The Last Dickens

by Matthew Pearl

  A fevered look passed over Yahee's face and he broke into a run to the stairs. “Herman! Herman here!” he shouted.

  “No,” Tom said. “It's just a broken water pipe. Yahee, nobody's in here!”

  Yahee darted up the steep, winding steps at full and reckless speed. Tom first and then Osgood chased after him, pleading with him as they went to slow down. The opium dealer screamed of Iron-head Herman coming to kill them all.

  “Yahee, stop!” Tom cried.

  A rusted section of the railing gave way, plummeting twenty feet down to the bottom of the tunnel. Yahee slipped and hung on only by his fingertips to the broken railing.

  Tom cried out for Yahee to be still. He heaved and pulled him up to safety. As he secured him, the man fell limp and motionless in Tom's arms.

  “Is he all right?” Osgood asked, holding his sides and panting as he reached the spot.

  “He's fainted,” Tom said. “Help me lay him down.” They carried Yahee to the next landing as his body shook and he mumbled in Cantonese.

  They sat on the landing and waited for Yahee to recover.

  “Herman nearly killed him,” Osgood commented after getting his breath back, “and he wasn't even here. What are we up against, Branagan?”

  DIVIDING UP AFTER leaving Yahee in a hired coach, Osgood hurried to the Piccadilly hotel and Tom went straight to the police station. When Tom returned to the hotel, where Osgood had shared their intelligence with Rebecca, he showed them a telegram cable. It was from Gadshill and composed of only five words:

  Constable Tom Branagan. Yes. No.

  “He still cannot simply address me as ‘Tom,’” he said, shaking his head. “This is from Henry Scott in Rochester.”

  “What does this mean?” Osgood asked.

  “If you are right to think that Herman assaulted Daniel in Boston,” Tom said, “and then went with you on your passage on the Samaria, I've wondered why Herman would have been following an American publisher to learn more about an English novel. I suspected that if Herman was trying to get information from you, and from Daniel before that, about The Mystery of Edwin Drood, he must have already tried other channels of information in England. These confirm my suspicion. See for yourself.”

  Tom placed a pile of documents from the London police in front of Osgood on the table.

  Osgood examined them. “A break-in at Chapman and Hall- Dickens's English publisher. Another break-in of the same sort at Clowes, the printer. Both the week of June ninth, the date of Dickens's death. In each instance, it appears nothing was stolen.”

  “Nothing stolen,” Tom said, “because what Herman was looking for-information about Dickens's ending-wasn't there. As nothing was taken, the police quickly dropped any inquiry into the incidents. That's why I sent a cable to Henry Scott asking for an immediate reply to two questions: Was Gadshill broken into after the Chief's death? And was anything taken? You hold his answers in that cable: yes and no.”

  “Why should Herman have been following me, then?” Osgood asked.

  “That we do not know, Mr. Osgood. But I think Herman actually may have been protecting you at the opium rooms,” Tom said. “The fiends were likely merely trying to rob you, a foreigner in an expensive suit-a certain target. Herman needed you to continue your search, needed you alive and well enough to keep going. He even left you near the sewer drains, where there are always sewer hunters.”

  “He thinks I know how to find the ending!” Osgood said. “And if it's all true, there's something worse…” He sat down to ponder this and put his head in both hands.

  “What is it, Mr. Osgood?” Rebecca asked.

  “Don't you see, Miss Sand? The Parsee, trained in his skills of terror and murder by the worst pirates in the world, has torn England to pieces with his bare hands looking for something, anything, on Drood. And he would not be following me if he'd had any success. What if…” Osgood stopped himself, then found the courage to admit: “What if it means there really is nothing to find?”

  “Perhaps it's just a matter of our looking in the wrong places,” said Rebecca bravely.

  “Yes,” Tom said with the spark of genuine insight, then slammed his hand on a table. “Yes, Miss Sand! But not only that. Not only the wrong place, but the wrong time.”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Branagan?” Rebecca asked.

