If I must make a guess, I conjecture that Jasper had one of his “filmy”
seizures, was “in a frightful sort of dream,” and bungled the murder:
made an incomplete job of it. Half-strangled men and women have often
recovered. In Jasper’s opium vision and reminiscence there was no
resistance, all was very soon over. Jasper might even bungle the locking
of the door of the vault. He was apt to have a seizure after opium, in
moments of excitement, and _he had been at the opium den through the
night of December_ 23, for the hag tracked him from her house in town to
Cloisterham on December 24, the day of the crime. Grant that his
accustomed fit came upon him during the excitement of the murder, as it
does come after “a nicht wi’ opium,” in chapter ii., when Edwin excites
him by contemptuous talk of the girl whom Jasper loves so furiously—and
then anything may happen!
Jasper murders Edwin inefficiently; he has a fit; while he is unconscious
the quicklime revives Edwin, by burning his hand, say, and, during
Jasper’s swoon, Edwin, like another famous prisoner, “has a happy
thought, he opens the door, and walks out.”
Being drugged, he is in a dreamy state; knows not clearly what has
occurred, or who attacked him. Jasper revives, “look on’t again he dare
not,”—on the body of his victim—and _he_ walks out and goes home, where
his red lamp has burned all the time—“thinking it all wery capital.”
“Another way,”—Jasper not only fails to strangle Drood, but fails to lock
the door of the vault, and Drood walks out after Jasper has gone. Jasper
has, before his fit, “removed from the body the most lasting, the best
known, and most easily recognizable things upon it, the watch and
scarf-pin.” So Dickens puts the popular view of the case against Neville
Landless, and so we are to presume that Jasper acted. If he removed no
more things from the body than these, he made a fatal oversight.
Meanwhile, how does Edwin, once out of the vault, make good a secret
escape from Cloisterham? Mr. Proctor invokes the aid of Mr. Grewgious,
but does not explain why Grewgious was on the spot. I venture to think
it not inconceivable that Mr. Grewgious having come down to Cloisterham
by a late train, on Christmas Eve, to keep his Christmas appointment with
Rosa, paid a darkling visit to the tomb of his lost love, Rosa’s mother.
Grewgious was very sentimental, but too secretive to pay such a visit by
daylight. “A night of memories and sighs” he might “consecrate” to his
lost lady love, as Landor did to Rose Aylmer. Grewgious was to have
helped Bazzard to eat a turkey on Christmas Day. But he could get out of
that engagement. He would wish to see Edwin and Rosa together, and Edwin
was leaving Cloisterham. The date of Grewgious’s arrival at Cloisterham
is studiously concealed. I offer at least a conceivable motive for
Grewgious’s possible presence at the churchyard. Mrs. Bud, his lost
love, we have been told, was buried hard by the Sapsea monument. If
Grewgious visited her tomb, he was on the spot to help Edwin, supposing
Edwin to escape. Unlikelier things occur in novels. I do not, in fact,
call these probable occurrences in every-day life, but none of the story
is probable. Jasper’s “weird seizures” are meant to lead up to
_something_. They may have been meant to lead up to the failure of the
murder and the escape of Edwin. Of course Dickens would not have treated
these incidents, when he came to make Edwin explain,—nobody else could
explain,—in my studiously simple style. The drugged Edwin himself would
remember the circumstances but mistily: his evidence would be of no value
against Jasper.
Mr. Proctor next supposes, we saw, that Drood got into touch with
Grewgious, and I have added the circumstances which might take Grewgious
to the churchyard. Next, when Edwin recovered health, he came down,
perhaps, as Datchery, to spy on Jasper. I have elsewhere said, as Mr.
Cuming Walters quotes me, that “fancy can suggest no reason why Edwin
Drood, if he escaped from his wicked uncle, should go spying about
instead of coming openly forward. No plausible unfantastic reason could
be invented.” Later, I shall explain why Edwin, if he is Datchery, might
go spying alone.
It is also urged that Edwin left Rosa in sorrow, and left blame on
Neville Landless. Why do this? Mr. Proctor replies that Grewgious’s
intense and watchful interest in Neville, otherwise unexplained, is due
to his knowledge that Drood is alive, and that Neville must be cared for,
while Grewgious has told Rosa that Edwin lives. He also told her of
Edwin’s real love of her, hence Miss Bud says, “Poor, poor Eddy,” quite
_à propos de bottes_, when she finds herself many fathoms deep in love
with Lieutenant Tartar, R.N. “‘Poor, poor Eddy!’ thought Rosa, as they
walked along,” Tartar and she. This is a plausible suggestion of Mr.
Proctor. Edwin, though known to Rosa to be alive, has no chance! But,
as to my own remark, “why should not Edwin come forward at once, instead
of spying about?” Well, if he did, there would be no story. As for “an
unfantastic reason” for his conduct, Dickens is not writing an
“unfantastic” novel. Moreover, if things occurred as I have suggested, I
do not see what evidence Drood had against Jasper. Edwin’s clothes were
covered with lime, but, when he told his story, Jasper would reply that
Drood never returned to his house on Christmas Eve, but stayed out,
“doing what was correct by the season, in the way of giving it the
welcome it had the right to expect,” like Durdles on another occasion.
Drood’s evidence, if it was what I have suggested, would sound like the
dream of an intoxicated man, and what other evidence could be adduced?
Thus I had worked out Drood’s condition, if he really was not killed, in
this way: I had supposed him to escape, in a very mixed frame of mind,
when he would be encountered by Grewgious, who, of course, could make
little out of him in his befogged state. Drood could not even prove that
it was not Landless who attacked him. The result would be that Drood
would lie low, and later, would have reason enough for disguising himself
as Datchery, and playing the spy in Cloisterham.
At this point I was reinforced by an opinion which Mr. William Archer had
expressed, unknown to me, in a newspaper article. I had described
Edwin’s confused knowledge of his own experience, if he were thoroughly
drugged, and then half strangled. Mr. Archer also took that point, and
added that Edwin being a good-hearted fellow, and fond of his uncle
Jasper, he would not bring, or let Grewgious bring, a terrible charge
against Jasper, till he knew more certainly the whole state of the case.
For that reason, he would come disguised to Cloisterham and make
inquiries. By letting Jasper know about the ring, he would compel him to
enter the vault, and then, Mr. Archer thinks, would induce him to “repent
and begin life afresh.”
I scarcely think that Datchery’s purpose was so truly honourable: he
rather seems to be getting up a case against Jasper. Still, the idea of
Mr. Archer is very plausible, and, at least, given Drood’s need of
evidence, and the lack of evidence against Jasper, we see reason good, in
a novel of this kind, for his playing the part of amateur detective.