IT SHOULD NOW BE THE FOURTH DAY of the convention, reader. We should already be discussing the last number. But in fact it’s still yesterday afternoon, and we’re on a sight-seeing coach making its way along Via Ostiense towards the ‘historic centre’ of the city. At this very moment we are passing the Basilica of San Paolo. What has brought about this spatial-temporal glitch?
To explain it, we must step back half an hour: and that is to 1500 hours. All the members of our group meet up again in the Dickens Room. The speakers take their places at the table. The chairman opens the session. Then enters a new dark-haired hostess. Wearing big round glasses which give her the air of a model who has turned to teaching, she announces that the coach is waiting outside to take them on their tour.
What coach? What tour?
There follows a lively exchange between Loredana and the new arrival (named Antonia), from which it emerges that each work-group has the right to a guided tour of the city, and that today it is the Drood group’s turn.
LOREDANA, pointing to the members: But they’ve already been imprinted. They all have the August number in their heads.
ANTONIA: No one said anything to me about a number. I was told to take everyone to the Roman Forum and then to St Peter’s. Come on, it’s lovely out! You don’t want to keep them cooped up on a day like this!
The Latinist from Juan-les-Pins, who has permanently joined the Dickensians out of disgust for his colleague from Pirna, suggests a compromise: The debate could be held on board the coach, which surely has a microphone.
Two microphones, Antonia says: one for herself as a guide, the other at the disposal of any group-member who wishes to use it.
And so here we are, aboard the coach, leaving behind us not only the pompous Basilica (pompous, as Antonia quite rightly points out, on account of the wretched ‘restoration’ it underwent in the pre-Japanese era, after the fire of 1823) but also Chapter Seventeen, remarkable for its pages on Honeythunder but on the whole of less interest clue-wise.
‘However,’ Cuff says, ‘we mustn’t overlook the fact that for the first time Dickens makes Crisparkle express some slight reservation as regards his belief in young Landless. Six months earlier, Crisparkle told the Dean that he was entirely satisfied of his perfect innocence; now he says he is certain of it, but adds that he’ll continue to befriend him “as long as that certainty shall last”. Mightn’t that suggest that the author is trying to cover himself?’
‘Well, of course,’ Loredana puts in, with feminine logic. ‘The Canon has realised that Neville’s sister is making up to him, and he’s thinking of the scene his mother will make if he lets himself get trapped.’
‘Quite right,’ says the colonel of the Carabinieri. ‘Because we mustn’t forget – and Signorina Loredana has done well to remind us of it – that Mrs. Crisparkle does not at all approve of her son’s indulgence towards the accused. She was convinced, remember, of the boy’s dangerous nature from the start! And that may already have been the author covering himself.’
‘Excuse me, please,’ Antonia interrupts. The doubts regarding Neville’s innocence as well as her own tirade against the Basilica on the left have prevented her from directing their attention to the Pagan Sepulchre that the coach has just passed on the right. According to the pious legend, she tells them now, it was there, in the tomb of the matron Lucina, that St Paul the Apostle was secretly buried, after being beheaded near the Tre Fontane, not far from the U&O.
The trippers all pay respectful attention, but a natural association with the tomb of the matron Sapsea immediately brings the discussion back to the MED and Chapter Eighteen.
‘“The most discussed chapter of any book of modern times,”’ says Dr Wilmot, ‘as the Droodist J. Y. Watt put it, exaggerating perhaps, but making a real point none the less.fn1 For on no question is there such total disagreement among the scholars as on the identity of Datchery, the mysterious and obviously disguised character who settles in Cloisterham to observe Jasper.’
‘I’ll bet he’s that . . . what’s his name? . . . the clerk of Mr. Grewgious that we saw in Chapter Eleven and who . . . that’s it: Bazzard. I’ll bet Datchery is Bazzard,’ says Antonia.
This declaration is greeted by an astounded silence, and the driver himself turns round to look at her, risking a collision with the lorry he’s overtaking.
‘But how do you . . . what do you know about . . .’ Loredana finally stammers out. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve read this MED yourself? Or are you telepathic too?’
The truth is simpler than that, reader. Knowing that she was assigned to take the Drood group out, and wishing to share in their interests, the conscientious hostess prepared herself by a subliminal imprinting of the entire book. And, as Dr Wilmot now compliments her, her hypothesis is by no means a fanciful one.
