THE PUZZLE OF 
 DICKENS'S LAST PLOT 
 
THE PUZZLE OF 
 DICKENS'S LAST PLOT 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 LONDON 
 CHAPMAN & HALL, ld. 
 
 1905 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ^^ORSTER tells US that Dickens, in his 
 later novels, from Bleak House onwards 
 (1853), ''assiduously cultivated" con- 
 struction, '' 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, ''atmo- 
 sphere," humour. 
 
 But as, in the natural changes of life, 
 and under the strain of restless and un- 
 satisfied activity, his old buoyancy and 
 unequalled high spirits deserted Dickens, 
 
 he certainly wrote no lono^er in what 
 
 247735 
 
vi Introduction 
 
 Scott, speaking of himself, calls the 
 manner of ''hab nab at a venture." H^ 
 constructed elaborate plots, rich in secret 
 and surprises. He emulated the manner 
 of Wilkie Collins, or even of Gaboriauj, 
 while he combined with some of th^'^ 
 elements of the detective novel, or roma'h 
 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 Nickhby. ' ' Youth 
 will be served ; " no sedulous care coula 
 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 
 
Introduction vii 
 
 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 there- 
 fore 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 Twinkle- 
 ton, the schoolmistress, are not in the 
 
viii Introduction 
 
 author's best vein of humour. ''The 
 Billickin," on the other hand, the lodging- 
 house keeper, is '' in very gracious fool- 
 ing : " her unlooked-for sallies in skir- 
 mishes 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 garmUy in Deputy, who 
 is in not unpleasant contrast with the 
 pathetic Jo of Bleak Ho2ise, 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 *' atmo- 
 sphere " of a small cathedral town. Here 
 there is a lack of softness and delicacy of 
 
Introduction ix 
 
 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," 
 
X Introduction 
 
 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 Hey- 
 wood, 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 
 
Introduction xi 
 
 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 re- 
 member that, according to Forster, *' such 
 was Dickens's interest in things super- 
 natural 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 
 sjoecimens of the supernormal — and he 
 uiay have gone to the limited extent 
 vv^hich my hypothesis requires. If I 
 am right, Dickens went further, and 
 fared worse, in the too material premoni 
 ti ons of ''The Signalman" in Miigby 
 J unction. 
 
xii Introduction 
 
 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, I 
 
 September 4, 1905. i 
 
THE PUZZLE OF 
 DICKENS^S LAST PLOT 
 
 THE STORY 
 
 Dramatis Persons 
 
 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 
 *Tast friends and old college companions." 
 
 B 
 
y ^ '0 f^jPli^ Puzzle of 
 
 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, 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 3 
 
 John Jasper (aged about sixteen when 
 the male parents died), was Edwin's 
 '* trustee," as well as his uncle and de- 
 voted friend. Rosa's little fortune was 
 an annuity producing ;2^25o 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 
 
4 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 move- 
 ments, for reasons unexplained. 
 
 Jasper is secretly in love with Rosa, 
 the fiancde 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 uncom- 
 fortable terms : she does not love him, 
 while he perhaps does love her, but is 
 annoyed by her manner, and by the 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 5 
 
 gossip about their betrothal. *' The 
 bloom is off the plum " of their pre- 
 arranged 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 her- 
 self. This Cathedral tower, thus early 
 
6 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 China- 
 man in their sleep. He pronounces it 
 ** unintelligible," which satisfies him that 
 his own babble, when under opium, 
 must be unintelligible also. He is, pre- 
 sumably, 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 mus- 
 cular 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 7 
 
 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 some- 
 times 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 illus- 
 tration shows Edwin as ''a lad with the 
 bloom of a lass," with a classic profile; 
 
8 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 '' Monu- 
 ment," a vault of some ^ort 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, 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 9 
 
 as the epitaph, of course, is to be en- 
 graved 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 
 
lo The Puzzle of 
 
 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. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 1 1 
 
 The Landlesses 
 
 Two new characters are now introduced, 
 Neville and Helena Landless,* 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 
 showmg the daring of a man!' Edwin 
 Drood's air of supercilious ownership of 
 
 * Landless is not "Lackland," but a form of de Laundeles, 
 a Lothian name of the twelfth century, merged later in 
 that of Ormistoun. 
 
