In the Mayor's Parlour

by J. S. Fletcher

Hawthwaite, essentially a man of fixed ideas, looked sullen.

"Well, it isn't mine, then," he growled. "From all I've learnt—and I've chances and opportunities that most folks haven't—my impression is that both men were after her, right up to the time Wallingford was murdered. I can tell you this—and I could have put it in evidence if I'd thought it worth while—Wellesley used to go and see her, of an evening, constantly, up to a very recent date, though she was supposed to have broken off with him and to be on with the Mayor. Now then!"

"Do you know that for a fact, Hawthwaite?" asked Tansley.

"I know it for a fact! He used to go there late at night, and stop late. If you want to know where I got it from, it was from a young woman that used to be housemaid at the Abbey House, Mrs. Saumarez's place. She's told me a lot; both Wallingford and Wellesley used to visit there a good deal, but as I say, Wellesley used to go there very late of an evening. This young woman says that she knows for a fact that he was often with her mistress till close on midnight. I don't care twopence what Wellesley said; I believe he was, and is, after her, and of course he'd be jealous enough about her being so friendly with Wallingford. There's a deal more in all this than's come out yet—let me tell you that!"

"I don't think anybody will contradict you, Hawthwaite," observed the barrister dryly. "But the pertinent fact is what I tell you—the fact of access! Somebody got to the Mayor's Parlour by way of the back staircase, through Bunning's rooms, that evening. Who was it? That's what you've got to find out. If you'd only found out, before now, that Mrs. Bunning took half an hour to fetch the supper beer that night we should have been spared a lot of talk this morning. As things are, we're as wise as ever."

Then Meeking, with a cynical laugh, picked up his papers and went off, and Brent, leaving Tansley talking to the superintendent, who was inclined to be huffy, strolled out of the Moot Hall, and went round to the back, with the idea of seeing for himself the narrow street which Krevin Crood had formally described. He saw at once that Krevin was an admirable exponent of the art of description: everything in St. Lawrence Lane was as the ex-official had said: there was the door into the Bunnings' rooms, and there, facing it, the ancient church and its equally ancient churchyard. It was to the churchyard that Brent gave most attention; he immediately realized that Krevin Crood was quite right in speaking of it as a place wherein anybody could conveniently hide—a dark, gloomy, sheltered, high-walled place, filled with thick shrubbery, out of which, here and there, grew sombre yew-trees, some of them of an antiquity as venerable as that of the church itself. It would be a very easy thing indeed, Brent decided, for any designing person to hide amongst these trees and shrubs, watch the Bunnings' door until Mrs. Bunning left it, jug in hand, and then to slip across the grass-grown, cobble-paved lane, silent and lonely enough, and up to the Mayor's Parlour. But all that presupposed knowledge of the place and of its people and their movements.

He went back to the market-place and towards the Chancellor. Peppermore came hurrying out of the hotel as Brent turned into it. He carried a folded paper in his hand, and he waved it at Brent as, at sight of him, he came to a sudden halt.

"Just been looking for you, Mr. Brent!" he said mysteriously. "Come into some quiet spot, sir, and glance at this. Here we are, sir, corner of the hall."

He drew Brent into an alcove that opened close by them, and affecting a mysterious air began to unfold his paper, a sheet of news-print which, Brent's professional eye was quick to see, had just been pulled as a proof.