“Agnes, you are now going to write a short note to your parents, telling them that a wonderful employment opportunity has arisen and that you have left London to pursue it. You will give them no details… simply tell them that you will write them once you have begun employment there.”

“Sir… I… I cannot… I do not…”

“Just write what I dictate to you, Agnes. Now take up the pencil. That’s a good girl.”

I made the note short—four sentences as simple as this dull child would write—and I looked it over when she had finished. The clumsy letters were formed in a spidery, nervous hand, the capitalisation was random, and several simple words were misspelled, but that would have been true in any case.

“Very good, Agnes. Now sign it. Add your love and sign it.”

She did so.

I put the writing board and pencil back and folded the note, slipping it into my pocket.

I set the £300 on the ottoman between us.

“This is for you, my child. The family to whom I have recommended you will pay you, of course… pay you very well, in truth, even more than Miss Carrie is currently earning (old families in Scotland can be very generous)… but this amount, which you must admit is also very generous, will allow you to purchase new clothes, more fitting for your new employment and responsibilities, upon your arrival in Edinburgh. Even that shall leave adequate funds for your first year or two.”

I had never noticed the girl’s freckles. When she looked up at me now, her round face was so pale that those freckles stood out in bold relief. “Me mum…” she said. “Me dad… I can’t… they…”

“They will be delighted,” I said heartily. “I shall explain it all to them as soon as they return and they will almost certainly come to visit you as soon as they are able. Now go on upstairs and pack everything you want to bring to this new life. Do not forget your prettiest dresses. There will be parties and balls.”

She continued sitting.

“Go!” I commanded. “No! Come back! Take the money with you. Now go!”

Agnes scurried up the stairway to pack her clothing and few pitiful personal items.

I followed her upstairs to check that she was complying. Then I went down to the basement to the workbench and toolbox that George kept in order there. Selecting the large hammer with its pry jaws and a heavy pry bar, I went back upstairs.

DEAR READER from another time, if at this point you are tempted to judge me, I would ask you not to. If you knew me in real life as opposed to through these mere words, you would know that I am a gentle man.

I have always been gentle in demeanour and actions. My fiction is—was—sensationalist, but my life is—was—a testimonial to quiet gentleness. Women always sensed this about me, which is why a short, bespectacled, slightly rotund gentleman such as myself was so popular with the ladies. Even our friend Charles Dickens used to joke about my gentleness, as if a lack of aggression were a reason to be made fun of.

During my ride home from Martha’s, I’d realised again that I was incapable of harming a hair on young Agnes’s head, no matter how devastating her inevitable indiscretion would be to my life and career. I had never raised my hand against anyone in anger.

But ah! you say, Dear Reader, what of your plans to shoot Drood and Dickens?

May I remind you that Drood is not a human being as we estimate people as being human. He has murdered scores, if not hundreds, of innocents. He is a creature of and from the Black Lands I dream about every time Frank Beard injects me with morphia.

And Dickens… I have shown you what Dickens has done to me. You may be the jury there, Dear Reader. How many years of arrogance and condescension would you have tolerated from this man… this self-named Inimitable… before you finally raised a hand (or weapon) in righteous anger?

But you must understand that I would never raise a hand to a poor dull child like Agnes.

SHE CAME DOWNSTAIRS dressed in her best cheap outfit and wearing an overcoat that would not keep her warm for ten minutes out of doors in England, less than two minutes in Scotland. She was carrying two cheap valises. And she was weeping.

“Now, now, my dear young friend, none of that,” I said and patted her back. Again she flinched from me. I said, “Would you check to see that the cab is still waiting?”

She looked out through the blinds that covered the lights on either side of the front door. “It is, sir.” She began weeping again. “I don’t know how t-t-to pay the man who d-d-drives the cab. I d-d-don’t know how to find my carriage at the st-station. I don’t know how to d-do anything.” The miserable child was working herself towards hysterics.

“There, there, Agnes. The driver has already been paid. And I have paid him extra to help you find your carriage and your seat. He will make sure you are on the right train, in the correct carriage, and comfortable in your seat before he leaves you. I asked him to watch and make sure you are safe until the coach actually departs. And I have telegraphed members of the fine family you will be serving.… They will meet you at the Edinburgh station.”

“My mum ’n’ dad…” she began again through her tears.

“Will be delighted that you were brave enough to rise to this singular and wonderful opportunity.” I started to open the door and then stopped. “I had forgotten. There is one thing I would like you to help me with before you leave.”

She stared at me with red, wide eyes, but I saw the sense of hope stirring there as well. Perhaps, she was thinking, this was a reprieve.

“This way,” I said and led her back to the kitchen.

At first she did not notice that the boards and nails had been removed from the door to the servants’ stairs, but when she did, she stopped in her tracks.

“I have decided to use this back staircase again, Agnes, and need the candles lit on all the landings going up. But my tired old eyes have trouble seeing in the dim light within.…” I was smiling at her.

She shook her head. Her cheap valises dropped to the floor. Her mouth was open and her expression was—to speak frankly—very close to that of the kind of female idiot they lock away in asylums.

“No… sir,” she said at last. “Dad said that I mustn’t…”

“Oh, there are no rats or mice in there now!” I interrupted with a laugh. “Long gone! Your father knows that I am opening up the stairway. It shan’t take more than a minute to light the candles in their sconces on each landing and then you’re off on your adventure.”

She only shook her head.

I had already lit a candle. Now I put it in her hand and stepped behind her. “Don’t be stubborn, Agnes,” I whispered in her ear. I wondered even at the time if my voice sounded a bit like Drood’s hiss and lisp. “Be a good girl.”

I moved forward and she had to move ahead of me to avoid my touch. She did not try to resist until the door was open and I had herded her into the black rectangle.

She balked then, and turned, her eyes as certain and sad and unbelieving as Dickens’s Irish bloodhound Sultan’s on that last walk he’d taken with us.

“I won’t…” she began.

“Light every candle, Agnes dear, and knock when you want out,” I said and pushed her in and locked the door.

Then I fetched the hammer and lumber and nails from where I had stored them on the counter and began pounding everything back the way it had been, making sure that the nails were driven into the same holes in the door frame so that everything would look undisturbed when George and Besse got home.

She screamed, of course. Very loudly, although the walls at Number 90 Gloucester Place were very thick and so were the doors. Her screams were just barely audible in the kitchen a few feet away and certainly could not be heard, I trusted, from the sidewalk or street outside.