It was Mr. Dork's business to examine these garments, in the hope of finding some shred of evidence which might become a clue to the secret of the trainer's death. He turned out the pockets of the shooting coat, and of the waistcoat; one of these packets contained a handful of halfpence, a couple of shillings, a fourpenny-piece, and a rusty watch-key; another held a little parcel of tobacco wrapped in an old betting-list, and a broken meerschaum pipe, black and greasy with the essential oil of bygone shag and bird's-eye. In one of the waistcoat pockets Mr. Dork found the dead man's silver watch, with a blood-stained ribbon and a worthless gilt seal. Amongst all these things there was nothing calculated to throw any light upon the mystery. Colonel Maddison shrugged his shoulders as the constable emptied the paltry contents of the trainer's pockets on to a little dresser at one end of the room.
"There's nothing here that makes the business any clearer," he said; "but to my mind it's plain enough. The man was new here, and he brought new ways with him from his last situation. The poachers and vagabonds have been used to have it all their own way about Mellish Park, and they didn't like this poor fellow's interference. He wanted to play the tyrant, I dare say, and made himself obnoxious to some of the worst of the lot; and he's caught it hot, poor chap!—that's all I've got to say."
Colonel Maddison, with the recollection of a refractory Punjaub strong upon him, had no very great reverence for the mysterious spark that lights the human temple. If a man made himself obnoxious to other men, other men were very likely to kill him. This was the soldier's simple theory; and, having delivered himself of his opinion respecting the trainer's death, he emerged from the cottage, and was ready to go home with John Mellish, and drink another bottle of that celebrated tawny port which had been laid in by his host's father twenty years before.
The constable stood close against a candle, that had been hastily lighted and thrust unceremoniously into a disused blacking-bottle, with the waistcoat still in his hands. He was turning the blood-stained garment inside out; for while emptying the pockets he had felt a thick substance that seemed like a folded paper, but the whereabouts of which he had not been able to discover. He uttered a suppressed exclamation of surprise presently; for he found the solution of this difficulty. The paper was sewn between the inner lining and the outer material of the waistcoat. He discovered this by examining the seam, a part of which was sewn with coarse stitches and a thread of a different colour to the rest. He ripped open this part of the seam, and drew out the paper, which was so much bloodstained as to be undecipherable to Mr. Dork's rather obtuse vision. "I'll say naught about it, and keep it to show to th' coroner," he thought; "I'll lay he'll make something out of it." The constable folded the document and secured it in a leathern pocket-book, a bulky receptacle, the very aspect of which was wont to strike terror to rustic defaulters. "I'll show it to th' coroner," he thought; "and if aught particklar comes out, I may get something for my trouble."
The village surgeon having done his duty, prepared to leave the crowded little room, where the gaping servants still lingered, as if loth to tear themselves away from the ghastly figure of the dead man, over which Mr. Morton had spread a patchwork coverlet, taken from the bed in the chamber above. The "Softy" had looked on quietly enough at the dismal scene, watching the faces of the small assembly, and glancing furtively from one to another beneath the shadow of his bushy red eyebrows. His haggard face, always of a sickly white, seemed to-night no more colourless than usual. His slow whispering tones were not more suppressed than they always were. If he had a hang-dog manner and a furtive glance, the manner and the glance were both common to him. No one looked at him; no one heeded him. After the first question as to the hour at which the trainer left the lodge had been asked and answered, no one spoke to him. If he got in anybody's way, he was pushed aside; if he said anything, nobody listened to him. The dead man was the sole monarch of that dismal scene. It was to him they looked with awe-stricken glances; it was of him they spoke in subdued whispers. All their questions, their suggestions, their conjectures, were about him, and him alone. There is this to be observed in the physiology of every murder,—that before the coroner's inquest the sole object of public curiosity is the murdered man; while immediately after that judicial investigation the tide of feeling turns; the dead man is buried and forgotten, and the suspected murderer becomes the hero of men's morbid imaginations.
John Mellish looked in at the door of the cottage to ask a few questions.
"Have you found anything, Dork?" he asked.
"Nothing particklar, sir."
"Nothing that throws any light upon this business?"
"No, sir."