The morning after Deede Dawson had paid his visit to the attic there was news, however, that disturbed him greatly, for Mrs. Barker, the charwoman who came each morning to Bittermeads, told them that two men in the village—notorious poachers—had been arrested by the police on a charge of being concerned in Mr. Clive's death.
The news was a great shock to Dunn, for, knowing as he thought he did, that the police were working on an entirely wrong idea, he had not supposed they would ever find themselves able to make any arrest. As a matter of fact, these arrests they had made were the result of desperation on the part of the police, who unable to discover anything and entirely absorbed by their preconceived idea that the crime was the work of poachers, had arrested men they knew were poachers in the vague hope of somehow discovering something or of somehow getting hold of some useful clue.
But that Dunn did not know, and feared unlucky chance or undesigned coincidence must have appeared to suggest the guilt of the men and that they were really in actual danger of trial and conviction. He had, too, received that morning, through the secret means of communication he kept open with an agent in London, conclusive proof that at the moment of Clive's death Deede Dawson was in town on business that seemed obscure enough, but none the less in town, and therefore undoubtedly innocent of the actual perpetration of the murder.
Who, then, was left who could have fired the fatal shot?
It was a question Dunn dared not even ask himself but he saw very plainly that if the proceedings against the two arrested men were to be pressed, he would be forced to come forward before his preparations were ready and tell all he knew, no matter at what cost.
All the morning he waited and watched for his opportunity to speak to Ella, who was in a brighter and gayer mood than he had ever seen her in before.
At breakfast Deede Dawson had assured her that he could not conceive what were the suspicions she had referred to the night previously, and while he would certainly have no objection to her mentioning them at any time, in any quarter she thought fit if anything happened at Wreste Abbey—and would indeed be the first to urge her to do so—he, for his part, considered it most unlikely that anything of the sort she seemed to dread would in fact occur.
“Not at all likely,” he said with his happy, beaming smile that never reached those cold eyes of his. “I should say myself that nothing ever did happen at Wreste Abbey, not since the Flood, anyhow. It strikes me as the most peaceful, secluded spot in all England.”
“I'm very glad you think so,” said Ella, tremendously relieved and glad to hear him say so, and supposing, though his smooth words and smiles and protestations deceived her very little, that, at any rate, what she had said had forced him to abandon whatever plans he had been forming in that direction.
Her victory, as it seemed to her, won so easily and containing good promise of further success in the future, cheered her immensely, and it was in almost a happy mood that she went unto the garden after lunch and met Dunn in a quiet, well-hidden corner, where he had been waiting and watching for long.