Neverending Stories

What buffer, blackguard, or mountebank was behind the ghastly disappearance and presumptive murder of the blessed innocent Edwin Drood? Was it the cadaverous old stonemason Stony Durdles? The “sullen, angry, and wild” orphan boy Neville Landless, dead set on making the gentlefolk of the cathedral town of Cloisterham answer for the bad sign under which he was born? The “Angular” pettifogger and foiled swain Hiram Grewgious? And let us not forget John Jasper, Drood’s opium-eater guardian and lech of a village choirmaster! Could that “muddy, solitary, moping weed” have manufactured an ignominious end for his ward within the cathedral crypt out of intemperate desire for Drood’s betrothed, the comely Rosa Bud?