Fechter’s one flaw as an actor was terrible stage fright, and his dresser was known to follow him around with a basin backstage before the curtain went up.

This November into December I was hurriedly writing the script for the stage version of No Thoroughfare and sent proofs straight to Fechter, who reported that he had “fallen madly in love with the subject” and immediately collaborated on the dramatic scenario. I was not surprised that the actor loved the villainous lead character of Obenreizer, since Dickens and I had held Fechter in mind as we’d created him.

On the days when I rode the train out towards Rochester to Gad’s Hill Place, it was easy to think that Charles Dickens was gone for good—I still felt it quite probable that he would be, given the sad (if hidden from most) state of his health and the rigours of the American reading tour—and that I not only could someday but already was filling his place in the world.

By early December No Thoroughfare would be out in All the Year Round and I had no doubt it would be a great success. Certainly Dickens’s name had something to do with that—his Christmas stories had brought the public flocking to buy the Christmas Issue of his two different magazines for twenty years now—but it was also true that my Woman in White had sold better than some serialised Dickens tales and I was confident that The Moonstone would do even better in 1868. Sitting at the dinner table at Gad’s Hill Place with Georgina on my left, my brother, Charley, on my right, Kate down the table, and some of the other Dickens children there as well, it felt as if I had replaced the Inimitable as surely and easily and completely as Georgina Hogarth had replaced Catherine Dickens.

As for my ongoing research for The Moonstone, after contacting many people in my quest for first-hand knowledge about India (as well as in my search for details on Hindoo and Mohammadan religious practices), I was put in touch with a certain John Wyllie, who had served in the Indian province of Kathiawar during his time in the Indian Civil Service.

“There is no part of India… so fanatically Hindoo in religious and so startlingly barbarous in primitive ethics,” Wyllie said to me between great drams of brandy. He directed me to “a collection of Wheeler’s letters or articles in the Englishman… Eleusinian mysteries are a joke to the abominations there revealed.”

When I explained that my small group of Hindoos in The Moonstone would indeed be villainous but would also have a certain noble martyrdom about them, since they would have to spend decades propitiating their gods for violating their caste rule of never travelling across the “Dark Water,” Wyllie just scoffed and stated flatly that their reinstatement in caste would be more a question of bribes paid to the right Brahman parties rather than the lifelong quest for purification my tale required.

So I threw away most of the comments and advice from Mr John Wyllie, formerly of the Indian Civil Service, and went with the dictates of my Muse. For the English setting of my novel I simply reached into my memory of the Yorkshire coast. For the historical events—since the main part of the novel was to begin in 1848—I continued to rely upon the excellent library at the Athenaeum. The only thing I carried over from Mr Wyllie’s recommendations was the wild Indian province of Kathiawar; so few white men had been there and lived to tell about it that I decided I could make up its geography, topography, and particular brands and cults of Hindoo belief.

I continued working on the novel every day, even amidst the unimaginable demands of preparing No Thoroughfare for the stage.

News of our play had somehow arrived in the United States before the co-author of the tale upon which it was based. I received a letter from Dickens in which he announced that he had been met by theatrical managers immediately upon his arrival in New York; the men seemed to be under the impression that the script for No Thoroughfare was in the novelist’s pocket. Dickens asked me to send copies of each act as I finished it and added, “I have little doubt, my dear Wilkie, of being able to make a good thing of the Drama.”

There followed a flurry of correspondence back and forth in which Dickens announced that he was hurrying to find an American citizen to whom we could consign the MS, thus assuring the right of playing it in America while equally assuring that we would gain some profit from such a production. By Christmas Eve, Dickens had received my final copy of the play, prompting this reply from Boston: “The play is done with great pains and skill, but I fear it is too long. Its fate will have been decided before you get this letter, but I greatly doubt its success.…” The rest of the note was all about Dickens’s fear of the inevitable American pirating of some version of our story, but, in truth, I had lost real interest after the words “… but I greatly doubt its success.”

DESPITE ALL OF THE OBLIGATIONS upon my time and energy, I had honoured, in mid-December, a written request from Inspector Field to meet him at Waterloo Bridge. I anticipated the substance of what he had to say to me and I have to say that my prediction was not in error.

The old detective looked insufferably pleased with himself, which at first seemed odd, since after my telling him that nothing untowards had happened in my home the previous 9 of June, the trail of Drood had gone very cold indeed. But one of the first things that the inspector told me as we walked over Waterloo Bridge into a breeze carrying light snow, our collars turned high and Field’s heavy wool cape flapping about his shoulders like the wings of a bat, was that the Metropolitan Police had captured a Malay suspected of murder. The Malay, it turned out, was one of Drood’s lieutenants and was being interrogated “briskly” in a deep cell even as we walked. Early information from the interrogation suggested that Drood may have moved from Undertown and was hiding in the surface slums of London. It was only a matter of time, Inspector Field informed me confidently, before they would have the best lead on the Egyptian murderer that they had obtained in decades of ceaseless effort.

“So the police are sharing the information with you,” I said.

Inspector Field showed his large, yellow teeth in a smile. “My own men and I are carrying out the interrogation, Mr Collins. I still have many close friends on the force, you see, even if the commissioner and those higher up continue to treat me with less than the respect I have earned.”

“Does the current chief of detectives know that one of Drood’s top lieutenants has been captured?” I asked.

“Not yet,” said Field and set that corpulent forefinger of his alongside his nose. “Now, you may be wondering why I have called you for this meeting on such a bitter cold day, Mr Collins.”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Well, sir, it is with some regret that I have to declare that our long working relationship is at an end, Mr Collins. It grieves me to do so, but my resources are limited—as you might imagine, sir—and from this point on, I shall have to focus those resources on the End Game with the monster Drood.”

“I am… surprised, Inspector,” I said while wrapping my red scarf higher around my face in order to hide a smile. This was precisely what I had expected. “Does this mean that there will be no boy waiting near Number Ninety Gloucester Place to carry messages back and forth between us?”

“It does, alas, Mr Collins. Which makes me remember the sad fate of poor young Gooseberry.” Here the old man amazed me by removing a huge handkerchief from his coat pocket and blowing his glowing red nose repeatedly.

“Well, if our working relationship must end…” I said as if filled with reluctant sadness.