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Updated: June 19, 2025
Had the Mayor of Highmarket, lying there sullen and suspicious, only known what was taking place close to him at that very moment, only known what had been happening in his immediate vicinity during the afternoon and evening, he might have taken some course of action which would have prevented what was shortly to come.
He wanted to go away openly from Highmarket without exciting suspicion: that was one. He wanted to make it known that he had gone to some definite place, on some definite mission; that was the other. And in reckoning up his chances he saw how fortune was favouring him. At that very time the Highmarket Town Council was very much concerned and busied about a new water-supply.
He had now to learn that a young man from Norcaster had come over to Highmarket that Sunday afternoon to visit his sweetheart; that this couple had gone up the moors; that they were on the opposite side of Hobwick Quarry when he went down into it after Stoner's fall; that they had seen him move about and finally go away; what was more, they had seen Cotherstone descend into the quarry and recover the stick; Cotherstone had passed near them as they stood hidden in the bushes; they had seen the stick in his hand.
He turned back, and followed Bent and Avice at a distance, watching them thoughtfully. "At some time?" he mused. "Um! Well, I'm now conversant with the movements of two inhabitants of Highmarket at a critical period of last night. Mallalieu didn't go to cards with Northrop until ten o'clock, and at ten o'clock Cotherstone returned to his house after being absent one hour."
Wilchester was four hundred miles away, far off in the south; ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in Highmarket had never heard the name of Wilchester. But Stoner had quite apart from the history books, and the geography books, and map of England. Stoner himself was a Darlington man. He had a close friend, a bosom friend, at Darlington, named Myler David Myler.
Tallington, solicitor, of Highmarket, to any person or persons who would afford information which would lead to the arrest and conviction of the murderer or murderers of the deceased Kitely. No one was in the bar-parlour of the Grey Mare when Stoner first entered it, but by the time he had re-read the handbill, two or three men of the town had come in, and he saw that each carried a copy.
It was literally in a breathless silence that the old man told the story of the crime of thirty years ago; it was a wonderfully dramatic moment when he declared that in spite of the long time that had elapsed he recognized the Mallalieu and Cotherstone of Highmarket as the Mallows and Chidforth whom he had known at Wilchester. Even then Mallalieu had not flinched.
Before the Highmarket folk had well swallowed their dinners, every street in the town, every shop, office, bar-parlour, public-house, private house rang with the news Mallalieu and Cotherstone, the Mayor and the Borough Treasurer, had been arrested for the murder of their clerk, and would be put before the magistrates at three o'clock.
They were now four hundred miles away from the scene of their crime. There was nothing whatever to bring Wilchester people into that northern country, nothing to take Highmarket folk anywhere near Wilchester. Neither he nor Mallalieu ever went far afield London they avoided with particular care, lest they should meet any one there who had known them in the old days.
I shall be able to find out how the land lies, sir and when I return I'll report to you, and the three of us will put our heads together." Leaving the captive in charge of Miss Pett, Christopher, having brushed his silk hat and his overcoat and fitted on a pair of black kid gloves, strolled solemnly into Highmarket.
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