NO FURTHER EVIDENCE
While Mallalieu lay captive in the stronghold of Miss Pett, Cotherstone
was experiencing a quite different sort of incarceration in the
detention cells of Norcaster Gaol. Had he known where his partner was,
and under what circumstances Mallalieu had obtained deliverance from
official bolts and bars, Cotherstone would probably have laughed in his
sleeve and sneered at him for a fool. He had been calling Mallalieu a
fool, indeed, ever since the previous evening, when the police,
conducting him to Norcaster, had told him of the Mayor's escape from the
Town Hall. Nobody but an absolute fool, a consummate idiot, thought
Cotherstone, would have done a thing like that. The man who flies is the
man who has reason to fly--that was Cotherstone's opinion, and in his
belief ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in Highmarket would
share it. Mallalieu would now be set down as guilty--they would say he
dared not face things, that he knew he was doomed, that his escape was
the desperate act of a conscious criminal. Ass!--said Cotherstone, not
without a certain amount of malicious delight: they should none of them
have reason to say such things of him. He would make no attempt to
fly--no, not if they left the gate of Norcaster Gaol wide open to him!
It should be his particular care to have himself legally cleared--his
acquittal should be as public as the proceedings which had just taken
place. He went out of the dock with that resolve strong on him; he
carried it away to his cell at Norcaster; he woke in the morning with
it, stronger than ever. Cotherstone, instead of turning tail, was going
to fight--for his own hand.
As a prisoner merely under detention, Cotherstone had privileges of
which he took good care to avail himself. Four people he desired to see,
and must see at once, on that first day in gaol--and he lost no time in
making known his desires. One--and the most important--person was a
certain solicitor in Norcaster who enjoyed a great reputation as a sharp
man of affairs. Another--scarcely less important--was a barrister who
resided in Norcaster, and had had it said of him for a whole generation
that he had restored more criminals to society than any man of his
profession then living. And the other two were his own daughter and
Windle Bent. Them he must see--but the men of law first.
When the solicitor and the barrister came, Cotherstone talked to them as
he had never talked to anybody in his life. He very soon let them see
that he had two definite objects in sending for them: the first was to
tell them in plain language that money was of no consideration in the
matter of his defence; the second, that they had come there to hear him
lay down the law as to what they were to do. Talk he did, and they
listened--and Cotherstone had the satisfaction of seeing that they went
away duly impressed with all that he had said to them. He went back to
his cell from the room in which this interview had taken place
congratulating himself on his ability.
"I shall be out of this, and all'll be clear, a week today!" he assured
himself. "We'll see where that fool of a Mallalieu is by then! For he'll
not get far, nor go hidden for thirty years, this time."
He waited with some anxiety to see his daughter, not because he must see
her within the walls of a prison, but because he knew that by that time
she would have learned the secrets of that past which he had kept so
carefully hidden from her. Only child of his though she was, he felt
that Lettie was not altogether of his sort; he had often realized that
she was on a different mental plane from his own, and was also, in some
respects, a little of a mystery to him. How would she take all
this?--what would she say?--what effect would it have on her?--he
pondered these questions uneasily while he waited for her visit.
But if Cotherstone had only known it, he need have suffered no anxiety
about Lettie. It had fallen to Bent to tell her the sad news the
afternoon before, and Bent had begged Brereton to go up to the house
with him. Bent was upset; Brereton disliked the task, though he
willingly shared in it. They need have had no anxiety, either. For
Lettie listened calmly and patiently until the whole story had been
told, showing neither alarm, nor indignation, nor excitement; her
self-composure astonished even Bent, who thought, having been engaged
to her for twelve months, that he knew her pretty well.
"I understand exactly," said Lettie, when, between them, they had told
her everything, laying particular stress on her father's version of
things. "It is all very annoying, of course, but then it is quite
simple, isn't it? Of course, Mr. Mallalieu has been the guilty person
all through, and poor father has been dragged into it. But then--all
that you have told me has only to be put before the--who is
it?--magistrates?--judges?--and then, of course, father will be entirely
cleared, and Mr. Mallalieu will be hanged. Windle--of course we shall
have to put off the wedding?"
"Oh, of course!" agreed Bent. "We can't have any weddings until all this
business is cleared up."
"That'll be so much better," said Lettie. "It really was becoming an
awful rush."
Brereton glanced at Bent when they left the house.
"I congratulate you on having a fiancée of a well-balanced mind, old
chap!" he said. "That was--a relief!"
"Oh, Lettie's a girl of singularly calm and equable temperament,"
answered Bent. "She's not easily upset, and she's quick at sizing things
up. And I say, Brereton, I've got to do all I can for Cotherstone, you
know. What about his defence?"
"I should imagine that Cotherstone is already arranging his defence
himself," said Brereton. "He struck me during that talk this morning at
Tallington's as being very well able to take care of himself, Bent, and
I think you'll find when you visit him that he's already fixed things.
You won't perhaps see why, and I won't explain just now, but this
foolish running away of Mallalieu, who, of course, is sure to be caught,
is very much in Cotherstone's favour. I shall be much surprised if you
don't find Cotherstone in very good spirits, and if there aren't
developments in this affair within a day or two which will impress the
whole neighbourhood."
Bent, visiting the prisoner in company with Lettie next day, found
Brereton's prediction correct. Cotherstone, hearing from his daughter's
own lips what she herself thought of the matter, and being reassured
that all was well between Bent and her, became not merely confident but
cheerily boastful. He would be free, and he would be cleared by that day
next week--he was not sorry, he said, that at last all this had come
out, for now he would be able to get rid of an incubus that had weighted
him all his life.
"You're very confident, you know," remarked Bent.
