It is true that the great sum paid in advance by George Smith at Smith, Elder & Company had all but bankrupted the publisher despite the brisk sales of the two volumes, but that was little concern of mine. It did frustrate me somewhat, however, in the sense that for my next novel—whatever its contents—I would almost certainly have to return to Dickens’s magazine, All the Year Round, just as the author-editor had predicted during our Christmas dinner. The frustration was not merely because the monies in advance of publication would be less—Dickens, John Forster, and Wills were miserly when it came to paying writers other than Dickens—but rather the fact that Dickens would again be my editor.

Yet I remained serenely confident that the hostile reviews of the day meant nothing. Critics and bourgeois reviewers simply were not ready for the heroine of Armadale, my femme fatale Lydia Gwilt. Not only did Lydia dominate the book in a way that no female literary protagonist in my era had done, but she stood out from the pages in a way that no woman in all of Dickens’s fiction ever had or ever would. The full, three-dimensional portrait of this woman, as scheming and vicious as Lydia Gwilt may have seemed to the careless reader or clueless reviewer, was a tour de force.

And yes, speaking of occasionally vicious women, Caroline G— chose this hot summer to upbraid me on a wide front of issues.

“Why will you not consider marriage, Wilkie? You present me as a wife—almost—to your friends who visit here. I am your hostess and proofreader and housekeeper and lover. Everyone who knows you knows that we live as man and wife. It is past time that we make that perception reality.”

I said, “If you know anything about me at all, my dear Caroline, you must know that I do not care a fig for perceptions or other people’s opinions.”

“But I do,” cried the woman with whom I’d spent the past ten years. “And Harriet is now fifteen. She needs a father.”

“She had a father,” I replied placidly. “He died.”

“When she was one year old!” cried Caroline. She appeared to be teetering on that thin ledge between anger and tears, reason and hysteria, upon which women so frequently find themselves. Or deliberately find themselves. “She is becoming a young woman. She will enter into society soon. She needs your name.”

“Nonsense,” I chuckled. “She has a perfectly good name and a perfectly good home. She shall always have my support and our love. What more could any intelligent young woman wish to have?”

“You promised that we would buy or lease the nicer home on Gloucester Place by this year or next,” whined Caroline. I hate and despise it when women whine. All men, Dear Reader, hate and despise it when women whine. It has always been thus. The only difference in men’s reactions to whining is that a very few, like me, refuse to give in to this auditory and emotional blackmail.

I looked over the top of my glasses at her. “I said that we should have the place sooner or later, my pet. And so we shall.”

“How?” demanded Caroline. “I spoke to Mrs Shernwold while you were having fun with Dickens in Birmingham. She says that she would consider leasing or selling ninety Gloucester to us except for the fact that her unmarried son is returning from Africa in a year or so and she has promised it to him.”

“Trust me on this, Caroline my dear,” I said. “I have promised you this home someday and you and Harriet shall have it. Have I ever failed you, my sausage?”

She glared at me. Caroline G— was a handsome woman—some would say beautiful—despite her advancing years (although she would never tell me her age, Inspector Field had told me that in all likelihood Caroline had been born thirty-six years earlier, in 1830)—but she was neither handsome nor beautiful when she glared. Despite the tons of romantic literary twaddle to the contrary, trust me, Dear Reader, when I assure you that no woman can be attractive when she whines and glares.

“You fail me by not marrying me and giving Harriet a proper father,” she all but shrieked at me. “Do not think that I am not capable of finding and marrying another man, Wilkie Collins. Do not think that for a second!”

“I do not think that for a second, my sausage,” I said and turned back to the newspaper.

CHARLES DICKENS, DESPITE his continuing illnesses and growing anxieties when travelling by rail, seemed to be having a relaxed summer. I overheard Wills telling Forster at the offices of All the Year Round that the total receipts for Dickens’s spring tour had earned the writer £4,672. The Chappells—whom Dickens had once described to me as “speculators, Wilkie, pure speculators, though, of course, of the worthiest and most honourable kind”—were so delighted with their share of the profits that no sooner had Dickens completed his last London reading on 12 June and returned to Gad’s Hill “… to rest and hear the birds sing,” than they proposed to Dickens another tour for the next winter, consisting of fifty nights on the road. Wills told Forster that Dickens had considered asking for £70 a night—he was sure that the ticket sales would support that—but instead offered the Chappells forty-two readings for £2,500. They accepted at once.

The days at Gad’s Hill through June and July were busy with guests, local fairs at which Dickens judged everything from pie contests to cricket matches, and—of course—more business. The Inimitable was not working on a novel at the moment, but he had begun work on a projected new edition of his works, the so-called Charles Dickens Edition, that would have each of his novels, freshly set, appearing once a month for 3/6. Naturally he could not leave such well-enough alone, so he offered in his prospectus to write a new preface for each volume.

As it turned out, this would be not only the most popular of all the many editions of Dickens’s work, but would be—for him—his last edition.

I saw Dickens frequently that summer, both at Gad’s Hill (where he never seemed to be entertaining fewer than half a dozen guests) and in London (he came up to his offices at All the Year Round at least twice a week, and we would often meet for lunch or dinner). Besides already planning his next Christmas story for our magazine, rehearsing new material for his winter tour, and writing the prefaces for his new editions, Dickens told me that he had some ideas for a new novel that he hoped to serialise in the spring of 1867. He asked me what I was working on.

“I have a few ideas,” I said. “A thread or two and a few beads to string on them.”

“Anything that we might serialise?”

“Quite possibly. I’ve been thinking of a tale involving a detective.”

“One from Scotland Yard Detectives Bureau?”

“Or one working for a private detection bureau.”

“Ah,” said Dickens and smiled. “Something along the lines of the further adventures of Inspector Bucket.”

I shook my head. “I was thinking that the name Cuff might work,” I said. “Sergeant Cuff.”

Dickens’s smile widened. “Sergeant Cuff. Very good, my dear Wilkie. Very good indeed.”

I TOLD THE boy waiting on my corner to tell the inspector that we should meet. The time and place had long since been prearranged, and the next day at two PM, I saw his short, squat figure hurrying towards me at Waterloo Bridge.

“Mr Collins.”

“Inspector.” I nodded towards the shadows under the bridge. “ ‘Unfurnished lodging for a fortnight.’ ”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Sam Weller to Pickwick.”

“Ah, yes, sir. Of course. Mr Dickens has always been an admirer of this bridge. I helped him with his piece ‘Down with the Tide’ by introducing him to the night toll-taker here some years ago. The literary gentleman was quite interested in the suicides and bodies floating in on the tides, I was told.”