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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot, by Andrew Lang
+(#5 in our series by Andrew Lang)
+
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+Title: The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: December, 1996  [EBook #738]
+[This file was first posted on December 7, 1996]
+[Most recently updated: September 8, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PUZZLE OF DICKENS'S LAST PLOT ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+THE PUZZLE OF DICKENS'S LAST PLOT
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+Forster tells us that Dickens, in his later novels, from Bleak
+House onwards (1853), "assiduously cultivated" construction, "this
+essential of his art."  Some critics may think, that since so many
+of the best novels in the world "have no outline, or, if they have
+an outline, it is a demned outline," elaborate construction is not
+absolutely "essential."  Really essential are character,
+"atmosphere," humour.
+
+But as, in the natural changes of life, and under the strain of
+restless and unsatisfied activity, his old buoyancy and unequalled
+high spirits deserted Dickens, he certainly wrote no longer in what
+Scott, speaking of himself, calls the manner of "hab nab at a
+venture."  He constructed elaborate plots, rich in secrets and
+surprises.  He emulated the manner of Wilkie Collins, or even of
+Gaboriau, while he combined with some of the elements of the
+detective novel, or roman policier, careful study of character.
+Except Great Expectations, none of his later tales rivals in merit
+his early picaresque stories of the road, such as Pickwick and
+Nicholas Nickleby.  "Youth will be served;" no sedulous care could
+compensate for the exuberance of "the first sprightly runnings."
+In the early books the melodrama of the plot, the secrets of Ralph
+Nickleby, of Monk, of Jonas Chuzzlewit, were the least of the
+innumerable attractions.  But Dickens was more and more drawn
+towards the secret that excites curiosity, and to the game of hide
+and seek with the reader who tried to anticipate the solution of
+the secret.
+
+In April, 1869, Dickens, outworn by the strain of his American
+readings; of that labour achieved under painful conditions of
+ominously bad health--found himself, as Sir Thomas Watson reported,
+"on the brink of an attack of paralysis of his left side, and
+possibly of apoplexy."  He therefore abandoned a new series of
+Readings.  We think of Scott's earlier seizures of a similar kind,
+after which Peveril, he said, "smacked of the apoplexy."  But
+Dickens's new story of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, first
+contemplated in July, 1869, and altered in character by the
+emergence of "a very curious and new idea," early in August, does
+not "smack of the apoplexy."  We may think that the mannerisms of
+Mr. Honeythunder, the philanthropist, and of Miss Twinkleton, the
+schoolmistress, are not in the author's best vein of humour.  "The
+Billickin," on the other hand, the lodging-house keeper, is "in
+very gracious fooling:" her unlooked-for sallies in skirmishes with
+Miss Twinkleton are rich in mirthful surprises.  Mr. Grewgious may
+be caricatured too much, but not out of reason; and Dickens, always
+good at boys, presents a gamin, in Deputy, who is in not unpleasant
+contrast with the pathetic Jo of Bleak House.  Opinions may differ
+as to Edwin and Rosa, but the more closely one studies Edwin, the
+better one thinks of that character.  As far as we are allowed to
+see Helena Landless, the restraint which she puts on her "tigerish
+blood" is admirable:  she is very fresh and original.  The villain
+is all that melodrama can desire, but what we do miss, I think, is
+the "atmosphere" of a small cathedral town.  Here there is a lack
+of softness and delicacy of treatment:  on the other hand, the
+opium den is studied from the life.
+
+On the whole, Dickens himself was perhaps most interested in his
+plot, his secret, his surprises, his game of hide and seek with the
+reader.  He threw himself into the sport with zest:  he spoke to
+his sister-in-law, Miss Hogarth, about his fear that he had not
+sufficiently concealed his tracks in the latest numbers.  Yet, when
+he died in June, 1870, leaving three completed numbers still
+unpublished, he left his secret as a puzzle to the curious.  Many
+efforts have been made to decipher his purpose, especially his
+intentions as to the hero.  Was Edwin Drood killed, or did he
+escape?
+
+By a coincidence, in September, 1869, Dickens was working over the
+late Lord Lytton's tale for All The Year Round, "The Disappearance
+of John Ackland," for the purpose of mystifying the reader as to
+whether Ackland was alive or dead.  But he was conspicuously
+defunct!  (All the Year Round, September-October, 1869.)
+
+The most careful of the attempts at a reply about Edwin, a study
+based on deep knowledge of Dickens, is "Watched by the Dead," by
+the late ingenious Mr. R. A. Proctor (1887).  This book, to which I
+owe much aid, is now out of print.  In 1905, Mr. Cuming Walters
+revived "the auld mysterie," in his "Clues to Dickens's Edwin
+Drood" (Chapman & Hall and Heywood, Manchester).  From the solution
+of Mr. Walters I am obliged to dissent.  Of Mr. Proctor's theory I
+offer some necessary corrections, and I hope that I have unravelled
+some skeins which Mr. Proctor left in a state of tangle.  As one
+read and re-read the fragment, points very dark seemed, at least,
+to become suddenly clear:  especially one appeared to understand
+the meaning half-revealed and half-concealed by Jasper's babblings
+under the influence of opium.  He saw in his vision, "THAT, I never
+saw THAT before."  We may be sure that he was to see "THAT" in real
+life.  We must remember that, according to Forster, "such was
+Dickens's interest in things supernatural that, but for the strong
+restraining power of his common sense, he might have fallen into
+the follies of spiritualism."  His interest in such matters
+certainly peeps out in this novel--there are two specimens of the
+supernormal--and he may have gone to the limited extent which my
+hypothesis requires.  If I am right, Dickens went further, and
+fared worse, in the too material premonitions of "The Signalman" in
+Mugby Junction.
+
+With this brief preface, I proceed to the analysis of Dickens's
+last plot.  Mr. William Archer has kindly read the proof sheets and
+made valuable suggestions, but is responsible for none of my
+theories.
+
+ANDREW LANG.
+ST. ANDREWS,
+September 4, 1905.
+
+
+
+THE STORY--DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+
+
+For the discovery of Dickens's secret in Edwin Drood it is
+necessary to obtain a clear view of the characters in the tale, and
+of their relations to each other.
+
+About the middle of the nineteenth century there lived in
+Cloisterham, a cathedral city sketched from Rochester, a young
+University man, Mr. Bud, who had a friend Mr. Drood, one of a firm
+of engineers--somewhere.  They were "fast friends and old college
+companions."  Both married young.  Mr. Bud wedded a lady unnamed,
+by whom he was the father of one child, a daughter, Rosa Bud.  Mr.
+Drood, whose wife's maiden name was Jasper, had one son, Edwin
+Drood.  Mrs. Bud was drowned in a boating accident, when her
+daughter, Rosa, was a child.  Mr. Drood, already a widower, and the
+bereaved Mr. Bud "betrothed" the two children, Rosa and Edwin, and
+then expired, when the orphans were about seven and eleven years
+old.  The guardian of Rosa was a lawyer, Mr. Grewgious, who had
+been in love with her mother.  To Grewgious Mr. Bud entrusted his
+wife's engagement ring, rubies and diamonds, which Grewgious was to
+hand over to Edwin Drood, if, when he attained his majority, he and
+Rosa decided to marry.
+
+Grewgious was apparently legal agent for Edwin, while Edwin's
+maternal uncle, John Jasper (aged about sixteen when the male
+parents died), was Edwin's "trustee," as well as his uncle and
+devoted friend.  Rosa's little fortune was an annuity producing 250
+pounds a-year:  Edwin succeeded to his father's share in an
+engineering firm.
+
+When the story opens, Edwin is nearly twenty-one, and is about to
+proceed to Egypt, as an engineer.  Rosa, at school in Cloisterham,
+is about seventeen; John Jasper is twenty-six.  He is conductor of
+the Choir of the Cathedral, a "lay precentor;" he is very dark,
+with thick black whiskers, and, for a number of years, has been a
+victim to the habit of opium smoking.  He began very early.  He
+takes this drug both in his lodgings, over the gate of the
+Cathedral, and in a den in East London, kept by a woman nicknamed
+"The Princess Puffer."  This hag, we learn, has been a determined
+drunkard,--"I drank heaven's-hard,"--for sixteen years BEFORE she
+took to opium.  If she has been dealing in opium for ten years (the
+exact period is not stated), she has been very disreputable for
+twenty-six years, that is ever since John Jasper's birth.  Mr.
+Cuming Walters suggests that she is the mother of John Jasper, and,
+therefore, maternal grandmother of Edwin Drood.  She detests her
+client, Jasper, and plays the spy on his movements, for reasons
+unexplained.
+
+Jasper is secretly in love with Rosa, the fiancee of his nephew,
+and his own pupil in the musical art.  He makes her aware of his
+passion, silently, and she fears and detests him, but keeps these
+emotions private.  She is a saucy school-girl, and she and Edwin
+are on uncomfortable terms:  she does not love him, while he
+perhaps does love her, but is annoyed by her manner, and by the
+gossip about their betrothal.  "The bloom is off the plum" of their
+prearranged loves, he says to his friend, uncle, and confidant,
+Jasper, whose own concealed passion for Rosa is of a ferocious and
+homicidal character.  Rosa is aware of this fact; "a glaze comes
+over his eyes," sometimes, she says, "and he seems to wander away
+into a frightful sort of dream, in which he threatens most . . . "
+The man appears to have these frightful dreams even when he is not
+under opium.
+
+
+OPENING OF THE TALE
+
+
+The tale opens abruptly with an opium-bred vision of the tower of
+Cloisterham Cathedral, beheld by Jasper as he awakens in the den of
+the Princess Puffer, between a Chinaman, a Lascar, and the hag
+herself.  This Cathedral tower, thus early and emphatically
+introduced, is to play a great but more or less mysterious part in
+the romance:  that is certain.  Jasper, waking, makes experiments
+on the talk of the old woman, the Lascar and Chinaman in their
+sleep.  He pronounces it "unintelligible," which satisfies him that
+his own babble, when under opium, must be unintelligible also.  He
+is, presumably, acquainted with the languages of the eastern coast
+of India, and with Chinese, otherwise, how could he hope to
+understand the sleepers?  He is being watched by the hag, who hates
+him.
+
+Jasper returns to Cloisterham, where we are introduced to the Dean,
+a nonentity, and to Minor Canon Crisparkle, a muscular Christian in
+the pink of training, a classical scholar, and a good honest
+fellow.  Jasper gives Edwin a dinner, and gushes over "his bright
+boy," a lively lad, full of chaff, but also full of confiding
+affection and tenderness of heart.  Edwin admits that his betrothal
+is a bore:  Jasper admits that he loathes his life; and that the
+church singing "often sounds to me quite devilish,"--and no wonder.
+After this dinner, Jasper has a "weird seizure;" "a strange film
+comes over Jasper's eyes," he "looks frightfully ill," becomes
+rigid, and admits that he "has been taking opium for a pain, an
+agony that sometimes overcomes me."  This "agony," we learn, is the
+pain of hearing Edwin speak lightly of his love, whom Jasper so
+furiously desires.  "Take it as a warning," Jasper says, but Edwin,
+puzzled, and full of confiding tenderness, does not understand.
+
+In the next scene we meet the school-girl, Rosa, who takes a walk
+and has a tiff with Edwin.  Sir Luke Fildes's illustration shows
+Edwin as "a lad with the bloom of a lass," with a classic profile;
+and a gracious head of long, thick, fair hair, long, though we
+learn it has just been cut.  He wears a soft slouched hat, and the
+pea-coat of the period.
+
+
+SAPSEA AND DURDLES
+
+
+Next, Jasper and Sapsea, a pompous ass, auctioneer, and mayor, sit
+at their wine, expecting a third guest.  Mr. Sapsea reads his
+absurd epitaph for his late wife, who is buried in a "Monument," a
+vault of some sort in the Cathedral churchyard.  To them enter
+Durdles, a man never sober, yet trusted with the key of the crypt,
+"as contractor for rough repairs."  In the crypt "he habitually
+sleeps off the fumes of liquor."  Of course no Dean would entrust
+keys to this incredibly dissipated, dirty, and insolent creature,
+to whom Sapsea gives the key of his vault, for no reason at all, as
+the epitaph, of course, is to be engraved on the outside, by
+Durdles's men.  However, Durdles insists on getting the key of the
+vault:  he has two other large keys.  Jasper, trifling with them,
+keeps clinking them together, so as to know, even in the dark, by
+the sound, which is the key that opens Sapsea's vault, in the
+railed-off burial ground, beside the cloister arches.  He has met
+Durdles at Sapsea's for no other purpose than to obtain access at
+will to Mrs. Sapsea's monument.  Later in the evening Jasper finds
+Durdles more or less drunk, and being stoned by a gamin, "Deputy,"
+a retainer of a tramp's lodging-house.  Durdles fees Deputy, in
+fact, to drive him home every night after ten.  Jasper and Deputy
+fall into feud, and Jasper has thus a new, keen, and omnipresent
+enemy.  As he walks with Durdles that worthy explains (in reply to
+a question by Jasper), that, by tapping a wall, even if over six
+feet thick, with his hammer, he can detect the nature of the
+contents of the vault, "solid in hollow, and inside solid, hollow
+again.  Old 'un crumbled away in stone coffin, in vault."  He can
+also discover the presence of "rubbish left in that same six foot
+space by Durdles's men."  Thus, if a foreign body were introduced
+into the Sapsea vault, Durdles could detect its presence by tapping
+the outside wall.  As Jasper's purpose clearly is to introduce a
+foreign body--that of Edwin who stands between him and Rosa--into
+Mrs. Sapsea's vault, this "gift" of Durdles is, for Jasper, an
+uncomfortable discovery.  He goes home, watches Edwin asleep, and
+smokes opium.
+
+
+THE LANDLESSES
+
+
+Two new characters are now introduced, Neville and Helena Landless,
+{1} twins, orphans, of Cingalese extraction, probably Eurasian;
+very dark, the girl "almost of the gipsy type;" both are "fierce of
+look."  The young man is to read with Canon Crisparkle and live
+with him; the girl goes to the same school as Rosa.  The education
+of both has been utterly neglected; instruction has been denied to
+them.  Neville explains the cause of their fierceness to
+Crisparkle.  In Ceylon they were bullied by a cruel stepfather and
+several times ran away:  the girl was the leader, always "dressed
+as a boy, and showing the daring of a man."  Edwin Drood's air of
+supercilious ownership of Rosa Bud (indicated as a fault of youth
+and circumstance, not of heart and character), irritates Neville
+Landless, who falls in love with Rosa at first sight.  As Rosa
+sings, at Crisparkle's, while Jasper plays the piano, Jasper's
+fixed stare produces an hysterical fit in the girl, who is soothed
+by Helena Landless.  Helena shows her aversion to Jasper, who, as
+even Edwin now sees, frightens Rosa.  "You would be afraid of him,
+under similar circumstances, wouldn't you, Miss Landless?" asks
+Edwin.  "Not under any circumstances," answers Helena, and Jasper
+"thanks Miss Landless for this vindication of his character."
+
+The girls go back to their school, where Rosa explains to Helena
+her horror of Jasper's silent love-making:  "I feel that I am never
+safe from him . . . a glaze comes over his eyes and he seems to
+wander away into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens
+most," as already quoted.  Helena thus, and she alone, except Rosa,
+understands Jasper thoroughly.  She becomes Rosa's protectress.
+"Let whomsoever it most concerned look well to it."
+
+Thus Jasper has a new observer and enemy, in addition to the
+omnipresent street boy, Deputy, and the detective old hag of the
+opium den.
+
+Leaving the Canon's house, Neville and Edwin quarrel violently over
+Rosa, in the open air; they are followed by Jasper, and taken to
+his house to be reconciled over glasses of mulled wine.  Jasper
+drugs the wine, and thus provokes a violent scene; next day he
+tells Crisparkle that Neville is "murderous."  "There is something
+of the tiger in his dark blood."  He spreads the story of the
+fracas in the town.
+
+Grewgious, Rosa's guardian, now comes down on business; the girl
+fails to explain to him the unsatisfactory relations between her
+and Edwin:  Grewgious is to return to her "at Christmas," if she
+sends for him, and she does send.  Grewgious, "an angular man," all
+duty and sentiment (he had loved Rosa's mother), has an interview
+with Edwin's trustee, Jasper, for whom he has no enthusiasm, but
+whom he does not in any way suspect.  They part on good terms, to
+meet at Christmas.  Crisparkle, with whom Helena has fallen
+suddenly in love, arranges with Jasper that Edwin and Landless
+shall meet and be reconciled, as both are willing to be, at a
+dinner in Jasper's rooms, on Christmas Eve.  Jasper, when
+Crisparkle proposes this, denotes by his manner "some close
+internal calculation."  We see that he is reckoning how the dinner
+suits his plan of campaign, and "close calculation" may refer, as
+in Mr. Proctor's theory, to the period of the moon:  on Christmas
+Eve there will be no moonshine at midnight.  Jasper, having worked
+out this problem, accepts Crisparkle's proposal, and his assurances
+about Neville, and shows Crisparkle a diary in which he has entered
+his fears that Edwin's life is in danger from Neville.  Edwin (who
+is not in Cloisterham at this moment) accepts, by letter, the
+invitation to meet Neville at Jasper's on Christmas Eve.
+
+Meanwhile Edwin visits Grewgious in his London chambers; is
+lectured on his laggard and supercilious behaviour as a lover, and
+receives the engagement ring of the late Mrs. Bud, Rosa's mother,
+which is very dear to Grewgious--in the presence of Bazzard,
+Grewgious's clerk, a gloomy writer of an amateur unacted tragedy.
+Edwin is to return the ring to Grewgious, if he and Rosa decide not
+to marry.  The ring is in a case, and Edwin places it "in his
+breast."  We must understand, in the breast-pocket of his coat:  no
+other interpretation will pass muster.  "Her ring--will it come
+back to me?" reflects the mournful Grewgious.
+
+
+THE UNACCOUNTABLE EXPEDITION
+
+
+Jasper now tells Sapsea, and the Dean, that he is to make "a
+moonlight expedition with Durdles among the tombs, vaults, towers,
+and ruins to-night."  The impossible Durdles has the keys necessary
+for this, "surely an unaccountable expedition," Dickens keeps
+remarking.  The moon seems to rise on this night at about 7.30 p.m.
+Jasper takes a big case-bottle of liquor--drugged, of course and
+goes to the den of Durdles.  In the yard of this inspector of
+monuments he is bidden to beware of a mound of quicklime near the
+yard gate.  "With a little handy stirring, quick enough to eat your
+bones," says Durdles.  There is some considerable distance between
+this "mound" of quicklime and the crypt, of which Durdles has the
+key, but the intervening space is quite empty of human presence, as
+the citizens are unwilling to meet ghosts.
+
+In the crypt Durdles drinks a good deal of the drugged liquor.
+"They are to ascend the great Tower,"--and why they do that is part
+of the Mystery, though not an insoluble part.  Before they climb,
+Durdles tells Jasper that he was drunk and asleep in the crypt,
+last Christmas Eve, and was wakened by "the ghost of one terrific
+shriek, followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog, a long dismal,
+woeful howl, such as a dog gives when a person's dead."  Durdles
+has made inquiries and, as no one else heard the shriek and the
+howl, he calls these sounds "ghosts."
+
+They are obviously meant to be understood as supranormal
+premonitory sounds; of the nature of second sight, or rather of
+second hearing.  Forster gives examples of Dickens's tendency to
+believe in such premonitions:  Dickens had himself a curious
+premonitory dream.  He considerably overdid the premonitory
+business in his otherwise excellent story, The Signalman, or so it
+seems to a student of these things.  The shriek and howl heard by
+Durdles are to be repeated, we see, in real life, later, on a
+Christmas Eve.  The question is--when?  More probably NOT on the
+Christmas Eve just imminent, when Edwin is to vanish, but, on the
+Christmas Eve following, when Jasper is to be unmasked.
+
+All this while, and later, Jasper examines Durdles very closely,
+studying the effects on him of the drugged drink.  When they reach
+the top of the tower, Jasper closely contemplates "that stillest
+part of it" (the landscape) "which the Cathedral overshadows; but
+he contemplates Durdles quite as curiously."
+
+There is a motive for the scrutiny in either case.  Jasper examines
+the part of the precincts in the shadow of the Cathedral, because
+he wishes to assure himself that it is lonely enough for his later
+undescribed but easily guessed proceedings in this night of
+mystery.  He will have much to do that could not brook witnesses,
+after the drugged Durdles has fallen sound asleep.  We have already
+been assured that the whole area over which Jasper is to operate is
+"utterly deserted," even when it lies in full moonlight, about 8.30
+p.m.  "One might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr.
+Jasper's own gate-house."  The people of Cloisterham, we hear,
+would deny that they believe in ghosts; but they give this part of
+the precinct a wide berth (Chapter XII.).  If the region is
+"utterly deserted" at nine o'clock in the evening, when it lies in
+the ivory moonlight, much more will it be free from human presence
+when it lies in shadow, between one and two o'clock after midnight.
+Jasper, however, from the tower top closely scrutinizes the area of
+his future operations.  It is, probably, for this very purpose of
+discovering whether the coast be clear or not, that Jasper climbs
+the tower.
+
+He watches Durdles for the purpose of finding how the drug which he
+has administered works, with a view to future operations on Edwin.
+Durdles is now in such a state that "he deems the ground so far
+below on a level with the tower, and would as lief walk off the
+tower into the air as not."
+
+All this is apparently meant to suggest that Jasper, on Christmas
+Eve, will repeat his expedition, WITH EDWIN, whom he will have
+drugged, and that he will allow Edwin to "walk off the tower into
+the air."  There are later suggestions to the same effect, as we
+shall see, but they are deliberately misleading.  There are also
+strong suggestions to the very opposite effect:  it is broadly
+indicated that Jasper is to strangle Edwin with a thick black-silk
+scarf, which he has just taken to wearing for the good of his
+throat.
+
+The pair return to the crypt, Durdles falls asleep, dreams that
+Jasper leaves him, "and that something touches him and something
+falls from his hand.  Then something clinks and gropes about," and
+the lines of moonlight shift their direction, as Durdles finds that
+they have really done when he wakens, with Jasper beside him, while
+the Cathedral clock strikes two.  They have had many hours, not
+less than five, for their expedition.  The key of the crypt lies
+beside Durdles on the ground.  They go out, and as Deputy begins
+stone-throwing, Jasper half strangles him.
