about the age of fifteen, or whether, on attaining his majority, he
succeeded to some other guardian, is not very obvious. In short,
we cannot guess why the Princess Puffer hated Jasper, a paying
client of long standing. We are only certain that Jasper was a bad
fellow, and that the Princess Puffer said, "I know him, better than
all the Reverend Parsons put together know him." On the other
hand, Edwin "seems to know" the opium woman, when he meets her on
Christmas Eve, which may be a point in favour of her being his
long-lost grandmother.

Jasper was certainly tried and condemned; for Dickens intended "to
take Mr. Fildes to a condemned cell in Maidstone, or some other
gaol, in order to make a drawing." {6} Possibly Jasper managed to
take his own life, in the cell; possibly he was duly hanged.

Jasper, after all, was a failure as a murderer, even if we suppose
him to have strangled his nephew successfully. "It is obvious to
the most excruciatingly feeble capacity" that, if he meant to get
rid of proofs of the identity of Drood's body by means of
quicklime, it did not suffice to remove Drood's pin, watch, and
chain. Drood would have coins of the realm in his pockets, gold,
silver, bronze. Quicklime would not destroy these metallic
objects, nor would it destroy keys, which would easily prove
Drood's identity. If Jasper knew his business, he would, of
course, rifle ALL of Edwin's pockets minutely, and would remove the
metallic buttons of his braces, which generally display the maker's
name, or the tailor's. On research I find "H. Poole & Co., Savile
Row" on my buttons. In this inquiry of his, Jasper would have
discovered the ring in Edwin's breast pocket, and would have taken
it away. Perhaps Dickens never thought of that little fact: if he