Throughout the novel, the narrators discuss their own narrative as though they were in the midst of a trial; they see themselves and each other as witnesses and defendants. The law and justice are tenets that occupy a central role throughout the novel, which functions like a metaphorical trial. Collins combines his rich writing style with a forensic technique to make the novel's pages approximate a law case.
Walter and Marian reveal an immense respect for the law, at the same time that they are sober about its limits in the pursuit of true justice and retribution. Walter even proves to be remarkably willing to abandon the law in favor of organized crime towards the end of the narrative. The first thing Walter gives the reader in the novel's first pages are his musings on his ambivalence towards the authority of the law:
If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, with moderate assistance only from the lubricating influences of oil of gold, the events which fill these pages might have claimed their share of the public attention in a Court of Justice.
He goes on to say, "As the Judge might once have heard it, so the Reader shall hear it now." From the first page, the reader is pulled in and assigned the role of judge in the literary trial that underlies the book. The characters repeatedly emphasize that they take their narrative project as seriously as they would have taken official court proceedings—their expectations regarding evidence, testimony, and truth are just as high.
However, the novel's imitation of a trial is not necessarily always an advantage. Just like the haziness and fragility of memory can obstruct legal proceedings in a courtroom, the haziness and fragility of characters' memories risk jeopardizing the literary trial that takes place across the novel's pages. For example, Laura's inability to remember the date of the day she travelled from Blackwater to London prevents Walter and Marian from restoring her identity and inheritance until the end of the Third Epoch. Most of the narrators may speak (or believe they are speaking) the truth, but nearly all of the evidence they present to the reader is fragmentary and circumstantial.
When Marian and Walter go into the village near Limmeridge to inquire about the identity of the person who sent the anonymous letter to Laura, they end up at the local school. Seeking the schoolmaster, they walk in on one of the boys being punished, and Walter uses a metaphor to describe him:
The schoolmaster was sitting at his high desk, with his back to me, apparently haranguing the pupils, who were all gathered together in front of him, with one exception. The one exception was a sturdy white-headed boy, standing apart from all the rest on a stool in a corner—a forlorn little Crusoe, isolated in his own desert island of solitary penal disgrace.
The metaphor of the "forlorn little Crusoe" is an allusion to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, one of the earliest English-language novels. Published in 1719, the novel tells the story of how its eponymous main character and narrator ends up stranded on a desert island—and how he survived to tell the tale. Walter compares the schoolboy to exaggerate his separation from the crowd of other schoolboys. Over the course of his life on the island, Crusoe comes to see his isolation as Providence's way of delivering him from a life of sin. The schoolmaster has similarly isolated the boy on his stool to compel him to see the error of his ways. His reason for being punished is that he claims to have seen a ghost the night before. And not just any ghost—the ghost of Mrs. Fairlie. The boy stubbornly maintains this claim.
It turns out that the little Crusoe is being punished for telling the truth—though he may not have seen the ghost of Mrs. Fairlie like he claims, he did see the ghostly Woman in White. Through this, he ends up giving Marian and Walter an indispensable clue that brings them one step closer to solving the mystery.
After the Second Epoch closes with the unexpected reunion between Walter, Laura, and Marian, the Third Epoch opens with the three of them anonymously living together in a rented flat in a busy working-class part of London. Walter brings the reader up to speed on their new living situation, using a metaphor to describe their neighborhood:
Our poor place of abode, our humble calling, our assumed relationship, and our assumed name, are all used alike as a means of hiding us in the house-forest of London.
By way of the metaphor of the "house-forest," Walter emphasizes the necessity that they stay hidden. A forest is typically uninhabited and full of hiding places. Instead of escaping London for a real forest of physical hiding places, they have opted to remain in the city and hide in plain sight, using the hustle and bustle of London for concealment. The image of the forest also serves as an eerie reminder that everyone has things to hide behind their closed doors—Walter, Marian, and Laura are certainly not the only ones taking advantage of the "house-forest" of London for seclusion.