The editor of The Dickensian explains that 33.7 per cent of the scholars believe Datchery to be Bazzard. But, he adds, a good 20 per cent think he is Helena in disguise, or Neville; 16 per cent Tartar; and another 16 per cent see him as Drood himself, who is not dead and has now returned to unmask his uncle. The remaining 14.3 per cent are divided between: a) the ubiquitous Grewgious; b) a detective sent by Grewgious, but who is not Bazzard; c) a detective not sent by anyone, but who has heard about the case and has come to look into it on his own account; d) Dickens himself, making a personal and surprising appearance at the end as the deus ex machina of the whole plot;fn2 e) a stranger destined to remain a stranger, since the MED, once again, is too incoherent to allow any reasonable conclusions to be drawn. This final point of view, Wilmot says, is held by G. K. Chesterton; while Cecil Chesterton (who defended Jasper in the mock trial in 1914) was a ‘Bazzardian’.fn3
LOREDANA: Antonia’s right, it must be Bazzard. At any rate, he knows his stuff as a detective, seeing as he’s already got on to Durdles and the Sapsea tomb with its crazy tablet.
ANTONIA: Meanwhile we have now reached – you will see it on your left – the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, which is 37 metres in height and contains a sepulchral cell of 4 × 6 metres, in which Belzoni would have run no risk of getting stuck. Its inscription . . .
LATINIST, anxious to make an impression on Antonia: It is in Augustean characters and tells us that C. Cestius (who died in 12 B.C.) was a member of the College of the Septemviri epulones, the organisers of sacred banquets, and that it took 330 days to build his tomb.
WILMOT: You may also be interested to know that during his stay in Rome in 1845, described in Pictures from Italy (1846), Dickens enjoyed a moonlit view of this same pyramid . . .
ANTONIA: . . . which together with the nearby Porta San Paolo (the ancient Porta Ostiense) forms one of the most picturesque sights of Rome.
WILMOT: Nor did he fail to brood on the adjoining Protestant Cemetery, where Shelley’s ashes are laid, and Keats’s bones.
As for the reader, we trust he will not fail to admire the thoroughness of the Japanese, under whose auspices a perfect inter-disciplinary fusion has been achieved between tourism, culture, and restoration. The remark that Marlowe and Archer make to Antonia, as an opening gambit, seems a little less appropriate: ‘With all this creep-show talk of tombs, I wouldn’t lay much on Drood’s still being alive.’fn4
Antonia, finding the remark in dubious taste, does not reply. She prefers to engage in an animated conversation with the Latinist about Titus Livy’s First Decade (which she also learnt by heart subliminally). Meanwhile, the coach has turned in to Piazza Albania, which is choked with traffic, so the others take this opportunity to discuss Chapter Nineteen with its menacing ‘shadow on the sun-dial’.
LOREDANA: What a beast!
DUPIN: Not if we accept the hypothesis that Jasper is merely feigning madness to Rosa, so that the real culprit or culprits will underestimate him as an investigator. The analogy with the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia, from this point of view, strikes me as of the utmost importance. And if we add to this the similarities with Macbeth, which would seem to incriminate the two Landlesses . . .
POIROT: But, according to Jasper’s eminent defender, if I’ve understood correctly, the Landless twins are not the murderers.
WILMOT: No, according to him . . . But I might as well tell you that the defender I spoke of is Sir Felix Aylmer, a well-known actor and theatrical scholar, whose book The Drood Case in 1964 revolutionised MED studies.
TOAD, to himself: Thank God we’re getting somewhere at last! But I have a nasty feeling . . .
WILMOT: According to Aylmer, the murderer is none of the characters we’ve already met. He’s a fanatic, a kind of terrorist who has come from the Middle East, to pay Edwin out, in accordance with Mahometan custom, for the grave affront that his father (who, as we know, lived there) committed against Islam . . .
ALL, including Antonia and the Latinist, who look up from their discussion of First Decade: The Rushdie Case!
WILMOT: Let’s not be over-hasty. Aylmer proposed the religious hypothesis as a first possibility, observing that the stones in the ring in Edwin’s possession could have come from the sacrilegious sacking of Mecca in 1813, in which European officers in the service of Mehemet Ali took part . . .
ALL, excluding Antonia, who does not know Collins, but including, mysteriously, the Latinist: But that would be exactly the same plot as The Moonstone! With the opium and all the rest!