  “I was just remembering. When we were in America with Mr. Dickens, our party was on the train to go to the Philadelphia readings, and the Chief began speaking rather wistfully of Edgar Poe. He said that when he saw Poe the last time he'd been to Philadelphia, they'd spoken of Caleb Williams. Who was the author of that novel?”

  “William Godwin,” Osgood said.

  “Thank you. Mr. Dickens said that he told Poe how Godwin wrote the last part of the book first and then started on the first part. And Poe said he, too, wrote his mystery tales backward. What if Mr. Dickens, when he set out to write his great mystery, didn't begin at the be-ginning?”

  Osgood, lifting his head, sat back in his chair and considered this in silence. “When Mr. Dickens collapsed in Gadshill,” Osgood said abstractedly, “he had that afternoon reached precisely the end of the first half of the book. It was almost as if his body surrendered, knowing he was finished with his labor, although to us it hardly seemed so.”

  Tom nodded and said, “What if he wrote the second half of The Mystery of Edwin Drood first, and then the first half once he was back here?”

  “What if he wrote the book backward? What if he wrote the ending first?” Osgood asked rhetorically.

  “Yet none of our efforts,” interrupted Rebecca, “have suggested where the rest of the book would be stored if he really did write it.”

  “Perhaps he would have tried to leave a clue with someone, to tell someone before he died where it was,” Tom mused.

  “Dickens's last words,” Osgood said excitedly. “He was calling for him!”

  “Calling for whom?” Rebecca asked.

  “Henry Scott told us, do you remember? The last thing Dickens was heard to say by the servants was ‘Forster’! Dickens had something left to tell his biographer!”

  ***

  BUT TO THEIR great frustration, John Forster, whom Osgood and Tom found sitting in his office in the Lunacy Commission at Whitehall, shook his head with a baleful expression. He rolled his big black eyes coolly as they peppered him with their questions. He took out his gold watch, rubbed its face with his fingers, shook it as if shaking a bottle, and cringed busily.

  “Friends, I am very busy-very very busy. My afternoon has been taken up by a visit from Arthur Grunwald, the actor-a damnder ass I never encountered in the course of my whole life! He wishes to change the entire play of Drood we've already prepared to open. I really must finish my day's work.”

  “You are certain that Mr. Dickens did not try to tell you anything else related to Drood when you arrived at Gadshill?” Osgood asked, trying to return him to the more urgent topic.

  Forster wrung his hands outstretched. “I wring my hands at this.”

  “I see that you do,” said Osgood. “We must know what he told you.”

  “Mr. Osgood,” Forster continued, “Mr. Dickens was insensible by the time I arrived. If he was saying anything, he could not be understood by human ears.”

  “Like in a dream,” Tom added musingly.

  The other two men looked at him quizzically.

  “The Chief told me of a dream he had once,” Tom explained. “In it, he was given a manuscript filled with words and was told it would save his life, but when he looked down at it he could not read it.”

  “He never told me about such a dream… Why is it you are so interested in the matter of his final mumblings, Mr. Branagan?” Forster demanded.

  “Mr. Forster, if I may,” Tom began. “Why do you think Mr. Dickens called your name in his delirium?”

  “Why did… Incredible question!” he roared back. The novelist's biographer began speechifying about his lifelong friendship and their unqu
estionable intimacy. “All of that, most certainly, occurred to him, as he still clutched this,” Forster continued, picking up the white goose-feather pen he had brought from Gadshill. “I suppose you will want this now.”

  “Me?” Osgood asked, surprised at the offer.

  Forster nodded his head. “Oh, didn't I say? I suppose it fled my mind. You see, Miss Hogarth was charged with giving away the objects of Mr. Dickens's writing table. She has decided to give this pen-on which is the ink dried from his very final written words-to you.”

  “But why?” Osgood asked.

  “I asked the same thing! She appears to admire your… what shall we call it? Your fortitude for looking for more about Drood, however foolish. I thought perhaps you would leave England before we could find you. But since you have come…” Forster held it out reluctantly.

  Osgood took up the quill pen. “Thank you,” Osgood said, addressed more to the absent Georgy than to Forster. “I shall treasure it.”

  “One more question, if you please, Mr. Forster,” said Tom. “When did you get new bolts on this door?”