The metaphor of the city as a forest of houses feels especially pertinent given that Walter has just returned from the "wilds and forests of Central America." Familiar with hiding in the wilderness, he decides that the safest option (and best way to seek justice) is for Laura, Marian, and himself to hide in the house-forest of London.
Soon after moving in, Walter refers to their city and neighborhood as a house-forest. Once they have settled, he uses another nature metaphor to describe their abode and isolation from society:
As early as the end of October, the daily course of our lives had assumed its settled direction; and we three were as completely isolated in our place of concealment, as if the house we lived in had been a desert island, and the great network of streets and the thousands of our fellow creatures all round us the waters of an illimitable sea.
The desert island metaphor emphasizes the degree to which they are cut off from the world around them, which further emphasizes the threat they feel and the degree to which they refuse to completely trust anyone else for the time being. This metaphor also brings to mind his comparison of the schoolboy to Robinson Crusoe in the First Epoch.
Walter is familiar with the vast and merciless isolation of the ocean. However, the metaphor on the whole has a positive connotation. While he doesn't hope to live like this forever, he is content to have successfully hidden Laura and Marian from the world while he continues to figure out how to prove the former's identity. Comparing their life to a desert island indicates that Walter feels content with the precautions he has taken to keep himself and his companions safe.
When Walter goes to Welmingham to speak to Mrs. Catherick, he is disgusted by the sight that meets him after he gets off the train in the village. In his description of the area, he uses a metaphor that compares the houses of Welmingham to dead bodies.
Walter asks himself and the reader if there is any "wilderness of sand in the deserts of Arabia" or "any prospect of desolation among the ruins of Palestine" that can "rival the repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind, of an English country town" when it is still in the process of development. As he narrates his walk through the village, he provides an answer to his own question:
And the tradesmen who stared after me from their lonely shops; the trees that drooped helpless in their arid exile of unfinished crescents and squares; the dead house-carcasses that waited in vain for the vivifying human element to animate them with the breath of life; every creature that I saw; every object that I passed—seemed to answer with one accord: The deserts of Arabia are innocent of our civilized desolation; the ruins of Palestine are incapable of our modern gloom!
Besides revealing Collins's vehement opinions on suburban sprawl, Walter's rhetorical question and the metaphor he employs in response set the mood as the reader waits to encounter the infamous Mrs. Catherick for the first time. Much has been said about Mrs. Catherick to build the reader's expectations and curiosity around this supposedly malevolent woman. The sweet Mrs. Clements even warned Walter to stay away from her, multiple times. As the suspense builds for the looming encounter, the metaphor of the "house-carcasses" and the accompanying imagery contribute to the reader's presentiments surrounding Mrs. Catherick.
As Laura grows stronger, Walter finds that she's acting more and more like her old self, which brings his romantic love for her back to the surface. Walter uses a metaphor to describe the return of these emotions:
Changed as all the circumstances now were, our position towards each other in the golden days of our first companionship, seemed to be revived with the revival of our love. It was as if Time had drifted us back on the wreck of our early hopes, to the old familiar shore!
According to Walter, the passage of time has brought about the return of his and Laura's former feelings for each other. Their love initially ended in a shipwreck because of their varying class positions and because Laura was engaged to Sir Percival. Now, however, time has allowed them to drift back to those feelings and discover that something can be salvaged from the shipwreck after all.
The image of a shipwreck usually carries a negative connotation, but this metaphor is overwhelmingly positive. This is due to the comforting image of the "familiar shore." With time, they have been brought back to the hopes of being able to be together. Rather than the memory of the wreck bringing them sadness, the sweet familiarity of the shore provides safety and hope.
After Professor Pesca divulges his involvement in the Brotherhood, Walter deduces that Count Fosco is a defector from the secret society. He then begins to carefully consider how to go about revealing that he knows he is a traitor, at which point he metaphorically refers to his discovery as a mine.
[...] I must place the discovery itself where it would be ready for instant use against him, and safe from any attempt at suppression on his part. If I laid the mine under his feet before I approached him, and if I left instructions with a third person to fire it, on the expiration of a certain time, unless directions to the contrary were previously received under my own hand, or from my own lips—in that event, the Count’s security was absolutely dependent upon mine, and I might hold the vantage ground over him securely, even in his own house.
