The Last Dickens

by Matthew Pearl

  Rebecca held out her hand to the attendant. “It did belong to Dickens, then?”

  “We don't know,” the attendant answered. “After all, it's written all in some kind of cipher! This bird would stay up at all hours staring at the page to understand it.”

  ‘All well’ means to come! ‘Safe and well’ means not to come!” Louisa exclaimed vigorously from the other side of the room.

  “What do you mean, Mrs. Barton?” Rebecca asked. When she could not extract any answer, she turned to the attendant and asked if she understood.

  “I should think we would, miss! This little bird crowed the same thing every night for two weeks. She claims she found directions to decipher secret language that Charles Dickens would cable to England whether this ‘Nelly’ should come with him to America. If he cabled ‘all well,’ she would come. If ‘safe and well,’ she'd stay in Europe.”

  “She didn't!” Louisa interrupted, her hands trembling and her chest heaving at the topic. “She didn't come! You see? The Chief told her safe and well, do not come. He didn't truly love her after all! He had come to finally find his great true love! As his Mr. Redlow would say to me, ‘Your voice and music are the same to me.’ That is why he found me. That is why he read to me all those nights at the Tremont Temple. Why he whispered to me after all those mean men had roped him into hating me!”

  Rebecca knew she had to be careful if she wanted Louisa to say more and not exhaust herself to the point of being useless.

  “Mr. Dickens-the Chief-wanted you to share with the world the message that he whispered to you the night that other man attacked you.”

  Louisa seemed to consider this as she continued her steady nod. Suddenly, she stopped. “Yes, wanted all of it shared. He spoke the truth-he saw the future at last,” she said.

  “Yes! What did he say?” Rebecca urged her.

  She let out an exhale that seemed to have been stored up for years. “God help you, poor woman.”

  Rebecca blinked. “That is what he said to you? That is everything he whispered?” That was all!

  “God help you, poor woman!” Louisa repeated more vigorously, and in a voice that had the heft of Dickens's.

  “Nothing else? You are certain, Mrs. Barton?”

  “And God has. The Chief always spoke the truth. God has helped me!”

  God help you, poor woman. Dickens, there to bless the unfortunate! Rebecca, dejected, thinking of all the time they had lost by coming here on her suggestion, signaled the attendant. She could not help lamenting how disappointed Osgood would be in the intelligence she would have to report, yet she also knew she had to tell him right away.

  Louisa, her wasting spirits appearing lifted by all the talk of Dickens, did not seem to want the interview to end yet. “You were wrong, dear!” she said when the attendant began to escort Rebecca away. There were tears foaming in Louisa's eyes. “No street! No street!”

  Rebecca told the attendant to wait.

  “What do you mean, Mrs. Barton?” she asked, turning her attention with a fresh patience back to the boarder.

  “You said I took him from the street. But that isn't true, not one whit. That carriage was stopped when I found it. That driver-trying to take the Chief away to who-knows-where!”

  Rebecca considered this. They'd always thought Dickens had just hailed a cab to be taken for a late-night drive before returning to the hotel. The fact that the cab was sitting empty suggested that Dickens had hailed the cab with some place-some errand-in mind. Did Dickens have a particular destination the night before he would leave Boston forever? Rebecca was about to ask for more but Louisa was by this time determined to continue on her own.

  “It was on North Grove Street,” said Louisa. “When he got back into the carriage, he didn't know I was driving it. Little did he know how our lives were destined to change forever from that point! Can the candle help it, my dear? Can the candle help it?”

  “North Grove Street.”

  THE WAITING DRIVER opened the carriage door for Rebecca. She climbed in and sat across from Osgood.

  “It's the Medical College!” Rebecca cried.

  “What-what do you mean? Was that what Mr. Dickens said to that woman?” Osgood asked.

  “No, no.” Rebecca explained that Louisa Barton had tricked the driver as he was waiting for Dickens at North Grove Street. “He wasn't merely going out for another of his breathers,” Rebecca said. “He must have instructed the driver to go to the Medical College.”