"Not beyond reason," asserted Cotherstone doggedly. "You wait till
tomorrow!"
"What is there tomorrow?" asked Bent.
"The inquest on Stoner is tomorrow," replied Cotherstone. "You be
there--and see and hear what happens."
All of Highmarket population that could cram itself into the Coroner's
court was there next day when the adjourned inquest on the clerk's death
was held. Neither Bent nor Brereton nor Tallington had any notion of
what line was going to be taken by Cotherstone and his advisers, but
Tallington and Brereton exchanged glances when Cotherstone, in charge
of two warders from Norcaster, was brought in, and when the Norcaster
solicitor and the Norcaster barrister whom he had retained, shortly
afterwards presented themselves.
"I begin to foresee," whispered Tallington. "Clever!--devilish clever!"
"Just so," agreed Brereton, with a sidelong nod at the crowded seats
close by. "And there's somebody who's interested because it's going to
be devilish clever--that fellow Pett!"
Christopher Pett was there, silk hat, black kid gloves and all, not
afraid of being professionally curious. Curiosity was the order of the
day: everybody present--of any intelligent perception--wanted to know
what the presence of Cotherstone, one of the two men accused of the
murder of Stoner, signified. But it was some little time before any
curiosity was satisfied. The inquest being an adjourned one, most of the
available evidence had to be taken, and as a coroner has a wide field in
the calling of witnesses, there was more evidence produced before him
and his jury than before the magistrates. There was Myler, of course,
and old Pursey, and the sweethearting couple: there were other
witnesses, railway folks, medical experts, and townspeople who could
contribute some small quota of testimony. But all these were forgotten
when at last Cotherstone, having been duly warned by the coroner that he
need not give any evidence at all, determinedly entered the
witness-box--to swear on oath that he was witness to his partner's
crime.
Nothing could shake Cotherstone's evidence. He told a plain,
straightforward story from first to last. He had no knowledge whatever
of Stoner's having found out the secret of the Wilchester affair. He
knew nothing of Stoner's having gone over to Darlington. On the Sunday
he himself had gone up the moors for a quiet stroll. At the spinney
overhanging Hobwick Quarry he had seen Mallalieu and Stoner, and had at
once noticed that something in the shape of a quarrel was afoot. He saw
Mallalieu strike heavily at Stoner with his oak stick--saw Mallalieu, in
a sudden passion, kick the stick over the edge of the quarry, watched
him go down into the quarry and eventually leave it. He told how he
himself had gone after the stick, recovered it, taken it home, and had
eventually told the police where it was. He had never spoken to
Mallalieu on that Sunday--never seen him except under the circumstances
just detailed.
The astute barrister who represented Cotherstone had not troubled the
Coroner and his jury much by asking questions of the various witnesses.
But he had quietly elicited from all the medical men the definite
opinion that death had been caused by the blow. And when Cotherstone's
evidence was over, the barrister insisted on recalling the two
sweethearts, and he got out of them, separately (each being excluded
from the court while the other gave evidence), that they had not seen
Mallalieu and Cotherstone together, that Mallalieu had left the quarry
some time before they saw Cotherstone, and that when Mallalieu passed
them he seemed to be agitated and was muttering to himself, whereas in
Cotherstone's manner they noticed nothing remarkable.
Brereton, watching the faces of the jurymen, all tradesmen of the town,
serious and anxious, saw the effect which Cotherstone's evidence and the
further admissions of the two sweethearts was having. And neither he nor
Tallington--and certainly not Mr. Christopher Pett--was surprised when,
in the gathering dusk of the afternoon, the inquest came to an end with
a verdict of _Wilful Murder against Anthony Mallalieu_.
"Your client is doing very well," observed Tallington to the Norcaster
solicitor as they foregathered in an ante-room.
"My client will be still better when he comes before your bench again,"
drily answered the other. "As you'll see!"
"So that's the line you're taking?" said Tallington quietly. "A good
one--for him."
"Every man for himself," remarked the Norcaster practitioner. "We're not
concerned with Mallalieu--we're concerned about ourselves. See you when
Cotherstone's brought before your worthies next Tuesday. And--a word in
your ear!--it won't be a long job, then."
Long job or short job, the Highmarket Town Hall was packed to the doors
when Cotherstone, after his week's detention, was again placed in the
dock. This time, he stood there alone--and he looked around him with
confidence and with not a few signs that he felt a sense of coming
triumph. He listened with a quiet smile while the prosecuting
counsel--sent down specially from London to take charge--discussed with
the magistrates the matter of Mallalieu's escape, and he showed more
interest when he heard some police information as to how that escape had
been effected, and that up to then not a word had been heard and no
trace found of the fugitive. And after that, as the prosecuting counsel
bent over to exchange a whispered word with the magistrates' clerk,
Cotherstone deliberately turned, and seeking out the place where Bent
and Brereton sat together, favoured them with a peculiar glance. It was
the glance of a man who wished to say "I told you!--now you'll see
whether I was right!"
"We're going to hear something--now!" whispered Brereton.
The prosecuting counsel straightened himself and looked at the
magistrates. There was a momentary hesitation on his part; a look of
expectancy on the faces of the men on the bench; a deep silence in the
crowded court. The few words that came from the counsel were sharp and
decisive.
"There will be no further evidence against the prisoner now in the dock,
your worships," he said. "The prosecution decides to withdraw the
charge."
In the buzz of excitement which followed the voice of the old chairman
was scarcely audible as he glanced at Cotherstone.
"You are discharged," he said abruptly.
Cotherstone turned and left the dock. And for the second time he looked
at Bent and Brereton in the same peculiar, searching way. Then, amidst a
dead silence, he walked out of the court.