AT THE END OF THE IMPRINTING, Dr Wilmot lowers his hands, which had been folded under his chin in a pose of Oxfordian detachment.
‘Subliminal listening is a wonderful achievement, I’m sure,’ he says, turning to the hostess and handing her the original edition of the instalment, ‘but I wonder, Loredana, if you would be so kind as to re-read the last sentence for us?’
Flattered at being so familiarly addressed by Dr Wilmot, she reads with great intensity and expression: ‘And thus, as everything comes to an end, the unaccountable expedition comes to an end – for the time.’
WILMOT: Perfect, thank you. We are thus at the end of this instalment and also of the expedition . . . for the time. But what is this time? I feel we would do well to establish it precisely both within and without the novel.
ALL, although not fully understanding him: Right.
WILMOT: If we consider the events of the narration, when Jasper returns home it is about half past two in the morning. And the night is that between Sunday the 18th and Monday the 19th of December.
LOREDANA, clearing her throat uncertainly, apologetically: Ahem.
WILMOT: What is it, signorina?
LOREDANA: I think it must be the night between Monday and Tuesday. Because at the beginning of the expedition we heard the Reverend Crisparkle say to Neville: ‘This is the first day of the week, and the last day of the week is Christmas Eve.’
There is a general murmur of ‘Yes,’ ‘That’s right,’ ‘The first day’s Monday,’ etc., among the public (but not from Father Brown). The editor of The Dickensian waits for it to subside before replying.
‘You’re a careful reader and most valuable assistant, Loredana. But,’ he adds, pointing to a shelf on the wall, ‘I see the two volumes of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary over there. Would you mind looking up the word Monday?’
The room is gripped by breathless suspense while the young lady, pale with anxiety, flips backwards and forwards through the Shorter OED. When at last she locates the word, she flushes scarlet.
‘Monday: second day of the week,’ she stammers, crushed.
The chairman consoles her as best he can, while Father Brown, who has also come forward reassuringly, explains from the platform what lies behind this error.
‘It is not the young lady’s fault,’ he says, ‘that in our modern age consecrated to the weekend, the Lord’s day has become the last one. For the Church, however, it has always been the first, and remains so in all major dictionaries, and there is no doubt that it was the first for Dickens, too: especially when putting words into the mouth of a churchman. It is therefore firmly established that the first expedition took place on Monday night.’
This is the advantage of conventions, reader. How many of us, reading the MED by ourselves, would have made Loredana’s mistake? And thus we would have placed the presumable ‘second expedition’ of Christmas night between Sunday and Monday rather than between Saturday and Sunday. An unimportant detail? Nothing is unimportant in a murder mystery.
WILMOT: Particularly if it comes in instalments and is destined to be tragically broken off halfway through. That is why I say we must take into consideration the novel’s internal as well as external chronology. Shall we have another look at the instalment?
By now fully recovered, Loredana eagerly takes it up again, and the chairman continues: ‘The last line finds us on December 19. The year could be 1842. Christmas is six days away. But what is the month and what is the year on the first line?’
The girl opens the booklet to the first page. But after a moment she closes it again and looks at Dr Wilmot questioningly. He nods, and she finally looks at the top of the cover page.
‘June 1870,’ she reads. And, after an awed pause, remarks: ‘Just eight days before his death!’
WILMOT: Exactly. The third number is the last published in the author’s lifetime. The next three will come out regularly, but posthumously. It’s a point we would do well to bear in mind.’
The mysterious Popeau, who has managed to worm his way into the panel, between Gideon Fell and Dr Thorndyke, interposes with his usual acrimony. ‘I fail to see what possible difference this makes. It strikes me as a complete waste of time. Why don’t we get on and examine the evidence?’
‘But may not this consideration of posthumousness affect the weight, the reliability, of the evidence?’ Poirot asks from the floor. ‘Was it this to which you wished to draw our attention, Monsieur Wilmot?’
WILMOT: Yes. In the sense that the sum of the evidence, as it can be established up until Monday, December 19, 1842, in the novel, and up until Wednesday, June 1, 1870, in real life, is in fact . . .
POPEAU: Objection, monsieur! Previously you stated, on the basis of observations connected with the railway, that the novel ‘could be’ set in 1842. Now it definitely is. How do you account for this?
