The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens. The novel was left unfinished at the time of Dickens' death, and readers have often speculated how it might have ended.

The novel is named after Edwin Drood, one of the characters, but it mostly tells the story of his uncle, a choirmaster named John Jasper, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud is Drood's fiancée, and has also caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless, who comes from Ceylon with his twin sister, Helena, who immediately makes an enemy of Drood.

It is hinted strongly that Jasper is the murderer of Drood, who is missing at the end of the extant text, but it is not known whether Dickens had a surprise in mind.

The story is set in Cloisterham, a lightly fictionalised Rochester, and feelingly evokes the atmosphere of the town as much as its streets and buildings. (Wikipedia.org)

Characters

    * Edwin Drood – an orphan. When he comes of age, he plans to marry Rosa Bud and go to Egypt, doing engineering with the firm where his father had been a partner.
    * Rosa Bud – an orphan and Edwin Drood's fiancée. Their betrothal was arranged by their fathers.
    * John Jasper – the choirmaster of Cloisterham Cathedral, Edwin Drood's uncle and guardian, and Rosa Bud's music master. He secretly loves Rosa. He visits an opium den in London.
    * Neville and Helena Landless – twin orphans. They are from Ceylon, but it is not clear to what extent they are Ceylonese. In their childhood they were mistreated and deprived. Neville is immediately smitten by Rosa Bud. He is more proud than is good for him, and his integrity prevents him from making an insincere apology to Drood. Helena and Rosa become dear friends.
    * Rev. Septimus Crisparkle – minor canon of Cloisterham Cathedral and Neville Landless's mentor.
    * Mr. (Hiram) Grewgious – a London lawyer and Rosa Bud's guardian. He was a friend of her parents.
    * Mr. Bazzard – Mr. Grewgious's clerk. He is absent from that post when Datchery is in Cloisterham. He has written a play.
    * (Stony) Durdles – a stonemason. He knows more than anyone else about the Cloisterham Cathedral cemetery.
    * Deputy – a small boy. "Deputy" is not his name but rather a handle he uses for anonymity. If he catches Durdles out after 10 pm, he throws rocks at him until he goes home. Durdles pays him a halfpenny for doing so.
    * Dick Datchery – a stranger who takes lodging in Cloisterham for a month or two.
    * Princess Puffer – a haggard woman who runs a London opium den frequented by Jasper. She is unnamed in most of the book. "Princess Puffer" is the handle by which Deputy knows her.
    * Mr. (Thomas) Sapsea – a comically conceited auctioneer. By the time of Drood's disappearance he has become Mayor of Cloisterham.
    * Mr. Tope – the verger of Cloisterham Cathedral.
    * Mrs. Tope – the verger's wife. She cook's for Jasper and rents lodging to Datchery.
    * Miss Twinkleton – the mistress of the Nuns' House, the boarding school where Rosa lives.
    * Mrs. Tisher – Miss Twinkleton's assistant at the Nuns' House.
    * Mrs. Crisparkle – Rev. Crisparkle's widowed mother.
    * Mr. Honeythunder – a bullying London philanthropist. He is Neville and Helena Landless's guardian.
    * Mr. Tartar – a retired naval officer. He resigned his commission in his late twentys when an uncle left him some property, but he lives in London, being unaccustomed to the space of a large estate.
    * Mrs. Billickin – a widowed distant cousin of Mr. Bazzard. She rents lodging in London to Rosa and Miss Twinkleton.

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The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them.

Cover Design: Jim Manis
Copyright © 2007 The Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity university.

CHAPTER I – THE DAWN
AN ANCIENT ENGLISH CATHEDRAL TOWER? How can the ancient English Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up?

Maybe it is set up by the Sultan’s orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one. It is so, for cymbals clash, and the Sultan goes by to his palace in long procession. Ten thousand scimitars flash in the sunlight, and thrice ten thousand dancing-girls strew flowers. Then, follow white elephants caparisoned in countless gorgeous colours, and infinite in number and attendants. Still the Cathedral Tower rises in the background, where it cannot be, and still no writhing figure is on the grim spike. Stay! Is the spike so low a thing as the rusty spike on the top of a post of an old bedstead that has tumbled all awry? Some vague period of drowsy laughter must be devoted to the consideration of this possibility.

Shaking from head to foot, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged windowcurtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court. He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a bedstead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it.

Lying, also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of her.

‘Another?’ says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper. ‘Have another?’ He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.

‘Ye’ve smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,’ the woman goes on, as she chronically complains. ‘Poor me, poor me, my head is so bad. Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the business is slack, is slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these say! Here’s another ready for ye, deary.

Ye’ll remember like a good soul, won’t ye, that the market price is dreffle high just now? More nor three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful! And ye’ll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t’other side the court; but he can’t do it as well as me) has the true secret of mixing it? Ye’ll pay up accordingly, deary, won’t ye?’ She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at it, inhales much of its contents. ...

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