ON THIS AMBIGUOUS NOTE Chapter Two concludes. We are sure, reader, you did not fail to notice the genial pun in the title, and also the delicious ecclesiastical scene which Dickens uses like a shuttle on which to weave the first threads of his plot. Such devices, we must not forget, constitute the very essence of the novelist’s art, and his skill can be measured by how successfully he managed to ‘palm off the information’ without seeming to do so, rather in the manner of a conjuror (and Dickens was a keen amateur conjuror, who never missed an opportunity to perform before spellbound audiences of children).
But the crime-specialists are already hard at work, assessing the wealth of information provided in Chapter Two. Let us listen to what they have to say.
Actually, they’re not saying anything at the moment, because Holmes, after a word with the chairman, has left the platform and is taking a seat in the audience. Why? The famous detective, Dr Wilmot announces briefly, will make a statement clarifying this change of position at the end of Chapter Three. Holmes’s place is taken by Porfiry Petrovich, the examining magistrate of the Criminal Investigations Office of St. Petersburg, who immediately saw to the heart of the matter in Crime and Punishment.
‘So what do you think of Jasper’s great secret? You’re not going to tell us that it baffles you?’ Toad attacks him at once. ‘He’s insanely jealous of his nephew and has decided to get rid of him: that’s all there is to it. A tuppenny-ha’penny mystery, like the instalments it came out in.’
‘Well, actually, here it says a shilling,’ Loredana murmurs, examining the cover of her issue.
The Czarist magistrate smiles at the girl through the smoke of his eternal cigarette, but he addresses Toad in a tone of sincere regret: ‘No, no, dear sir. I fear I must disagree. Dickens is a popular writer, but he is certainly not slipshod or superficial. And here you must allow me to mention Dostoevsky’s admiration for him – an admiration raised even to the level of a cult. Indeed, in many of his works, and particularly in The Insulted and the Injured – Dr Wilmot will correct me if I’m wrong – we can detect a distinct Dickensian influence.’
Dr Wilmot does not correct him, and the investigator, after apologising for the digression, proceeds: ‘In short, and this is my point, Jasper is by no means a mere run-of-the-mill hypocrite, hiding his sneer behind a smile; no dime-a-dozen villain from some serial-novel (the story of Raskolnikov, too, I might add, was first published in instalments, in Ruskij Jazyk). Jasper is a complex and tormented man. His affection for Drood is sincere and spontaneous; there is nothing artificial about his attitude towards his nephew. His conscience struggles desperately against . . .’
Yes, no doubt, and we are sure that nobody wishes to interrupt this elaborate defence of Jasper (Jasper as a literary creation, that is, quite apart from any proven or presumed guilt on his part). But let us withdraw for one moment, reader, to consider the two schools of thought, as it were, that are forming within the convention, even before Drood is murdered (if he ever does get murdered).
The first could be called the Porfiry Petrovich School, or the Porfirians, who already consider the MED to be less a detective novel than a psychological thriller – if not indeed a psychiatric thriller, on account of the opium. The other school, which we will call the Christie School, or the Agathists, claim that the novel’s detective-story intention is clear from the very beginning, and demand a surprise ending.
The fragments of sentences that ricochet from the Dickens Room tell us that battle between the two camps has already been joined.
‘. . . nature of the murderer. And, in my opinion, it is this that the author . . .’
‘. . . nothing against psychology, just so long as . . .’
‘. . . has got to be someone else, because in a real detective story the prime suspect is never . . .’
‘. . . unless he himself has fabricated the evidence that indicates his guilt, so that when it’s proved false . . .’
‘But this is Dickens, for God’s sake, not some old hack like . . .’
‘No need to get personal. Dickens is Dickens, we know, but he too . . .’
The debate continues heatedly until the chairman’s repeated appeals finally re-establish order of a kind. When we return to the room, Loredana is writing a list on the blackboard near the platform, to Dupin’s dictation.
