Some eighty-five years ago [1870] Charles Dickens began his last novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", which was to have been a mystery story in the manner of Wilkie Collins. Like most other devisers of suspense and detection, Dickens undoubtedly intended temporarily to puzzle his readers, and in a backhanded way he was all to successful, more successful, in fact, than any other mystery story writer in any time or tongue; for he died suddenly, leaving "Edwin Drood" approxmately half finished, with no clarification of the many minor mysteries which interweave to form the complex plot. But Dickens's death was no barrier to his admirers. Some dozen assorted writers have tried their hands at finishing "Edwin Drood", building from Dickens's hints and their own imaginations; while scores have written more or less scholarly articles attempting to solve the problems in "Edwin Drood". Dickens, however, builded well, for despite these articles fanciful and grave, there is still no agreement among scholars as to Dickens's intentions, and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" is still a mystery.

The plot of "Edwin Drood," as far as it was written out, is characteristically Victorian in motives and surface treatment. There was, once, visiting in Cloisterham (Rochester, Kent), a young man named Edwin Drood, an orphan, who suddenly disappeared as mysteriously as a magician's assistant. Suspicion immediately fell upon Neville Landless, a young fire-eater whom Drood had insulted and quarrelled with, but no corpse was to be found, and charges could not be pressed. The reader, however, knows more: that John Jasper, marvellous musician, opiumist, guardian and nearly coetaneous uncle of the missing Drood, was madly in love with Drood*s fiancee (Rosa Bud), and, amid opium dreams of grandeur and crime, has plotted to murder Drood. Just as Neville Landless is the burn of heat, John Jasper is the shadow of cold. And as the first part of the text closes, we are left with a single major mystery: "What has happened to Edwin Drood?"

The second half of our text, beginning with the seventeenth chapter, is set approximately six months later, and develops the second major mystery: "Who is Dick Datchery?" While John Jasper broods in Cloisterham, "carving devils from his heart," counteraction is emerging in London. There, a circle is gradually solidifying from those whom Jasper has injured. Rosa, Drood's fiancee, has fled to London to escape Jasper's suit; and Neville Landless and his sister have joined forces with her. Hiram Grewgious, Rosa's guardian, is openly suspicious of Jasper. And in Cloisterham, a new personality enters the story: Dick Datchery, a most engaging retired "buffer" with long white locks and black brows, who sits sentinel upon Jasper's movements. And, as our text abruptly ends, a pattern is beginning to shake itself free from the hitherto seemingly random associations and humors. A net is being laced around John Jasper. The Londoners, in varying degrees, suspect him; Datchery has a witness to Jasper's opium ravings. And the net is beginning to close... But the fisherman died and the net was neither closed nor released. Instead, a host of minor fish have been swimming about since June 8, 1870.

Out text of "Edwin Drood" is only half finished, and there is disconcertingly little secondary material to show the trend which the unwritten remainder would have taken, for Dickens wrote no general outline. Indeed, secrctivencss and sensitivity pervaded this last novel, and Dickens so resented questions about it that he would give only the most grudging and guarded answers. Even his immediate family and his confidant, John Forster, knew only the barest outlines of the plot, so little, in fact, that all they preserved could be pressed into a single short paragraph which leaves untouched all too great an area. And subsidiary material, like correspondence, and chapter notes, and possible instructions to the illustrating artists are no more than chameleon skins which change color as they are adapted to each successive interpretation of Drood.

Our first mystery, nevertheless, the fate of Edwin Drood, is easily disposed of. John Forster is very explicit that Drood was really murdered, and that the London circle will unmask Jasper as the murderer. And our other two sources, Charles Dickens, Junior, and Sir Luke Fildes, who illustrated the periodical numbers of "Drood", unhesitatingly confirm Forster: Charles Dickens stated clearly in conversation that Drood was really dead. And there is thus no reanimating his carcass, as some would, with printer's ink. This death is unshakable. But our second mystery, the identity of Dick Datchery, is far less firm, for none of our sources identified Datchery, and those who plan to reconstruct "Edwin Drood" have too many difficult clues to evaluate. That Datchery came to Cloisterham to investigate John Jasper is obvious from the text, and that there is at least a mystery about him is equally certain. No other character is described with such ingenious ambiguity as to at once suggest and undermine the possibility of imposture. From his appearance he is a disharmony. He is at first white-haired with black brows, yet later gray-haired. He has a military air, yet disclaims army or navy. He obviously has a purpose in Cloisterham, yet he pretends to be a retired "buffer" looking for a comfortable haven. And he pays excessive heed to his long hair, continually shaking it, while there are hints (though no more than hints) that he wears a wig. The masterful caution with which Datchery is hedged with mystery truly refutes those who see Drood as a total failing of Dicken's powers, for everywhere the author very surely treads a razor-sharp bridge of suggesting infinities and yielding, really, absolutely nothing.