12 The Puzzle of 
 
 Rosa Bud (indicated as a fault of youth 
 and circumstance, not of heart and cha- 
 racter), 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 pro- 
 duces 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 13 
 
 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 ity 
 
 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 pro- 
 vokes 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 
 \\\^ fracas in the town. 
 
14 The Puzzle of 
 
 Mr. Grewgious 
 
 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 Christ- 
 mas Eve. Jasper, when Crisparkle pro- 
 poses this, denotes by his manner ''some 
 close internal calculation." We see that 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 15 
 
 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 Christ- 
 mas Eve there will be no moonshine at 
 midnight. Jasper, having worked out 
 this problem, accepts Crisparkle's pro- 
 posal, 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, 
 
1 6 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 expe- 
 dition with Durdles among the tombs, 
 vaults, towers, and ruins to-night." The 
 impossible Durdles has the keys neces- 
 sary 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 17 
 
 goes to the den of Durdles. In the yard 
 of this inspector of monuments he is^ 
 bidden to beware of a mound of quick- 
 lime near the yard gate. '' With a little 
 handy stirring, quick enough to eat your 
 bones," says Durdles. There is some con- 
 siderable 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 
 
 c 
 
1 8 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 under- 
 stood 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 con- 
 siderably overdid the premonitory busi- 
 ness 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. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 19 
 
 All this while, and later, Jasper exa- 
 mines 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 contem- 
 plates 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 Cathe- 
 dral, because he wishes to assure himself 
 that it is lonely enough for his later un- 
 described but easily guessed proceedings 
 in this night of mystery. He will have 
 much to do that could not brook wit- 
 nesses, 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 moon- 
 light, about 8.30 p.m. ''One might fancy 
 
20 The Puzzle of 
 
 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. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 21 
 
 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 v/ith 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 
 
22 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 con- 
 vey several wheelbarrowfuls of quicklime 
 from Durdles's yard to Mrs. Sapsea's 
 sepulchre, of which monument he pro- 
 bably took the key from Durdles, and 
 tried its identity by clinking. But even 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 23 
 
 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 
 
24 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 
 fiancde, 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 A gam ? 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 25 
 
 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 
 
26 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 six- 
 pence, 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 27 
 
 story to Jasper that night, in the pre- 
 sence 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 dis- 
 placed 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 
 
28 The Puzzle of 
 
 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, Grew- 
 gious, as we know, was to be at Clois- 
 terham at Christmas. True, he was en- 
 gaged 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, 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 29 
 
 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 
 \\diWQ Just left Miss Landless !' He then 
 slowly and watchfully told Jasper that 
 Edwins 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 
 
30 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 informa- 
 tion 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 begin- 
 ning 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 31 
 
 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 co7ne 
 from Miss Landless T 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, 
 
32 The Puzzle of 
 
 with Jasper's consequent shriek and fit, 
 confirms the hypothesis. Thus Grew- 
 gious 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 know- 
 ledge limited to the evidence that Jasper 
 has murdered Edwin? Or does Grew- 
 gious 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 33 
 
 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 mys- 
 terious impression, apparently telepathic 
 (the book is rich in such psychical pheno- 
 mena), 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 Grew^gious also dwells, and in- 
 cessantly watches Neville out of his 
 window. 
 
 D 
 
34 The Puzzle of 
 
 About six months later, Helena Land- 
 less 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, buttojied 
 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 35 
 
 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, scatter- 
 ing 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 
 
36 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 con- 
 vention of successful disguise, and for 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 37 
 
 the necessities of the novelist. A tightly 
 buttoned surtout would show Helenas 
 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 
 deference : 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. 
 
