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. A warrant is issued and Neville is brought back. Charged with the murder, he is imprisoned. No sign of Drood, though, comes to hand. The river is dragged, but without result. In the meantime, Neville's sister, Helena, disappears and shortly after a mysterious stranger under the name of Mr. Datchery, appears in Cloisterham, takes rooms near John Jasper, and commences secret inquiries. A peculiar woman in black, the keeper of the opium den which John Jasper visits in London, also shadows Jasper. It is at this exciting period that the book finishes, stopped by the death of Charles Dickens, and writers of many minds have endeavored to fit in the concluding chapters of this story. In Mr. Terriss's version on the screen he presents John Jasper as having plotted to kill Edwin Drood, but Drood succeeds in making his escape through the quiet offices of the elusive character of Datchery, who in his opinion is known as Helena Landless disguised as a man.