“Whatever did you do to make them so keenly interested in you?” asked the man, after they looked around and decided they had not been followed.
“I honestly don't know,” Osgood answered. “I inquired to the auctioneer about that item they had left out-item eighty-five. It's here in the catalog. I had noticed it at Gadshill that day you were there-I even saw it being wrapped up by the auction workers the next day.” Osgood handed him the catalog.
The man nodded as they walked across the busy square of brick and mortar buildings. Every passerby in London, even the poorest newsboy, had a flower in his coat, though no one else boasted an opium poppy. “If you saw this plaster statue taken out of the house, and it was printed in the catalog, we know it made it to the auction rooms. Why would they skip over it, then? There is only one strong likelihood to suspect. That it was stolen from Christie's rooms after the catalog was printed but without enough time to correct it-shortly before the one o'clock auction, then. That explains why they were after you.”
“Do you mean they thought I was the one who stole the statue?” Osgood exclaimed.
“Unlikely enough! But you were calling attention to the fact it was missing. Think of it through their eyes. If a theft from Christie's auction house were to be reported in the papers, all the finest dealers in London would hear of it. They'd note, too, that it occurred from a prize sale like Dickens's. How many customers would be lost to rival auction houses?”
Osgood thought it over. He recalled that Mr. Wakefield from the Samaria had mentioned using Christie's for his tea business and decided he would write to Wakefield asking him to inquire into what had happened to the statue. For now, Osgood studied the steady gait and bearing of the man who had acted so unaccountably strange in the chalet at Gadshill.
“I have wanted to speak to you, sir,” Osgood said cautiously.
“I know it,” said his walking companion without breaking stride.
“You do?”
“You have looked for me at the Abbey.”
“You saw us going back there then? You have been following us!” Osgood exclaimed.
“No, this is without making the least investigation. There is much to know by simply opening the eyes, though, my friend.”
“How then?” Osgood asked, genuinely curious but also as a test of the man's sanity.
“First, I saw you keenly interested in my flower when we were both at Poets’ Corner together.”
“The opium poppy.”
He nodded. “Then, on another day, I had seen that one of my flowers had been removed. I surmised it was likely the same person who observed it attentively on the first occasion: you.”
“I suppose that makes some sense.”
“Have you received any responses about me from your letters to the mesmerism experts?”
“What?” Osgood's jaw dropped. “But I left my bookkeeper at the inn writing those letters of inquiry as we speak! I instructed her to do this only this morning, thinking that without Mr. Dickens you may have sought those services elsewhere. How did you possibly know about that?”
“Oh, I didn't! I merely surmised it as well, which is a rather more convenient way of obtaining information than actually knowing it.”
Osgood was impressed. “Have you seen another mesmerist?”
“Mr. Dickens cured me quite thoroughly. I have no need.”
“Sir, I owe you my thanks today for what transpired at the auction house. My name is James Ripley Osgood.”
The man turned toward the publisher with a military air. His lank white hair was combed with perfect care this time, although his clothes were disheveled and loose. His sun-scarred features were handsome, large and chiseled. It did not surprise Osgood that Dickens would have accepted the farmer into his home-his pride in helping the working poor had been almost as strong as his pride in his writing, for he remembered his own humble childhood.
“I fancy you are ready, Ripley,” the man said with an enigmatic, crooked-toothed smile upon adopting an immediate nickname for the publisher.
“You said the same thing at the chalet. But ready for what?”
“Why, to find the truth about Edwin Drood.”
Osgood took care not to show excitement or even surprise at the startling pronouncement. “May I take the liberty of having your name, sir?” Osgood replied.
“I apologize-I was in one of my unnatural spells when you saw me at Gadshill and not acting right. I did not present myself. What you must think!” He shook his head in self-recrimination. “My name is Dick Datchery. Now that you know who I am, we may talk openly.”
Chapter 20
REBECCA HAD RECEIVED WORD FROM A MESSENGER WITH A NOTE to wait for Osgood in the coffee room of the Falstaff. When he arrived, she sat patiently as he hung his hat and his light coat on the peg and put his satchel and a paper-wrapped package carefully on the table. He looked to be in a state of quiet excitement and anticipation. He poured out the whole story of the auction, his escape, and what had been revealed by his meeting with the mesmerism patient.
“Then he is a madman,” Rebecca declared, throwing up her hands. “I suppose that decides it. He'll be no help in remembering anything he heard from Mr. Dickens.”
Osgood made a noncommittal gesture.
“Mr. Osgood,” she pursued, “is it not the case-did you not just explain to me for a quarter hour, that this poor farmer believes himself Dick Datchery, a character from an unfinished novel?”
Osgood crossed his arms over his chest. “What would the novel's state of completion matter in terms of his sanity, Miss Sand?”
Rebecca looked at her employer with a decidedly practical air, but her usually even voice wavered with emotion. “It would be somewhat more reasonable to believe oneself a character in a book that is finished. At least, one would know if one's fate is dire or grand.”
Osgood smiled at her chagrin. “Miss Sand, I admit your skepticism is well-founded, of course. This man calling himself Datchery has suffered a type of mental strain, as we saw with our own eyes at Gadshill. He does not seem to remember anything about a time before he began the sessions, or where he came from. But what if-just think of this-what if the mesmerism sessions performed by Dickens had some unintended effect on an already-shattered constitution, one that could prove to be to our benefit? What if in the process of mesmerism, Dickens transfered, by some profound exposure, the skills of investigation displayed by the fictional character of Datchery onto this man. The man even spoke like Dick Datchery! Look at these.”
Rebecca watched dubiously as Osgood removed from his satchel some books he said he had purchased in Paternoster Row on his way back to the hotel. Each tome examined an element of spiritualism or mesmerism. “These books speak of the fluid of life passing through us. The ability to chase away pain and repair nerves through magnetic forces-”
Rebecca, incredulous at hearing this terminology from her employer, put the cup she had just raised to her lips down with a bang.
“What's wrong, Miss Sand?”
“Some of these are the same titles from Gadshill's library.”
“Yes, they are!”
“Mr. Osgood, you didn't wish me to examine those books at the Gadshill library. You said then that you do not believe one whit in phenomena.”
“Nor have I changed my mind. But Mamie Dickens and her sister Katie confirmed at the Abbey how much Charles Dickens believed in it. Mamie even testified that the mesmerism worked on her. If Dickens, intentionally or accidentally, exposed this man to more information about the novel, even if he doesn't consciously know it, this may be our chance-the best chance to quit England with more knowledge than when we entered it. This man's mind-however disordered-may carry inside it the last strands of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”