The watch
found at the Weir was challenged by the jeweller as one he had
wound and set for Edwin Drood, at twenty minutes past two on that
same afternoon; and it had run down, before being cast into the
water; and it was the jeweller's positive opinion that it had never
been re-wound. This would justify the hypothesis that the watch
was taken from him not long after he left Mr. Jasper's house at
midnight, in company with the last person seen with him, and that
it had been thrown away after being retained some hours. Why
thrown away? If he had been murdered, and so artfully disfigured,
or concealed, or both, as that the murderer hoped identification to
be impossible, except from something that he wore, assuredly the
murderer would seek to remove from the body the most lasting, the
best known, and the most easily recognisable, things upon it.
Those things would be the watch and shirt-pin. As to his
opportunities of casting them into the river; if he were the object
of these suspicions, they were easy. For, he had been seen by many
persons, wandering about on that side of the city--indeed on all
sides of it--in a miserable and seemingly half-distracted manner.
As to the choice of the spot, obviously such criminating evidence
had better take its chance of being found anywhere, rather than
upon himself, or in his possession. Concerning the reconciliatory
nature of the appointed meeting between the two young men, very
little could be made of that in young Landless's favour; for it
distinctly appeared that the meeting originated, not with him, but
with Mr.
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