First published in The Times Literary Supplement, 11 Nov. 1983

Mrs Tope's care has spread a very neat, dean breakfast ready for her lodger. Before sitting down to it, he opens his corner-cupboard door; takes his bit of chalk from its shelf; adds one thick line to the score, extending from the top of the cupboard door to the bottom; and then falls to with an appetite.

These words were written by Charles Dickens in his little Swiss chalet on June 8, 1870, only hours before he died. They are the conclusion of chapter 23 of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. (It is clear that this is the end of a chapter because below the last line in the manuscript there is a flourish.) What was to follow? No one knows. Since Edwin Drood is a mystery story there have been many guesses about how it was to have ended, but none has won general agreement. I wish to suggest a solution which I have not seen put forward before. If it is correct, Edwin Drood marks a new departure in Dickens's work.

Any would-be solver of the mystery must confront the testimony of Dickens's biographer John Forster about Dickens's plan for his last novel. Forster says the story

was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his uncle; the originality of which was to consist in the review of the murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but some other man, were the tempted. The last chapters were to be written in the condemned cell, to which his wickedness, all elaborately elicited from him as if told of another, had brought him. Discovery by the murderer of the utter needlessness of the murder for its object, was to follow hard upon commission of the deed; but all discovery of the murderer was to be baffled till towards the close, when, by means of a gold ring which had resisted the corrosive effects of the lime into which he had thrown the body, not only the person murdered was to be identified but the locality of the crime and the man who committed it. So much was told to me before any of the book was written; and it will be recollected that the ring, taken by Drood to be given to his betrothed only if their engagement went on, was brought away with him from their last interview. Rosa was to marry Tartar, and Crisparkle the sister of Landless, who was himself, I think, to have perished in assisting Tartar finally to unmask and seize the murderer.

[Charles Dickens] junior, the novelist oldest son, says his father told him Jasper murdered Edwin. And Luke Fildes, the novelists illustrator, in the letter to The Times (1905) says Dickens told him: "Can you keep a secret? I must have a double necktie. It is necessary, for Jasper strangles Edwin Drood with it." (in the novel it is a black scarf.)

But Forster's account did not go unchallenged. The general reliability of the Life was soon questioned. This takes us into the teak of the controversy about Dickens's private life, which is still a matter of dispute among scholars. There is one worrying problem for those who believe Forster. He says that in July 1869 Dickens wrote to him:

What should you think of the idea of a story beginning in this way?—Two people, boy and girl, or very young, going apart from one another, pledged to be married after many years—at the end of the book. The interest to arise out of the tracing of their separate ways, and the impossibility of telling what will be done with that impending fate.

Forster says this idea was discarded, and that in the letter dated Friday August 6, 1869, Dickens wrote: "I laid aside the fancy I told you of, and have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work.". Forster than says: "I learnt immediately afterward, was to be that of the murder of a nephew, & etc". The problem here is that the first idea for Edwin Drood which Forster says Dickens wrote to him about has been shown to appear in Dickens's memoranda Book, kept by him between 1855 and 1865. In an entry which cannot be dated later than 1862.

It looks as if Forster copied out a plot from the old Memoranda Book and said Dickens had send it to him. As Angus Wilson (1974) has said, this is not a charge of faulty memory but of bad faith. It throws doubt on the whole od the Life. If Forster had been capable of it, surely he would have been capable of what is also alleged that he based his account of Edwin Drood not on what Dickens told him, but merely on interferences from his readings of what was published.

If Forster's account is rejected, the recollections of Fildes (recorded long afterwards and partly discrepant) and Charles Dickens junior (which appeared many years after his own death) cannot carry great weight. The essential truth of Forster's account is clearly the crucial question. Can it be defended?

The real difficulty is the business of the Memoranda Book. Of course it could be that Dickens, considering a new story, himself consulted it. And there is no doubt that many modern scholars are convinced of Forger's general reliability and good faith, even if there are minor distortions of fact in the Life. All the same, this business seems fishy. Forster's account of Edwin Drood must for the present remain problematic.