+
+
+PURPOSE OF THE EXPEDITION
+
+
+Jasper has had ample time to take models in wax of all Durdles's
+keys.  But he could have done that in a few minutes, while Durdles
+slept, if he had wax with him, without leaving the crypt.  He has
+also had time to convey several wheelbarrowfuls of quicklime from
+Durdles's yard to Mrs. Sapsea's sepulchre, of which monument he
+probably took the key from Durdles, and tried its identity by
+clinking.  But even in a Cathedral town, even after midnight,
+several successive expeditions of a lay precentor with a
+wheelbarrow full of quicklime would have been apt to attract the
+comment of some belated physician, some cleric coming from a sick
+bed, or some local roysterers.  Therefore it is that Dickens
+insists on the "utterly deserted" character of the area, and shows
+us that Jasper has made sure of that essential fact by observations
+from the tower top.  Still, his was a perilous expedition, with his
+wheelbarrow!  We should probably learn later, that Jasper was
+detected by the wakeful Deputy, who loathed him.  Moreover, next
+morning Durdles was apt to notice that some of his quicklime had
+been removed.  As far as is shown, Durdles noticed nothing of that
+kind, though he does observe peculiarities in Jasper's behaviour.
+
+The next point in the tale is that Edwin and Rosa meet, and have
+sense enough to break off their engagement.  But Edwin, represented
+as really good-hearted, now begins to repent his past behaviour,
+and, though he has a kind of fancy for Miss Landless, he pretty
+clearly falls deeper in love with his late fiancee, and weeps his
+loss in private:  so we are told.
+
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE
+
+
+Christmas Eve comes, the day of the dinner of three, Jasper,
+Landless, and Edwin.  The chapter describing this fateful day
+(xiv.) is headed, When shall these Three meet again? and Mr.
+Proctor argues that Dickens intends that THEY SHALL meet again.
+The intention, and the hint, are much in Dickens's manner.
+Landless means to start, next day, very early, on a solitary
+walking tour, and buys an exorbitantly heavy stick.  We casually
+hear that Jasper knows Edwin to possess no jewellery, except a
+watch and chain and a scarf-pin.  As Edwin moons about, he finds
+the old opium hag, come down from London, "seeking a needle in a
+bottle of hay," she says--that is, hunting vainly for Jasper.
+
+Please remark that Jasper has run up to town, on December 23, and
+has saturated his system with a debauch of opium on the very eve of
+the day when he clearly means to kill Edwin.  This was a most
+injudicious indulgence, in the circumstances.  A maiden murder
+needs nerve!  We know that "fiddlestrings was weakness to express
+the state of" Jasper's "nerves" on the day after the night of opium
+with which the story opens.  On December 24, Jasper returned home,
+the hag at his heels.  The old woman, when met by Edwin, has a
+curious film over her eyes; "he seems to know her."  "Great
+heaven," he thinks, next moment.  "Like Jack that night!"  This
+refers to a kind of fit of Jasper's, after dinner, on the first
+evening of the story.  Edwin has then seen Jack Jasper in one of
+his "filmy" seizures.  The woman prays Edwin for three shillings
+and sixpence, to buy opium.  He gives her the money; she asks his
+Christian name.  "Edwin."  Is "Eddy" a sweetheart's form of that?
+He says that he has no sweetheart.  He is told to be thankful that
+his name is not Ned.  Now, Jasper alone calls Edwin "Ned."  "'Ned'
+is a threatened name, a dangerous name," says the hag, who has
+heard Jasper threaten "Ned" in his opium dreams.
+
+Edwin determines to tell this adventure to Jasper, BUT NOT ON THIS
+NIGHT:  to-morrow will do.  Now, DID he tell the story to Jasper
+that night, in the presence of Landless, at dinner?  If so, Helena
+Landless might later learn the fact from Neville.  If she knew it,
+she would later tell Mr. Grewgious.
+
+The three men meet and dine.  There is a fearful storm.  "Stones
+are displaced upon the summit of the great tower."  Next morning,
+early, Jasper yells to Crisparkle, who is looking out of his window
+in Minor Canon Row, that Edwin has disappeared.  Neville has
+already set out on his walking tour.
+
+
+AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE
+
+
+Men go forth and apprehend Neville, who shows fight with his heavy
+stick.  We learn that he and Drood left Jasper's house at midnight,
+went for ten minutes to look at the river under the wind, and
+parted at Crisparkle's door.  Neville now remains under suspicion:
+Jasper directs the search in the river, on December 25, 26, and 27.
+On the evening of December 27, Grewgious visits Jasper.  Now,
+Grewgious, as we know, was to be at Cloisterham at Christmas.
+True, he was engaged to dine on Christmas Day with Bazzard, his
+clerk; but, thoughtful as he was of the moody Bazzard, as Edwin was
+leaving Cloisterham he would excuse himself.  He would naturally
+take a great part in the search for Edwin, above all as Edwin had
+in his possession the ring so dear to the lawyer.  Edwin had not
+shown it to Rosa when they determined to part.  He "kept it in his
+breast," and the ring, we learn, was "gifted with invincible force
+to hold and drag," so Dickens warns us.
+
+The ring is obviously to be a piece de conviction.  But our point,
+at present, is that we do not know how Grewgious, to whom this ring
+was so dear, employed himself at Cloisterham--after Edwin's
+disappearance--between December 25 and December 27.  On the evening
+of the 27th, he came to Jasper, saying, "I have JUST LEFT MISS
+LANDLESS."  He then slowly and watchfully told Jasper that Edwin's
+engagement was broken off, while the precentor gasped, perspired,
+tore his hair, shrieked, and finally subsided into a heap of muddy
+clothes on the floor.  Meanwhile, Mr. Grewgious, calmly observing
+these phenomena, warmed his hands at the fire for some time before
+he called in Jasper's landlady.
+
+Grewgious now knows by Jasper's behaviour that he believes himself
+to have committed a superfluous crime, by murdering Edwin, who no
+longer stood between him and Rosa, as their engagement was already
+at an end.  Whether a Jasper, in real life, would excite himself so
+much, is another question.  We do not know, as Mr. Proctor insists,
+what Mr. Grewgious had been doing at Cloisterham between Christmas
+Day and December 27, the date of his experiment on Jasper's nerves.
+Mr. Proctor supposes him to have met the living Edwin, and obtained
+information from him, after his escape from a murderous attack by
+Jasper.  Mr. Proctor insists that this is the only explanation of
+Grewgious's conduct, any other "is absolutely impossible."  In that
+case the experiment of Grewgious was not made to gain information
+from Jasper's demeanour, but was the beginning of his punishment,
+and was intended by Grewgious to be so.
+
+But Dickens has been careful to suggest, with suspicious breadth of
+candour, another explanation of the source of Grewgious's
+knowledge.  If Edwin has really escaped, and met Grewgious, Dickens
+does not want us to be sure of that, as Mr. Proctor was sure.
+Dickens deliberately puts his readers on another trail, though
+neither Mr. Walters nor Mr. Proctor struck the scent.  As we have
+noted, Grewgious at once says to Jasper, "I HAVE JUST COME FROM
+MISS LANDLESS."  This tells Jasper nothing, but it tells a great
+deal to the watchful reader, who remembers that Miss Landless, and
+she only, is aware that Jasper loves, bullies, and insults Rosa,
+and that Rosa's life is embittered by Jasper's silent wooing, and
+his unspoken threats.  Helena may also know that "Ned is a
+threatened name," as we have seen, and that the menace comes from
+Jasper.  As Jasper is now known to be Edwin's rival in love, and as
+Edwin has vanished, the murderer, Mr. Grewgious reckons, is Jasper;
+and his experiment, with Jasper's consequent shriek and fit,
+confirms the hypothesis.  Thus Grewgious had information enough,
+from Miss Landless, to suggest his experiment--Dickens
+intentionally made that clear (though not clear enough for Mr.
+Proctor and Mr. Cuming Walters)--while his experiment gives him a
+moral certainty of Jasper's crime, but yields no legal evidence.
+
+But does Grewgious know no more than what Helena, and the fit and
+shriek of Jasper, have told him?  Is his knowledge limited to the
+evidence that Jasper has murdered Edwin?  Or does Grewgious know
+more, know that Edwin, in some way, has escaped from death?
+
+That is Dickens's secret.  But whereas Grewgious, if he believes
+Jasper to be an actual murderer, should take him seriously; in
+point of fact, he speaks of Jasper in so light a tone, as "our
+local friend," that we feel no certainty that he is not really
+aware of Edwin's escape from a murderous attack by Jasper, and of
+his continued existence.
+
+Presently Crisparkle, under some mysterious impression, apparently
+telepathic (the book is rich in such psychical phenomena), visits
+the weir on the river, at night, and next day finds Edwin's watch
+and chain in the timbers; his scarf-pin in the pool below.  The
+watch and chain must have been placed purposely where they were
+found, they could not float thither, and, if Neville had slain
+Edwin, he would not have stolen his property, of course, except as
+a blind, neutralised by the placing of the watch in a conspicuous
+spot.  However, the increased suspicions drive Neville away to read
+law in Staple Inn, where Grewgious also dwells, and incessantly
+watches Neville out of his window.
+
+About six months later, Helena Landless is to join Neville, who is
+watched at intervals by Jasper, who, again, is watched by Grewgious
+as the precentor lurks about Staple Inn.
+
+
+DICK DATCHERY
+
+
+About the time when Helena leaves Cloisterham for town, a new
+character appears in Cloisterham, "a white-headed personage with
+black eyebrows, BUTTONED UP IN A TIGHTISH BLUE SURTOUT, with a buff
+waistcoat, grey trowsers, and something of a military air."  His
+shock of white hair was unusually thick and ample.  This man, "a
+buffer living idly on his means," named Datchery, is either, as Mr.
+Proctor believed, Edwin Drood, or, as Mr. Walters thinks, Helena
+Landless.  By making Grewgious drop the remark that Bazzard, his
+clerk, a moping owl of an amateur tragedian, "is off duty here," at
+his chambers, Dickens hints that Bazzard is Datchery.  But that is
+a mere false scent, a ruse of the author, scattering paper in the
+wrong place, in this long paper hunt.
+
+As for Helena, Mr. Walters justly argues that Dickens has marked
+her for some important part in the ruin of Jasper.  "There was a
+slumbering gleam of fire in her intense dark eyes.  Let whomsoever
+it most concerned look well to it."  Again, we have been told that
+Helena had high courage.  She had told Jasper that she feared him
+"in no circumstances whatever."  Again, we have learned that in
+childhood she had dressed as a boy when she ran away from home; and
+she had the motives of protecting Rosa and her brother, Neville,
+from the machinations of Jasper, who needs watching, as he is
+trying to ruin Neville's already dilapidated character, and, by
+spying on him, to break down his nerve.  Really, of course, Neville
+is quite safe.  There is no corpus delicti, no carcase of the
+missing Edwin Drood.
+
+For the reasons given, Datchery might be Helena in disguise.
+
+If so, the idea is highly ludicrous, while nothing is proved either
+by the blackness of Datchery's eyebrows (Helena's were black), or
+by Datchery's habit of carrying his hat under his arm, not on his
+head.  A person who goes so far as to wear a conspicuous white wig,
+would not be afraid also to dye his eyebrows black, if he were
+Edwin; while either Edwin or Helena MUST have "made up" the face,
+by the use of paint and sham wrinkles.  Either Helena or Edwin
+would have been detected in real life, of course, but we allow for
+the accepted fictitious convention of successful disguise, and for
+the necessities of the novelist.  A tightly buttoned surtout would
+show Helena's feminine figure; but let that also pass.  As to the
+hat, Edwin's own hair was long and thick:  add a wig, and his hat
+would be a burden to him.
+
+What is most unlike the stern, fierce, sententious Helena, is
+Datchery's habit of "chaffing."  He fools the ass of a Mayor,
+Sapsea, by most exaggerated diference:  his tone is always that of
+indolent mockery, which one doubts whether the "intense" and
+concentrated Helena could assume.  He takes rooms in the same house
+as Jasper, to whom, as to Durdles and Deputy, he introduces himself
+on the night of his arrival at Cloisterham.  He afterwards
+addresses Deputy, the little gamin, by the name "Winks," which is
+given to him by the people at the Tramps' lodgings:  the name is a
+secret of Deputy's.
+
+
+JASPER, ROSA, AND TARTAR
+
+
+Meanwhile Jasper formally proposes to Rosa, in the school garden:
+standing apart and leaning against a sundial, as the garden is
+commanded by many windows.  He offers to resign his hopes of
+bringing Landless to the gallows (perhaps this bad man would
+provide a corpus delicti of his own making!) if Rosa will accept
+him:  he threatens to "pursue her to the death," if she will not;
+he frightens her so thoroughly that she rushes to Grewgious in his
+chambers in London.  She now suspects Jasper of Edwin's murder, but
+keeps her thoughts to herself.  She tells Grewgious, who is
+watching Neville,--"I have a fancy for keeping him under my eye,"--
+that Jasper has made love to her, and Grewgious replies in a parody
+of "God save the King"!
+
+
+"On Thee his hopes to fix
+Damn him again!"
+
+
+Would he fool thus, if he knew Jasper to have killed Edwin?  He is
+not certain whether Rosa should visit Helena next day, in
+Landless's rooms, opposite; and Mr. Walters suggests that he may be
+aware that Helena, dressed as Datchery, is really absent at
+Cloisterham.  However, next day, Helena is in her brother's rooms.
+Moreover, it is really a sufficient explanation of Grewgious's
+doubt that Jasper is lurking around, and that not till next day is
+a PRIVATE way of communication arranged between Neville and his
+friends.  In any case, next day, Helena is in her brother's rooms,
+and, by aid of a Mr. Tartar's rooms, she and Rosa can meet
+privately.  There is a good deal of conspiring to watch Jasper when
+he watches Neville, and in this new friend, Mr. Tartar, a lover is
+provided for Rosa.  Tartar is a miraculously agile climber over
+roofs and up walls, a retired Lieutenant of the navy, and a handy
+man, being such a climber, to chase Jasper about the roof of the
+Cathedral, when Jasper's day of doom arrives.
+
+
+JASPER'S OPIUM VISIONS
+
+
+In July, Jasper revisits the London opium den, and talks under
+opium, watched by the old hag.  He speaks of a thing which he often
+does in visions:  "a hazardous and perilous journey, over abysses
+where a slip would be destruction.  Look down, look down!  You see
+what lies at the bottom there?"  He enacts the vision and says,
+"There was a fellow traveller."  He "speaks in a whisper, and as if
+in the dark."  The vision is, in this case, "a poor vision:  no
+struggle, no consciousness of peril, no entreaty."  Edwin, in the
+reminiscent vision, dies very easily and rapidly.  "When it comes
+to be real at last, it is so short that it seems unreal for the
+first time."  "And yet I never saw THAT before.  Look what a poor
+miserable mean thing it is.  THAT must be real.  It's over."
+
+What can all this mean?  We have been told that, shortly before
+Christmas Eve, Jasper took to wearing a thick black-silk
+handkerchief for his throat.  He hung it over his arm, "his face
+knitted and stern," as he entered his house for his Christmas Eve
+dinner.  If he strangled Edwin with the scarf, as we are to
+suppose, he did not lead him, drugged, to the tower top, and pitch
+him off.  Is part of Jasper's vision reminiscent--the brief,
+unresisting death--while another part is a separate vision, is
+PROSPECTIVE, "premonitory"?  Does he see himself pitching Neville
+Landless off the tower top, or see him fallen from the Cathedral
+roof?  Is Neville's body "THAT"--"I never saw THAT before.  Look
+what a poor miserable mean thing it is!  THAT must be real."
+Jasper "never saw THAT"--the dead body below the height--before.
+THIS vision, I think, is of the future, not of the past, and is
+meant to bewilder the reader who thinks that the whole represents
+the slaying of Drood.  The tale is rich in "warnings" and
+telepathy.
+
+
+DATCHERY AND THE OPIUM WOMAN
+
+
+The hag now tracks Jasper home to Cloisterham.  Here she meets
+Datchery, whom she asks how she can see Jasper?  If Datchery is
+Drood, he now learns, WHAT HE DID NOT KNOW BEFORE, THAT THERE IS
+SOME CONNECTION BETWEEN JASPER AND THE HAG.  He walks with her to
+the place where Edwin met the hag, on Christmas Eve, and gave her
+money; and he jingles his own money as he walks.  The place, or the
+sound of the money, makes the woman tell Datchery about Edwin's
+gift of three shillings and sixpence for opium.  Datchery, "with a
+sudden change of countenance, gives her a sudden look."  It does
+not follow that he is NOT Drood, for, though the hag's love of
+opium was known to Drood, Datchery is not to reveal his recognition
+of the woman.  He does what any stranger would do; he "gives a
+sudden look," as if surprised by the mention of opium.
+
+Mr. Walters says, "Drood would not have changed countenance on
+hearing a fact he had known six months previously."  But if Drood
+was playing at being somebody else, he would, of course, give a
+kind of start and stare, on hearing of the opium.  When he also
+hears from the hag that her former benefactor's name was Edwin, he
+asks her how she knew that--"a fatuously unnecessary question,"
+says Mr. Walters.  A needless question for Datchery's information,
+if he be Drood, but as useful a question as another if Drood be
+Datchery, and wishes to maintain the conversation.
+
+
+DATCHERY'S SCORE
+
+
+Datchery keeps a tavern score of his discoveries behind a door, in
+cryptic chalk strokes.  He does this, says Mr. Walters, because,
+being Helena, he would betray himself if he wrote in a female hand.
+But nobody would WRITE secrets on a door!  He adds "a moderate
+stroke," after meeting the hag, though, says Mr. Walters, "Edwin
+Drood would have learned nothing new whatever" from the hag.
+
+But Edwin would have learned something quite new, and very
+important--that the hag was hunting Jasper.  Next day Datchery sees
+the woman shake her fists at Jasper in church, and hears from her
+that she knows Jasper "better far than all the reverend parsons put
+together know him."  Datchery then adds a long thick line to his
+chalked score, yet, says Mr. Walters, Datchery has learned "nothing
+new to Edwin Drood, if alive."
+
+This is an obvious error.  It is absolutely new to Edwin Drood that
+the opium hag is intimately acquainted with his uncle, Jasper, and
+hates Jasper with a deadly hatred.  All this is not only new to
+Drood, if alive, but is rich in promise of further revelations.
+Drood, on Christmas Eve, had learned from the hag only that she
+took opium, and that she had come from town to Cloisterham, and had
+"hunted for a needle in a bottle of hay."  That was the sum of his
+information.  Now he learns that the woman knows, tracks, has
+found, and hates, his worthy uncle, Jasper.  He may well,
+therefore, add a heavy mark to his score.
+
+We must also ask, How could Helena, fresh from Ceylon, know "the
+old tavern way of keeping scores?  Illegible except to the scorer.
+The scorer not committed, the scored debited with what is against
+him," as Datchery observes.  An Eurasian girl of twenty, new to
+England, would not argue thus with herself:  she would probably
+know nothing of English tavern scores.  We do not hear that Helena
+ever opened a book:  we do know that education had been denied to
+her.  What acquaintance could she have with old English tavern
+customs?
+
+If Drood is Datchery, then Dickens used a form of a very old and
+favourite ficelle of his:  the watching of a villain by an
+improbable and unsuspected person, in this case thought to be dead.
+If Helena is Datchery, the "assumption" or personation is in the
+highest degree improbable, her whole bearing is quite out of her
+possibilities, and the personation is very absurd.
+
+Here the story ends.
+
+
+
+THEORIES OF THE MYSTERY
+
+
+
+FORSTER'S EVIDENCE
+
+
+We have some external evidence as to Dickens's solution of his own
+problem, from Forster. {2}  On August 6, 1869, some weeks before he
+began to work at his tale, Dickens, in a letter, told Forster, "I
+have a very curious and new idea for my new story.  Not
+communicable (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a
+very strong one, though difficult to work."  Forster must have
+instantly asked that the incommunicable secret should be
+communicated to HIM, for he tells us that "IMMEDIATELY AFTER I
+learnt"--the secret.  But did he learn it?  Dickens was ill, and
+his plot, whatever it may have been, would be irritatingly
+criticized by Forster before it was fully thought out.  "Fules and
+bairns should not see half-done work," and Dickens may well have
+felt that Forster should not see work not even begun, but merely
+simmering in the author's own fancy.
+
+Forster does not tell us that Dickens communicated the secret in a
+letter.  He quotes none:  he says "I was told," orally, that is.
+When he writes, five years later (1874), "Landless was, _I_ THINK,
+to have perished in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize
+the murderer," he is clearly trusting, not to a letter of
+Dickens's, but to a defective memory; and he knows it.  He says
+that a nephew was to be murdered by an uncle.  The criminal was to
+confess in the condemned cell.  He was to find out that his crime
+had been needless, and to be convicted by means of the ring (Rosa's
+mother's ring) remaining in the quicklime that had destroyed the
+body of Edwin.
+
+Nothing "new" in all this, as Forster must have seen.  "The
+originality," he explains, "was to consist in the review of the
+murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations
+were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but some other
+man, were the tempted."
+
+But all this is not "hard to work," and is not "original."  As Mr.
+Proctor remarks, Dickens had used that trick twice already.
+("Madman's Manuscript," Pickwick; "Clock Case Confession," in
+Master Humphrey's Clock.)  The quicklime trick is also very old
+indeed.  The disguise of a woman as a man is as ancient as the art
+of fiction:  yet Helena MAY be Datchery, though nobody guessed it
+before Mr. Cuming Walters.  She ought not to be Datchery; she is
+quite out of keeping in her speech and manner as Datchery, and is
+much more like Drood.
+
+
+"A NEW IDEA"
+
+
+There are no new ideas in plots.  "All the stories have been told,"
+and all the merit lies in the manner of the telling.  Dickens had
+used the unsuspected watcher, as Mr. Proctor shows, in almost all
+his novels.  In Martin Chuzzlewit, when Jonas finds that Nadgett
+has been the watcher, Dickens writes, "The dead man might have come
+out of his grave and not confounded and appalled him so."  Now, to
+Jasper, Edwin WAS "the dead man," and Edwin's grave contained
+quicklime.  Jasper was sure that he had done for Edwin:  he had
+taken Edwin's watch, chain, and scarf-pin; he believed that he had
+left him, drugged, in quicklime, in a locked vault.  Consequently
+the reappearance of Edwin, quite well, in the vault where Jasper
+had buried him, would be a very new idea to Jasper; would "confound
+and appall him."  Jasper would have emotions, at that spectacle,
+and so would the reader!  It is not every day, even in our age of
+sixpenny novels, that a murderer is compelled to visit, alone, at
+night, the vault which holds his victim's "cold remains," and
+therein finds the victim "come up, smiling."
+
+Yes, for business purposes, this idea was new enough!  The idea was
+"difficult to work," says Dickens, with obvious truth.  How was he
+to get the quicklime into the vault, and Drood, alive, out of the
+vault?  As to the reader, he would at first take Datchery for
+Drood, and then think, "No, that is impossible, and also is stale.
