Jasper stayed on for Rutlish's funeral, conscious at all times of how unwelcome his presence was in the mourning house. He sensed that the Rutlishes blamed him for their son's untimely demise, and he had done nothing to disabuse them of the notion, feeling that it would not help them (or him) to defend himself. They did not, of course, want to own their dead child a licentious drunkard. He was, in the words of the vicar who gave the eulogy, 'light-hearted and full of the joys of youth', rather than teetering on the cusp of debauchery.

It was accepted by all, including the police, that Rutlish had refused to come home with Jasper once the Criterion closed and had wandered off alone towards the river. Milly's part in the tragedy – if she had one – never came to public light.

But, the day after the funeral, Jasper took a trip to Limehouse.

It was the day before Epiphany, and he was conscious of the need to return to Cloisterham with all due speed. His plan was to take a boat down the Thames as far as Gravesend and from thence the coach to Cloisterham. Limehouse lay on his route but, as he approached the grim little street by day, he doubted Princess Puffer and her daughter would be awake.

He was wrong, though. As he passed into the alleyway, he bumped into Milly coming in the other direction, with a pint pot in her hand.

"Oh, it's you," she said. "Where's your friend? I thought I'd see him before now."

He was not prepared for this.

"You do not know?" he said. "Were you not with him? Did you leave him?"

"Know what? Come out into the light, do. It's creepy talking to you here like this. I can't make out your expression."

She took his elbow and drew him out into the half-light of the street. Although it was near ten in the morning, the January air was smoky and smudgy.

"He is dead," said Jasper, his voice pitched just loud enough for her to hear it over the creaking of carts on their way to load and unload at the docks.

"What? Is this some kind of stupid joke? How can he be dead? He was hale as anything when we…"

"He drowned in the river, that night."

"But…he walked me all the way home and he seemed quite well. We did take another drink in the sailor's tavern though. Two, if I recall. Well, perhaps three."

Jasper nodded. "Then his intoxication was the culprit."

"He can't be drowned! He just can't." She plucked at Jasper's sleeve, her eyes bright with gathering tears.

"I'm afraid he is. He was buried yesterday."

"Oh, Mr Datchery." She flung her weeping face into his waistcoat, to his intense disquiet.

"I only came to ascertain you knew nothing of it," he said coldly. "Pray, let me go, for I have a long journey to make and must be off directly."

He cast her aside and moved swiftly along the street and towards the nearest river station. Her anguished cries were soon swallowed up in the relentless hubbub of Limehouse and the docks.

The only comparative relief to his spirits was the absence of Phoebe and the babe when he returned to the song school. They had departed to celebrate Epiphany at the Reverend Woolnough's little backwoods church and would not be seen again for some time.

"Did you have a wonderful time in London?" asked Diana, envy at the forefront of her tone, as he took his usual place in the corner of the drawing room before tea.

"As it happens, I did not," he said.

"Then you should have returned to us earlier," said Mr Linney with a frown. "Dr Cross has been in need of you to help with the Epiphany music."

"The friend I was visiting died," said Jasper shortly, cutting off any further words of reproach. Polite condolences were given and then the matter was dropped – by all, that is, except Diana, who showed by her frequent vivid glances in his direction that she would be needing more information on the subject in due course.

She caught up with him as he left for the cathedral to meet with Dr Cross after tea. It was steely cold with the threat of snow in the air and they both hurried along with their scarves pulled up over their lower faces in the dusky darkness.

"Jasper, don't rush so. I wanted to say how sorry I was about your friend. What did he die of? Was he ill a long time?"

"No. He drowned."

"Drowned? Oh, how awful! It must have been a terrible shock."

"Yes, it was." He stopped and turned to her, forcing himself to be gentler with her, despite his urge to snap that he wanted to be left alone. "Thank you. I appreciate your sympathy."

"You are so stiff, Jasper. It is all right, you know, to grieve."

"What is the use?" he said, his resolve flying away with his temper. "It does nobody any good. I am late for Dr Cross – do go back, won't you?"

"You are like a porcupine," said Diana with exasperation. "All prickles and spines. Why can't you let people care for you?"

But he had no reply to this and he hastened on to the cathedral.

Rutlish's was only the first of three significant deaths that year of 1838.

The second, just as the snowdrops were bringing the first inkling of cheer to a barren time in the Close, was Reverend Canon Crisparkle.

Jasper was cheered and surprised to find, shortly after the funeral requiem had been sung, that his replacement was to be his own son, Jasper's friend Septimus. There were mutterings about this in certain corners of the ancient precincts – at twenty nine, the junior Crisparkle was unusually young for such a position. But his name saved him any open hostility, for all had admired his father and nobody would dream of bringing his mother a moment's grief. She was quite the Chapter favourite and Septimus's appointment would ensure that her delicious macaroons would still make their appearance at meetings.