38 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 win- 
 dows. 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"! 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 39 
 
 " On Thee his hopes to fix 
 Damn him again ! " 
 
 Would he fool thus, if he knew Jasper 
 to have killed Edwin ? He is not cer- 
 tain 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. How- 
 ever, 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 com- 
 munication 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 
 
40 The Puzzle of 
 
 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." 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 41 
 
 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 reminis- 
 cent — the brief, unresisting death — while 
 another part is a separate vision, is 
 prospective, ''premonitory"? Does he 
 see himself pitching Neville Landless off 
 
42 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 "warm'np-s'' 
 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 43 
 
 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 some- 
 body else, he would, of course, give a 
 kind of start and stare, on hearing of 
 
44 The Puzzle 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 unneces- 
 sary question," says Mr. Walters. A 
 needless question for Datchery's informa- 
 tion, 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 45 
 
 have learned nothing new whatever " from 
 the hag. 
 
 But Edwin would have learned some- 
 thing 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 abso- 
 lutely 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 Christ- 
 mas Eve, had learned from the hag only 
 that she took opium, and that she had 
 
46 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 Eura- 
 sian 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 47 
 
 used a form of a very old and favourite 
 ficelle of his : the watching of a villain by 
 by an improbable and unsuspected person, 
 in this case thought to be dead. If Helena 
 is Datchery, the '' assumption " or per- 
 sonation is in the highest degree impro- 
 bable, her whole bearing is quite out of 
 her possibilities, and the personation is 
 very absurd. 
 
 Here the story ends. 
 
48 The Puzzle of 
 
 THEORIES OF THE MYSTERY 
 
 Forster's Evidence 
 
 We have some external evidence as to 
 
 Dickens's solution of his own problem, 
 
 from Forster.* 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 
 
 * Life of Dickens^ vol. iii. pp. 425-439. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 49 
 
 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, / 
 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 
 
 E 
 
50 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 re- 
 marks, Dickens had used that trick twice 
 already. (" Madman's Manuscript," in 
 Pickwick; "Clock Case Confession," in 
 Master Httmphrey s Clock) The quick- 
 lime 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 51 
 
 of keeping in her speech and ma^^Jlier 
 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 unsus- 
 pected watcher, as Mr. Proctor shows, in 
 almost all his novels. In Martin Chuzzle- 
 wit, 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 con- 
 tained 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 
 
52 The Puzzle of 
 
 quicklime, in a locked vault. Conse- 
 quently 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 com- 
 pelled 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 53 
 
 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 cer- 
 tainly 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 re- 
 jected Forster's report, from memory, of 
 what he understood to be the "incommu- 
 nicable 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 
 
54 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 misunder- 
 stood 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 mid- 
 night on Christmas Eve, recommended 
 a warm drink — mulled wine, drugged — 
 and then proposed another stroll of in- 
 spection 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 55 
 
 to bed. Next, according to Mr. Proctor, 
 Durdles, then, ''lying drunk in the pre- 
 cincts," 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 
 
.56 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 57 
 
 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 incom- 
 plete 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 /le Jiad been at the 
 opuim den throngh 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 
 
58 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 any- 
 thing 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 oc- 
 curred, or who attacked him. Jasper 
 revives, '' look on't again he dare not," 
 — on the body of his victim — and /le 
 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 59 
 
 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 re- 
 moved 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 
 
6o The Puzzle of 
 
 visit to the tomb of his lost love, Rosa's 
 mother. Grewgious was very senti- 
 mental, 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 en- 
 gagement. He would wish to see Edwin 
 and Rosa together, and Edwin was leaving 
 Cloisterham. The date of Grewgious's 
 arrival at Cloisterham is studiously con- 
 cealed. 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 6i 
 
 occurrences in every-day life, but none of 
 the story is probable. Jasper's ''weird 
 seizures " are meant to lead up to some- 
 thmg. 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 cir- 
 cumstances but mistily : his evidence 
 would be of no value against Jasper. 
 
