The Puzzle of Dickenss Last Plot | Page 3

sixteen years BEFORE she took to opium. If she
has been dealing in opium for ten years (the exact period is not stated),
she has been very disreputable for twenty-six years, that is ever since
John Jasper's birth. Mr. Cuming Walters suggests that she is the mother
of John Jasper, and, therefore, maternal grandmother of Edwin Drood.
She detests her client, Jasper, and plays the spy on his movements, for
reasons unexplained.
Jasper is secretly in love with Rosa, the fiancee of his nephew, and his
own pupil in the musical art. He makes her aware of his passion,
silently, and she fears and detests him, but keeps these emotions private.
She is a saucy school-girl, and she and Edwin are on uncomfortable
terms: she does not love him, while he perhaps does love her, but is
annoyed by her manner, and by the gossip about their betrothal. "The
bloom is off the plum" of their prearranged loves, he says to his friend,
uncle, and confidant, Jasper, whose own concealed passion for Rosa is
of a ferocious and homicidal character. Rosa is aware of this fact; "a
glaze comes over his eyes," sometimes, she says, "and he seems to
wander away into a frightful sort of dream, in which he threatens
most . . . " The man appears to have these frightful dreams even when
he is not under opium.
OPENING OF THE TALE
The tale opens abruptly with an opium-bred vision of the tower of
Cloisterham Cathedral, beheld by Jasper as he awakens in the den of
the Princess Puffer, between a Chinaman, a Lascar, and the hag herself.
This Cathedral tower, thus early and emphatically introduced, is to play

a great but more or less mysterious part in the romance: that is certain.
Jasper, waking, makes experiments on the talk of the old woman, the
Lascar and Chinaman in their sleep. He pronounces it "unintelligible,"
which satisfies him that his own babble, when under opium, must be
unintelligible also. He is, presumably, acquainted with the languages of
the eastern coast of India, and with Chinese, otherwise, how could he
hope to understand the sleepers? He is being watched by the hag, who
hates him.
Jasper returns to Cloisterham, where we are introduced to the Dean, a
nonentity, and to Minor Canon Crisparkle, a muscular Christian in the
pink of training, a classical scholar, and a good honest fellow. Jasper
gives Edwin a dinner, and gushes over "his bright boy," a lively lad,
full of chaff, but also full of confiding affection and tenderness of heart.
Edwin admits that his betrothal is a bore: Jasper admits that he loathes
his life; and that the church singing "often sounds to me quite
devilish,"--and no wonder. After this dinner, Jasper has a "weird
seizure;" "a strange film comes over Jasper's eyes," he "looks
frightfully ill," becomes rigid, and admits that he "has been taking
opium for a pain, an agony that sometimes overcomes me." This
"agony," we learn, is the pain of hearing Edwin speak lightly of his
love, whom Jasper so furiously desires. "Take it as a warning," Jasper
says, but Edwin, puzzled, and full of confiding tenderness, does not
understand.
In the next scene we meet the school-girl, Rosa, who takes a walk and
has a tiff with Edwin. Sir Luke Fildes's illustration shows Edwin as "a
lad with the bloom of a lass," with a classic profile; and a gracious head
of long, thick, fair hair, long, though we learn it has just been cut. He
wears a soft slouched hat, and the pea-coat of the period.
SAPSEA AND DURDLES
Next, Jasper and Sapsea, a pompous ass, auctioneer, and mayor, sit at
their wine, expecting a third guest. Mr. Sapsea reads his absurd epitaph
for his late wife, who is buried in a "Monument," a vault of some sort
in the Cathedral churchyard. To them enter Durdles, a man never sober,
yet trusted with the key of the crypt, "as contractor for rough repairs."

In the crypt "he habitually sleeps off the fumes of liquor." Of course no
Dean would entrust keys to this incredibly dissipated, dirty, and
insolent creature, to whom Sapsea gives the key of his vault, for no
reason at all, as the epitaph, of course, is to be engraved on the outside,
by Durdles's men. However, Durdles insists on getting the key of the
vault: he has two other large keys. Jasper, trifling with them, keeps
clinking them together, so as to know, even in the dark, by the sound,
which is the key that opens Sapsea's vault, in the railed-off burial
ground, beside the cloister arches. He has met Durdles at Sapsea's for
no other purpose than to obtain access at will to Mrs. Sapsea's
monument. Later in the evening Jasper finds Durdles more