"I expect my nephew today." "Edwin will do more good than a dozen medicine chests." "My Jack's an opium eater." "I'm sorry about your father." "He died in action?" "No, mining accident in Upper Egypt." "Mr Neville!" "I will have your weapon!" "John Jasper is more than an uncle to him, he is a guardian and protector." "Your little rosebud's been picked by another." "You do know he loves you?" "He terrifies me." "He pursues me." "What else are you not telling me, Jack?" "Jack!" "NED!" "Lost some lead off the roof too, sir." "And the hands in the clock's all bent and twisted." "Dear me, what a night." "We must pray no lives were lost." "Jasper?" "My bright boy is gone." "Rosa, to your room this minute." "What is it?" "When did you last see Edwin?" "Yesterday afternoon." "Why?" "You saw or heard nothing of him last night?" "What has happened to Eddy?" "He departed my house last night with Neville Landless and he never came home." "Neville left at first light to walk by the coast." "Thank you, Miss Twinkleton." "They will blame my brother." "They will punish my brother." "This is my fault." "Mine." "What are you, huh?" "A pack of thieves?" "What have you done with my nephew?" "I don't understand." "Gently, Jasper." "What have you done with him?" "How should I know?" "His bed was not slept in last night." "He never came home." "We said our good nights in the cathedral and I went home." "So you left him there alone?" "There was no danger in it." "He was restless." "He said he wanted fresh air and the smell of open water." "So he came down to the estuary?" "Jasper, the storm." "Come along." "A most agonising summons!" "The messenger brought a note which was addressed very personally to me, I see, Mr Hiram Grewgious." "Being, as I am, your assistant, I must be privy to all events, of which you will agree, there are precious few hereabouts." "And being, as I am, your assistant," "I dare predict there'll be a great deal for you to do today, sir, in the investigating and comforting line, and you will be requiring me to be of service in the organising and, and, and catering line." "I am not so awkward that I cannot find my own sandwiches, thank you." "I follow you, sir." "But, oh, sir, how I do hate the indoors." "Oh, the hellish indoors!" "They also serve, Bazzard, who only hold the fort." "Take a trip to Doctors Commons, if it please you." "And take sight there of Edwin Drood's last will and testament." "You don't know he's dead yet." "Edwin Drood Senior." "Ned!" "Mr Drood?" "Ned!" "Mr Drood?" "I was so sure we'd find him." "Have courage." "He may have simply left, gone back to London." "Without telling me?" "He'd never be so cruel." "Do not give in to despair, my friend." "My bright boy... is dead." "He seemed in agreement with me." "He seemed relieved." "As I was." "Rosa fears she made him unhappier than he admitted." "That he has brought himself to harm because of her." "You made no mention of a ring." "Deputy, what you got there?" "Nothing." "There'll be some young lady somewhere crying her heart out over that." "It's mine." "Durdles don't entirely think so." "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness." "Blot out my transgressions." "Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin." "NED!" "Ned?" "I can't even sing for him." "Then pray with me." "Our Father who art in heaven... hallowed be thy name." "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done..." "I cannot... forgive those that trespass against me..." "In time...any more than I could forgive myself." "Do not reproach yourself." "You have nothing to forgive." "Anyone could see how you loved that boy." "I did." "I did love him." "Of course." "All these years I cared for him and now some... some stranger..." "has taken him from me." "Let the monster that killed him hear my vow." "I devote myself to his destruction." "Mr Jasper asserts a history of violent words and even fisticuffs between you!" "There was nothing ill-tempered in our meeting last night." "Nevertheless, while investigations continue, I have no option but to issue a warrant and commit you forthwith to jail." "On what grounds?" "Circumstances of grave suspicion." "And the case has a generally dark look to me." "No!" "No, that's absurd!" "I mean, sorry, your worship." "I mean no disrespect, but no man can be accused of murder in the absence of the body." "Will you not be satisfied until they find my nephew's poor dead body?" "You twist my meaning." "Sirs!" "Please do not sacrifice your friendship on my account." "I can end this argument now, as I could've done earlier, had I told you the truth." "I did not kill Edwin Drood." "I could never