In the critical literature Datchery has been overwhelmingly identified as some other personality in Edwin Drood in disguise. The Favorites have been Drood himself (who, according to some theorists, escaped Jasper), Helena Landless, Tartar (an ex-naval officer who joins the London circle), Hiram Grewgious (Rosa Bud's guardian), and Bazzard (Grewgious's law clerk). These identifications, indeed, have gone in cycles. The Victorians preferred Drood or Helena Landless; our own age, which sees transvestism differently, has favored Bazzard or Grewgious. Bazzard, all in all, is at present, as Vincent Starrett has put it, "the people's choice," though the most detailed Drood study in recent years, Richard M. Baker's "The Drood Murder Case" favors Hiram Grewgious.

These varied identifications, unfortunately, have all too frequently been sentimentally conceived, and have been based more upon the researcher's whim than the author's text, for the text, incomplete though it is, presents clear and irrefutable means for eliminating most of the masks which have been advanced, if, of course, we assume that Charles Dickens knew what he was doing.

In "Edwin Drood" there are approximately thirty persons who have both names and speaking parts, and to them may be applied several circles of exclusion drawn from Dickens's complete unedited text, circles which rely as little as possible upon subjective factors. First, several persons arc ruled out as true identities for Datchery by their co-presence with Dick Datchery. These are: John Jasper, the Topes, Sapsea, Crisparkle, the Opium Hag, Durdles, and Deputy. (Fortunately, no one, to our knowledge, has yet suggested that Datchery is simply an embodied dissociated conscience for John Jasper.)

Almost all remaining persons, secondly, are eliminated by a single action on Mr. Datchery's part, an action whose astonishing importance has apparently escaped all researchers:

So when he had done his dinner, he was duly directed to the spot, and sallied out for it. But the Crozier being a hotel of the nost retiring disposition, and the waiter's directions being fatally precise, he soon became bewildered, and went boggling about and about the Cathedral Tower, wherever he he could catch a glimpse of It, with a general impression on his mind that Mrs. Tope's was somewhere very near it, and that like the children in the game of hot boiled beans and very good butter, he was warm in his search when he saw the Tower, and cold when he didn't see it. He was getting very cold indeed when he came upon a fragment of burial-ground.... ["The Mystery of Edwin Drood", Chapter XVIII.]

In this text, which Dickens later trimmed, Datchery is by authorial omniscience officially, unmistakably, and immutably declared, "Lost!" And so, Datchery was a stranger to Cloisterham.

We can now drop, without question, Drood, Rosa Bud, Helena and Neville Landless, Grewgious, and all the establishment at the Nuns' House, for the area of action in Cloisterham is limited; the buildings where the chief characters live are all visible or nearly visible from the Tope establishment. Drood, obviously, knew where the Tope Hotel was — within touching distance of Jasper's Gatehouse, where he had stayed so long; and unless Drood were stricken with amnesia, an explanation hitherto spared us, could hardly become lost in his own frontyard. Neville Landless lived approximately three months, and his sister Helena approximately nine months, within a stone's throw of the Tope hotel, with Helena even being able to see the near vicinity of the hotel. Rosa Bud seems to have spent years in Cloisterham. And as for Hiram Grewgious — in many ways the best mask for Datchery — not only is he perfectly familiar with the cathedral area from many visits to the town, but he is even stated to have summoned Mr. and Mrs. Tope when Jasper fainted.

Four persons remain to us: Billickin, Honeythunder, Tartar, and Bazzard. Billickin may be discarded immediately, for this elderly lady who operates a London rooming house can hardly be Datchery, while Honeythunder, who visited Cloisterham once, is an obvious "humour": he sincerely believes Landless to be guilty of murder. We are left with Tartar and Bazzard.

