Chapter 34: Mr Day Walks Home

It chanced that night that Mr Day, the highly respected butler at Exham Park, paid a visit to a friend. It was rather late when he returned. The friend offered to put him into a trap and drive him home, but Mr Day declined.

“It’s a fine night,” he observed, “and a walk will do me good. I don’t get enough exercise out of doors. I like to take advantage of any that comes my way. I’m not so young as I was--we none of us are; but a five-mile walk won’t do me any harm. On a night like this I’ll enjoy it. Thank you, Hardy, all the same.”

So he walked.

It was just after eleven when he reached the village. Considering the hour he was surprised to find how many people there were about. Mr Jenkins had just turned his customers out of the “Rose and Crown.” A roaring trade he seemed to have been doing. A couple of dozen people were gathered together in clusters in front of the inn, exchanging final greetings before departing homewards. For the most part they were talking together at the top of their voices, as yokels on such occasions have a trick of doing. Mr Day stopped to speak to a man, with whom he had some acquaintance, in the drily sarcastic fashion for which he was locally famed.

“What’s the excitement? Parish pump got burned?”

“Why, Mr Day, haven’t you heard the news?”

“That Saturday comes before Sunday? Haven’t heard anything newer.”

“Why, Mr Day, don’t you know that Sarah Ann Wilson, from up at your place, has been over to Granger’s, trying to get him to give her a warrant for your young lady?”

“There’s several kinds of fools about, but Sarah Ann Wilson’s all kinds of them together.”

“So it seems that Granger thinks. Anyhow he ain’t given it her. He’s locked up Mr Morice instead.”

“What’s that?”

Another man chimed in.

“Why, Mr Day, where are you been not to have heard that they’ve locked up Mr Morice for murdering o’ that there chap in Cooper’s Spinney.”

“What nonsense are you men talking about?”

“It ain’t nonsense, Mr Day; no, that it ain’t. You go over to Granger’s and you’ll soon hear.”

“Who locked him up?”

“Granger and Mr Nunn, that’s the detective over from London. They locked him up between them. It seems he gave himself up.”

“Gave himself up?”

“So Mrs Wilson and her daughter says. They was in the kitchen, at the other side of the door, and they heard him giving of himself up. Seems as how they’re going to take him over to Doverham in the morning and bring him before the magistrates. My word! won’t all the countryside be there to see! To think of its having been Mr Morice after all. Me, I never shouldn’t have believed it, if he hadn’t let it out himself.”

Mr Day waited to hear no more. Making his way through the little crowd he strode on alone. That moon-lit walk was spoilt for him. As he went some curious reflections were taking shape in his mind.