+Datchery cannot be Drood," and thus the reader would remain in a
+pleasant state of puzzledom, as he does, unto this day.
+
+If Edwin is dead, there is not much "Mystery" about him.  We have
+as good as seen Jasper strangle him and take his pin, chain, and
+watch.  Yet by adroitly managing the conduct of Mr. Grewgious,
+Dickens persuaded Mr. Proctor that certainly, Grewgious knew Edwin
+to be alive.  As Grewgious knew, from Helena, all that was
+necessary to provoke his experiment on Jasper's nerves, Mr. Proctor
+argued on false premises, but that was due to the craft of Dickens.
+Mr. Proctor rejected Forster's report, from memory, of what he
+understood to be the "incommunicable secret" of Dickens's plot, and
+I think that he was justified in the rejection.  Forster does not
+seem to have cared about the thing--he refers lightly to "the
+reader curious in such matters"--when once he had received his
+explanation from Dickens.  His memory, in the space of five years,
+may have been inaccurate:  he probably neither knew nor cared who
+Datchery was; and he may readily have misunderstood what Dickens
+told him, orally, about the ring, as the instrument of detection.
+Moreover, Forster quite overlooked one source of evidence, as I
+shall show later.
+
+
+MR. PROCTOR'S THEORY
+
+
+Mr. Proctor's theory of the story is that Jasper, after Edwin's
+return at midnight on Christmas Eve, recommended a warm drink--
+mulled wine, drugged--and then proposed another stroll of
+inspection of the effects of the storm.  He then strangled him,
+somewhere, and placed him in the quicklime in the Sapsea vault,
+locked him in, and went to bed.  Next, according to Mr. Proctor,
+Durdles, then, "lying drunk in the precincts," for some reason taps
+with his hammer on the wall of the Sapsea vault, detects the
+presence of a foreign body, opens the tomb, and finds Drood in the
+quicklime, "his face fortunately protected by the strong silk shawl
+with which Jasper has intended to throttle him."
+
+
+A MISTAKEN THEORY
+
+
+This is "thin," very "thin!"  Dickens must have had some better
+scheme than Mr. Proctor's.  Why did Jasper not "mak sikker" like
+Kirkpatrick with the Red Comyn?  Why did he leave his silk scarf?
+It might come to be asked for; to be sure the quicklime would
+destroy it, but why did Jasper leave it?  Why did the intoxicated
+Durdles come out of the crypt, if he was there, enter the
+graveyard, and begin tapping at the wall of the vault?  Why not
+open the door? he had the key.
+
+Suppose, however, all this to have occurred, and suppose, with Mr.
+Proctor, that Durdles and Deputy carried Edwin to the Tramps'
+lodgings, would Durdles fail to recognize Edwin?  We are to guess
+that Grewgious was present, or disturbed at his inn, or somehow
+brought into touch with Edwin, and bribed Durdles to silence,
+"until a scheme for the punishment of Jasper had been devised."
+
+All this set of conjectures is crude to the last degree.  We do not
+know how Dickens meant to get Edwin into and out of the vault.
+Granting that Edwin was drugged, Jasper might lead Edwin in,
+considering the licence extended to the effects of drugs in novels,
+and might strangle him there.  Above all, how did Grewgious, if in
+Cloisterham, come to be at hand at midnight?
+
+
+ANOTHER WAY
+
+
+If I must make a guess, I conjecture that Jasper had one of his
+"filmy" seizures, was "in a frightful sort of dream," and bungled
+the murder:  made an incomplete job of it.  Half-strangled men and
+women have often recovered.  In Jasper's opium vision and
+reminiscence there was no resistance, all was very soon over.
+Jasper might even bungle the locking of the door of the vault.  He
+was apt to have a seizure after opium, in moments of excitement,
+and HE HAD BEEN AT THE OPIUM DEN THROUGH THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 23,
+for the hag tracked him from her house in town to Cloisterham on
+December 24, the day of the crime.  Grant that his accustomed fit
+came upon him during the excitement of the murder, as it does come
+after "a nicht wi' opium," in chapter ii., when Edwin excites him
+by contemptuous talk of the girl whom Jasper loves so furiously--
+and then anything may happen!
+
+Jasper murders Edwin inefficiently; he has a fit; while he is
+unconscious the quicklime revives Edwin, by burning his hand, say,
+and, during Jasper's swoon, Edwin, like another famous prisoner,
+"has a happy thought, he opens the door, and walks out."
+
+Being drugged, he is in a dreamy state; knows not clearly what has
+occurred, or who attacked him.  Jasper revives, "look on't again he
+dare not,"--on the body of his victim--and HE walks out and goes
+home, where his red lamp has burned all the time--"thinking it all
+wery capital."
+
+"Another way,"--Jasper not only fails to strangle Drood, but fails
+to lock the door of the vault, and Drood walks out after Jasper has
+gone.  Jasper has, before his fit, "removed from the body the most
+lasting, the best known, and most easily recognizable things upon
+it, the watch and scarf-pin."  So Dickens puts the popular view of
+the case against Neville Landless, and so we are to presume that
+Jasper acted.  If he removed no more things from the body than
+these, he made a fatal oversight.
+
+Meanwhile, how does Edwin, once out of the vault, make good a
+secret escape from Cloisterham?  Mr. Proctor invokes the aid of Mr.
+Grewgious, but does not explain why Grewgious was on the spot.  I
+venture to think it not inconceivable that Mr. Grewgious having
+come down to Cloisterham by a late train, on Christmas Eve, to keep
+his Christmas appointment with Rosa, paid a darkling visit to the
+tomb of his lost love, Rosa's mother.  Grewgious was very
+sentimental, but too secretive to pay such a visit by daylight.  "A
+night of memories and sighs" he might "consecrate" to his lost lady
+love, as Landor did to Rose Aylmer.  Grewgious was to have helped
+Bazzard to eat a turkey on Christmas Day.  But he could get out of
+that engagement.  He would wish to see Edwin and Rosa together, and
+Edwin was leaving Cloisterham.  The date of Grewgious's arrival at
+Cloisterham is studiously concealed.  I offer at least a
+conceivable motive for Grewgious's possible presence at the
+churchyard.  Mrs. Bud, his lost love, we have been told, was buried
+hard by the Sapsea monument.  If Grewgious visited her tomb, he was
+on the spot to help Edwin, supposing Edwin to escape.  Unlikelier
+things occur in novels.  I do not, in fact, call these probable
+occurrences in every-day life, but none of the story is probable.
+Jasper's "weird seizures" are meant to lead up to SOMETHING.  They
+may have been meant to lead up to the failure of the murder and the
+escape of Edwin.  Of course Dickens would not have treated these
+incidents, when he came to make Edwin explain,--nobody else could
+explain,--in my studiously simple style.  The drugged Edwin himself
+would remember the circumstances but mistily:  his evidence would
+be of no value against Jasper.
+
+Mr. Proctor next supposes, we saw, that Drood got into touch with
+Grewgious, and I have added the circumstances which might take
+Grewgious to the churchyard.  Next, when Edwin recovered health, he
+came down, perhaps, as Datchery, to spy on Jasper.  I have
+elsewhere said, as Mr. Cuming Walters quotes me, that "fancy can
+suggest no reason why Edwin Drood, if he escaped from his wicked
+uncle, should go spying about instead of coming openly forward.  No
+plausible unfantastic reason could be invented."  Later, I shall
+explain why Edwin, if he is Datchery, might go spying alone.
+
+It is also urged that Edwin left Rosa in sorrow, and left blame on
+Neville Landless.  Why do this?  Mr. Proctor replies that
+Grewgious's intense and watchful interest in Neville, otherwise
+unexplained, is due to his knowledge that Drood is alive, and that
+Neville must be cared for, while Grewgious has told Rosa that Edwin
+lives.  He also told her of Edwin's real love of her, hence Miss
+Bud says, "Poor, poor Eddy," quite a propos de bottes, when she
+finds herself many fathoms deep in love with Lieutenant Tartar,
+R.N.  "'Poor, poor Eddy!' thought Rosa, as they walked along,"
+Tartar and she.  This is a plausible suggestion of Mr. Proctor.
+Edwin, though known to Rosa to be alive, has no chance!  But, as to
+my own remark, "why should not Edwin come forward at once, instead
+of spying about?"  Well, if he did, there would be no story.  As
+for "an unfantastic reason" for his conduct, Dickens is not writing
+an "unfantastic" novel.  Moreover, if things occurred as I have
+suggested, I do not see what evidence Drood had against Jasper.
+Edwin's clothes were covered with lime, but, when he told his
+story, Jasper would reply that Drood never returned to his house on
+Christmas Eve, but stayed out, "doing what was correct by the
+season, in the way of giving it the welcome it had the right to
+expect," like Durdles on another occasion.  Drood's evidence, if it
+was what I have suggested, would sound like the dream of an
+intoxicated man, and what other evidence could be adduced?  Thus I
+had worked out Drood's condition, if he really was not killed, in
+this way:  I had supposed him to escape, in a very mixed frame of
+mind, when he would be encountered by Grewgious, who, of course,
+could make little out of him in his befogged state.  Drood could
+not even prove that it was not Landless who attacked him.  The
+result would be that Drood would lie low, and later, would have
+reason enough for disguising himself as Datchery, and playing the
+spy in Cloisterham.
+
+At this point I was reinforced by an opinion which Mr. William
+Archer had expressed, unknown to me, in a newspaper article.  I had
+described Edwin's confused knowledge of his own experience, if he
+were thoroughly drugged, and then half strangled.  Mr. Archer also
+took that point, and added that Edwin being a good-hearted fellow,
+and fond of his uncle Jasper, he would not bring, or let Grewgious
+bring, a terrible charge against Jasper, till he knew more
+certainly the whole state of the case.  For that reason, he would
+come disguised to Cloisterham and make inquiries.  By letting
+Jasper know about the ring, he would compel him to enter the vault,
+and then, Mr. Archer thinks, would induce him to "repent and begin
+life afresh."
+
+I scarcely think that Datchery's purpose was so truly honourable:
+he rather seems to be getting up a case against Jasper.  Still, the
+idea of Mr. Archer is very plausible, and, at least, given Drood's
+need of evidence, and the lack of evidence against Jasper, we see
+reason good, in a novel of this kind, for his playing the part of
+amateur detective.
+
+
+DICKENS'S UNUSED DRAFT OF A CHAPTER
+
+
+Forster found, and published, a very illegible sketch of a chapter
+of the tale:  "How Mr. Sapsea ceased to be a Member of the Eight
+Club, Told by Himself."  This was "a cramped, interlined, and
+blotted" draft, on paper of only half the size commonly used by
+Dickens.  Mr. Sapsea tells how his Club mocked him about a
+stranger, who had mistaken him for the Dean.  The jackass, Sapsea,
+left the Club, and met the stranger, A YOUNG MAN, who fooled him to
+the top of his bent, saying, "If I was to deny that I came to this
+town to see and hear you, Sir, what would it avail me?"  Apparently
+this paper was a rough draft of an idea for introducing a
+detective, as a YOUNG man, who mocks Sapsea just as Datchery does
+in the novel.  But to make the spy A YOUNG man, whether the spy was
+Drood or Helena Landless, was too difficult; and therefore Dickens
+makes Datchery "an elderly buffer" in a white wig.  If I am right,
+it was easier for Helena, a girl, to pose as a young man, than for
+Drood to reappear as a young man, not himself.  Helena MAY be
+Datchery, and yet Drood may be alive and biding his time; but I
+have disproved my old objection that there was no reason why Drood,
+if alive, should go spying about in disguise.  There were good
+Dickensian reasons.
+
+
+A QUESTION OF TASTE
+
+
+Mr. Cuming Walters argues that the story is very tame if Edwin is
+still alive, and left out of the marriages at the close.  Besides,
+"Drood is little more than a name-label, attached to a body, a man
+who never excites sympathy, whose fate causes no emotion, he is
+saved for no useful or sentimental purpose, and lags superfluous on
+the stage.  All of which is bad art, so bad that Dickens would
+never have been guilty of it."
+
+That is a question of taste.  On rereading the novel, I see that
+Dickens makes Drood as sympathetic as he can.  He is very young,
+and speaks of Rosa with bad taste, but he is really in love with
+her, much more so than she with him, and he is piqued by her
+ceaseless mockery, and by their false position.  To Jasper he is
+singularly tender, and remorseful when he thinks that he has shown
+want of tact.  There is nothing ominous about his gaiety:  as to
+his one fault, we leave him, on Christmas Eve, a converted
+character:  he has a kind word and look for every one whom he
+meets, young and old.  He accepts Mr. Grewgious's very stern
+lecture in the best manner possible.  In short, he is marked as
+faulty-- "I am young," so he excuses himself, in the very words of
+Darnley to Queen Mary! (if the Glasgow letter be genuine); but he
+is also marked as sympathetic.
+
+He was, I think, to have a lesson, and to become a good fellow.
+Mr. Proctor rightly argues (and Forster "thinks"), that Dickens
+meant to kill Neville Landless:  Mr. Cuming Walters agrees with
+him, but Mr. Proctor truly adds that Edwin has none of the signs of
+Dickens's doomed men, his Sidney Cartons, and the rest.  You can
+tell, as it were by the sound of the voice of Dickens, says Mr.
+Proctor, that Edwin is to live.  The impression is merely
+subjective, but I feel the impression.  The doom of Landless is
+conspicuously fixed, and why is Landless to be killed by Jasper?
+Merely to have a count on which to hang Jasper!  He cannot be
+hanged for killing Drood, if Drood is alive.
+
+
+MR. PROCTOR'S THEORY CONTINUED
+
+
+Mr. Proctor next supposes that Datchery and others, by aid of the
+opium hag, have found out a great deal of evidence against Jasper.
+They have discovered from the old woman that his crime was long
+premeditated:  he had threatened "Ned" in his opiated dreams:  and
+had clearly removed Edwin's trinkets and watch, because they would
+not be destroyed, with his body, by the quicklime.  This is all
+very well, but there is still, so far, no legal evidence, on my
+theory, that Jasper attempted to take Edwin's life.  Jasper's
+enemies, therefore, can only do their best to make his life a
+burden to him, and to give him a good fright, probably with the
+hope of terrifying him into avowals.
+
+Now the famous ring begins "to drag and hold" the murderer.  He is
+given to know, I presume, that, when Edwin disappeared, he had a
+gold ring in the pocket of his coat.  Jasper is thus compelled to
+revisit the vault, at night, and there, in the light of his
+lantern, he sees the long-lost Edwin, with his hand in the breast
+of his great coat.
+
+Horrified by this unexpected appearance, Jasper turns to fly.  But
+he is confronted by Neville Landless, Crisparkle, Tartar, and
+perhaps by Mr. Grewgious, who are all on the watch.  He rushes up
+through the only outlet, the winding staircase of the Cathedral
+tower, of which we know that he has had the key.  Neville, who
+leads his pursuers, "receives his death wound" (and, I think, is
+pitched off the top of the roof).  Then Jasper is collared by that
+agile climber, Tartar, and by Crisparkle, always in the pink of
+condition.  There is now something to hang Jasper for--the slaying
+of Landless (though, as far as I can see, THAT was done in self-
+defence).  Jasper confesses all; Tartar marries Rosa; Helena
+marries Crisparkle.  Edwin is only twenty-one, and may easily find
+a consoler of the fair sex:  indeed he is "ower young to marry
+yet."
+
+The capture of Jasper was fixed, of course, for Christmas Eve.  The
+phantom cry foreheard by Durdles, two years before, was that of
+Neville as he fell; and the dog that howled was Neville's dog, a
+character not yet introduced into the romance.
+
+
+MR. CUMING WALTERS'S THEORY
+
+
+Such is Mr. Proctor's theory of the story, in which I mainly agree.
+Mr. Proctor relies on a piece of evidence overlooked by Forster,
+and certainly misinterpreted, as I think I can prove to a
+certainty, by Mr. Cuming Walters, whose theory of the real conduct
+of the plot runs thus:  After watching the storm at midnight with
+Edwin, Neville left him, and went home:  "his way lay in an
+opposite direction.  Near to the Cathedral Jasper intercepted his
+nephew. . . . Edwin may have been already drugged."  How the murder
+was worked Mr. Cuming Walters does not say, but he introduces at
+this point, the two sounds foreheard by Durdles, without explaining
+"the howl of a dog."  Durdles would hear the cries, and Deputy "had
+seen what he could not understand," whatever it was that he saw.
+Jasper, not aware of Drood's possession of the ring, takes only his
+watch, chain, and pin, which he places on the timbers of the weir,
+and in the river, to be picked up by that persistent winter-bather,
+Crisparkle of the telescopic and microscopic eyesight.
+
+As to the ring, Mr. Cuming Walters erroneously declares that Mr.
+Proctor "ignores" the power of the ring "to hold and drag," and
+says that potent passage is "without meaning and must be
+disregarded."  Proctor, in fact, gives more than three pages to the
+meaning of the ring, which "drags" Jasper into the vault, when he
+hears of its existence. {3}  Next, Mr. Cuming Walters supposes
+Datchery to learn from Durdles, whom he is to visit, about the
+second hearing of the cry and the dog's howl.  Deputy may have seen
+Jasper "carrying his burden" (Edwin) "towards the Sapsea vault."
+In fact, Jasper probably saved trouble by making the drugged Edwin
+walk into that receptacle.  "Datchery would not think of the Sapsea
+vault unaided."  No--unless Datchery was Drood !  "Now Durdles is
+useful again.  Tapping with his hammer he would find a change . . .
+inquiry must be made."  Why should Durdles tap the Sapsea monument?
+As Durdles had the key, he would simply walk into the vault, and
+find the quicklime.  Now, Jasper also, we presume, had a key, made
+from a wax impression of the original.  If he had any sense, he
+would have removed the quicklime as easily as he inserted it, for
+Mr. Sapsea was mortal:  he might die any day, and be buried, and
+then the quicklime, lying where it ought not, would give rise to
+awkward inquiries.
+
+Inquiry being made, in consequence of Durdles's tappings, the ring
+would be found, as Mr. Cuming Walters says.  But even then, unless
+Deputy actually saw Jasper carry a man into the vault, nobody could
+prove Jasper's connection with the presence of the ring in the
+vault.  Moreover, Deputy hated Jasper, and if he saw Jasper
+carrying the body of a man, on the night when a man disappeared, he
+was clever enough to lead Durdles to examine the vault, AT ONCE.
+Deputy had a great dislike of the Law and its officers, but here
+was a chance for him to distinguish himself, and conciliate them.
+
+However these things may be, Mr. Cuming Walters supposes that
+Jasper, finding himself watched, re-enters the vault, perhaps, "to
+see that every trace of the crime had been removed."  In the vault
+he finds--Datchery, that is, Helena Landless!  Jasper certainly
+visited the vault and found somebody.
+
+
+EVIDENCE OF COLLINS'S DRAWINGS
+
+
+We now come to the evidence which Forster strangely overlooked,
+which Mr. Proctor and Mr. Archer correctly deciphered, and which
+Mr. Cuming Walters misinterprets.  On December 22, 1869, Dickens
+wrote to Forster that two numbers of his romance were "now in type.
+Charles Collins has designed an excellent cover."  Mr. C. A.
+Collins had married a daughter of Dickens. {4}  He was an artist, a
+great friend of Dickens, and author of that charming book, "A
+Cruise on Wheels."  His design of the paper cover of the story (it
+appeared in monthly numbers) contained, as usual, sketches which
+give an inkling of the events in the tale.  Mr. Collins was to have
+illustrated the book; but, finally, Mr. (now Sir) Luke Fildes
+undertook the task.  Mr. Collins died in 1873.  It appears that
+Forster never asked him the meaning of his designs--a singular
+oversight.
+
+The cover lies before the reader.  In the left-hand top corner
+appears an allegorical female figure of joy, with flowers.  The
+central top space contains the front of Cloisterham Cathedral, or
+rather, the nave.  To the left walks Edwin, with hyacinthine locks,
+and a thoroughly classical type of face, and Grecian nose.  LIKE
+DATCHERY, HE DOES NOT WEAR, BUT CARRIES HIS HAT; this means
+nothing, if they are in the nave.  He seems bored.  On his arm is
+Rosa; SHE seems bored; she trails her parasol, and looks away from
+Edwin, looks down, to her right.  On the spectator's right march
+the surpliced men and boys of the Choir.  Behind them is Jasper,
+black whiskers and all; he stares after Edwin and Rosa; his right
+hand hides his mouth.  In the corner above him is an allegorical
+female, clasping a stiletto.
+
+Beneath Edwin and Rosa is, first, an allegorical female figure,
+looking at a placard, headed "LOST," on a door.  Under that, again,
+is a girl in a garden-chair; a young man, whiskerless, with wavy
+hair, kneels and kisses her hand.  She looks rather unimpassioned.
+I conceive the man to be Landless, taking leave of Rosa after
+urging his hopeless suit, for which Helena, we learn, "seems to
+compassionate him."  He has avowed his passion, early in the story,
+to Crisparkle.  Below, the opium hag is smoking.  On the other
+side, under the figures of Jasper and the Choir, the young man who
+kneels to the girl is seen bounding up a spiral staircase.  His
+left hand is on the iron railing; he stoops over it, looking down
+at others who follow him.  His right hand, the index finger
+protruded, points upward, and, by chance or design, points straight
+at Jasper in the vignette above.  Beneath this man (clearly
+Landless) follows a tall man in a "bowler" hat, a "cut-away" coat,
+and trousers which show an inch of white stocking above the low
+shoes.  His profile is hid by the wall of the spiral staircase:  he
+might be Grewgious of the shoes, white stockings, and short
+trousers, but he may be Tartar:  he takes two steps at a stride.
+Beneath him a youngish man, in a low, soft, clerical hat and a
+black pea-coat, ascends, looking downwards and backwards.  This is
+clearly Crisparkle.  A Chinaman is smoking opium beneath.
+
+In the central lowest space, a dark and whiskered man enters a dark
+chamber; his left hand is on the lock of the door; in his right he
+holds up a lantern.  The light of the lantern reveals a young man
+in a soft hat of Tyrolese shape.  His features are purely
+classical, his nose is Grecian, his locks are long (at least,
+according to the taste of to-day); he wears a light paletot,
+buttoned to the throat; his right arm hangs by his side; his left
+hand is thrust into the breast of his coat.  He calmly regards the
+dark man with the lantern.  That man, of course, is Jasper.  The
+young man is EDWIN DROOD, of the Grecian nose, hyacinthine locks,
+and classic features, as in Sir L. Fildes's third illustration.
+
+Mr. Proctor correctly understood the unmistakable meaning of this
+last design, Jasper entering the vault -
+
+
+"To-day the dead are living,
+The lost is found to-day."