POIROT: I imagine that in the meantime Dr Wilmot, like myself, has consulted his Perpetual Gregorian calendar, and thus ascertained that in 1842, December 19 fell on a Monday.
WILMOT: Quite right. But we were talking about the evidence. The evidence contained in the three numbers that had already come out (and which had sold in the order of 100,000 copies each) could not, of course, be modified or suppressed. But this does not apply to the later numbers. The fourth and fifth were in the editor’s hands, and the author had already gone through the proofs – but he could always go through them again and make changes. And the sixth was only partly written. Now, we know from various witnesses that on June I (when he returned from London to Gadshill to finish the sixth number), Dickens was having trouble with the story’s development. ‘I don’t see how I can get myself out of this maze,’ he confided in particular to William Wills. It is thus conceivable that he had it in mind to alter some of the evidence, which because of its precision had tied his hands too much. That he wished to leave himself freer as regards the development of the plot, and also to prepare his surprise-ending better.
POPEAU: Objection! We do not know that the ending was going to be a surprise.
TOAD: I agree. I am more convinced than ever that the book would have ended with page upon tedious page of Jasper’s torments of conscience, and the loss of that troubles me not one jot.
WILMOT: We have already discussed this. There are those, like Dickens’s daughter, who believe that the writer was more interested in ‘the tragic secrets of the human heart’ than ‘the intricate working out of his plot’ and the traditional uncovering of the culprit. And there are those who believe the opposite. But Dickens himself wrote to James T. Field, his American publisher, in these words: ‘At Nos. 5 or 6 the story will turn upon an interest suspended until the end.’ To me, suspense until the end means a surprise ending.
The chairman’s calm, impartial reply is rewarded with lively applause. Porfiry Petrovich, the colonel of the Carabinieri, and Toad himself step forward to shake his hand. And Loredana’s eyes continually return to him with a greater intensity than is perhaps in keeping with her professional capacity. . . . But the speakers, Thorndyke and Fell, who are specialists in questions of scientific investigation, are already examining the ‘evidence that cannot be changed’ of the third number.
Extrasensory perception. When teaching Neville, the Rev. Crisparkle has the strange sensation that Helena is listening to him as well. She also seems to have some mesmeric influence over him: after his first assessment of her as no less dangerous than her brother, he ends up considering her to be a kind of saint. But in Dr Fell’s opinion, this is not necessarily caused by paranormal abilities. Helena may simply be using her feminine wiles to win the young churchman over, even to the point of mawkish displays of piety which seem quite out of place in a character such as hers. It remains to be seen what her purpose is.
Neville’s hands. ‘You have repeated that former action of your hands, which I so much dislike,’ says Crisparkle, when his pupil, fired by hatred for Drood, clenches his hands convulsively. And note, observes Thorndyke, that the author says hands and not fists, betokening a less specific state of aggressiveness. This piece of evidence will be important should an eventual autopsy of Drood’s body reveal that he was strangled before being thrown from the tower (if that is what is to happen). But in that case – Dr Wilmot says, fair-mindedly anticipating a detail – it will also be necessary to establish how he was strangled: that is, by a pair of hands or by a certain scarf that we will see around Jasper’s neck in the next number.
Medicinal herbs. Unlike the special food closet, which is kept scrupulously locked, Mrs Crisparkle’s ‘nauseous medicinal herb-closet’ is accessible to anybody; and among other things it contains bottles of ‘a remedy against toothache’ (i.e., laudanum). Why does the author devote two whole pages to a description intended to introduce (and disguise) this clue? Probably – this is the opinion of both speakers – to establish right away that Neville, too, could obtain drugs.
Ambiguous cry. ‘What is the matter? Who did it?’ Jasper cries out on being woken from a dream which, he tells Crisparkle, was produced by indigestion. In fact, it must have been his usual opium ‘vision’. But ‘Who did it?’ implies the fear that a certain act, so far only meditated, has indeed been committed. Or could it be that Jasper is so bent on killing his nephew himself that he would hate anybody else’s stealing the crime from him?
