The question took Mrs. Toft aback. “Why, Miss,” she said, “you don’t mean as you think he was putting on this morning?”
“No,” Mary answered. “But is it possible that he knows the worst and does not tell us?”
“And why shouldn’t he tell us? It would be strange if he wouldn’t tell his own wife? And you that’s Mr. Audley’s nearest!”
“It’s all so strange,” Mary pleaded. “My uncle is gone. Where has he gone?”
Mrs. Toft did not answer the question. She could not. And there came an interruption. “That’s Petch’s voice,” she said. “They’re back.”
The men trooped into the hall. They advanced to the door of the parlor, Petch leading, a man whom Mary did not know next to him, after these a couple of farmers and Toft, in the background a blur of faces vaguely seen.
“We’ve found something, Miss,” Petch said. “At least Tom has. But I’m not sure it lightens things much. He was going home by the Yew Tree Walk and pretty close to the iron gate, when what should he see lying in the middle of the walk but this!”
Petch held out a silver flask.
“It’s the Master’s, sure enough,” Mrs. Toft said.
“Ay,” Petch answered. “But the odd thing is, I searched that place before noon, a’most inch by inch, looking for footprints, and I went over it again when we were beating the Yew Tree Walk this afternoon, and I’m danged if that flask was there then!”