There are no new ideas in plots. "All the stories have been told,"
and all the merit lies in the manner of the telling. Dickens had
used the unsuspected watcher, as Mr. Proctor shows, in almost all
his novels. In Martin Chuzzlewit, when Jonas finds that Nadgett
has been the watcher, Dickens writes, "The dead man might have come
out of his grave and not confounded and appalled him so." Now, to
Jasper, Edwin WAS "the dead man," and Edwin's grave contained
quicklime. Jasper was sure that he had done for Edwin: he had
taken Edwin's watch, chain, and scarf-pin; he believed that he had
left him, drugged, in quicklime, in a locked vault. Consequently
the reappearance of Edwin, quite well, in the vault where Jasper
had buried him, would be a very new idea to Jasper; would "confound
and appall him." Jasper would have emotions, at that spectacle,
and so would the reader! It is not every day, even in our age of
sixpenny novels, that a murderer is compelled to visit, alone, at
night, the vault which holds his victim's "cold remains," and
therein finds the victim "come up, smiling."

Yes, for business purposes, this idea was new enough! The idea was
"difficult to work," says Dickens, with obvious truth. How was he
to get the quicklime into the vault, and Drood, alive, out of the
vault? As to the reader, he would at first take Datchery for
Drood, and then think, "No, that is impossible, and also is stale.
Datchery cannot be Drood," and thus the reader would remain in a
pleasant state of puzzledom, as he does, unto this day.

If Edwin is dead, there is not much "Mystery" about him. We have
as good as seen Jasper strangle him and take his pin, chain, and