The Last Dickens

by Matthew Pearl

  Wakefield waved his Parsee protector away and, standing erect, glared at Osgood. He spoke in sharp bursts of Chinese to the two scharfs, who nodded and left the building. Then he turned back to Osgood.

  “No, Mr. Osgood, I am not he. That was my name once, yes-I was cowering little Eddie Trood with the club foot when I was sent away from Rochester by the cruel despotism of my father. But that part of me is dead, and so is Eddie Trood. I began to erase him when I escaped through opium ecstasies in the home of my uncle. But my body soon rebelled against it, placing me either in the agony of its power when I swallowed it, or in the depth of misery when I attempted to abstain from it. A physician advised me on the use of a syringe, a method that spread a greater sense of relaxation and deadening of the senses but did nothing to reduce my inner demand for it. It was a stimulation without satisfaction.

  “Opium was an armor that kept me safe from the outside world but crushed my bones in the process. I was told that a sea voyage was the only way to force myself out of its control. After I sailed to China I was no longer enslaved. A new truth had come to me. An understanding of the unavoidable power of the drug-the need to oversee its arrangements not through the doctor or druggist but in the shadows and the cover of night. It was in Canton that a doctor fitted my foot with this. It corrected the position of deformity so that there is no noticeable deficiency in my step even under close scrutiny. That was when I knew I was ready to return to England a new man.”

  Osgood's mind raced and his comprehension of their situation jumped three or four moves ahead. “Then Herman never tried to kill Eddie Trood-you-for knowing the secrets of his drug enterprise?”

  “My drug enterprise, Mr. Osgood,” Wakefield said, smiling. “Herman has served as my agent ever since I helped him escape from the Chinese pirates. You see, in my travels, I determined that a smuggler, in order to survive long enough to prosper, would have to be an invisible man. On that basis, I started a new life when I came back, a life as Marcus Wakefield. Herman and Imam, our Turkish comrade, assisted in my scheme, but they were carpenters in its execution, and I, the lone architect. There was a young man who had at the time recently suffered the effects of an overdose of bad opium and died. We dressed the lad in some of my old clothes and Herman took a crowbar to the head so the body would not be recognized. One weekend, when my uncle was in the country, I went into hiding, while my collaborators tore down a wall in his home and hid the body of our false Edward Trood there.”

  “Machiavellian to the last degree,” Osgood said, surmising his larger purpose. “Then Marcus Wakefield would be feared.”

  “Well, yes, precisely, only not Wakefield exactly. I used that alias in my ordinary course of business. As an opium merchant, I have used as many names in as many places as would suit my purposes: Copeland, Hewes, Simonds, Tauka. But nobody would ever meet the keeper of any of the names. They would hear stories-legends of his remarkable and terrible deeds, stories of the dead, starting with Eddie Trood who had tried to infiltrate his opium lines. Otherwise, there was invisibility, and men like Herman and Imam served as my hands and feet out in the world.

  “So, too, did my means of transport have to achieve invisibility. Though there were not many countries like China willing to fight wars to prevent the import of opium to its people, there are many governments, like your own, gleeful to extract tariffs and hold inspections on incoming supplies of the narcotics. My organization secured ownership of a line of steamships, the Samaria being the fastest, and specially fitted them not only so they could be converted to warships but with ample hidden storage space. Since ours is a passenger steamer, the customs officials would examine the luggage being brought on shore. But in the dark of the night, my crew would bring out the chests of opium, disguised in cheap vases or sardine boxes to deliver to the enterprising scoundrels in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. They would supply them to eager customers unable or unwilling to purchase their opium from doctors and pharmacists, who have in the last years been forced to record the names of every purchaser of ‘poisons.’”

  “Why Daniel?” Rebecca asked, shocked and overwhelmed by the betrayal. “Why harm my little brother?”

  Wakefield looked disapprovingly at Herman. “I'm afraid, my dear girl, that his death was incidental to our purpose. After Dickens died, Herman had found an urgent telegram from Fields and Osgood at the office of Dickens's executor requesting all that remained of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. We set out for Boston immediately to intercept the shipment, and bribing a willing employee of yours named Mr. Midges, it was discovered that Daniel Sand had been assigned the task of receiving the latest installments of any novels coming from England.”

