‘This lie, so gross, while the mere words in which it is told are so true.’

Jasper ‘watched every animated look and gesture attending the delivery of these words’ from Edwin.

‘A sense of destructive power is so expressed in his face, that even Durdles pauses in his munching.’

‘But his face looks so wicked and menacing ... that her flight is arrested by horror as she looks at him.’

‘The air of leisurely patronage and indifference with which this is said, as the speaker throws himself back in a chair and clasps his hands at the back of his head, as a rest for it, is very exasperating to the excitable and excited Neville.’ [It’s the way the words are said and Edwin’s over-relaxed posture that Neville finds so infuriating.]

“I hope I see Mr. Drood well; though I needn’t ask, if I may judge from his complexion.”

A secondary theme of Drood — and a very modern concept — is the primary importance of non-verbal communication. Only a fraction of the information we convey to others is transmitted through words. Collectively, facial expression, gesture and posture, as well as vocal inflection, are more important. Even sheep can recognise up to 50 facial expressions of other flock members and handlers. Drood is Dickens’s testimony to the astonishing amount that can be non-verbally transferred between people.

Information can be conveyed deliberately and consciously:

“He has made a slave of me with his looks. He has forced me to understand him, without his saying a word; and he has forced me to keep silence, without his uttering a threat.”

“You don't know, sir, yet, what a complete understanding can exist between my sister and me, though no spoken word — perhaps hardly as much as a look — may have passed between us.” A picture is said to be worth a thousand words — so, too, is a significant look. Neville and Helena, being twins, can read the others body language perfectly e.g. ‘she answered the slightest look of inquiry conceivable, in her brother’s eyes, with as slight an affirmative bend of her own head’.

A world of meaning (in this case sympathy) can also be expressed in a touch: ‘As there was something mournful in his sigh, Rosa, in touching him with her tea-cup, ventured to touch him with her small hand too. “Thank you, my dear,” said Mr Grewgious’.

When people are attuned, as Rosa (with her ‘whimsically wicked face’) and Jasper are, despite their differences, intentions and feelings can be read almost telepathically: ‘He would begin by touching her hand. She feels the intention, and draws her hand back. His eyes are then fixed upon her, she knows, though her own see nothing but the grass’.

‘Mr. Crisparkle, in utter amazement, looked at Helena for corroboration, and met in her expressive face full corroboration, and a plea for advice.’

‘Rosa’s expressive little eyebrows asked him what he meant?’

Edwin on Rosa’s portrait: “I ought to have caught that expression [of Miss Scornful Pert] pretty well, for I have seen it often enough”.

But signals are not always picked up or understood:

‘“And you like him, and he likes you.” “I LIKE him very much, sir,” rejoined Rosa. “So I said, my dear,” returned her guardian, for whose ear the timid emphasis [inflection] was much too fine.’

‘Before going in, she gave him one last, wide, wondering look, as if she would have asked him with imploring emphasis: “O! don't you understand?”’

‘That was a curious look of Rosa’s when they parted at the gate. Did it mean that she saw below the surface of his thoughts, and down into their twilight depths? Scarcely that, for it was a look of astonished and keen inquiry. He decides that he cannot understand it, though it was remarkably expressive.’

Much is revealed unconsciously:

Helena instantly detects that Rosa has fallen for Tartar (probably before Rosa is even aware of it herself), and swiftly discerns that Jasper loves Rosa.

In Chapter 19, Jasper reads Rosa’s mind and responds to her unspoken thoughts (though it’s her facial expressions he’s reading): ‘Rosa puts her hands to her temples, and, pushing back her hair, looks wildly and abhorrently at him, as though she were trying to piece together what it is his deep purpose to present to her only in fragments.

“Reckon up nothing at this moment, angel, but the sacrifices that I lay at those dear feet.”’

But again, signals are not always picked up:

Edwin: ‘“Am I likely to forget what you have said with so much feeling?” “Take it as a warning, then.” ... Edwin pauses for an instant to consider the application of these last words’. Paltering words that, for a moment, Jasper fears Edwin has interpreted in their true sense, so that ‘Mr. Jasper's steadiness of face and figure becomes so marvellous that his breathing seems to have stopped’. But when it quickly becomes apparent that Edwin has entirely missed the point, ‘Mr. Jasper [becomes] a breathing man again’. And reassured, Jasper repeats the concealed threat twice more ‘with a quiet smile’ on his face. (Jasper, who suffers from ennui, grasps every opportunity for living dangerously and proving to himself how much smarter he is than others. Note, too, what a visual character he is and how he ‘haunts’ the novel. When not at the forefront, he’s almost constantly lurking in the background. “Mr. Jasper was that, Tope?” Who else?)

False signals can be sent with the intention to deceive:

‘“Look at him,” cries Jasper, stretching out his hand [towards Edwin] admiringly and tenderly.’

‘[Jasper] folds his hands upon the sun-dial and leans his chin upon them, so that his talk would seem from the windows ... to be of the airiest and playfullest.’

But when strong emotions are felt they can’t be entirely constrained and leak out:

‘His preservation of his easy attitude rendering his working features and his convulsive hands absolutely diabolical.’

In Drood even natural sounds convey important information: ‘tap, tap, tap’ holds a world of meaning for Durdles and ‘clink, clink’ proves useful to the musically-trained John Jasper.

In a novel with body language as a theme, those familiar with Dickens’s technique would expect to find a character with practically none — and Mr Grewgious is that man. He’d make a perfect poker player as his face (‘Edwin might as well have glanced at the face of a clock’), posture (‘wooden of aspect’), voice (‘as hard and dry as himself’) and manner of speaking (‘He jerked this inquiry at Edwin, and stopped when one might have supposed him in the middle of his oration’) reveal nothing at all. He has ‘very limited means of expression’ even when he tries.