  “What?” Forster asked, for the first time since Osgood's arrival in England speaking in a quiet pitch. “How do you know they're-why do you think they're new at all, sir?”

  “Mr. Branagan is a police constable, Mr. Forster,” Osgood answered for him. “He sees enough locks in his line to know the difference at a glance, I'd wager.”

  “Very well, I suppose you think that is a great achievement. It was in the days after Mr. Dickens's decease, I believe,” Forster said. “I came here and found that someone had been inside and rifled through my papers related to Dickens. They were all in one place, you see, for I keep my belongings well organized.”

  “Was anything taken?” Tom asked.

  “No. It was probably some ruffian looking for something of value to sell for drink. But there was one document in particular that seemed to have been, well, wrestled with, shall we say. It was yours, in fact,” he said, nodding to Osgood.

  “What do you mean, Mr. Forster?” asked Osgood.

  “I mean the telegram from your publishing firm asking that all remaining pages of The Mystery of Edwin Drood be immediately sent to Boston.”

  He removed a wrinkled telegram from a file. Urgent. Send on all there is of Drood to Boston at once.

  “I have a very particular system of organization for my Dickens collection,” Forster continued. “This was placed back but in the wrong spot.”

  Osgood and Tom exchanged a quick glance with each other. “That telegram is how Herman must have gotten the idea to go to Boston in the first place,” Osgood said. “He believed Forster might have sent us what he could not find here.”

  “Monstrous whispering!” Forster called out. “What is that you're saying, gentlemen?”

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Forster,” Osgood said. “Only speaking to myself. A bad habit.”

  “A wretched one,” Forster bettered him.

  “Mr. Forster, besides you and Miss Hogarth, can you think of anyone else that Mr. Dickens may have given confidential business information to in his final months?” Tom asked.

  This was the absolute wrong question to ask Forster, unless one's purpose was to evoke a litany of his usual curses and lamentations about the world's lack of understanding of Forster's special intimacy with Dickens. Forster even removed Dickens's will and pointed to a clause.

  “Do you see what this line says about me, Mr. Branagan?” Forster asked. “Perhaps you need spectacles, sir, for it says ‘My dear and trusty friend.’ It was there that he left me this chronometer watch, which never fails to remind me of all the work that still must be done in this world to make it worthy of a man like Charles Dickens!” He then shook the instrument. “Not that I shall ever know what o'clock it is with this blasted timepiece.”

  Osgood looked distracted as Forster lectured. The publisher's eye rested on the will. “I wonder, Mr. Forster,” said Osgood coolly, “if you would allow Mr. Branagan and myself a moment in private?”

  The commissioner's face became red. “Leave my own office? Incredible!”

  “Just for a moment, if you please. It is quite important,” Osgood said. “Then we shall leave you in peace.” Forster finally agreed, apparently in hopes of ridding himself of his visitors. Osgood's hand reached for Dickens's will. But before stepping outside, Forster swung around and pocketed the document.

  Osgood looked up at Tom and said, “We cannot trust him about this.”

  “What do you mean?” Tom asked.

  “The will, I have my own copy from Aunt Georgy,” Osgood said, removing the document from his coat. “Dash the thought for having never occurred to me! You see, Miss Hogarth asked me to review it with her. The will bequeaths Forster ‘such manuscripts of my published works as may be in my possession at the time of my decease.’ But all that is unpublished at the time of Dickens's death, goes to Georgina Hogarth. If the last six installments of the novel do indeed exist, at the moment of Dickens's death they'd fall under her control by order of his will.”

  “Control over Dickens is the one thing in the world I'd guess Mr. Forster won't relinquish,” Tom said. “Do you believe he is hiding something else from us?”

  Forster began knocking insistently on his office door and declaring they were to have exactly half a minute more. Osgood fastened Forster's new door lock, leading to more severe exclamations.

  “Not necessarily hiding,” Osgood said more quietly to Tom, “but if he knows more about the ending of the novel or who Dickens may have confided in, he will not tell us. Not if it means making it appear that Dickens trusted any person on earth more than himself to direct his legacy.”

