So in May I began looking for him.

As an ex-newspaper reporter, I knew that the most certain approach would be to contact someone in authority from the Metropolitan Police or their Detective Bureau. Despite Field’s being retired, there was no doubt that someone there would know both his personal address and the whereabouts of his Private Enquiry Bureau office. But there were compelling reasons not to ask the police. First of all, there was the fact of Field’s ongoing feud with the Police Force over his pension, over his meddling in the Palmer poisoning case years earlier, and over other problems. Secondly, I was concerned that Inspector Field himself might be in trouble with the police after the January mob scenes and burnings and shootings I had witnessed in Undertown. I had no wish to associate myself with such illegal behaviour.

Finally, and most compelling, I knew that both Drood and Dickens had their contacts with the Metropolitan Police Force and I had no intention of letting them know that I was seeking Inspector Field.

I then considered going to the Times or other newspaper; if anyone knew where the old inspector’s offices might be, I was sure that some enterprising street reporter would.

But here again, the negative points outweighed the positive aspects of such an approach. As little as I wanted the police to associate me with Inspector Charles Frederick Field, I wanted the newspapers to do so even less. I had been away from reporting so long that I no longer had any contact with the papers or magazines that I could trust.

So that left searching myself. Throughout May, I did this as best I could—walking the streets when I was well enough to do so, taking a cab through the downtown at other times, and sending my servant George into promising buildings and alleys to look for Field’s office. Perhaps because of our walk up the Strand and through Lincoln’s Inn Fields (or perhaps because young Edmond Dickenson’s ancient barrister’s office was there), or perhaps because of our repeated meetings on Waterloo Bridge, I had carried away the distinct impression that the old detective’s offices had been between Charing Cross and Fleet Prison, quite probably within the warren of old buildings and legal offices between Drury and Chancery Lanes.

But weeks of searching there turned up not the slightest hint. I then dropped the word at my club that I was seeking (for literary research purposes) the former policeman whom Dickens had written about in the mid-1850s, but although many remembered that Field had been the template for Inspector Bucket (none had yet come to associate him with Sergeant Cuff, who was currently so popular in my still-serialised novel), no one at the club knew where he might be found. In truth, most of those to whom I spoke were under the impression that Inspector Field had died.

I still firmly believed that Field would be back in touch with me before the summer was out. As chagrined as he might have been about his subordinate’s pistol-whipping of me in January—my guess was that Field was afraid that I might sue for damages—I was certain that he still wanted information from me. Sooner or later, one of his street urchins or an otherwise non-descript man in a brown suit (although I seriously doubted that he would used Reginald Barris as his agent for such a service) would approach me on the street and I would resume my relationship with the obsessed inspector.

Until then, I realised, I would have to use my own spies to prepare for my confrontation with Charles Dickens.

BY EARLY JUNE, Dickens was writing to me almost daily from the Hôtel du Helder, where he was staying in Paris. Fechter had joined him there to oversee rehearsals, but the true stage manager—as he had promised—was Dickens himself. The French were calling my play L’Abîme (“The Abyss”), and it was scheduled to premiere on 2 June. He also reported to me that the French version of No Thoroughfare (according to Fechter and Didier, Dickens’s translator there, as well as his Parisian friends and actors) was an immense improvement over the London version and was bound to be a success. He also reported that he would, in all probability, stay in Paris until mid-June.

I accurately guessed his prediction of the play’s wild success there to be wishful thinking and his stated plans to stay for two more weeks a simple lie. Scarab or no scarab, I knew that Drood would draw Dickens back to London for the 9 June anniversary of the Staplehurst accident. Of this I had no doubt whatsoever.

Accordingly, I activated my own modest network of spies. To Fechter in Paris I sent a confidential letter asking if he would telegraph me the instant Charles left the city to return home. Explaining that I was considering a small but pleasant surprise for the Inimitable that required me to know his return time, I requested that Fechter keep the telegram a secret between us. (Since the actor now owed me more than £1,500, I felt certain he would honour my request.) Next, I asked a similar confidential favour of my brother, Charley, who, with Katey, was spending several weeks at Gad’s Hill recovering from a bout of moderately severe stomach pains. (Charley and Katey did employ one servant, but she was undependable and a poor cook. The amenities at Gad’s Hill Place were infinitely more suitable to a convalescent than the younger couple’s cramped and overheated home in London.) For Charley’s place in my espionage net, I simply asked him to send me a private note letting me know when Dickens arrived home at Gad’s Hill and another when he departed for London, which I was sure he would do soon after arrival.

And I also knew that London, per se, would not be the Inimitable’s actual destination after touching briefly at Gad’s Hill Place upon his return from France. Dickens would again be going to Peckham to see Ellen Ternan. It was from Peckham, I was sure, that Dickens would come back to the city to meet with Drood on the Anniversary.

I also did my own small bit of spying. An older female cousin of mine—more of my mother’s generation than my own—lived in Peckham, and after years of being out of contact with the old maid, I visited her twice in May. The ostensible reason was to console her after Mother’s passing, but in truth I spent time during each trip to Peckham walking or taking a cab past the Ternans’ home—paid for by Dickens under the assumed name of “Charles Tringham,” you may remember—at 16 Linden Grove. I also took time to stroll by the dark apartment Dickens kept—secretly—near the Five Bells Inn at New Cross, only about a twenty-minute walk (at Dickens’s pace) from 16 Linden Grove.

The two-storey home that the author had provided for Ellen and her mother could have comfortably housed a well-to-do family of five with the appropriate number of attendant servants. The house—it was more small manor than cottage—was surrounded by a well-tended garden which, in turn, was surrounded by empty fields, giving the suburban home an almost resplendent country feel. It was evident that the reward for being an intimate but secret friend of the world’s most famous author was substantial. It occurred to me that Martha R— might not be so pleased with her small rooms on Bolsover Street should she ever see the home provided for Ellen Ternan and her mother.

Both times I visited my cousin in Peckham, I traced the shortest distance from the Ternans’ house to Peckham’s railway station.

My final guess was that Dickens would be leaving Paris a day or two after the premiere of his play.

I was wrong only on that final guess. As it turned out, both Dickens and Fechter were half-mad with tension on the evening of the June 2 premiere of L’Abîme and although Dickens attempted to enter the theatre, he found he could not do it. So rather than attend the performance, the writer and the actor clopped through the streets of Paris in an open cab all evening, returning frequently to a café near the theatre where Didier, the translator, would emerge between acts to inform the two nervous men that—so far—the play was a riotous success.