  Osgood thought back to the breakfast conversation between Dickens and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  Anything in Boston you haven't yet seen that you'd like, Mr. Dickens? Osgood had asked.

  There is one place. I believe it is at your very school, Dr. Holmes. The place where Dr. Webster, whom I met twenty-five years ago, murdered Mr. Parkman in such extraordinary fashion. I would have staked my head upon it even then, that Webster was a cruel man.

  “There may be something to find there,” Osgood said to Rebecca. “He had seen it already. Knowing Dr. Holmes, he had probably given Dickens a very thorough examination of it. If he really went back to that dismal place before he left Boston, he must have had a reason.”

  “Let us go at once then!” This excited utterance came from the lips of Marcus Wakefield. He sat in the seat next to Osgood.

  Osgood turned to him. “Mr. Wakefield, are you certain it is no trouble for us to use your carriage?”

  Wakefield shrugged. “Of course! I hired it for the afternoon, and I haven't any pressing business until late. It is a pleasure to be of small assistance to my two American friends. Let me send a runner with a note to my trading associate, and my chariot and my humble self will be at your disposal until you are entirely finished once and for all with your expedition.”

  Chapter 37

  OSGOOD, HOLDING A LANTERN, TOOK THE STAIRS SLOWLY DOWN into the vault of the medical college, following in the steps that Dickens had taken with Holmes that day in Boston. And steps he'd retraced that night before his assault by Mrs. Barton?

  Osgood had left Rebecca in the idling carriage, though she had not wanted to stay.

  “Mr. Osgood, please, surely I can help you search for any clues!” she had urged.

  “We do not know where Herman is. I cannot in good conscience bring you into a place of potential danger,” said Osgood. “I should not forgive myself if anything happened.”

  “I will stay with her, Mr. Osgood,” Wakefield had said, nodding meaningfully and smiling gently. “I will watch her, in case Herman is anywhere near.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wakefield. I shan't be long at all,” Osgood had replied. He had known that he had to fulfill this task, even though it would afford Wakefield the opportunity to confess his love to Rebecca. He had to find out what was inside for the sake of the firm's future, and he had to keep Rebecca safe, even if it all meant that in the process he would lose her affections to Wakefield before he could find a way to prove his own.

  The publisher entered the building and reached the bottom of the wooden steps down into the vile-smelling dark vault filled with specimen jars and half-empty shelves. Why-if the lunatic in the asylum was right-had Dickens come back here alone, in the middle of the night, with only hours remaining in his stay in Boston? A line from the first installment of The Mystery of Edwin Drood chanted itself in the publisher's mind: “If I hide my watch when I am drunk,” it said, “I must be drunk again before I can remember where.” Carrying the lantern in one hand, Osgood groped the shelves with his other. He searched the old demonstration table and the holes in the wall, felt behind spouts and sinks. He reached the furnace, from which the dreadful stink that filled the room emerged. It was where chunks of Parkman's body had once burned. Osgood hesitated and chased the thoughts inside his head. This would be the perfect spot-the one place in Boston left behind, left untouched, while everything around it changed. Nobody wanted to remember such a hideous death. Boston left it a skeleton in our giant cabinet.

  Steadily
, Osgood reached inside the furnace. His fingers traced the ashen, chemical-laden surface. It felt like pushing a hand through a storm cloud-leaden and empty at once. Then he brushed up against something solid, something that felt like the wrinkled skin of a dying man. Slowly, careful not to lose his grip, he pulled out a cracked calf-leather case.

  He opened it. Inside was a stack of pages.

  Osgood couldn't believe his eyes. He recognized Dickens's hand in iron gall ink at once. He was frozen in place holding his treasure. The feeling was so enormous that for a moment he couldn't bring himself to perform the most natural action known to him since childhood-to read. He could not do anything else but sit there on the cold stone floor from some irrational fear the pages would vanish before his eyes once he looked at them. It was not only the triumphant relief of bringing his quest to a successful conclusion. It was his whole future that he felt at the tips of his fingers. It was Fields, Osgood & Co. in his hands; it was all the men and women who relied on him. It was Rebecca.

