The Last Dickens

were several quill pens and inkwells, a memorandum slate, various trinkets including two bronze frogs, and a stack of slips of blue stationery covered with writing in blue ink.

“This is it,” Osgood said with awe of the latter object, sitting on the dusty chair. “The first six installments of The Mystery of Edwin Drood in his own hand, with corrections from the printer in the margins.” He gently fingered the edges of the pages. Dickens's handwriting, not always neat, was strong and dynamic. It did not seem to be written to be read by anyone other than the writer-printers and compositors be damned. Usually when Osgood saw the working space of one of his authors, the revelation was purely mechanical, like visiting the dusty floor of a factory. It had become too common, in fact, that when he finally met an author he had held in high esteem, the result was disappointment in the ordinariness of the person behind the words. But with Dickens there had always been a magical feeling, as though Osgood were not the seasoned publisher of Boston but once again a college lad from Maine or that shop boy on his first day in the Old Corner in an India rubber apron streaked with ink. To this day, even with Dickens now gone, he was still excited to be Dickens's publisher.

“Are you ready?” Osgood asked, inhaling it all. “Let us begin, Miss Sand.”

Time for the researchers over the next few days was broken up by short respites and occasional interruptions from the outside world. The most notable one came as they continued the next morning. They had by this point found a few small gems in the vast spread of materials. Osgood had discovered an early page of Dickens's notes that listed titles before the novelist had settled on The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Flight and Pursuit, One Object in Life, Dead? or Alive? He had been dictating these to Rebecca before he stopped in midsentence.

“Mr. Osgood?”

“My apology, Miss Sand. My eye was drawn away by that. Rather grotesque little thing, isn't it?” On the chimneypiece, there sat a light yellow plaster figure. It depicted an Oriental man with a jaunty fez smoking from a pipe, sitting cross-legged on a settee. Osgood picked it up and held it out at arm's length as he examined it. It was heavier than it looked.

Just then, a man rushed up the stairs of the chalet and into the study. The intruder wore a ragged suit and wild uncovered hair over a sunburned face. It was the same man the publisher had seen through the telescope walking through the hop fields the day before. His mouth was agape as though in some kind of sudden terror, and he grabbed Osgood's arm.

“Do you need some help, sir?” Osgood said.

The man studied the publisher with searching eyes. He held out his other hand to Osgood and kept it outstretched.

Cautiously, Osgood put his own hand up to shake. The stranger grabbed it with both hands and pressed hard. Rebecca gasped.

“Yes, I see it! You are. You are. You are ready for it!” the man sputtered out, when one of the Gadshill servants burst in.

“Come on now.” The mustachioed servant removed the invader by the ear like a misbehaving child. “Come on, old fellow. That's enough of that beastly behavior. They are at some important work. Very sorry, sir, miss. I'll see to it he won't bother you again.”

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Osgood took the one-hour train into London while Rebecca continued their research. Using the map from his guidebook, he reached the offices of Chapman & Hall, Dickens's English publisher. The day of their arrival, Osgood had sent a messenger with his card and a note asking for an interview but had yet to receive a reply. Osgood did not have the luxury of waiting if their stay in England was to succeed in time.

But there would be more waiting at the busy Piccadilly offices of the publishing firm. Today was Magazine Day, when every publisher, printer, binder, and bookseller in London scrambled to release the latest journals and periodicals to readers. In the case of Chapman & Hall, this meant the latest serial installment of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Messenger boys stuffed their sacks with pale green-covered pamphlets of the installment to deliver all across the city and to the country towns to book stands and stalls, shouting instructions at each other. On the first of the next month, the next Magazine Day, the final installment in the London publisher's hands would be printed and sold to the hungry public-and the pirates back in America would have all they needed.

Osgood, as he watched the mayhem of clerks and messengers, noticed that the mere mention of the name Mr. Chapman, the head partner, caused bowed heads and darting eyes among the man's employees. He had been kept sitting in the anteroom for an hour when broad-shouldered Chapman appeared in a sporty outfit.

“Terribly sorry, old boy,” he said after Osgood presented himself. “Must run to the country to go shooting with some capital people-terrific bores, really, but capital-will you call another time?”

Osgood gave one more long look at Chapman's office and staff before starting back, with a rising feeling of futility, to Rochester. Taking a buggy from Higham station, Osgood found reliable Rebecca still hard at work in the Gadshill chalet.

After another two hours, the men from Christie's auction firm came in to finally break up the quiet of the chalet. The workers snatched up the Oriental statue and the other salable effects inside Dickens's sanctum. The men were accompanied dutifully by Aunt Georgy, who gave them instructions.

Georgy shook her head in dignified frustration as they did their work. “I suppose it is impossible to try to pretend things haven't changed forever. How empty the world feels now!”

“Where will you go once you sell Gadshill, Aunt Georgy?” Rebecca asked.

“Mamie and I must look for a small house in London, though my mind frets at the long, bitter winters in the city.”

“I believe you and Mr. Dickens will always be part of this land, no matter what,” Osgood said. “No matter where you go.”

Georgy looked hard at Osgood. “I must confess that my role as executrix is new for me-not in managing the children's careers, for that has been my life's devotion. But in reading documents and contracts.”

“I can imagine the strain,” Osgood replied.

“I've learned too quickly it is rare to meet a man of business who can wear an honest face. Forgive me, but I wonder if I might trouble you while you stay in Rochester. Would you consider looking over Mr. Dickens's will if I left a copy with the Falstaff?”

“It would be my honor and pleasure,” Osgood said, standing up and bowing, “to repay your kindness.”

“Thank you. It will put me at ease to have an hour of time to ask someone questions-someone other than Mr. Forster, to be perfectly candid. I feel, for one thing, such an infant around him! As if I had no power of free will of my own when he is near.”

They became quiet when a heavy tread ascended the stairs. Then came the burly form of Forster, who yelled after the departing auction men to remember the value of what they had in their unworthy hands.

“Superfluous creatures,” Forster concluded, turning to the desk, where his eyes landed on the stack of blue sheets. He rubbed his hands together. “Ah, there it is! All of the manuscripts of Mr. Dickens's books, you see, Mr. Osgood, were left by order of his will to be given into my care.”

Forster, with two careful, trembling hands, grasped both sides of the manuscript of Drood and picked it up. His reverence was touching, if excessive.

“This is the last of them in the house, I think?” Forster asked Aunt Georgy.

“It is the last of his manuscripts here,” Georgy said, sighing. “The last anywhere.”

With the manuscript safely lodged in his case, Forster's eye now darted across the desk to a particular quill pen. It was a long goose's feather, white and wavy, the nib stained in dried blue ink.

“That's it, isn't it?” he asked.

Georgy nodded.

Rebecca asked what it was.

“That is the pen with which he wrote The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Miss Sand,” answered Georgy. “Charles liked to use a single pen for a single book-there was a purity about it that way. He did not want the pen's spirit mixed up in trifling bills and sundry checks. With this, he finished the novel's sixth installment, just before coming into the house.”

Osgood asked if he could see the pen. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand, then gripped it as if on its own it might finish the final six parts of Drood.