WILMOT: Quite. And therefore Aylmer, judging that such barefaced plagiarism was impossible on Dickens’s part, falls back on the family vendetta; Drood’s father, he says, gravely affronted an Islamic nobleman, whose descendants have sworn to avenge themselves on his son, on December 24, the anniversary of the affront. Jasper, who knew all about the threat overhanging Edwin and had prepared a plan to thwart it, is not Edwin’s uncle, but his half-brother (on his mother’s side), while the woman in the opium-den is Rosa’s grandmother. Rosa’s father, remember . . .
TOAD: All right, all right, that’s enough! I knew it: out of the frying-pan and into the fire. First, a murderer who against all the rules is the prime suspect; and now, a murderer who was never suspected for the simple reason that we didn’t know of his existence! . . . This is going too far! Poirot, say something, for heaven’s sake!
POIROT: There is no doubt that when the murderer is a totally unknown person, the crime loses much of its . . . er . . . charme. The classic case is that of the passing vagabond, which we have already considered. But if Aylmer is right . . .
TOAD: There’s no difference whatsoever: some fellow we’ve never seen or heard of! A perfect stranger!
POIROT: Not so perfect. Inspector Maigret has already suspected his existence and his intentions.
MAIGRET: I merely suggested a reason why Jasper kept saying his nephew’s name in his opium dreams, even though the enemy he imagined himself killing was someone else. It could be that the uncle knew of the existence of this enemy, knew of his murderous intentions towards his nephew, but did not yet know his name.
POIROT: In other words: Jasper has known for some time that someone on the night of December 24, will try to kill his nephew, but he doesn’t know who. Later, with the arrival of the twins, he begins to suspect that the assassin is Neville, but he can’t be sure.
ANTONIA: That makes no sense. If Jasper knows of the threat and has even prepared a plan to thwart it, why on earth does he go blissfully to bed that night, leaving Drood to take a walk with his presumed killer?
WILMOT: Aylmer’s explanation is somewhat involved, but it does stand up, in its own way. I certainly wouldn’t exclude the possibility that Dickens had in mind something along these lines, given the fondness of his public for stories of murky family history, especially if set against an Anglo-colonial background. So, according to Aylmer . . .
The explanation is truly involved, reader. So we hereby furnish the following telegraphic summary:
Islamic family passes blame from father to son, condemns Edwin to death by sacred law of vengeance, but sentence cannot be carried out – another sacred law – so long as Edwin is engaged to Rosa. Rosa’s father, you see, although Edwin’s father’s friend, behaves nobly to Islamic family and wins their unswerving protection for self and descendants, and all relatives of descendants. Assassin must therefore first determine whether Edwin and Rosa are still engaged. Only if not, can he proceed. Jasper stirs up Neville not only to make him give himself away (if he is the assassin) but also to see whether the two lovebirds are still in love. Convinced (erroneously) that they are, and certain the assassin will respect the sacred law, he goes blissfully to bed. Question: How does assassin learn engagement broken off. Explanation: He overheard the entire Rosa/Edwin conversation, while Jasper, detained at the cathedral for Vespers, saw only the final affectionate kiss and took it for love.
DRIVER, who has been listening, having nothing else to do, since the coach is still held up in Piazza Albania: What a story!
Should the reader ever find himself in a midsummer traffic jam in Rome, barely moving from Piazza Albania along the Viale Aventino, there will be no point in his staying on the right. On the right, in the direction of the Circus Maximus, there is nothing for him to see apart from the appalling modern Palazzo della FAO with the adjoining Ministry for Post and Telegraphs. But by keeping as far as possible to the left, he will have an unobstructed view of the marvellous south-eastern ruins of the Palatine at sunset, unless it is already dark.
In this case, the sun has not yet set, and the spectacle is still impressive. Antonia, with help from the Latinist, provides commentary on it; describes the Domitian constructions to the west, the arches of Septimius Severus (20 to 30 metres high) to the south, and the site of the famous Septizonium to the south-east. But Toad allows nobody to enjoy the spectacle. ‘Questa e quella, per me pari sono,’ he croaks querulously from Rigoletto. (‘This one or that one, it’s all the same to me!’ Meaning, the ‘Jekyllian’ solution or that of the unknown assassin.) And adds that the reappearance of Lascar Sal in Chapter Twenty-two leaves no alternative.
