“The secret outing you agreed to accompany me on,” I said softly. I stepped closer, took the watch from his hand—the metal was very hot—and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket for him. “You agreed to go with me on a short adventure during which I promised that we would solve at least two mysteries together. Remember the time we went to investigate that haunted house in Cheshunt?”

“Cheshunt,” repeated Dickens. “You and Wills went ahead in a brougham. John Hollingshead and I walked to the village.”

“Sixteen miles, if I remember correctly,” I said, patting his shoulder. “It was long ago.” Dickens was suddenly and irrevocably an old man.

“But we found no ghosts, Wilkie.”

“No, but we had a wonderful time, did we not? Great fun! And so we shall on this coming Wednesday night, the eighth of June. But you must tell no one that you are going with me.”

We had started walking back, Dickens hobbling painfully, but suddenly he stopped and looked at me. “I shall go on this… expedition… if you promise me, my dear Wilkie… if you promise me now, and give your word of honour… that you shall let me mesmerise you first thing that night. Mesmerise you and release you from this cruel delusion I foisted upon you through my sheer arrogance and lack of common sense.”

“I promise, Charles,” I said. And when he continued to stare, “Our first item of business shall be you mesmerising me and me helping you in that endeavour. You can say your magic word… ‘Unintelligible’… to your heart’s content and we shall see what happens. You have my word of honour.”

He grunted and we continued the slow hobble back towards Gad’s Hill Place. I had left the Swiss chalet in the company of a middle-aged man filled with guilt, creative energy, and enthusiasm for life. I was returning in the company of a dying cripple.

“Wilkie,” he muttered as we approached the shade of the trees. “Did I ever tell you about the cherries?”

“Cherries? No, Charles, I don’t believe you did.” I was listening to a confused old man gather wool, but I wanted to keep him moving, keep him hobbling forward. “Tell me about the cherries.”

“When I was a difficult London youth long ago… it must have been after the awful Blacking Factory… yes, definitely after the Blacking Factory.” He feebly touched my arm. “Remind me to tell you about the Blacking Factory someday, my dear Wilkie. I have never told anyone in my life the truth about the Blacking Factory in my childhood, although it was the most horrible thing that…” He seemed to drift off.

“I promise to ask you about that someday, Charles. You were saying about the cherries?”

The shade of the trees was welcome. I walked on. Dickens hobbled on.

“Cherries? Oh, yes… When I was a rather difficult London youth so long ago, I found myself walking down the Strand one day behind a workingman carrying a rather homely big-headed child on his shoulders. I presumed the boy was the workingman’s son. I had used almost the last of my pence to purchase this rather large bag of ripe cherries, you see…”

“Ah,” I said, wondering if Dickens might have had a sunstroke. Or a real stroke.

“Yes, cherries, my dear Wilkie. But the delightful thing was, you see, that the child looked back at me in a certain way… a certain, singular way… and I began popping cherries into the boy’s mouth, one after the other, and the big-headed child would spit out the pits most silently. His father never heard nor turned. He never knew. I believe I fed that big-headed boy all of my cherries—every single last one. And then the workingman with the boy on his shoulders turned left at a corner and I continued on straight and the father was never the wiser, but I was the poorer—at least for cherries—and the big-headed boy was the fatter and happier.”

“Fascinating, Charles,” I said.

Dickens tried hobbling more quickly, but his foot could bear no weight at all now. He had to rest all of his weight on his cane at each painful step. He glanced at me. “Sometimes, my dear Wilkie, I feel that my entire career as a writer has been nothing more than an extension of those minutes popping cherries into the mouth of that big-headed boy on his father’s shoulders. Does that make sense to you?”

“Of course, Charles.”

“You promise that you will allow me to mesmerise you and release you from my cruelly inflicted magnetic suggestions?” he said suddenly, sharply. “On Wednesday night, eight June? I have your word on that?”

“My word of honour, Charles.”

By the time we reached the stream with its small, arched bridge, I was whistling the tune I remembered from my dream.

Ifinished my novel Man and Wife early in the afternoon of Wednesday, 8 June, 1870.

I told George and Besse—who would not, in any case, continue in my employ much longer—that I needed the house quiet so I could sleep and sent them away for a day to visit whomever they chose.

Carrie was gone for the week, travelling with the Wards.

I sent a note to my editor at Cassell’s Magazine and another to my soon-to-be book publisher, F. S. Ellis, reporting that the manuscript was finished.

I sent a note to Dickens telling him that I had finished my book and reminding him of our appointment the next day, on the afternoon of 9 June. We did not have an appointment for 9 June, of course—our appointment was for that night of 8 June—but I was confident that the note would not arrive until the next morning, so it would serve as what those of us trained in the law call by its Latin name—an “alibi.” I also sent friendly notes to the Lehmanns, the Beards, and others, crowing that I had finished Man and Wife and—after a long night of welcomed and well-earned sleep—planned to celebrate the completion by a visit to Gad’s Hill Place the next afternoon, on the ninth.

Late that afternoon, dressed in black travelling clothes with a cape and broad hood thrown back, I took a rented carriage down to Gad’s Hill and parked under the oldest trees next to the Falstaff Inn as the sun set and the darkness sent out fingers from the forest behind that establishment.

I had not succeeded in finding a Hindoo sailor ready to leave England (never to return) in ten days. Nor a German or American or even English sailor ready to be my coachman. Nor had I found the black coach of my opium- and morphia-assisted imaginings. So I drove myself that night—I had little experience in handling coaches or carriages and crept along to Gad’s Hill far more slowly than my careering fantasy-Hindoo driver would have—and the rented vehicle I was driving was a tiny open carriage hardly larger than the pony cart in which Dickens used to fetch me.

But I set the small bullseye lantern under the single seat behind me and had Hatchery’s pistol—all four cartridges unfired and nestled in place—in my jacket pocket next to the burlap sack for metal objects, just as I had planned. In truth, this arrangement wherein I drove myself made much more sense: no driver, Hindoo or otherwise, could ever be a blackmail threat this way.

The evening also was not the perfect June night I had envisioned.

It rained hard during the tiring drive out and between the showers and the splashes onto the absurdly low box this miniature carriage offered, all of me was soaked through by the time I arrived at the Falstaff Inn just after sunset. And the sunset itself was more of a grey, smudged, watery afterthought to the day than the beautiful scene I had painted in my mind.

I tucked the single (ancient) horse and wobbly carriage as far back under the trees to the side of the inn as I could, but the rain showers still soaked me when they blew in, and after they departed, the trees continued to drip on me. The footwell in the tiny carriage space was actually filling up with puddles.