+
+
+Mr. Cuming Walters tells us that he did not examine these designs
+by Mr. Collins till he had formed his theory, and finished his
+book.  "On the conclusion of the whole work the pictures were
+referred to for the first time, and were then found to support in
+the most striking manner the opinions arrived at," namely, that
+Drood was killed, and that Helena is Datchery.  Thus does theory
+blind us to facts!
+
+Mr. Cuming Walters connects the figure of the whiskerless young man
+kneeling to a girl in a garden seat, with the whiskered Jasper's
+proposal to Rosa in a garden seat.  But Jasper does not kneel to
+Rosa; he stands apart, leaning on a sundial; he only once vaguely
+"touches" her, which she resents; he does not kneel; he does not
+kiss her hand (Rosa "took the kiss sedately," like Maud in the
+poem); and--Jasper had lustrous thick black whiskers.
+
+Again, the same whiskerless young man, bounding up the spiral
+staircase in daylight, and wildly pointing upwards, is taken by Mr.
+Cuming Walters to represent Jasper climbing the staircase to
+reconnoitre, at night, with a lantern, and, of course, with black
+whiskers.  The two well-dressed men on the stairs (Grewgious, or
+Tartar, and Crisparkle) also, according to Mr. Cuming Walters,
+"relate to Jasper's unaccountable expedition with Durdles to the
+Cathedral."  Neither of them is Jasper; neither of them is Durdles,
+"in a suit of coarse flannel"--a disreputable jacket, as Sir L.
+Fildes depicts him--"with horn buttons," and a battered old tall
+hat.  These interpretations are quite demonstrably erroneous and
+even impossible.  Mr. Archer interprets the designs exactly as I
+do.
+
+As to the young man in the light of Jasper's lamp, Mr. Cuming
+Walters says, "the large hat and the tightly-buttoned surtout must
+be observed; they are the articles of clothing on which most stress
+is laid in the description of Datchery.  But the face is young."
+The face of Datchery was elderly, and he had a huge shock of white
+hair, a wig.  Datchery wore "a tightish blue surtout, with a buff
+waistcoat and grey trousers; he had something of a military air."
+The young man in the vault has anything but a military air; he
+shows no waistcoat, and he does not wear "a tightish blue surtout,"
+or any surtout at all.
+
+The surtout of the period is shown, worn by Jasper, in Sir L.
+Fildes's sixth and ninth illustrations.  It is a frock-coat; the
+collar descends far below the top of the waistcoat (buff or
+otherwise), displaying that garment; the coat is tightly buttoned
+beneath, revealing the figure; the tails of the coat do not reach
+the knees of the wearer.  The young man in the vault, on the other
+hand, wears a loose paletot, buttoned to the throat (vaults are
+chilly places), and the coat falls so as to cover the knees; at
+least, partially.  The young man is not, like Helena, "very dark,
+and fierce of look, . . . of almost the gipsy type."  He is blonde,
+sedate, and of the classic type, as Drood was.  He is no more like
+Helena than Crisparkle is like Durdles.  Mr. Cuming Walters says
+that Mr. Proctor was "unable to allude to the prophetic picture by
+Collins."  As a fact, this picture is fully described by Mr.
+Proctor, but Mr. Walters used the wrong edition of his book,
+unwittingly.
+
+Mr. Proctor writes:- "Creeping down the crypt steps, oppressed by
+growing horror and by terror of coming judgment, sickening under
+fears engendered by the darkness of night and the charnel-house air
+he breathed, Jasper opens the door of the tomb and holds up his
+lantern, shuddering at the thought of what it may reveal to him.
+
+"And what sees he?  Is it the spirit of his victim that stands
+there, 'in his habit as he lived,' his hand clasped on his breast,
+where the ring had been when he was murdered?  What else can Jasper
+deem it?  There, clearly visible in the gloom at the back of the
+tomb, stands Edwin Drood, with stern look fixed on him--pale,
+silent, relentless!"
+
+Again, "On the title-page are given two of the small pictures from
+the Love side of the cover, two from the Murder side, and the
+central picture below, which presents the central horror of the
+story--the end and aim of the 'Datchery assumption' and of Mr.
+Grewgious's plans--showing Jasper driven to seek for the proofs of
+his crime amid the dust to which, as he thought, the flesh and
+bones, and the very clothes of his victim, had been reduced."
+
+There are only two possible choices; either Collins, under
+Dickens's oral instructions, depicted Jasper finding Drood alive in
+the vault, an incident which was to occur in the story; or Dickens
+bade Collins do this for the purpose of misleading his readers in
+an illegitimate manner; while the young man in the vault was really
+to be some person "made up" to look like Drood, and so to frighten
+Jasper with a pseudo-ghost of that hero.  The latter device, the
+misleading picture, would be childish, and the pseudo-ghost,
+exactly like Drood, could not be acted by the gipsy-like, fierce
+Helena, or by any other person in the romance.
+
+
+MR. WALTERS'S THEORY CONTINUED
+
+
+Mr. Cuming Walters guesses that Jasper was to aim a deadly blow
+(with his left hand, to judge from the picture) at Helena, and that
+Neville "was to give his life for hers."  But, manifestly, Neville
+was to lead the hunt of Jasper up the spiral stair, as in Collins's
+design, and was to be dashed from the roof:  his body beneath was
+to be "THAT, I never saw before.  THAT must be real.  Look what a
+poor mean miserable thing it is!" as Jasper says in his vision.
+
+Mr. Cuming Walters, pursuing his idea of Helena as both Datchery
+and also as the owner of "the YOUNG face" of the youth in the vault
+(and also of the young hands, a young girl's hands could never pass
+for those of "an elderly buffer"), exclaims:  "Imagine the intense
+power of the dramatic climax, when Datchery, the elderly man, is
+re-transformed into Helena Landless, the young and handsome woman;
+and when she reveals the seemingly impenetrable secret which had
+been closed up in one guilty man's mind."
+
+The situations are startling, I admit, but how would Canon
+Crisparkle like them?  He is, we know, to marry Helena, "the young
+person, my dear," Miss Twinkleton would say, "who for months lived
+alone, at inns, wearing a blue surtout, a buff waistcoat, and grey-
+-"  Here horror chokes the utterance of Miss Twinkleton.  "Then she
+was in the vault in ANOTHER disguise, not more womanly, at that
+awful scene when poor Mr. Jasper was driven mad, so that he
+confessed all sorts of nonsense, for, my dear, all the Close
+believes that it WAS nonsense, and that Mr. Jasper was reduced to
+insanity by persecution.  And Mr. Crisparkle, with that elegant
+dainty mother of his--it has broken her heart--is marrying this
+half-caste gipsy TROLLOP, with her blue surtout and grey--oh, it is
+a disgrace to Cloisterham!"
+
+The climax, in fact, as devised by Mr. Cuming Walters, is rather
+too dramatic for the comfort of a minor canon.  A humorist like
+Dickens ought to have seen the absurdity of the situation.  Mr.
+Walters MAY be right, Helena may be Datchery, but she ought not to
+be.
+
+
+WHO WAS THE PRINCESS PUFFER?
+
+
+Who was the opium hag, the Princess Puffer?  Mr. Cuming Walters
+writes:  "We make a guess, for Dickens gives us no solid facts.
+But when we remember that not a word is said throughout the volume
+of Jasper's antecedents, who he was, and where he came from; when
+we remember that but for his nephew he was a lonely man; when we
+see that he was both criminal and artist; when we observe his own
+wheedling propensity, his false and fulsome protestations of
+affection, his slyness, his subtlety, his heartlessness, his
+tenacity; and when, above all, we know that the opium vice is
+HEREDITARY, and that a YOUNG man would not be addicted to it unless
+born with the craving; {5} then, it is not too wild a conjecture
+that Jasper was the wayward progeny of this same opium-eating
+woman, all of whose characteristics he possessed, and, perchance,
+of a man of criminal instincts, but of a superior position.  Jasper
+is a morbid and diseased being while still in the twenties, a
+mixture of genius and vice.  He hates and he loves fiercely, as if
+there were wild gipsy blood in his veins.  Though seemingly a model
+of decorum and devoted to his art, he complains of his "daily
+drudging round" and "the cramped monotony of his existence."  He
+commits his crime with the ruthlessness of a beast, his own nature
+being wholly untamed.  If we deduce that his father was an
+adventurer and a vagabond, we shall not be far wrong.  If we deduce
+that his mother was the opium-eater, prematurely aged, who had
+transmitted her vicious propensity to her child, we shall almost
+certainly be right."
+
+
+WHO WAS JASPER?
+
+
+Who was Jasper?  He was the brother-in-law of the late Mr. Drood, a
+respected engineer, and University man.  We do not know whence came
+Mrs. Drood, Jasper's sister, but is it likely that her mother
+"drank heaven's-hard"--so the hag says of herself--then took to
+keeping an opium den, and there entertained her son Jasper, already
+an accomplished vocalist, but in a lower station than that to which
+his musical genius later raised him, as lay Precentor?  If the
+Princess Puffer be, as on Mr. Cuming Walters's theory she is,
+Edwin's long-lost grandmother, her discovery would be unwelcome to
+Edwin.  Probably she did not live much longer; "my lungs are like
+cabbage nets," she says.  Mr. Cuming Walters goes on -
+
+"Her purpose is left obscure.  How easily, however, we see
+possibilities in a direction such as this.  The father, perhaps a
+proud, handsome man, deserts the woman, and removes the child.  The
+woman hates both for scorning her, but the father dies, or
+disappears, and is beyond her vengeance.  Then the child, victim to
+the ills in his blood, creeps back to the opium den, not knowing
+his mother, but immediately recognized by her.  She will make the
+child suffer for the sins of the father, who had destroyed her
+happiness.  Such a theme was one which appealed to Dickens.  It
+must not, however, be urged; and the crucial question after all is
+concerned with the opium woman as one of the unconscious
+instruments of justice, aiding with her trifle of circumstantial
+evidence the Nemesis awaiting Jasper.
+
+"Another hypothesis--following on the Carker theme in 'Dombey and
+Son'--is that Jasper, a dissolute and degenerate man, lascivious,
+and heartless, may have wronged a child of the woman's; but it is
+not likely that Dickens would repeat the Mrs. Brown story."
+
+Jasper, pere, father of John Jasper and of Mrs. Drood, however
+handsome, ought not to have deserted Mrs. Jasper.  Whether John
+Jasper, prematurely devoted to opium, became Edwin's guardian at
+about the age of fifteen, or whether, on attaining his majority, he
+succeeded to some other guardian, is not very obvious.  In short,
+we cannot guess why the Princess Puffer hated Jasper, a paying
+client of long standing.  We are only certain that Jasper was a bad
+fellow, and that the Princess Puffer said, "I know him, better than
+all the Reverend Parsons put together know him."  On the other
+hand, Edwin "seems to know" the opium woman, when he meets her on
+Christmas Eve, which may be a point in favour of her being his
+long-lost grandmother.
+
+Jasper was certainly tried and condemned; for Dickens intended "to
+take Mr. Fildes to a condemned cell in Maidstone, or some other
+gaol, in order to make a drawing." {6}  Possibly Jasper managed to
+take his own life, in the cell; possibly he was duly hanged.
+
+Jasper, after all, was a failure as a murderer, even if we suppose
+him to have strangled his nephew successfully.  "It is obvious to
+the most excruciatingly feeble capacity" that, if he meant to get
+rid of proofs of the identity of Drood's body by means of
+quicklime, it did not suffice to remove Drood's pin, watch, and
+chain.  Drood would have coins of the realm in his pockets, gold,
+silver, bronze.  Quicklime would not destroy these metallic
+objects, nor would it destroy keys, which would easily prove
+Drood's identity.  If Jasper knew his business, he would, of
+course, rifle ALL of Edwin's pockets minutely, and would remove the
+metallic buttons of his braces, which generally display the maker's
+name, or the tailor's.  On research I find "H. Poole & Co., Savile
+Row" on my buttons.  In this inquiry of his, Jasper would have
+discovered the ring in Edwin's breast pocket, and would have taken
+it away.  Perhaps Dickens never thought of that little fact:  if he
+did think of it, no doubt he found some mode of accounting for
+Jasper's unworkmanlike negligence.  The trouser-buttons would have
+led any inquirer straight to Edwin's tailor; I incline to suspect
+that neither Dickens nor Jasper noticed that circumstance.  The
+conscientious artist in crime cannot afford to neglect the humblest
+and most obvious details.
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+According to my theory, which mainly rests on the unmistakable
+evidence of the cover drawn by Collins under Dickens's directions,
+all "ends well."  Jasper comes to the grief he deserves:  Helena,
+after her period of mourning for Neville, marries Crisparkle:  Rosa
+weds her mariner.  Edwin, at twenty-one, is not heart-broken, but,
+a greatly improved character, takes, to quote his own words, "a
+sensible interest in works of engineering skill, especially when
+they are to change the whole condition of an undeveloped country"--
+Egypt.
+
+These conclusions are inevitable unless we either suppose Dickens
+to have arranged a disappointment for his readers in the tableau of
+Jasper and Drood, in the vault, on the cover, or can persuade
+ourselves that not Drood, but some other young man, is revealed by
+the light of Jasper's lantern.  Now, the young man is very like
+Drood, and very unlike the dark fierce Helena Landless:  disguised
+as Drood, this time, not as Datchery.  All the difficulty as to why
+Drood, if he escaped alive, did not at once openly denounce Jasper,
+is removed when we remember, as Mr. Archer and I have independently
+pointed out, that Drood, when attacked by Jasper, was (like Durdles
+in the "unaccountable expedition") stupefied by drugs, and so had
+no valid evidence against his uncle.  Whether science is acquainted
+with the drugs necessary for such purposes is another question.
+They are always kept in stock by starving and venal apothecaries in
+fiction and the drama, and are a recognized convention of romance.
+
+So ends our unfolding of the Mystery of Edwin Drood.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  Landless is not "Lackland," but a form of de Laundeles, a
+Lothian name of the twelfth century, merged later in that of
+Ormistoun.
+
+{2}  Life of Dickens, vol. iii. pp. 425-439.
+
+{3}  J. Cuming Walters, p. 102; Proctor, pp. 131-135.  Mr. Cuming
+Walters used an edition of 1896, apparently a reprint of a paper by
+Proctor, written earlier than his final book of 1887.  Hence the
+error as to Mr. Proctor's last theory.
+
+{4}  Mrs. Perugini, the books say, but certainly a daughter.
+
+{5}  What would Weissmann say to all this?
+
+{6}  So Mr. Cuming Walters quotes Mr. Hughes, who quotes Sir L.
+Fildes.  HE believes that Jasper strangled Edwin with the black-
+silk scarf, and, no doubt, Jasper was for long of that opinion
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PUZZLE OF DICKENS'S LAST PLOT ***
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+<title>The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot, by Andrew Lang</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot, by Andrew Lang
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+Title: The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot
+
+Author: Andrew Lang
+
+Release Date: December, 1996  [EBook #738]
+[This file was first posted on December 7, 1996]
+[Most recently updated: September 8, 2002]
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+</pre>
+<p>
+<a name="startoftext"></a>
+Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE PUZZLE OF DICKENS&rsquo;S LAST PLOT<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+INTRODUCTION<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Forster tells us that Dickens, in his later novels, from <i>Bleak House</i>
+onwards (1853), &ldquo;assiduously cultivated&rdquo; construction, &ldquo;this
+essential of his art.&rdquo;&nbsp; Some critics may think, that since
+so many of the best novels in the world &ldquo;have no outline, or,
+if they have an outline, it is a demned outline,&rdquo; elaborate construction
+is not absolutely &ldquo;essential.&rdquo;&nbsp; Really essential are
+character, &ldquo;atmosphere,&rdquo; humour.<br>
+<br>
+But as, in the natural changes of life, and under the strain of restless
+and unsatisfied activity, his old buoyancy and unequalled high spirits
+deserted Dickens, he certainly wrote no longer in what Scott, speaking
+of himself, calls the manner of &ldquo;hab nab at a venture.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He constructed elaborate plots, rich in secrets and surprises.&nbsp;
+He emulated the manner of Wilkie Collins, or even of Gaboriau, while
+he combined with some of the elements of the detective novel, or <i>roman
+policier</i>, careful study of character.&nbsp; Except <i>Great Expectations</i>,
+none of his later tales rivals in merit his early picaresque stories
+of the road, such as <i>Pickwick</i> and <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Youth will be served;&rdquo; no sedulous care could compensate
+for the exuberance of &ldquo;the first sprightly runnings.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+In the early books the melodrama of the plot, the secrets of Ralph Nickleby,
+of Monk, of Jonas Chuzzlewit, were the least of the innumerable attractions.&nbsp;
+But Dickens was more and more drawn towards the secret that excites
+curiosity, and to the game of hide and seek with the reader who tried
+to anticipate the solution of the secret.<br>
+<br>
+In April, 1869, Dickens, outworn by the strain of his American readings;
+of that labour achieved under painful conditions of ominously bad health
+- found himself, as Sir Thomas Watson reported, &ldquo;on the brink
+of an attack of paralysis of his left side, and possibly of apoplexy.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He therefore abandoned a new series of Readings.&nbsp; We think of Scott&rsquo;s
+earlier seizures of a similar kind, after which <i>Peveril</i>, he said,
+&ldquo;smacked of the apoplexy.&rdquo;&nbsp; But Dickens&rsquo;s new
+story of <i>The Mystery</i> <i>of Edwin Drood</i>, first contemplated
+in July, 1869, and altered in character by the emergence of &ldquo;a
+very curious and new idea,&rdquo; early in August, does not &ldquo;smack
+of the apoplexy.&rdquo;&nbsp; We may think that the mannerisms of Mr.
+Honeythunder, the philanthropist, and of Miss Twinkleton, the schoolmistress,
+are not in the author&rsquo;s best vein of humour.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+Billickin,&rdquo; on the other hand, the lodging-house keeper, is &ldquo;in
+very gracious fooling:&rdquo; her unlooked-for sallies in skirmishes
+with Miss Twinkleton are rich in mirthful surprises.&nbsp; Mr. Grewgious
+may be caricatured too much, but not out of reason; and Dickens, always
+good at boys, presents a <i>gamin</i>, in Deputy, who is in not unpleasant
+contrast with the pathetic Jo of <i>Bleak House</i>.&nbsp; Opinions
+may differ as to Edwin and Rosa, but the more closely one studies Edwin,
+the better one thinks of that character.&nbsp; As far as we are allowed
+to see Helena Landless, the restraint which she puts on her &ldquo;tigerish
+blood&rdquo; is admirable: she is very fresh and original.&nbsp; The
+villain is all that melodrama can desire, but what we do miss, I think,
+is the &ldquo;atmosphere&rdquo; of a small cathedral town.&nbsp; Here
+there is a lack of softness and delicacy of treatment: on the other
+hand, the opium den is studied from the life.<br>
+<br>
+On the whole, Dickens himself was perhaps most interested in his plot,
+his secret, his surprises, his game of hide and seek with the reader.&nbsp;
+He threw himself into the sport with zest: he spoke to his sister-in-law,
+Miss Hogarth, about his fear that he had not sufficiently concealed
+his tracks in the latest numbers.&nbsp; Yet, when he died in June, 1870,
+leaving three completed numbers still unpublished, he left his secret
+as a puzzle to the curious.&nbsp; Many efforts have been made to decipher
+his purpose, especially his intentions as to the hero.&nbsp; Was Edwin
+Drood killed, or did he escape?<br>
+<br>
+By a coincidence, in September, 1869, Dickens was working over the late
+Lord Lytton&rsquo;s tale for <i>All The Year Round</i>, &ldquo;The Disappearance
+of John Ackland,&rdquo; for the purpose of mystifying the reader as
+to whether Ackland was alive or dead.&nbsp; But he was conspicuously
+defunct!&nbsp; (<i>All</i> <i>the Year Round</i>, September-October,
+1869.)<br>
+<br>
+The most careful of the attempts at a reply about Edwin, a study based
+on deep knowledge of Dickens, is &ldquo;Watched by the Dead,&rdquo;
+by the late ingenious Mr. R. A. Proctor (1887).&nbsp; This book, to
+which I owe much aid, is now out of print.&nbsp; In 1905, Mr. Cuming
+Walters revived &ldquo;the auld mysterie,&rdquo; in his &ldquo;Clues
+to Dickens&rsquo;s Edwin Drood&rdquo; (Chapman &amp; Hall and Heywood,
+Manchester).&nbsp; From the solution of Mr. Walters I am obliged to
+dissent.&nbsp; Of Mr. Proctor&rsquo;s theory I offer some necessary
+corrections, and I hope that I have unravelled some skeins which Mr.
+Proctor left in a state of tangle.&nbsp; As one read and re-read the
+fragment, points very dark seemed, at least, to become suddenly clear:
+especially one appeared to understand the meaning half-revealed and
+half-concealed by Jasper&rsquo;s babblings under the influence of opium.&nbsp;
+He saw in his vision, &ldquo;<i>that</i>, I never saw <i>that</i> before.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+We may be sure that he was to see &ldquo;<i>that</i>&rdquo; in real
+life.&nbsp; We must remember that, according to Forster, &ldquo;such
+was Dickens&rsquo;s interest in things supernatural that, but for the
+strong restraining power of his common sense, he might have fallen into
+the follies of spiritualism.&rdquo;&nbsp; His interest in such matters
+certainly peeps out in this novel - there are two specimens of the supernormal
+- and he may have gone to the limited extent which my hypothesis requires.&nbsp;
+If I am right, Dickens went further, and fared worse, in the too material
+premonitions of &ldquo;The Signalman&rdquo; in <i>Mugby</i> <i>Junction.<br>
+<br>
+</i>With this brief preface, I proceed to the analysis of Dickens&rsquo;s
+last plot.&nbsp; Mr. William Archer has kindly read the proof sheets
+and made valuable suggestions, but is responsible for none of my theories.<br>
+<br>
+ANDREW LANG.<br>
+ST. ANDREWS,<br>
+<i>September</i> 4, 1905.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE STORY - DRAMATIS PERSONAE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+For the discovery of Dickens&rsquo;s secret in <i>Edwin Drood</i> it
+is necessary to obtain a clear view of the characters in the tale, and
+of their relations to each other.<br>
+<br>
+About the middle of the nineteenth century there lived in Cloisterham,
+a cathedral city sketched from Rochester, a young University man, Mr.
