Purpose of the Expedition
Jasper has had ample time to take models in wax of all Durdles’s keys. But he could have done that in a few minutes, while Durdles slept, if he had wax with him, without leaving the crypt. He has also had time to convey several wheelbarrowfuls of quicklime from Durdles’s yard to Mrs. Sapsea’s sepulchre, of which monument he probably took the key from Durdles, and tried its identity by clinking. But even in a Cathedral town, even after midnight, several successive expeditions of a lay precentor with a wheelbarrow full of quicklime would have been apt to attract the comment of some belated physician, some cleric coming from a sick bed, or some local roysterers. Therefore it is that Dickens insists on the “utterly deserted” character of the area, and shows us that Jasper has made sure of that essential fact by observations from the tower top. Still, his was a perilous expedition, with his wheelbarrow! We should probably learn later, that Jasper was detected by the wakeful Deputy, who loathed him. Moreover, next morning Durdles was apt to notice that some of his quicklime had been removed. As far as is shown, Durdles noticed nothing of that kind, though he does observe peculiarities in Jasper’s behaviour.
The next point in the tale is that Edwin and Rosa meet, and have sense enough to break off their engagement. But Edwin, represented as really good-hearted, now begins to repent his past behaviour, and, though he has a kind of fancy for Miss Landless, he pretty clearly falls deeper in love with his late fiancée, and weeps his loss in private: so we are told.
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve comes, the day of the dinner of three, Jasper, Landless, and Edwin. The chapter describing this fateful day (xiv.) is headed, When shall these Three meet again? and Mr. Proctor argues that Dickens intends that they shall meet again. The intention, and the hint, are much in Dickens’s manner. Landless means to start, next day, very early, on a solitary walking tour, and buys an exorbitantly heavy stick. We casually hear that Jasper knows Edwin to possess no jewellery, except a watch and chain and a scarf-pin. As Edwin moons about, he finds the old opium hag, come down from London, “seeking a needle in a bottle of hay,” she says – that is, hunting vainly for Jasper.
Please remark that Jasper has run up to town, on December 23, and has saturated his system with a debauch of opium on the very eve of the day when he clearly means to kill Edwin. This was a most injudicious indulgence, in the circumstances. A maiden murder needs nerve! We know that “fiddlestrings was weakness to express the state of” Jasper’s “nerves” on the day after the night of opium with which the story opens. On December 24, Jasper returned home, the hag at his heels. The old woman, when met by Edwin, has a curious film over her eyes; “he seems to know her.” “Great heaven,” he thinks, next moment. “Like Jack that night!” This refers to a kind of fit of Jasper’s, after dinner, on the first evening of the story. Edwin has then seen Jack Jasper in one of his “filmy” seizures. The woman prays Edwin for three shillings and sixpence, to buy opium. He gives her the money; she asks his Christian name. “Edwin.” Is “Eddy” a sweetheart’s form of that? He says that he has no sweetheart. He is told to be thankful that his name is not Ned. Now, Jasper alone calls Edwin “Ned.” “‘Ned’ is a threatened name, a dangerous name,” says the hag, who has heard Jasper threaten “Ned” in his opium dreams.
Edwin determines to tell this adventure to Jasper, but not on this night: to-morrow will do. Now, did he tell the story to Jasper that night, in the presence of Landless, at dinner? If so, Helena Landless might later learn the fact from Neville. If she knew it, she would later tell Mr. Grewgious.
The three men meet and dine. There is a fearful storm. “Stones are displaced upon the summit of the great tower.” Next morning, early, Jasper yells to Crisparkle, who is looking out of his window in Minor Canon Row, that Edwin has disappeared. Neville has already set out on his walking tour.
After the Disappearance
Men go forth and apprehend Neville, who shows fight with his heavy stick. We learn that he and Drood left Jasper’s house at midnight, went for ten minutes to look at the river under the wind, and parted at Crisparkle’s door. Neville now remains under suspicion: Jasper directs the search in the river, on December 25, 26, and 27. On the evening of December 27, Grewgious visits Jasper. Now, Grewgious, as we know, was to be at Cloisterham at Christmas. True, he was engaged to dine on Christmas Day with Bazzard, his clerk; but, thoughtful as he was of the moody Bazzard, as Edwin was leaving Cloisterham he would excuse himself. He would naturally take a great part in the search for Edwin, above all as Edwin had in his possession the ring so dear to the lawyer. Edwin had not shown it to Rosa when they determined to part. He “kept it in his breast,” and the ring, we learn, was “gifted with invincible force to hold and drag,” so Dickens warns us.
The ring is obviously to be a pièce de conviction. But our point, at present, is that we do not know how Grewgious, to whom this ring was so dear, employed himself at Cloisterham – after Edwin’s disappearance – between December 25 and December 27. On the evening of the 27th, he came to Jasper, saying, “I have just left Miss Landless.” He then slowly and watchfully told Jasper that Edwin’s engagement was broken off, while the precentor gasped, perspired, tore his hair, shrieked, and finally subsided into a heap of muddy clothes on the floor. Meanwhile, Mr. Grewgious, calmly observing these phenomena, warmed his hands at the fire for some time before he called in Jasper’s landlady.
Grewgious now knows by Jasper’s behaviour that he believes himself to have committed a superfluous crime, by murdering Edwin, who no longer stood between him and Rosa, as their engagement was already at an end. Whether a Jasper, in real life, would excite himself so much, is another question. We do not know, as Mr. Proctor insists, what Mr. Grewgious had been doing at Cloisterham between Christmas Day and December 27, the date of his experiment on Jasper’s nerves. Mr. Proctor supposes him to have met the living Edwin, and obtained information from him, after his escape from a murderous attack by Jasper. Mr. Proctor insists that this is the only explanation of Grewgious’s conduct, any other “is absolutely impossible.” In that case the experiment of Grewgious was not made to gain information from Jasper’s demeanour, but was the beginning of his punishment, and was intended by Grewgious to be so.