have killed Edwin Drood." "He is my brother." "My sister and I came here as orphans to seek our father," "Captain Edwin Drood." "Mr Jasper... we are kinsmen." "That... vile and groundless allegation would mean that Captain Drood, the best of husbands, betrayed his marriage vows to my sister... with a native concubine." "My mother was a Christian lady!" "Neville, for shame!" "Whether Mr Landless is right or wrong is immaterial, surely?" "If he believes Edwin to be his brother, then why would want to harm him?" "Angry, resentful, excluded, unloved and poor!" "Everything Edwin had, he wanted, and stopped at nothing, not even murder, to get it." "Mr Sapsea may feel a duty to public safety..." "Indeed!" "Indeed I do." "Remanded in custody." "I give my solemn guarantee, as a man of the law, that the young man will be confined to my house, under my responsibility, and I shall produce him whenever demanded." "You cannot send my brother away." "When did you plan to tell me?" "Please, let us explain." "This year?" "Next year some time, or never?" "We only sought to find the father that abandoned us and throw ourselves upon his love." "Upon his pocketbook, more like." "Ma!" "Not helpful." "Fortune hunters." "Your mother was never Mrs Drood." "No, sir." "So you have no document to prove the connection you claim?" "Our mother was a Christian woman..." "Yes, so you said." "Who never told a falsehood in her life." "A commendable trait... one she failed to pass on to her offspring." "Do not clench your fist at me!" "Neville, go and get your coat." "Mr Jasper may accuse my brother for his own reasons." "The poor man's beside himself with grief and fear." "No, sir, Mr Jasper is in love with Rosa." "If you can call it love, that raging, angry thing." "Nonsense!" "Dear God!" "Mr Crisparkle, you have seen him with your own eyes, sitting at your own piano, in your own house, devouring her with his looks." "Have you absolutely no shame?" "Mr Neville." "He suffers and I do my best to help him and you ask me to apologise for it." "And the poor boy hasn't even a mother of his own, of course." "I have one on long-term loan to him, it seems." "A very fine medicine chest among her attractions." "Ma, dear, it might be the action of a friend, especially a kindly maternal friend, to persuade him to depend on fresh air and exercise in his grief, rather than on laudanum." "Perhaps you don't remember." "You were so young, but I do." "I remember when he came here to the choir school, that poor little boy, seven years old, and all alone in the world." "He's not seven years old any more." "Sept, dear Sept, can't you see how lonely he is?" "Feel as sorry for John Jasper as you like, Ma, but I forbid you to give him laudanum again." "You forbid me?" "!" "What century do you believe this to be?" "No matter how many hours you spend studying that document..." "I know my father's will off by heart, sir, and I know it will never change." ""I leave my entire estate to my beloved and only son, Edwin."" "The uniform penny post is arrived." "The excitement." "Captain Drood would, alas, not be the first Englishman to father children in foreign climes and then abandon them." "He was the first Englishman to do it to me." "Yes, Bazzard?" "Being, as I am, only your assistant and not permitted to leave this hellish office," "I have been forced to apply to the trustees using the penny post." "Trustees?" "Of the Mission School in Trincomalee." "Which, august gentlemen, confirm that a certain Captain Edwin Arthur Drood began regular payments to the school in the autumn of 1834." "When my sister and I were six years old." "Mr Grewgious!" "I know it's not proof, but this could..." "But it is evidence, Neville." "Very suggestive evidence." "And ended in the summer of 1836." "He lost interest in us after only two years?" "Perhaps it is simply that the regiment moved back to Egypt." "I need to know." "Mr Grewgious, the regimental archives are in Cloisterham." "Neville, you know very well that you cannot go back to Cloisterham." "Bazzard!" "Get your coat." "Speak to now-one." "In particular, keep your distance from Mr Jasper." "I could use a suedeonym to avoid discovery." "You shall do no such thing." "And the word is pseudonym." "Or, or, or, employ the Scottish accent I used as a schoolboy in my very well-received Macbeth." "Bazzard, go to the archives." "Track Captain Drood's movements." "Speak to no-one!" "I follow you, sir." "Och, aye, the noo!" "I do understand how cravings can be very strong in such cases but..." "You suspect an element of pleasurable excitement in it." "Why else begin it?" "To banish grief beyond endurance." "To reach total