It was Jasper - and the Old Puffer knew it

Gentle fellow loggers (threaders?)

I subscribe to the general view, that the hints Dickens gave Forster broadly explain who killed ED, however, I would like to add a line of support to this theory via the scenes with the Old Puffer (purveyor of fine opium).

You all remember the novel opens with Jasper awakening in the Old Puffer's opium den. But do you remember his curious action on awakening? He prowls around to listen to his fellow addicts rambling in their trances and pronounces them "unintelligible". A clue in the very first few pages, says I!

Bear with me now to Chapter 14, where Edwin meets the Old Puffer and charitably gives her enough for a pipe of opium. During the exchange, she mutters, "You be thankful that your name ain't, Ned... a threatened name." This curious comment leads Edwin to recall that his Uncle Jasper "alone calls him Ned". Ominous music offstage.

Now indulge me all the way to Chpater 23, where Jasper takes the pipe again in the company of the Old Puffer. He tells her, "Suppose you had something in your mind; something you were going to do... Should you do it in your fancy, when you were lying here doing this?... I did it over and over again. I have done it hundreds of thousands of times in this room."

Then Jasper goes into an opium trance and, it is hinted, relives the murder of Edwin. The Old Puffer listens and after Jasper has left remarks, " 'Unintelligible' I heard you say, of two more than me. But don't ye be too sure always; don't ye be too sure, beauty!". Thereafter she follows Jasper to Clositerham and spies on him.

I interpret these hints as suggesting that the Old Puffer has heard Jasper in his opium daze murdering someone called "Ned" and that Jasper's attempt to satisfy himself that opium ravings were incomprehensible has given him a false sense of security.

Presumably, the old woman has worked out his secret from what she heard and the chance meeting with Edwin and pursued Jasper either to blackmail or denounce him.

Going way beyond the text and into delusions of creativity, perhaps Dickens intended Jasper to murder the Old Puffer to keep his secret safe, and that this second murder would provide the means for his villainy to be unmasked? Maybe one more corpse was destined for the quicklime in the Sapsea Vault...

I would quite agree if I had not read so much of Dickens and realized that when I try to make some kind of an assertion I am usually wrong. Perhaps this time, however, we are both right! I dearly wish he had finished!