  And it was as though he had, for a few more seconds, kept Charles Dickens alive. The moment was invigorating. He thought of Frederick Leypoldt's question to him about being a publisher. “Why are we not blacksmiths or politicians?” Here, here is why, Leypoldt. The truest act of the publisher was one of the discovery of what nobody else was looking for, one that would reawaken imaginations, ambitions, emotions. All of a sudden, he could not wait a second longer to know how Edwin Drood would turn out. Here, right here, all the answers in his hand! Dead or alive? Taken or in hiding? He turned up the light and shined it over the pages and began to examine them, struggling to see through the dust and thick darkness. But the brighter light of the lantern nearly blinded his darkness-adjusted eyes.

  “Well, you've done it then!” Wakefield interrupted, appearing at the top of the stairs, carefully stepping down into the vault. He was covered by the darkness of the vault, and his usually friendly, airy mood seemed completely buried in the gloom. “Have you found any-thing yet, Mr. Osgood?”

  Osgood stood up.

  “But why here? Why would he leave it here, Mr. Osgood?” Wake-field asked.

  “He was scared to lose it,” Osgood answered.

  “Scared?”

  “Yes, he was scared, don't you see? Think of it. Dickens was about to leave Boston forever the next morning. Every time he boarded a train, a ship, even a hackney, he grew cold with fear since the accident in Staplehurst where he almost perished. The passage back to England on the Russia, Dickens knew could be a dangerous voyage halfway across the world on the roughest waters in the ocean. Indeed, he would not forget that at the time of the dreadful train accident in Staplehurst, he had been composing Our Mutual Friend, the book before The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and had its latest pages with him. The newest installment of it was still in the train compartment that he escaped, and he risked his life to climb back inside to retrieve it.”

  “That was daring.”

  Osgood nodded. “That is not the only thing that would have been on his mind, though. There had been the woman Mrs. Barton, who had broken into the hotel room-leaving behind a note demanding to speak to Dickens about his next book. There had been his pocket diary, stolen by her. There were the tax agents threatening to do whatever they had to in order to retrieve the money he was owed-to confiscate tickets or his personal belongings and documents. Dickens knew that if he boarded the ship with this in hand, he might never see it again. Moreover, back in England, he knew when he would begin publishing his mystery, there would be fierce demand to know how it was to turn out. A servant he had once trusted had broken into his locked safe at his office while he was away. There were dangers for Dickens, yes, for this manuscript, waiting everywhere. This spot, this dingy lonely place, may have been the only safe place on earth for these pages. They would reside here undisturbed until he was ready to call for them to be retrieved-which he would do when he finished the first half. But when he died suddenly, it was too late for him to communicate it.”

  Wakefield applauded.

  Osgood thought about Rebecca. He wished he had agreed to her coming along into the building so she could be beside him to share this moment. Then he realized.

  “Where's Miss Sand, Mr. Wakefield?”

  “Oh, don't worry, Mr. Osgood! I have my colleague watching Rebecca.”

  Osgood nodded gratefully, though tilting his head at the informality of his patron's use of her Christian name. It meant one thing-she had accepted his declaration of love. Despite the heartache of thinking about this, Osgood still wished she were with him. This was an accomplishment by her every bit as much as by him-by her and for her. For all she endured with Daniel.

  Osgood realized those words passing through his thoughts were not his own words. All she endured with her brother, Daniel. Awful, senseless tragedy. That had been Wakefield's phrase, in their conversation on board the ship saloon. A question entered Osgood's mind, for that moment pushing out the astonishing document he held in his hands and the gloomy cellar where he stood: How had Wakefield known about Daniel? Had Rebecca become that intimate with him to tell him? Osgood could not decide whether it was protectiveness, or jealousy, or suspicion of Wakefield that suddenly took hold of him.

  “Remarkable, Mr. Osgood!” Wakefield was saying, laughing as though they had reached the climax in a riotous joke. “And, lo, you've found these before anyone!”

