“I reckon there’ll be room enough, now the old man’s gone,” returned Darbage irreverently. “There wa’n’t room for no extras, though, when he was alive.”
“Then old Jacob is really dead, is he?”
“Aye, sir, as dead as he’ll ever be in this world. Can’t say what he’ll come to in the next.”
“Well, this world is the one we have most to do with while in it,” said the lawyer, with some austerity. “What are the particulars? I have only Mr. Thorpe’s telegram saying Jacob had been murdered.”
Darbage looked up without a change of countenance.
“Aye, sir, he was murdered, right enough,” said he, in his grim fashion. “Ma’am Haynie found him dead in bed this morning, with two knife slits atween his ribs, and most of his blood run out of his body, which wasn’t much, at that.”
“Is it known when the crime was committed?”
“I reckon not, sir, though I’m not sartin. Jim Bragg, the constable, is up there nosing round and looking as wise as an owl; but I can’t say what he’s l’arned. They don’t tell me much.”
“Is Mr. Thorpe at the house?”
“Aye, sir; he’s been down here nigh a week.”