Two more exemptions can rid us of ex-lieutenant Tartar. First, as Mr. Baker has pointed out, Datchery is not entirely sure of the meaning of a slang naval term ("jacks") , which an ex-naval officer, like Tartar, would not have questioned. Secondly, Dick Datchery, in Chapter XXIII, gives us one un-disguisable flash of his true identity. When he drops a coin before the Opium Hag, he "reddens with the exertion" of picking it up. And so Tartar leaves us, for much stress has been placed upon Tartar's athletic prowess and almost simian agility, as he clambers over roofs as lightly as up rigging, and hangs out windows like an impossibly reckless glazier. No, Tartar cannot be Datchery, and Bazzard alone of the named characters — or a new personage — remains to us, for Bazzard, though relatively young, has been characterized as sluggish in physique. Bazzard may well redden when he stoops.

Bazzard alone can survive our negative tests; and he can also be reinforced as a claimant by positive evidence. At the time that Datchery appears in Cloisterham — We reject, as utterly without reason, Professor Henry Jackson's conjecture that the chapters in Edwin Drood should be rearranged — Bazzard is not in his accustomed place in Grewgious's office. He is — as Mr. Grewgious puts it — "off duty here, altogether, just at present." And, again, Bazzard, whom Grewgious rates highly, is the logical confidant to Grewgious's suspicions of John Jasper. Bazzard is probably a stranger to Cloisterham, though our text is silent here, and Bazzard might well have to wear a disguise, for it is very likely that Jasper has seen him. Bazzard, too, is enamoured of the stage. He wrote a play called "The Thorn of Anxiety", and may be familiar with make-up and board-strutting. All this evidence, negative and positive, brings us to the conclusion that Dickens intended that the reader identify Datchery and Bazzard. Please note, however, that this is not the same as saying that Datchery was Bazzard.

A peculiarity of Edwin Drood must now be mentioned, a highly significant peculiarity: that it is damnably hard to prove one's own theory, but relatively easy to cloud one's opponent's theories. And Bazzard, despite his success in running the negative gauntlet, is very vulnerable. The attack moves in two lines: against Bazzard the actor, and against Bazzard the man. First, point out the opponents of Bazzard, too much has been read into "The Thorn of Anxiety." Dickens is very explicit in saying that Bazzard wrote a play, and that he is a member of a coterie who dedicated their (presumably bad) works to one another. Dickens is here obviously satirical. There is absolutely no hint that Bazzard ever acted, or even understood the art of makeup. A dramaturge is not the same as an actor. And Datchery, if merely an assumption by a named character, is the summit of incredibly able acting.

Argument two: Bazzard, as described, is simply too weak to bear the weight of Datchery. Bazzard, as he appears in Chapter XI, is a surly, self-pitying egotist, ostentatious in mock-humility; a glutton, and a boor. He is only a humour, a sort of reverse Uriah Heep. Can such a person, argue his opponents, be the witty, mellow, logical, sensitive Datchery, whose devious and nimble mind can ensnare a half-dozen asses and apes in their own stupidity; whose vagrant fantasy can see the workings of fate in an ancient inn-reckoning? No more, say the anti-Bazzardites, than Pistol could have impersonated Hamlet.

* * *

We have worked ourselves into a mild dilemma: our leading suspect for Datchery-ship stands insecure in essence. What shall we do? We shall now recognize that Bazzard's post-scriptal antics are not isolated, but part of a pattern, for "Edwin Drood" is nothing more than an enormous quagmire of false trails and quicksands. Hardly a direction is put forth without, in near sequence, its cancellation and then — its reemergence. These trails — as is the case with Bazzard — lead in all directions, but arrive nowhere. And it is these false trails, we feel, that have misled previous researchers, most of whom have cantered along a single one — and defended it — rather than examining the web of roads.

The name of this web is "deliberate misdirection." Let us consider only two plot questions, although many more could be similarly anatomized. Is Drood dead? Pro: John Jasper has as good as confessed guilt; once, in words, to Rosa Bud; another time, in action, to Grewgious. Con: no corpse has been found, and (we must emphasize) Jasper, in strict logicality, had no reason on earth to conceal the body if there was one. His plans included "framing" Neville Landless, and had there been a corpse available at the proper moment, Landless would have hanged. Pro: the book abounds with symbols and overtones of death. Con: survival hints are also present. A chapter heading, "When shall these three meet again," and the cover illustration which was drawn to Dickens's specifications, can be interpreted, if ingenuity be exercised, as indicating that Drood survived.

