INTRODUCTION

Charles Dickens' final masterpiece was left unfinished, and none of the second half was written.

The book was due to appear in twelve monthly instalments beginning in April 1870. Dickens wrote six of these, and prepared the first three for publication in April-June. The remaining three appeared after his death, in July-September. For Dickens died suddenly, on 9th June, the day after writing his famous description of sunlight: "A brilliant morning shines on the old city... Changes of glorious light... penetrate into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odour, and preach the Resurrection and the Life... flecks of brightness dart into the sternest marble corners of the building, fluttering there like wings." This helps end the first half of the book on a note of exultation.

What Dickens has left us is a marvellous example of the work of his late period. After a striking opening, he builds his novel and characters with his accustomed vigour and imagination, demonstrating that he remained at the height of his powers when he died. It is a tragedy that he left it unfinished: but also a challenge. What follows is an attempt to complete what Dickens started, to do so in a way which is true to what can be divined of his intentions, to set the new alongside the old, and thus to offer readers a version which is at least completed, albeit by a surrogate. Dickens was born in 1812; and my hope is to encourage people to return to this memorable novel in his anniversary year.

The approach which I have followed flows from this underlying aim. The first and most obvious aspect is the structure. Publication by instalment imposes its own logic: the separate parts have to be rounded off, and the new ones launched, as is done in the first half, most obviously between Chapters 16 and 17 (the ends of instalments are clearly delineated in the text). It also requires a certain degree of repetition to keep salient traits and other details in the reader's mind over the course of a year. Secondly, Dickens sets his tale in both past and present, depending on chapter, content and characters (scenes involving one of the protagonists invariably use the present tense, others attract the past): though certain passages of the novel reveal that Dickens is looking back at events which are meant to have happened in the fictional town of Cloisterham (Rochester) some years previously. Thirdly, there are his borrowings and references. To take just one of many influences on the first half, there is a quotation from Macbeth in a title and echoes of the play in the text. The second half needs to reflect the format and rhythm and fabric of the first.

More complicated is the question of Dickens' intentions: how did he mean to continue and finish his story? The materials for answering this question lie in the evidence from himself and also from those who knew him and his work, from the text he has left, the characters he has created, and the interplay between them, from the clues contained in the first half, and from the loose ends which are left untied at the half-way point (though some may have knowingly been left obscure).

An important caveat is that Dickens played his cards close to his chest, and may not have revealed to others his precise or final ideas, and may indeed have changed his mind; so the testimony of his family and associates cannot be totally relied on, especially on the details: though they appear to provide noteworthy pointers to what was in Dickens' mind as he planned his work.

It would, I suppose, be possible to complete Edwin Drood in the modern vernacular, or set in the present day, or during the Second World War―an approach much beloved by those staging Shakespeare and opera. This is not the path I have followed.

Dickens' number plans for the book are extant, and give a fascinating glimpse into the workings of the novelist's mind (was the Blustrous Philanthropist to be Mr Honeythunder or Mr Honeyblast? we follow the progression of the eponymous central character from James Wakefield to Edwvn Brood to Eduin Brude to Edwvn Drood to Eduin Drude and then finally and conclusively to Eduin Drood: there are already references to scenes and phrases which play a vital part in the work, especially those involving Drood's uncle Jasper); but the notes become progressively thinner in content, there are none for the sixth instalment, and total silence on the second part. The word murder is used twice, however, once apparently with reference to uncle and nephew; and there are other dark hints about the uncle ("quarrel, (fomented by Jasper)", "Jasper lays his ground", "Jasper's artful turn" etc).

Contemporary testimony is thin but consistent. There is a recorded exchange between Dickens and his son Charles Dickens, Junior. To the son's comment, "Of course, Edwin Drood was murdered?" Dickens' reply was "Of course; what else do you suppose?" John Forster, Dickens' literary executor and first biographer, -wrote of the novel, that "The story... was to be that of a murder of a nephew by his uncle." According to Charles Allston Collins, Dickens' son-in-law and first designer of the front cover, "Edwin Drood was never to reappear, he having been murdered by Jasper".

The weight of this accumulated evidence seems to leave little doubt that Drood was murdered by his uncle Jasper; and since this is so unambiguously hinted at in what Dickens actually wTote in his slx instalments, a further conclusion is that "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" is not an early whodunit, competing with the writing of Dickens' colleague Wilkie Collins, but a novel about the disappearance and death of Drood, presumably to include how Jasper managed to earn' it out, how he was discovered and punished, and how these circumstances affected both him and the other dramatis personae. As Dickens' daughter Katey reminds us, her father "was quite as deeply fascinated and absorbed in the study of the criminal Jasper, as in the dark and sinister crime that has given the book its title".

Forster provides other indicators of elements to feature in the second half of the novel. He describes Dickens' intention to include "the review of the murderer's career by himself at the close", and to set the final chapters in the condemned cell. The illustrator for the book, Luke Fildes, confirms a plan to visit Maidstone Gaol for an illustration: never undertaken, because Dickens was dead and Drood left unfinished.

Fildes also offers another detail. He records Dickens as telling him for a picture of Jasper: "I must have the double necktie! It is necessary, for Jasper strangles Edwin Drood with it." And indeed it appears in Dickens' text. In chapter 14, Jasper is wearing, on the evening of Drood's disappearance, "a large black scarf of strong close-woven silk." This would seem to establish Jasper's intention to strangle Drood: but later Jasper, drugged by opium, mutters "No struggle, no consciousness of peril, no entreat!" Might Dickens have had a further trick up his sleeve? My earlier caution about the evidence of the collaborators is particularly relevant on this kind of point.

