THE D CASE, reader, was thus the Dickens case.
Poirot’s further punctilious clarifications are of little interest. We cannot, however, pass over one melancholy hypothesis he posits: When Dickens spoke to Wills of the difficulties he was having with the plot, he was perhaps alluding to feelings of remorse, feelings that had persuaded him to change his ending and give up the idea of the play within the novel. Collins, who had recognised the product of his own ingenuity from the first instalment,fn1 could not have known this. Thus, exactly like Jasper in Thesis A, he proceeded with the murder, unaware that his hated rival had already left the field.
As to the defence of Collins, we cannot report in full the Latinist’s passionate peroration, in which he praised the writer’s mild nature and long devotion to Dickens, referred to the painful ailments that had led to his self-destruction with opium, and described Dickens’s ‘increasingly shameful’ treatment of his former friend. He went so far as to conclude: ‘If Wilkie really did kill him, I don’t blame him!’
But let us return to that mini-conference between Wilmot, Holmes, and Poirot in the corridor. Or, rather: let Poirot himself tell us, with one of his classic, clinching wrap-ups.
From the very beginning (Poirot says) our debate was plagued, as it were, by the question of plagiarism. There was Dickens’s plagiarism of The Moonstone, which completely misled our predecessors instead of putting them on the right track. There was the alleged, and no less misleading, derivation of the character of Jekyll from that of Jasper, with the added complication of two further acts of plagiarism on Stevenson’s part: the story of the uncle who plans to make his nephew fall from the tower, in Kidnapped, and the derivation of the character of Utterson from that of Grewgious, which Dickens in turn may have taken from Sterne. We also saw how Dickens drew on certain scenes from Macbeth and Hamlet: with the double aim of providing us with subtle clues that pointed to the Landlesses, and of preparing us for the final twist of the play within the novel.
But so far (Poirot continues) we remain in the realm of literary imitation and pure fiction. The plagiarism becomes serious, and the coincidence curious indeed, when we see reality imitating fiction. Here, for example, we find the most real of detectives, moi, the inimitable Poirot, discovering that he is the unwitting imitation of a . . . well, a somewhat dubious detective, one Popeau! And we find the main road of Gadshill suddenly peopled with imaginary – nay, doubly imaginary – ‘men in buckram’, in a sort of prelude to the real vagabonds (among whom one who is real enough, though false) who will pass along it on that fatal June 8, 1870.
Was it entirely by chance (Poirot asks himself) that I was reminded of those men in buckram when Dr Wilmot told us about Dickens’s house and garden in that locality? As you know, I do not believe in supernatural premonitions, but I certainly had the impression then of something inexplicably sinister. I began to reflect on Holmes’s supernatural fears, and to wonder whether they might not have some basis in fact.
But let us leave the house of Gadshill (Poirot resumes after a pause for effect) and pass on to the castle of Elsinore, where the ‘second-degree’ fiction of the play within the play is celebrated in Act Three. Here we see an actor impersonating a murderer, Lucianus, in an Italian tragedy (the murdered man is Gonzago). He enters the victim’s garden furtively, with ‘Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing’, and pours his poison into the victim’s ear. For additional details we need only look at the ‘real’ scene in Act One, where the ghost of the victim, after stating that the murderer knew his ‘custom always of the afternoon’, specifies that the poison was ‘hebenon’, the ‘leperous distilment’ of which ‘holds such an enmity with blood of man’.
Scholars (Poirot adds after another pause) have not been able to identify the plant Shakespeare calls hebenon. And I don’t know whether Digitalis purpurea would have any deleterious effect if instilled into the ear. But reality is so strikingly foreshadowed in that fictitious scene that I am inclined to think that Hamlet inspired Collins not only with the plot of his novel but also with the method of his crime. Unless . . .
This time, Poirot pauses for so long that everybody starts when suddenly he cries, in the ghost’s own words:
O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
And there is still a tremor of fear in his voice as he concludes:
‘Unless Holmes and Hamlet are right, when they say there are more things in heaven and earth than . . . than are dreamt of in the philosophy of Hercule Poirot.’
WILMOT, to the audience: Bearing in mind this possibility, not to mention the horror that Thesis D would arouse in the breasts of our sponsors, I have asked the technicians to eliminate every reference to it from the electronic minutes of the session. Poirot, Holmes, and I have given our solemn word, furthermore, that we will not speak of this to anyone. May we ask the same of you?
TOAD, his voice hoarser than anyone has ever heard it: I will be the first to give you my word. Let’s make do with Thesis C, the conclusions of which are more than any critic dreamt of in his Droodist philosophy.
There is no need to add, reader, that all those present, including Loredana, Antonia, the Latinist, and Thorndyke (who arrived just a moment ago), all quickly followed Toad’s example. And you have also probably guessed, reader, that, notwithstanding, the cover of the MED there will not be one but two weddings. Between whom, we leave it to you to imagine.
fn1 Another possibility: It was Dickens himself who told Collins, claiming (and by now, in his egomania, thoroughly convinced of the fact) that it was his own idea. We can point to similar brazen behaviour on his part in a related case. In mid-1869, another contributor to All the Year Round, R. Lytton, sent Dickens the first episode of a story of his, vexingly like the MED in the relations between an uncle and nephew. Dickens turned it down, saying that the theme was too reminiscent of a story already published. No analyst of the MED has found any trace of such a story.