One puzzling aspect of it is the apparent inconsistency between Dickens's statement that his new idea was "not communicable" with Forster's statement that Dickens "immediately" communicated it to him. A little joke? Or a contradiction? Charles Forsyte (1980) has argued that there need be no contradiction. It is surely probable that Dickens told Forster something about Edwin Drood; not all the details, as that would have spoilt the plot for him, but a vague outline of the story, which did not give away the real secret of the mystery; and it was this that Forster "learnt immediately aftenvard". It is not certain that Forster even meant to imply that Dickens revealed the incommunicable secret to him. Even if he did mean to imply that, we do not have to believe that Dickens actually did it.

Can we find out what it was? It is hard to believe that Dickens had no idea what was to be the solution to his mystery when he embarked on Edwin Drood, even if he may not decided on all the details. There is in fact [...] and was approved by Dickens on December 5, 1869. It includes a dramatic scene with a man [...]

There have been many guesses about the new idea. A popular theory is that Edwin Drood was not really murdered but was to reappear in the denouement. And it is true, that Dickens's list of possible chapter titles for the novel, which has survived, include some, which leave open the question of what happened to Edwin. But as Margaret Cardwell points out in her admirable edition of novel for the World's Classics (1982), Dickens was prepared in 1869, while still planning his own story, to print in All the Year Round a serial by Robert Lytton, for which Dickens suggested the title The Disappearance of John Acland, as it would "leave the reader in doubt wheather he was really murdered, till the end". If Dickens was prepared to print such a story the "curios and new idea ... strong ... though difficult to work", cannot be the question of whether or not Drood was murdered.

Nor it is likely that the new idea was the innocence of John Jasper, maintained by Felix Aylmer (1964) in his Agatha Christie-type solution. This kind of solution, elaborately ingenious, is open to the serious objection that Sherlock Holmes did not make his first bow till 1887, seventeen years after the publication of Edwin Drood. If it is hard to believe that Dickens's anticipated himself is even harder to believe that he could have anticipated the sophistication of detective and mystery stories written since the days of Conan Doyle. The Victorian Agatha Cristie was not Dickens but Wilkie Collins, and in a letter to Collins of October 6, 1859 Dickens seems to deny any interest in that kind of plotting.

I think the business of Art us to lay all that ground carefully, but with the care that conceals itself –to shew, by a backward light, what everything has been working to–but only to suggest, until the fulfilment comes. These are the ways of Providence–of which all Art is but a little imitation.

The truth is that for the modern connoisseur of mystery stories Edwin Drood must be very disappointing. There is almost nothing to find out. As a detective story Edwin Drood is a primitive, like Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson. Yet the effect of the novel is anything but feeble. We feel all the time that it is full of meaning. Dickens had never written in this pregnant and intense way before. The sense of deep mystery which pervades it does not derive from the whodunit but front the haunting figure of Jasper — a man not only leading a double life, but deeply divided within himself. The appropriate culmination of the novel would have been a dramatic confrontation of good and evil. It has been suggested that this might have come about through a revelation of the Jekyll and Hyde aspects of Jasper. (Forster's account of the projected scene in the condemned cell may support this.) Or there might have been a final confrontation between Jasper, the symbol of evil, and an opponent from among the "good" characters.

Supposing that this were in fact to have been the story, it seems plausible that the opponent might have been Datchery, that mysterious personage whom we leave (for ever) eating his breakfast at the end of chapter 23. Many critics agree with S. C. Roberts (1955) that what we are told of him is "the beginning of a new element in the narrative". There are one or two straws in the wind here. In a letter to James T. Fields (January 14, I870) Dickens wrote: "There is a curious interest working up to No 5, which requires a great deal of art and self-denial ... So I hope at Nos 5 and 6 the story will turn upon an interest suspended until the end." Datchery first appears in No 5 (chapter 18) and again in No 6 (chapter 23). Was he the "curious interest", "suspended until the end"? Modern scholarship lends support to the view that he was to be a key figure. The manuscript , says Cardwell, confirms "the importance to Dickens of Datchery or of a character playing Datchery's role". And in her Clarendon Press edition (1974) she points out an interesting difference between Charles Collins's sketch for [...] monthly parts and his drawing [...] sketch showed "the second and third of throe [...]mystery and detection ware to have remained completely private. The police are absent from the story, as Philip Collins (1965) has noted; though the fictional action is usually thought to take place at a time when policemen were on their beats. We hear al one was that the search for the missing Edwin was "pressed on every band", yet the only collector of clues we see is Datchery.

