"Two years ago that it were made and that the party was at the Lion. The coat was sold less than three months ago."
"Was it? To whom?"
"To a stranger--a slim young gent who came in here one day promiscuous, and wanted an overcoat. He had that blue Witney, he had!"
"Now, my dear Mr. Evans," says Mr. Dalrymple, laying his hand lightly on Mr. Evans's shirt-sleeve, and looking up from under his bushy brows into the old man's face, "just try and exercise your memory a little about this stranger. Give us a little more description of him--his age, height, general appearance, and that sort of thing!"
But Mr. Evans's memory is quite unaccustomed to exercise, and cannot be jogged, or ensnared, or bullied into any kind of action. The stranger was young, "middling height," appearance, "well, gen-teel and slim-like;" and wild horses could not extract further particulars from Mr. Evans than these. Stay. "What did he give for the coat, and in what money did he pay for it?" There's a chance. Mr. Evans remembers that he "gev fifty-three-and-six for the overcoat, and handed in a ten-pun' note for change." A ten-pound note, which, as Mr. Evans, by a further tremendous effort, recollects, had "the stamp of our post-office on it, as I pinted out to the gent at the time." Was the note there? No; Mr. Evans had paid it into the County Bank to his little account with some other money, but he quite recollected the post-office stamp being on it.
Mr. Carruthers thinks this a great point, but is dashed by Mr. Dalrymple's telling him, on their way from the tailor's, that all bank-notes passing through post-offices received the official stamp. This statement is corroborated at the Amherst post-office, where no money-order of that amount, or of anything equivalent to that amount, has been recently paid, the remittances in that form being, as the postmaster explains, generally to the canal boatmen or the railway people, and of small value.
So there the clue fails suddenly and entirely, and Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Dalrymple again mount the big swinging barouche and are driven back to Poynings to dinner, which meal is not, however, graced by the presence of either of the ladies; for Mrs. Carruthers is too ill to leave her room, and Clare is in attendance on her. So the gentlemen eat a solemn dinner by themselves, and talk a solemn conversation; and at eight o'clock Mr. Dalrymple goes away, driven by Gibson, coachman, in the carriage, and turning over in his mind how best to make something out of the uneventful day for the information of the Home Secretary.
That dignitary occupies also much of the attention of Mr. Carruthers, left in dignified solitude in the dining-room before the decanters of wine and the dishes of fruit, oblivious of his wife's indisposition, and wholly unobservant of the curiosity with which Mr. Downing, his butler and body-servant, surveys him on entering the room to suggest the taking of tea. Very unusual is it for the Poynings servants to regard their master with curiosity, or indeed with any feeling that bears the semblance of interest; but, be the cause what it may, there is no mistaking the present expression of Downing's face. Surprise, curiosity, and something which, if it must be called fear, is the pleasant and excited form of that feeling, prompt Mr. Downing to look fixedly at his master, who sits back in his chair in an attitude of magisterial cogitation, twirling his heavy gold eye-glass in his bony white hands, and lost in something which resembles thought more closely than Mr. Carruthers's mental occupation can ordinarily be said to do. There he sits, until he resolves to take his niece Clare into confidence, tell her of the visit he has received from the gentleman from the Home Office, and ask her whether she can make anything of it, which resolution attained, and finding by his watch that the hour is half-past ten, and that therefore a Carruthers of Poynings may retire to rest if he chooses without indecorum, the worthy gentleman creaks upstairs to his room, and in a few minutes is sleeping the sleep of the just. Mrs. Carruthers--Clare having been some time previously dismissed from the room--also seems to sleep soundly; at least her husband has seen that her eyes are closed.
Her rest, real or pretended, would have been none the calmer had she been able to see her faithful old servant pacing up and down the housekeeper's room, and wringing her withered hands in an agony of distress; for the servant who had gone to Amherst with Mr. Carruthers and his mysterious visitor in the morning had learned the meaning and purpose of the two gentlemen's visit to Evans, the tailor, and had made it the subject of a lively and sentimental conversation in the servants' hall. Although literature was not in a very flourishing condition at Amherst, the male domestics of the household at Poynings were not without their sources of information, and had thoroughly possessed themselves of the details of the murder.
Mrs. Brookes had heard of the occurrence two or three times in the course of the preceding day, but she had given it little attention. She was in her own room when the servants returned with the carriage which had taken Mr. Dalrymple to the railway station, having visited her mistress for the last time that evening, and was thinking, sadly enough, of George, when the entrance of the upper housemaid, her eager face brimful of news, disturbed her.