“But it was not,” I said.

“Obviously,” grunted Inspector Field. “Three of my best men were in Wiseton Hall at the time of the… atrocity. I had been there myself until nine o’clock that night, at which time my duties brought me back to London.”

“Incredible,” I said. I had no idea what point the old inspector was attempting to make.

“I did not advertise the fact that I had been working in a private, confidential capacity for Lord Lucan at the time of his murder,” whispered Inspector Field, “but detection is a small professional field, and word leaked back to both my superiors and the detectives who served under me on the Force. It was an unpleasant period for me… at a time that should have been the apex of my professional career.”

“I see,” I said, although in truth I saw nothing but a man admitting to his own incompetence.

“Not quite,” whispered the Inspector. “It was a full month after the murder of Lord Lucan, the official investigation still under way, of course—Her Majesty herself had expressed interest in the outcome—when I received a small package at my office in the Metropolitan Police Detective Bureau at Scotland Yard.”

I nodded and sliced off a large shred of beef. It was a bit chewy, but otherwise quite good.

“In the package was Lord Lucan’s heart,” rasped Inspector Field. “Treated somehow—by some lost Egyptian art—so as not to decay, but most assuredly a human heart and, according to several forensic physicians with whom I consulted, most assuredly that of John Frederick Forsyte, Lord Lucan.”

I set my knife and fork down and stared. Eventually I managed to swallow the suddenly tasteless wad of beef.

The old inspector leaned closer across the table. His breath was strong with ale and beef. “I did not tell you, Mr Collins, what arrived with Gooseberry’s bloody shirt and the note from Drood. I sought to spare your sensibilities.”

“His… eyes?” I whispered.

Inspector Field nodded and sat back in the booth.

THIS EXCHANGE KILLED both appetite and conversation, at least for me. Inspector Field lingered for coffee and dessert. I drank the last of my wine and waited, lost in my thoughts.

It was a relief when we stepped outside into the cold wind. I welcomed the fresh air. I was not certain that I had believed Inspector Field’s horror story about either Lord Lucan’s wandering heart or Gooseberry’s packaged eyes—a writer of sensationalist fiction knows another possible piece of sensationalist fiction when he hears it—but the topic had upset me and brought on a rheumatical gout headache behind my eyes.

We did not part immediately upon leaving the inn but walked back towards Waterloo Bridge together.

“Mr Collins,” said the inspector after honking into a handkerchief, “my guess is that you wanted to meet with me for some reason other than to enquire into the fate of my unlucky young associate. What is it, sir?”

I cleared my throat. “Inspector, you know that I am embarked upon a new novel that requires research of the most unusual kind.…”

“Of course,” interrupted the private policeman. “That is why I pay one of my most useful operatives—the esteemed Detective Hatchery—to spend every Thursday night in a crypt awaiting your return sometime the next morning. You assured me that your trips to King Lazaree’s opium den were for relief from pain, not research. And I must say, Mr Collins, that my paying Detective Hatchery’s hourly wage for that service, not to mention his unavailability for a full night and day in terms of my own service (for even detectives have to sleep, sir), has not been… balanced, shall we say… in terms of your promise to report on the whereabouts and activities of Mr Charles Dickens.”

I stopped and clutched my stick with both hands. “Inspector Field, you certainly cannot be suggesting that it is my fault that Dickens is on yet another reading tour in the provinces and thus is out of my effective radius of investigation!”

“I suggest nothing,” said the inspector. “But the truth of the matter is that the esteemed author returns to London for at least one day and night a week.”

“To read at Saint James’s Hall!” I said in some heat. “And occasionally to do some work at his office at Wellington Street North!”

“And to visit his mistress in Slough,” Inspector Field said drily, “although my operatives tell me that he is now looking for another house for Miss Ternan—and possibly her mother—in the suburb of Peckham.”

“This has nothing to do with me,” I said coldly. “I am neither a gossip nor keeper of my fellow gentleman’s affairs.” I regretted that last choice of word as soon as it was out of my mouth. Pedestrians were beginning to stare at us as they passed, so I began walking again and Inspector Field briskly joined me.

“Our arrangement was for you to see Dickens as frequently as possible, Mr Collins, and thus to accumulate—and to convey to us—any and all information you received on the murderer who calls himself Drood.”

“And so I have done, Inspector.”

“And so you have done, Mr Collins… to a very meagre degree. You did not even spend Christmas with Mr Dickens, although he was at home in Gad’s Hill for the better part of two weeks and came into the city repeatedly.”

“I was not invited,” I said. I meant my tone to be chilly, but it emerged as almost plaintive.

“Which you cannot help,” said Inspector Field in a tone of sympathy that made me want to break my cane over the crown of his balding old head. “But you also have not availed yourself of obvious opportunities to join Mr Dickens either on his tour or during his London sojourns. It may interest you to know, sir, that Dickens continues to elude my operatives at least once every two weeks and disappear into slum basements and old church crypts, not to reappear until he takes the train to Gad’s Hill the next day.”

“You need better operatives, Inspector,” I said.

The old man chuckled at this and blew his prodigious nose again. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps. But in the meantime, I wish not to chastise you, Mr Collins, nor to complain of an… imbalance… in the performance of our contractual agreements, but merely to remind you that our common interests lie in running this monster Drood to ground—or to above ground—before more innocents have to die by the creature’s hand.”

We had reached the bridge. I stopped at the railing and looked at the line of wharves, hovels, derricks, and low-masted rivercraft running in both directions. Rain squalls whipped the surface of the Thames to rows of white crowns.

The inspector pulled the plush collar of his out-of-date jacket up over the back of his neck. “Now please tell me the reason for this meeting, Mr Collins, and I will do my utmost to accede to your requests for further… ah… research assistance.”

“I admit that my purpose was not merely to pursue research,” I said, “but to offer you a suggestion that may be of inestimable assistance in your efforts to find this Drood.”

“Really?” said Inspector Field, the bushy eyebrows rising under the brim of his top hat. “Please go on, Mr Collins.”

“In the novel I have almost finished outlining,” I said, “there is a section that shall require a detective—one of great intelligence and experience, I might add—who knows all the techniques employed to track down a missing person.”

“Yes? These are common procedures in both my former and current aspects of police work, Mr Collins, and I will be pleased to offer professional insights.”

“But I did not wish this assistance to benefit me alone,” I said, looking at the grey waves rather than at the grey inspector. “It occurred to me that a London man who has gone missing might be your missing link in tracing the chain of contacts and circumstances back to Dickens and Drood’s contacts since the Staplehurst accident… if such contact actually exists.”