 Mr. Proctor next supposes, we saw, 
 that Drood got into touch with Grew- 
 gious, and I have added the circum- 
 stances which might take Grewgious to 
 the churchyard. Next, when Edwin re- 
 covered 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 
 
62 The Puzzle of 
 
 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," 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 63 
 
 Tartar and she. This is a plausible sug- 
 gestion 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 wTiting 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 
 
64 The Puzzle of 
 
 what other evidence could be adduced? 
 Thus I had worked out Droods con- 
 dition, 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 news- 
 paper 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 65 
 
 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 pur- 
 pose 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. \ 
 
66 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 yoimg 
 maUy 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 67 
 
 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 objec- 
 tion that there was no reason why Drood, 
 if alive, should go spying about in dis- 
 guise. 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 
 
68 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 re- 
 reading 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 re- 
 morseful 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. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 69 
 
 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 im- 
 pression. The doom of Landless is 
 conspicuously fixed, and why is Landless 
 to be killed by Jasper? Merely to have 
 
70 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 pre- 
 meditated : 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, 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 71 
 
 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 com- 
 pelled 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 
 b^ lleville Landless, Crisparkle, Tartar, 
 and perhaps by Mr. Grew^gious, 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 
 
72 The Puzzle of 
 
 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. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 73 
 
 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 
 
74 The Puzzle of 
 
 the river, to be picked up by that per- 
 sistent 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.* 
 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 75 
 
 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 
 
76 The Puzzle of 
 
 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. 
 
Ko. I] 
 
 APHIL, 1870. 
 
 [Price One Shilling. 
 
 LUJNL»UiN: C HAPMAN & HALL, l'J3, I' lCCAlHLLy. 
 
 Advertisements to te sent to the Publishers, and ADAMS & FEANCI3, 59, Fleet Street, E.C. 
 [7hc rtghl 0/ Trmslalwn is reservid.] 
 
 \Toface p. 76. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 77 
 
 Evidence of Collins's Drawings 
 
 We now come to the evidence which 
 Forster strangely overlooked, which Mr. 
 Proctor and Mr. Archer correctly de- 
 ciphered, and which Mr. Cuming Walters 
 misinterprets. On December 22, 1869, 
 Dickens wrote to Forster that two num- 
 bers of his romance were ''now in type. 
 Charles Collins has designed an excellent 
 cover." Mr. C. A. Collins had married 
 a daughter of Dickens.* 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 illus- 
 trated the book; but, finally, Mr. (now 
 
 * Mrs. Perugini, the books say, but certainly a daughter. 
 
78 The Puzzle of 
 
 Sir) Luke Fildes undertook the task. 
 Mr. ColHns 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 alle- 
 gorical 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 sur- 
 pliced men and boys of the Choir. Behind 
 them is Jasper, black whiskers and all ; 
 he stares after Edwin and Rosa; his 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 79 
 
 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 con- 
 ceive the man to be Landless, taking leave 
 of Rosa after urging his hopeless suit, for 
 which Helena, we learn, *' seems to com- 
 passionate 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 
 
8o The Puzzle of 
 
 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 pro- 
 file 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, look- 
 ing 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 8i 
 
 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 livings 
 The lost is foimd to-day'' 
 
 Mr. Cuming Walters tells us that he 
 did not examine these designs by Mr. 
 
 G 
 
82 The Puzzle of 
 
 Collins till he had formed his theory, 
 and finished his book. '' On the con- 
 clusion 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 re- 
 sents ; 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. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 83 
 
 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 expe- 
 dition 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 demon- 
 strably erroneous and even impossible. 
 Mr. Archer interprets the designs exactly 
 as I do. 
 