+Bud, who had a friend Mr. Drood, one of a firm of engineers - somewhere.&nbsp;
+They were &ldquo;fast friends and old college companions.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Both married young.&nbsp; Mr. Bud wedded a lady unnamed, by whom he
+was the father of one child, a daughter, Rosa Bud.&nbsp; Mr. Drood,
+whose wife&rsquo;s maiden name was Jasper, had one son, Edwin Drood.&nbsp;
+Mrs. Bud was drowned in a boating accident, when her daughter, Rosa,
+was a child.&nbsp; Mr. Drood, already a widower, and the bereaved Mr.
+Bud &ldquo;betrothed&rdquo; the two children, Rosa and Edwin, and then
+expired, when the orphans were about seven and eleven years old.&nbsp;
+The guardian of Rosa was a lawyer, Mr. Grewgious, who had been in love
+with her mother.&nbsp; To Grewgious Mr. Bud entrusted his wife&rsquo;s
+engagement ring, rubies and diamonds, which Grewgious was to hand over
+to Edwin Drood, if, when he attained his majority, he and Rosa decided
+to marry.<br>
+<br>
+Grewgious was apparently legal agent for Edwin, while Edwin&rsquo;s
+maternal uncle, John Jasper (aged about sixteen when the male parents
+died), was Edwin&rsquo;s &ldquo;trustee,&rdquo; as well as his uncle
+and devoted friend.&nbsp; Rosa&rsquo;s little fortune was an annuity
+producing &pound;250 a-year: Edwin succeeded to his father&rsquo;s share
+in an engineering firm.<br>
+<br>
+When the story opens, Edwin is nearly twenty-one, and is about to proceed
+to Egypt, as an engineer.&nbsp; Rosa, at school in Cloisterham, is about
+seventeen; John Jasper is twenty-six.&nbsp; He is conductor of the Choir
+of the Cathedral, a &ldquo;lay precentor;&rdquo; he is very dark, with
+thick black whiskers, and, for a number of years, has been a victim
+to the habit of opium smoking.&nbsp; He began very early.&nbsp; He takes
+this drug both in his lodgings, over the gate of the Cathedral, and
+in a den in East London, kept by a woman nicknamed &ldquo;The Princess
+Puffer.&rdquo;&nbsp; This hag, we learn, has been a determined drunkard,
+- &ldquo;I drank heaven&rsquo;s-hard,&rdquo; - for sixteen years <i>before</i>
+she took to opium.&nbsp; If she has been dealing in opium for ten years
+(the exact period is not stated), she has been very disreputable for
+twenty-six years, that is ever since John Jasper&rsquo;s birth.&nbsp;
+Mr. Cuming Walters suggests that she is the mother of John Jasper, and,
+therefore, maternal grandmother of Edwin Drood.&nbsp; She detests her
+client, Jasper, and plays the spy on his movements, for reasons unexplained.<br>
+<br>
+Jasper is secretly in love with Rosa, the <i>fianc&eacute;e</i> of his
+nephew, and his own pupil in the musical art.&nbsp; He makes her aware
+of his passion, silently, and she fears and detests him, but keeps these
+emotions private.&nbsp; She is a saucy school-girl, and she and Edwin
+are on uncomfortable terms: she does not love him, while he perhaps
+does love her, but is annoyed by her manner, and by the gossip about
+their betrothal.&nbsp; &ldquo;The bloom is off the plum&rdquo; of their
+prearranged loves, he says to his friend, uncle, and confidant, Jasper,
+whose own concealed passion for Rosa is of a ferocious and homicidal
+character.&nbsp; Rosa is aware of this fact; &ldquo;a glaze comes over
+his eyes,&rdquo; sometimes, she says, &ldquo;and he seems to wander
+away into a frightful sort of dream, in which he threatens most . .
+. &rdquo;&nbsp; The man appears to have these frightful dreams even
+when he is not under opium.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+OPENING OF THE TALE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The tale opens abruptly with an opium-bred vision of the tower of Cloisterham
+Cathedral, beheld by Jasper as he awakens in the den of the Princess
+Puffer, between a Chinaman, a Lascar, and the hag herself.&nbsp; This
+Cathedral tower, thus early and emphatically introduced, is to play
+a great but more or less mysterious part in the romance: that is certain.&nbsp;
+Jasper, waking, makes experiments on the talk of the old woman, the
+Lascar and Chinaman in their sleep.&nbsp; He pronounces it &ldquo;unintelligible,&rdquo;
+which satisfies him that his own babble, when under opium, must be unintelligible
+also.&nbsp; He is, presumably, acquainted with the languages of the
+eastern coast of India, and with Chinese, otherwise, how could he hope
+to understand the sleepers?&nbsp; He is being watched by the hag, who
+hates him.<br>
+<br>
+Jasper returns to Cloisterham, where we are introduced to the Dean,
+a nonentity, and to Minor Canon Crisparkle, a muscular Christian in
+the pink of training, a classical scholar, and a good honest fellow.&nbsp;
+Jasper gives Edwin a dinner, and gushes over &ldquo;his bright boy,&rdquo;
+a lively lad, full of chaff, but also full of confiding affection and
+tenderness of heart.&nbsp; Edwin admits that his betrothal is a bore:
+Jasper admits that he loathes his life; and that the church singing
+&ldquo;often sounds to me quite devilish,&rdquo; - and no wonder.&nbsp;
+After this dinner, Jasper has a &ldquo;weird seizure;&rdquo; &ldquo;a
+strange film comes over Jasper&rsquo;s eyes,&rdquo; he &ldquo;looks
+frightfully ill,&rdquo; becomes rigid, and admits that he &ldquo;has
+been taking opium for a pain, an agony that sometimes overcomes me.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+This &ldquo;agony,&rdquo; we learn, is the pain of hearing Edwin speak
+lightly of his love, whom Jasper so furiously desires.&nbsp; &ldquo;Take
+it as a warning,&rdquo; Jasper says, but Edwin, puzzled, and full of
+confiding tenderness, does not understand.<br>
+<br>
+In the next scene we meet the school-girl, Rosa, who takes a walk and
+has a tiff with Edwin.&nbsp; Sir Luke Fildes&rsquo;s illustration shows
+Edwin as &ldquo;a lad with the bloom of a lass,&rdquo; with a <i>classic
+profile</i>;<i> and a gracious head of long, thick, fair</i> <i>hair</i>,
+long, though we learn it has just been cut.&nbsp; He wears a soft slouched
+hat, and the pea-coat of the period.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+SAPSEA AND DURDLES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Next, Jasper and Sapsea, a pompous ass, auctioneer, and mayor, sit at
+their wine, expecting a third guest.&nbsp; Mr. Sapsea reads his absurd
+epitaph for his late wife, who is buried in a &ldquo;Monument,&rdquo;
+a vault of some sort in the Cathedral churchyard.&nbsp; To them enter
+Durdles, a man never sober, yet trusted with the key of the crypt, &ldquo;as
+contractor for rough repairs.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the crypt &ldquo;he habitually
+sleeps off the fumes of liquor.&rdquo;&nbsp; Of course no Dean would
+entrust keys to this incredibly dissipated, dirty, and insolent creature,
+to whom Sapsea gives the key of his vault, for no reason at all, as
+the epitaph, of course, is to be engraved on the outside, by Durdles&rsquo;s
+men.&nbsp; However, Durdles insists on getting the key of the vault:
+he has two other large keys.&nbsp; Jasper, trifling with them, keeps
+clinking them together, so as to know, even in the dark, by the sound,
+which is the key that opens Sapsea&rsquo;s vault, in the railed-off
+burial ground, beside the cloister arches.&nbsp; He has met Durdles
+at Sapsea&rsquo;s for no other purpose than to obtain access at will
+to Mrs. Sapsea&rsquo;s monument.&nbsp; Later in the evening Jasper finds
+Durdles more or less drunk, and being stoned by a <i>gamin</i>, &ldquo;Deputy,&rdquo;
+a retainer of a tramp&rsquo;s lodging-house.&nbsp; Durdles fees Deputy,
+in fact, to drive him home every night after ten.&nbsp; Jasper and Deputy
+fall into feud, and Jasper has thus a new, keen, and omnipresent enemy.&nbsp;
+As he walks with Durdles that worthy explains (in reply to a question
+by Jasper), that, by tapping a wall, even if over six feet thick, with
+his hammer, he can detect the nature of the contents of the vault, &ldquo;solid
+in hollow, and inside solid, hollow again.&nbsp; Old &lsquo;un crumbled
+away in stone coffin, in vault.&rdquo;&nbsp; He can also discover the
+presence of &ldquo;rubbish left in that same six foot space by Durdles&rsquo;s
+men.&rdquo;&nbsp; Thus, if a foreign body were introduced into the Sapsea
+vault, Durdles could detect its presence by tapping the outside wall.&nbsp;
+As Jasper&rsquo;s purpose clearly is to introduce a foreign body - that
+of Edwin who stands between him and Rosa - into Mrs. Sapsea&rsquo;s
+vault, this &ldquo;gift&rdquo; of Durdles is, for Jasper, an uncomfortable
+discovery.&nbsp; He goes home, watches Edwin asleep, and smokes opium.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE LANDLESSES<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Two new characters are now introduced, Neville and Helena Landless,
+<a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a> twins, orphans,
+of Cingalese extraction, probably Eurasian; very dark, the girl &ldquo;almost
+of the gipsy type;&rdquo; both are &ldquo;fierce of look.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The young man is to read with Canon Crisparkle and live with him; the
+girl goes to the same school as Rosa.&nbsp; The education of both has
+been utterly neglected; instruction has been denied to them.&nbsp; Neville
+explains the cause of their fierceness to Crisparkle.&nbsp; In Ceylon
+they were bullied by a cruel stepfather and several times ran away:
+the girl was the leader, always &ldquo;<i>dressed as a boy, and</i>
+<i>showing the daring of a man</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; Edwin Drood&rsquo;s
+air of supercilious ownership of Rosa Bud (indicated as a fault of youth
+and circumstance, not of heart and character), irritates Neville Landless,
+who falls in love with Rosa at first sight.&nbsp; As Rosa sings, at
+Crisparkle&rsquo;s, while Jasper plays the piano, Jasper&rsquo;s fixed
+stare produces an hysterical fit in the girl, who is soothed by Helena
+Landless.&nbsp; Helena shows her aversion to Jasper, who, as even Edwin
+now sees, frightens Rosa.&nbsp; &ldquo;You would be afraid of him, under
+similar circumstances, wouldn&rsquo;t you, Miss Landless?&rdquo; asks
+Edwin.&nbsp; &ldquo;Not under any circumstances,&rdquo; answers Helena,
+and Jasper &ldquo;thanks Miss Landless for this vindication of his character.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The girls go back to their school, where Rosa explains to Helena her
+horror of Jasper&rsquo;s silent love-making: &ldquo;I feel that I am
+never safe from him . . . a glaze comes over his eyes and he seems to
+wander away into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens most,&rdquo;
+as already quoted.&nbsp; Helena thus, and she alone, except Rosa, understands
+Jasper thoroughly.&nbsp; She becomes Rosa&rsquo;s protectress.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;<i>Let whomsoever it most</i> <i>concerned look well to it</i>.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Thus Jasper has a new observer and enemy, in addition to the omnipresent
+street boy, Deputy, and the detective old hag of the opium den.<br>
+<br>
+Leaving the Canon&rsquo;s house, Neville and Edwin quarrel violently
+over Rosa, in the open air; they are followed by Jasper, and taken to
+his house to be reconciled over glasses of mulled wine.&nbsp; Jasper
+drugs the wine, and thus provokes a violent scene; next day he tells
+Crisparkle that Neville is &ldquo;murderous.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;There
+is something of the tiger in his dark blood.&rdquo;&nbsp; He spreads
+the story of the <i>fracas</i> in the town.<br>
+<br>
+Grewgious, Rosa&rsquo;s guardian, now comes down on business; the girl
+fails to explain to him the unsatisfactory relations between her and
+Edwin: Grewgious is to return to her &ldquo;at Christmas,&rdquo; if
+she sends for him, and she does send.&nbsp; Grewgious, &ldquo;an angular
+man,&rdquo; all duty and sentiment (he had loved Rosa&rsquo;s mother),
+has an interview with Edwin&rsquo;s trustee, Jasper, for whom he has
+no enthusiasm, but whom he does not in any way suspect.&nbsp; They part
+on good terms, to meet at Christmas.&nbsp; Crisparkle, with whom Helena
+has fallen suddenly in love, arranges with Jasper that Edwin and Landless
+shall meet and be reconciled, as both are willing to be, at a dinner
+in Jasper&rsquo;s rooms, on Christmas Eve.&nbsp; Jasper, when Crisparkle
+proposes this, denotes by his manner &ldquo;some close internal calculation.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+We see that he is reckoning how the dinner suits his plan of campaign,
+and &ldquo;<i>close</i> calculation&rdquo; may refer, as in Mr. Proctor&rsquo;s
+theory, to the period of the moon: <i>on Christmas Eve there will be
+no moonshine at</i> <i>midnight</i>.&nbsp; Jasper, having worked out
+this problem, accepts Crisparkle&rsquo;s proposal, and his assurances
+about Neville, and shows Crisparkle a diary in which he has entered
+his fears that Edwin&rsquo;s life is in danger from Neville.&nbsp; Edwin
+(who is not in Cloisterham at this moment) accepts, by letter, the invitation
+to meet Neville at Jasper&rsquo;s on Christmas Eve.<br>
+<br>
+Meanwhile Edwin visits Grewgious in his London chambers; is lectured
+on his laggard and supercilious behaviour as a lover, and receives the
+engagement ring of the late Mrs. Bud, Rosa&rsquo;s mother, which is
+very dear to Grewgious - in the presence of Bazzard, Grewgious&rsquo;s
+clerk, a gloomy writer of an amateur unacted tragedy.&nbsp; Edwin is
+to return the ring to Grewgious, if he and Rosa decide not to marry.&nbsp;
+The ring is in a case, and Edwin places it &ldquo;in his breast.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+We must understand, in the breast-pocket of his coat: no other interpretation
+will pass muster.&nbsp; &ldquo;Her ring - will it come back to me?&rdquo;
+reflects the mournful Grewgious.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THE UNACCOUNTABLE EXPEDITION<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Jasper now tells Sapsea, and the Dean, that he is to make &ldquo;a moonlight
+expedition with Durdles among the tombs, vaults, towers, and ruins to-night.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The impossible Durdles has the keys necessary for this, &ldquo;surely
+an unaccountable expedition,&rdquo; Dickens keeps remarking.&nbsp; The
+moon seems to rise on this night at about 7.30 p.m.&nbsp; Jasper takes
+a big case-bottle of liquor - drugged, of course and goes to the den
+of Durdles.&nbsp; In the yard of this inspector of monuments he is bidden
+to beware of a mound of quicklime near the yard gate.&nbsp; &ldquo;With
+a little handy stirring, quick enough to eat your bones,&rdquo; says
+Durdles.&nbsp; There is some considerable distance between this &ldquo;mound&rdquo;
+of quicklime and the crypt, of which Durdles has the key, but the intervening
+space is quite empty of human presence, as the citizens are unwilling
+to meet ghosts.<br>
+<br>
+In the crypt Durdles drinks a good deal of the drugged liquor.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;They are to ascend the great Tower,&rdquo; - and why they do
+that is part of the Mystery, though not an insoluble part.&nbsp; Before
+they climb, Durdles tells Jasper that he was drunk and asleep in the
+crypt, last Christmas Eve, and was wakened by &ldquo;the ghost of one
+terrific shriek, followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog, a long
+dismal, woeful howl, such as a dog gives when a person&rsquo;s dead.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Durdles has made inquiries and, as no one else heard the shriek and
+the howl, he calls these sounds &ldquo;ghosts.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+They are obviously meant to be understood as supranormal premonitory
+sounds; of the nature of second sight, or rather of second hearing.&nbsp;
+Forster gives examples of Dickens&rsquo;s tendency to believe in such
+premonitions: Dickens had himself a curious premonitory dream.&nbsp;
+He considerably overdid the premonitory business in his otherwise excellent
+story, <i>The</i> <i>Signalman</i>, or so it seems to a student of these
+things.&nbsp; The shriek and howl heard by Durdles are to be repeated,
+we see, in real life, later, on a Christmas Eve.&nbsp; The question
+is - when?&nbsp; More probably <i>not</i> on the Christmas Eve just
+imminent, when Edwin is to vanish, but, on the Christmas Eve following,
+when Jasper is to be unmasked.<br>
+<br>
+All this while, and later, Jasper examines Durdles very closely, studying
+the effects on him of the drugged drink.&nbsp; When they reach the top
+of the tower, Jasper closely contemplates &ldquo;that stillest part
+of it&rdquo; (the landscape) &ldquo;which the Cathedral overshadows;
+but he contemplates Durdles quite as curiously.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+There is a motive for the scrutiny in either case.&nbsp; Jasper examines
+the part of the precincts in the shadow of the Cathedral, because he
+wishes to assure himself that it is lonely enough for his later undescribed
+but easily guessed proceedings in this night of mystery.&nbsp; He will
+have much to do that could not brook witnesses, after the drugged Durdles
+has fallen sound asleep.&nbsp; We have already been assured that the
+whole area over which Jasper is to operate is &ldquo;utterly deserted,&rdquo;
+even when it lies in full moonlight, about 8.30 p.m.&nbsp; &ldquo;One
+might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper&rsquo;s
+own gate-house.&rdquo;&nbsp; The people of Cloisterham, we hear, would
+deny that they believe in ghosts; but they give this part of the precinct
+a wide berth (Chapter XII.).&nbsp; If the region is &ldquo;utterly deserted&rdquo;
+at nine o&rsquo;clock in the evening, when it lies in the ivory moonlight,
+much more will it be free from human presence when it lies in shadow,
+between one and two o&rsquo;clock after midnight.&nbsp; Jasper, however,
+from the tower top closely scrutinizes the area of his future operations.&nbsp;
+It is, probably, for this very purpose of discovering whether the coast
+be clear or not, that Jasper climbs the tower.<br>
+<br>
+He watches Durdles for the purpose of finding how the drug which he
+has administered works, with a view to future operations on Edwin.&nbsp;
+Durdles is now in such a state that &ldquo;he deems the ground so far
+below on a level with the tower, and would as lief walk off the tower
+into the air as not.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+All this is apparently meant to suggest that Jasper, on Christmas Eve,
+will repeat his expedition, <i>with Edwin</i>, whom he will have drugged,
+and that he will allow Edwin to &ldquo;walk off the tower into the air.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+There are later suggestions to the same effect, as we shall see, but
+they are deliberately misleading.&nbsp; There are also strong suggestions
+to the very opposite effect: it is broadly indicated that Jasper is
+to strangle Edwin with a thick black-silk scarf, which he has just taken
+to wearing for the good of his throat.<br>
+<br>
+The pair return to the crypt, Durdles falls asleep, dreams that Jasper
+leaves him, &ldquo;and that something touches him and something falls
+from his hand.&nbsp; Then something clinks and gropes about,&rdquo;
+and the lines of moonlight shift their direction, as Durdles finds that
+they have really done when he wakens, with Jasper beside him, while
+the Cathedral clock strikes two.&nbsp; They have had many hours, not
+less than five, for their expedition.&nbsp; The key of the crypt lies
+beside Durdles on the ground.&nbsp; They go out, and as Deputy begins
+stone-throwing, Jasper half strangles him.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+PURPOSE OF THE EXPEDITION<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Jasper has had ample time to take models in wax of all Durdles&rsquo;s
+keys.&nbsp; But he could have done that in a few minutes, while Durdles
+slept, if he had wax with him, without leaving the crypt.&nbsp; He has
+also had time to convey several wheelbarrowfuls of quicklime from Durdles&rsquo;s
+yard to Mrs. Sapsea&rsquo;s sepulchre, of which monument he probably
+took the key from Durdles, and tried its identity by clinking.&nbsp;
+But even in a Cathedral town, even after midnight, several successive
+expeditions of a lay precentor with a wheelbarrow full of quicklime
+would have been apt to attract the comment of some belated physician,
+some cleric coming from a sick bed, or some local roysterers.&nbsp;
+Therefore it is that Dickens insists on the &ldquo;utterly deserted&rdquo;
+character of the area, and shows us that Jasper has made sure of that
+essential fact by observations from the tower top.&nbsp; Still, his
+was a perilous expedition, with his wheelbarrow!&nbsp; We should probably
+learn later, that Jasper was detected by the wakeful Deputy, who loathed
+him.&nbsp; Moreover, next morning Durdles was apt to notice that some
+of his quicklime had been removed.&nbsp; As far as is shown, Durdles
+noticed nothing of that kind, though he does observe peculiarities in
+Jasper&rsquo;s behaviour.<br>
+<br>
+The next point in the tale is that Edwin and Rosa meet, and have sense
+enough to break off their engagement.&nbsp; But Edwin, represented as
+really good-hearted, now begins to repent his past behaviour, and, though
+he has a kind of fancy for Miss Landless, he pretty clearly falls deeper
+in love with his late <i>fianc&eacute;e</i>, and weeps his loss in private:
+so we are told.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CHRISTMAS EVE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Christmas Eve comes, the day of the dinner of three, Jasper, Landless,
+and Edwin.&nbsp; The chapter describing this fateful day (xiv.) is headed,
+<i>When shall</i> <i>these Three meet again</i>? and Mr. Proctor argues
+that Dickens intends that <i>they shall</i> meet again.&nbsp; The intention,
+and the hint, are much in Dickens&rsquo;s manner.&nbsp; Landless means
+to start, next day, very early, on a solitary walking tour, and buys
+an exorbitantly heavy stick.&nbsp; We casually hear that Jasper knows
+Edwin to possess no jewellery, except a watch and chain and a scarf-pin.&nbsp;
+As Edwin moons about, he finds the old opium hag, come down from London,
+&ldquo;seeking a needle in a bottle of hay,&rdquo; she says - that is,
+hunting vainly for Jasper.<br>
+<br>
+Please remark that Jasper has run up to town, on December 23, and has
+saturated his system with a debauch of opium on the very eve of the
+day when he clearly means to kill Edwin.&nbsp; This was a most injudicious
+indulgence, in the circumstances.&nbsp; A maiden murder needs nerve!&nbsp;
+We know that &ldquo;fiddlestrings was weakness to express the state
+of&rdquo; Jasper&rsquo;s &ldquo;nerves&rdquo; on the day after the night
+of opium with which the story opens.&nbsp; On December 24, Jasper returned
+home, the hag at his heels.&nbsp; The old woman, when met by Edwin,
+has a curious film over her eyes; &ldquo;he seems to know her.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Great heaven,&rdquo; he thinks, next moment.&nbsp; &ldquo;Like
+Jack that night!&rdquo;&nbsp; This refers to a kind of fit of Jasper&rsquo;s,
+after dinner, on the first evening of the story.&nbsp; Edwin has then
+seen Jack Jasper in one of his &ldquo;filmy&rdquo; seizures.&nbsp; The
+woman prays Edwin for three shillings and sixpence, to buy opium.&nbsp;
+He gives her the money; she asks his Christian name.&nbsp; &ldquo;Edwin.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Is &ldquo;Eddy&rdquo; a sweetheart&rsquo;s form of that?&nbsp; He says
+that he has no sweetheart.&nbsp; He is told to be thankful that his
+name is not Ned.&nbsp; Now, Jasper alone calls Edwin &ldquo;Ned.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ned&rsquo; is a threatened name, a dangerous name,&rdquo;
+says the hag, who has heard Jasper threaten &ldquo;Ned&rdquo; in his
+opium dreams.<br>
+<br>
+Edwin determines to tell this adventure to Jasper, <i>but not on this
+night</i>: to-morrow will do.&nbsp; Now, <i>did</i> he tell the story
+to Jasper that night, in the presence of Landless, at dinner?&nbsp;
+If so, Helena Landless might later learn the fact from Neville.&nbsp;
+If she knew it, she would later tell Mr. Grewgious.<br>
+<br>
+The three men meet and dine.&nbsp; There is a fearful storm.&nbsp; &ldquo;Stones
+are displaced upon the summit of the great tower.&rdquo;&nbsp; Next
+morning, early, Jasper yells to Crisparkle, who is looking out of his
+window in Minor Canon Row, that Edwin has disappeared.&nbsp; Neville
+has already set out on his walking tour.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Men go forth and apprehend Neville, who shows fight with his heavy stick.&nbsp;
+We learn that he and Drood left Jasper&rsquo;s house at midnight, went
+for ten minutes to look at the river under the wind, and parted at Crisparkle&rsquo;s
+door.&nbsp; Neville now remains under suspicion: Jasper directs the
+search in the river, on December 25, 26, and 27.&nbsp; On the evening
+of December 27, Grewgious visits Jasper.&nbsp; Now, Grewgious, as we
+know, was to be at Cloisterham at Christmas.&nbsp; True, he was engaged
+to dine on Christmas Day with Bazzard, his clerk; but, thoughtful as
+he was of the moody Bazzard, as Edwin was leaving Cloisterham he would
+excuse himself.&nbsp; He would naturally take a great part in the search
+for Edwin, above all as Edwin had in his possession the ring so dear
+to the lawyer.&nbsp; Edwin had not shown it to Rosa when they determined
+to part.&nbsp; He &ldquo;kept it in his breast,&rdquo; and the ring,
+we learn, was &ldquo;<i>gifted with</i> <i>invincible force to hold
+and drag</i>,&rdquo; so Dickens warns us.<br>
+<br>
+The ring is obviously to be a <i>pi&egrave;ce de</i> <i>conviction</i>.&nbsp;
+But our point, at present, is that we do not know how Grewgious, to
+whom this ring was so dear, employed himself at Cloisterham - after
+Edwin&rsquo;s disappearance - between December 25 and December 27.&nbsp;
+On the evening of the 27th, he came to Jasper, saying, &ldquo;I have<i>
+just left Miss Landless</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; He then slowly and watchfully
+told Jasper that Edwin&rsquo;s engagement was broken off, while the
+precentor gasped, perspired, tore his hair, shrieked, and finally subsided
+into a heap of muddy clothes on the floor.&nbsp; Meanwhile, Mr. Grewgious,
+calmly observing these phenomena, warmed his hands at the fire for some
+time before he called in Jasper&rsquo;s landlady.<br>
+<br>
+Grewgious now knows by Jasper&rsquo;s behaviour that he believes himself
+to have committed a superfluous crime, by murdering Edwin, who no longer
+stood between him and Rosa, as their engagement was already at an end.&nbsp;
+Whether a Jasper, in real life, would excite himself so much, is another
+question.&nbsp; We do not know, as Mr. Proctor insists, what Mr. Grewgious
+had been doing at Cloisterham between Christmas Day and December 27,
+the date of his experiment on Jasper&rsquo;s nerves.&nbsp; Mr. Proctor
+supposes him to have met the living Edwin, and obtained information
+from him, after his escape from a murderous attack by Jasper.&nbsp;
+Mr. Proctor insists that this is the only explanation of Grewgious&rsquo;s
+conduct, any other &ldquo;is absolutely impossible.&rdquo;&nbsp; In
+that case the experiment of Grewgious was not made to gain information
+from Jasper&rsquo;s demeanour, but was the beginning of his punishment,
+and was intended by Grewgious to be so.<br>
+<br>
+But Dickens has been careful to suggest, with suspicious breadth of
+candour, another explanation of the source of Grewgious&rsquo;s knowledge.&nbsp;
+If Edwin has really escaped, and met Grewgious, Dickens does not want
+us to be sure of that, as Mr. Proctor was sure.&nbsp; Dickens deliberately
+puts his readers on another trail, though neither Mr. Walters nor Mr.