eclipse without all hope of day." "When you came to me last year about your pain..." "No man flies back to opium from physical pain." "From what, then?" "Blank and hopeless desolation." "And then for a while it brings dreams of paradise and unimaginable pleasure." "I have stood looking down into an abyss of divine enjoyment, until a desolation more blank and hopeless than before returns." "We must seek a way to break this slavery, through prayer." "There is no need, dear lady." "For my slavery is already at an end since my poor Ned... (I cannot speak of it.)" "Never have my prayers been answered more quickly." "Regimental Muster Rolls." "Most efficient." "Thank you." "I shall miss you." "Your first duty is to your brother." "It was supposed to be you leaving me behind." "And in my wedding dress." "How long ago that seems." "Miss Landless, please, let me." "I can carry my own bag, sir." "But why should you when a friend presents himself as beast of burden?" "A friend?" "I wish we'd not quarrelled." "Cloisterham will seem very quiet without both Landlesses." "It will do as well without us now as if we had never come here." "But, Helena, then I would never have known you." "Either of you, I mean, of course." "You and your brother, both of you." "Excellent pupils." "You will send him my best regards?" "All aboard now!" "Miss Landless." "Run!" "Thank you." "This is all happening too quickly." "Reverend Crisparkle, kindest of men, so much kinder than we deserved." "Walk on." "Thank you." "Weeks without even a glimpse of your face while I waited patiently for your summons." "Why should I summon you?" "Back to my duties as your faithful music master." "I shall never play the piano again." "Never let those lovely fingers make sweet melody?" "Nobody can see us." "Everyone's gone home for the summer." "Except little orphan Rosa." "But I will not touch you again." "I'll come no nearer to you than this." "Sit, my love." "You wear his ring." "My mother's ring, in his memory." "Dear God, I tried so hard not to love you." "I won't hear you." "If you knew what visions tormented me." "I have wandered through paradise and through hell, every night, carrying you in my arms." "But as long as you were his, I stayed loyal to him." "Every day that you pursued me, every day you made my life hell, you betrayed him." "But he's dead." "He never knew, that trusting soul, who loved you, like a brother." "He's dead, and you are free." "My poor Edwin never knew that his Jack's heart is black as coal." "You will love me, Rosa." "I'd rather die too." "Sweet witch, then keep your love." "I'll gladly take this pretty rage instead." "If you could see yourself, Rosa, in your panting hatred, you're more desirable than ever." "You would take by force what will never be yours by consent?" "But you will consent." "In the end, you will love me, Rosa." "How could I ever love a man whose spirit is so mean, whose heart is so bitter?" "You drove my friends away with false accusations." "You still defend Neville Landless?" "Your pursuit of him is like your pursuit of me... unfair and ugly and cruel." "Ugly and cruel?" "Ugly and cruel?" "Am I that man?" "Pretty little Neville" "Landless is entirely guilty of dreaming he can have you." "As to his guilt in the death of my boy," "I have wound the coil of suspicion so tightly around him, it hardly matters if it be true or not." "Nor does it matter if you love me, Rosa, or hate me." "I no longer care." "Ugly and cruel, yes, you have made me so and you will still come to me." "I will not." "You refuse to save him?" "Well, then Neville Landless will hang." "Say nothing to a living soul." "Rosa, I love you more than any man ever loved a woman and you will never be rid of me." "I will pursue you to the death." "What are you looking at?" "Nothing has happened here." "I say!" "Excuse me." "This officer here, Captain Drood." "See, I've discovered him leaving Ceylon and going back to Egypt in 1836." "Then a year later there's a mining accident, and he is listed as missing." "But... when I try to cross-reference the accident report with the record of his death..." "Well, it's not there." "Our records is never wrong." "There's got to be a death in service record if he's dead." "IF he's dead." "Hit 'im again!" "I made a dent in his wool!" "Let him be, you've lamed him." "You lie!" "He lamed himself." "Show me where your choirmaster's house is." "I will not." "Ain't going nowhere near him, not ever again, not after he upended me and damn near choked me." "Anyway, it's miles away." "Take me where the ruffian lives and I'll give you a penny." "No point, cos he's not in!" "But give me another and