Drood

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

In July, my brother was staying at Gad’s Hill Place for an extended period because of his health. Charley had been very ill with terrible stomach cramps and had been vomiting for days on end. His wife, Katey, continued to find it easier to care for him at her father’s house than at their home in London. (I also believe she found it more comfortable for herself to be waited on there.)

On this particular day, Charley was feeling somewhat better and was in the library at Gad’s Hill, talking to the other Charley—Dickens’s son—who was doing some work in the library there. (I don’t believe I mentioned, Dear Reader, that in May, my editor and Charles Dickens’s indefatigable sub-editor at All the Year Round, William Henry Wills, had somehow contrived to fall off his horse during a hunt and put a serious crease in his skull. Wills recovered somewhat but announced that he continued to hear doors slamming all the time. This reduced his effectiveness as an editor, also as Dickens’s administrator, accountant, manager, marketing chief, and ever-faithful factotum, so Dickens—after asking me to come back to the magazine in May and receiving no positive reply—had put his rather ineffectual and disappointing son Charles in the position of filling at least some of Wills’s many duties while he, the Inimitable, took care of the rest. What this amounted to was that his son was answering letters at the office and at home, but even this required at least 110 percent of Charles Dickens Junior’s feeble capabilities.)

So on this July day at Gad’s Hill, my brother, Charley, was in the library there with Charley Dickens when suddenly both young men heard two people, a man and a woman, shouting and arguing, the rising racket coming from somewhere on the lawn out of sight below and behind the house. It was the unmistakable sound of a quarrel escalating into violence. The woman’s screams, my brother later told me, were terrifying.

Both Charleys rushed down and outside and around the house, Dickens’s son arriving a full half-minute before my convalescing brother.

There, in the meadow behind the long yard and barn where Dickens and I had seen young Edmond Dickenson sleepwalking several Christmases earlier, Charles Dickens was now striding up and down, speaking and shouting in two different voices, one male, one female, all the while gesticulating wildly and finally rushing an unseen victim and attacking… attacking her… with a great, invisible club.

Dickens had become the bully-thug Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist and was lost in the bloody act of murdering Nancy.

She tried to escape, crying out for mercy. No mercy, bellowed Bill Sikes. She cried out for God to help her. God did not answer, but Bill Sikes did, shouting and cursing and striking her down with his heavy club.

She tried to rise, holding her arm and hand up to ward off the blow. Dickens/Sikes struck again, and again, breaking her delicate fingers, smashing the bones of her upraised forearm, then bringing the full weight of the club down on her bloodied head. And again. And again.

Charley Dickens and Charley Collins could see the blood and brain tissue flying. They could see the pool of blood growing beneath the now prone dying woman as Bill Sikes continued clubbing her. They could see the blood spattering Sikes’s screaming, distorted face. The very paws and legs of Sikes’s dog were bloody!

And still he kept clubbing her, even after she was dead.

Still crouched over the imaginary woman’s corpse, the invisible club still held in two hands and poised above the battered and bloody form in the grass, Charles Dickens looked up at his son and my brother. His face was twisted and contorted in triumph. His eyes were wide, wild, and in no way sane. My brother, Charley, later said that he was sure he could see pure, murderous evil in the eyes of that twisted, gloating countenance.

The Inimitable had, at long last, found his Murder for his next round of public readings.

IT WAS AT ABOUT THIS TIME that I became certain that I had to kill Charles Dickens.

He would pretend to murder his imaginary Nancy on stage, in front of thousands. I would murder him in real life. We would see which ritual murder was more effective in driving the Drood-scarab out of a man’s brain.

To prepare the way, I wrote him a letter of apology, even though I had nothing to apologise for and Dickens had everything for which to beg forgiveness. It made no difference.

90 Gloucester Place Saturday, 18 July, 1868

My Dear Charles:

I write to offer my sincere and total apologies for the contretemps I provoked last month at our favourite place of dining, Vérey’s. My failure to consider that you were overtired from your many travels and exertions undoubtedly provoked the illusion of disagreement between us, and my not-unusual clumsiness in expression led to unfortunate consequences for which I again apologise and humbly ask your forgiveness. (Any accidental attempt on my part to compare my poor current literary efforts to your incomparable Bleak House were presumptuous and in error. No one shall ever confuse this humble protégé with Cher Maître.)

