The Last Dickens

by Matthew Pearl

  “Come back?” Osgood asked.

  Fields held up a hand as he swallowed another bite of tongue. “Yes, why, you don't think Charles Dickens would leave the innocent young man missing? I think that Datchery fellow will find him and rescue him from whatever fate Jasper had planned.”

  “It seems quite plain to me that Edwin Drood is dead, Mr. Fields. The mystery will turn instead on how John Jasper will be successfully exposed as the villain by Dick Datchery, Grewgious, Tartar, and the others in the book seeking justice for the deed against young Drood.”

  “Really?” Fields exclaimed, not the least bit persuaded. “Well, I shall read it all again.”

  The next days, Osgood went through his routine around the offices but was distracted by thoughts of poor Daniel. One memory especially kept coming back to him, from the time when Daniel learned he was to be promoted from shop boy to clerk. Osgood had taken Daniel to his own tailor for his first proper suit-and Daniel had insisted on purchasing one exactly like Osgood's.

  “That may be more money than you should spend,” Osgood had said. “I did not wear this quality wool as a new clerk.”

  “Surely I'll be able to afford more sometime, if I remain at the firm and devote myself to work?” Daniel asked.

  “I should think,” said Osgood, stifling a smile at his big plans.

  “Then I shall already have it, instead of needing to buy a better one later.”

  “How do you feel in it, young sir?” asked the tailor.

  “I feel an inch taller, sir!”

  Osgood laughed at the lean young man, who was already taller than he. “Perhaps after it fits properly, you will feel like a giant.”

  He offered to loan Daniel money for the purchase but Daniel was proud to buy the suit with money he had painstakingly saved and even prouder of the suit itself. When the summer arrived, Daniel still had only this same heavy wool suit and no money for another of serge or flannel. But he never complained and only removed his coat when carrying the heaviest boxes of books to the cellar to pack. He kept on hand a supply of cheap cotton handkerchiefs to scrub his forehead. The strain of overuse eventually loosened the seams at the shoulders, and a couple of times a week at their boardinghouse Rebecca would repair them as best she could.

  Chapter 6

  ONLY DAYS AFTER HIS HOME HAD BEEN RANSACKED, SYLVANUS Bendall had arrived to work one morning and found his office in similar condition. Just as at home, nothing had been removed. The lawyer no longer could attribute the original assault on his property to being a Back Bay pioneer since his office was in a more conventional district. No, the crimes were personal. Perhaps the petty revenge of a client Bendall had failed? There were enough names in that category.

  Bendall had questioned a number of his more reliable underworld connections for clues. Then one day he came to his office to find two men waiting in the anteroom. One was a young riffraff, the likes of which often frequented his offices, and the other was a gentleman. The gentleman was dressed in fine clothes and had a fresh, brave face that was instantly admirable and thus suspect in its openness.

  Sylvanus Bendall did not ask who had been waiting longer; he simply introduced himself to the young gentleman as attorney-at-law and invited him into his inner office.

  “I wish we had set an appointment for our interview another day, Mr. Osgood, so that you would not have had to share the waiting room with such class of people.”

  “I make no complaints about the company. It is important I obtain certain facts as soon as I can.”

  “I see. Important to a court of law, I suppose.”

  “Not exactly,” Osgood said. “Important for myself. I have come to ask about Daniel Sand, a man in my employ who died a few weeks ago.”

  “I do not believe I had the opportunity to be acquainted with him,” said Bendall. “Though I am counsel for many a poor and ignorant young man.”

  “He may have begun life poor, Mr. Bendall, but he worked industriously and was not ignorant in any field he was given the chance to learn. He was killed in an omnibus accident, and I believe you were present.”

  “Oh?”

  “The policeman told me the name of the omnibus, and the driver remembered that you announced your name and profession.”

  “Did I?” Bendall asked, bewildered.

  “Several times. They recalled that you stood close to Daniel's body.”

  “I see.” Bendall nodded with a new stiffness to his expression. “I suppose I did, now that you remind me. That was a tragic scene, Mr. Osgood. I hope you have been able to fill the young man's vacancy well enough and, if not, that I might suggest a candidate or two needing work. You shall hardly guess they had ever been to prison.”

