Here operations ceased for the moment, and Mallow and Aldean, with Jeremiah in charge, returned home after a few directions to the deaf housekeeper. Then came the difficult task of explaining certain rumours which had already reached the Manor House. Jim discreetly held his tongue and left things to his friend, who vouchsafed as little information as was consistent with allaying the general alarm. Mr. Brock had died suddenly from heart failure, he declared, refraining carefully from all mention of the dead man's identity with the Michael Trall of Carson's story, and from any reference to the cipher diary. In the lamentations which ensued, further questions were spared him.
"The man must be buried as Mr. Brock," said Mallow to Aldean, a day or two later. "There is no other course open, if the story is to be kept quiet."
"Yes, I suppose so. It will save all trouble over those marriages. Better let him have a decent name over his tombstone, though he doesn't deserve it."
As the pseudo Brock had no relatives--for Mallow insisted that Jeremiah should suppress the fact of his relationship--Olive, as the Lady of the Manor, charged herself with the funeral. So the scoundrel was buried in fine style, although it is only fair to state that he had kept his false name clean enough, so far as concerned the parish. They could not but feel his loss, and there was much weeping and eulogy by the graveside as Michael Trall, of Kikat, was laid under the turf of the churchyard in the odour of sanctity. Mallow thought this was one of life's greater ironies.
"Good Lord!" was his aside to Jim, "how the rogue must chuckle at this mummery if his spirit has eyes to see. He might be a canonized saint for the fuss they make."
"Must have had some good in him," replied Aldean, meditatively; "as Mr. Brock he was straight enough. That I know."
"A serpent in a bamboo cannot be otherwise than straight," said Mallow. "Casterwell Vicarage was our friend's bamboo. But a triple murderer! Faugh!"
"Triple! How triple?"
"He murdered Carson, I'm certain. Brock was despatched by him so that he could assume the missionary's lambskin, and I shouldn't be surprised to learn that he, and not Bellairs, made away with Rao Singha. He was capable of it."
"But as Mr. Brock----"