Captain Cowen examined his trunk carefully. "Nothing to speak of," said he. "I've lost eight guineas and my gold watch."
"There!—there!—there!" cried the landlady.
"What does that matter, dame? He has lost his life."
"Ay, poor soul. But 'twont bring him back, you being robbed and all. Was ever such an unfortunate woman? Murder and robbery in my house! Travellers will shun it like a pest-house. And the new landlord he only wanted a good excuse to take it down altogether."
This was followed by more sobbing and crying. Cowen took her down-stairs into the bar, and comforted her. They had a glass of spirits together, and he encouraged the flow of her egotism, till at last she fully persuaded herself it was her calamity that one man was robbed and another murdered in her house.
Cowen, always a favorite, quite won her heart by falling into this view of the matter, and when he told her he must go back to the City again, for he had important business, and besides had no money left, either in his pockets or his rifled valise, she encouraged him to go, and said, kindly, indeed it was no place for him now; it was very good of him to come back at all: but both apartments should be scoured and made decent in a very few days; and a new Carpet down in Mr. Gardiner's room.
So Cowen went back to the City, and left this notable woman to mop up her murder.
At Bow Street next morning, in answer to the evidence of his guilt, Cox told a tale which the magistrate said was even more ridiculous than most of the stories uneducated criminals get up on such occasions; with this single comment he committed Cox for trial.
Everybody was of the magistrate's opinion, except a single Bow Street runner, the same who had already examined the premises. This man suspected Cox, but had one qualm of doubt founded on the place where he had discovered the knife, and the circumstance of the blood being traced from that place to the stable, and not from the inn to the stable, and on a remark Cox had made to him in the cart. "I don't belong to the house. I haan't got no keys to go in and out o' nights. And if I took a hatful of gold, I'd be off with it into another country—wouldn't you? Him as took the gentleman's money, he knew where 'twas, and he have got it: I didn't and I haan't."
Bradbury came down to the "Swan," and asked the landlady a question or two. She gave him short answers. He then told her that he wished to examine the wine that had come down from Mr. Gardiner's room.