The same conflicting evidence can be found in the question of Datchery's true identity. It is not simply perverseness, or inability to read plain English, or madness which has boxed the compass to find the man, or woman, of whom Datchery is a facet. It is Charles Dickens himself, who has carefully scattered dozens of hints, misleading and genuine, for his readers. Is Datchery a new character, and not simply a mask for another personality? Pro: he is different in appearance and personality from all other characters. Con: consider his disingenuous actions, the matter of his possible wig. What is his identity, if a mask? Perhaps Helena Landless: she has motive, intellect, and is apt in theatrical makeup. She delighted, when younger, in male impersonation. Grewgious? He is the first, apparently, to suspect Jasper's guilt; he has announced his intention to have Jasper watched; he is preoccupied with his hair, as is Datchery; and, most important of all, he is the closest in personality, mental powers, and (inferred) age to Dick Datchery. The scale is truly heavily swung for Grewgious (though, of course, he is really eliminated). Bazzard? Weighted down, as we have seen with clues.

All these clues and suggestions are mutually contradictory, but they form, nevertheless, a pattern. And that pattern is deliberate misdirection. Charles Dickens very obviously tried — with considerable success — to mislead his readers as far as he was honestly able. Ambiguity is the motif of the day.

Bazzard alone remains to us, after the text has been examined, as a possible prime for Datchery. And of Bazzard we are both suspicious and incredulous, for although textual specificities will not demand his destruction, the nuances and overtones of both the story and Dickens's literary personality show Bazzard as simply the greatest and reddest of all red herring, the one that nearly got away with it.

Bazzard, as has often been pointed out, is really unable to bear the weight of Datchery's character, and any attempted reconciliation between his grubby egotism and Datchery's slightly doddering whimsicality, while not impossible, is rendered suspect by Bazzard's own name. It was the practice of Dickens, in "Edwin Drood" as in most of his other work, to name his minor characters with slightly distorted words suggestive of their humour. Here, in "Drood", for example, Sapsea is "sapsy," a schoolboy's endearing diminutive for a sap; Tartar is a tar; Rosa Bud is, figuratively, a rose-bud; Landless is landless and homeless; Billickin, who dignifies a rooming house, is a billikin, a small domestic utensil; and Bazzard is — a buzzard. (English pronunciation, where the first "a" would approximate the sound of "a" in Bostonian "calf," makes this identity must more obvious than the usual American pronunciation of "a" as in "cat.") What better symbol could be found for this law-clerk than this filthy fowl?

This name, I am inclined to believe, is a sure indication that Bazzard is only what he seems to be, and a token for believing that Datchery shall not bloom out of Bazzard like a lotus out of mud.

We find a further thread to follow — though, to be sure, a nearly colorless thread — in the circumstances of Datchery's first interview with John Jasper. Datchery, it will be remembered, finally found the Tope establishment, and bespoke lodgings there, dependent, however, upon Mr. John Jasper's giving a favorable "character" to the Topes. Datchery thereupon interviewed Jasper, and learned that the Topes were dependable. This all, at first glance, seems open and undevious, but closer examination of the circumstances shadows out invisible patternings. Datchery, actually, had no reason to seek a reference from Jasper or anyone else. Datchery came to Cloisterham, as all authorities (and Charles Dickens) agree, to watch John Jasper, and the Tope hotel was ideal for his purposes, seemingly the only hotel there. It seems obvious that Datchery, for one reason or another, wished to meet Jasper, and used Tope simply as an excuse to force an interview. Why? For social ends, as we might think in another context? No, for Datchery did not follow up his introduction to Jasper, but, indeed, made no pretense, later, of hiding his dislike for Jasper. But perhaps Datchery did not know Jasper, and simply wanted to identify him?