I'll take you to his landlord." "Your worshipfulness." "What an honour it is for a humble student of funerary architecture to come face to face with the fons et origo of such a piece of perfection." "The inscription composed by my own unworthy hand, sir." "And yet, strangers have been seen copying it down in their notebooks." ""Stranger pause."" "It is the language of Shakespeare." "Thank you, sir." "Mr...?" "The name's..." "Datchery." "Dick Datchery, at your most humble service." "I have the honour, sir, to welcome you to an ancient city, a proud city, an ecclesiastical city." "Your worshipfulness inspires me with a desire to know more, and confirms me in my inclination to spend some time under his beneficent sway." "In which context, and after a woeful night at the Dog and Gun," "I wonder if you might suggest somewhere I might stay." "Somewhere architectural and inconvenient." "Somewhere... cathedral-y?" "Rosa?" "Don't let him catch me." "I never knew I was such a coward." "You are nothing of the sort." "I am." "For I think now that I was afraid to marry Edwin for fear" "I would never then be free of his uncle." "Now my poor Eddy is dead and it was all for nothing, for I will never be free again." "Glad to hear praise the Lord with such enthusiasm, Jasper." "I find I am much inspired, since my bright boy's demise, by thoughts of our joy to come in heaven." "For are not we sinners always knocking on heaven's door?" "So you think Mr Crisparkle, if he were here, would release me from my promise?" "I do." "Not least because in rooms this small you can scarcely avoid bumping into Rosa several times a day." "But, Neville, she is in mourning." "In mourning for a good man." "And under attack from an evil one." "I would not dream of adding to her burdens." "Besides, she already seems more like a beloved sister to me now." "I have sent word to Miss Twinkleton that Rosa is safe with us." "And yes, Helena, I have requested she refrain from telling Mr Jasper." "My dear!" "You have slept." "And now you must eat." "Come." "What did you take last?" "Was it breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea or supper?" "And what will you take next?" "Shall it be breakfast, lunch, or a nice jumble of all meals?" "Mr Grewgious, I have something to say." "The hardest thing I have ever had to say in my life." "Helena has told me of Mr Jasper's unwanted attentions." "That is nothing." "Nothing compared to the question to which those attentions give rise." "My friends, ask yourselves, please, as I have been forced to do... who on this earth had most to gain from the death of Edwin Drood?" "Mr Jasper, thank heaven you've come!" "Her bed not slept in, and this foolish maid, taken in by a notice on the door..." ""do not disturb"!" "Mr Jasper, can you find her?" "Can you bring our little rosebud home?" "It was him that upset her!" "No!" "Don't you start your nonsense again!" "She's not here!" "Liar!" "Rosa?" "Rosa, what is this foolishness?" "Come home with me now." "You will come no closer." "Who will prevent me?" "Neville, stay back!" "Rosa, come now." "I'm not afraid of you, sir." "No?" "You terrify me." "I'm not afraid of you because the threats you have made are empty." "You cannot harm my brother because he is innocent and you know it." "It makes no difference now." "Come, Rosa, my love." "She shrinks from your love!" "Rosa is not afraid of me." "She's afraid of what's in her own heart." "Look at her." "Look at the real Rosa, not the one of your dreams." "Tell me, what does she see?" "A lover." "A monster." "A killer." "Look into your own black heart, John Jasper, and tell me she is wrong." "Dear God!" "So it was you." "Mr Jasper?" "What is this?" "You should not be here." "You have poisoned her mind against me!" "Neither her mind nor her heart needed any help from me, I assure you." "Let go of me!" "Mr Jasper, you must learn to accept that when a lady says no, it is her free choice." "She is meant for me!" "As it was her free choice to end her engagement to Edwin." "You did not know." "This young couple, the lost youth and the lovely girl, though so long engaged and so close to being married, decided the very afternoon of his death that they would be happier as brother and sister, than as man and wife," "and, accordingly, broke off their engagement." "(He never told me.)" "(He should have told me.)" "NED!" "Are you alone here?" "Worse luck for business, I am, deary." "Come in, where I can see you, for your voice is familiar." "Well, stranger!" "And there was me thinking you'd died and gone to heaven." "Not you that died, then." "Who's that you're in mourning for?" "I can't see." "I can't