Ring. Will it be used as a means of identification? Father Brown, no expert in matters of chemistry, asks whether a ring such as the one described would be proof against the action of quicklime. Dr Thorndyke cites various cases of corpses half-consumed by CaO (calcium oxide), but whose rings remained intact. Gideon Fell adds that even without rings or other forms of jewellery, human remains found in quicklime have been identified by the nails in the shoes.
Mayor’s powers. At the panel’s request, the chairman lists these powers, reciting from memory the immortal pages of The Pickwick Papers re G. Nupkins Esq., mayor of Ipswich. In small towns like Ipswich and Rochester, the mayor was also chief of police. This is why Jasper flatters Sapsea so assiduously, and does his best to turn him against the ‘half-caste’ Neville. Not only to avert future suspicion. Jasper may also reckon that Neville may come off worse in the struggle he is so busily preparing, and then it will be Drood who gets into trouble with the law.
The quicklime deposit. Another doubled-edged clue. Jasper shows a certain interest in this lime; but if he wants to get rid of a corpse, he already has access to Mrs. Sapsea’s tomb. Besides, the deposit, as the author carefully specifies, is ‘by the gate’ of Durdles’s yard, not far from Crisparkle’s house. It is therefore quite possible that Neville, too, has seen it and thought about it.
Eye and trigger. Jasper’s eye fills with a sudden destructive hatred when he sees Helena’s twin from far off. But this hatred seems hardly explicable as jealousy for a rival who is, after all, only a secondary rival. It is not clear why the author emphasises this point. ‘Unless,’ Loredana murmurs to herself, not daring to speak up again in the debate, ‘it’s a way of suggesting that the uncle is actually on his nephew’s side, despite appearances?’ The Carabinieri colonel meanwhile puts Dr Wilmot in some difficulty with a technical question. ‘At the time of the novel,’ he inquires, ‘did one fire with one’s eye to the trigger instead of to the sights? Or is this just an error on Dickens’s part?’fn1
Ghostly cry. The speakers refuse to pronounce in any way on the nature and possible significance of this cry. But they take note of the date, Christmas Eve, on which Durdles claims to have heard it the previous year.
The tower and the keys. What can have been the purpose of the mysterious expedition? Everybody agrees – except Toad, who ironically says that Jasper really does intend to write a Guide to Cloisterham, which will earn him fame and fortune, but is reluctant to admit it – that the choir-master’s aims were: 1) to inspect the stairs and the galleries that lead to the tower; 2) once up there, to study in the moonlight the best place from which to hurl someone down; and 3) to take the key to the Sapsea tomb off Durdles, after drugging him. All three aims appear to have been achieved, though there is some doubt with regard to the key. Or, rather, to the keys, since . . .
LOREDANA, whom there is no holding now: But if he intended to go back up the tower with his victim, if that was the plan, wouldn’t he need the keys also to the crypt and the tower?
POPEAU, scornfully: Mais voyons, ma pauvre fille! As choirmaster, Jasper has free run of the sacristy and can take Tope’s keys. But what I do not understand is how Durdles could possibly have failed to realise that the key to the tomb was stolen.
POIROT: Jasper could have taken it for only a few minutes. The time needed to . . .
POPEAU, sarcastically: . . . go and open the tomb straight-away? In the hope that Durdles would not notice before Christmas? Mais voyons, mon pauvre monsieur!
POIROT, mellifluously: I meant the time needed for Jasper to make an impression of the key, with the wax he presumably brought with him. But this is a simple hypothesis of Hercule Poirot, which he hardly dares submit to the great Hercule Popeau! Sensation and prolonged buzz of voices in the room. In the hotel register, I noticed that not only do you have a surname very similar to my own, but you are actually called Hercule like myself. And our backgrounds are strangely analogous: you are a former high-ranking officer in the French police, it appears; and I in the Belgian police. I must confess that the coincidence strikes me as suspicious.
POPEAU, furious: You call me suspicious? If anyone has any explaining to do, it is you! . . .
WILMOT, glancing diplomatically at the clock: It’s getting late. I suggest that in true Dickensian fashion we leave the sequel until the July and August numbers.
fn1 The text (see here) states that Jasper watches Neville ‘as though his eye were at the trigger of a loaded rifle, and he had covered him, and were going to fire.’