But Chapter Twenty-two hasn’t been imprinted yet, the reader will object. How do they come to be talking of it already? We forgot to explain that the traffic in the Viale Aventino remained stationary for so long, that the debate on the August number petered out. Thorndyke, with regard to the ‘shadow on the sun-dial’, had drawn their attention to Jasper’s hypnotic power; simply by staring at Rosa, he was able not only to paralyse her but even to force her, towards the end of their conversation, twice to give him a sign of assent. Dupin then insisted on the derivation of this scene from Hamlet, demonstrating how Jasper, here and there, expresses himself in iambic pentameter.fn5 And Sergeant Cuff reminded everybody that he had foreseen (with Wilmot’s ‘partial’ nod) that the author would not present us with any further private conversations between Helena and Rosa. Nor, it goes without saying, between Helena and Neville.
‘Six months have gone by since that fatal night,’ the sergeant said. ‘We’ve reached the last page of the fifth number. And the three have not talked to one another again, at least not in our presence. A situation that could hardly be prolonged without the reader growing suspicious.’
COLONEL: Quite right!
CUFF: So Dickens finds a clever way out, and implying that careless talk costs lives, he has Grewgious come out with innocent sounding words along the lines: ‘I can’t as yet make up my mind whether it is prudent in the present situation for Miss Rosa to hold open communication with Miss Helena and Mr. Neville. On the other hand, Miss Rosa naturally wishes to see her friend, and it would seem important that at least Miss Helena (if not her brother too, through her) should privately know from Miss Rosa’s lips what has occurred, and what has been threatened.’
TOAD: Hear, hear!
CUFF: Which, in my opinion, is as much as to say: ‘As author, I don’t see how I can have these three talk without letting the cat out of the bag. Yet the reader is bound to suspect something, if I go on like this. So in the next number Rosa will talk to Helena. But, with a twist or two on my part, connected with Jasper’s machinations, the promised “private conversation” will be held anything but privately.’
What is this twist or two? The coach-trippers’ curiosity as to subsequent developments had grown so acute, that Loredana finally radio-phoned through to the U&O: Would it be possible to proceed immediately with the tele-imprinting of the next number via the simultaneous-translation headphones in the coach?
In no time at all, the subliminal impulses were transmitted to the coach, and even before the Palatine was in sight, the work-group had all sub-listened to the entire September number: the one that Dickens, June 8, 1870, left unfinished on the sixth- or seventh-from-last page, and which the reader will now find overleaf.
LOREDANA: But . . .
Oh yes, just a moment, reader. In the heat of the debate and the sightseeing, we forgot two or three other points that it would be well to mention now:
A. Chapter Twenty is entitled ‘Divers Flights’. Loredana explains, for those not familiar with English, that the word ‘flight’ has two meanings, one connected with the idea of movement through air and the other with escape. The divers flights, therefore, are: Rosa’s escape from Cloisterham; the arrival of her train in London, which speeds ‘over the housetops’ (the track being elevated at this point); and her ascension to the ‘garden in the air’ of the providential Mr Tartar.
B. Speaking of the window-to-window conversation between Tartar and the ‘poor student’, P. Petrovich jokingly referred to ‘Kafka’s theft’. Why? Because Kafka, an assiduous reader of Dickens (whose ‘opulence and great, careless prodigality’ he exalted in a diary note), was almost certainly influenced by this episode in the balcony-to-balcony conversations between Karl and the ‘poor student’ in Amerika.
C. The Latinist, in his increasingly animated conversation with Antonia, declared himself to be a great admirer of Wilkie Collins. How strange (she remarked) for a scholar from Juanles-Pins! The fact is (he said) that I was first drawn to Latin by my love for the protagonist of a Collins novel. Ah (Antonia at once asked), and what was the title of the novel, and what was the protagonist’s name? He blushed, however, and said nothing, so this point will have to be cleared up later.
fn1 John Y. Watt, A Student’s Study on Edwin Drood, undated but 1913.
fn2 This intriguing hypothesis was advanced by the English Scholar W. W. Robson (Times Literary Supplement, Number 4206).
fn3 The Bazzard hypothesis finds support in the fact that the clerk is ‘off duty here just at present,’ when Rosa arrives in London.
fn4 The cynical Bucket has already indicated one reason for considering Drood dead, though a third of all Droodists think him alive. The strongest argument in favour of death appears to us to be the ring with diamonds and rubies that Dickens had him put inside his waistcoat pocket: what could the purpose of this ring be, if not to identify the corpse half-consumed by the quicklime?
fn5 The meticulous Poirot confirmed that he had counted nine such lines. This one especially is Shakespearian in its wording: ‘I shall not strike too soon. Give me a sign / that you attend me.’