He obtained from Mr. Brion a list of the articles retained by him, and which belonged to Peace, and a promise that they should be given up to the proper owner of them.
He also assigned to Mr. Brion the right to make use of three inventions that he had discovered, if they should be worth following up.
Having made the necessary arrangements for the completion of certain legal documents, the visitors left and returned to Leeds to again consult a legal gentleman.
In the afternoon they returned to Armley, and had another long interview with Peace. They found him—as they had found him during previous visits—calm and collected, and prepared to reply to any questions put to him. A number of subjects were referred to.
The chief of them was as to his remarkable confession that he murdered Police-constable Cock at Whalley Range, on the night of the 1st August, 1876.
He was told that a portion of the public had received the statement with considerable incredulity, that some persons would not believe that he had made any such confession, and others that if he had made it he had done it to throw discredit on the police, and that it was still untrue.
He repeated that he had made such a confession, and that he had prepared plans of the locality where the murder occurred.
The plans and the confession he had, he said, placed in the hands of the governor, by whom they had been forwarded to the proper authorities. In due course, he said, it would be seen whether or not he had not made such a confession.
Of course his relatives needed no confirmation of the statement at his hands. They knew perfectly well that he had made such a confession, and, what was more, it was no news to them.
It is true Peace never had a confederate in his work, but he could not do without a confidant. There is perhaps not a crime of any consequence that he had committed that he did not make known to some one.