+Proctor struck the scent.&nbsp; As we have noted, Grewgious at once
+says to Jasper, &ldquo;<i>I have just come</i> <i>from Miss Landless</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+This tells Jasper nothing, but it tells a great deal to the watchful
+reader, who remembers that Miss Landless, and she only, is aware that
+Jasper loves, bullies, and insults Rosa, and that Rosa&rsquo;s life
+is embittered by Jasper&rsquo;s silent wooing, and his unspoken threats.&nbsp;
+Helena may also know that &ldquo;Ned is a threatened name,&rdquo; as
+we have seen, and that the menace comes from Jasper.&nbsp; As Jasper
+is now known to be Edwin&rsquo;s rival in love, and as Edwin has vanished,
+the murderer, Mr. Grewgious reckons, is Jasper; and his experiment,
+with Jasper&rsquo;s consequent shriek and fit, confirms the hypothesis.&nbsp;
+Thus Grewgious had information enough, from Miss Landless, to suggest
+his experiment - Dickens intentionally made that clear (though not clear
+enough for Mr. Proctor and Mr. Cuming Walters) - while his experiment
+gives him a moral certainty of Jasper&rsquo;s crime, but yields no legal
+evidence.<br>
+<br>
+But does Grewgious know no more than what Helena, and the fit and shriek
+of Jasper, have told him?&nbsp; Is his knowledge limited to the evidence
+that Jasper has murdered Edwin?&nbsp; Or does Grewgious know more, know
+that Edwin, in some way, has escaped from death?<br>
+<br>
+That is Dickens&rsquo;s secret.&nbsp; But whereas Grewgious, if he believes
+Jasper to be an actual murderer, should take him seriously; in point
+of fact, he speaks of Jasper in so light a tone, as &ldquo;our local
+friend,&rdquo; that we feel no certainty that he is not really aware
+of Edwin&rsquo;s escape from a murderous attack by Jasper, and of his
+continued existence.<br>
+<br>
+Presently Crisparkle, under some mysterious impression, apparently telepathic
+(the book is rich in such psychical phenomena), visits the weir on the
+river, at night, and next day finds Edwin&rsquo;s watch and chain in
+the timbers; his scarf-pin in the pool below.&nbsp; The watch and chain
+must have been placed purposely where they were found, they could not
+float thither, and, if Neville had slain Edwin, he would not have stolen
+his property, of course, except as a blind, neutralised by the placing
+of the watch in a conspicuous spot.&nbsp; However, the increased suspicions
+drive Neville away to read law in Staple Inn, where Grewgious also dwells,
+and incessantly watches Neville out of his window.<br>
+<br>
+About six months later, Helena Landless is to join Neville, who is watched
+at intervals by Jasper, who, again, is watched by Grewgious as the precentor
+lurks about Staple Inn.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+DICK DATCHERY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+About the time when Helena leaves Cloisterham for town, a new character
+appears in Cloisterham, &ldquo;a white-headed personage with black eyebrows,
+<i>buttoned up in a tightish blue surtout</i>, with a buff waistcoat,
+grey trowsers, and something of a military air.&rdquo;&nbsp; His shock
+of white hair was unusually thick and ample.&nbsp; This man, &ldquo;a
+buffer living idly on his means,&rdquo; named Datchery, is either, as
+Mr. Proctor believed, Edwin Drood, or, as Mr. Walters thinks, Helena
+Landless.&nbsp; By making Grewgious drop the remark that Bazzard, his
+clerk, a moping owl of an amateur tragedian, &ldquo;is off duty here,&rdquo;
+at his chambers, Dickens hints that Bazzard is Datchery.&nbsp; But that
+is a mere false scent, a ruse of the author, scattering paper in the
+wrong place, in this long paper hunt.<br>
+<br>
+As for Helena, Mr. Walters justly argues that Dickens has marked her
+for some important part in the ruin of Jasper.&nbsp; &ldquo;There was
+a slumbering gleam of fire in her intense dark eyes.&nbsp; Let whomsoever
+it most concerned look well to it.&rdquo;&nbsp; Again, we have been
+told that Helena had high courage.&nbsp; She had told Jasper that she
+feared him &ldquo;in no circumstances whatever.&rdquo;&nbsp; Again,
+we have learned that in childhood she had dressed as a boy when she
+ran away from home; and she had the motives of protecting Rosa and her
+brother, Neville, from the machinations of Jasper, who needs watching,
+as he is trying to ruin Neville&rsquo;s already dilapidated character,
+and, by spying on him, to break down his nerve.&nbsp; Really, of course,
+Neville is quite safe.&nbsp; There is no <i>corpus delicti</i>, no carcase
+of the missing Edwin Drood.<br>
+<br>
+For the reasons given, Datchery might be Helena in disguise.<br>
+<br>
+If so, the idea is highly ludicrous, while nothing is proved either
+by the blackness of Datchery&rsquo;s eyebrows (Helena&rsquo;s were black),
+or by Datchery&rsquo;s habit of carrying his hat under his arm, not
+on his head.&nbsp; A person who goes so far as to wear a conspicuous
+white wig, would not be afraid also to dye his eyebrows black, if he
+were Edwin; while either Edwin or Helena <i>must</i> have &ldquo;made
+up&rdquo; the face, by the use of paint and sham wrinkles.&nbsp; Either
+Helena or Edwin would have been detected in real life, of course, but
+we allow for the accepted fictitious convention of successful disguise,
+and for the necessities of the novelist.&nbsp; A tightly buttoned surtout
+would show Helena&rsquo;s feminine figure; but let that also pass.&nbsp;
+As to the hat, Edwin&rsquo;s own hair was long and thick: add a wig,
+and his hat would be a burden to him.<br>
+<br>
+What is most unlike the stern, fierce, sententious Helena, is Datchery&rsquo;s
+habit of &ldquo;chaffing.&rdquo;&nbsp; He fools the ass of a Mayor,
+Sapsea, by most exaggerated diference: his tone is always that of indolent
+mockery, which one doubts whether the &ldquo;intense&rdquo; and concentrated
+Helena could assume.&nbsp; He takes rooms in the same house as Jasper,
+to whom, as to Durdles and Deputy, he introduces himself on the night
+of his arrival at Cloisterham.&nbsp; He afterwards addresses Deputy,
+the little <i>gamin</i>, by the name &ldquo;Winks,&rdquo; which is given
+to him by the people at the Tramps&rsquo; lodgings: the name is a secret
+of Deputy&rsquo;s.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+JASPER, ROSA, AND TARTAR<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Meanwhile Jasper formally proposes to Rosa, in the school garden: standing
+apart and leaning against a sundial, as the garden is commanded by many
+windows.&nbsp; He offers to resign his hopes of bringing Landless to
+the gallows (perhaps this bad man would provide a <i>corpus</i> <i>delicti</i>
+of his own making!) if Rosa will accept him: he threatens to &ldquo;pursue
+her to the death,&rdquo; if she will not; he frightens her so thoroughly
+that she rushes to Grewgious in his chambers in London.&nbsp; She now
+suspects Jasper of Edwin&rsquo;s murder, but keeps her thoughts to herself.&nbsp;
+She tells Grewgious, who is watching Neville, - &ldquo;I have a fancy
+for keeping him under my eye,&rdquo; - that Jasper has made love to
+her, and Grewgious replies in a parody of &ldquo;God save the King&rdquo;!<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;On Thee his hopes to fix<br>
+Damn him again!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Would he fool thus, if he knew Jasper to have killed Edwin?&nbsp; He
+is not certain whether Rosa should visit Helena next day, in Landless&rsquo;s
+rooms, opposite; and Mr. Walters suggests that he may be aware that
+Helena, dressed as Datchery, is really absent at Cloisterham.&nbsp;
+However, next day, Helena is in her brother&rsquo;s rooms.&nbsp; Moreover,
+it is really a sufficient explanation of Grewgious&rsquo;s doubt that
+Jasper is lurking around, and that not till next day is a <i>private</i>
+way of communication arranged between Neville and his friends.&nbsp;
+In any case, next day, Helena is in her brother&rsquo;s rooms, and,
+by aid of a Mr. Tartar&rsquo;s rooms, she and Rosa can meet privately.&nbsp;
+There is a good deal of conspiring to watch Jasper when he watches Neville,
+and in this new friend, Mr. Tartar, a lover is provided for Rosa.&nbsp;
+Tartar is a miraculously agile climber over roofs and up walls, a retired
+Lieutenant of the navy, and a handy man, being such a climber, to chase
+Jasper about the roof of the Cathedral, when Jasper&rsquo;s day of doom
+arrives.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+JASPER&rsquo;S OPIUM VISIONS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+In July, Jasper revisits the London opium den, and talks under opium,
+watched by the old hag.&nbsp; He speaks of a thing which he often does
+in visions: &ldquo;a hazardous and perilous journey, over abysses where
+a slip would be destruction.&nbsp; Look down, look down!&nbsp; You see
+what lies at the bottom there?&rdquo;&nbsp; He enacts the vision and
+says, &ldquo;There was a fellow traveller.&rdquo;&nbsp; He &ldquo;speaks
+in a whisper, and as if in the dark.&rdquo;&nbsp; The vision is, in
+this case, &ldquo;a poor vision: no struggle, no consciousness of peril,
+no entreaty.&rdquo;&nbsp; Edwin, in the reminiscent vision, dies very
+easily and rapidly.&nbsp; &ldquo;When it comes to be real at last, it
+is so short that it seems unreal for the first time.&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;And
+yet I never saw <i>that</i> before.&nbsp; Look what a poor miserable
+mean thing it is.&nbsp; <i>That</i> must be real.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s over.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+What can all this mean?&nbsp; We have been told that, shortly before
+Christmas Eve, Jasper took to wearing a thick black-silk handkerchief
+for his throat.&nbsp; He hung it over his arm, &ldquo;his face knitted
+and stern,&rdquo; as he entered his house for his Christmas Eve dinner.&nbsp;
+If he strangled Edwin with the scarf, as we are to suppose, he did not
+lead him, drugged, to the tower top, and pitch him off.&nbsp; Is part
+of Jasper&rsquo;s vision reminiscent - the brief, unresisting death
+- while another part is a separate vision, is <i>prospective</i>, &ldquo;premonitory&rdquo;?&nbsp;
+Does he see himself pitching Neville Landless off the tower top, or
+see him fallen from the Cathedral roof?&nbsp; Is Neville&rsquo;s body
+&ldquo;<i>that</i>&rdquo; - &ldquo;I never saw <i>that</i> before.&nbsp;
+Look what a poor miserable mean thing it is!&nbsp; <i>That</i> must
+be real.&rdquo;&nbsp; Jasper &ldquo;never saw <i>that</i>&rdquo; - the
+dead body below the height - before.&nbsp; <i>This</i> vision, I think,
+is of the future, not of the past, and is meant to bewilder the reader
+who thinks that the whole represents the slaying of Drood.&nbsp; The
+tale is rich in &ldquo;warnings&rdquo; and telepathy.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+DATCHERY AND THE OPIUM WOMAN<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+The hag now tracks Jasper home to Cloisterham.&nbsp; Here she meets
+Datchery, whom she asks how she can see Jasper?&nbsp; If Datchery is
+Drood, he now learns, <i>what he did not know before, that there</i>
+<i>is some connection between Jasper and</i> <i>the hag</i>.&nbsp; He
+walks with her to the place where Edwin met the hag, on Christmas Eve,
+and gave her money; and he jingles his own money as he walks.&nbsp;
+The place, or the sound of the money, makes the woman tell Datchery
+about Edwin&rsquo;s gift of three shillings and sixpence for opium.&nbsp;
+Datchery, &ldquo;with a sudden change of countenance, gives her a sudden
+look.&rdquo;&nbsp; It does not follow that he is <i>not</i> Drood, for,
+though the hag&rsquo;s love of opium was known to Drood, Datchery is
+not to reveal his recognition of the woman.&nbsp; He does what any stranger
+would do; he &ldquo;gives a sudden look,&rdquo; as if surprised by the
+mention of opium.<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Walters says, &ldquo;Drood would not have changed countenance on
+hearing a fact he had known six months previously.&rdquo;&nbsp; But
+if Drood was playing at being somebody else, he would, of course, give
+a kind of start and stare, on hearing of the opium.&nbsp; When he also
+hears from the hag that her former benefactor&rsquo;s name was Edwin,
+he asks her how she knew that - &ldquo;a fatuously unnecessary question,&rdquo;
+says Mr. Walters.&nbsp; A needless question for Datchery&rsquo;s information,
+if he be Drood, but as useful a question as another if Drood be Datchery,
+and wishes to maintain the conversation.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+DATCHERY&rsquo;S SCORE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Datchery keeps a tavern score of his discoveries behind a door, in cryptic
+chalk strokes.&nbsp; He does this, says Mr. Walters, because, being
+Helena, he would betray himself if he wrote in a female hand.&nbsp;
+But nobody would <i>write</i> secrets on a door!&nbsp; He adds &ldquo;a
+moderate stroke,&rdquo; after meeting the hag, though, says Mr. Walters,
+&ldquo;Edwin Drood would have learned nothing new whatever&rdquo; from
+the hag.<br>
+<br>
+But Edwin would have learned something quite new, and very important
+- that the hag was hunting Jasper.&nbsp; Next day Datchery sees the
+woman shake her fists at Jasper in church, and hears from her that she
+knows Jasper &ldquo;better far than all the reverend parsons put together
+know him.&rdquo;&nbsp; Datchery then adds a long thick line to his chalked
+score, yet, says Mr. Walters, Datchery has learned &ldquo;nothing new
+to Edwin Drood, if alive.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+This is an obvious error.&nbsp; It is absolutely new to Edwin Drood
+that the opium hag is intimately acquainted with his uncle, Jasper,
+and hates Jasper with a deadly hatred.&nbsp; All this is not only new
+to Drood, if alive, but is rich in promise of further revelations.&nbsp;
+Drood, on Christmas Eve, had learned from the hag only that she took
+opium, and that she had come from town to Cloisterham, and had &ldquo;hunted
+for a needle in a bottle of hay.&rdquo;&nbsp; That was the sum of his
+information.&nbsp; Now he learns that the woman knows, tracks, has found,
+and hates, his worthy uncle, Jasper.&nbsp; He may well, therefore, add
+a heavy mark to his score.<br>
+<br>
+We must also ask, How could Helena, fresh from Ceylon, know &ldquo;the
+old tavern way of keeping scores?&nbsp; Illegible except to the scorer.&nbsp;
+The scorer not committed, the scored debited with what is against him,&rdquo;
+as Datchery observes.&nbsp; An Eurasian girl of twenty, new to England,
+would not argue thus with herself: she would probably know nothing of
+English tavern scores.&nbsp; We do not hear that Helena ever opened
+a book: we do know that education had been denied to her.&nbsp; What
+acquaintance could she have with old English tavern customs?<br>
+<br>
+If Drood is Datchery, then Dickens used a form of a very old and favourite
+<i>ficelle</i> of his: the watching of a villain by an improbable and
+unsuspected person, in this case thought to be dead.&nbsp; If Helena
+is Datchery, the &ldquo;assumption&rdquo; or personation is in the highest
+degree improbable, her whole bearing is quite out of her possibilities,
+and the personation is very absurd.<br>
+<br>
+Here the story ends.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+THEORIES OF THE MYSTERY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+FORSTER&rsquo;S EVIDENCE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+We have some external evidence as to Dickens&rsquo;s solution of his
+own problem, from Forster. <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a>&nbsp;
+On August 6, 1869, some weeks before he began to work at his tale, Dickens,
+in a letter, told Forster, &ldquo;I have a very curious and new idea
+for my new story.&nbsp; Not communicable (or the interest of the book
+would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Forster must have instantly asked that the incommunicable secret should
+be communicated to <i>him</i>, for he tells us that &ldquo;<i>immediately
+after</i> I learnt&rdquo; - the secret.&nbsp; But did he learn it?&nbsp;
+Dickens was ill, and his plot, whatever it may have been, would be irritatingly
+criticized by Forster before it was fully thought out.&nbsp; &ldquo;Fules
+and bairns should not see half-done work,&rdquo; and Dickens may well
+have felt that Forster should not see work not even begun, but merely
+simmering in the author&rsquo;s own fancy.<br>
+<br>
+Forster does not tell us that Dickens communicated the secret in a letter.&nbsp;
+He quotes none: he says &ldquo;I was told,&rdquo; orally, that is.&nbsp;
+When he writes, five years later (1874), &ldquo;Landless was, <i>I think</i>,
+to have perished in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize the
+murderer,&rdquo; he is clearly trusting, not to a letter of Dickens&rsquo;s,
+but to a defective memory; and he knows it.&nbsp; He says that a nephew
+was to be murdered by an uncle.&nbsp; The criminal was to confess in
+the condemned cell.&nbsp; He was to find out that his crime had been
+needless, and to be convicted by means of the ring (Rosa&rsquo;s mother&rsquo;s
+ring) remaining in the quicklime that had destroyed the body of Edwin.<br>
+<br>
+Nothing &ldquo;new&rdquo; in all this, as Forster must have seen.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The originality,&rdquo; he explains, &ldquo;was to consist in
+the review of the murderer&rsquo;s career by himself at the close, when
+its temptations were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but
+some other man, were the tempted.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+But all this is not &ldquo;hard to work,&rdquo; and is not &ldquo;original.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+As Mr. Proctor remarks, Dickens had used that trick twice already.&nbsp;
+(&ldquo;Madman&rsquo;s Manuscript,&rdquo; <i>Pickwick</i>; &ldquo;Clock
+Case Confession,&rdquo; in <i>Master Humphrey&rsquo;s Clock</i>.)&nbsp;
+The quicklime trick is also very old indeed.&nbsp; The disguise of a
+woman as a man is as ancient as the art of fiction: yet Helena <i>may</i>
+be Datchery, though nobody guessed it before Mr. Cuming Walters.&nbsp;
+She ought not to be Datchery; she is quite out of keeping in her speech
+and manner as Datchery, and is much more like Drood.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;A NEW IDEA&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+There are no new ideas in plots.&nbsp; &ldquo;All the stories have been
+told,&rdquo; and all the merit lies in the manner of the telling.&nbsp;
+Dickens had used the unsuspected watcher, as Mr. Proctor shows, in almost
+all his novels.&nbsp; In <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, when Jonas finds
+that Nadgett has been the watcher, Dickens writes, &ldquo;The dead man
+might have come out of his grave and not confounded and appalled him
+so.&rdquo;&nbsp; Now, to Jasper, Edwin <i>was</i> &ldquo;the dead man,&rdquo;
+and Edwin&rsquo;s grave contained quicklime.&nbsp; Jasper was sure that
+he had done for Edwin: he had taken Edwin&rsquo;s watch, chain, and
+scarf-pin; he believed that he had left him, drugged, in quicklime,
+in a locked vault.&nbsp; Consequently the reappearance of Edwin, quite
+well, in the vault where Jasper had buried him, would be a very new
+idea to Jasper; would &ldquo;confound and appall him.&rdquo;&nbsp; Jasper
+would have emotions, at that spectacle, and so would the reader!&nbsp;
+It is not every day, even in our age of sixpenny novels, that a murderer
+is compelled to visit, alone, at night, the vault which holds his victim&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;cold remains,&rdquo; and therein finds the victim &ldquo;come
+up, smiling.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Yes, for business purposes, this idea was new enough!&nbsp; The idea
+was &ldquo;difficult to work,&rdquo; says Dickens, with obvious truth.&nbsp;
+How was he to get the quicklime into the vault, and Drood, alive, out
+of the vault?&nbsp; As to the reader, he would at first take Datchery
+for Drood, and then think, &ldquo;No, that is impossible, and also is
+stale.&nbsp; Datchery cannot be Drood,&rdquo; and thus the reader would
+remain in a pleasant state of puzzledom, as he does, unto this day.<br>
+<br>
+If Edwin is dead, there is not much &ldquo;Mystery&rdquo; about him.&nbsp;
+We have as good as seen Jasper strangle him and take his pin, chain,
+and watch.&nbsp; Yet by adroitly managing the conduct of Mr. Grewgious,
+Dickens persuaded Mr. Proctor that certainly, Grewgious knew Edwin to
+be alive.&nbsp; As Grewgious knew, from Helena, all that was necessary
+to provoke his experiment on Jasper&rsquo;s nerves, Mr. Proctor argued
+on false premises, but that was due to the craft of Dickens.&nbsp; Mr.
