Drood by Dan Simmons Page A

took a cab to a police station house in Leman Street.
    “Do you remember Police Inspector Charles Frederick Field?” Dickens asked as our cab rumbled towards the police station.
    “Of course,” I said. “Field was in the Detective Department at Scotland Yard. You spent time with him when you were obtaining background material for
Household Words
years ago, and he escorted us that time we toured the… ah… less appealing areas of Whitechapel.” I did not mention that I’d always felt sure that Dickens had used Inspector Field as his template for “Inspector Bucket” in
Bleak House.
The overly assured voice, the sense of easy dominance over obvious criminals and brigands and women of the street who had crossed our path that long night in Whitechapel, not to mention the big man’s ability to take one’s elbow in an iron grip one could not escape and which would then move one in directions one had not planned on going… all of Inspector Bucket’s rough skills had described the real Inspector Field to a “T,” as they say.
    I said, “Inspector Field was our protective angel during our descent into Hades.”
    “Precisely, my dear Wilkie,” said Dickens as we exited the cab in front of the Leman Street police station. “And while Inspector Field has gone on to retirement and new endeavours, it is my sincerest pleasure to introduce you to our
new
protective angel.”
    The man waiting for us there under the gas lamp outside the police station seemed more wall than man. Despite the heat, he wore a full coat—rather like the loose, long sort that Australian or American cowboys are so often shown wearing in illustrations for penny-dreadful novels—and his massive head was topped with a bowler hat set firmly on a mop of tight, curly hair. The man’s body was absurdly wide and stolidly square—a sort of granite pedestal to the square block of stone that was his head and face. His eyes were small, his nose a blunt rectangle seemingly carved out of the same stone as his face, and his mouth appeared to be little more than a thin sculpted line. His neck was as wide as the brim of his bowler. His hands were at least thrice the size of mine.
    Charles Dickens stood five foot nine inches tall. I was several inches shorter than Dickens. This square hulk of a man in the grey cowboy duster looked to be at least eight inches taller than Dickens.
    “Wilkie, please meet former sergeant Hibbert Aloysius Hatchery,” said Dickens, grinning through his beard. “Detective Hatchery, I am pleased to introduce my most valued associate and talented fellow writer and fellow seeker of Mr Drood this night, Mr Wilkie Collins, Esquire.”
    “Pleasure, sir, indeed,” said the wall looming above us. “You may call me Hib if it pleases you, Mr Collins.”
    “Hib,” I repeated stupidly. Luckily, the giant had merely tipped his bowler hat in greeting. The thought of that huge hand enveloping my own and crushing all the bones of my hand made me feel weak about the knees.
    “My father, a wise man but not a learned one, if you follow my meaning, sir,” said Detective Hatchery, “was sure that the name Hibbert was in the Bible. But, alas, it weren’t. Not even as a resting place for the Hebrews in the wilderness.”
    “Detective Hatchery was a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Force for several years but is currently on… ah… leave and is
privately
employed as an investigative detective,” said Dickens. “He may decide to rejoin Scotland Yard’s Detective Bureau in a year or so, but it appears that being privately employed pays more.”
    “A privately employed detective,” I muttered. The idea had wonderful possibilities. I filed it away at that moment and the result—as perhaps you know, Dear Reader from my future, if I might be so immodest—would later become my novel
The Moonstone.
I said, “Are you on holiday, Detective Hatchery? Some form of police sabbatical?”
    “In a way as you might say, sir,” rumbled the giant.