Jasper strolled with Crisparkle in the Close on the spring evening after his service of installation. They were on their way to celebratory drinks in the Bishop's palace, Jasper's first experience of such an honour, conferred on him because he had deputised that day for Dr Cross, who was in bed suffering with a sore throat.

"Well, who would have thought it?" Crisparkle lifted his face to the waning rays of late sunshine as if he could never be sated of its glowing effects. "Me a canon and you a precentor, at our ages."

"I am not a precentor, merely a substitute," cautioned Jasper, but his modest utterance concealed a great swell of professional pride at how well the service had gone.

"Well, if you are not yet fully-formed choirmaster, you are certainly one in the making. But can a man both conduct and sing in his own choir? For your voice would be a most grievous loss, if not."

"You're very kind. I suppose it has been done."

"But of course, our Dr Cross has a great many years in him yet – I should certainly not suggest otherwise."

"Certainly not indeed."

"Ah, here is mother."

Mrs Crisparkle hastened across the lawn towards them, a sealed letter in her hand.

"What is this?" Septimus hailed her. "I hope our dear young Queen has not seen fit to rescind my appointment? Is that the royal seal?"

"No, don't be silly, Sept, of course not. It is for Mr Jasper."

"For me?"

"Yes, delivered to the song school this last ten minutes, and said to be urgent, so Miss Diana ran across and caught me on my way to the Bishop's Palace."

"Urgent?" Jasper had no idea who might want to write urgently to him unless…Phoebe? Was the child ill? Or was their secret revealed?

He took the letter in shaking fingers.

"If you would excuse me," he muttered, taking the letter away to read in the privacy of the cathedral vestry, the closest place he could think of.

"I hope it is not bad news," Mrs Crisparkle called after him, but, receiving no reply, she simply grimaced at her son and took his arm to walk through the palace gates.

Alone amid the vestments and altar plate, Jasper broke the seal. The handwriting was not familiar – not Phoebe's after all.

He took a breath, cleared his head of apprehension and panic, and read on.

"Jasper," the letter opened peremptorily. "I find myself near the end of my life, diagnosed with a lung condition from which I am not expected to recover. As you read this, I will be on board ship bound for England and Cloisterham in the hopes of spending my last hours with my son, Edwin. I would be much obliged if you would visit me at The Lindens, should I prove to be still alive.

Your brother-in-law

Capt. E. Drood."

He put the letter down, trying to still the strange victory tattoo in his heart. It would not do to celebrate the man's death. All the same, the knowledge that soon all the major players in his unhappy childhood would be interred in earth could not but cheer him a little. Perhaps he was already dead. Jasper smiled. But then he would never know what on earth the old devil had to say to him.

Was an apology completely beyond the question? Oh, that would be sweet indeed. But unlikely.

A week later, he drew up to the old red-brick house in a hansom cab. It had been years since his last visit, but the place looked no different – forbidding and without the air of cosy domesticity to temper its gloomy façade. The shutters were open, and he knew that Captain Drood had arrived some days in advance of him.

The door was opened by an unfamiliar maidservant.

"My name is Jasper. Captain Drood has asked to see me." And this was once my home. It seemed futile to mention it.

She took his hat and gloves, put them on the hall table and went upstairs, leaving him in the old tiled hallway. He looked around and up to the landing. There was the room where Edwin was born. And there the room where he had spent Christmas Day shut up and alone, in disgrace.

Pale traces of his childhood anguish dug into his heart like fish hooks and he felt himself more the unhappy boy he had been than the flourishing young gentleman he was determined to show himself. These feelings must be ignored, routed, sent away before Drood clapped eyes on him. He had no intention of appearing at a disadvantage.

The maidservant came back down.

"He's with the doctor just now, sir, but he says to wait in the drawing room and the doctor will send you up when he's on the way out."

"Thank you."

She looked surprised that he knew his way to the drawing room without being shown.

"Oh, I know the house," said Jasper to her. "My sister died in it."

She inhaled sharply and scurried back below stairs.

The piano, the fireplace, the little stool by the hearth on which he had spent unhappy hours trying to be invisible to Drood and yet not to Meg. They all struck leaden melancholy into his soul.

He stood by the piano, raised the lid and played a few bars of a Field nocturne with his right hand only. He had dreamed, as a boy, of Drood's death. Of his violent death, more often than not.

Still, if it was not violent, it was the next best thing, which was painful and lingering.

He used both hands to play a rousing Schubert march until the doctor entered the room, looking extremely puzzled to find a man at the piano playing a cheerful melody.

"Mr Jasper?" he said.

"The same," said Jasper, ceasing the music. "Excuse me. It's a fine instrument but it wants tuning, I think."

"Er, quite. Captain Drood is ready to receive you now. Please be warned, he is in a very poor condition and finds speaking a trial."

"Do you expect his sufferings to be soon at an end?"

"It will be a mercy to him if they are. Are you a member of his family, sir?"

"He was my late sister's husband."

