There was just enough light from the private detective’s shaded bullseye lantern for me to be able to see that his right hand had disappeared within his loose coat. What did he carry there? A pistol? I thought not. Almost certainly a leaded club though. Perhaps handcuffs. The ruffians ahead of us and behind us and to the sides of us would know.
The circle of men shuffled away as quickly as it had coalesced. I expected heavy stones or at least gobs of refuse to be thrown at us as we passed, but when we moved on, nothing stronger than a muffled curse was flung in our direction. Detective Hatchery faded into the darkness behind us and Dickens continued his rapid cane-tapping march to what I believed to be the south.
Then we entered the area ruled by prostitutes and their owners.
I seemed to remember having come here in my student days. The street was actually more respectable in appearance than most of those we had traversed in the past half hour or so. Dim lights shone through closed blinds on the upper windows. If one did not know better, it would be easy to think that these dwellings belonged to hard-working factory hands or mechanics. But the stillness was too oppressive. On the steps and balconies and on the cracked slabs of what passed for sidewalks gathered groups of young women—we could see them by the lamplight escaping from the unshuttered lower windows—most of them appearing no older than eighteen. Some looked to be fourteen or younger.
Rather than scatter at the sight of Detective Hatchery, they called out to him in soft, mocking girl-voices—“Hey, ’Ibbert, bringing us some business, eh?” or “Come in and relax a bit, Hib old cock.” Or “No, no, the door’s not shut, Inspector H, no neither are our room doors neither.”
Hatchery laughed easily. “Your doors are never shut, Mary, although well they should be. Watch your manners now, girls. These gentlemen don’t want none of your wares this ’ot evening.”
That was not necessarily true. Dickens and I paused near one young woman, perhaps seventeen years of age, as she leaned over a railing and studied us in the dim light. I could see that her figure was full, her dark skirt high, and her bodice low.
She noticed Dickens’s interest and gave him a wide smile that showed too many missing teeth. “Are you searching for bacca, dear-ie?” she asked the writer.
“Bacca?” said Dickens and gave me a sideways glance filled with mirth. “Why no, my dear. What makes you think I have come in search of tobacco?”
“’Cause if you want it, I’ve got it,” said the girl. “Screws and arf ounces of it, an’ cigars and all other sorts what you may want and you may well have it of me if you wish. You only ’ave to come inside.”
Dickens’s smile faded slightly. He set both his gloved hands on his cane. “Miss,” he said softly, “have you given thought to the very real possibility of changing your life? Of giving up…” His white glove was visible in the dark as he gestured to the silent buildings, silent gatherings of girls, shattered street, and even the distant line of rough men waiting like a pack of forest wolves beyond the circle of pale light. “Of giving up this life?”
The girl laughed through her broken or rotted teeth, but it was not a girl’s laugh. It was a bitter presage of a diseased crone’s dry rattle. “Give up my life, sweetie? Why not give up yours then, eh? All you ’ave to do is walk back up there where Ronnie and the boys is waitin’.”
“Yours has no future, no hope,” said Dickens. “There are homes for fallen women. Why, I myself have helped commission and administrate one in Broadstairs where…”
“I ain’t about to fall,” she said. “Unless it’s on my back for the right bit o’ payment.” The girl turned to stare at me. “What about you, little man? You look like you ’ave some life left in you. You want to come inside for a screw of bacca before ol’ ’Atchery ’ere turns sour on us?”
I cleared my throat. To be honest with you, Dear Reader, I found some allure hovering about the wench, despite the heat and stench of the night, my male companions’ gazes, and even her ruined smile and ignorant language.
“Come,” said Dickens, turning and striding off into the night. “We are wasting our time here, Wilkie.”
DICKENS,” I said as we crossed yet another creaking, narrow bridge over yet another reeking, foetid stream, the lanes ahead of us mere alleys, the dark buildings there more medieval than any we’d yet seen, “I have to ask, does this… excursion… really have anything to do with your mysterious Mr Drood?”
