"When did I see him last? why on the Monday afternoon, when he came in from court," responded Mrs. Jones. "I was crossing the hall at the foot of the stairs, between the parlour and the shop, as he came in. He looked tired, and I said so; and he answered that he had been about all day, in the court and elsewhere, and was tired. That's when I saw him last: never after, till I saw him in his chair, dead."
"You heard nothing of his movements on that evening?"
"I wasn't likely to hear it, seeing I went out as soon as the shop was shut. Before it, in fact, for I left Jones's nephew to put up the shutters. Old Jenkins is dying, as all the parish knows, and I went to sit with him and take him some beef-tea. Jones's nephew, he went out too, to his debating club, as he calls it. And precious debating it must be," continued Mrs. Jones, with additional tartness, "if the debaters are all as green and soft as he! Alletha Rye, she was at work at Mrs. Wilson's: and so, as ill-luck had it, all the house was out."
"Except your servant, Susan Marks," observed one of the jury. "She was left at home to keep house, we hear."
"And in a very pretty manner she did keep it!" retorted Mrs. Jones, as if she had taken a pint of vinegar to set her teeth on edge; when Susan Marks, at the back, gave a kind of groan, and burst into fresh tears. "Up the street here, down the street there, over the way at the doors yonder, staring, and gossiping, and gampusing--that's how she kept it. And on an assize night, of all nights in the year, to be airing her cap in the street, when barristers and other loose characters are about!"
The gratuitous compliment paid to the barristers raised a laugh, in spite of the sad inquiry the court had met upon. Mrs. Jones's epithet sounded, however, worse to others than to herself.
"And she could tell me, when I got in just before eleven, that Mr. Ollivera had gone to bed!" resumed that lady, in intense aggravation: "which, of course, I believed, and we all went up to our rooms, suspecting nothing. Let me ever catch her out at the street door again! home she'll go to Upton Snodsbury."
Groans from the back, in the vicinity of Susan Marks.
"Had you known previously, Mrs. Jones, that Mr. Ollivera was in the habit of bringing with him a loaded pistol?"
"Yes; for he told me. One day last October, when I was up dusting his drawing-room, he had got it out of the case. I said I should not like to have such a weapon near me, and he laughed at that. He used to keep it on the chest of drawers in his bedroom: that is, the case; and I suppose the thing itself was inside."