The church was open, for it was Saturday afternoon. The chancel was full of monuments of dead and gone Campaignes. Among them was a tablet, “To the Memory of Langley Holme, born at Great Missenden, June, 1798, found murdered in a wood in this parish, May 18, 1826. Married February 1, 1824, to Eleanor, daughter of the late Marmaduke Flight, of Little Beauchamp, in this county; left one child, Constance, born January 1, 1825.”
“Yes,” said Constance, “one can realise it: the death of wife and friend at once, and in this dreadful manner.”
In the churchyard an old man was occupied with some work among the graves. He looked up and straightened himself slowly, as one with stiffened joints.
“Mornin’, sir,” he said. “Mornin’, miss. I hope I see you well. Beg your pardon, sir, but you be a Campaigne for sure. All the Campaignes are alike—tall men they are, and good to look upon. But you’re not so tall, nor yet so strong built, as the Squire. Been to see the old gentleman, sir? Ay, he do last on, he do. It’s wonderful. Close on ninety-five he is. Everybody in the village knows his birthday. Why, he’s a show. On Sundays, in summer, after church, they go to the garden wall and look over it, to see him marching up and down the terrace. He never sees them, nor wouldn’t if they were to walk beside him.”
“You all know him, then?”
“I mind him seventy years ago. I was a little chap then. You wouldn’t think I was ever a little chap, would you? Seventy years ago I was eight—I’m seventy-eight now. You wouldn’t think I was seventy-eight, would you?” A very garrulous old man, this.
“I gave evidence, I did, at the inquest after the murder. They couldn’t do nohow without me, though I was but eight years old.”
“You? Why, what had you to do with the murder?”
“I was scaring birds on the hillside above the wood. I see the Squire—he was a fine big figure of a man—and the other gentleman crossing the road and coming over the stile into the field. Then they went as far as the wood together. The Squire he turned back, but the other gentleman he went on. They found him afterwards in the wood with his head smashed. Then I see John Dunning go in—same man as they charged with the murder. And he came running out—scared-like with what he’d seen. Oh! I see it all, and I told them so, kissing the Bible on it.”
“I have heard that a man was tried for the crime.”