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"That's so," replied Cotherstone, so imperturbably that all three looked at him in astonishment "That's quite so, Mr. Tallington." "And this is an accurate report of what happened?" asked Tallington, trailing the pencil over the newspaper. "That is, as far as you can see at a glance?" "Oh, I daresay it is," said Cotherstone, airily. "That was the best paper in the town I daresay it's all right.
Had he known where his partner was, and under what circumstances Mallalieu had obtained deliverance from official bolts and bars, Cotherstone would probably have laughed in his sleeve and sneered at him for a fool. He had been calling Mallalieu a fool, indeed, ever since the previous evening, when the police, conducting him to Norcaster, had told him of the Mayor's escape from the Town Hall.
The answer was Because when Cotherstone, Garthwaite, Bent, and Brereton set out from Cotherstone's house to look at the dead man's body, Cotherstone led the way straight to it. How did Cotherstone know exactly where, in that half-mile of wooded hill-side, the murder had been committed of which he had only heard five minutes before?
Cotherstone walked out of the dock and the court and the Town Hall amidst a dead silence which was felt and noticed by everybody but himself. At that moment he was too elated, too self-satisfied to notice anything.
Business?" Cotherstone put his lips almost close to Mallalieu's ear. "That man Kitely my new tenant," he whispered. "He's met us you and me before!" Mallalieu's rosy cheeks paled, and he turned sharply on his companion. "Met us!" he exclaimed. "Him! Where? when?" Cotherstone got his lips still closer. "Wilchester!" he answered. "Thirty years ago. He knows!"
And if you want the whole truth, they think you're a deal cleverer than Mallalieu, and that Kitely probably met his end at your hands, with your partner's connivance. And there are those who say that if Mallalieu's caught as he will be he'll split on you. That's all, sir." "And what do you think?" demanded Cotherstone. The superintendent shifted uneasily in his chair.
Kitely had come to him, one day about three months previously, told him that he had come to these parts for a bit of a holiday, taken a fancy to a cottage which he, Cotherstone, had to let, and inquired its rent. He had mentioned, casually, that he had just retired from business, and wanted a quiet place wherein to spend the rest of his days.
He saw himself in that dock again and Mallalieu standing by him. They were not called Mallalieu and Cotherstone then, of course. He remembered what their real names were he remembered, too, that, until a few minutes before, he had certainly not repeated them, even to himself, for many a long year. Oh, yes he remembered everything he saw it all again.
Them he must see but the men of law first. When the solicitor and the barrister came, Cotherstone talked to them as he had never talked to anybody in his life.
Of course Cotherstone knew all about Harborough's arrangements he would often pass the pig-killer's house from the hedge of the garden he would have seen the coils of greased rope hanging from their nails under the verandah roof, aye, a thousand times.
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