by Dan Simmons
“A fortunate coincidence, Mr Collins, running into you like this,” said Barris.
I did not honour that nonsense with a reply, but looked at Hatchery in a way that showed cool disapproval of his being so free with the details of our habits. Then I remembered wryly that the huge man worked for Inspector Field—and almost certainly reported to this insufferable Barris as well, since the younger man seemed to be a lieutenant of the tiresome inspector—and reminded myself that there had been no real friendship between Hatchery and me, despite my generosity towards him in recent weeks.
Barris leaned forward over his forearms and lowered his voice. “Inspector Field was hoping for a report, sir. I volunteered that if I were to run into you, I would mention it. Time is getting short.”
“I gave Inspector Field a report less than a fortnight ago,” I said. “And time is getting short for what?”
Barris smiled but set a quick finger to his lips, his eyes darting left and right in a melodramatic reminder that we must be discreet. I always forgot that Field and his men presumed agents of the phantasm Drood to be lurking everywhere.
“Until the ninth of June,” Barris whispered.
“Ah,” I said and took a drink. “The ninth of June. The sacred anniversary of Staplehurst and…”
“Shhh,” said Mr Reginald Barris.
I shrugged. “I’ve not forgotten.”
“Your report was a little less than clear, Mr Collins, on…”
“Less than clear?” I interrupted, my voice loud enough to be heard throughout the public house if anyone had been interested in eavesdropping—which certainly none of the few inhabitants seemed to be. “Mr Barris, I am a writer. A journalist for several years, a novelist now by vocation. I hardly think that my report could have been less than clear.”
“No, no, no,” agreed the young detective, smiling in his embarrassment. “I mean, yes. That is, no—I chose the wrong words, Mr Collins. Never less than clear, but… perhaps… perfectly clear but a trifle sketchy?”
“Sketchy?” I repeated, giving the word the disdain it deserved.
“As in perfectly captured in a few strokes,” purred the young detective, leaning even lower over his massive forearms, “but not fully filled in with details. For instance, you reported that Mr Dickens continues to say that he has no knowledge of Mr Edmond Dickenson’s current whereabouts, but did you… as we liked to say in school and the regiment… drop the bombshell on him?”
I had to smile at this. “Mr… Detective… Barris,” I said softly, noticing Hibbert Hatchery’s apparent lack of concern with everything his superior and I were saying, “I not only dropped the bombshell, as you put it, on Mr Dickens—I dropped the entire mortar.”
BARRIS WAS TALKING about Dickenson’s money as a motive in the boy’s disappearance.
I was feeling so well that beautiful May day that I actually had been enjoying the long walk to Rochester from Gad’s Hill Place, despite having to keep up with Dickens’s killing pace, and we were about two-thirds of the way to our urban destination when I dropped the shell, mortar, and caisson on the Inimitable.
“Oh, I say,” I said as we followed the walking path along the north side of the highway towards the distant church spires, “I happened to run into a friend of young Edmond Dickenson the other day.”
If I had expected shock or surprise from Dickens, I received only the mildest twitch of one magisterial eyebrow. “Really? I would have guessed that young Dickenson had no friends.”
“Evidently he had,” I lied. “An old school chum by the name of Barnaby or Benedict or Bertram or somesuch.”
“Are those the friend’s last name or Christian name?” asked Dickens, clicking along with his walking stick touching the ground at its usual precise and rapid intervals.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, wishing that I had taken greater care in constructing this part of the introductory fiction I’d set to trap Dickens. “Just someone I met at my club.”
“It might matter in the sense that the chap you met may have been a liar,” Dickens said lightly enough.
“A liar? How is this, Charles?”
“I am quite sure that young Dickenson informed me that he never went to university—even to drop out—nor had ever darkened the door of any school,” said Dickens. “It seems the poor orphan had a succession of tutors, each less imposing than the last.”