If we interpret this scene as the trick of a "detective" who wants to learn Jasper's appearance — and we freely admit that this is interpretation rather than authorial statement — Bazzard eliminates himself as an identity for Datchery. If Bazzard knew Jasper, from a possible visit of Jasper's to Mr. Grewgious's establishment in London, Bazzard had no reason to press for an interview. If Bazzard did not know Jasper, and vice versa, there was no urgent reason for a cumbrous imposture and disguise. Datchery, as a third point against Bazzard, is, to me, obviously an elderly man, not simply a young man in white locks and greasepaint wrinkles. It is age that causes him to redden when he stoops. And he is characterized as an elderly man. He is mellow, socially adept, errantly whimsical, and highly individuated. And for Dickens, as a rule, such individuation as Datchery's, such development of full personality, come only in later life. Young men, for him, are usually uncrystallized, often not far from being only types. Such is the case with all the very young personalities in Edwin Drood. Edwin, himself, we must point out to those who dislike him, is not really "antipatico," he is simply calfish and undeveloped. Had he lived, it is hinted, he would have grown. Jasper, Crisparkle and Tartar, as the next level of age, assume greater independence from their biological and environmental moulds, while Grewgious, the oldest named character (save the nearly senile Mrs. Crisparkle), is by far the most complex unquestioned personality in the novel. And this same pattern, be it conscious or unconscious on the part of the author, is to be found in Dickens's other work. Can one imagine a child Micawber? A child Fagin, or Brownlow, or Gabriel Vardan? Or an elderly Oliver Twist or Coppcrfield? For Dickens true individuation, especially the gift of whimsy, comes in later life, and by all counts, therefore, Datchery is an elderly man. And thereby, he is, of necessity, a new character in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood".

If Datchery is a new character, two possible identities are most obvious. Datchery may simply be a detective, perhaps hired by Grewgious; perhaps otherwise acquainted with the case. Or, secondly, Mr. Datchery may be a "ghost," a "watcher from the dead" — an exemplar of a theme which seems to have fascinated Dickens.

In much Victorian literature there are peculiar assumptions about the universe. Most obvious of these is the heightening of social intercourse, so that persons known to us keep bobbing up and reemerging in the most unexpected places and situations, a practice which to us moderns is "coincidental" and disturbing. Lives, for the Victorians, intersect like the paths of inked balls rolling about the hollow interior of a paper-lined sphere. (In Edwin Drood, for example, Tartar, who enters the story by the bare chance of living next door to Landless, is not suffered to remain a stranger, but is unexpectedly — and incredibly — revealed to be a childhood friend of Crisparkle's.) And besides this, another slightly contradictory permission is yielded: that there is a dim penumbra surrounding each novel, a limbo of biologically necessary persons, who may suddenly precipitate themselves into the story like actors-from-the-wings as long-lost brothers, or uncles, or fathers, or mothers; persons who have been pocketed in time by shipwreck, or loss of memory, or degradation, or captivity among savages, or fortune-grubbing in the New World. One such phantom may be materializing as Datchery.

Or is this, too, one of the misdirections which Dickens calculated for his audience? Note the idiosyncratic vagueness of the text. Rosa's parents are unquestionably dead, but Drood's father is glossed over silently. We know absolutely nothing about him, nor of the peculiar circumstances which gave Drood a nearly coetaneous "uncle." Nor do we know anything of Landless, Sr. The Orient pervades this novel, just as do opium fumes, and either man may perhaps have been resident upon some tropical island, in mild dalliance, until the proper moment.

The father of Edwin Drood could pass all our exclusions and interpretations. He might, upon returning to England unexpectedly, contact his old friend Grewgious, and from him learn of the peculiar situation at Cloisterham. His knowledge of the crime would be second-hand, as Datchery's seems to be. He would be a stranger to the dusty cathedral town, ignorant of Jasper's face, elderly, and he would simply be telling the truth when he refers to himself as a "buffer" looking for a rest — after he has avenged his son.

Datchery brings to his quest not the calm, dispassionate investigation of a professional, but the emotions of a man who feels the crime deeply. He is concerned. His actions and words are those of a man who really hates John Jasper, of a man who takes little care to hide his hatred. Such emotion could well be expected of Drood Sr. (or, less likely, of a Landless uncle) upon learning that his son or nephew has been murdered (or "framed") by a lustful, conniving scoundrel. And his personality, admittedly new to the story, can be legitimately unique; we need invoke no strange transformations beneath the crumbling death of Cloisterham.

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1980 Addendum: The thought has occurred to me a couple of timeo that the name "Datchery" might be an echo of Pondicherry, the French colony in India.