Next are the clues left by Dickens in his text. There is one big one. When Edwin decides not to show the engagement ring to Rosa after they have ended their betrothal by mutual consent, but to keep it secure in his inside pocket, Dickens wxites: "...there was one chain forged in the moment of that small conclusion, riveted to the foundations of heaven and earth, and gifted with invincible force to hold and drag." I think that we can safely assume that this is an important moment, and that the ring is destined to play a further part in the story; and indeed that the circumstances of its reappearance will be directly related to the disappearance of Drood. And, again, testimony from Forster seems to confirm this: "discover of the murderer was to be baffled till towards the close, when, by means of a gold ring which had resisted the corrosive effects of the lime into which he had thrown the body," the persons of murderer and murdered were to be identified.

Another unexplained detail seems significant. The stonemason Durdles walking among the gravestones, "surrounded by his works, like a popular Author", points out to Jasper the sarcophagus of "your own brother-in-law". There is no reference to Jasper's sister, though we know that she also is dead; just to the brother-in-law.

There are other words or phrases which may give an inkling of what Dickens had in store. The repeated references in the opening lines to the tower and the spike appear telling. The various keys in the possession of Durdles receive special attention, especially when Jasper is present. The tower in particular remains a regular theme, for example in the case of Jasper's night excursion with Durdles (in Dickens' words, "an unaccountable sort of expedition"). Then, on the night of the great storm and of Drood's disappearance ("No such power of wind has blown for many a winter-night. Chimneys topple in the streets... the violent rushes abate not..."), the tower is still at the centre of events: "some stones have been displaced upon the summit of the great tower." The scene seems to be set for some cataclysmic event or events involving the tower.

Intimations of mesmerism are scattered about the text: Jasper's "look of intentness and intensity" in looking at Drood, his "strange power of suddenly including the sketch [of Rosa] over the chimneypiece" in their dialogue. Rosa's "old horrible feeling of being compelled by him". It is hard to avoid the conclusion that these powers may have played a role in the killing of Drood by Jasper: or at least that Dickens was giving himself the opportunity to use this theme when the moment came to describe the murder.

Some "clues" are more questionable. Forster wrote of Neville Landless "who was himself. I think, to have perished in assisting... finally to unmask and seize the murderer". Some have seen a hint of an untimely end in Dickens' text: Crisparkle says to Neville "I wish your eyes were not quite so large and not quite so bright". But large and bright eyes are hardly a signal that someone is to perish in unmasking and seizing a murderer; while they are quite consistent with a lengthy period of enforced isolation and study away from the world, and accompanying mental turmoil as a result of being unjustly suspected of Drood's murder. Dickens describes Neville as having a prisonous look.

I see from the notes to my Penguin version of Drood that a reference to Neville's sister Helena running away from home in Ceylon when young "dressed as a boy" has on occasion been used to suggest that the proto-detective Datchery is really Helena in disguise; but the timing does not fit, for after Datchery takes up residence in Cloisterham, Helena departs from the city to attend her brother's fortunes in Holborn, where Rosa duly finds her when she flees to London shortly afterwards. It is obvious that Datchery wears a white wig, presumably to make himself look older; but there is not much else in the way of hiding identity, and he invariably wears a "tightish blue surtout". Another note in my same guide comments that this was a frockcoat worn tightly buttoned to show off the figure: hardly ideal concealment for Helena, whose appearance would seem pretty―unmistakeable both in Dickens' text and in Fildes' illustrations.

Then there is the dog. About a year before the 'unaccountable sort of expedition" up the Tower, the previous Christmas Eve, Durdles had been woken from drunken sleep by "the ghost of one terrific shriek, which shriek was followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog: a long dismal woeful howl, such as a dog gives when a person's dead." Being told this, Jasper is abrupt, fierce, scornful and impatient. Clearly this episode suggests some kind of premonition, since Drood disappeared the following Christmas Eve. But is it a clue, or a loose end, or a device to help build the atmosphere, or simply an illustrative detail designed to tell us more about Jasper?

There is also the "Sapsea Fragment". The relationship of these few manuscript pages (about an incident related by Sapsea in the first person) to the book remains uncertain; but since there are parallels between Sapsea's account of his conversation with a character named Poker, and the first meeting in the fifth instalment between Sapsea and Datchery (of whom Poker may have been an early version), it seems reasonably clear―that it was not intended in this form for the second part, and it does not therefore feature in my version.

Finally, the characters. Dickens has assembled and presented his usual rich gallery: they are also clues, indeed they are the chief ones, for it is their personalities, and the interaction between them, which will continue to carry the story forward, and tell us how it is likely to end, if we read them aright.

The characters have to act and speak and think (and develop) in the second part; and they have to do so in a way which is consistent with the style of the first part. This is the final element of the challenge of completing Drood: to reflect something of the voice of Dickens without sounding like a parody or a pastiche or even a rejected script for a Monty Python sketch. One possible advantage I had was my experience as a diplomat. Diplomats are protean figures who have to learn to ventriloquise, to assume the aura and authority of their governments, but also to understand other countries, to sound different notes as necessary in arguing a case, to play a variety of roles and see situations from a variety of viewpoints, to listen to others, to develop access and familiarity while remaining objective observers, and above all to narrate a complicated story involving many characters. So I attempted to make use of this experience in this work of reconstruction (a term I use, because it is a reasonable assumption that on 8/9 June 1870 Dickens had a fairly clear view of how he would end the book, even if he did not commit it to paper).

Out of this jigsaw, I have tried to create and present a credible conclusion to the novel. I am by no means an expert on Dickens or the bibliography on Drood; but I hope that it will interest those who are, and give pleasure to others. I intend it as a tribute to Charles Dickens, and to his unmatched and undimmed ability to involve, excite and entertain.

David Madden

Oxford