“Ah, I thought I hadn’t heard the door. Well, I was in the shops, and they told me at five o’clock. When they came to tell me, I asked what time it was, and they told me, five o’clock. Now it was two o’clock when I finished my dinner; I asked Hannah, and she told me, two o’clock. That’s three hours, sir. Mark that. She’d been on that line three hours before her husband knew it. Is that right, when husband and wife should be one?”
“They told you directly she was found, Dene,” said the clergyman. “No one is to blame.”
“I’m blaming no one,” said Silas sullenly, “I only ask you to mark it, sir: three hours. Three hours before I knew.”
“Why does he insist on that point?” thought Calthorpe.
“I’m alone now, a lonely man and a blind one. The inquest now,—must you have an inquest?”
“We are all equal before the law,” said Mr. Medhurst in a gentle and reproving voice.
“And I have to go to it?”
“I am afraid so, Dene.”
“Well, I’ll tell them what I told you: it was three hours before I knew. She was alive at two o’clock, when she left me,” said Silas with great violence, striking his fist upon the table and glaring round the room with his sightless eyes; “you’ve all heard: three hours,—you, Mr. Medhurst, and you, Mr. Calthorpe, and you, Hambley, and you, Nan. Come here, Nan.”
Gregory’s wife went to him, like a dog to a cruel master; he had thrust his fingers through his black hair, and looked wild. He groped for her shoulder; clutched it firmly.