Plot
The film begins with John Jasper, choirmaster of Cloisterham Cathedral, in an opium den, hallucinating about strangling his nephew, Edwin Drood, in full view of his fiancée, Rosa Bud. Edwin Drood later visits Cloisterham, initially to see Rosa, before going off to his uncle's house. His arrival at the Nuns' House, the boarding school where Rosa lives, is met with much excitement by the other occupants, while Rosa appears indifferent at best. It is soon apparent that theirs is an odd relationship and Rosa shows little passion for it, something Edwin communicates to his uncle after the visit. In the same scene, the attraction Jasper seems to have for Rosa, as indicated in his earlier hallucination, is buttressed by a drawing of her enjoying pride of place on his wall, which Edwin believes he has kept because he (Edwin) was the artist.
A second arrival to Cloisterham follows Edwin's, as Neville Landless and his twin sister Helena arrive from Ceylon, Neville to study with one of the minor canons, Reverend Crisparkle, and Helena will live at the Nuns' House with Rosa. Failing to engage them in conversation, Reverend Crisparkle and his mother invite Edwin and Rosa to meet them. While Jasper plays on the piano and Rosa sings along, his desire for her becomes more obvious, and is immediately noticed by Helena. At the same event, Neville becomes attracted to Rosa and takes an immediate dislike to Edwin, and Helena and Rosa strike up a friendship, after the singing exercise leaves the latter unsettled. Back at the Nuns' House, Helena makes her suspicions known to Rosa, who confides to her that she loathes and fears her music-master, Jasper.
Neville and Edwin, meanwhile, have a brief scrap, and Edwin later provokes him into reacting violently, which Jasper reports to others, giving birth to Neville's reputation of having a violent temper. Meanwhile, having an interest in the cathedral crypt, Jasper seeks the company of Durdles, a man who knows more about the crypt than anyone else. Durdles takes Jasper into the cathedral crypt. Jasper provides a bottle of wine to Durdles. The wine is mysteriously potent and Durdles soon loses consciousness.
Rosa, convinced she does not love Edwin, visits her guardian, Mr Grewgious. When she asks whether there would be any forfeiture to her inheritance if she does not marry Edwin, he replies that there would be none on either side. Mr Grewgious gives Edwin a ring which Rosa's father had given to her mother, with the proviso that Edwin must either give the ring to Rosa as a sign of his irrevocable commitment to her or return it to him. The next day, Rosa and Edwin amicably agree to end their betrothal. Unfortunately, Jasper, who had been given information by Mr Grewgious to indicate that the betrothal might not go through, sees his delight crushed by a misreading of their conversation, mistaking the amicable parting for a confirmation of shared affection.
Reeling from his anger, he arranges a reconciliation dinner between Edwin and Neville, which proves successful. Drood and Neville leave together to go down to the cathedral, where they learn they have more in common than was previously thought. Neville is seen to depart, but the next morning Edwin is missing and Jasper spreads suspicion that Neville has killed him. Neville leaves early in the morning for a hike, but the townspeople overtake him and bring him back to the city. Mr Grewgious keeps Neville out of jail by taking responsibility for him: he will produce him any time his presence is required. Meanwhile, Deputy, Durdles' little helper, finds the ring discarded on the graveyard floor.
While defending Neville's innocence against Jasper's accusations, the twins confess that they did not come to Cloisterham to further their education but to find their father, the late Edwin Drood Sr. As Edwin Jr was their brother, they argued, Neville had no cause to murder him. Jasper refutes their claims, but Mr Grewgious begins to look into it, assisted by Neville and Grewgious's clerk, Bazzard.
In dream sequences it is shown that Jasper is responsible for killing Edwin, though no one is certain what he has done with the body. He visits Rosa at the Nuns' House and professes his love for her. She rejects him but he persists; he says that he will never give up on her until he is dead. In fear of Jasper, Rosa goes to Mr Grewgious in London. Jasper is informed of Rosa's disappearance and follows her, but Neville and Helena prevent him from taking her with him. As he departs, Mr Grewgious informs him that Edwin and Rosa had ended their betrothal, meaning he has murdered his nephew for no reason.
Bazzard, calling himself Dick Datchery, arrives in Cloisterham. His investigations show no evidence of Edwin Drood Sr's death, so he extends his search. He asks directions from Deputy, who will not go near Jasper for fear that he will choke him again, the choirmaster having threatened to kill him earlier. At the same time, Reverend Crisparkle is given a letter which seems to confirm Helena's assertion that Jasper is obsessed with Rosa, and he stumbles upon Bazzard and Deputy, who have broken into Jasper's flat. All three begin to work together to solve the mystery of Drood Jr's disappearance and enlist the help of Durdles to search the tombs for his body.