He stopped and leaned on his stick. “Absolutely, my dear Wilkie. I should have told you at dinner. Mr Hatchery has done more for us in this regard than merely escort us through this… unseemly… neighbourhood. He has been in my employ for some time now and has put his detective abilities to good use.” He turned to the large shape that had come up behind us. “Detective Hatchery, would you be so kind as to inform Mr Collins of your discoveries to date?”
“Certainly, sir,” said the huge detective. He took off his bowler, rubbed his scalp under the explosion of tight curls, and squeezed the hat into place again. “Sir,” he said, addressing me now, “in the past ten days I ’ave made enquiries of the various railway ticket takers at Folkestone and other possible stops along the way—although the tidal express did not make no stops along the way—as well as discreet enquiries of other passengers, the guards on the train that afternoon, the conductors, and others. And the fact is, Mr Collins, that nobody named Drood or resembling the very odd description Mr Dickens gave me of this Mr Drood had a ticket to ride or was in one of the passenger carriages at the time of the accident.”
I looked at Dickens in the dim light. “So either your Drood was a local there at Staplehurst,” I said, “or he didn’t exist.”
Dickens only shook his head and gestured for Hatchery to continue.
“But in the second mail carriage,” said the detective, “there was three coffins being transported to London. Two of them had been loaded at Folkestone and the third had come over on the same ferry what brought Mr Dickens and… his party. The railway papers showed that this third coffin, the one what had come from France that day—no record of from where in France—was to be released to a Mr Drood, no Christian name listed, upon arrival in London.”
I had to think about this for a minute. There came muted shouts from the direction of the “dress lodgers’ ” houses far behind us. Finally, I said, “You think Drood was in one of those coffins?” I looked at Dickens as I posed the question.
The author laughed, almost delightedly, I thought. “Of course, my dear Wilkie. As it turns out, that second mail carriage derailed, displacing all of the parcels and bags and… yes… coffins, but it was not thrown into the ravine below. That explains why Drood was descending the hillside with me a few minutes later.”
I shook my head. “Why would he choose to travel by… my God… by coffin? It would cost more than a first-class ticket.”
“A little less, sir, a little less,” interposed Hatchery. “I checked into that. Cargo rates for transporting the deceased is a little less than first class, sir. Not much, but a few shillings lighter.”
I still could make no sense of it. “But certainly, Charles,” I said softly, “you’re not suggesting that your bizarre-looking Mr Drood was a… what? A ghost? A ghoul of some sort? The walking dead?”
Dickens laughed again, even more boyishly this time. “My dear Wilkie. Really. If you were a criminal, Wilkie—known to the port police as well as to London police—what would be the easiest and most effective way that you could get from France back to London?”
It was my turn to laugh, but not with any delight, I can assure you. “Not by coffin,” I said. “All the way from France? It’s… unthinkable.”
“Hardly, my dear boy,” said Dickens. “Merely a few hours of discomfort. Hardly more uncomfortable than normal ferry and rail travel today, if one must be perfectly candid. And who bothers to inspect a coffin with a week-old corpse rotting in it?”
“Was his corpse a week old?” I asked.
Dickens only flicked the white
fingers of his glove at me, as if I had made a jest.
“So why are we going towards the docks tonight?” I asked. “Does Detective Hatchery have some information on where Mr Drood’s coffin has floated?”
“Actually, sir,” said Hatchery, “my enquiries in this part of town has led us to some folks who say they know Drood. Or knew him. Or have done business with ’im, as it were. That’s where we’re ’eaded now.”
“Then let’s press on,” said Dickens.
Hatchery held up a huge hand as if he were stopping carriage traffic on the Strand. “I feel it my duty to point out, gentlemen, that we are now entering Bluegate Fields proper, although there is precious little proper about it. It ain’t even on most city maps, officially speaking, nor New Court, where we’re ’eaded, neither. It’s a dangerous place for gentlemen, gentlemen. There’s men where we’re going as will kill you in a minute.”
Dickens laughed. “As would those ruffians we encountered a while ago, I presume,” he said. “What is the difference with Bluegate Fields, my dear Hatchery?”
