Trial of John Jasper, lay precentor of Cloisterham Cathedral in the County of Kent, for the murder of Edwin Drood, engineer

by England) Dickens Fellowship (London

Mr. Chesterton: You kept this record in this fashion?

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Chesterton: Will you carry your mind back to one evening, I think in July, when Jasper came home comparatively late, and went under the archway, and passed up the staircase?

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Chesterton: Do you remember an old woman following?

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Chesterton: What passed between you?

Witness: I asked her if she was looking for anybody, and she, in substance, said that she would like to know the name and address of that gentleman. Then we had some further conversation, and she asked me, first of all for money for her lodgings, and then she asked for money for what she described as opium, which I gave her.

Mr. Chesterton: She also mentioned an interview with a young gentleman on the previous Christmas Eve?

Witness: Yes, she told me she had been to Cloisterham before on Christmas Eve, and that she had met a youth named Ned, I think it was, who had also given her money. I took it she had been down on the same business as that night—following the prisoner.