Many secrets have existed as ticking time bombs throughout the story. The truth of the Count's identity has been more of a second-order mystery in a plot riddled with mysteries. Now, however, this mystery is brought to the fore in the intense opera scene, when Count Fosco fearfully flees the second he gets a glimpse of Professor Pesca. Walter knows that time is of the essence and that he only has a small amount of time to plan his confrontation with Count Fosco.
The secret of the Count's backstory is less of a ticking time bomb, however, and more of a mine. Whereas a time bomb is preprogrammed to detonate at some time or another, a mine only goes off upon being disturbed. The Count has remained composed throughout all of the novel's minor and major crescendos. It is only when Walter begins to prod at his identity—his ultimate weakness—that the cool, dark, mysterious villain loses his composure. By saying that he plans to place the mine under the Count's feet, Walter indicates that he will make sure that, if the discovery results in an explosion, the blast will harm the Count as well.
After the Count and Madame Fosco drive away at the end of the third part of the Third Epoch, the tell-all narrative that the Count agreed to write for Walter takes over and serves as the entire fourth part. Early in this narrative, Count Fosco metaphorically describes humanity as puppets and personifies Destiny as the supreme puppet-master:
All the gold of my rich nature was poured hopelessly at her feet. My wife—poor angel!—my wife who adores me, got nothing but the shillings and the pennies. Such is the World; such Man; such Love. What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our strings gently! Dance us mercifully off our miserable little stage!
Addressing Destiny, Count Fosco asks for mercy and implores for his strings to be pulled gently. The trigger of this interjection is the introduction of Marian into his narrative. He laments the irony of his absolute captivation with her—a woman he could never be with, a woman he had no choice but to wrong—over his own wife. Count Fosco, a character who is more in control than any other character we meet throughout the novel, admits with the puppet show metaphor that he too is enfeebled by the unpredictable workings of fate. His love for Marian is one of his few weaknesses, and he is dramatically aware of it.
The tone and syntax of this part and Count Fosco's narrative overall are in line with the dramatic and eloquent manner of speaking that readers have become acquainted with in his portions of dialogue. Nevertheless, the tone in this section is more apprehensive and vulnerable than it normally is when he speaks. The Count's love for Marian and his lament over his powerlessness allow Collins to fill readers with slightly more sympathy for the character just before he disappears from the novel's pages for good.
In Count Fosco's narrative, he weaves his narration of the story's events with broader reflections on himself and other characters. Emphasizing that it is his rule "never to make unnecessary mysteries" or to make people suspect him, he uses a metaphor to describe the trust he managed to earn from Mrs. Michelson and Mrs. Clements.
Mrs. Michelson believed in me from first to last. This ladylike person (widow of a Protestant Priest) overflowed with faith. Touched by such superfluity of simple confidence, in a woman of her mature years, I opened the ample reservoirs of my nature, and absorbed it all.
I was rewarded for posting myself sentinel at the lake, by the appearance—not of Anne Catherick herself, but of the person in charge of her. This individual also overflowed with simple faith, which I absorbed in myself.
In his pursuit of Anne Catherick, Count Fosco drains the trust of these unsuspecting older women. He depletes their overflowing stores of innocent credulousness and stockpiles it in his own reservoir, which he has opened for the occasion.
In this metaphor, the trust of Mrs. Michelson and Mrs. Clements acquires liquid properties. Although he develops the metaphor with a tone of admiration and compassion for the two women, the description of their trust as overflowing is not positive. Instead, their excessive trust characterizes them as gullible and foolish, even if they both mean well.
The image in the metaphor of the liquid trust is complemented by the appearance of real water, as Count Fosco's figurative water meets the lake imagery at the end of the passage. However, there is something contradictory to the ideas evoked by the water images. Whereas water is often employed as a symbol of purity and divine wisdom, the water metaphor describes Count Fosco's ill will and the old women's ignorance.