“The difference is, gov’ner, that them what we met a while ago, they’d take you for your purse and leave you beat senseless by the road, p’hraps even to the point of death, aye. But them what’s up ahead… they’ll slit your throat, sir, just to see if their blade still ’as an edge.”
I looked at Dickens.
“Lascars and Hindoos and Bengalees particular and Chinamen by the gross,” continued Hatchery. “Also Irishmen and Germans and other such flotsam, not to mention the scum o’ the earth sailors ashore a’hunting for women and opium, but it’s the Englishmen ’ere in Bluegate Fields you have to fear most, gentlemen. The Chinee and other foreigners, they don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t talk mostly, just live for their opium… but the Englishmen ’ereabouts, they are an uncommonly rough crew, Mr Dickens. Uncommonly rough.”
Dickens laughed again. He sounded as if he had been drinking heavily, but I know he only had some wine and port with dinner. It was more the carefree laugh of a child. “Then we will just have to entrust our safety to you once again, Inspector Hatchery.”
I’d noticed that Dickens had just given the private detective a promotion in rank, and from the way the huge man shuffled modestly from foot to foot, it appeared that Hatchery had interpreted it that way as well.
“Aye, sir,” said the detective. “With your pardon, I’ll take the lead now, sir. And it might be’oove you gentlemen to stay close for a while now.”
MOST OF THE STREETS we had already passed through were not marked and the maze of Bluegate Fields was even less delineated, but Hatchery seemed to know exactly where he was going. Even Dickens, striding next to the huge detective, seemed to have a sense of his destination, but the detective answered my whispered question by listing, in his normal tone of voice, some of the places we had been or were soon to see: the church of St Georges-in-the-east (I had no memory of passing it), George Street, Rosemary Lane, Cable Street, Knock Fergus. Black Lane, New Road, and Royal Mint Street. I had noticed none of these names posted on signs.
At New Court, we left the stinking street, passed into a dark courtyard—Hatchery’s bullseye lantern was our only illumination— and proceeded on through a gap that was more hole in the wall than formal gateway into a series of other dark courtyards. The buildings seemed abandoned, but my guess was that the windows were merely heavily shuttered. When we stepped off pavement, the ooze of the river or seeping sewage squelched underfoot.
Dickens paused by what had once been a broad window but which now, with all the glass gone, was merely a ledge and black hole in the blinded side of a black building.
“Hatchery,” he cried, “your lamp.”
The cone of light from the bullseye lantern illuminated three pale, whitish, indistinct lumps on the broken stone sill. For a moment I was sure that three skinned rabbits had been left there. I stepped closer and then stepped quickly back, raising my handkerchief to my nose and mouth.
“Newborns,” said Hatchery. “The one in the middle was stillborn, is my guess. The two others died shortly after birth. Not triplets. Born and died different times from the look of the maggots and rat nibblings and other signs.”
“Dear God,” I said through my handkerchief. Bile rose high in my throat. “But why… leave them here?”
“’Ere’s as good a place as any,” said the detective. “Some of the mothers try to bury ’em. Dress ’em up in what rags they may have. Put little caps on ’em before dropping the wee things into the Thames or burying ’em in the courtyards ’ere. Most don’t bother. They ’ave to get back to work.”
Dickens turned towards me. “Still tempted by the wench who wanted to take you inside for ‘bacca,’ Wilkie?”
I did not answer. I took another step back and concentrated on not vomiting.
“I’ve seen this before, Hatchery,” said Dickens, his voice strangely flat, calm, and conversational. “Not just here in the Great Oven during my walks, but as a young child.”
“Have you indeed, sir?” said the detective.
“Yes, many times. When I was very young, before we moved from Rochester to London, we had a servant girl named Mary Weller who would take me with her, my tiny hand trembling in her large calloused one, to countless lyings-in. So many that I have often wondered if my true profession should not have been that of midwife. More often than not, the babies died, Hatchery. I remember one terrible multiple birth—the mother did not survive either—where there were five dead infants—I believe it was five, as astounding as that sounds, although I was very young, it might have been four—all laid out side by side, on a clean cloth on a chest of drawers. You know what I thought of at my tender age of four or five, Hatchery?”
