World’s End

had made. All the jury knew the relations between the witness and the deceased. Jenkins had lived in the service of the Waldrons all his life, as had his father before him, and the deceased had always exhibited the greatest interest in his welfare. He had good wages, an easy occupation, and was well cared for in every way. The most suspicious could conceive of no ground of quarrel or ill-will.

The Coroner directed the witness to remain in attendance, and the first person who had seen the deceased after the alarm was given was called.

This was Phillip Lewis, a farmer’s son (one of the stewards at World’s End Races), who being swift of foot had outstripped the others in the run from the church to The Place.

Phillip Lewis found the deceased in his armchair, with his head drooping on one side⁠—just as the gardener Jenkins described; only this witness at once caught sight of the weapon with which the fatal blow was given. It was lying on the ground, just outside the open window, stained with blood, and was now produced by the constable who had taken charge of it. It was a small billhook, not so large as would be used in cutting hedges, but much the same shape.

The edge of a billhook, as everyone knows, curves inward like a sickle, and at the end the blade forms a sharp point, or spike. It is, therefore, a fearful instrument with which to deliver a blow upon a bare head.

Phillip Lewis said that the gardener Jenkins recognised this hook as his⁠—the one he usually employed to lop the yew trees, and other favourite trees of the deceased, and for general work in the shrubberies.

This piece of evidence made the jury look very sternly upon Jenkins. He was asked if it was his, and at once admitted it. Where had he left it last? He would not be quite sure, but he believed in the tool-house, which was close to the gate in the garden wall, which led out into the fields. He had used it that morning.

There was a distinct movement among the jury. They evidently began to suspect Jenkins.

The medical man, Dr. Parker, was the last witness. He had examined the wound the deceased had received. There was first an incised wound, three inches long, on the top of the skull, extending along the very crown of the head. This wound was not deep, and, though serious, might not have proved mortal. At the end of this wound there was a small space not cut at all, but an inch farther, just at the top of the forehead, was a deep wound, which had penetrated to the brain, and must have caused almost instantaneous death.

These peculiar wounds were precisely such as would have been made if a person had approached the deceased from behind, and struck him on the bare head with the billhook produced. He did not think that there was more than one blow. He thought that the deceased when he received the blow must have started up mechanically, and, losing power, fell forward on to the floor. He did not think that the deceased had suffered much pain. There would not be time. The point or spike-like end of the hook had stuck deep into the brain. He had examined the hook, and found clotted gore and a few grey hairs upon the blade.

This concluded the evidence, and the court was cleared⁠—after the Coroner had whispered a few words to the police, several members of which force were present.

The Coroner then summed up the evidence, and in a few brief but terribly powerful sentences pointed out that suspicion could only attach to one man. This man was left alone. He had every opportunity. The tale of the alleged stranger on the lawn bore every mark of being apocryphal. It was obviously a clumsy invention. The witness, who at first could not give any idea whatever as to how the stranger was dressed, had, when pressed, in a manner identified himself as the stranger, by describing him as wearing a grey coat.

In conclusion, he would add that the country had been scoured by the police in the three days that had elapsed, and they had failed to find any trace of the supposed stranger. He then left the jury to deliberate, and going out into the air, met Mr. Merton, who was more firmly convinced than the Coroner as to the guilt of Jenkins.

“There was no motive,” he admitted, as they talked it over, walking slowly down the road; “but crimes were not always committed from apparent motives. On the contrary, out of ten such crimes seven would, if investigated, seem to be committed from very inadequate motives. How could they tell that Waldron had not called to the gardener after the carriage had left, and that then a quarrel took place?” He was determined to see that justice was done to his dead friend.

But while the Coroner and Merton thus strolled along together a new complexion had been put upon affairs. The wretched wife of Jenkins, who had heard the muttered communications of the police, and saw that they kept a close lookout upon her husband, had listened as near the door as she could get, and so heard the summing-up of the Coroner. Distracted and out of her mind with terror, a resource occurred to her that would never have been thought of by one less excited. She rushed from the place like mad. “Poor old Sally has lost her head,” said the hangers about. She ran across the fields, scrambled through the hedges, reached The Place, tore upstairs, and threw herself upon Violet, beseeching her for the love of God to save her poor husband.

Till that moment Violet had not the least idea that Jenkins, who had carried her in his arms many a time when she was a child, and was more like an old friend than a servant, was under any suspicion.