"Ah, you are his brother-in-law? Then I will tell you in confidence that I hardly expect him to last the week. If you do not know of a good funeral director, perhaps now might be the time to make enquiries. Sorry to be so blunt, but I find it is best to be forewarned."

"Forewarned," said Jasper thoughtfully, "is forearmed."

"Quite so, sir. Good day."

Jasper, under the influence of a kind of steely calm induced by the medical man's agreeably respectful manner, ascended the stair.

Drood's room was in semi-darkness, the curtains drawn against the mild spring sunshine. He was propped up on a multitude of pillows and his face was no longer red and thread-veined, as Jasper remembered it, but grey and sunken-eyed.

A plethora of bottles, glasses and pill boxes littered the low table at his bedside and a maid, folding linens in the corner, was dismissed with a wave of the hand.

As Jasper drew closer, Drood's breathing became painfully audible, a stertorous wheeze that made Jasper, as a man with knowledge of the usefulness of good lungs, wince.

"You sent for me," opened Jasper, now standing at the foot of Drood's bed.

"Damn…you…" wheezed Drood. "Standing there…like some spectre…sit down…for God's sake."

Jasper drew up a chair and sat beside the gloomy little laden table, his eyes level with those bloodshot orbs into which he now looked.

"The doctor says you are dying," said Jasper, not without relish.

Drood seemed to understand, even excuse, the manner in which this intelligence was conveyed.

"You don't…have to…kill me, then," he said. "As you might…"

"I have thought about it often. You did yourself the favour of removing to Egypt, or perhaps I would have done it."

"Meg…"

"You know she was my mother."

"Of course…tricked me…duped me…I was a fool."

"She deserved better than you."

"And you, Jasper."

"Perhaps."

"She was a whore and you a whore's son." The sentence came out entire, without pauses for wheezing.

Jasper clenched his fists, his eye roving over the spare pillows, picturing them over Drood's foul mouth, pressed down close.

"And Ned?" The words came out as a grinding mutter. "What is he?"

"My son. My heir." He paused for a long splutter and wheezing volley of coughs. "It is he…I wish to…speak of…"

"When you die, he will be orphaned."

"Yes, but…never mind that…chancery…he will have money…and property…in trust…"

"And little Rosa Bud for a bride, one day."

Drood merely looked at Jasper with loathing.

"Poor little Rosa Bud," said Jasper softly. "Her children will bear your blood."

"Listen," said Drood, with a great effort to get the word out over his gusts and expectorations. "This is…the gist of the matter." He panted for a moment or two. "Pay heed…to an old man's…dying wish."

Jasper sat up. A dying wish? Was he to care for Edwin? To dispose of the property in Drood's name? To address himself to the dead man's estate? Surely he was too young for any of these responsibilities – at eighteen, there was nothing he could do. Was it something to do with Meg? He leant forward, brow tight, to catch the increasingly faint words.

"Stay…away…from…my…son."

Jasper eye's narrowed. Was that Drood's dying wish? For him to have no contact with his nephew – his half-brother, in truth? Whilst it would be no hardship to forego his irregular meetings with the careless boy, he was offended more than he could express.

"Why? We are kin. He is alone in the world – why deny him the comfort of an…yes, an older brother?"

"No!" Drood's emphasis tumbled him into another fearful set of racking coughs. "My dying wish…Jasper. Ignore it…at your…peril." He paused, holding up a hand to show he meant to continue. "Ned…is an innocent…I won't have him…under your shadow…You were never…a boy…unnatural…bad influence…leave him be."

"You're afraid I might tempt him towards the church?" said Jasper sardonically, but Drood had no more to say.

He waved his hand ferociously towards the door and rang the bell for the maid.

While they waited for her, Drood managed a last gasp of, "Remember…Jasper…my dying wish."

"I am glad your death is an unpleasant one," said Jasper, hearing her footsteps on the staircase. "And I hope you soon find yourself exactly where you should be. Somewhere hot. I suppose Egypt might have been good practice. Acclimatisation."

Some ten days later, a fair-haired boy, his face splotched red from weeping, stood in the vault of Cloisterham Cathedral. Few mourners accompanied him – a master from his school, some old soldiers, the Crisparkles - mother and son.

Mrs Crisparkle in particular took his distress hard and tried to draw him away from the gloomy scene – the coffin, placed inside its wrought-iron prison house, where it would gather dust in the company of the other dead Droods for as long as the cathedral stood.

Terribly dark it was down there, and the air thick with a dampness that caught at his throat, but he could not be induced to leave his father's final resting place until another joined them, coming down the winding stair from the choir stalls where he had sung a moving hymn of mourning for the deceased.

"Ned," he said, and the others shuffled aside, making way for him. "Come away, now."

The boy turned miserably to his trusted relative and threw his arms about his neck, dampening his surplice with tears.

"You are all I have now, Jack," he sobbed. "You won't leave me, will you?"

"Of course not, Ned. I will always be uncle, brother and friend to you. Always."