  “Did you see the accident, Mr. Bendall?”

  “I merely heard the whap! I mean,” Bendall said, “the sound as we struck the unfortunate young man.”

  “The driver said he believed Daniel was holding something when the accident occurred, but that it was gone by the time the police arrived. Mr. Sand, I should explain, was to be delivering some papers belonging to our firm.”

  Bendall involuntarily caressed his waistcoat where he still kept his treasured advance sheets of the Dickens story, then chewed at his thumb's nail. He had grown uncommonly fond of these pages; so fond, come to think of it, as of his thumbnail. The last story of Dickens! Of course, the publisher sitting across from him would no doubt already have sent for a duplicate of the advance sheets from England. So what harm was there in keeping his souvenir?

  “No,” Bendall answered Osgood's query blandly. Then, after waiting a moment to see the reaction in Osgood's face, added, “He wasn't holding a piece of paper, Mr. Osgood. Not even, to speak between gentlemen, the smallest dirt-coated scrap of thin quality stationery.”

  “The driver must have been mistaken,” Osgood said with disappointment. “I only wish there were more clues. The police believe that my clerk was suffering in a narcotic state, and I do not want to- I cannot believe it.”

  “Pooh! I cannot say, really. He was speaking mumbo jumbo, certainly-”

  “What?” Osgood interrupted with a revived attentiveness. “Do you mean Daniel Sand was alive when you reached him?”

  “For a few seconds only,” Bendall replied.

  “The police didn't say anything about it.”

  “Well, they didn't-I mean, the police! They are often so negligent. I myself have suffered break-ins twice of late, you know!”

  “Please. What did Daniel say?”

  “Nonsense! Gibberish, that's what. He looked at me and said ‘God’-that's right, imagine my breathing very shallowly if you will, when I say that, and a hoarse whisper as suits a man fading from the mortal state of life-‘It is God's,’ said he. It was much like a sentimental novel.”

  “That was all he said? ‘It is God's’ what?”

  “He did not finish the statement, I fear. It is God's will. It is God's desire, perhaps. Intention? No, too long winded. To tell the truth, if he had said more, I think I would have chosen not to hear, for to eavesdrop on a man making his peace with his maker is to do a disservice to both those parties. At any rate, I took his hand after he spoke and held it there tightly as he expired.” Bendall had not in fact taken Sand's hand after Daniel spoke his final words, but this embellishment had appeared in his retelling and the lawyer by now believed in it more sincerely than if it had occurred.

  SYLVANUS BENDALL could be seen toiling around the streets of Boston for several more hours that day after meeting James Osgood, hurrying distractedly between his office, the courthouse, the bleak expanse of the Charlestown prison, then running heroically through the rain to board the horsecars on his return home. As he read the evening newspaper in his seat, he began to feel the pungent breath of a tobacco-chewing man sitting behind him and, upon leaning back in the seat, feel the man's fingers pressing against his neck. “It is not polite,” said Bendall into the air, for he was determined not to turn around, “to infringe on another person, no m
atter how cramped the space.”

  The fingers withdrew slowly from the back of his seat. Satisfied, Bendall read on, though through a filmy lens of distraction. Ever since his meeting with Osgood, a thought was growing inside Bendall's mind. Those final words of the clerk's-it is God's. Now that his mind returned to that moment, he could not avoid feeling a helpless sense of misunderstanding. Had the poor lad actually been trying to say something in particular, to convey some kind of warning to Bendall?

  Black liquid showered down on the floor by his feet.

  “It is not polite to spit tobacco inside the cars, either!” the lawyer exclaimed. He heard his voice shake with a lack of control and hated that it did.

  But he would not give any satisfaction to the rude imp by turning around in his seat, even when the disgusting black ooze continued to spray his neck and the man's wet umbrella dripped on him. Were the slimy head of Medusa presented to the lawyer's view, he would still not divert his gaze. Instead, Bendall got out at the next stop-three stops early. The summer rain had given way to wind and a thick, hot mist that filled a man's mouth with bitterness.

