“Have you ever seen him since?”
The blacksmith winked.
“Come, come!” cried Master Nathaniel impatiently. “Have you seen him since? This is no time for beating about the bush.”
“Well, perhaps I have,” said the blacksmith slowly, “trotting about Swan, as brisk and as pleased with himself as a fox with a goose in his mouth. And I’ve often wondered whether it wasn’t my duty as lawman to speak out … but, after all, it was very long ago, and his life seemed to be of better value than his death, for he was a wonderfully clever doctor and did a powerful lot of good.”
“It—it was Dr. Leer, then?” asked Hazel in a low voice; and the blacksmith winked.
“Well, I think we should be getting back to the house,” said Master Nathaniel, “there’s still some business before us.” And, lowering his voice, he added, “Not very pleasant business, I fear.”
“I suppose your Honour means belling the cat?” said the blacksmith, adding with a rueful laugh, “I can’t imagine a nastier job. She’s a cat with claws.”
As they walked up to the house, the labourer whispered to Hazel, “Please, missy, does it mean that the mistress killed her husband? They always say so in the village, but …”
“Don’t, Ben; don’t! I can’t bear talking about it,” cried Hazel with a shudder. And when they reached the house, she ran up to her own bedroom and locked herself in.
Ben was despatched to get a stout coil of rope, and Master Nathaniel and the blacksmith, whom the recent excitement had made hungry, began to forage around for something to eat.
Suddenly a voice at the door said, “And what, may I ask, are you looking for in my larder, gentlemen?”
It was the widow. First she scrutinized Master Nathaniel—a little pale and hollow-eyed, perhaps, but alive and kicking, for all that. Then her eyes travelled to Peter Pease. At that moment, Ben entered with the rope, and Master Nathaniel nudged the lawman, who, clearing his throat, cried in the expressionless falsetto of the Law, “Clementina Gibberty! In the name of the country of Dorimare, and to the end that the dead, the living, and those not yet born, may rest quietly in their graves, their bed, and the womb, I arrest you for the murder of your late husband, Jeremiah Gibberty.”
She turned deadly pale, and, for a few seconds, stood glaring at him in deadly silence. Then she gave a scornful laugh. “What new joke of yours is this, Peter Pease? I was accused of this before, as you know well, and acquitted with the judge’s compliments, and as good as an apology. Law business must be very slack in Swan that you’ve nothing better to do than to come and frighten a poor woman in her own house with old spiteful tales that were silenced once and for all nearly forty years ago. My late husband died quietly in his bed, and I only hope you may have as peaceful an end. And you must know very little of the law, Peter Pease, if you don’t know that a person can’t be tried twice for the same crime.”
Then Master Nathaniel stepped forward. “You were tried before,” he said quietly, “for poisoning your husband with the sap of osiers. This time it will be for poisoning him with the berries of merciful death. Tonight the dead have found their tongues.”
She gave a wild shriek, which reached upstairs to Hazel’s room and caused her to spring into bed and pull the blankets over her ears, as if it had been a thunderstorm.
Master Nathaniel signed to Ben, who, grinning from ear to ear, as is the way of rustics when witnessing a painful and embarrassing scene, came up to his mistress with the coil of rope. But to bind her, he needed the aid of both the blacksmith and Master Nathaniel, for, like a veritable wild cat, she struggled and scratched and bit.
When her arms were tightly bound, Master Nathaniel said, “And now I will read you the words of the dead.”
She was, for the time, worn out by her struggles, and her only answer was an insolent stare, and he produced the farmer’s document and read it through to her.
“And now,” he said, eyeing her curiously, “shall I tell you who gave me the clue without which I should never have found that letter? It was a certain old man, whom I think you know, by name Portunus.”
Her face turned as pale as death, and in a low voice of horror she cried, “Long ago I guessed who he was, and feared that he might prove my undoing.” Then her voice grew shrill with terror and her eyes became fixed, as if seeing some hideous vision, “The Silent People!” she screamed. “The dumb who speak! The bound who strike! I cherished and fed old Portunus like a tame bird. But what do the dead know of kindness?”
“If old Portunus is he whom you take him to be, I fail to see that he has much cause for gratitude,” said Master Nathaniel drily. “Well, he has taken his revenge, on you—and your accomplice.”
“My accomplice?”
“Aye, on Endymion Leer.”
“Oh, Leer!” And she laughed scornfully. “It was a greater than Endymion Leer who ordered the death of farmer Gibberty.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. One who cares not for good and evil, and sows his commands like grain.”
“Whom do you mean?”
Again she laughed scornfully. “Not one whom I would name to you. But set your mind at rest, he cannot be summoned in a court of law.”
She gave him a searching look, and said abruptly, “Who are you?”
“My name is Nathaniel Chanticleer.”
“I thought as much!” she cried triumphantly. “I wasn’t
