Detection and experiment

Collins invents modern detective fiction mechanics: Cuff tracks smeared paint and a trampled rosebed; Gooseberry the boy follows suspects; Jennings proposes replicating Blake’s nervous state with laudanum to prove somnambulistic theft. Detection here is scientific theater — witnesses, timing, medicine — not Holmesian flash alone.

Betteredge’s narrative supplies red herrings and domestic detail Jennings later organizes. The second period’s title — discovery of the truth — promises synthesis after comic and religious digressions. Teach students to compare Cuff’s professional patience with Clack’s moral panic. Experiment theme also invokes colonial medicine and addiction without reducing Jennings to plot device: his hair and notebooks are dignity under prejudice.