"Mr. Marsh! Them letters stands for his name, and he always wears them kind of gloves."
"Had Mr. Marsh been near the bed, after your return to the room together, before you found this glove?"
"No; I found it lying close by the bedside, and he had never been nearer than the middle of the room, where he was trying to fetch his sister to."
Robert Nettleby was told he might stand down, and Mr. Marsh was called upon to identify his property. Charley, who had been standing at one of the windows listening, in gloomy silence, and closely watched by two policemen, stepped forward, took the glove, examined it, handed it back, and coldly owned it was his.
How was he going to account for its being found by the bedside of the murdered woman?
Mr. Marsh was not going to account for it at all—he knew nothing about it. He always had two or three such pairs of gloves at once, and had never missed this. Amid an ominous silence, he resumed his place at the window, staring out at the broad green fields and waving trees, bathed in the golden August sunshine, and seeing them no more than if he had been stone-blind.
Mrs. Marsh was the next witness called, and came from an adjoining room, dressed in black, and simpering at finding herself the cynosure of so many eyes. Mrs. Marsh folded one black-kid-gloved hand over the other after being sworn, with a mild sigh, and prepared to answer the catechism about to be propounded. The coroner began wide of the mark, and asked her a good many questions, that seemed to have little bearing on the matter in hand, all of which the lady answered very minutely, and at length. Presently, in a somewhat roundabout fashion, he inquired if her son had been at home on the night of the murder.
"No; he not been at home, at least not until he had come driving home with Natty, both of them as pale as ghosts, and no wonder, though they quite made her scream to look at them; but when she had heard the news, she had such a turn, it was a mercy she hadn't fainted herself, and she hadn't half got over it yet."
Here Mrs. Marsh took a sniff at a smelling-bottle she carried, and the ammonia being strong, brought a tear into each eye, which she wiped away with a great show of pocket-handkerchief.
"What time had her son left the house before returning with his sister?"