 As to the young man in the light of 
 
84 The Puzzle of | 
 
 Jasper's lamp, Mr. Cuming Walters i 
 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 de- ; 
 scription 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 1 
 tightish blue surtout, with a buff waist- i 
 coat and grey trousers ; he had some- ' 
 thing 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 sur- 
 tout," or any surtout at all. i 
 The surtout of the period is shown, 1 
 worn by Jasper, in Sir L. Fildes's sixth ; 
 and ninth illustrations. It is a frock- 1 
 coat; the collar descends far below the i 
 top of the waistcoat (buff or otherwise), ; 
 displaying that garment ; the coat is 1 
 

 
Dickens's Last Plot 85 
 
 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, 
 
86 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 87 
 
 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 in- 
 structions, 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 mis- 
 leading 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. 
 
88 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 89 
 
 Datchery, the elderly man, is re-trans- 
 formed 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 
 
go The Puzzle of 
 
 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 remem- 
 ber that not a word is said throughout 
 the volume of Jasper s antecedents, who 
 he was, and where he came from ; when 
 
Dickens's Last Plot gi 
 
 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 yotmg man 
 would not be addicted to it unless born 
 with the craving;* 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 dis- 
 eased 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 
 
 * What would Weissmann say to all this ? 
 
92 The Puzzle of I 
 
 seemingly a model of decorum and I 
 devoted to his art, he complains of \ 
 his ''daily drudging round" and ''the • 
 cramped monotony of his existence." | 
 He commits his crime with the ruthless- ] 
 ness 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 i 
 
 engineer, and University man. We do ' 
 not know whence came Mrs. Drood, 
 
 Jasper's sister, but is it likely that her ^ 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 93 
 
 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, 
 
94 The Puzzle of 
 
 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, 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 95 
 
 ought not to have deserted Mrs. Jasper. 
 Whether John Jasper, prematurely de- 
 voted 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 grand- 
 mother. 
 
 Jasper was certainly tried and con- 
 demned ; for Dickens intended ''to take 
 Mr. Fildes to a condemned cell in Maid- 
 stone, or some other gaol, in order to 
 
96 The Puzzle of 
 
 make a drawing."* 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 
 
 * So Mr. Cuming Walters quotes Mr. Hughes, who quotes 
 Sir L. Tildes. He believes that Jasper strangled Edwin 
 with the black-silk scarf, and, no doubt, Jasper was for 
 long of that opinion himself. 
 
Dickens's Last Plot 97 
 
 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 un- 
 workmanlike 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 con- 
 scientious artist in crime cannot afford 
 to neglect the humblest and most obvious 
 details. 
 
 H 
 
98 The Puzzle of 
 
 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 engi- 
 neering skill, especially when they are 
 to change the whole condition of an 
 undeveloped country " — Egypt. 
 
 These conclusions are inevitable un- 
 less we either suppose Dickens to have 
 
Dickens'^'. Last Plot ; i "'•'> 99 
 
 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 expedi- 
 tion ") 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 
 
I oa ' ■ Dickens'.s 'La^t Plot 
 
 apothecaries in fiction and the drama, 
 and are a recognized convention of 
 romance. 
 
 So ends our unfolding of the Mystery 
 of Edwin Drood. 
 
 THE END 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
\ 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Jim 2^ 1^40 
 
 ■ 5Mar'56l<K 
 
 UAUG'56Hi 
 
 JUL V ^' #^ 
 
 14My'62MW 
 
 7 B"^ 
 
 ^tf 
 
 .NTER-LlBR^Wr. 
 
 m 
 
 (lEC'O to 
 
 lECT) 
 
 LD 21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6 
 
 sD^N 
 
 , .:iVED 
 
 •IN (13 1997 
 
 '■-'CfULATiON DEPT. 
 
 APR 2 8 1972 ^--^^-^ ''■^ ^^ 
 
 'JUN 2 2009 
 
 c 
 
 JUN 171 -UAM^ 
 AUG24 
 
 CD AUG2 9 73 
 
 PW5 9 
 
 )476 
 
U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 CDSfiDmE4b 
 
 ^ 
 
 ) 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY