When he had flattened the nearly decayed body in the coffin as much as he could, he lifted the corpse of his victim from the floor of the vault. It was still closely enveloped in the large sheet, although at one part the blood had begun to make its way through all the folds upon folds of that wrapper, and he threw it into the coffin. It more than filled it.
Poor Mrs. Oakley shut her eyes; she knew what he was going to do. She knew it from what he had done, and she saw it in his eyes. He was of course going to tread down the dead body of her he had murdered, in the same way that he had already trodden down the half-decomposed one in the coffin.
Strange companionship! How little the very respectable defunct, who had been expensively placed in one of the vaults, could have imagined that she—it was a female—that she should be trodden down as flat as any pancake, to make room for the Reverend Josiah Lupin's murdered wife!
"To what base uses may we come as last."
Mrs. Oakley heard him treading and stamping, and then she opened her eyes, and she saw him fitting on the lid of the coffin again. He had made it hold its double burthen.
And now she had surely seen all that she came to see, and yet with a frightful fascination she lingered as though spell-bound to the spot. She thought that she had plenty of time. Of course Lupin would put the coffin into its recess again, and that would take him some time. It would, with its additional weight, certainly be no easy task, but he set about it, and it is astonishing what herculean labours people will perform, when their necks are to answer for any delay or dereliction of the duty. Lupin dragged the coffin to its receptacle on a low shelf, and fairly hitched one end of it in the aperture made for its reception.
By the assistance of the lever he pushed it fairly in, and then he paused and wiped his brow.
"It is done," he said.
He leaned heavily against the damp wall.
"It is done—it is done. This will be one of the undiscovered murders that are done in London. I am safe now. Nobody will miss her—nobody will look for her—nobody will dream that this vault can possibly conceal such a crime; and now that the terror of it, and the horror of doing it, is all over, I feel like a new man, and am much rejoiced."