remember." "Then you've come to the right place, cos that's just what Princess Puffer's here for." "Miss Twinkleton, please calm yourself." "Septimus, read this!" "Ma!" "A message from Mr Grewgious." "Mr Grewgious sent me!" "On an errand of burglary?" "Well, he did not expressly forbid it." "He was most insistent on other things." "I must stay in the library, I must talk to no-one..." "And did you find anything in the library, Mr... ?" "The name's Datcher..." "Bazzard." "I found the Royal Engineers pensions record for Captain Drood." "And, sir... he has been picking it up for the last nine years." "That's nonsense, Datcher Bazzard." "He died in a mining accident in Upper Egypt." "Well, if he did, there's no record of it." "Either someone else is taking the money... or Captain Drood is still alive." "That's just the old man's will." "I obtained a copy weeks ago." "There's nothing in it." "He's crossed out Edwin's name." "Every time it appears." "Cor!" "He really hated 'im!" "Was it hate or envy?" "And where did he hide the body?" "Bet I know." "Yes, I brought Mr Jasper down here, a couple of days before the unfortunate business with Mr Edwin." "Go on!" "Get out of it!" "I was telling him about the night I was enjoying my forty winks, when I was woken by the ghost of one terrific shriek." "Spooked you!" "Ha!" "Get out of it!" "Deputy was right, Mr Crisparkle." "So many hiding places." "There is no place in this cathedral that's hidden to Durdles." "Durdles is the keeper of all the keys." "Nearly all the keys." "Durdles has had a loss perplexing him and preying on his mind, sir." "He's sorry to say that on the night he took Mr Jasper on his tour," "Durdles found himself in a state of intoxication, which makes him now wonder if that was the night he lost hold of..." "This one!" "No." "It was much bigger." "Dear." "Need his worship's permission." ""Good morning, Mr Sapsea." "Please may we dig up your dead wife on a foolish whim?"" "If only I could see the end." "The end of what, deary?" "I rehearsed it hundreds, thousands of times in this room." "I saw him fall like a snowflake." "Like a breath of sweet air falling so gently." "Things never turn out like we hope, do they?" "Millions, millions of times." "I never saw that before." "This stuff's not strong enough." "What next?" "Show me what happened next." "What a poor, mean, miserable thing this is." "Rosa!" "I thought I was dreaming." "Lord!" "How like your dear mother you have grown." "I've made you sad?" "I'm so sorry." "I can never be sad when I think of her, or look at you." "Did she know your feelings?" "I hope not." "What kind of specimen am I to have hopes in that direction?" "Lord, what a conversation!" "Mr Grewgious, please tell me." "What is true love like?" "True love... is always returned." "How we witter on when the dream's upon us." "Singing like a little canary bird all night long, we was." "Sing some more." "What was that?" "Tell me what you did." "I'm nearly... nearly... damned." ""Subtle and mighty opium" ""to the guilty man for one night gives back the hopes of his youth," ""and hands washed pure from blood."" "Tell me what happened to him and I will go with you." "And there is no danger of any harm befalling my inscription?" "None whatsoever, my dear worshipfulness." "I shall guard that priceless masterpiece with my life." "This is no place for a child." "Deputy, go and watch out for Mr Jasper's return." "I will not!" "I'll give you a shilling." "Joking!" "Need a guinea to persuade me to miss this." "You stay there." "Good day to you, Joe." "Miss Rosa." "Thank you." "Well?" "Nothing but the mortal remains of poor Mrs Sapsea." "Hellfire!" "And damnation." "Yes, very helpful" "Get the other one out, then." "What other one?" "The one he found in Mr Jasper's desk, stupid!" "Durdles needs a closer look at that." "Had no cause to go inside there for years, but Durdles'd know it anywhere." "This is the key to the Drood tomb." "You hesitated the last." "I'm ready." "To say I planned it would not be quite right." "The idea, the method, came to me in a dream." "A nightmare?" "No, no, no!" "Edwin died night after night in dreams of perfect beauty." "You stay there." "Here, on the altar step, where he would have married you, taken the woman who was meant for me, taken my life, unless I took his first." "Lord, let me know mine end." "Voices?" "Listen." "What is down there?" "And mine age is even nothing in respect of thee." "His corpse was safe enough in the Sapsea tomb till that fat fool wanted his inscription carving." ""Stranger, pause." "Stranger..."" "So I took the key, and..." "I moved..." "I moved his body..." "I moved his poor