  They learned further from Midges-who was disgruntled at rumors of Daniel's having been a drunkard and even more disgruntled that women were taking too many positions at the firm-that Daniel was to be waiting at the harbor early in the morning for more pages of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The ship from England was already docked. But by the time Herman detained the young man in the too-heavy suit, Daniel had suspected he was being followed and had nothing in the canvas sack hung from his shoulder. And to their astonishment, he would take no money in exchange for telling them where he had hidden the pages.

  “No, sir,” Daniel had said. “I am very sorry, I cannot.” They had led him into the second story of a warehouse on Long Wharf where they stored smuggled opium.

  Wakefield had put a hand on the young clerk's shoulder. “Young man, we know you've had some troubles in the past with certain intoxicating agents. We surely wouldn't want your employer, who trusts you with such important errands, to know about that. We're not some cheap reprinters looking to steal copy. We just need to see what's in those Dickens pages, and then we'll give them back.”

  Daniel had hesitated, studying his interrogators, then shook his head vigorously. “No, sir! I must not!” He was repeating, “It's Os-good's! It's Osgood's!”

  Herman lunged forward, but Wakefield signaled him to stop.

  “Now, think carefully, my dear lad,” Wakefield had urged, the friendly expression on his face flagging, and a fog of violence replacing it. “How disappointed Fields, Osgood and Company would be after putting their faith in you to find out who you really are beneath that youthful and charming face. An inveterate drunkard.”

  “Mr. Osgood would be disappointed if I didn't do my job I'm paid for,” the boy had said bullheadedly. “I would rather account for my history to Mr. Osgood myself than to fail his instructions.”

  Wakefield's full smile returned, almost breaking into a warm laugh, before he gave the slightest flick of his hand.

  Herman tore open the clerk's shirt and cut shallow, straight slits into his chest with the Kylin cane's shimmering fangs. Daniel winced but did not cry. As the blood dripped, Herman let it fall into a cup and then drank it down in front of Daniel with a rising grin until his lips were bright. Daniel, recovering from the pain, shook hard but tried staring straight ahead.

  “For God's sake,” Wakefield had said. He cracked Daniel over the head with a bludgeon. Daniel crumpled to the floor.

  “Can't you see,” Wakefield had explained to Herman, “you could beat this boy until his head rolls off and scare him until his hair stands up on its ends and he wouldn't say a word this Osgood hadn't authorized? He is a lesson in loyalty, Herman.”

  At this, Herman grunted irritably.

  Wakefield instructed Herman to inject the lad with opium and re-lease him onto the wharf. If Wakefield's instinct was right, in his confused state the boy would go to retrieve the pages wherever they were hidden. But his senses would be impaired enough to allow Herman to easily overtake him; and, to make the affair even cleaner, if the boy reported the theft to the police they wouldn't listen because he'd be stuck in the aura of the drug.

  But Daniel, upon retrieving the bundle from a stray barrel, lost Herman in the crowded piers of the wharf and the commotion of the waterfront. When Herman grabbed him at Dock Square, Daniel pulled away and wa
s struck by the omnibus. There were too many people around for Herman to get the papers. But Wakefield joined the circle of observers around Daniel's body and heard the name of Sylvanus Bendall, the lawyer who would greedily confiscate the pages.

  “YOU WERE THERE,” said Osgood to Wakefield with an unexpected tinge of envy. “You were there when poor Daniel died.”

  “No,” Rebecca whispered, horrified by the thought and the new vividness of her brother's final moments.

