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The coroner's jury has returned a verdict of wilful murder against you!" Mallalieu's big face turned of a queer grey hue that word murder was particularly distasteful to him. "Against me!" he muttered. "Why me particularly? There were two of us charged. What about Cotherstone?" "I'm talking about the inquest" said Christopher. "They don't charge anybody at inquests they only inquire in general.
He listened with a quiet smile while the prosecuting counsel sent down specially from London to take charge discussed with the magistrates the matter of Mallalieu's escape, and he showed more interest when he heard some police information as to how that escape had been effected, and that up to then not a word had been heard and no trace found of the fugitive.
There was a curious suggestion in that glance which Cotherstone did not like. He was already angry; Mallalieu's inquiring look made him still angrier. "Like to come?" asked Mallalieu, laconically. "No!" answered Cotherstone, turning towards the office. "It's naught to me."
I'm a reasonable man and getting an old man." He accompanied the last words with a meaning smile, and Cotherstone took a turn or two about the room, trying to steady himself. And Kitely presently went on again, in the same monotonous tones: "Think it all out by all means," he said. "I don't suppose there's a soul in all England but myself knows your secret and Mallalieu's.
"Oh, you're still here?" he said as he entered. "I what's up?" He had come to a sudden halt close to his partner, and he now stood staring at him. And Cotherstone, glancing past Mallalieu's broad shoulder at a mirror, saw that he himself had become startlingly pale and haggard. He looked twenty years older than he had looked when he shaved himself that morning.
His own house was just across the road from Mallalieu's, and he and Brereton said goodnight and turned towards it as the Mayor strode quickly off in the direction of the police-station. From the little colony of new houses at the foot of the Shawl to the police station at the end of the High Street was only a few minutes' walk.
A moment later the superintendent snatched the bull's-eye lamp from his man, and stepped over Mallalieu's dead body and went into the cottage to come back on the instant shivering and sick with shock at the sight his startled eyes had met.
And Mallalieu's nerves, which had gradually become sharpened and irritated by his recent adventures and his close confinement, became still more irritable, still more set on edge, and it was with difficulty that he forced himself to lie still and to listen.
And his Highmarket property and his share in the business only represented a part of Mallalieu's wealth. He could afford to do without all that he left behind him; it was a lot to leave, he sighed regretfully, but he would still be a very wealthy man if he never touched a pennyworth of it again.
Naturally, the police would believe the word of the Mayor: it would be a queer thing if they didn't, in Mallalieu's opinion. And therewith he tried to go to sleep, and made a miserable failure of it. As he lay tossing and groaning in his comfortable bed that night, Mallalieu thought over many things. How had Stoner acquired his information? Did anybody else know what Stoner knew?
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