A young couple, Edwin Drood and Rosa Bud, are engaged to be married. This is not a love affair, but a marriage of convenience, according to the wills of their parents. They, however, are very fond of each other in a platonic friendship. John Jasper, a young uncle of Edwin Drood, leader of the choir and organist of Cloisterham Cathedral, unknown to Edwin Drood, is madly in love with Rosa. His passion for her is so intense that it drives him to the despair of opium, and, in secret, he practices this vice in all manner of low places. A young man called Neville Landless is also in love with Rosa, and his feelings of jealousy and enmity to Drood are, at times, inflamed secretly by John Jasper. There is a quarrel after dinner one night at Jasper's home, and that night Edwin Drood disappears. Jasper, immediately arouses the village to suspect Neville Landless, who, in the morning after Drood's disappearance, left the village for a walking tour.