“And so must you be to harve your marn in the house. Well, well—and dismissed from his post, too, come rain or sunshine.”
I hurried off, satisfied with what I had heard. If the woman with the basket was not the sexton’s wife, there was no happy fortuity in fate. For a moment I had thought I would address myself to her, but the reflection that no good purpose could be answered thereby, and that by doing so I might awaken suspicions where none existed, made me think better of it.
Expanding her allusions, I writ down in my mind that George White, taken in hand by the police, had been remanded to the workhouse infirmary pending his recovery from an attack of delirium tremens, and such I found to be the case. Now the hope of getting anything in the nature of conclusive proof from him seemed remote. At least no harm could be done by me paying him a visit.
Fortunately I discovered, upon presenting myself at the “house,” that it was a visitors’ day, and that a margin yet remained of the time limit imposed upon callers.
I was referred to the infirmary doctor—a withered stick of a man, with an unprofessional beard the color and texture of dead grass. This gentleman’s broadcloth, reversing the order of things, seemed to have worn out him, instead of he it, so sleek, imposing and many sizes too large for him were his clothes.
He listened with his teeth, it seemed, for his lip went up, exposing them every time he awaited an answer.
“George White? The man’s in a state of melancholia following alcoholic excess. He is only a responsible creature at moments, and has hallucinations. I doubt his recovery.”
“I might take my chance of one of the moments, sir.”
“You might, if you could recognize your opportunity. Is it important?”
“Very. That’s no idle assertion, I assure you. He only knows the truth of a certain matter, the solution of which affects many people.”