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Updated: June 23, 2025
But Saurin did not want companionship; he preferred that of Marriner and Company. Edwin Marriner was a young farmer in the neighbourhood of Weston College, and he farmed his own land. Certainly it was as small an estate as can well be imagined, consisting of exactly two acres, pasture, arable, cottage, and pig-stye included, but undoubted freehold, without a flaw in the title.
One thing decidedly against him in the opinion of the gentry round about, was that he frequently visited Slam's, and Slam was regarded as a receiver of stolen goods, certainly so far as game was concerned, perhaps in other matters also. Edwin Marriner was a wiry-looking little man, with red hair and whiskers, quick bright eyes, and a look of cunning about his mouth.
Marriner, as his father had done, openly carried a gun, for which he paid his license, and it was impossible, with reason, to blame him, for the rabbits alone would have eaten up every particle of his little stock if he took no measures against them. If he shot an occasional pheasant, or his dog caught a hare, or even two, in the course of the season on his own land, why, no one could wonder.
Cotman, who had been whispering with his client during the Borough Surveyor's evidence, asked no questions, and presently the interest of the court shifted to a little shrewd-faced, self-possessed woman who tripped into the witness-box and admitted cheerfully that she was Mrs. Marriner, proprietor of Marriner's Laundry, and that she washed for several of the best families in Hathelsborough.
The Coroner asked nothing further; he was still plainly impatient about the handkerchief evidence, if not wholly sceptical, and he waved Mrs. Marriner away. But Cotman stopped her. "I suppose, Mrs. Marriner, that mistakes are sometimes made when you and your assistants send home the clean clothes?" he suggested. "Things get in the wrong baskets, eh?"
"Well, not often at my place, sir," replied Mrs. Marriner. "We're very particular." "Still sometimes, you know?" "Oh, I'll not say that they don't, sometimes, sir," admitted Mrs. Marriner. "We're all of us human creatures, as you're very well aware, sir." "This particular handkerchief may have got into a wrong basket?" urged Cotman. "It's possible?" "Oh, it's possible, sir," said Mrs. Marriner.
A curious sequel to this disappointment was the accident that made the Roger Morris house Washington's head-quarters in 1776, both Morris and his wife being fugitive Tories. Again Washington was a chance visitor in 1790, when, as part of a picnic, he "dined on a dinner provided by Mr. Marriner at the House lately Colo. Roger Morris, but confiscated and in the occupation of a common Farmer."
As a matter of fact, Marriner would rather have been quite alone, as his custom was on these predatory occasions, and it was only his desire to make Saurin an accomplice, and so seal his mouth, which induced him to depart from his ordinary custom now.
After school Edwards came up to him and drew him aside confidentially, full of eagerness and curiosity. "Well," he said, "was it good fun? How did it all go off?" "It was a regular sell," replied Saurin, smothering his impatience at being questioned, and forcing himself to take the tone he was accustomed to assume towards his chum in confidential communications. "How! did you not meet Marriner?"
Marriner is correct in identifying the burnt and blood-stained fragment of handkerchief found in the Mayor's Parlour after the murder as your property; you also acknowledge the existence of a door communicating between your house and the Moot Hall.
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