It is somewhat more difficult for me to entertain at home since Mrs Caroline G— left my home and service, but I still hope that you will be my guest at No. 90 Gloucester Place before too much more of the year passes. Also, as I am sure you have noticed despite your business with All the Year Round in our poor friend Wills’s absence, our wonderful success, No Thoroughfare, has finally closed at the Adelphi Theatre. I confess to have begun making rough notes about another play—I believe I shall call it Black and White, since it may be about a French nobleman who, for one reason or another, finds himself on the auction in Jamaica, being sold as a slave. Our dear mutual friend Fechter suggested the general idea some months ago—I plan to speak to him about it in detail in October or November—and Fechter would love to play the lead. In preparing this work I would be most grateful if I could avail myself of your advice and criticism so that I might avoid the more egregious errors so plentiful in my contributions to No Thoroughfare. In any case, I would consider it an honour if you and your entire family would be my guests at premiere night at the Adelphi should this modest effort ever succeed in being staged.

With final and abject apologies and most sincere wishes for a mending of this unforeseen and unwanted breach in the constant history of our cordial relationships, I remain…

Affectionately and Loyally Yours,

W. C. Collins

I looked this note over for some time, making small changes here and there, always in the direction of the contrite and servile. I had no fear whatsoever that this missive would someday come to light after Dickens’s sudden and mysterious death and cause curiosity in the biographer who read it. Dickens was still in the habit of annually burning every letter he received. (He would have burned every letter he sent as well, if he could have, but most of us who corresponded with the famous man did not share his pyromaniacal tendencies when it came to communications.)

Then I had George send it off by post and I went out to buy a bottle of good brandy and a puppy.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON I carried the brandy, a copy of this week’s All the Year Round, and the unnamed puppy with me as I took the train to Rochester and hired a carriage to take me to the cathedral.

I left the puppy in the carriage but took the brandy and paper as I walked through the graveyard to the back of the high, hulking cathedral. Rochester had always been a coastal city of narrow streets and redbrick buildings, which made this colossus of an ancient grey stone cathedral seem all the more impressive and oppressive.

This was the very landscape of Charles Dickens’s childhood. It was the presence of this very cathedral that had caused him to say to me years ago that Rochester reflected, for him, “universal gravity, mystery, decay, and silence.”

There was silence enough this hot, humid July day. And I could smell the stench of decay from the nearby tidal flats. Even with what Dickens had once called “the splash and flop of the tide” geographically nearby, there was no splashing audible this day, precious little flop, and absolutely no breeze. The full weight of the sun lay on the baking old headstones and browning grass like an incongruous gold blanket.

Even the shade of the cathedral tower gave little relief. I leaned back and stared up at that grey tower and remembered Dickens’s comment about how it had affected him when he was a tiny boy—“… what a brief little practical joke I seemed to be, my dear Wilkie, in comparison with its solidity, stature, strength, and length of life.”

Well, Dear Reader, if I had my way—and I fully intended to—the cathedral might go on for centuries or millennia more, but the length of life for that little-boy-turned-old-man-writer was all but at its end.

At the far end of the graveyard, beyond the headstones, with only the slightest path leading to it, I found the quick-lime pit still open, still full, and as foul as ever. My eyes watered as I walked back through the graveyard, passing by the very stones and wall and flat headstone-table where Dickens, Ellen Ternan, Ellen’s mother, and I had shared that macabre luncheon so long ago.

I followed the soft TIP-TAP-TIP-TAP around the cathedral, past the rectory, and into a courtyard on the far side. Between the stone wall and a low hovel of stones and thatch, Mr Dradles and an idiot-looking young assistant were working on a headstone taller than either of them. Only the name and the dates—GILES BRENDLE GYMBY, 1789–1866—had been chiselled out of the marble.

When Mr Dradles turned to me, I saw that his face, under a layer of stone dust rivuleted with tracks of his perspiration, was red to the point of bursting. He mopped his forehead as I came closer.

“You probably do not remember me, Mr Dradles,” I began. “But I came here some time ago in the company of…”

“Dradles remembers ’ee, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins, named after a Sirred house painter or some’at,” rasped the red-faced figure. “You was here with Mr Charles D., of all them books an’ such, who was interested in the ol’ ’uns in their dark beds.”

“Exactly,” I said. “But I felt that you and I got off on the wrong foot.”

Dradles looked down at his worn, holed boots, which, I noted, were not “differentiated.” That is, there was no left or right to them, as had been the custom decades ago. “Dradles’s feet are the only ’uns Dradles has,” he said. “The can’t be no wrong ’un.”

I smiled. “True, true. But I felt that I may have left the wrong impression. I brought you this…” I handed him the bottle of fine brandy.

Dradles looked at it, mopped his face and neck again, uncorked the bottle, sniffed it, swigged it, squinted at me, and said, “This ’ere is better drink ’an Dradles is used to at the Thatched an’ Twopenny or anywheres else.” He drank again. His assistant, whose face was as red from the heat and labour as Dradles’s, stared stupidly but did not ask for a drink.