  This was an empty stretch of land. Bendall's plot was far west, almost approaching the corner of Exeter Street, beyond which there was not a soul.

  Unseen by Bendall, the man who had been sitting behind him also had exited the cars, only a moment before the door closed again. The heavy, wet footfalls followed just behind him until there was no way to ignore them.

  Bendall, realizing he was shivering, stopped. “What is your purpose, sir?” he said sternly, this time finally turning around to face the wretch.

  The stranger's umbrella was open and along with a thick fur hat, it shadowed his face. He glared, allowing his eyes to rove across Bendall's suit and down to his rubber boots. The stranger laughed with a deep, discordant bass movement of his throat. The man's sheer bulk was imposing, and his skin was dusky without being quite Negro- perhaps a Bengalee or some sort? From under the shadow of the umbrella it could be seen that he dangled an ivory toothpick on the top of his lower lip.

  Sylvanus Bendall froze. He came to an immediate and urgent conclusion: not only was he in danger, but this swarthy mustachioed man with the dark eyes and the baritone laugh-this very man-was his worst enemy. It is God's vengeance, that is what the lad had meant to imply!

  Bendall said, his instinct outracing his logic, “It is you, isn't it? It was you who tore my home to pieces and then my office?”

  The stranger shrugged his shoulders and continued to laugh.

  Bendall demanded, “What do you want with me? Why do you trifle with a gentleman? Come, now. Speak, man!”

  “What… do… I… want? Dickens!” The man repeated: “Dickens!” He pronounced his words like an Englishman-or perhaps a “dude,” that particular species of American that imitated English manners-though the rumbling gruffness sounded more exotic. “You didn't give those pages back to Mr. Osgood, did you?”

  Bendall answered righteously, furrowing his brow, “Pooh! Did Osgood hire you to find those papers?”

  “Did you tell him of the papers, sir?” asked the man.

  “It is none of his concern, nor yours. This is a free country. I kept it to myself.”

  “Good fellow. Yet they are not anywhere in your office or at your home, which means…” The stranger grabbed him by the arm as the attorney felt the blood drain from his head in terror. Methodically, the man patted Bendall's waistcoat until he located the paper bundle. “You try to order me? Give them here before I make you swallow them!” He yanked out the pages and pushed Bendall hard, sending the lawyer right into a puddle.

  Bendall drew a first breath of relief to have suffered only scrapes, but only a moment later, grew incensed. He'd been assaulted and muddied in the middle of the street and by the man who had also ransacked his home and office. I shall root out the source of this evil myself, he had told his housemaid, and here he had done so! Now was the time to grab the moment by the throat. Bendall, recovering his courage, rose to his feet and chased after the thief.

  “Wait!” Bendall cried.

  The stranger kept walking.

  Bendall caught up, waving his fist. “If you don't come back and give an account of yourself, I shall go directly to the police, and complain to Mr. Osgood at once. Tell me your name!”

  The stranger slowed down. “Herman,” he responded in a compliant voice. “They call me Herman.” As he said it, in one unhesitating motion, he turned around and slashed Bendall across the throat with the fangs of his cane head. Bendall gasped for air before he fell. In the dreary landscape of the New Land, there was no one around to see Bendall take his last, struggling breath.

  Herman bent down and lodged a knife into the neck several times. He kept the toothpick and umbrella in place even while the knife sawed through the lawyer's bone.

  Chapter 7

  Bengal, India, June 18, 1870

  THESE LAST TWO WEEKS FOR OFFICERS TURNER AND MASON OF the Bengal Mounted Police could have been measured out in drills, parades, and treasure escorts. Since the bullock cart convoy had been robbed, they still had not traced the second fugitive that had escaped their raid in the jungle. Worse, they had yet to recover the chests that were each filled with one picul, or 133⅓ pounds, of valuable opium that had been stolen that day.

  Their supervisor in the mounted patrol, Francis Dickens, was agitated. He called the two officers to his desk. “Gentlemen, headway?”

