"But your reasons, my dear sir, your reasons!" exclaimed the Town Clerk. "Such a breaking with established custom and precedent! I really don't know what the neighbouring boroughs will say of us!"
"Let 'em say!" retorted Brent. He laughed contemptuously. But suddenly his mood changed, and he turned on his visitor with what the Town Clerk afterwards described as a very ugly look. "But if you want to know," he added, "I'll tell you why I won't have any Corporation processing after my cousin's dead body! It's because I believe that his murderer's one of 'em! See?"
The Town Clerk, a rosy-cheeked man, turned pale. His gloves lay on the table at his elbow, and his fingers trembled a little as he picked them up and began fitting them on with meticulous precision.
"My dear sir!" he said, in a tone that suggested his profession more strongly than ever. "That's very grave language. As a solicitor, I should advise you——"
"When I say murderer," continued Brent, "I'm perhaps wrong. I might—and no doubt ought to—use the plural. Murderers! I believe that more than one of your rascally Corporation conspired to murder my cousin! And I'm going to have no blood-stained hypocrites processing after his coffin! You tell 'em to keep away!"
"I had better withdraw," said the Town Clerk.
"No hurry," observed Brent, changing to geniality. He laid his hand on the bell. "Have a whisky-and-soda and a cigar? We've finished our business, and I guess you're a man as well as a lawyer?"
But the visitor was unable to disassociate his personal identity from his office, and he bowed himself out. Brent laughed when he had gone.
"Got the weight of four hundred and eighty-one years of incorporation on him!" he said. "Lord! it's like living with generation after generation of your grandfathers slung round you! Four hundred and eighty-one years! Must have been in the bad old days when this mouldy town got its charter!"
Next morning Brent buried the dead Mayor in St. Hathelswide's Churchyard, privately and quietly. He stayed by the grave until the sexton and his assistants had laid the green turf over it; that done, he went round to the Abbey House and sought out Mrs. Saumarez. After his characteristic fashion he spoke out what was in his mind.