5. The weighty letter of Sir Luke Fildes printed on pages 54–5 confirms unmistakably and strongly the witness already adduced. Fildes was the sole illustrator of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and he testifies that Collins did not in the least know the significance of the various groups on the wrapper. Further, when Sir Luke was puzzled by the statement that John Jasper was described as wearing a neckerchief that would go twice round his neck he drew Dickens’s attention to the circumstance that he had previously dressed Jasper as wearing a little black tie once round the neck, and asked why the alteration was made. Dickens, a little disconcerted, suddenly asked, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ He then said: ‘I must have the double necktie! It is necessary, for Jasper strangles Edwin Drood with it.’ Fildes was impressed by Dickens’s earnestness, and resented the suggestion often made that Dickens’s hints dropped to members of his family or friends may have been intentionally misleading. ‘It is a little startling,’ says Sir Luke, ‘after more than thirty-five years of profound belief in the nobility of character and sincerity of Charles Dickens, to be told now that he probably was more or less of a humbug on such occasions.’
I cannot but feel that the external testimony is too strong to be explained away, and it ought to be read and pondered in its entirety.
II. DICKENS’S OWN NOTE
In the Memoranda made by Dickens for chapter xii., and printed on page 63, we read that Jasper ‘lays the ground for the manner of the murder, to come out at last. Night picture of the Cathedral.’ Mr. Lang himself admits, ‘It seems almost undeniable that, when Dickens wrote this note, he meant Jasper to succeed in murdering Edwin.’ [113]
III. THE ADMITTED TESTIMONY OF THE BOOK
The proof that Edwin Drood was murdered is to my mind mainly to be found in the pages of the story. One would have to print a large part of it in order to convey the impressive and unmistakable force of the whole, but perhaps it is better to read it as Dickens wrote it. For he himself advances nothing to modify or mitigate the conclusion that, as the result of a carefully designed plot, Edwin Drood was foully murdered by his uncle. Happily it is not necessary to spend much space on this. I believe that Dr. Jackson is fully justified in his statement that all who have written on the subject acknowledge that Jasper tried to murder his nephew, and believed himself to have succeeded. We all see that Jasper had either strangled Edwin with a black scarf and committed his body to a heap of quicklime that lay about convenient, or thought that he had done so. ‘We all see that the crime is to be proved by a gold ring of rubies and diamonds which Edwin has concealed about his person, though Jasper does not know it.’ Mr. Proctor writes:
It is clear that Dickens has intended to convey the impression that Edwin Drood is murdered, his body and clothes consumed, Jasper having first taken his watch and chain and shirt-pin, which cannot have been thrown into the river till the night of Christmas Day, since the watch, wound up at twenty minutes past two on Christmas Eve, had run down when found in the river.
Having arrived at this point we may proceed.
Is it conceivable that Jasper, believing himself to have succeeded in murdering his nephew, could have failed? Jasper is meant by Dickens to be a man wholly without conscience and heart. Such characters are not numerous in Dickens’s books, but we have evidence that he knew them and had pondered over them. I may quote his words in Hunted Down:
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that a man who is a calculating criminal, is, in any phase of his guilt otherwise than true to himself, and perfectly consistent with his whole character. Such a man commits murder, and murder is the natural culmination of his course; such a man has to outface murder, and will do it with hardihood and effrontery. It is a sort of fashion to express surprise that any notorious criminal, having such crime upon his conscience, can so brave it out. Do you think that if he had it on his conscience at all, or had a conscience to have it upon, he would ever have committed the crime? Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe all such monsters to be, this Slinkton recovered himself, and showed a defiance that was sufficiently cold and quiet. He was white, he was haggard, he was changed; but only as a sharper who had played for a great stake and had been outwitted and had lost the game.