+Proctor rejected Forster&rsquo;s report, from memory, of what he understood
+to be the &ldquo;incommunicable secret&rdquo; of Dickens&rsquo;s plot,
+and I think that he was justified in the rejection.&nbsp; Forster does
+not seem to have cared about the thing - he refers lightly to &ldquo;the
+reader curious in such matters&rdquo; - when once he had received his
+explanation from Dickens.&nbsp; His memory, in the space of five years,
+may have been inaccurate: he probably neither knew nor cared who Datchery
+was; and he may readily have misunderstood what Dickens told him, orally,
+about the ring, as the instrument of detection.&nbsp; Moreover, Forster
+quite overlooked one source of evidence, as I shall show later.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+MR. PROCTOR&rsquo;S THEORY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Proctor&rsquo;s theory of the story is that Jasper, after Edwin&rsquo;s
+return at midnight on Christmas Eve, recommended a warm drink - mulled
+wine, drugged - and then proposed another stroll of inspection of the
+effects of the storm.&nbsp; He then strangled him, somewhere, and placed
+him in the quicklime in the Sapsea vault, locked him in, and went to
+bed.&nbsp; Next, according to Mr. Proctor, Durdles, then, &ldquo;lying
+drunk in the precincts,&rdquo; for some reason taps with his hammer
+on the wall of the Sapsea vault, detects the presence of a foreign body,
+opens the tomb, and finds Drood in the quicklime, &ldquo;his face fortunately
+protected by the strong silk shawl with which Jasper has intended to
+throttle him.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A MISTAKEN THEORY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+This is &ldquo;thin,&rdquo; very &ldquo;thin!&rdquo;&nbsp; Dickens must
+have had some better scheme than Mr. Proctor&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Why did
+Jasper not &ldquo;mak sikker&rdquo; like Kirkpatrick with the Red Comyn?&nbsp;
+Why did he leave his silk scarf?&nbsp; It might come to be asked for;
+to be sure the quicklime would destroy it, but why did Jasper leave
+it?&nbsp; Why did the intoxicated Durdles come out of the crypt, if
+he was there, enter the graveyard, and begin tapping at the wall of
+the vault?&nbsp; Why not open the door? he had the key.<br>
+<br>
+Suppose, however, all this to have occurred, and suppose, with Mr. Proctor,
+that Durdles and Deputy carried Edwin to the Tramps&rsquo; lodgings,
+would Durdles fail to recognize Edwin?&nbsp; We are to guess that Grewgious
+was present, or disturbed at his inn, or somehow brought into touch
+with Edwin, and bribed Durdles to silence, &ldquo;until a scheme for
+the punishment of Jasper had been devised.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+All this set of conjectures is crude to the last degree.&nbsp; We do
+not know how Dickens meant to get Edwin into and out of the vault.&nbsp;
+Granting that Edwin was drugged, Jasper might lead Edwin in, considering
+the licence extended to the effects of drugs in novels, and might strangle
+him there.&nbsp; Above all, how did Grewgious, if in Cloisterham, come
+to be at hand at midnight?<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+ANOTHER WAY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+If I must make a guess, I conjecture that Jasper had one of his &ldquo;filmy&rdquo;
+seizures, was &ldquo;in a frightful sort of dream,&rdquo; and bungled
+the murder: made an incomplete job of it.&nbsp; Half-strangled men and
+women have often recovered.&nbsp; In Jasper&rsquo;s opium vision and
+reminiscence there was no resistance, all was very soon over.&nbsp;
+Jasper might even bungle the locking of the door of the vault.&nbsp;
+He was apt to have a seizure after opium, in moments of excitement,
+and <i>he had been at the</i> <i>opium den through the night of December</i>
+23, for the hag tracked him from her house in town to Cloisterham on
+December 24, the day of the crime.&nbsp; Grant that his accustomed fit
+came upon him during the excitement of the murder, as it does come after
+&ldquo;a nicht wi&rsquo; opium,&rdquo; in chapter ii., when Edwin excites
+him by contemptuous talk of the girl whom Jasper loves so furiously
+- and then anything may happen!<br>
+<br>
+Jasper murders Edwin inefficiently; he has a fit; while he is unconscious
+the quicklime revives Edwin, by burning his hand, say, and, during Jasper&rsquo;s
+swoon, Edwin, like another famous prisoner, &ldquo;has a happy thought,
+he opens the door, and walks out.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Being drugged, he is in a dreamy state; knows not clearly what has occurred,
+or who attacked him.&nbsp; Jasper revives, &ldquo;look on&rsquo;t again
+he dare not,&rdquo; - on the body of his victim - and <i>he</i> walks
+out and goes home, where his red lamp has burned all the time - &ldquo;thinking
+it all wery capital.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Another way,&rdquo; - Jasper not only fails to strangle Drood,
+but fails to lock the door of the vault, and Drood walks out after Jasper
+has gone.&nbsp; Jasper has, before his fit, &ldquo;removed from the
+body the most lasting, the best known, and most easily recognizable
+things upon it, the watch and scarf-pin.&rdquo;&nbsp; So Dickens puts
+the popular view of the case against Neville Landless, and so we are
+to presume that Jasper acted.&nbsp; If he removed no more things from
+the body than these, he made a fatal oversight.<br>
+<br>
+Meanwhile, how does Edwin, once out of the vault, make good a secret
+escape from Cloisterham?&nbsp; Mr. Proctor invokes the aid of Mr. Grewgious,
+but does not explain why Grewgious was on the spot.&nbsp; I venture
+to think it not inconceivable that Mr. Grewgious having come down to
+Cloisterham by a late train, on Christmas Eve, to keep his Christmas
+appointment with Rosa, paid a darkling visit to the tomb of his lost
+love, Rosa&rsquo;s mother.&nbsp; Grewgious was very sentimental, but
+too secretive to pay such a visit by daylight.&nbsp; &ldquo;A night
+of memories and sighs&rdquo; he might &ldquo;consecrate&rdquo; to his
+lost lady love, as Landor did to Rose Aylmer.&nbsp; Grewgious was to
+have helped Bazzard to eat a turkey on Christmas Day.&nbsp; But he could
+get out of that engagement.&nbsp; He would wish to see Edwin and Rosa
+together, and Edwin was leaving Cloisterham.&nbsp; The date of Grewgious&rsquo;s
+arrival at Cloisterham is studiously concealed.&nbsp; I offer at least
+a conceivable motive for Grewgious&rsquo;s possible presence at the
+churchyard.&nbsp; Mrs. Bud, his lost love, we have been told, was buried
+hard by the Sapsea monument.&nbsp; If Grewgious visited her tomb, he
+was on the spot to help Edwin, supposing Edwin to escape.&nbsp; Unlikelier
+things occur in novels.&nbsp; I do not, in fact, call these probable
+occurrences in every-day life, but none of the story is probable.&nbsp;
+Jasper&rsquo;s &ldquo;weird seizures&rdquo; are meant to lead up to
+<i>something</i>.&nbsp; They may have been meant to lead up to the failure
+of the murder and the escape of Edwin.&nbsp; Of course Dickens would
+not have treated these incidents, when he came to make Edwin explain,
+- nobody else could explain, - in my studiously simple style.&nbsp;
+The drugged Edwin himself would remember the circumstances but mistily:
+his evidence would be of no value against Jasper.<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Proctor next supposes, we saw, that Drood got into touch with Grewgious,
+and I have added the circumstances which might take Grewgious to the
+churchyard.&nbsp; Next, when Edwin recovered health, he came down, perhaps,
+as Datchery, to spy on Jasper.&nbsp; I have elsewhere said, as Mr. Cuming
+Walters quotes me, that &ldquo;fancy can suggest no reason why Edwin
+Drood, if he escaped from his wicked uncle, should go spying about instead
+of coming openly forward.&nbsp; No plausible unfantastic reason could
+be invented.&rdquo;&nbsp; Later, I shall explain why Edwin, if he is
+Datchery, might go spying alone.<br>
+<br>
+It is also urged that Edwin left Rosa in sorrow, and left blame on Neville
+Landless.&nbsp; Why do this?&nbsp; Mr. Proctor replies that Grewgious&rsquo;s
+intense and watchful interest in Neville, otherwise unexplained, is
+due to his knowledge that Drood is alive, and that Neville must be cared
+for, while Grewgious has told Rosa that Edwin lives.&nbsp; He also told
+her of Edwin&rsquo;s real love of her, hence Miss Bud says, &ldquo;Poor,
+poor Eddy,&rdquo; quite <i>&agrave; propos</i> <i>de bottes</i>, when
+she finds herself many fathoms deep in love with Lieutenant Tartar,
+R.N.&nbsp; &ldquo;&lsquo;Poor, poor Eddy!&rsquo; thought Rosa, as they
+walked along,&rdquo; Tartar and she.&nbsp; This is a plausible suggestion
+of Mr. Proctor.&nbsp; Edwin, though known to Rosa to be alive, has no
+chance!&nbsp; But, as to my own remark, &ldquo;why should not Edwin
+come forward at once, instead of spying about?&rdquo;&nbsp; Well, if
+he did, there would be no story.&nbsp; As for &ldquo;an unfantastic
+reason&rdquo; for his conduct, Dickens is not writing an &ldquo;unfantastic&rdquo;
+novel.&nbsp; Moreover, if things occurred as I have suggested, I do
+not see what evidence Drood had against Jasper.&nbsp; Edwin&rsquo;s
+clothes were covered with lime, but, when he told his story, Jasper
+would reply that Drood never returned to his house on Christmas Eve,
+but stayed out, &ldquo;doing what was correct by the season, in the
+way of giving it the welcome it had the right to expect,&rdquo; like
+Durdles on another occasion.&nbsp; Drood&rsquo;s evidence, if it was
+what I have suggested, would sound like the dream of an intoxicated
+man, and what other evidence could be adduced?&nbsp; Thus I had worked
+out Drood&rsquo;s condition, if he really was not killed, in this way:
+I had supposed him to escape, in a very mixed frame of mind, when he
+would be encountered by Grewgious, who, of course, could make little
+out of him in his befogged state.&nbsp; Drood could not even prove that
+it was not Landless who attacked him.&nbsp; The result would be that
+Drood would lie low, and later, would have reason enough for disguising
+himself as Datchery, and playing the spy in Cloisterham.<br>
+<br>
+At this point I was reinforced by an opinion which Mr. William Archer
+had expressed, unknown to me, in a newspaper article.&nbsp; I had described
+Edwin&rsquo;s confused knowledge of his own experience, if he were thoroughly
+drugged, and then half strangled.&nbsp; Mr. Archer also took that point,
+and added that Edwin being a good-hearted fellow, and fond of his uncle
+Jasper, he would not bring, or let Grewgious bring, a terrible charge
+against Jasper, till he knew more certainly the whole state of the case.&nbsp;
+For that reason, he would come disguised to Cloisterham and make inquiries.&nbsp;
+By letting Jasper know about the ring, he would compel him to enter
+the vault, and then, Mr. Archer thinks, would induce him to &ldquo;repent
+and begin life afresh.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+I scarcely think that Datchery&rsquo;s purpose was so truly honourable:
+he rather seems to be getting up a case against Jasper.&nbsp; Still,
+the idea of Mr. Archer is very plausible, and, at least, given Drood&rsquo;s
+need of evidence, and the lack of evidence against Jasper, we see reason
+good, in a novel of this kind, for his playing the part of amateur detective.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+DICKENS&rsquo;S UNUSED DRAFT OF A CHAPTER<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Forster found, and published, a very illegible sketch of a chapter of
+the tale: &ldquo;How Mr. Sapsea ceased to be a Member of the Eight Club,
+Told by Himself.&rdquo;&nbsp; This was &ldquo;a cramped, interlined,
+and blotted&rdquo; draft, on paper of only half the size commonly used
+by Dickens.&nbsp; Mr. Sapsea tells how his Club mocked him about a stranger,
+who had mistaken him for the Dean.&nbsp; The jackass, Sapsea, left the
+Club, and met the stranger, <i>a young</i> <i>man</i>, who fooled him
+to the top of his bent, saying, &ldquo;If I was to deny that I came
+to this town to see and hear you, Sir, what would it avail me?&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Apparently this paper was a rough draft of an idea for introducing a
+detective, as a <i>young</i> man, who mocks Sapsea just as Datchery
+does in the novel.&nbsp; But to make the spy <i>a young</i> man, whether
+the spy was Drood or Helena Landless, was too difficult; and therefore
+Dickens makes Datchery &ldquo;an elderly buffer&rdquo; in a white wig.&nbsp;
+If I am right, it was easier for Helena, a girl, to pose as a young
+man, than for Drood to reappear as a young man, not himself.&nbsp; Helena
+<i>may</i> be Datchery, and yet Drood may be alive and biding his time;
+but I have disproved my old objection that there was no reason why Drood,
+if alive, should go spying about in disguise.&nbsp; There were good
+Dickensian reasons.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+A QUESTION OF TASTE<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Cuming Walters argues that the story is very tame if Edwin is still
+alive, and left out of the marriages at the close.&nbsp; Besides, &ldquo;Drood
+is little more than a name-label, attached to a body, a man who never
+excites sympathy, whose fate causes no emotion, he is saved for no useful
+or sentimental purpose, and lags superfluous on the stage.&nbsp; All
+of which is bad art, so bad that Dickens would never have been guilty
+of it.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+That is a question of taste.&nbsp; On rereading the novel, I see that
+Dickens makes Drood as sympathetic as he can.&nbsp; He is very young,
+and speaks of Rosa with bad taste, but he is really in love with her,
+much more so than she with him, and he is piqued by her ceaseless mockery,
+and by their false position.&nbsp; To Jasper he is singularly tender,
+and remorseful when he thinks that he has shown want of tact.&nbsp;
+There is nothing ominous about his gaiety: as to his one fault, we leave
+him, on Christmas Eve, a converted character: he has a kind word and
+look for every one whom he meets, young and old.&nbsp; He accepts Mr.
+Grewgious&rsquo;s very stern lecture in the best manner possible.&nbsp;
+In short, he is marked as faulty -&nbsp; &ldquo;I am young,&rdquo; so
+he excuses himself, in the very words of Darnley to Queen Mary! (if
+the Glasgow letter be genuine); but he is also marked as sympathetic.<br>
+<br>
+He was, I think, to have a lesson, and to become a good fellow.&nbsp;
+Mr. Proctor rightly argues (and Forster &ldquo;thinks&rdquo;), that
+Dickens meant to kill Neville Landless: Mr. Cuming Walters agrees with
+him, but Mr. Proctor truly adds that Edwin has none of the signs of
+Dickens&rsquo;s doomed men, his Sidney Cartons, and the rest.&nbsp;
+You can tell, as it were by the sound of the voice of Dickens, says
+Mr. Proctor, that Edwin is to live.&nbsp; The impression is merely subjective,
+but I feel the impression.&nbsp; The doom of Landless is conspicuously
+fixed, and why is Landless to be killed by Jasper?&nbsp; Merely to have
+a count on which to hang Jasper!&nbsp; He cannot be hanged for killing
+Drood, if Drood is alive.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+MR. PROCTOR&rsquo;S THEORY CONTINUED<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Proctor next supposes that Datchery and others, by aid of the opium
+hag, have found out a great deal of evidence against Jasper.&nbsp; They
+have discovered from the old woman that his crime was long premeditated:
+he had threatened &ldquo;Ned&rdquo; in his opiated dreams: and had clearly
+removed Edwin&rsquo;s trinkets and watch, because they would not be
+destroyed, with his body, by the quicklime.&nbsp; This is all very well,
+but there is still, so far, no legal evidence, on my theory, that Jasper
+attempted to take Edwin&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; Jasper&rsquo;s enemies,
+therefore, can only do their best to make his life a burden to him,
+and to give him a good fright, probably with the hope of terrifying
+him into avowals.<br>
+<br>
+Now the famous ring begins &ldquo;to drag and hold&rdquo; the murderer.&nbsp;
+He is given to know, I presume, that, when Edwin disappeared, he had
+a gold ring in the pocket of his coat.&nbsp; Jasper is thus compelled
+to revisit the vault, at night, and there, in the light of his lantern,
+he sees the long-lost Edwin, with his hand in the breast of his great
+coat.<br>
+<br>
+Horrified by this unexpected appearance, Jasper turns to fly.&nbsp;
+But he is confronted by Neville Landless, Crisparkle, Tartar, and perhaps
+by Mr. Grewgious, who are all on the watch.&nbsp; He rushes up through
+the only outlet, the winding staircase of the Cathedral tower, of which
+we know that he has had the key.&nbsp; Neville, who leads his pursuers,
+&ldquo;receives his death wound&rdquo; (and, I think, is pitched off
+the top of the roof).&nbsp; Then Jasper is collared by that agile climber,
+Tartar, and by Crisparkle, always in the pink of condition.&nbsp; There
+is now something to hang Jasper for - the slaying of Landless (though,
+as far as I can see, <i>that</i> was done in self-defence).&nbsp; Jasper
+confesses all; Tartar marries Rosa; Helena marries Crisparkle.&nbsp;
+Edwin is only twenty-one, and may easily find a consoler of the fair
+sex: indeed he is &ldquo;ower young to marry yet.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The capture of Jasper was fixed, of course, for Christmas Eve.&nbsp;
+The phantom cry foreheard by Durdles, two years before, was that of
+Neville as he fell; and the dog that howled was Neville&rsquo;s dog,
+a character not yet introduced into the romance.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+MR. CUMING WALTERS&rsquo;S THEORY<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Such is Mr. Proctor&rsquo;s theory of the story, in which I mainly agree.&nbsp;
+Mr. Proctor relies on a piece of evidence overlooked by Forster, and
+certainly misinterpreted, as I think I can prove to a certainty, by
+Mr. Cuming Walters, whose theory of the real conduct of the plot runs
+thus: After watching the storm at midnight with Edwin, Neville left
+him, and went home: &ldquo;his way lay in an opposite direction.&nbsp;
+Near to the Cathedral Jasper intercepted his nephew. . . . Edwin may
+have been already drugged.&rdquo;&nbsp; How the murder was worked Mr.
+Cuming Walters does not say, but he introduces at this point, the two
+sounds foreheard by Durdles, without explaining &ldquo;the howl of a
+dog.&rdquo;&nbsp; Durdles would hear the cries, and Deputy &ldquo;had
+seen what he could not understand,&rdquo; whatever it was that he saw.&nbsp;
+Jasper, not aware of Drood&rsquo;s possession of the ring, takes only
+his watch, chain, and pin, which he places on the timbers of the weir,
+and in the river, to be picked up by that persistent winter-bather,
+Crisparkle of the telescopic and microscopic eyesight.<br>
+<br>
+As to the ring, Mr. Cuming Walters erroneously declares that Mr. Proctor
+&ldquo;ignores&rdquo; the power of the ring &ldquo;to hold and drag,&rdquo;
+and says that potent passage is &ldquo;without meaning and must be disregarded.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Proctor, in fact, gives more than three pages to the meaning of the
+ring, which &ldquo;drags&rdquo; Jasper into the vault, when he hears
+of its existence. <a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3">{3}</a>&nbsp;
+Next, Mr. Cuming Walters supposes Datchery to learn from Durdles, whom
+he is to visit, about the second hearing of the cry and the dog&rsquo;s
+howl.&nbsp; Deputy may have seen Jasper &ldquo;carrying his burden&rdquo;
+(Edwin) &ldquo;towards the Sapsea vault.&rdquo;&nbsp; In fact, Jasper
+probably saved trouble by making the drugged Edwin walk into that receptacle.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Datchery would not think of the Sapsea vault unaided.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+No - unless Datchery was Drood !&nbsp; &ldquo;Now Durdles is useful
+again.&nbsp; Tapping with his hammer he would find a change . . . inquiry
+must be made.&rdquo;&nbsp; Why should Durdles tap the Sapsea monument?&nbsp;
+As Durdles had the key, he would simply walk into the vault, and find
+the quicklime.&nbsp; Now, Jasper also, we presume, had a key, made from
+a wax impression of the original.&nbsp; If he had any sense, he would
+have removed the quicklime as easily as he inserted it, for Mr. Sapsea
+was mortal: he might die any day, and be buried, and then the quicklime,
+lying where it ought not, would give rise to awkward inquiries.<br>
+<br>
+Inquiry being made, in consequence of Durdles&rsquo;s tappings, the
+ring would be found, as Mr. Cuming Walters says.&nbsp; But even then,
+unless Deputy actually saw Jasper carry a man into the vault, nobody
+could prove Jasper&rsquo;s connection with the presence of the ring
+in the vault.&nbsp; Moreover, Deputy hated Jasper, and if he saw Jasper
+carrying the body of a man, on the night when a man disappeared, he
+was clever enough to lead Durdles to examine the vault, <i>at once</i>.&nbsp;
+Deputy had a great dislike of the Law and its officers, but here was
+a chance for him to distinguish himself, and conciliate them.<br>
+<br>
+However these things may be, Mr. Cuming Walters supposes that Jasper,
+finding himself watched, re-enters the vault, perhaps, &ldquo;to see
+that every trace of the crime had been removed.&rdquo;&nbsp; In the
+vault he finds - Datchery, that is, Helena Landless!&nbsp; Jasper certainly
+visited the vault and found somebody.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+EVIDENCE OF COLLINS&rsquo;S DRAWINGS<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+We now come to the evidence which Forster strangely overlooked, which
+Mr. Proctor and Mr. Archer correctly deciphered, and which Mr. Cuming
+Walters misinterprets.&nbsp; On December 22, 1869, Dickens wrote to
+Forster that two numbers of his romance were &ldquo;now in type.&nbsp;
+Charles Collins has designed an excellent cover.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mr. C.
