This is “thin,” very “thin!” Dickens must have had some better scheme
than Mr. Proctor’s. Why did Jasper not “mak sikker” like Kirkpatrick
with the Red Comyn? Why did he leave his silk scarf? It might come to
be asked for; to be sure the quicklime would destroy it, but why did
Jasper leave it? Why did the intoxicated Durdles come out of the crypt,
if he was there, enter the graveyard, and begin tapping at the wall of
the vault? Why not open the door? he had the key.
Suppose, however, all this to have occurred, and suppose, with Mr.
Proctor, that Durdles and Deputy carried Edwin to the Tramps’ lodgings,
would Durdles fail to recognize Edwin? We are to guess that Grewgious
was present, or disturbed at his inn, or somehow brought into touch with
Edwin, and bribed Durdles to silence, “until a scheme for the punishment
of Jasper had been devised.”
All this set of conjectures is crude to the last degree. We do not know
how Dickens meant to get Edwin into and out of the vault. Granting that
Edwin was drugged, Jasper might lead Edwin in, considering the licence
extended to the effects of drugs in novels, and might strangle him there.
Above all, how did Grewgious, if in Cloisterham, come to be at hand at
midnight?