Believing also that Jasper killed Edwin, Rosa promises to leave with him if he will show her where he placed Edwin's body. He takes her to the Cathedral, where they overhear the investigative quartet down below. Rosa escapes from his clutches only to bump into Edwin, who informs her that he simply left for Egypt, where his father had a business, and discarded the ring in anger after she called their betrothal off. At the same time Jasper stumbles upon Reverend Crisparkle, Durdles, Bazzard and Deputy, who have located a recently deceased body in the Drood tomb. Jasper confirms that it is Drood Sr, who he states was his father and not his brother-in-law as previously believed, and confesses to killing him a year earlier when he showed up suddenly to look for Edwin. Edwin himself appears and Jasper, thinking him a ghost, takes his own life.
In the aftermath, Edwin accepts the twins as his siblings and Neville's offer to go into business with him. A romance having been budding for the duration of the story, Helena accepts Reverend Crisparkle's unspoken proposal.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by English author Charles Dickens, originally published in 1870.
The Draughtsman's Contract is a 1982 British period comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Greenaway – his first conventional feature film. Originally produced for Channel 4, the film is a form of murder mystery, set in rural Wiltshire, England in 1694. The period setting is reflected in Michael Nyman's score, which borrows widely from Henry Purcell, and in the extensive and elaborate costume designs. The action was shot on location in the house and formal gardens of Groombridge Place. The film received the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.
Constantia, a South African dessert wine, is made from Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains grapes grown in the district of Constantia, City of Cape Town. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was widely exported to Europe. However, production of Constantia ceased in the late-nineteenth century following the devastation of South African vineyards in the phylloxera epidemic. Production resumed at Klein Constantia in 1986, at Groot Constantia in 2003 and at Buitenverwachting in 2007.
William Pett Ridge was an English fiction writer, born at Chartham, near Canterbury, Kent, and educated at Marden, Kent, and at the Birkbeck Institute, London. He was for some time a clerk in the Railway Clearing House, and began about 1891 to write humorous sketches for the St James's Gazette and other papers.
Ellen Lawless Ternan, also known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Wharton-Robinson, was an English actress known for her relationship with the elderly Charles Dickens.
Howard McGillin is an American actor. He is known for originating the role of John Jasper in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1985) and for portraying the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera from 1999 to 2009 on Broadway.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a musical written by Rupert Holmes based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel of the same name. The show was the first Broadway musical with multiple endings. The musical won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical; from among eleven nominations. Holmes received Tony awards for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.
George Walter Rose was an English actor and singer in theatre and film. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for roles in My Fair Lady and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Constance Emily Kent (1844–1944) was an English woman who confessed to the murder of her half-brother, Francis Saville Kent, in 1860, when she was aged 16 and he aged three. The case led to high-level pronouncements that there was no longer any ancient priest-penitent privilege in England and Wales. Kent's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and she was released after serving twenty years. In later life, she changed her name to Ruth Emilie Kaye, became a nurse and for twenty years was matron of a nurses' home in East Maitland, New South Wales. She died at the age of 100.
Robert Douglass Montgomery was an American film actor.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a 1935 American melodrama film directed by Stuart Walker and based on the unfinished 1870 novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a 1993 film, the fourth film adaptation of the Charles Dickens unfinished 1870 novel of the same name. This was the last film of Barry Evans.
Forrester Harvey was an Irish film actor.
David Robert Dawson is an English actor. On television, he is known for his roles in the BBC Four film The Road to Coronation Street (2010), the BBC One series Luther (2011), Ripper Street (2012–2016), The Last Kingdom (2015–2018) and The Secret Agent (2016), and the Channel 4 sitcom Year of the Rabbit (2019). His films include My Policeman (2022).
Bransby Williams was a British actor, comedian and monologist. He became known as "The Irving of the music halls".
George W. Anson was a British actor. He specialised in comedy roles, and appeared in New York and Sydney, Australia. He appeared in plays of Shakespeare, particularly in productions by Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
Dickensian is a British drama television series that premiered on BBC One from 26 December 2015 to 21 February 2016. The 20-part series, created and co-written by Tony Jordan, brings characters from many Charles Dickens novels together in one Victorian London neighbourhood, as Inspector Bucket investigates the murder of Ebenezer Scrooge's partner Jacob Marley.
Eastgate House is a Grade I listed Elizabethan townhouse in Rochester, Kent, England. It is notable for its association with author Charles Dickens, featuring as Westgate in The Pickwick Papers and as the Nun's House in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Now a Dickens Museum, the grounds of Eastgate House contain the Swiss chalet in which Dickens penned several of his novels.
The Long Divorce is a 1951 detective novel by the British writer Edmund Crispin, the eighth in his series featuring the Oxford professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen. It was the penultimate novel in the series, with a gap or more than twenty five years before the next entry The Glimpses of the Moon, although a collection of short stories Beware of the Trains was published in 1953. The novel features many traits of a Golden Age mystery, set in a small, wealthy English village. The title doesn't refer to a marriage but is a quote from Shakespeare's Henry VIII "the long divorce of steel". It was published in the United States by Dodd, Mead in 1951 under the same title, and a year later as A Noose for Her.