+A. Collins had married a daughter of Dickens. <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a>&nbsp;
+He was an artist, a great friend of Dickens, and author of that charming
+book, &ldquo;A Cruise on Wheels.&rdquo;&nbsp; His design of the paper
+cover of the story (it appeared in monthly numbers) contained, as usual,
+sketches which give an inkling of the events in the tale.&nbsp; Mr.
+Collins was to have illustrated the book; but, finally, Mr. (now Sir)
+Luke Fildes undertook the task.&nbsp; Mr. Collins died in 1873.&nbsp;
+It appears that Forster never asked him the meaning of his designs -
+a singular oversight.<br>
+<br>
+The cover lies before the reader.&nbsp; In the left-hand top corner
+appears an allegorical female figure of joy, with flowers.&nbsp; The
+central top space contains the front of Cloisterham Cathedral, or rather,
+the nave.&nbsp; To the left walks Edwin, with hyacinthine locks, and
+a thoroughly classical type of face, and Grecian nose.&nbsp; <i>Like
+Datchery, he does not wear, but</i> <i>carries his hat</i>; this means
+nothing, if they are in the nave.&nbsp; He seems bored.&nbsp; On his
+arm is Rosa; <i>she</i> seems bored; she trails her parasol, and looks
+away from Edwin, looks down, to her right.&nbsp; On the spectator&rsquo;s
+right march the surpliced men and boys of the Choir.&nbsp; Behind them
+is Jasper, black whiskers and all; he stares after Edwin and Rosa; his
+right hand hides his mouth.&nbsp; In the corner above him is an allegorical
+female, clasping a stiletto.<br>
+<br>
+Beneath Edwin and Rosa is, first, an allegorical female figure, looking
+at a placard, headed &ldquo;LOST,&rdquo; on a door.&nbsp; Under that,
+again, is a girl in a garden-chair; a young man, whiskerless, with wavy
+hair, kneels and kisses her hand.&nbsp; She looks rather unimpassioned.&nbsp;
+I conceive the man to be Landless, taking leave of Rosa after urging
+his hopeless suit, for which Helena, we learn, &ldquo;seems to compassionate
+him.&rdquo;&nbsp; He has avowed his passion, early in the story, to
+Crisparkle.&nbsp; Below, the opium hag is smoking.&nbsp; On the other
+side, under the figures of Jasper and the Choir, the young man who kneels
+to the girl is seen bounding up a spiral staircase.&nbsp; His left hand
+is on the iron railing; he stoops over it, looking down at others who
+follow him.&nbsp; His right hand, the index finger protruded, points
+upward, and, by chance or design, points straight at Jasper in the vignette
+above.&nbsp; Beneath this man (clearly Landless) follows a tall man
+in a &ldquo;bowler&rdquo; hat, a &ldquo;cut-away&rdquo; coat, and trousers
+which show an inch of white stocking above the low shoes.&nbsp; His
+profile is hid by the wall of the spiral staircase: he might be Grewgious
+of the shoes, white stockings, and short trousers, but he may be Tartar:
+he takes two steps at a stride.&nbsp; Beneath him a youngish man, in
+a low, soft, clerical hat and a black pea-coat, ascends, looking downwards
+and backwards.&nbsp; This is clearly Crisparkle.&nbsp; A Chinaman is
+smoking opium beneath.<br>
+<br>
+In the central lowest space, a dark and whiskered man enters a dark
+chamber; his left hand is on the lock of the door; in his right he holds
+up a lantern.&nbsp; The light of the lantern reveals a young man in
+a soft hat of Tyrolese shape.&nbsp; His features are purely classical,
+his nose is Grecian, his locks are long (at least, according to the
+taste of to-day); he wears a light paletot, buttoned to the throat;
+his right arm hangs by his side; his left hand is thrust into the breast
+of his coat.&nbsp; He calmly regards the dark man with the lantern.&nbsp;
+That man, of course, is Jasper.&nbsp; The young man is EDWIN DROOD,
+of the Grecian nose, hyacinthine locks, and classic features, as in
+Sir L. Fildes&rsquo;s third illustration.<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Proctor correctly understood the unmistakable meaning of this last
+design, Jasper entering the vault -<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;<i>To-day the dead are living,<br>
+The lost is found to-day</i>.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Cuming Walters tells us that he did not examine these designs by
+Mr. Collins till he had formed his theory, and finished his book.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;On the conclusion of the whole work the pictures were referred
+to for the first time, and were then found to support in the most striking
+manner the opinions arrived at,&rdquo; namely, that Drood was killed,
+and that Helena is Datchery.&nbsp; Thus does theory blind us to facts!<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Cuming Walters connects the figure of the whiskerless young man
+kneeling to a girl in a garden seat, with the whiskered Jasper&rsquo;s
+proposal to Rosa in a garden seat.&nbsp; But Jasper does not kneel to
+Rosa; he stands apart, leaning on a sundial; he only once vaguely &ldquo;touches&rdquo;
+her, which she resents; he does not kneel; he does not kiss her hand
+(Rosa &ldquo;took the kiss sedately,&rdquo; like Maud in the poem);
+and - Jasper had lustrous thick black whiskers.<br>
+<br>
+Again, the same whiskerless young man, bounding up the spiral staircase
+in daylight, and wildly pointing upwards, is taken by Mr. Cuming Walters
+to represent Jasper climbing the staircase to reconnoitre, at night,
+with a lantern, and, of course, with black whiskers.&nbsp; The two well-dressed
+men on the stairs (Grewgious, or Tartar, and Crisparkle) also, according
+to Mr. Cuming Walters, &ldquo;relate to Jasper&rsquo;s unaccountable
+expedition with Durdles to the Cathedral.&rdquo;&nbsp; Neither of them
+is Jasper; neither of them is Durdles, &ldquo;in a suit of coarse flannel&rdquo;
+- a disreputable jacket, as Sir L. Fildes depicts him - &ldquo;with
+horn buttons,&rdquo; and a battered old tall hat.&nbsp; These interpretations
+are quite demonstrably erroneous and even impossible.&nbsp; Mr. Archer
+interprets the designs exactly as I do.<br>
+<br>
+As to the young man in the light of Jasper&rsquo;s lamp, Mr. Cuming
+Walters says, &ldquo;the large hat and the tightly-buttoned surtout
+must be observed; they are the articles of clothing on which most stress
+is laid in the description of Datchery.&nbsp; But the face is young.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The face of Datchery was elderly, and he had a huge shock of white hair,
+a wig.&nbsp; Datchery wore &ldquo;a tightish blue surtout, with a buff
+waistcoat and grey trousers; he had something of a military air.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+The young man in the vault has anything but a military air; he shows
+no waistcoat, and he does not wear &ldquo;a tightish blue surtout,&rdquo;
+or any surtout at all.<br>
+<br>
+The surtout of the period is shown, worn by Jasper, in Sir L. Fildes&rsquo;s
+sixth and ninth illustrations.&nbsp; It is a frock-coat; the collar
+descends far below the top of the waistcoat (buff or otherwise), displaying
+that garment; the coat is tightly buttoned beneath, revealing the figure;
+the tails of the coat do not reach the knees of the wearer.&nbsp; The
+young man in the vault, on the other hand, wears a loose paletot, buttoned
+to the throat (vaults are chilly places), and the coat falls so as to
+cover the knees; at least, partially.&nbsp; The young man is not, like
+Helena, &ldquo;very dark, and fierce of look, . . . of almost the gipsy
+type.&rdquo;&nbsp; He is blonde, sedate, and of the classic type, as
+Drood was.&nbsp; He is no more like Helena than Crisparkle is like Durdles.&nbsp;
+Mr. Cuming Walters says that Mr. Proctor was &ldquo;unable to allude
+to the prophetic picture by Collins.&rdquo;&nbsp; As a fact, this picture
+is fully described by Mr. Proctor, but Mr. Walters used the wrong edition
+of his book, unwittingly.<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Proctor writes:- &ldquo;Creeping down the crypt steps, oppressed
+by growing horror and by terror of coming judgment, sickening under
+fears engendered by the darkness of night and the charnel-house air
+he breathed, Jasper opens the door of the tomb and holds up his lantern,
+shuddering at the thought of what it may reveal to him.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;And what sees he?&nbsp; Is it the spirit of his victim that stands
+there, &lsquo;in his habit as he lived,&rsquo; his hand clasped on his
+breast, where the ring had been when he was murdered?&nbsp; What else
+can Jasper deem it?&nbsp; There, clearly visible in the gloom at the
+back of the tomb, stands Edwin Drood, with stern look fixed on him -
+pale, silent, relentless!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Again, &ldquo;On the title-page are given two of the small pictures
+from the Love side of the cover, two from the Murder side, and the central
+picture below, which presents the central horror of the story - the
+end and aim of the &lsquo;Datchery assumption&rsquo; and of Mr. Grewgious&rsquo;s
+plans - showing Jasper driven to seek for the proofs of his crime amid
+the dust to which, as he thought, the flesh and bones, and the very
+clothes of his victim, had been reduced.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+There are only two possible choices; either Collins, under Dickens&rsquo;s
+oral instructions, depicted Jasper finding Drood alive in the vault,
+an incident which was to occur in the story; or Dickens bade Collins
+do this for the purpose of misleading his readers in an illegitimate
+manner; while the young man in the vault was really to be some person
+&ldquo;made up&rdquo; to look like Drood, and so to frighten Jasper
+with a pseudo-ghost of that hero.&nbsp; The latter device, the misleading
+picture, would be childish, and the pseudo-ghost, exactly like Drood,
+could not be acted by the gipsy-like, fierce Helena, or by any other
+person in the romance.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+MR. WALTERS&rsquo;S THEORY CONTINUED<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Cuming Walters guesses that Jasper was to aim a deadly blow (with
+his left hand, to judge from the picture) at Helena, and that Neville
+&ldquo;was to give his life for hers.&rdquo;&nbsp; But, manifestly,
+Neville was to lead the hunt of Jasper up the spiral stair, as in Collins&rsquo;s
+design, and was to be dashed from the roof: his body beneath was to
+be &ldquo;<i>that</i>, I never saw before.&nbsp; <i>That</i> must be
+real.&nbsp; Look what a poor mean miserable thing it is!&rdquo; as Jasper
+says in his vision.<br>
+<br>
+Mr. Cuming Walters, pursuing his idea of Helena as both Datchery and
+also as the owner of &ldquo;the <i>young</i> face&rdquo; of the youth
+in the vault (and also of the young hands, a young girl&rsquo;s hands
+could never pass for those of &ldquo;an elderly buffer&rdquo;), exclaims:
+&ldquo;Imagine the intense power of the dramatic climax, when Datchery,
+the elderly man, is re-transformed into Helena Landless, the young and
+handsome woman; and when she reveals the seemingly impenetrable secret
+which had been closed up in one guilty man&rsquo;s mind.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The situations are startling, I admit, but how would Canon Crisparkle
+like them?&nbsp; He is, we know, to marry Helena, &ldquo;the young person,
+my dear,&rdquo; Miss Twinkleton would say, &ldquo;who for months lived
+alone, at inns, wearing a blue surtout, a buff waistcoat, and grey -
+&rdquo;&nbsp; Here horror chokes the utterance of Miss Twinkleton.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Then she was in the vault in <i>another</i> disguise, not more
+womanly, at that awful scene when poor Mr. Jasper was driven mad, so
+that he confessed all sorts of nonsense, for, my dear, all the Close
+believes that it <i>was</i> nonsense, and that Mr. Jasper was reduced
+to insanity by persecution.&nbsp; And Mr. Crisparkle, with that elegant
+dainty mother of his - it has broken her heart - is marrying this half-caste
+gipsy <i>trollop</i>, with her blue surtout and grey - oh, it is a disgrace
+to Cloisterham!&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+The climax, in fact, as devised by Mr. Cuming Walters, is rather too
+dramatic for the comfort of a minor canon.&nbsp; A humorist like Dickens
+ought to have seen the absurdity of the situation.&nbsp; Mr. Walters
+<i>may</i> be right, Helena may be Datchery, but she ought not to be.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+WHO WAS THE PRINCESS PUFFER?<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Who was the opium hag, the Princess Puffer?&nbsp; Mr. Cuming Walters
+writes: &ldquo;We make a guess, for Dickens gives us no solid facts.&nbsp;
+But when we remember that not a word is said throughout the volume of
+Jasper&rsquo;s antecedents, who he was, and where he came from; when
+we remember that but for his nephew he was a lonely man; when we see
+that he was both criminal and artist; when we observe his own wheedling
+propensity, his false and fulsome protestations of affection, his slyness,
+his subtlety, his heartlessness, his tenacity; and when, above all,
+we know that the opium vice is <i>hereditary</i>, and that a <i>young</i>
+man would not be addicted to it unless born with the craving; <a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5">{5}</a>
+then, it is not too wild a conjecture that Jasper was the wayward progeny
+of this same opium-eating woman, all of whose characteristics he possessed,
+and, perchance, of a man of criminal instincts, but of a superior position.&nbsp;
+Jasper is a morbid and diseased being while still in the twenties, a
+mixture of genius and vice.&nbsp; He hates and he loves fiercely, as
+if there were wild gipsy blood in his veins.&nbsp; Though seemingly
+a model of decorum and devoted to his art, he complains of his &ldquo;daily
+drudging round&rdquo; and &ldquo;the cramped monotony of his existence.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He commits his crime with the ruthlessness of a beast, his own nature
+being wholly untamed.&nbsp; If we deduce that his father was an adventurer
+and a vagabond, we shall not be far wrong.&nbsp; If we deduce that his
+mother was the opium-eater, prematurely aged, who had transmitted her
+vicious propensity to her child, we shall almost certainly be right.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+WHO WAS JASPER?<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Who was Jasper?&nbsp; He was the brother-in-law of the late Mr. Drood,
+a respected engineer, and University man.&nbsp; We do not know whence
+came Mrs. Drood, Jasper&rsquo;s sister, but is it likely that her mother
+&ldquo;drank heaven&rsquo;s-hard&rdquo; - so the hag says of herself
+- then took to keeping an opium den, and there entertained her son Jasper,
+already an accomplished vocalist, but in a lower station than that to
+which his musical genius later raised him, as lay Precentor?&nbsp; If
+the Princess Puffer be, as on Mr. Cuming Walters&rsquo;s theory she
+is, Edwin&rsquo;s long-lost grandmother, her discovery would be unwelcome
+to Edwin.&nbsp; Probably she did not live much longer; &ldquo;my lungs
+are like cabbage nets,&rdquo; she says.&nbsp; Mr. Cuming Walters goes
+on -<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Her purpose is left obscure.&nbsp; How easily, however, we see
+possibilities in a direction such as this.&nbsp; The father, perhaps
+a proud, handsome man, deserts the woman, and removes the child.&nbsp;
+The woman hates both for scorning her, but the father dies, or disappears,
+and is beyond her vengeance.&nbsp; Then the child, victim to the ills
+in his blood, creeps back to the opium den, not knowing his mother,
+but immediately recognized by her.&nbsp; She will make the child suffer
+for the sins of the father, who had destroyed her happiness.&nbsp; Such
+a theme was one which appealed to Dickens.&nbsp; It must not, however,
+be urged; and the crucial question after all is concerned with the opium
+woman as one of the unconscious instruments of justice, aiding with
+her trifle of circumstantial evidence the Nemesis awaiting Jasper.<br>
+<br>
+&ldquo;Another hypothesis - following on the Carker theme in &lsquo;Dombey
+and Son&rsquo; - is that Jasper, a dissolute and degenerate man, lascivious,
+and heartless, may have wronged a child of the woman&rsquo;s; but it
+is not likely that Dickens would repeat the Mrs. Brown story.&rdquo;<br>
+<br>
+Jasper, <i>p&egrave;re</i>, father of John Jasper and of Mrs. Drood,
+however handsome, ought not to have deserted Mrs. Jasper.&nbsp; Whether
+John Jasper, prematurely devoted to opium, became Edwin&rsquo;s guardian
+at about the age of fifteen, or whether, on attaining his majority,
+he succeeded to some other guardian, is not very obvious.&nbsp; In short,
+we cannot guess why the Princess Puffer hated Jasper, a paying client
+of long standing.&nbsp; We are only certain that Jasper was a bad fellow,
+and that the Princess Puffer said, &ldquo;I know him, better than all
+the Reverend Parsons put together know him.&rdquo;&nbsp; On the other
+hand, Edwin &ldquo;seems to know&rdquo; the opium woman, when he meets
+her on Christmas Eve, which may be a point in favour of her being his
+long-lost grandmother.<br>
+<br>
+Jasper was certainly tried and condemned; for Dickens intended &ldquo;to
+take Mr. Fildes to a condemned cell in Maidstone, or some other gaol,
+in order to make a drawing.&rdquo; <a name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6">{6}</a>&nbsp;
+Possibly Jasper managed to take his own life, in the cell; possibly
+he was duly hanged.<br>
+<br>
+Jasper, after all, was a failure as a murderer, even if we suppose him
+to have strangled his nephew successfully.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is obvious
+to the most excruciatingly feeble capacity&rdquo; that, if he meant
+to get rid of proofs of the identity of Drood&rsquo;s body by means
+of quicklime, it did not suffice to remove Drood&rsquo;s pin, watch,
+and chain.&nbsp; Drood would have coins of the realm in his pockets,
+gold, silver, bronze.&nbsp; Quicklime would not destroy these metallic
+objects, nor would it destroy keys, which would easily prove Drood&rsquo;s
+identity.&nbsp; If Jasper knew his business, he would, of course, rifle
+<i>all</i> of Edwin&rsquo;s pockets minutely, and would remove the metallic
+buttons of his braces, which generally display the maker&rsquo;s name,
+or the tailor&rsquo;s.&nbsp; On research I find &ldquo;H. Poole &amp;
+Co., Savile Row&rdquo; on my buttons.&nbsp; In this inquiry of his,
+Jasper would have discovered the ring in Edwin&rsquo;s breast pocket,
+and would have taken it away.&nbsp; Perhaps Dickens never thought of
+that little fact: if he did think of it, no doubt he found some mode
+of accounting for Jasper&rsquo;s unworkmanlike negligence.&nbsp; The
+trouser-buttons would have led any inquirer straight to Edwin&rsquo;s
+tailor; I incline to suspect that neither Dickens nor Jasper noticed
+that circumstance.&nbsp; The conscientious artist in crime cannot afford
+to neglect the humblest and most obvious details.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+CONCLUSION<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+According to my theory, which mainly rests on the unmistakable evidence
+of the cover drawn by Collins under Dickens&rsquo;s directions, all
+&ldquo;ends well.&rdquo;&nbsp; Jasper comes to the grief he deserves:
+Helena, after her period of mourning for Neville, marries Crisparkle:
+Rosa weds her mariner.&nbsp; Edwin, at twenty-one, is not heart-broken,
+but, a greatly improved character, takes, to quote his own words, &ldquo;a
+sensible interest in works of engineering skill, especially when they
+are to change the whole condition of an undeveloped country&rdquo; -
+Egypt.<br>
+<br>
+These conclusions are inevitable unless we either suppose Dickens to
+have arranged a disappointment for his readers in the <i>tableau</i>
+of Jasper and Drood, in the vault, on the cover, or can persuade ourselves
+that not Drood, but some other young man, is revealed by the light of
+Jasper&rsquo;s lantern.&nbsp; Now, the young man is very like Drood,
+and very unlike the dark fierce Helena Landless: disguised as Drood,
+this time, not as Datchery.&nbsp; All the difficulty as to why Drood,
+if he escaped alive, did not at once openly denounce Jasper, is removed
+when we remember, as Mr. Archer and I have independently pointed out,
+that Drood, when attacked by Jasper, was (like Durdles in the &ldquo;unaccountable
+expedition&rdquo;) stupefied by drugs, and so had no valid evidence
+against his uncle.&nbsp; Whether science is acquainted with the drugs
+necessary for such purposes is another question.&nbsp; They are always
+kept in stock by starving and venal apothecaries in fiction and the
+drama, and are a recognized convention of romance.<br>
+<br>
+So ends our unfolding of the Mystery of Edwin Drood.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+Footnotes:<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a>&nbsp; Landless
+is not &ldquo;Lackland,&rdquo; but a form of de Laundeles, a Lothian
+name of the twelfth century, merged later in that of Ormistoun.<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a>&nbsp; <i>Life of
+Dickens</i>, vol. iii. pp. 425-439.<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3">{3}</a>&nbsp; J. Cuming
+Walters, p. 102; Proctor, pp. 131-135.&nbsp; Mr. Cuming Walters used
+an edition of 1896, apparently a reprint of a paper by Proctor, written
+earlier than his final book of 1887.&nbsp; Hence the error as to Mr.
+Proctor&rsquo;s last theory.<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a>&nbsp; Mrs. Perugini,
+the books say, but certainly a daughter.<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5">{5}</a>&nbsp; What would
+Weissmann say to all this?<br>
+<br>
+<a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6">{6}</a>&nbsp; So Mr. Cuming
+Walters quotes Mr. Hughes, who quotes Sir L. Fildes.&nbsp; <i>He</i>
+believes that Jasper strangled Edwin with the black-silk scarf, and,
+no doubt, Jasper was for long of that opinion himself.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PUZZLE OF DICKENS'S LAST PLOT ***<br>
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