Mention was made at this time of a suspicious-looking crucible in the house in the Evalina-road. It was found, however, that Peace never made use of this. One of his “fences” had brought it to the house in the hope that arrangements might be made for reducing on the spot a large haul of goods to a concentrated shape.
But Mr. Peace preferred to dispose of his plunder in the rough, and did not care to set up a furnace, whose discovery would have been fatal.
He did once try melting silver in this crucible over an ordinary fire, but the attempt was a failure, and it was not renewed.
Peace was quite right when he observed that Mrs. Thompson required watching. But who was to undertake the task now that her lord and master was in durance vile?
Mrs. Peace became duly impressed with the fact “that the game was up” and she was not disposed to remain any longer in her old quarters at Peckham.
The consequence was, that Mrs. Thompson was left to fight her own battles in the best way she could. A description of this woman is given by a journalist, and it is a tolerably accurate one.
“I was privileged yesterday,” says he, “to see Mrs. Thompson, the lady who has been so intimately identified with the convict Charles Peace. Mrs. Thompson is a woman of gaunt stature, wizened features, and altogether the very antithesis of the saucy Mrs. Dyson, for whom Peace seemed to have formed such a consuming passion.
“This preference for two women of such opposite appearance may be taken, I presume, as an instance of the happy impartiality of Mr. Peace in his loves. Possibly Mrs. Thompson may owe some of her present uncomeliness to her experience while under the protection of the burglar. That she has undergone much suffering I think certain, from the hard and leather-looking hue of her shrunken face.
“There is an abiding distrust lurking in her cold, restless eyes, which is confirmed by the twitching of her fingers as she speaks to you.
“There are moments when Mrs. Thompson thaws, as it were, when the curiously Mephistophelian mouth, the corners of which curl upwards instead of downwards, with a sharp precision of ominous intent, loses somewhat of its rigidity.