body." "(No, that's not it.)" "Something's wrong." "It's not 'im!" "What?" "I've got something wrong." "It's some old fella." "Look!" "My God!" "Edwin!" "You're in mourning?" "For you!" "I went early to Egypt, as I did tell you I might when you broke off our engagement." "And are there no post offices in Egypt?" "Write to you?" "!" "Why would I write to you?" "I was so angry with you, I threw away that pretty ring." "Come on, son." "If that personage has been dead nine years, I'll eat my hat, and yours too." "My bet is he's been dead a bit less than one year." "And the ghost of one terrific shriek." "Wasn't a ghost, after all." "Who is it, Jasper?" "Why, sir, it is Edwin Drood." "The father?" "Our father." "Ned's and mine." "It was common knowledge in Egypt." "The date of his birth was inconvenient, so my mother passed Jack off as her little brother." "We all thought he killed you." "Jack?" "!" "Never!" "He loves me." "Eddy, even he thinks he killed you." "I have striven... so hard to remember." "And I have remembered it all wrong." "Muddled them both up in my head." "Gentlemen, leave us, please." "On your own, with him?" "We are old friends, Mr Jasper and I." "We'll get help." "No!" "Don't alert anyone." "Mr Jasper and I will do very well here together." "I have dreamed so much about... killing Edwin..." ".and forgotten this." "Captain Drood's will left everything to him, and nothing to you." "I never cared about the money." "Is there a circle of hell reserved especially for fathers who do not love their children?" "There ought to be." "And does it stand next to the circle where eternal damnation awaits the man who killed his own father?" "God will forgive you if you are truly penitent." "For when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness..." "The wicked man!" "The wicked man!" "The wicked man was a bastard boy of seven!" "A boy of seven." "Sent away!" "Sent away to learn to sing." "While a little, fat, fair baby, a little, fat, fair, legitimate baby sucked up all the love in the house until there was none left over." "And yet... when Captain Drood..." "died the first time in a mining accident in Egypt, so they said..." "I grieved." "But a year ago he came back?" "Who's there?" "Show yourself." "Sorry." "Father?" "Father, is it really you?" "Leave off me, Jack." "I've come looking for Edwin." "Where is my bright boy?" "If... if he had written, if he had given me any warning..." "It's too late for me to deceive myself." "I would have still killed him." "FATHER!" "One kind word for me would have saved him." "That old fool Durdles thought he'd heard the cry of a murder victim." "But the old devil uttered not a word." "It was I who cried out to the heavens, at the loss of all my hopes." "There is always hope in the Lord." "Not for me." "I've killed my father." "But no matter, for soon I will hang, and then all will be darkness, and silence, and blissful forgetting." "But where is Ned?" "Where is Ned's body?" "Jack!" "Good God!" "Jack." "Our father loved him but not me." "And together they robbed me of every happiness." "I'm here." "You see?" "I've come back." "And I'm sorry." "I am so sorry." "The old man was a monster." "But that was the only human creature that ever loved me." "Jack..." "And I killed him too." "No." "No, look at him." "And so he haunts me." "And I am damned." "Edwin, take Rosa outside." "No, no, no." "I want to see Jack." "I have to make everything well with Jack." "Do as I say." "Is he up there?" "Jack?" "Haven't you done enough harm?" "Jack?" "Jack, it's me." "I'm coming up." "No." "No, you're not, you're frightening him." "He thinks you're dead." "He's my brother." "I can help him." "Dear God!" "Rosa, Rosa!" "Quick, you don't want to be here." "Get help." "Get anyone!" "Run!" "Jasper?" "Jasper?" "There's no need to be afraid." "Pray with me." "Pray with me now." "Choose the light." "Our Father who art in heaven..." "Jasper, won't you join me?" "Our Father who art in heaven..." "Hallowed be thy name." "Hallowed be thy name." "Jack?" "Thy kingdom come..." "Thy will be done." "NO!" "Thank you." "To Edwin, who once was lost, and now is found." "And to his new life in Egypt." "To my brother, my partner, you won't regret coming with me." "They will forget us." "They'll be in trouble if they do." "They'll bring home exotic brides and cause consternation." "I do hope so!" "Em, one final toast." "To our older brother, Jack... and his fond memory." "To the man he might have been." "To Jack." "I was thinking..." "I wonder..." "You first." "No, you." "No, of course, me." "Rosa, quickly." "No, Helena!" "Did I just ask you something?" "No." "But I said yes anyway."