  A scene entered Osgood's mind from his first journey on the Samaria. Wakefield becoming his friend immediately. A rush of ideas, of facts. Wakefield had not just been on their steamer to London and back. Wakefield had followed them to London and back-just as Herman did. He and Herman had been in Boston at the same time, on the ship at the same time, and in London at the same time. Wakefield rushed to the police station after Herman's attack on him at the opium rooms.

  “I think I should find Miss Sand now,” Osgood said quietly.

  “Certainly, certainly,” Wakefield said.

  “Will you be kind enough to stand guard over this for a moment?” Osgood asked, gesturing at the calf-leather case.

  “I am your humble servant, sir,” Wakefield said. Just as Osgood had hurried halfway up the stairs, Wakefield added, “Oh, but hold on. I have a gift for you I brought from London! In all the excitement, I nearly forgot! To repay you for all the books aboard our passages.”

  “That is generous,” Osgood murmured, judging in a sidelong glance the number of stairs remaining to the door.

  “Watch out!” Wakefield called.

  He tossed the heavy object through the air. Osgood caught it to his chest with one hand. Unwrapping the paper, he bathed the lumpy object in the light of the flaring lantern. It was a yellow plaster statue that had once been listed for auction under the title Turk Seated Smoking Opium. The statue from the home of Charles Dickens.

  “You said,” Osgood commented offhandedly, “that the auction house had broken this.”

  “Think of it as a farewell gift, of sorts, Mr. Osgood. Oh, and why should I guard a calf-leather case that I'd bet my best pair of kid gloves is empty? You did switch the pages into your own satchel already, didn't you?”

  The loud echo of Wakefield snapping his fingers rang through the grim chamber. Two Chinese men appeared at the top of the stairs. One of the men scratched the back of his neck with his fingernail. Only it was no ordinary finger. The nail of the little finger on the left hand was between seven and eight inches long and perfectly clean and sharp, an appendage uniquely cultivated by the Chinese scharf for use in testing the counterfeit or genuine nature of specie used to pay for opium.

  Rebecca, trembling, also appeared at the top of the stairs. Behind her, the silvery reflection of Osgood's lantern illuminated the jutting fangs of a Kylin's head.

  OSGOOD BACKED DOWN the stairs to the bottom, where Rebecca joined him for protection. Wakefield joined Herman on the landing above them. Herman bowed his head at Wakefield, putting both hands on his forehead.

  “I told you, Mr. Osgood,” pointed
out Wakefield, “that Miss Sand was being carefully watched.”

  “You arranged for Herman to assault me on the Samaria and for you to be the hero in the encounter, to ensure that I would trust and rely on you,” Osgood said. “You have been partners with him the whole time. You attempted to win Miss Sand's affections so that she would reveal to you our plans.”

  “You are awarded the premium! You know, you have an earnest habit of thinking the world around you is as well meaning as you are, my friend,” Wakefield replied. “I admire that. Let us go somewhere more comfortable than this.”

  “We shall go nowhere with you,” Osgood said. “You're no tea merchant, Mr. Wakefield.” As he spoke, Osgood casually slipped the Turkish statue into his satchel, and felt the increased weight of the bag on his shoulder.

  “Oh, I am,” came the reply from Wakefield with a muted laugh shared by Herman. “Though not tea alone, of course. Tea, quite often, is how our friends in China pay for their opium shipments. Don't you see the larger picture yet, Mr. Osgood? No, you were always paying too close attention to sentences to understand the books-it has kept you insulated, worried over words that make no difference in the end, because the machinery of more powerful men overcome you. When I was a boy, I was sent away from home. I found refuge with a relative, but I gained a restless spirit that has never abandoned me.”

  As Wakefield spoke, Osgood swung his satchel hard, striking the businessman in the leg. He did not flinch. There was a metallic clang and the statue shattered to pieces in the bag.

  Osgood and Rebecca exchanged a startled glance. Wakefield lifted his trousers and revealed a mechanism on his foot consisting of straps, joints, and cogwheels.

  “My God!” Osgood blurted out. “Edward Trood!”

  HERMAN TOOK two menacing steps closer to him.