  Wakefield nodded. “Yes, I was among the many curious spectators as he expired. The poor boy still called your name, Osgood. By the time Herman retrieved the pages from Bendall-the two-penny lawyer carried them around with him on his person, leaving us little choice how to serve him-we learned even those later installments of the serial, the fourth, fifth, and sixth, had no reliable clues to the ending of the book. We were about to return to England. Then our stool pigeon in your firm told us that you were going to sail to Gadshill to find the end of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Why do you think it was so easy for Mr. Fields to get you passage at the last minute, my dear Osgood, when he decided to send you? The Samaria was the only liner with any room left-because I made certain of it. Because the Samaria and all its crew all belong to me.”

  “When Herman disappeared in the middle of the ocean, where had you hidden him? The captain, the stewards, the ship detective all looked for him,” Osgood said.

  “They work for me. Me, me, Osgood. Herman no more disappeared in the middle of the ocean than you did. It didn't occur to us that you'd pay a visit without escort days after the charade of locking him up. He was safely stored away in our secret rooms below the captain's quarters as he was on the passage back to Boston we've just completed. But by that point you trusted me, dare I say, with your life. As well you should have. Herman protected you in London from the opium fiends when those fools attacked you for your purse and left you where you were sure to be given help. He saved you.”

  “So I could live long enough to find what you were after.”

  Wakefield nodded. “In the meantime, my entire business began to suffer-payments gone unmade, opium managers avoiding my suppliers. Why do you think those opium fiends salivated at the sight of you? They'd kill any stranger for a shilling. The whole field of opium dealers had become dry as they all read The Mystery of Edwin Drood in its serial parts along with the rest of the world.”

  “But why?” Osgood asked.

  “Because my trade had very quickly recognized in Dickens's words what you've unearthed, the story of Edward Trood, and saw in those hints of Drood's survival a looming danger to our enterprise. Nor could we afford any further attention on the ‘murderers’ of Trood- that is why Herman stole the statue from the auction house. That Turk, in the statue, you see, was done by some interfering artist of the real man, Imam, one of the opium pushers who helped conceal ‘my’ body. We didn't need Imam's face on display at the biggest auction to be held at Christie's in the last hundred years! This attention to everything related to Dickens's final days and book was all nothing less than disaster!”

  “If people believed Trood was alive,” said Rebecca, “your organization could collapse, be overtaken by doubts, because of your lie that started it. People began to believe that the supposedly murdered Trood was alive and knew your secrets.”

  Wakefield waved his hand in the air. “You see, Mr. Osgood, your bookkeeper is a natural woman of business. Yes, it's true. If it was believed that Eddie Trood had not died, it meant he could be out there somewhere waiting to use his knowledge to bring us down. Yet that is not all that has haunted me since Dickens picked up his pen to retell my story. After the case of Webster and Parkman of your city became famous, the methods it also made famous spread. The skeleton of Parkman was identified by his teeth. Since then, death does not bring an end to all things. And if the police were to hear the tales that Trood might be alive and decide to dig up the grave of Edward Trood? Would they determine it was not Trood, and then what? If that was not Trood lying beneath the earth, where was he? You can imagine the entertainment Scotland Yard would have with that question. You can imagine how free I would be to move about London-my old self suddenly resurrected! Arthur Grunwald convinced the Surrey to perform just such an ending in their production of Mr. Dickens's book, so Herman burned it down early on the morning of our departure. A shame, though, that Grunwald had to be in the green room, I did enjoy him as Hamlet at the Princess. You see, even Herman and myself are not always perfect.

  “Of course, I read Tom Branagan's wire when we made port at Queenstown. The captain directed it toward me upon my instructions before you saw it. What a dear soul your Constable Tom is, to find proof that the letter to Forster was Grunwald's forgery. That letter would have been a great interference to us.”

  “These six installments,” Osgood said, gripping the satchel with the remainder of Dickens's novel tightly. “That's all you want, then, to destroy these?” Osgood folded his satchel into his chest.

  Wakefield laughed. “If only there were happy music,” he mused suddenly. “Yes, that would put all our minds at ease. What do you say, Ironhead Herman?” Wakefield extended his hand and Herman took it, being swept around the room, dancing a brisk waltz around Osgood and Rebecca. “Are we graceful enough for you, Osgood?” Wakefield asked, laughing and bowing.