Could Datchery be a policeman? Dickens had introduced the professional police detective into English fiction In Bleak House (1852) inspector Bucket. But Datchery, unlike inspector Bucket, is a gentleman. It seems more probable that he is an amateur. That Datchery was to be a “deus ex machina” may be suggested by a conversation in chapter 17, which Dickens deleted, between Neville Landless; who is suspected of the murder of Edwin, and Crisparkle. Neville says, "It seems a little hard to be so tied to a stake and innocent; but I don't complain." "And you must expect no miracle to help you", says Mr Crisparkle compassionately. "No, sir, I knew that. The ordinary fullness of time and circumstance is all I have to trust to." At the end of the chapter lawyer Grewgious is looking up at the stars "as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him". The next chapter (18) begins: "At about this time a stranger appears in Cloisterham" - Datchery. Is he the "miracle"?

Who is Datchery, of the white (or grey) hair and black eyebrows? he may be a new character. But there seem to be hints that he is in disguise, and it has been usually thought that he is a character who has already appeared. Two of the purposed identifications are sensational. The first is that he is Edwin Drood himself in disguise. This was cleverly argued for in an early study, Watched by the Dead (by Richard A. Proktor, 1887). But it contradicts Forster, Fildes, and a son of Dickens, three men who in different ways were close to him, and who all affirm that Dickens told that Edwin was murdered. The John Acland Business also makes against it. The other existing suggestion is Helena Landless, supported by Edmund Wilson in the influential essay in The Wound and the Bow (1941), "The plausible", as Alfred Hitchcock called them, will not like this idea. Helena is a lady known in Cloisterham, yet she walks disguised as a retired buffer in broad daylight. Would a young girl be likely to know about "the old tavern way of keeping scores"? - as likely the Dean, one would think, or less. The Helena idea does not appear to be in Dickens's style. We learn from his letter to W.H.Walls (June 30, 1867) that ha was relieved to find in The Moonstone "nothing belonging to disguised women or the like" (a reference to Collins's No Name).

Other identifications are less interesting. On Grewgious as Datchery G. K. Chesterton (1911) has surely said the last word: "There is something pointless about one grotesque character dressing up as another grotesque character actually less amusing than himself". Recent books on Edwin Drood have favored Bazzard, amateur dramatist and author of The Thorn of Anxiety. His character seems to be quite different from Datchery's, but of course it might also be a pose; as Aylmer says, his theatrical manner may contest deep motives. But in that case we have to invent a "real" Bazzard about whom we know absolutely nothing. Equally uninteresting is the suggestion that Datchery is Neville Landless, or lieutenant Tartar. Tartar knows nothing of Jasper.

One more suggestion may be mentioned as "getting warmer". This is the young man named Poker, who does not actually appear in Edwin Drood, but who teases the old way jackass in the enigmatic "Sapsea fragment", discovered by Forster. Forster thought Dickens had used up his material too quickly and was trying to invent some more, but it is not credible that the business of Poker could have been introduced as it stands into the novel too similar to the business ol Datchery. Charles Forsyte suggests that the Sapsea fragment may have been an earlier unpolished sketch which Dickens kept by him as [...] into Edwin Drood. Or (an attractive suggestion) it make be a tentative first sketch of the Datchery idea. Once again we dont know. Phillip Holsbauer (1973), after listing the various hypotheses about Datchery, concludes: "Clearly, this is enigmatic. The critics should confess themselves baffled." I believe that there is an explanation. Three considerations are relevant.

1. The period of Dickens's life during writing "Edwin Drood" was concealed. Dickens had achieved a direct contact with his public in his reading which meant a great deal to them and to him. In April 1869 his health broke down and his doctors insisted that be should stop. But he was allowed to give twelve farewell performances in 1870. He took his last leave of his audience at St James's Hall with a little joke:

In but two short weeks from this time I hope that you may enter, in your own homes, on a new series of readings at which my assistance will be indispensable; but from these garish lights I vanish now forever more, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, affectionate farewell.

Dickens could not know that Edwin Drood was to be a farewell performance, but he may well guessed it. If so it would be surprising if he had not considered some way of making his last bow in the novel itself. At any rate there is little doubt of the influence of the readings on Edwin Drood: it is full of "stage directions".