“Well…” I said and hurried to catch up to Dickens. “Perhaps they weren’t school chums, but this Barnaby…”
“Or Bertram,” offered Dickens.
“Yes, well, it seems that this chap…”
“Or Benedict,” said Dickens.
“Yes. May I tell this, Charles?”
“By all means, my dear Wilkie,” said Dickens, smiling and extending his open hand. Some small grey birds—doves or partridges—exploded from the hedges we were approaching and flew into the blue sky. Without breaking pace, Dickens raised his walking stick to his shoulder like a shotgun and pantomimed pulling a trigger.
“It seems that this chap, a former friend of young Dickenson from somewhere,” I said, “was told by Dickenson himself last year that he—Dickenson—had legally changed guardians during the last months before he reached his majority.”
“Oh?” was all that Dickens said in response. It was a polite syllable only.
“Yes,” I said, waiting.
We walked a hundred yards or so in silence.
Finally I dropped my bombshell. “This same chap…”
“Mr Barnaby.”
“This same chap,” I persisted, “happened to be involved with some transactions at his friend Dickenson’s bank and happened to overhear…”
“Which bank is that?” asked Dickens.
“Pardon?”
“To which bank are you referring, my dear Wilkie? Or rather, to which bank was your friend of young Dickenson referring?”
“Tillson’s Bank,” I said, feeling the power in the two words. It was as if I were moving a knight into place before pronouncing checkmate. I believe it was Sir Francis Bacon who said, “Knowledge is power”—and the power I now held over Charles Dickens’s head had come through the knowledge obtained by Inspector Charles Frederick Field.
“Ah, yes,” said Dickens. He hopped slightly to clear a branch that had fallen in the gravel path. “I know that bank, my dear Wilkie… an old-fashioned, boastful, small, dark, and ugly place with a musty odour.”
By this point I had almost, but not quite, lost the thread of the interrogation by which I’d hoped to catch the conscience of this king.
“A sound enough bank, it seems, to have transferred some twenty thousand pounds to the account of Edmond Dickenson’s new guardian,” I said and wondered if my Sergeant Cuff would have added an “Ah-hah!”
“I should have added ‘indiscreet’ to old-fashioned, boastful, small, dark, and ugly with a musty odour,” chuckled Dickens. “I shall do no more business with Tillson’s.”
I had to stop. Dickens took a few final steps and then—frowning slightly at the interruption of our pace—also stopped. My heart was pounding in my chest.
“You do not deny receiving such monies then, Charles?”
“Deny it? Why would I deny it, my dear Wilkie? What on earth are you going on about?”
“You do not deny having become Edmond Dickenson’s guardian and having transferred some twenty thousand pounds—his entire inheritance—from Tillson’s Bank to your own bank and chequing account?”
“Not for a second could I or would I deny it!” laughed Dickens. “Both statements of fact are statements of fact, and therefore true. Come now, let’s walk.”
“But…” I said, catching up to him and trying to match him stride for stride. “But… when I asked some short time ago whether you knew where young Dickenson was, you said you had heard he’d gone to South Africa or somesuch place but otherwise had no idea.”
“Which is, of course, the absolute truth,” said Dickens.
“But you were
his guardian!”
“In name only,” said Dickens. “And only for a few weeks before the poor boy came into his majority and his full inheritance. He thought he was doing me an honour by naming me such, and I allowed him to think so. It certainly was no one’s business other than Dickenson and myself.”
“But the money…” I began.
“Withdrawn, on Dickenson’s request, the day after he turned twenty-one and could do anything he wished with it, my dear Wilkie. I had the pleasure of writing him a cheque for the full amount that same day.”
“Yes, but… why through your account, Charles? It makes no sense.”
“Of course it does not,” agreed Dickens, chuckling again. “The boy—still thinking I had saved his life at Staplehurst—wanted to see my signature on the draught that would start his life anew as an adult. All nonsense, of course, but it cost me nothing other than the energy of receiving the payment and writing my own cheque to the lad. His former barrister and advisor—a Mr Roffe, I believe—made all the arrangements with both banks.”
“But you say that you have no idea where Dickenson went…”
“And so I do not,” he said. “He talked of visiting France and then truly beginning his life anew… South Africa, perhaps, or even Australia. But I received no letters from him.”
I started to speak again and realised that I had nothing to say. When I had rehearsed this confrontation in my mind, I had imagined Sergeant Cuff surprising the culprit into an admission of murder.
Dickens seemed to be inspecting my face as we walked. He was clearly amused. “When you heard all this from this amazingly ubiquitous Mr Barnaby or Benedict or Bertrand, my dear Wilkie, did you imagine that I had insinuated myself into the position of guardian for poor young Dickenson and then murdered him for his money?”
“What!? I… Of course I did not… Ridiculous… How could you…”
“Because that would be what I would have made from all these otherwise circumstantial clues,” Dickens said brightly. “An ageing writer, perhaps suffering from money problems, happens to save this rich orphan’s life and soon realises that the boy has no friends, no family, no close acquaintances to speak of—only a doddering old barrister who tends to forget whether he has had lunch that day or not—and the writer then arranges to have the trusting boy appoint him, the avaricious writer with money problems, to a position as guardian.…”
“Are you having money problems, Charles?”
Dickens laughed so loudly and easily that I almost laughed with him.
“How would I have killed him, do you think, Wilkie? And where? Gad’s Hill Place? Frightfully public with so many visitors coming and going all the hours of the day and night.”
“Rochester Cathedral,” I said dully.
Dickens glanced up over the green trees. “Yes, so it is. We are almost there. Oh-hoh! No, wait, you mean… I would have killed Dickenson at Rochester Cathedral. Yes, of course. It all fits in. You are a genius of deduction, my dear Wilkie.”
“You like to show it to people at night, in the moonlight,” I said, not believing that I was saying these words aloud.
“Indeed I do,” laughed Dickens. “And Mr Dradles and the cathedral’s cleric, whom I shall call Septimus Crisparkle in my novel, have given me keys to gain access to the tower at all hours when I bring guests there.…”
“And the crypts,” I muttered.
“What’s that? Oh, yes! Very good. The same keys would give me access to the crypts. So all I would have to do would be to invite young Dickenson on a private outing with me—showing off Rochester from its cathedral tower in the moonlight; why, I took you and Longfellow’s brother-in-law and his daughters up there in the moonlight just last year—and, at the appropriate second, as I urged the boy to lean over better to see the moonlight on the sea around the base of the tower… just give him the slightest shove.”
“Let us stop this, Charles,” I said raggedly. I felt the rheumatical gout creeping behind my right eye like a geyser of pent-up blood and pain.
“No, no, it is too wonderful,” cried Dickens, twirling his walking stick as if he were leading a parade. “No pistol needed—nor hammer, nor shovel, nor any grimy, heavy instrument needed to do the deed and then to be cleaned or disposed of—only gravity. A brief cry in the night. And then… what then? Say the boy had impaled himself on one of the black iron spikes rising from the fence surrounding the sacristy, or dashed out what few brains he had on one of the ancient headstones… what then, Sergeant Cuff?”
“Then the lime pit,” I said.
Dickens actually stopped and seized his forehead with his free hand. His eyes were wide, his smile broad and beatific.
“The lime pit!” he exclaimed. A rider trotting past on a bay mare looked over from the road. “Of course! How could I have forgotten the lime pit? And then, perhaps in a few days’ time… the crypts?”
I shook my head, looked away, and bit my lip until I could taste blood. We resumed walking.
“Of course,” said Dickens, swinging his stick absently at a weed, “I would then need old Dradles as an accomplice, to take down and put back up the crypt walls, I mean. This is how murder plots are found out, you know, Wilkie—taking an accomplice is too often a step towards the gallows.”
“Not at all,” I said, my voice still flat and lifeless. “You will have used your power of magnetic influence on poor Dradles. He will have no memory of his aiding and abetting of your disposal of Dickenson’s corpse… skeleton… watch, glasses, and other metal effects.”
“Mesmerism!” cried Dickens. “Wonderful! Shall we add laudanum to the mixture here, my dear friend?”
“I don’t believe that is required, Charles. Mesmeric control alone will account for the accomplice’s unwitting help.”
“Poor old Dradles!” cried Dickens. He was almost skipping in his delight. “Poor young Dickenson! Those few people in this world who even knew he had ever lived believe him—on the word of his murderer!—to be off to France or South Africa or Australia. No one to mourn him. No one to bring a single flower to his sealed and shared crypt. And the killer solves his… money problems… and goes on as if nothing has happened. This is too wonderful, my dear Wilkie.”
My heart pounding wildly again, I decided to explode the bombshell I had dropped perhaps so prematurely. “Yes, Charles, but this is all predicated on the murderer in question knowing that he is the murderer… knowing that he has done murder.”
“But how can he not know…” began Dickens, and then ran his hand furiously through his scraggly beard. “Of course! The murderer, the same man who has mesmerised his crypt-keeper accomplice into compliance, has been acting under the control of magnetic influence himself!”
I said nothing but watched Dickens’s face as we walked.
He shook his head. “I fear it breaks down here, Wilkie.”
“How so, Charles?”
“Professor John Elliotson, my first instructor in the magnetic arts—you quoted him yourself, Wilkie!—and all other experts I have read and conferred with, insist that someone under the magnetic influence of another, stronger will, still cannot commit any deed which he would not perform or agree to when not under mesmeric control.”
“But you had old Dradles help you dispose of the body,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” said Dickens, walking more quickly even as he ran his hands through his hair and beard, lost in deep contemplation of the plot elements here. “But burying the newly dead in graves and the crypts—transporting them when necessary—then walling up the corpses, is Dradles’s job. The controlling mesmeriser would simply construct a waking dream of a story around him. But to command murder… No, I think that will not work in our story, Wilkie. Not if the murderer is a sane man.”
“Even sane men have dark thoughts,” I said softly as we came into the very shadow of Rochester Cathedral. “Even sane men—eminently sane men, public men—have dark sides which they show to no one.”
“True, true,” said Dickens. “
But to the point of being able to do murder?”
“But what if the real puppet master behind this crime were to be a Master Mesmeriser and mass killer himself?” I said. “He might have many covert ways of convincing the men and women under his control to do his bidding, no matter how horrible. Perhaps they are made to think that they are players in some theatrical experience and that their murdered victims will hop up and take a curtain call bow at the end.”
Dickens looked at me very sharply. “You are more of a sensationalist than I gave you credit for, Wilkie Collins. This new book of yours—The Moonstone—will do very well indeed, given the public’s literally insatiable appetite for slaughter, gore, and the unwholesome aspects that stir to life in the darkest folds of the human mind.”
“One can only hope,” I said softly.
We had come into the town and were less than a block from Rochester Cathedral. The great tower threw its shadow over us and over the whole cluster of low, grey houses on either side of the road.
“Would you care to go up and look around?” asked Dickens, gesturing towards the tall stone spire. “I happen to have the key with me.”
“Not today,” I said. “But thank you all the same, Charles.”
“Some other time, then,” said the Inimitable.
SO HE SHOWED no visible guilt or remorse about the twenty thousand pounds,” said Reginald Barris. “But what about the anniversary?”
“I beg your pardon?” I said. I had been thinking of other things.
“The anniversary of Staplehurst,” whispered the young detective. “Inspector Field asked you to do your utmost to accompany Dickens when he comes into town on that date, and the ninth is only three days away. You said nothing in your report on whether he had accepted or rejected your offer of spending the day and night with him at Gad’s Hill Place or during his inevitable return to the city and Undertown London on that night.”