On the morning after the murder, according to his account, he walked into his mother’s house, to her great surprise just as she was sitting down to breakfast. Willie Ward and two other relatives were there at the time, and perhaps their presence disconcerted him, for he left again directly for the purpose, as he said, of seeing his brother Dan.
He promised to return shortly, but did not go back till ten o’clock the same night, when he had a wild expression in his eye, his face was discoloured, and his clothes daubed with mud.
He told his mother that he had “been and shot Mr. Dyson,” assigning as the reason that he had taken out a warrant against him for using threatening language and that if it were brought before a magistrate his prison life would go against him.
He hastened at once to clean himself, and after saying “Good-bye” to his mother he left the house never to see her again in this world.
Peace, as we have before observed, took great delight in boasting how he could deceive the police, and often declared—
“That he could dodge any detective in existence.”
The fact of his having baffled his pursuers is doubtless to be ascribed to his facial peculiarities, especially the length and mobility of the lower jaw, and the flexibility of his muscles. This was one of his most remarkable characteristics. He said to some friends one day—
“Do you want to know how I dodged the bobbies?” and on receiving a reply in the affirmative he said, “Well, I will tell you,” then he asked them to turn their backs to him a bit.
They did so, and were astounded to find that Peace had completely altered the expression of his face, and so protruded his chin and curled his lip that under ordinary circumstances it would have been impossible to recognise him, especially as he had by the peculiar contortion of his features forced the blood into his face until he looked like a mulatto. One of the inspectors said—
“No wonder you could get clear from Sheffield when you can change your face like that.”