“Well,” says Dickens, “as one professional replying to another, we must remember that… wait!”
The pistol jerks up in my hand and I blink away distraction as I aim the muzzle at his heart some four feet away. Has someone entered the graveyard? Is he trying to distract me?
No. It appears that the Inimitable simply has been struck by a thought.
“How is it, my dear Wilkie,” continues Dickens, “that you know of Datchery’s appearance and even of poor Edwin’s murder when these scenes, those numbers even, have not yet appeared and… ahh… Wills. Somehow you got a copy of the finished work from Wills. William Henry is a dear man, a trusted friend, but he has not been the same since that accident, what with all those doors creaking and slamming in his head.”
I say nothing.
“Very well, then,” says Dickens. “You know of the murder of young Drood on Christmas Eve. You know of Crisparkle’s discovery of Edwin’s watch and tie-pin in the river, although no body is found. You know of the suspicion falling on the fiery-tempered young foreigner from Ceylon, Neville Landless, brother to the beautiful Helena Landless, and of the blood found on Landless’s stick. You know of Edwin’s engagement to Rosa having been broken off and you know of Edwin’s uncle, the opium-eater John Jasper, fainting after the murder when he first learns that there had been no engagement and that his obvious jealousy had been for naught. I currently have six of the contracted twelve instalments written. But what is your question?”
I feel the laudanum warmth in my arms and legs and I grow more impatient. The scarab in my brain is even more impatient than I. I can feel it scurry back and forth past the inside of the bridge of my nose, peering first from one eye, then from the other, as if jostling for a better view.
“John Jasper did the murder on Christmas Eve,” I say, waving the pistol just a trifle as I speak. “I can even name the murder weapon… that long black scarf you have taken pains to mention at least three times so far for little reason. Your clues are hardly subtle, Charles!”
“It was to be an overly long cravat or neck tie,” he says with another damning smile. “But I changed it to the scarf.”
“I know,” I say impatiently. “Charley told me that you emphasised that the cravat must be shown in the illustration and then told Fildes to change it to a scarf. Neck tie, scarf, it makes little difference. My question remains—how can you possibly hope to keep the readers engaged for the full second half of the book if we all know that John Jasper is to be revealed as the murderer?”
Dickens pauses before speaking as if struck by an important thought. He sets his brandy flask down carefully on the weathered stone. For some reason, he has put his spectacles on—as if discussing his never-to-be-finished book might require some reading aloud to me—and the moon’s now twice-reflected glow turns the lenses of his spectacles to opaque silver-white disks.
“You want to finish the book,” he whispers.
“What!”
“You heard me, Wilkie. You want to approach Chapman and tell him that you can finish the novel for me—William Wilkie Collins, the famous author of The Moonstone, stepping in to carry on the work of his fallen friend, his deceased onetime collaborator. William Wilkie Collins, you will tell dear mourning Chapman and Hall, is the only man in England—the only man in the English-speaking world—the only man in the entire world! — who knew Charles Dickens’s mind sufficiently that he, William Wilkie Collins, can complete the mystery so tragically truncated when the aforesaid Mr Dickens disappeared suddenly, almost certainly taking his own life. You want to complete The Mystery of Edwin Drood, my dear Wilkie, and thus quite literally replace me in the hearts of readers as well as in the annals of great writers of our time.”
“That’s absolutely absurd,” I shout so loudly that I cringe and look around in embarrassment. My voice has echoed back from the cathedral and its tower. “It’s absurd,” I whisper urgently. “I have no such thought or ambition. I have never had any such thought or ambition. I write my own immortal books—The Moonstone sold better than your Bleak House or this current tale! — and as a mystery tale The Moonstone—as I was pointing out to you tonight—was infinitely more carefully plotted and thought out than is this confused tale of the murder of Edwin Drood.”
“Yes, of course,” Dickens says softly. But he is smiling that mischievous Dickens smile again. If I had a shilling for every time I have seen that smile, I would never have to write again.
“Besides,” I say, “I know your secret. I know the ‘Great Surprise,’ your clever plot hinge, upon which this rather transparent tale—by my professional standards—obviously hangs.”
“Oh?” says Dickens affably enough. “Please be so kind as to enlighten me, my dear Wilkie. As a newcomer to this mystery business, I may have failed to see my own obvious Great Surprise.”
Ignoring his sarcasm and idly pointing the pistol at his head, I say, “Edwin Drood is not dead.”
“No?”
“No. Jasper attempted to murder him, that is clear. And Jasper may even think that he succeeded in his efforts. But Drood survived, is alive, and shall join forces with your oh-so-obvious ‘heroes’—Rosa Bud; Neville and his sister, Helena Landless; your Muscular Christian, Minor Canon Crisparkle; and even that new sailor character you drag in so late…” I rack my memory for the character’s name.
“Lieutenant Tartar,” Dickens offers helpfully.
“Yes, yes. The heroic rope-climbing Lieutenant Tartar, so instantly and conveniently fallen in love with Rosa Bud, and all these other… benevolent angels… shall conspire with Edwin Drood to reveal the murderer… John Jasper!”
Dickens removes his spectacles, considers them with a smile for a moment, and then folds them carefully away in their case and sets the case back in his jacket pocket. I want to shout at him, Throw them away! You will have no more use for spectacles! If you keep them now, I will simply have to fish them out of the lime pit later!
He says softly, “And will Dick Datchery be one of these… benevolent angels… helping the resurrected Edwin to reveal the identity of the attempted murderer?”
“No,” I say, unable to hide the triumph in my voice, “for the so-called ‘Dick Datchery’ is actually Edwin Drood himself… in disguise!”
Dickens sits on his headstone and thinks about this for a moment. I have seen this silent motionless statue of the always-in-motion Charles Dickens before, but only when I have put him in checkmate in one of my few victorious chess games against him.
“You are… this extrapolation is… very clever, my dear Wilkie,” he says at last.
I have no need to speak. It must be almost midnight. I am both anxious and eager to get to the quick-lime pit and to finish the night’s business and then to go home and take a very hot bath.
“But one question, please,” he says softly, tapping at his flask with his manicured forefinger.
“What?”
“If Edwin Drood survived the murder attempt by his uncle, why does he have to go to all these labours… staying in hiding, enlisting allies, disguising himself as the almost comedic Dick Datchery? Why does he not just come forward and tell the authorities that his uncle attempted to murder him on Christmas Eve? Attempted, perhaps, even to the point of dumping Edwin’s presumed-dead but in-truth-unconscious body into a pit of quick-lime (from which he must have awakened and crawled out as the acidic substance began to eat upon his skin and clothing… a delicious scene, I admit to you, as one professsional to another, but not, I also confess, one that I had cause to write)… but surely then we have no murderer, only a crazy uncle attempting murder, and no reason for Edwin Drood to remain in hiding. There is then no murder of Edwin Drood and precious little mystery.”