Part 121

‘God! I couldn’t believe it--no, I couldn’t believe it!’ the detective whispered, horror-struck. ‘And I have lost the man for the present through my unbelief. Let’s get into a sheltered place.... Now wait a minute whilst I prove it.’

He thrust his hand into his waistcoat pocket, and withdrew thence a minute packet of brown paper. Spreading it out he disclosed, coiled in the middle, another long hair. It was the hair the clerk’s wife had found on Manston’s pillow nine days before the Carriford fire. He held the two hairs to the light: they were both of a pale-brown hue. He laid them parallel and stretched out his arms: they were of the same length to a nicety. The detective turned to Anne.

‘It is the body of his first wife,’ he said quietly. ‘He murdered her, as Mr. Springrove and the rector suspected--but how and when, God only knows.’

‘And I!’ exclaimed Anne Seaway, a probable and natural sequence of events and motives explanatory of the whole crime--events and motives shadowed forth by the letter, Manston’s possession of it, his renunciation of Cytherea, and instalment of herself--flashing upon her mind with the rapidity of lightning.

‘Ah--I see,’ said the detective, standing unusually close to her: and a handcuff was on her wrist. ‘You must come with me, madam. Knowing as much about a secret murder as God knows is a very suspicious thing: it doesn’t make you a goddess--far from it.’ He directed the bull’s-eye into her face.

‘Pooh--lead on,’ she said scornfully, ‘and don’t lose your principal actor for the sake of torturing a poor subordinate like me.’

He loosened her hand, gave her his arm, and dragged her out of the grove--making her run beside him till they had reached the rectory. A light was burning here, and an auxiliary of the detective’s awaiting him: a horse ready harnessed to a spring-cart was standing outside.

‘You have come--I wish I had known that,’ the detective said to his assistant, hurriedly and angrily. ‘Well, we’ve blundered--he’s gone--you should have been here, as I said! I was sold by that woman, Miss Aldclyffe--she watched me.’ He hastily gave directions in an undertone to this man. The concluding words were, ‘Go in to the rector--he’s up. Detain Miss Aldclyffe. I, in the meantime, am driving to Casterbridge with this one, and for help. We shall be sure to have him when it gets light.’

He assisted Anne into the vehicle, and drove off with her. As they went, the clear, dry road showed before them, between the grassy quarters at each side, like a white riband, and made their progress easy. They came to a spot where the highway was overhung by dense firs for some distance on both sides. It was totally dark here.

There was a smash; and a rude shock. In the very midst of its length, at the point where the road began to drop down a hill, the detective drove against something with a jerk which nearly flung them both to the ground.

The man recovered himself, placed Anne on the seat, and reached out his hand. He found that the off-wheel of his gig was locked in that of another conveyance of some kind.

‘Hoy!’ said the officer.

Nobody answered.

‘Hoy, you man asleep there!’ he said again.

No reply.

‘Well, that’s odd--this comes of the folly of travelling without gig-lamps because you expect the dawn.’ He jumped to the ground and turned on his lantern.

There was the gig which had obstructed him, standing in the middle of the road; a jaded horse harnessed to it, but no human being in or near the vehicle.

‘Do you know whose gig this is?’ he said to the woman.

‘No,’ she said sullenly. But she did recognize it as the steward’s.

‘I’ll swear it’s Manston’s! Come, I can hear it by your tone. However, you needn’t say anything which may criminate you. What forethought the man must have had--how carefully he must have considered possible contingencies! Why, he must have got the horse and gig ready before he began shifting the body.’

He listened for a sound among the trees. None was to be heard but the occasional scamper of a rabbit over the withered leaves. He threw the light of his lantern through a gap in the hedge, but could see nothing beyond an impenetrable thicket. It was clear that Manston was not many yards off, but the question was how to find him. Nothing could be done by the detective just then, encumbered as he was by the horse and Anne. If he had entered the thicket on a search unaided, Manston might have stepped unobserved from behind a bush and murdered him with the greatest ease. Indeed, there were such strong reasons for the exploit in Manston’s circumstances at that moment that without showing cowardice, his pursuer felt it hazardous to remain any longer where he stood.

He hastily tied the head of Manston’s horse to the back of his own vehicle, that the steward might be deprived of the use of any means of escape other than his own legs, and drove on thus with his prisoner to the county-town. Arrived there, he lodged her in the police-station, and then took immediate steps for the capture of Manston.

XX. THE EVENTS OF THREE HOURS

1. MARCH THE TWENTY-THIRD. MIDDAY

Thirty-six hours had elapsed since Manston’s escape.

It was market-day at the county-town. The farmers outside and inside the corn-exchange looked at their samples of wheat, and poured them critically as usual from one palm to another, but they thought and spoke of Manston. Grocers serving behind their counters, instead of using their constant phrase, ‘The next article, please?’ substituted, ‘Have you heard if he’s caught?’ Dairymen and drovers standing beside the sheep and cattle pens, spread their legs firmly, readjusted their hats, thrust their hands into the lowest depths of their pockets, regarded the animals with the utmost keenness of which the eye was capable, and said, ‘Ay, ay, so’s: they’ll have him avore night.’

Later in the day Edward Springrove passed along the street hurriedly and anxiously. ‘Well, have you heard any more?’ he said to an acquaintance who accosted him.

‘They tracked him in this way,’ said the other young man. ‘A vagrant first told them that Manston had passed a rick at daybreak, under which this man was lying. They followed the track he pointed out and ultimately came to a stile. On the other side was a heap of half-hardened mud, scraped from the road. On the surface of the heap, where it had been smoothed by the shovel, was distinctly imprinted the form of a man’s hand, the buttons of his waistcoat, and his watch-chain, showing that he had stumbled in hurrying over the stile, and fallen there. The pattern of the chain proved the man to have been Manston. They followed on till they reached a ford crossed by stepping-stones--on the further bank were the same footmarks that had shown themselves beside the stile. The whole of this course had been in the direction of Budmouth. On they went, and the next clue was furnished them by a shepherd. He said that wherever a clear space three or four yards wide ran in a line through a flock of sheep lying about a ewe-lease, it was a proof that somebody had passed there not more than half-an-hour earlier. At twelve o’clock that day he had noticed such a feature in his flock. Nothing more could be heard of him, and they got into Budmouth. The steam-packet to the Channel Islands was to start at eleven last night, and they at once concluded that his hope was to get to France by way of Jersey and St. Malo--his only chance, all the railway-stations being watched.