  It was a chilling scene to watch the two killers waltz across the warehouse. Strangest in the tableau was this: Ironhead Herman was ready to look like a fool on command of Wakefield. If Herman were a killer who respected only brutality and force, what were the depths of Wakefield's own brutality to have that kind of hold over him? The meaning of it sunk into Osgood. The dance, step by step, made one thing clear as noontime. They would die there.

  “Please, for mercy's sake, let Miss Sand go free,” Osgood said prayerfully.

  Wakefield examined his captives, saying, “I am not the terrible man you must now imagine. My curse in life is to have the vision others do not. I can understand what your government and mine still cannot. People are beginning to make a devil out of opium and opium use; in their minds the opium eater is as unreal and unwanted as a human vampire. They have protested the morality of the trade with China. Before long the Americans and the English will hold opium accountable for all their own faults and pass more rules and regulations. China has finally surrendered their will against the drug and will grow the poppy themselves to feed their people's appetite. Besides, with the opening of the Suez Canal, every damned little parleyvou with a tugboat can get to China without any skills or knowledge of trading: the coasts will be positively overrun. It is your own people who clamor for supply, with scores of soldiers-Yankee and Rebel alike-returned to their homes under the spell of injury and the need for relief and ignored by a society that has moved on with commerce and progress while those brave souls wither. Now with the hypodermic, any man or woman who wishes will provide themselves with the medication and enjoyment they can no longer find in the devouring cities without artificial assistance. America is the land of experimentation-a new religion, a new medicine, a new invention-if there is something to transform, Americans will throw away all constraints with the freedom of self-indulgence. Alcohol makes man into beast, but opium makes him divine. The syringe will replace the flask and be an unfailing remedy in the pocket of the businessman, the bookkeeper, the mother, the teacher, and the lawyer who suffer the curse of modern cares. What do you think of it, Osgood? Oh, I know your trade is books, but it all comes down to this: to know your customers, to know how they wish to make their escapes from this bleak world, and to make sure they can't live without you. The modern brain will wither without finding a way to join excitement and numbness. We have sought the same thing through Dickens, you and I, to protect ourselves and the people we depend on. No, I seek nobody's death.”

  “Daniel Sand depended on me,” Osgood said, “and I could not protect him.”

  “But I could have,” Wakefield said, “if he had not been so set on your approval.”
He turned solicitously to Rebecca. “My dear girl, I'm afraid you've gained too much intelligence today to live freely without causing me some degree of future consternation. You have fascinated me from the moment I saw you. We have both been made invisible by unjust forces. Damn the rules of your divorce, damn the little position Osgood has thrown at you for half pay, the peasant laborer he made your brother into: come with me back to England, you will have all you ever ask for, all you deserve. That is why I have unfolded every-thing for you now. I'd want you to understand all the reasons for what has happened, so that you could consider my offer honestly once and for all within your heart.”

  Rebecca looked up from where she sat, first at Osgood, then at Wakefield. “You killed Daniel! You are nothing but a scoundrel and a liar! A woman could have loved Eddie Trood, with all his faults in the face of a hard world, but never a fraud like you!”

  Wakefield's face turned red before his hand went flying out across her face. To his apparent surprise, she did not cry when he struck her. “I shall not give you the satisfaction, Mr. Trood,” she said bitterly, seeing in his raging eyes his anticipation. “I'll weep for my brother, not for anything you could do to me.”

  “Ungrateful female,” Wakefield said, turning away from her and replacing his hat on his head. “You have done fine in training her in your species of high-handed failure, Mr. Osgood. Very well. You have made your bed, Rebecca; now you may both lie in it.”

  Wakefield turned his back to them.

  “Your father!” Osgood said.

  Wakefield slowed his steps.

  “Your father misses you, Edward,” Osgood continued.

  Wakefield sighed longingly. Then, as he turned around again he laughed, harshly this time.

  “Thank you. I shall have to see to it that my old man never tells another soul my story who may pick up on the clues as you have done. We'll be paying him a visit back in England, be sure, and Jack Chinaman, and your friend Branagan, too.”