2. The personal significance of Edwin Drood. That there is some seems probable Cloisterham is Rochester, where Pickwick started his adventures and Ellen Ternan was born. And while we need not accept the whole of Edmund Wilson's theory about Edwin Drood, it is easy to agree with him that Jasper and Dickens have affinities. But if he represent an aspect of Dickens, he cannot be the puppet in whose costume Dickens would have made his "positively last appearance". He is bad man in disguise. Is it not likely that he will be defeated by a good man in disguise and [...] that is the part Dickens himself would play in both life and art. Dickens loved the incognito and was fascinated by role-playing. "There had always been something vaguely theatrical about his style of dress", says Ellen Moers (1960), who gives him a place in the lane of dandys from Brummell to Beerbohm. He could dress up to attract attention, as a Heavy Swell. But he could also, says John Reed (1975), [...] deep satisfaction from moving secretly about the low districts of London, "like Harun al Raschid in disguise".

3. Dickens's lifelong fascination with "The Arabian Nights". Agnus Wilson has written convincingly about the profound significance of Jasper's "oriental dream" under the influence of opium. [...] world of The Arabian Nights with the [...] and the violent, those parts of it which we may suppose he was conscious of when as a child he so loved it. "There are many references in The Arabian Nights in Dickens's work - for example in Martin Chuzzlewit, chapter 5, David Copperfield, chapter 3 and 59, American Notes, chapter 9. They are frequent in the Christmas Stories. There is the detailed account in "A Christmas Tree" of these stories had over his childish imagination. la another story he speaks of the "sweet memories" with which the name of "the good Caliph Haroun Alraschid" is "scented". Of yet another passage Michael Slater in his recent Dickens and Women (1983) says: "As always with Dickens, The Arabian Nights allusions are a sure sign that his emotions are deeply stirred." Under the [...] public without that public at all suspecting what it is that he is doing."

We should hear in mind here that if Philip Collins is right Dickens had composed a mystery, plot in the real world at this time — the house of Slough, the assumed name his double life. But psychological explanations are quite speculative. The solution I suggest does not depend on them. It is a simple one. Edwin Drood turns out to be an "Arabian Nights expedition" (Dickens once invited Wilkie Collins to one in real life). Datchery is Charles Dickens himself, moving like Harun al Raschid in disguise among the subjects of his fictional kingdom. This would explain why Dickens was so secretive in the notes [...] privacy of his desk, the solution to his mystery." All the other suggested solutions are either, in Dickens's phrase, "difficult to work", but in an un-Dickensian, Agatha Christie way, or, if straightforward, could not have presented problems to so experienced a writer. This solution give a reason why Dickens should have played his cards close to his chest. The secret, would have been uniquely exciting while it was kept, but anti-climactic if it had got out prematurely. It would also explain his reference to the "self-denial" required in writing the Datchery numbers; and the curious phrase "the Datchery assumption" quoted by Forster as used by Dickens. It would explain the deleted reference to "a miracle". A miracle is a direct intervention of God, and in a novel the novelist himself is God. There are anticipations of the idea in Dickens's other work. The teller of the tale of the Baron of Grogzwig in Nicholas Niekleby is clearly a persona of the author. There is the revelation of Master Humphrey as himself "the single gentleman" at the end of The Old Curiosity Shop. There is the peculiar character "The Shadow" which intrigued Dickens at one time. In later years we have the sketches collected as The Uncommercial Traveller, in which Dickens goes about as "Mr Uncommercial". If Hitchcock could appear in his own films, why not Dickens in his own novel? Of course it is impossible to say how the Dickens/Datchery figure would be finally explained. I suspect that it would have turned out to be the person referred to by Grewgious in chapter 20: "a Firm downstairs with which I have business relations, lend me a substitute" - ie, for Buzzard, who is "off duty at present". At any rate this would give a reason for the mention of this "substitute", otherwise unexplained.

It seems probable that Datchery would have been a main agent in the unmasking of Jasper. But there is no reason to believe that the process of detection need have involved anything very ingenious or elaborate. Kate Perugini, Dickens's daughter, endorsing Forster's account of novel, says (in a passage quoted by Cardwell): "It was not, I imagine, for the intricate working out of his plot alone that my father cared to write this story; but it was through his wonderful observation of character, and his strange insight into the tragic secrets of the human heart, that he desired his greatest triumph to be achieved."