For the discovery of Dickens's secret in Edwin Drood it is
necessary to obtain a clear view of the characters in the tale, and
of their relations to each other.

About the middle of the nineteenth century there lived in
Cloisterham, a cathedral city sketched from Rochester, a young
University man, Mr. Bud, who had a friend Mr. Drood, one of a firm
of engineers--somewhere. They were "fast friends and old college
companions." Both married young. Mr. Bud wedded a lady unnamed,
by whom he was the father of one child, a daughter, Rosa Bud. Mr.
Drood, whose wife's maiden name was Jasper, had one son, Edwin
Drood. Mrs. Bud was drowned in a boating accident, when her
daughter, Rosa, was a child. Mr. Drood, already a widower, and the
bereaved Mr. Bud "betrothed" the two children, Rosa and Edwin, and
then expired, when the orphans were about seven and eleven years
old. The guardian of Rosa was a lawyer, Mr. Grewgious, who had
been in love with her mother. To Grewgious Mr. Bud entrusted his
wife's engagement ring, rubies and diamonds, which Grewgious was to
hand over to Edwin Drood, if, when he attained his majority, he and
Rosa decided to marry.

Grewgious was apparently legal agent for Edwin, while Edwin's
maternal uncle, John Jasper (aged about sixteen when the male
parents died), was Edwin's "trustee," as well as his uncle and
devoted friend. Rosa's little fortune was an annuity producing 250
pounds a-year: Edwin succeeded to his father's share in an
engineering firm.

When the story opens, Edwin is nearly twenty-one, and is about to
proceed to Egypt, as an engineer. Rosa, at school in Cloisterham,