  “Stuff! Come out or I send for the police!” Forster boomed out.

  Osgood frowned and unlocked the door.

  Forster, exuding rage, blinked several times at Osgood and leaned in toward him. “Now, tell me, Mr. Osgood, did you really imagine you, commonplace publisher, and your little girl bookkeeper could find more of Drood that I couldn't? Did you really imagine you could have accomplished any such thing? What is it you wanted from it, anyway? To be the nine days’ talk of the trade? To be made as rich as a Jew, perhaps? You're not still caught in that fool's quest, are you?”

  “I shall continue on, sir,” Osgood said without hesitation. “I recall Mr. Dickens's words. There is nothing to do but close up the ranks, march on, and fight it out.”

  “Then you hadn't heard?” Forster asked.

  “What do you mean?” Tom asked Forster.

  “I mean this,” Forster said. He removed a wrinkled slip of paper. “Read for yourself.”

  Osgood picked it up and examined it.

  June 8, 1870. My dearest friend, I fear, with my illnesses worsening each day, I shall reach no further than the end of the sixth number of my Drood. What hopes I had for a unique ending, I need not tell you! Will this truly be my last? I fancy it would have been my best one, had I had the time to finish.

  It was signed, Charles Dickens.

  “This is the date he collapsed. Where did this come from?” Osgood asked. “Why did you never show this to me?”

  “I received it only yesterday,” Forster explained. “It was found lodged in a box of watercolor paintings at Christie's auction house, carelessly put there by the auction house laborers. Clearly, he did not have time to post it before he collapsed.”

  “This can't be,” Osgood said to himself, to the satisfaction of Forster.

  “It does not say who it was addressed to,” Tom commented.

  “Who else would it be?” Forster asked proudly. “‘My dearest friend,’ who else do you think it would be but me? We have not yet made this note public, but we will. I am sorry this was not discovered earlier, it would have saved you, Miss Sand, and Mr. Branagan valuable time pursuing nonsense. Now,” he said, with a greedy smack of his lips, “may I have my office?”

  Osgood handed him the letter. “Of course, Mr. Forster.”

  “Think
of it like this,” said Forster. “You do not leave empty-handed, my dear Mr. Osgood. You have Mr. Dickens's last pen-and how many people can boast such a rare forget-me-not?”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Osgood and Tom were back inside the rooms at the Piccadilly hotel. Osgood was already packing his things into his trunk. Tom had tried every form of argument to convince Os-good to continue their inquiries.

  “Mr. Osgood,” Tom said, “you cannot yield now. There is still too much not understood. You may still be in danger from Herman!”

  “We haven't any choice,” said Osgood, half resigned and half reluctant. “Once Forster makes his letter public, Herman will leave us alone, anyway. He'll know the truth by then, that he has no reason to fear, even as we have no reason to hope.”

  “Perhaps the Chief had a motive to mislead Mr. Forster-knowing that Forster would try to manipulate the ending of the novel how he'd want it,” urged Tom.

  Osgood shook his head. “I don't think so. Our search has been utter folly, as Forster warned us it would from the first hour. There is nothing lost or secret in what Dickens left behind-nothing waiting to rescue us from our troubles. The book is no more, it died with him. I made a mistake. I, James Osgood, was carried away on an error of judgment, and now I must eat my words! I wanted to believe it, I wanted to believe that a man who called himself Datchery could help. Because of my stubbornness, because I wanted there to be something to find, all I have done here is waste time and give a head start to the literary pirates who even now prepare their editions back in America.” He turned to his bookkeeper. “Miss Sand, make arrangements for our immediate passage back to Boston, and send a cable to Mr. Fields at the office informing him.”

  “Yes, Mr. Osgood,” Rebecca said dutifully, each step taking her back to the normality and routine of daily life in Boston.

  Osgood looked over the room and at his two companions as Rebecca prepared a cable and Tom continued to try to persuade him. Osgood knew that to yield and go home was the proper, rational, responsible decision-really, the only decision he, James Ripley Osgood, could possibly make without some countervailing mandate from the heavens.