“Speaking of the Thatched and Twopenny,” I said conversationally, “I do not see your rock-hurling young devil around. What did you call him? Deputy? Is it too early in the day for him to be pelting you homeward?”

“That d— ned boy is dead,” said Dradles. He saw my expression and chuckled. “Oh, Dradles di’n’t kill ’im, though Dradles thought to more ’an a time. No, the pox killed ’im and the pox be welcome to ’im.” He took another deep drink and squinted at me. “No gen’lman, not even Mr D., come up from London to bring Dradles ’spensive drink for no reason, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins. Mr D. wanted me to open doors for ’im with me many keys and tap-tap out the where’bouts of the ol’ ’uns in their hollers. What is that Mr Billy W. C. wants from old Dradles this hot day?”

“You may remember that I am an author also,” I said. I handed the stonemason and crypt-cathedral caretaker the copy of All the Year Round. “This, as you see, was last Friday’s number carrying the concluding chapters of my novel The Moonstone.” I opened the periodical to the proper page.

Dradles stared at the mass of type but only grunted. I had no idea whether the man could read. My guess was that he could not.

“It has come to pass,” I said, “that I also am doing some literary research involving a great cathedral such as this. A great cathedral and its attendant crypts.”

“’E wants the keys, Dradles thinks,” said Dradles. “’E wants the keys to the old ’uns’ dark places.” It would have seemed that he was addressing his idiot lop-eared assistant with the haircut that seemed to have been applied with sheep shears, but the boy appeared to be deaf and dumb.

“Not at all,” I said with an easy laugh. “The keys are your responsibility and must remain such. I would merely like to visit from time to time and perhaps avail myself of your expertise in tapping out the hollow places. I certainly would never come empty-handed.”

Dradles took another swig. The bottle was already more than half empty and the filthy mason’s face, even under the Marley-was-dead coating of dust, was redder than ever (if such a thing was possible).

“Dradles does an ’onest day’s work for ’is occasional tipple,” he said thickly.

“As do I,” I said with an easy laugh.

He nodded then and turned back to his carving—or, rather, to supervising the idiot boy in his carving. Evidently the interview was over and the contract had been consummated.

Mopping my own face from the heat, I walked slowly back to the carriage. The puppy—an ungainly but enthusiastic thing with long legs, a short tail, and spots—was leaping with joy on the cushioned seat at the sight of me.

“It will be just another minute, driver,” I said. The old man, half-dozing, grunted and let his chin fall back to his liveried chest.

I carried the puppy back through the graveyard, past our picnic site. Remembering how Dickens had made us all laugh when he put a towel over his arm and perfectly mimicked the behaviour of an efficient but officious waiter, carrying our dishes from the wall to the table-headstone, expertly pouring wine for us all, I walked on with a smile. The puppy had settled in the crook of my arm, its tail still trying to wag from time to time, and its large eyes looking up adoringly at me. Caroline, Carrie, and I had owned several dogs in the past decade and more. Our last beloved pet had died only months earlier.

A gnarled old tree near the rear boundary of the cathedral yard had dropped a branch about four feet long. Still carrying the puppy in my left arm, rubbing the back of its head and neck absently with my thumb as I held it, I picked up the branch, kicked away its small protuberances, and used it as a sort of walking stick.

In the weeds beyond the cemetery, I paused and looked around. The carriage and road were out of sight. Nothing and no one moved in the churchyard proper. From far beyond the cathedral came the TIP-TAP-TIP-TAP of Dradles’s—or, rather, Dradles’s apprentice’s—hot and careful work. The only other sound was the buzz and chitter of insects here in the weeds and high grass that led east to the tidal flats. Even the sea and its attending river were silent in this glare of sunlight.

With one smooth motion, I wrung the puppy’s neck. The snap was audible but not loud. The small body went limp in my arms.

I glanced around again and then dropped the puppy’s carcass into the lime pit. There was no dramatic hiss or bubbling. The little black-and-white-spotted form just lay there, a bit more than half submerged in the thick grey gruel of quick-lime. Bending and using the branch, I carefully prodded the puppy’s ribs and head and hindquarters until the tiny form was just beneath the surface. Then I tossed the branch into the high grass and marked the spot where it landed.

Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? I decided to give it seventy-two hours—and a little more, since I planned to wait until dusk—before coming back to use the same branch to poke out and analyse the results.

Softly whistling a tune that had become popular in the music halls that summer, I strolled back through the graveyard to the waiting carriage.