“What, sir?”
“I thought of pigs’ feet the way they are usually displayed at a neat tripe-shop,” said Charles Dickens. “It’s hard not to think of Thyestes’ feast when encountering such an image.”
“Indeed, sir,” agreed Hatchery. I was sure the detective had no idea of the classical reference to which Dickens was referring. But I did. Again the bile and vomit rose in my throat and threatened to explode.
“Wilkie,” Dickens said sharply. “Your handkerchief, if you please.”
After a pause, I handed it over.
Taking out his own larger, more expensive silk handkerchief, Dickens carefully laid both cloths over the three rotting and partially eaten infant bodies, weighting down the ends with loose bricks from the broken sill.
“Detective Hatchery,” he said, already turning away, his walking cane clicking on stone, “you shall see to the disposition?”
“Before daybreak, sir. You may count on it.”
“I am sure we can,” said Dickens, lowering his head and holding his top hat as we stepped through another aperture into yet an even darker, smaller, more pestilential courtyard. “Come, come, Wilkie. Keep up to the light.”
The open doorway, when we finally reached it, was no more distinguished than the last three dozen shadowy doorways we had passed. Just inside, shielded from view from without, set into its own deep niche, was a small blue lantern. Detective Hatchery grunted and led the way up the narrow black stairs.
The first-storey landing was dark. The next flight of stairs was narrower than the first, though not quite as dark, since there was the dim glow of a single fluttering candle above us on the next landing. The air was so thick here, the heat so intense, and the stench so overpowering that I wondered how the candle managed to continue burning.
Hatchery opened a door without knocking and we all filed in.
We were in the first and largest of several rooms, all visible through open doorways. In this room two Lascars and an old woman sprawled over a sprung bed that seemed heaped with discoloured rags. Some of the rags stirred and I realised that there were more people on the bed. The whole scene was lit by a few burned-down candles and one red-glassed lantern that cast a bloody hue over everything. Eyes peeped furtively at us from beneath r
ags in the adjoining rooms even as I realised that there were more bodies—Chinese, Occidental, Lascar—sprawled on the floors and in corners. Some tried to crawl away like roaches exposed to a sudden light. The ancient crone on the bed immediately before us, its four posts carved with years of idle knives, its draperies hanging down like rotted funeral cloths, was blowing at a kind of pipe made of an old penny ink-bottle. The thickness of smoke and harsh, aromatic stink in the room, blended with the sewer-Thames stench wafting in through the close-slatted blinds, caused my gout-hounded stomach to lurch again. I wished then that I had imbibed a second glass of my medicinal laudanum before joining Dickens this evening.
Hatchery prodded the old woman with a wooden police club he had smoothly retrieved from his belt. “’Ere, ’ere, old Sal,” he said harshly. “Wake up and talk to us. These gentlemen have questions for you, and by my oath, you’re going to answer them to my satisfaction.”
“Sal” was a wrinkled ancient, missing teeth, lacking colour in her cheeks and lips, and showing no light of character other than the debauchery visible in her weak, watery eyes. She squinted at Hatchery and then at us. “’Ib,” she said, recognising the giant through her daze, “are you back on the force? Do I need to pay thee?”
“I’m here to ’ave some answers,” said Hatchery, prodding her again on the rags above her sunken chest. “And we’ll ’ave them before we leave.”
“Ask away,” said the woman. “But give me leave first to refill old Yahee’s pipe, that’s a good copper.”
For the first time I noticed what appeared to be an ancient mummy reclining on pillows in the corner of the room behind the large bed.
Old Sal reached to a tumbler in the centre of the room, on a japan tray, that appeared to be half-filled with something like treacle. Lifting some of the thick treacle with a pin, she carried it to the mummy in the corner. As he turned towards the light, I saw that old Yahee was attached to an opium pipe and had been since we had entered. Without fully opening his eyes, he took the bit of treacle in his yellowed, long-nailed fingers, rolled it and rolled it until it was a little ball hardly larger than a pea, and then set it into the bowl of his already smoking pipe. The old mummy’s eyes closed and he turned away from the light, his bare feet tucked under him.