Author's End Note and Acknowledgements

The temptation to think through an ending to The Mystery of Edwin Drood is strong. Apart from the desire to restore order the dislike of an unsolved mystery, there is also the fascination to wonder how Dickens would have resolved his story.

Most attempts to address this fascination, whether in play or novel form, have begun by following Dickens's own first part and then working through to a resolution. This approach is fraught with problems, not the least being the challenge of imitating Dickens's style.

It seemed to me that a more straightforward way would be to send a detective to Cloisterham at more or less the point where Dickens's fragment ends, which is six months after Edwin disappears. I had come across his admiration for what were then called the Detective Police when reading his journalism and decided that one of these gentleman might make the journey and investigate the mystery by looking at the available evidence in his quest for an answer.

The detective story flourished in Victorian times. From Poe's Auguste Dupin in the 1840s to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes at the turn of the century, detective stories thrived. Notable among these was Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868), which gave us Sergeant Cuff of the Detective Police, although Dickens had already introduced Inspector Bucket from the same organisation in Bleak House (1853).

The work of the Detective Police, a force formed in 1842, was marked by its emphasis on evidence rather than chance, prejudice or conies ore. Dickens writes 'the Detective Force … is so well-chosen and trained, proceeds so systematically and quietly, does its business in such a workmanlike manner and is always so steadily and calmly engaged'. He goes on to say that the officers are 'famous for steadily pursuing the inductive process, and, front small beginnings, working on from clue to clue' (Detective Police: Household Words, 27 July and 10 August 1850).

I decided that my protagonist, Detective Sergeant Samuel Warden, would attempt his investigation in a similar manner, and this has also been my approach to the story. I have been aided in my research by the books listed below and I hereby acknowledge a debt of deep gratitude to the authors and editors involved.

From my reading I made two key decisions. Firstly, some questions raised by the nature of the unfinished fragment were unanswerable and speculation was misleading; secondly, there was clear evidence of Dickens's intentions in other matters.

The unanswerable questions were Datchery's identity, the origins of the Landlesses, Jasper's family history (including his possible relationship to Princess Puffer), the purpose of Princess Puffer's visit to Cloisterham on the Christmas Eve that Edwin disappears, the role of Deputy (if any) in the final resolution, the meaning of Durdle's memory of the scream a year before Edwin's disappearance, how and by whom the person responsible for Edwin's disappearance will be brought to account.

Clear evidence does exist, however, for certain of Dickens's intentions, if one is to believe the comments of his illustrators, the words of his family and friends and his own working notes; and there seems no reason why one shouldn't. The story concerns the murder of a nephew by his uncle, the murderer was to review the crime (while in the condemned cell) as though it had been committed by another, the engagement ring was to play a vital role in identifying not only the murderer but the location of the crime, the uncle was to urge on the search for Edwin Drood and the pursuit of his murderer and the murder was to be by strangulations.

It also seems likely from what John Forster had to say that important roles were to be played by other characters, notably Rosa Bud, Septimus Crisparkle, Helena Landless and lieutenant Tartar. Dickens endows each of these characters with special qualities likely to be useful in the pursuit of justice: Rosa's initiative, Crisparkle's muscular Christianity', Helena's strange powers and Tartar's athleticism.

Researchers are generally agreed that Dickens intended Rosa to marry Tartar, Crisparkle to marry Helena and that Neville was one of those Dickens characters marked for death.

Two of the unanswerable questions, however, had to be addressed: the identity of Datchery and how and by whom the person responsible for Edwin's disappearance was to he brought to account. In the first, I was aided by Wendy Jacobson in her wonderful book, The Companion to Edwin Drood, where she points out that Bazzard 'is the only (existing) character available for disguise as the stranger in Cloisterham' (page 151 of the Companion). She also points out that Datchery might be 'simply himself': a new character, perhaps detective?

I didn't want to make this assumption. Besides, Bazzard as the only existing character possible suited my purposes with regard to how the person responsible for Edwin's disappearance was to be brought to account. Thanks to Simon Callow's Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World, the idea occurred to me that Dickens may have already given us the indication of this in his fragment.

In approaching the story, I also kept in mind Dickens's comments that the novel was to contain 'a very curious and new idea ... a very strong one, though difficult to work' and his daughter Katey's belief that 'it was (never) on the Mystery alone that he relied for interest and originality of his idea' but that 'he was as deeply fascinated and absorbed in the study of the criminal as in the dark and sinister crime'. Lady Pakenham's comments support this view: that the 'very curious and new idea' was to be 'the pursuit and destruction of the criminal by himself'.

Lastly, I have made no attempt to re-write Dickens's words and have kept his and mine very separate: those of the `Inimitable' in italic font, mine are in normal.