“A fortunate coincidence, Mr Collins, running into you like this,” said Barris.

I did not honour that nonsense with a reply, but looked at Hatchery in a way that showed cool disapproval of his being so free with the details of our habits. Then I remembered wryly that the huge man worked for Inspector Field—and almost certainly reported to this insufferable Barris as well, since the younger man seemed to be a lieutenant of the tiresome inspector—and reminded myself that there had been no real friendship between Hatchery and me, despite my generosity towards him in recent weeks.

Barris leaned forward over his forearms and lowered his voice. “Inspector Field was hoping for a report, sir. I volunteered that if I were to run into you, I would mention it. Time is getting short.”

“I gave Inspector Field a report less than a fortnight ago,” I said. “And time is getting short for what?”

Barris smiled but set a quick finger to his lips, his eyes darting left and right in a melodramatic reminder that we must be discreet. I always forgot that Field and his men presumed agents of the phantasm Drood to be lurking everywhere.

“Until the ninth of June,” Barris whispered.

“Ah,” I said and took a drink. “The ninth of June. The sacred anniversary of Staplehurst and…”

“Shhh,” said Mr Reginald Barris.

I shrugged. “I’ve not forgotten.”

“Your report was a little less than clear, Mr Collins, on…”

“Less than clear?” I interrupted, my voice loud enough to be heard throughout the public house if anyone had been interested in eavesdropping—which certainly none of the few inhabitants seemed to be. “Mr Barris, I am a writer. A journalist for several years, a novelist now by vocation. I hardly think that my report could have been less than clear.”

“No, no, no,” agreed the young detective, smiling in his embarrassment. “I mean, yes. That is, no—I chose the wrong words, Mr Collins. Never less than clear, but… perhaps… perfectly clear but a trifle sketchy?”

“Sketchy?” I repeated, giving the word the disdain it deserved.

“As in perfectly captured in a few strokes,” purred the young detective, leaning even lower over his massive forearms, “but not fully filled in with details. For instance, you reported that Mr Dickens continues to say that he has no knowledge of Mr Edmond Dickenson’s current whereabouts, but did you… as we liked to say in school and the regiment… drop the bombshell on him?”

I had to smile at this. “Mr… Detective… Barris,” I said softly, noticing Hibbert Hatchery’s apparent lack of concern with everything his superior and I were saying, “I not only dropped the bombshell, as you put it, on Mr Dickens—I dropped the entire mortar.”

BARRIS WAS TALKING about Dickenson’s money as a motive in the boy’s disappearance.

I was feeling so well that beautiful May day that I actually had been enjoying the long walk to Rochester from Gad’s Hill Place, despite having to keep up with Dickens’s killing pace, and we were about two-thirds of the way to our urban destination when I dropped the shell, mortar, and caisson on the Inimitable.

“Oh, I say,” I said as we followed the walking path along the north side of the highway towards the distant church spires, “I happened to run into a friend of young Edmond Dickenson the other day.”

If I had expected shock or surprise from Dickens, I received only the mildest twitch of one magisterial eyebrow. “Really? I would have guessed that young Dickenson had no friends.”

“Evidently he had,” I lied. “An old school chum by the name of Barnaby or Benedict or Bertram or somesuch.”

“Are those the friend’s last name or Christian name?” asked Dickens, clicking along with his walking stick touching the ground at its usual precise and rapid intervals.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, wishing that I had taken greater care in constructing this part of the introductory fiction I’d set to trap Dickens. “Just someone I met at my club.”

“It might matter in the sense that the chap you met may have been a liar,” Dickens said lightly enough.

“A liar? How is this, Charles?”

“I am quite sure that young Dickenson informed me that he never went to university—even to drop out—nor had ever darkened the door of any school,” said Dickens. “It seems the poor orphan had a succession of tutors, each less imposing than the last.”

“Well…” I said and hurried to catch up to Dickens. “Perhaps they weren’t school chums, but this Barnaby…”

“Or Bertram,” offered Dickens.

“Yes, well, it seems that this chap…”

“Or Benedict,” said Dickens.

“Yes. May I tell this, Charles?”

“By all means, my dear Wilkie,” said Dickens, smiling and extending his open hand. Some small grey birds—doves or partridges—exploded from the hedges we were approaching and flew into the blue sky. Without breaking pace, Dickens raised his walking stick to his shoulder like a shotgun and pantomimed pulling a trigger.

“It seems that this chap, a former friend of young Dickenson from somewhere,” I said, “was told by Dickenson himself last year that he—Dickenson—had legally changed guardians during the last months before he reached his majority.”

“Oh?” was all that Dickens said in response. It was a polite syllable only.

“Yes,” I said, waiting.

We walked a hundred yards or so in silence.

Finally I dropped my bombshell. “This same chap…”

“Mr Barnaby.”

“This same chap,” I persisted, “happened to be involved with some transactions at his friend Dickenson’s bank and happened to overhear…”

“Which bank is that?” asked Dickens.

“Pardon?”

“To which bank are you referring, my dear Wilkie? Or rather, to which bank was your friend of young Dickenson referring?”

“Tillson’s Bank,” I said, feeling the power in the two words. It was as if I were moving a knight into place before pronouncing checkmate. I believe it was Sir Francis Bacon who said, “Knowledge is power”—and the power I now held over Charles Dickens’s head had come through the knowledge obtained by Inspector Charles Frederick Field.

“Ah, yes,” said Dickens. He hopped slightly to clear a branch that had fallen in the gravel path. “I know that bank, my dear Wilkie… an old-fashioned, boastful, small, dark, and ugly place with a musty odour.”

By this point I had almost, but not quite, lost the thread of the interrogation by which I’d hoped to catch the conscience of this king.

“A sound enough bank, it seems, to have transferred some twenty thousand pounds to the account of Edmond Dickenson’s new guardian,” I said and wondered if my Sergeant Cuff would have added an “Ah-hah!”

“I should have added ‘indiscreet’ to old-fashioned, boastful, small, dark, and ugly with a musty odour,” chuckled Dickens. “I shall do no more business with Tillson’s.”

I had to stop. Dickens took a few final steps and then—frowning slightly at the interruption of our pace—also stopped. My heart was pounding in my chest.

“You do not deny receiving such monies then, Charles?”

“Deny it? Why would I deny it, my dear Wilkie? What on earth are you going on about?”

“You do not deny having become Edmond Dickenson’s guardian and having transferred some twenty thousand pounds—his entire inheritance—from Tillson’s Bank to your own bank and chequing account?”

“Not for a second could I or would I deny it!” laughed Dickens. “Both statements of fact are statements of fact, and therefore true. Come now, let’s walk.”

“But…” I said, catching up to him and trying to match him stride for stride. “But… when I asked some short time ago whether you knew where young Dickenson was, you said you had heard he’d gone to South Africa or somesuch place but otherwise had no idea.”

“Which is, of course, the absolute truth,” said Dickens.

“But you were his guardian!”