First published in "The Nation". vol. 98, 1914

John Jasper, whose neck was saved from the English hangman through Mr. Bernard Shaw's desire to make an epigram, is again to be put in jeopardy of his life. This time it is in Philadelphia, where a mock-trial of the alleged murderer of Edwin Drood will be held on April 29.

It is a wonder they did not hang him in London. Foreman Shaw of the jury had his little joke about finding him guilty of manslaughter "in the spirit of compromise." But it is possible that all the jurymen would have voted for a verdict of murder in the first degree if it had not been for the prosecuting attorney. Mr. Cuming Walters, who “led for the Crown," arose at eleven o'clock in the evening and delivered a long, very earnest, and rather dull address. In short, he bored the jury, the Court, and the audience, “full of holes." Mr. Walters has written one book, compiled another, and published any number of letters, articles, and addresses to prove that Jasper's plot against Edwin Drood really succeeded. So he not only refused to be frivolous about the case, but he almost declined to be interesting. A discussion about the make-believe characters in a novel had no room in it, he thought, for lightness. And so the jury revolted and Jasper got off with his life.

The cards were stacked against Jasper from the start. The choir-master walked into court a half-doomed man. The defence seems to have taken a rather academic interest in an acquittal. But Mr. Walters's thirst for a conviction was very real. For nine or ten years (since his publication of “Clues to the Mystery of Edwin Drood") he has pursued Jasper as relentlessly as fate. And the defence virtually gave their case away before the trial began. They agreed not to produce Edwin in court, and then tried to clear his uncle of the charge of murdering him. This was an egregious blunder. Jasper's lawyers should have insisted upon producing in court a person — Datchery, or another — who would insist that he was Edwin Drood. Then the jury could have decided the question of identity.

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If a writer who has recently described the approaching Philadelphia trial, in the Boston Transcript, is correctly informed, then the defence is going to make a worse blunder than that made in London. “It was proposed by the defence," he writes, “to call Drood himself to the stand by proxy, but the prosecution, rather than be handicapped by such a proceeding, agreed to admit that Drood was dead.”

That was good of them! It gives them their case half-won. In London, Helena Landless was permitted to go on the witness stand and testify that she was Mr. Datchery; that she, the Oriental tragedy queen, already in love with that properest of persons, the Rev. Dr. Crisparkle, had been careering about Cloisterham in trousers and wig, eating fried sole, veal cutlet, and a pint of sherry for her dinner!

It is true that she said she did not drink the sherry, but poured it away. This is an invention of the exponents of the Helena-Datchery theory — Dickens says nothing about it. It is also true that the defence called Bazzard, who, in turn, testified that he was Datchery. Mr. Walters, in cross-examination, was far less successful in destroying his evidence than Mr. Cecil Chesterton, for the defence, had been in shaking Helena's story.

The identity of Datchery is, of course, a separate problem from the question of Jasper's guilt. It is, unless Datchery was Edwin Drood himself. And if the defence be not permitted to make this contention any argument about Datchery merely prolongs the trial — though it may add some humor to it. At the English trial Mr. "Justice" Gilbert K. Chesterton had to remind the prosecutor that his lengthy cross-examination of Bazzard was dragging a little. They must get on, for “we are all in high hopes of hanging somebody."

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They say that the Philadelphia trial will be eminently fair because of the lawyers who are to take part in it. A Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will be on the bench, and the prosecution will be conducted by Attorney-General Bell and Judge Patterson, of the Court of Common Pleas.

Really, nothing could look worse for Jasper. Legally, the evidence against him is tremendous. It is because Mr. Walters and Sir Robertson Nicoll have looked at the problem in such a cold, legal light that they are sure of Jasper’s legal as well as moral guilt. But imagine the choir-master's attorneys trying to present it as an artistic problem, as a study of the human equation! Those judges and lawyers would simply dance on the idea.

There is one ray of hope for Jasper. Among the talesmen are George Ade and “Mr. Dooley." The lawyers for the defence ought to see to it that these two humorists get into the box. They may find a way out for the prisoner.

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The “legal" case for Jasper’s guilt is very strong. Certainly, Dickens told Forster that his story was to concern an uncle who should murder his nephew. Certainly, the novelist’s son and daughter believed that their father died still intending the murder to succeed. Certainly, Dickens told Fildes, the illustrator, that Jasper must have a black scarf — for with that “Jasper strangles Edwin Drood." Certainly, eighteen out of the thirty-two principal commentators on the problem have believed that the plot did not miscarry, and that Edwin’s dead body was actually placed in the quick-lime after that sinister Christmas Eve dinner.

But — it is not a legal problem, in the narrow sense. It is a human problem — a question of the workings of a novelist's mind. Another novelist or literary man is a better judge in the case than any lawyer who looks at it in a purely professional light. That Jasper tried to murder Edwin is denied by no one; the question is whether he is legally as well as morally guilty. The list of literary folk, especially imaginative writers, who believe that Edwin escaped is rather impressive: “Orpheus G. Kerr,” “Gillan Vase," Andrew Lang, William Archer, Comyns Carr, M. R. James, Clement Shorter, and Cecil Chesterton.

Forster and the Dickenses heard from the novelist that Edwin was murdered, but there is no proof that the plan was not changed afterwards. Charles Dickens was apparently in trouble with his plot towards the last days of his life. The statement to Fildes about the black scarf is not conclusive — an unsuccessful attempt might have been made with the scarf. (Fildes never seems to have drawn it, by the way.) Finally, and it is a point seldom emphasized, the machinery of the opium, Jasper's drugged trances, seem utterly unnecessary unless they were to prevent the murder. They would explain how the attempt failed, and do it beautifully. What other purpose have they?