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Updated: June 21, 2025
"I go on, then, to the day before your brother's death," continued Pratt. "Namely, a certain Friday. Now, if you please, I'll invite you to listen carefully to certain facts which are indisputable, which I can prove, easily. On that Friday, the day before your brother's death, Mrs. Mallathorpe was in the shrubbery at Normandale Grange which is near the north end of the old foot-bridge.
Half an hour at Normandale Grange a journey to London a couple of hours in the City and then the next train to the Continent, on his way to regions much further off. Here, things had turned out badly, unexpectedly badly but he would carry away considerable, easily transported wealth, to a new career in a new country. Pratt began his flight in methodical fashion.
I must go this way." He went off rapidly, and Collingwood walked on through the plantation towards the Normandale Arms wondering, all the way, why Pratt was so anxious to know exactly when it was that Mrs. Mallathorpe had been warned about the old bridge.
And for some months they and their mother had been safely installed at Normandale Grange, and in full possession of the dead man's wealth and business. All this flashed through Linford Pratt's mind in a few seconds he knew all the story: he had often thought of the extraordinary good fortune of those young people.
But that evening, as he sat in his parlour at the Normandale Arms, the landlord, coming in on pretence of attending to the fire, approached him with an air of mystery and jerked his thumb in the direction of the regions which he had just quitted. "You remember what we were talking of this afternoon when you come in, sir?" he whispered.
Mallathorpe, who was only twenty-four years of age, succeeded to the Normandale estates, one of the finest properties in the neighbourhood of Barford, about two years ago, under somewhat romantic and also tragic circumstances, their previous owner, his uncle, Mr.
Own up! you've found out that the will leaves the property away from the present holders, and you've been to Normandale to bargain? Come, now!" "What then!" demanded Pratt. "Then, of course, I come in at the bargaining," answered Parrawhite. "I'm going to have my share. That's a certainty. You'd better take my advice. Because you're absolutely in my power.
About four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Linford Pratt, managing clerk to Messrs. Eldrick & Pascoe, Solicitors, of Barford, who was crossing the grounds of Normandale Grange on his way to a business appointment, discovered the dead body of Mr. H. J. Mallathorpe, the owner of the Normandale Estate, lying in a roadway which at that point is spanned, forty feet above, by a narrow foot-bridge.
Pratt continued his round of duties at Eldrick & Pascoe's; no more was heard by outsiders, at any rate of the stewardship at Normandale. As for Collingwood, he settled down in chambers and lodgings and, as Eldrick had predicted, found plenty of work.
And next morning, before going up to the Grange, he went to the nearest telegraph office, and sent Sir John Standridge a lengthy message in which he resigned the appointment that would have taken him to India. Collingwood had many things to think over as he walked across Normandale Park that morning.
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