But Dickens has been careful to suggest, with suspicious breadth of candour, another explanation of the source of Grewgious’s knowledge. If Edwin has really escaped, and met Grewgious, Dickens does not want us to be sure of that, as Mr. Proctor was sure. Dickens deliberately puts his readers on another trail, though neither Mr. Walters nor Mr. Proctor struck the scent. As we have noted, Grewgious at once says to Jasper, “I have just come from Miss Landless.” This tells Jasper nothing, but it tells a great deal to the watchful reader, who remembers that Miss Landless, and she only, is aware that Jasper loves, bullies, and insults Rosa, and that Rosa’s life is embittered by Jasper’s silent wooing, and his unspoken threats. Helena may also know that “Ned is a threatened name,” as we have seen, and that the menace comes from Jasper. As Jasper is now known to be Edwin’s rival in love, and as Edwin has vanished, the murderer, Mr. Grewgious reckons, is Jasper; and his experiment, with Jasper’s consequent shriek and fit, confirms the hypothesis. Thus Grewgious had information enough, from Miss Landless, to suggest his experiment – Dickens intentionally made that clear (though not clear enough for Mr. Proctor and Mr. Cuming Walters) – while his experiment gives him a moral certainty of Jasper’s crime, but yields no legal evidence.
But does Grewgious know no more than what Helena, and the fit and shriek of Jasper, have told him? Is his knowledge limited to the evidence that Jasper has murdered Edwin? Or does Grewgious know more, know that Edwin, in some way, has escaped from death?
That is Dickens’s secret. But whereas Grewgious, if he believes Jasper to be an actual murderer, should take him seriously; in point of fact, he speaks of Jasper in so light a tone, as “our local friend,” that we feel no certainty that he is not really aware of Edwin’s escape from a murderous attack by Jasper, and of his continued existence.
Presently Crisparkle, under some mysterious impression, apparently telepathic (the book is rich in such psychical phenomena), visits the weir on the river, at night, and next day finds Edwin’s watch and chain in the timbers; his scarf-pin in the pool below. The watch and chain must have been placed purposely where they were found, they could not float thither, and, if Neville had slain Edwin, he would not have stolen his property, of course, except as a blind, neutralised by the placing of the watch in a conspicuous spot. However, the increased suspicions drive Neville away to read law in Staple Inn, where Grewgious also dwells, and incessantly watches Neville out of his window.
About six months later, Helena Landless is to join Neville, who is watched at intervals by Jasper, who, again, is watched by Grewgious as the precentor lurks about Staple Inn.
Dick Datchery
About the time when Helena leaves Cloisterham for town, a new character appears in Cloisterham, “a white-headed personage with black eyebrows, buttoned up in a tightish blue surtout, with a buff waistcoat, grey trowsers, and something of a military air.” His shock of white hair was unusually thick and ample. This man, “a buffer living idly on his means,” named Datchery, is either, as Mr. Proctor believed, Edwin Drood, or, as Mr. Walters thinks, Helena Landless. By making Grewgious drop the remark that Bazzard, his clerk, a moping owl of an amateur tragedian, “is off duty here,” at his chambers, Dickens hints that Bazzard is Datchery. But that is a mere false scent, a ruse of the author, scattering paper in the wrong place, in this long paper hunt.
As for Helena, Mr. Walters justly argues that Dickens has marked her for some important part in the ruin of Jasper. “There was a slumbering gleam of fire in her intense dark eyes. Let whomsoever it most concerned look well to it.” Again, we have been told that Helena had high courage. She had told Jasper that she feared him “in no circumstances whatever.” Again, we have learned that in childhood she had dressed as a boy when she ran away from home; and she had the motives of protecting Rosa and her brother, Neville, from the machinations of Jasper, who needs watching, as he is trying to ruin Neville’s already dilapidated character, and, by spying on him, to break down his nerve. Really, of course, Neville is quite safe. There is no corpus delicti, no carcase of the missing Edwin Drood.
For the reasons given, Datchery might be Helena in disguise.
If so, the idea is highly ludicrous, while nothing is proved either by the blackness of Datchery’s eyebrows (Helena’s were black), or by Datchery’s habit of carrying his hat under his arm, not on his head. A person who goes so far as to wear a conspicuous white wig, would not be afraid also to dye his eyebrows black, if he were Edwin; while either Edwin or Helena must have “made up” the face, by the use of paint and sham wrinkles. Either Helena or Edwin would have been detected in real life, of course, but we allow for the accepted fictitious convention of successful disguise, and for the necessities of the novelist. A tightly buttoned surtout would show Helena’s feminine figure; but let that also pass. As to the hat, Edwin’s own hair was long and thick: add a wig, and his hat would be a burden to him.
What is most unlike the stern, fierce, sententious Helena, is Datchery’s habit of “chaffing.” He fools the ass of a Mayor, Sapsea, by most exaggerated diference: his tone is always that of indolent mockery, which one doubts whether the “intense” and concentrated Helena could assume. He takes rooms in the same house as Jasper, to whom, as to Durdles and Deputy, he introduces himself on the night of his arrival at Cloisterham. He afterwards addresses Deputy, the little gamin, by the name “Winks,” which is given to him by the people at the Tramps’ lodgings: the name is a secret of Deputy’s.