The Last Dickens

by Matthew Pearl

  The Last Dickens

  Matthew Pearl

  Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history's greatest mysteries in his most enthralling novel yet, a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of bestsellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.

  Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens's untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await Dickens's unfinished novel-The Mystery of Edwin Drood. But when Daniel's body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel's killer.

  Danger and intrigue abound on the journey, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel's older sister, to help clear her brother's name and achieve their singular mission. As they attempt to uncover Dickens's final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of the inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens's lost ending to Edwin Drood is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.

  Matthew Pearl

  The Last Dickens

  © 2009

  First Installment

  ***

  Chapter 1

  Bengal, India, June 1870

  NEITHER OF THE YOUNG MOUNTED POLICEMEN FANCIED THESE subdivisions of the Bagirhaut province. Neither of them fancied jungles where all manner of things could happen unprovoked, unseen, as they had a few years before when a poor lieutenant was stripped, clubbed, and drowned in the river for trying to collect licensing taxes.

  The officers clamped the heels of their boots tighter into their horses’ flanks. Not to say they were scared-only careful.

  “You must be careful always,” said Turner to Mason as they ducked the low branches and vines. “Be assured, the natives in India do not value life. Not even as the poorest Englishman does.”

  The younger of the two policemen, Mason, nodded thoughtfully at the words of his impressive partner, who was nearly twenty-five years old, who had two brothers also come from England to be in Indian Civil Service, and who had fought the Indian rebellion a few years before. He was an expert if ever one was.

  “Perhaps we should have come with more men, sir.”

  “Well, that's pretty! More men, Mason? We shan't need any more than our two heads between us to take in a few ragged dacoits. Remember, a high-mettled horse stands not for hedge nor ditch.”

  When Mason had arrived in Bengal from Liverpool for his new post, he accepted Turner's offer to “chum,” pooling incomes and living expenses and passing their free time in billiards or croquet. Mason, at eighteen, was thankful for counsel from such an experienced man in the ranks of the Bengal police. Turner could list places a policeman ought never to ride alone because of the Coles, the Santhals, the Assamee, the Kookies, and the hill tribes in the frontiers. Some of the criminal gangs among the tribes were dacoits, thieves; others, warned Turner, carried axes and wanted English heads. “The natives of India value life only as far as they can kill when doing so,” was another Turner proverb.

  Fortunately, they were not hunting out that sort of bloodthirsty gang in these wasting temperatures this morning. Instead they were investigating a plain, brazen robbery. The day before, a long train of twenty or thirty bullock carts had been hit with a shower of stones and rocks. In the chaos, dacoits holding torches tipped over the carts and fled with valuable chests from the convoy. When intelligence of the theft reached the police station, Turner had gone to their supervisor's desk to volunteer himself and Mason, and their commander had sent them to question a known receiver of stolen goods.

  Now, as the terrain thinned, they neared the small thatched house on the creek. A dwindling column of smoke hovered above the mud chimney. Mason gripped the sword at his belt. Every two men in the Bengal police were assigned one sword and one light carbine rifle, and Turner had naturally claimed the rifle.

  “Mason,” he said with a slight smile in his voice after noticing the anxious look on his partner's face. “You are green, aren't you? It is highly likely they have unloaded the goods and fled already. Perhaps for the mountains, where our elaka-that is like ‘jurisdiction,’ Mason-where our elaka does not extend. No matter, really, when captured, they lie and say they are innocent peasants until the corrupt darkie magistrates release them. What do you say to going tiger shooting upon some elephants?”

  “Turner!” Mason whispered, just then, interrupting his partner.

  They were coming upon the thatched-roof house where a bright red horse was tied to a post (the natives in these provinces often painted their horses unnatural colors). A slight rustle at the house drew their eyes to a pair of men fitting the description of two of the thieves. One of them held a torch. They were arguing.

  Turner signaled Mason to stay quiet. “The one on the right, it's Narain,” he whispered and pointed. Narain was a known opium thief against whom several attempts at conviction had failed.

  The opium poppy was cultivated in Bengal and refined there under English control, after which the colonial government sold the drug at auction to opium traders from England, America, and other nations. From there, the traders would transport the opium for sale to China, where it was illegal but still in great demand. The trade was enormously profitable for the British government.

  Dismounting, Turner and Mason split up and approached the thieves from two sides. As Mason crept through the bushes from around the back, he could not help but think about their good fortune: not only that two of the thieves were still at the suspected confederate's house but also that their argument was serving as distraction.

  As Mason made his way around the thick shrubbery he jumped out at Turner's signal and displayed his sword at the surprised Narain, who put up two trembling hands and lay flat on the ground. Meanwhile the other thief had pushed Turner down and dashed into the dense trees. Turner staggered to his feet, aimed his rifle, and shot. He fired a wild second shot into the jungle.

  They tied the prisoner and traced the fugitive's path but soon lost the trail. While searching up and down the curve of the rough creek, Turner lunged at something on the ground. Upon reaching the spot, Mason saw with great pride in his chum that Turner had bludgeoned a cobra with his carbine. But the cobra was not dead and it rose up again as Mason approached and tried to strike. Such was the peril of the Bengalee jungle.

  Abandoning the hunt for the other thief, they returned to the spot where they'd left Narain tied to a tree and freed him, leading him as they took the horses they'd borrowed back to the police outpost. There, they boarded the train with their prisoner in tow to bring Narain to the district of their station house.

  “Get some sleep,” Turner said to Mason with a brotherly care. “You look worn out. I can guard the dacoit.”

  “Thank you, Turner,” said Mason gratefully.

  The eventful morning had been exhausting. Mason found an empty row of seats and covered his face with his hat. Before long he fell into a deep sleep beneath the rattling window, where a slow breeze made the compartment nearly tolerable. He woke to a horrible echoing scream-the kind that lived sometimes in his nightmares of Bengal's jungles.

  When he shook himself into sensibility he saw Turner standing alone staring out the window.

  “Where's the prisoner?” Mason cried.

  “I don't know!” Turner shouted, a wild glint in his eyes. “I looked the other way for a moment, and Narain must have thrown himself out the window!”

  They pulled the alarm fo
r the train to stop. Mason and Turner, with the help of an Indian railway policeman, searched along the rocks and found Narain's crushed and bloody body. His head had been smashed open at impact. His hands were still tied together with wire.

  Solemnly, Mason and Turner abandoned the body and reboarded the train. The young English officers were silent the remaining train ride to the station house, except for some unmusical humming by Turner. They had almost reached the terminal when Turner posed a question.

  “Answer me this, Mason. Why did you enroll in the mounted police?”

  Mason tried to think of a good answer but was too troubled. “To raise a little dust, I suppose. We all want to make some noise in the world.”

  “Stuff!” said Turner. “Never lose sight of the true blessings of public service. Each one of us is here to turn out a better civilization in the end, and for that reason alone.”

  “Turner, about what happened today…” The younger man's face was white.

  “What's wrong?” Turner demanded. “Luck was with us. That cobra might have done us both in.”

  “Narain… the suspected dacoit. Well, shouldn't we, I mean, to collect up the names and statements of the passengers for our diaries so that if there is any kind of inquiry…”

  “Suspected? Guilty, you meant. Never mind, Mason. We'll send one of the native men.”

  “But, won't we, if Dickens, I mean…”

  “What mumbling! You oughtn't chew your words.”

  “Sir,” the younger officer enunciated forcefully, “considering for a moment Dickens-”

  “Mason, that's enough! Can't you see I'm tired?” Turner hissed.

  “Sir,” Mason said, nodding.

  Turner's neck had become stiff and veiny at the sound of that particular name: Dickens. As though the word had been rotting deep inside him and now crawled back up his throat.

  Chapter 2

  Boston, the same day, 1870

  THE LABORERS CURSED THE MAYOR OF BOSTON AND THE SUM-mer heat and the governor of Massachusetts and the freed Negroes. And of course they cursed the ships. The freed Negroes cursed the same but substituted the Irish in their epithets.

  In other months, some dockworkers sang. But in the summer they'd curse.

  “Damn moss to hell!” said one laborer. He did not specify whether it was his own poor wages he was damning or the money lining the pockets of the cushion-faced rich folks whose goods they hauled.

  A second laborer added: “Damn all moss! Straight to the devil!” At that, three cheers and another were called out in unison.

  They didn't yet notice, walking across the pier, a large stranger dangling an ivory toothpick from his lips. His dark eyes darted ahead into the lanes of stevedores and express wagons. “Say!” he called out to the clique of Irish laborers, though he failed to attract their attention. Then he raised his gilded walking stick.

  That did it.

  At the top of the stick was an exotic and ugly golden idol, the head of a beast, a horn rising from the top, terrible mouth agape, sparks of fire shooting from its outstretched tongue. It was mesmerizing to behold. Not just because of its shining ugliness, but also because it was such a contrast to the stranger's own mouth, mostly hidden under an ear-to-ear mustache. The man's lips barely managed to pry open his mouth when he spoke.

  “I need,” said the stranger, addressing the dockworkers, “to find a lad. Have you seen him? He wears a heavy suit and carries a bundle of papers.”

  In fact, the dockworkers had seen a passerby fitting the description just a few minutes before. The young man had stopped at an overturned barrel outside the Salt House. Just to look at the fellow's thick suit added to the heat. Steadying himself with a self-conscious air, he had removed a bundle of papers tied up with black string from underneath the barrel and staggered through the pack of laborers. Naturally, they had cursed him.

  “Well,” said the stranger when recognition came into their eyes. “Which way did he walk?”

  The four dockworkers exchanged evasive glances. Not so much at his question, but at his decidedly English accent-and at his brown-parchment complexion. Under his hat, a chocolate-colored cotton turban stuck out. He wore a tunic-style garment that hung over the knees of his silk trousers, and a woolen cord was wrapped around the waist.

  “You some kind of Hindoo?” a wiry laborer finally asked.

  The swarthy stranger paused and took a momentous breath. He turned with only his eyes to the laborer who had proposed the question. With a sudden ferociousness, he thrust his stick against the laborer's neck and slammed his body down to the ground. His companions rushed in, but a single look from the attacker kept the would-be rescuers at bay.

  That grotesque head had crooked, razor-sharp fangs. These were now biting into the soft flesh of the prostrate worker's jugular. A thin drop of blood trembled down his Adam's apple.

  “Look at me. Look at me in the eye now,” the stranger said. “You'll tell me where you saw that lad go, or right here I rip your Dublin tongue out through your throat, God save us all.”

  Fearing the fangs would dig deeper into his neck, the felled stevedore answered with a just perceptible motion. He raised his arm and pointed a shaky finger in the direction the young man had taken, his eyes closing in dread.

  “Good boy, my young Paddy,” said the stranger.

  No wonder the Irish laborer had closed his eyes. The stranger's teeth and lips, seen from that low vantage point, looked to be stained an unnaturally bright red. As though painted by blood. As if this man had just chewed up a rabid animal for breakfast.

  Armed with the new information, the dark-eyed stranger soon regained the trail on the street leading away from Long Wharf and into Boston proper. There, straight ahead, weaving around the market carts of produce by Faneuil Hall, he spotted the one he was after. It was as though a strong wind were pushing the young man. His loco-motion was wild, his disoriented eyes urgent; if anyone had paid attention, it would seem that he was possessed of a mission-vital to Boston, vital to the world. He tossed back looks of concern as he hugged the water-stained packet tightly with both arms.

  The pursuer pushed aside fish dealers and beggars through the aisles of Quincy Market.

  “Beer by the glass!” cried a hawker before being jostled to the ground.

  At the end of the market, as predator and prey crossed through the exit, the large hand had latched on to the other's sleeve.

  “You'll be sorry you ran from me!” he growled, pulling him by the arm.

  “No!” The earnest eyes of the young man lit up with defiance. “Os-good needs it!”

  The lad's free arm rose as if to strike his assailant-at which gesture the enormous man did not even flinch. But instead of striking, the lad used the free hand to take hold of his own captured sleeve and pull down on the fabric, ripping his suit open at the shoulder. Freed from the stranger's clutches, he was sent pirouetting from the force across the street and almost to the safety of the other side.

  An inhuman shriek combined with an awful cracking sound.

  The stranger with the golden idol, panting at the bottom of his throat, pulled his rounded hat to shield his eyes from the clouds of dust as he stepped to the curb. For a moment he could not find the young man, but then he saw what had happened. When a large assortment of people had gathered, too many people, the watcher shuffled away as though he'd never had any interest.

  ***

  THE SWARTHY STRANGER hadn't been the only one out hunting in the lusty traffic of the docks that morning. There were, at the moment, two or three others among the hives of workmen, wharf rats, and holiday-revelers. These were familiar faces on the docks, many mornings out before the stevedores. They were familiar most of all to each other, though odd as it sounded they didn't know one another's names.

  Not their christened names, that is. There was Molasses, so titled humorously for his always harried pace. Esquire was a colored gentleman, a former cabman, who taught fencing and dancing in the Negro neighborhoods. Kitte
n was one of the females of this elite and grimy clique and could have charmed the drink right out of the hands of Whiskey Bill, another of their rivals.

  It was Molasses, today, in a black neck cloth and moleskin jacket, who was a hair's breadth from sweet victory. Victory! During the War of the Rebellion, Molasses had been a professional bounty man, paid to take the place of rich lads in the draft who did not want to serve. Using various aliases to get his money and then vanishing as eagerly from each regiment, the powdery days of war helped Molasses pocket five thousand dollars in two and a half years. Since then he had taken to dying his hair and beard colors never known to grow on any man naturally. The beard was also overlong. He had sworn that he would not shave until a Democrat was president and those cheating Republicans out of business.

  There. Right in front of Molasses's eyes was hidden what he wanted. He had been ordered by wire from Philadelphia to retrieve the treasure for a hefty reward. Stationing himself in one of the fish houses on the waterfront with his long spyglass, he had seen the young man in the suit hide it earlier that morning. Now it would be his.

  A wharfinger was taking up an abandoned barrel.

  “Beg pardon,” Molasses said, approaching and picking his tweed cap off his head as if in polite greeting. “I'll take that, sir.”

  “Who are you?” asked the wharfinger in a firm German accent. “Go away from my barrels, wharf rat.”

  Molasses kicked over the barrel with his unlaced boot. To his dismay, nothing but stray fish bones poured out. He couldn't believe it. He crouched down, rummaging through the mess. When he looked up, there was Esquire standing over him, gallantly chuckling. “Squire, you copper bottom rascal! Where are they?”

  “They're not here! Calm down, ‘lasses, I didn't procure the papers neither. You didn't get them, I didn't get them, and I saw Kitten- I think she's working for C. today-at an old tug with a face like she'd been slapped on the back while eating a stick of butter. Why, they've likely vanished safely altogether by now to their rightful owner, I s'pose. Rotten luck.”