"And 'im with the nastiest 'eavy blue jaw you ever saw on a man, 'adn't 'e, Miss Annett?"
"He had, indeed, Mrs. Ridge."
"Ah, I shouldn't wonder—nasty-sort-o'-looking feller. And that Sannet Wood too—nasty lonely place with its old stones and all—comfortable?—I don't think."
Olva made inquiries as to the stones.
"Why, ever so old, they say—before Christ, I've 'eard. Used to cut up 'uman flesh and eat it like the pore natives, and there's a ugly lookin' stone in that very wood where they did it too, or so I've 'eard. Would you go along that way in the dark, Miss Annett?"
"Not much—I grant you, Mrs. Ridge."
"Oh yes! not likely on a dark night, I don't think!—and that pore Mr. Carfax—well, all I say is, I 'opes they catch 'im, that's all I say . . ." with further reminiscence concerning Mrs. Birch who had worked on Carfax's staircase the last ten years and never "'ad no kind of luck. There was that Mr. Oliver—-"
Final dismissal of Mrs. Ridge and Miss Annett.
Meanwhile, strange enough the relief that he felt because the body was actually removed from that wood. No longer possible now to see it lying there with the leg bent underneath, the head falling straight back, the ring on the finger. . . . Curious, too, that the matchbox had not been discovered; they must have searched pretty thoroughly by now—perhaps after all it had not been dropped there.
But over him there had fallen a strange lassitude. He was outside, beyond it all.