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Informationen zum Autor Charles Dickens; Introduction by Peter Washington Klappentext Central to the plot is John Jasper: in public he is a man of integrity and benevolence; in private he is an opium addict. And while seeming to smile on the engagement of his nephew! Edwin Drood! he is! in fact! consumed by jealousy! driven to terrify the boy's fiancée and to plot the murder of Edwin himself. As in many of Dickens's greatest novels! the gulf between appearance and reality drives the action. Set in the seemingly innocuous cathedral town of Cloisterham! the story rapidly darkens with a sense of impending evil. Charles Dickens's final! unfinished novel is in many ways his most intriguing. A highly atmospheric tale of murder! The Mystery of Edwin Drood foreshadows both the detective stories of Conan Doyle and the nightmarish novels of Kafka.Though The Mystery of Edwin Drood is one of its author's darkest books! it also bustles with a vast roster of memorable-and delightfully named-minor characters: Mrs. Billikins! the landlady; the foolish Mr. Sapsea; the domineering philanthropist! Mr. Honeythunder; and the mysterious Datchery. Several attempts have been made over the years to complete the novel and solve the mystery! but even in its unfinished state it is a gripping and haunting masterpiece. Chapter One The Dawn An ancient English Cathedral Town? How can the ancient English Cathedral town be here! The well-known massive grey 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 colors, 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 window- curtain, 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, dreary. Ye’ll remember like a good soul, won’t ye, that the market price is dreffle high just now? More than three shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful! And ye’ll remember that nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t’other side th...