  “We received intelligence from one of the native patrolmen on some of the thief's comrades,” said Mason excitedly. “In the hills. He could be hiding there, waiting for us to abandon our investigation.”

  “I rarely trust information from the native men, Mr. Dickens,” Turner interjected, countering his junior's optimism.

  “There is corruption to be found in native officials, Turner, I under stand that well enough,” said Frank Dickens, a light-complexioned and slender twenty-six-year-old man wearing a flaxen mustache. He spoke with an air of one too rapidly hardened by his own authority. “That dacoit is the only fellow we know of who can lead us to the stolen opium-which I daresay they have not been bold enough to try to sell on the illegal market. We've had guards at the border to the French colony watching for just that.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered back Turner.

  “You understand our interest, gentlemen,” Frank Dickens added sternly. “The peace of the district depends greatly on our police department's appearing effective. We mustn't tempt thieves into thinking they are free to operate in Bengal, in our jurisdictions. The railway police and the village police are on the alert. I have an appointment today with the magistrate of the village where the escaped thief lived. I daresay he will inquire into our progress, and I rely on your service.”

  The officers saluted and were dismissed. Before they exited, Frank asked to speak privately with Turner.

  “Officer Turner. This dacoit-should you find him-be certain he arrives here.”

  “Sir?” Turner bristled.

  Frank crossed his arms over his chest. “With Narain dead, that thief may be the only way we can trace those opium chests. I want you to ensure his physical safety. You take the seat by the window.”

  “By all means, Superintendent Dickens.”

  As the two mounted policemen rode on their mission, Turner could not stop curling his hands into fists. He knew, everyone knew, Francis Dickens was only superintendent because of his name. Why, Turner could hold a command every bit as well as Dickens! The bloke's father, dead this month, was a poor cockney from the back country who happened to know how to pick up a pen. And how respectable was the family, in any case, with a wife in banishment from her own home, and a pretty actress having taken her place, according to the gossip Turner had read in the London columns? The great genius himself was dead and buried. It galled Turner to be ordered about by the son of such a man. And for what reason? All because Charles Dickens could sketch out maudlin stories that made women cry and men laugh. Was that all there
was to becoming a rich and popular author?

  He'd said to Mason more than once, “I'd rather be a son of Charles Dickens than the heir of the Duke of Westminster when it's time for promotions.”

  FRANK DICKENS, MEANWHILE, rode to the magistrate's bungalow. Finding the bungalow empty, he crossed the compound to enter the cutcherry, a building of mud walls and a thatched roof. The magistrate was only a year older and his study at Calcutta University had resulted in English that bore hardly a trace of his native accent. Frank and other English officials had become rather fond of him.

  Passing across the compound, Frank noted with satisfaction the newest lamps and footpaths. The more signs of civilization spread around the native villages, the less trouble. Natives rose and salaamed to him as he walked, placing their hands to their faces and bowing low. Some were lying down across the grass in the shade. One, sitting with his elbows balanced on his knees, shuffled away at the sight of the visitor-perhaps it was because Frank was European, perhaps it was the uniform.

  As the Englishman entered the court, the Indian attorneys and guards also salaamed. The magistrate was sitting at a table on a platform before a dimly lit room crowded in every corner with impatient natives. Dressed in ornamental costume with gold and silver patterns, the magistrate walked around the table and took the police supervisor's hand warmly.

  “Don't let me interrupt your proceedings, baboo,” Frank insisted.

  “You don't disturb me at all, Mr. Dickens,” replied the magistrate jovially. “I am not very busy today. Will you take a glass of wine?”

  Frank ran his gaze over the anxious men and women filling the cutcherry. “Please, go on with your proceedings.”

  Despite Frank's demurral, the magistrate ordered glasses and wine to be brought from his bungalow. He brought out a case of fine cigars while his servants yelled, “Og laoul” and built a fire. The crowd in the cutcherry began to murmur among themselves and then grew louder until one of the court officials demanded silence. After the two gentlemen drank wine and brandy pawnee before their restless audience, Frank again anxiously insisted, “Please, baboo, proceed.”