“Was he always there—at ‘Delsrop,’ I mean, in your early memory of it?”
“Save us, no. The place belonged to the Woodruffs up to ’77, when it came into the market. The new owner wasn’t in possession—no, not a year. He turned up sudden—was there on a day, with his black-bodin’ face; and nobody knew where he’d come from or what was his business in life. They didn’t find out then or afterwards. He kept himself to himself; received no visitors and wanted none; lived his days solitary, shut up like a miser; and didn’t so much as weed the gravel of his drive.”
“And so disappeared?”
“Disappeared? Not he. He was a landmark to every traveller for months to come. I mind the mornin’ well—ah! even through this lapse of time—that young Peterson, our landreeve, rode over to ‘Chatters,’ with a face like whey, and said as how Mr. Turk had been found murdered and hangin’ in the chains on Stockbridge downs.”
“Hanging?”
“Aye! There they’d strung him up that did the deed; for he’d been stabbed first—nigh a dozen angry wounds that had sucked at the steel like mouths—and then set to dangle for a jest to the daws.”
“And when they ran the rogues to earth?”
“They never did, sir—they never did. To this day the man’s fate is locked up in the mystery of his life.”
“But at the inquest——”
“None was held. ’Twas an odd thing, you’ll say; and a cursed odd thing it was. But none was held for all that. Men’s minds were disorganized at that time, ’tis said. There was the French and Spanish coalition, and dark trouble about a possible descent on the coast—like as there is now. Who was to think of one murdered land-loper, that nobody knew or claimed, when all eyes were turned to the sea? Anyhow, there he swung and rotted, to the huge scandal of the neighbourhood, till he and his head parted company and came to the ground.”