to his scalded foot, dressing it with some of his own ointment. Then he secured some bread and butter, not knowing what the accommodation at the lock-up might be in the shape of eatables, and changed his handsome quaint suit of clothes for those he wore every day. After that, he was escorted back to the lock-up.
Now, the lock-up was in Piefinch Cut, nearly opposite to Dovey the blacksmith’s. The Squire remembered the time when the lock-up stood alone; when Piefinch Cut had no more houses in it than Piefinch Lane now has; but since then Piefinch Cut had been built upon and inhabited; houses touching even the sacred walls of the lock-up. A tape-and-cotton and sweetstuff shop supported it on one side, and a small pork-butcher’s on the other. Pettipher’s drug shop, should anybody be curious on the point, was next to the tape-and-cotton mart.
To see Abel Crew arriving in the custody of old Jones the constable, the excited stragglers after them, astonished Piefinch Cut not a little. Figg the pawnbroker—who was originally from Alcester—considered himself learned in the law. Anyway, he was a great talker, and liked to give his opinion upon every topic that might turn up. His shop joined Dovey’s forge: and when we arrived there, Figg was outside, holding forth to Dovey, who had his shirt-sleeves rolled up above his elbows as usual, his leather apron on. Mrs. Dovey stood listening behind, in the smart gown and red-ribboned bonnet she had worn at the inquest.
“Why—what on earth!—have they been and gone and took up Crew?” cried Figg in surprise.
“It is an awful shame of old Jones,” I broke in; speaking more to Dovey than Figg, for Figg was no favourite of mine. “A whole week of the lock-up! Only think of it, Dovey!”
“But have they brought it in again’ him, Master Johnny?” cried Dovey, unfolding his grimy arms to touch his paper cap to me as he spoke.
“No; that’s what they have not done. The inquest is adjourned for a week; and I don’t believe old Jones has a right to take him at all. Not legally, you know.”
“That’s just what her brought word,” said Dovey, with a nod in the direction of his wife. “‘Well, how be it turned, Ann?’ says I to her when her come back—for I’d a sight o’ work in to-day and couldn’t go myself. ‘Oh, it haven’t turned no ways yet, Jack,’ says her; ‘it be put off to next week.’ There he goes! right in.”
This last remark applied to Abel Crew. After fumbling in his pocket for the two big keys, tied together with string, and then fumbling at the latch, old Jones succeeded in opening the door. Not being much used, the lock was apt to grow rusty. Then he stood back, and with a flourish of hands motioned Abel in. He made no resistance.
“They must know for certain as ’twere his pills what done it,” struck in Mrs. Dovey.
“No, they don’t,” said I. “What’s more, I do not think it was his pills. Abel Crew says he never put poison in his pills yet, and I believe him.”
“Well, and no more it don’t stand to reason as he would, Mr. Ludlow,” said Figg, a man whose self-complaisance was not to be put down by any amount of discouragement. “I were just a-saying so to Dovey– Why have old Jones took him up?” went on Figg to Gibbon the gamekeeper, who came striding by.
“Jones says he has the coroner’s orders for it,” answered Gibbon.
“Look here, I know a bit about law, and I know a man oughtn’t to be shut up till some charge is brought again’ him,” contended Figg. “Crew’s pills is suspected, but he have not been charged yet.”
“Anyway, it’s what Jones has gone and done,” said Gibbon. “Perhaps he is right. And a week’s not much; it’ll soon pass. But as to any pills of Abel Crew’s having killed them children, it’s just preposterous to think of it.”
“What d’ye suppose did kill ’em, then, Richard Gibbon?” demanded Ann Dovey, a hot flush on her face, her tone full of resentment.
“That’s just what has to be found out,” returned Gibbon, passing on his way.
“If it hadn’t been for Dobbs and Butcher Perkins holding out again’ it, Crew ’ud ha’ been brought in guilty safe enough,” said Ann Dovey. And the tone was again so excited, so bitterly resentful against Dobbs and Perkins, that I could not help looking at her in wonder. It sounded just as though the non-committal of Abel were a wrong inflicted upon herself.
“No, he would not have been brought in guilty,” I answered her; “he would have been committed for trial; but that’s a different thing. If the matter could be sifted to the bottom, I know it would be found that the mischief did not lie with Abel Crew’s pills. There, Mrs. Dovey!”
She was looking at me out of the corners of her eyes—for all the world as if she were afraid of me, or of what I said. I could not make her out.
“Why should you wish so particularly to bring it home to Crew?” I pointedly asked her; and Figg turned round to look at her, as if seconding the question.
“Me want particular to bring it home to Crew!” she retorted, her voice rising with temper; or perhaps with fear, for she trembled like an aspen leaf. “I don’t want to bring it home particular to him, Mr. Ludlow. It were his pills, though, all the same, that did it.”
And with that she whisked through the forge to her kitchen.
On the morning following I got old Jones to let me into the lock-up. The place consisted of two rooms opening into one another, and a small square space, no bigger than a closet, at the end of the passage, where they kept the pen and ink. For that small space had a window in it, looking on to the fields at the back; the two rooms had only skylights in the roof. In the inner room a narrow iron bedstead stood against the wall, a mattress and blanket on it. Abel was sitting on that when we went in.
“You must have been lively here last night, Abel!”
“Yes, very, sir,” answered he, with a half-smile. “I did not really mind it; I am used to be alone. I could have done with fewer rats, though.”
“Oh, are there rats here?”
“Lots of them, Master Johnny. I don’t like rats. They came upon my face, and all about me.”
“Why does old Jones not set traps for them? He considers this place to be under his special protection.”
“There are too many for any trap to catch,” answered Abel.
Old Jones had gone off to the desk in the closet, having placed some bread and butter and milk on the shelf for Abel. His errand there was to enter the cost of the bread in the account-book, to be settled for later. A prisoner in the lock-up was commonly treated to bread and water: old Jones had graciously allowed this one to pay for some butter and milk out of his own pocket.
“I don’t want to treat ’em harsher nor I be obliged, Master Ludlow,” he said to me, when coming in, in reference to the butter and the milk he was carrying. “Abel Crew have been known as a decent man ever since he come among us: and if he chooses to pay for the butter and the milk, there ain’t no law against his having ’em. ’Tain’t as if he was a burglar.”
“No, he is not a burglar,” I answered. “And you must mind that you do not get into the wrong box about him. There’s neither law nor justice in locking him up, Jones, before he is charged.”
“If I had never locked up nobody till they was charged, I should ha’ been in the wrong box many a time afore now,” said old Jones, doggedly. “Look at that there man last Christmas; what I caught prowling in the grounds at Parrifer Hall, with a whole set of house-breaking things concealed in his pockets! After I’d took him, and lodged him in here safe, it was found that he was one o’ the worst characters in the county, only let out o’ Worcester goal two days before. Suppose I’d not took him, Master Johnny? where ’ud the spoons at Parrifer Hall ha’ been?”
“That was a different case altogether.”
“I know what I’m about,” returned Jones. “The coroner, he just give me a nod or two, looking at Crew as he give it. I knew what it meant, sir: a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse.”
Anyway,