UNNAMED OPIUM ADDICT
LANDLADY OF THE DEN
TWO OTHER CLIENTS OF THE DEN
CHINAMAN (landlord of another den)
MR TOPE (Cathedral verger)
CHOIRBOYS
THE DEAN
DEAN’S WIFE
DEAN’S UNMARRIED DAUGHTER
REV. CRISPARKLE
JOHN JASPER (Choirmaster and Drood’s uncle; perhaps the same person as the Opium Addict at the beginning and perhaps the Wicked Man of Ezekiel)
‘PUSSY’ (school-girl, Drood’s fiancée; we have seen only her portrait)
EDWIN DROOD (Jasper’s young nephew, an engineer, and Pussy’s fiancé)
MRS TOPE (verger’s wife and occasionally Jasper’s charwoman)
‘Fine,’ Dupin thanks her. ‘We now have a complete list of the characters in the first two chapters. Or, if you prefer, of the suspects.’
‘Suspects, suspects,’ the Agathist School says unanimously.
‘Characters,’ protest the Porfirians, who consider that suspecting a school-girl or, worse still, the Dean and his daughter, would compromise the seriousness of the discussion.
The chairman gives the floor to Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard, who although intimate with Poirot, has never belonged to a school of any sort. A stolid, positive man, for whom the only thing that counts is results.
‘I remember,’ he says phlegmatically, ‘many years ago, I was talking to an inspector about the Waynflate case . . .’
‘The Waynflate case, parfaitement,’ Poirot says, nodding.
‘. . . and as an example of persons who were not suspected but suspectable I listed the following: a young school-girl, a highly virtuous spinster-lady, and a high-ranking dignitary of the Anglican church.’
‘You refer to our characters?’
‘No, no. I refer only to the fact that anybody can be a criminal.’
This irrefutable statement is necessarily accepted by all, and the editor of The Dickensian, who knows every detail of everything that has been written on the Drood case, is summoned to the blackboard.
‘In theory,’ Maigret says, handing him the chalk, ‘all these good people are “suspectable” with regard to the case we are examining. But to simplify matters, could you cross out all those who have never been suspected by any of our predecessors?’
Wilmot crosses out the Dean and his wife and daughter. He also crosses out Rev. Crisparkle, the ‘two other clients of the den’, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, Drood. Then he stops.
‘Of course,’ he says, ‘we must bear in mind that the “reconstructions” attempted so far are by no means all on the same level. Many are even . . .’
‘Of course.’
‘And so, it remains only to eliminate the Opium Addict: because, as I said, nobody has ever doubted that he and Jasper are . . . the same person.’
‘Yet you have not eliminated him,’ says Maigret, studying his pipe. ‘Why?’
‘Ah,’ says Wilmot, ‘you put me in a difficult position, Inspector.’
Any reader who likes to imagine Dr Wilmot sitting in Maigret’s office, with Maigret facing him as Inspectors Lucas and Janvier fire relentless questions, is of course free to do so. But don’t expect to find him brow-beaten and ready to ‘blow the gaff’. His demeanour remains reticent, even evasive. He is not (he repeats) unwilling to furnish information on previous research, or about clues that have already been uncovered. Indeed, he is here for that very purpose. But, he insists, he thinks it better if certain over-audacious theories are left alone for the moment, ‘so as not to influence the normal course of the enquiry’. This he reaffirms, is ‘in the interests of justice, if I may put it like that’.
And so, all that the staff of the Quai des Orfèvres manage to worm out of him is the suggestion that they might ‘keep an eye on Jasper’s sudden transformations’: at one moment he is normal, at another (could this be an effect of the opium he takes allegedly as medicine?) he is not, and at yet another he is, as Drood tells him at a certain point, ‘very unlike his usual self’.
Maigret takes note of this. But it’s not the uncle’s transformations that strike him as peculiar in that conversation, he says; it is the nephew’s gullibility. Can the young man really take Jasper’s scarcely veiled threat as a sign of ‘fondness’ for him? Does he really see nothing sinister in the invitation to ‘go and walk in the churchyard’?
The chairman throws his hands wide. ‘There’s no denying that Drood’s intelligence quotient appears to be well below average. However,’ he adds, nodding to the hostess, ‘let’s hear the third chapter before we discuss this point further.’