It may be imagined how Bleake seethed.
Old Humphreys came up to Miss Falconer’s on the evening of the second day. He had changed his boots and put on his Sunday suit. Standing in the middle of Miss Falconer’s faded Persian carpet, he shifted an aged cap from one hand to the other and said,
“I was wishful to speak to you, ma’am.”
Miss Silver had been brought up with the manners of a gentlewoman. There was really nothing for it but to rise to her feet and gather up her knitting. But to her immense relief the sacrifice was not required. Old Humphreys jerked his head in her direction and said,
“The lady can stay if she’s a mind to-I’ve no objections. Arrh! ’Tis the evildoers that needs to say their says and do their deeds in secret. Those that lives respectable and speaks the truth, they haven’t got nothing that wants hiding.”
“Sit down, Humphreys,” said Miss Falconer in her benevolent voice.
“Thank you, ma’am, but I’m more at my ease standing. They’ve arrested my boy Tom, and what I’ve come here to say is he never done it.”
Miss Silver lifted a bright, intelligent glance to his face. That he was affected by it is certain, since he tended more and more to address himself to the stranger lady rather than to his own Miss Falconer. When at times he seemed to become aware of this he would once more direct himself to the accustomed quarter, only to experience the same gradual falling away.
“Tom never done it,” he said firmly. “He’s got a temper same as every man that calls hisself a man did ought to have. I’ve got a temper myself. If a chap was interfering with a daughter of mine, I might give him a walloping, or I might loose off a charge of small shot at him same as what Tom did. But I wouldn’t go a-murdering of him with a knife. Think I’d be such a fool as to hang for a chap like that? Arrh! well, Tom isn’t a fool neither, nor he isn’t the sort to go sticking knives in people. I’ve got things against him. He don’t keep his daughter in order, for one thing. I’d like to see any gal of mine that darst act the way that gal of Tom’s does. Took a stick to ’em, I did, when they was young. Arrh! That was what that there Nellie needed and didn’t never get!”
Miss Falconer said, “Oh-” and then stopped. The idea of a young woman being beaten by her father was really very shocking, but on the other hand this hardly seemed the moment-
It was Miss Silver who said,
“Your son went into his house and shut the door, and Mrs. Larkin saw Flaxman go away. Your son did not follow him?”
“No, ma’am, he didn’t. He was giving that Nellie what she’d been asking for, a right good hiding-and pity she didn’t get it sooner.”
Miss Silver considered. Could Tom Humphreys have beaten his daughter and still had time to follow up a badly peppered man? Whoever had stabbed him, Flaxman had got no more than a hundred yards from the Humphreys’ cottage. The waste piece of ground where his body had been found was on the other side of the road and about that distance nearer the village. Flaxman could have been in considerable pain. He could have stumbled off the road without much idea of what he was doing. If Tom Humphreys had come up with him there, a knife in his hand and murder in his heart, the crime might have been an easy one. She said,
“Flaxman received a fatal wound. If it was not your son who stabbed him, who was it?”
Old Humphreys said, “Arrh-” in a meditative manner. Then, lowering his voice to a churchyard whisper,
“There’s those that knows too much. There’s those that don’t know when to keep a still tongue in their head. And there’s those that think theirselves too clever by half.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“You are alluding to Flaxman?”
He gave his head an affirmative jerk.
“My son Tom, he got his grudge against Flaxman all right, and put a charge of shot into him on account of it. Scandalous goings on with his daughter and bringing of us all to shame. But maybe there was others that got things against him too-and weightier matters than a light wench.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Humphreys?”
He was turned wholly towards Miss Silver now. Miss Falconer looked on in astonishment. She heard him say,
“Before I answers that question, ma’am, there’s one as I’d like to put to you, and here ’tis. Be you, or be you not the Miss Silver as was staying in Greenings in the autumn and found out who done the murders there?”
If Miss Silver received any shock of surprise, it did not appear. She said soberly,
“I was in Greenings in the autumn.”
He nodded, as if with satisfaction.
“Arrh! That’s my sister as keeps the shop there-youngest of the family-Mrs. Alexander. Come visiting us at Christmas, and a wonderful lot to say about they murders and how clever you found them out-said the police thought the world and all of you too. So when it come to my lad Tom being took I thought maybe I’d come up and talk it over like.”
‘Then you had better sit down, Mr. Humphreys. It will be easier for us both.”
To Miss Falconer’s continued astonishment he accepted this ruling, fetched himself a solid Chippendale chair, and sat down. Then, with a hand firmly planted on either knee, he addressed himself to Miss Silver.
“I said there was others might have their grudges let alone my Tom, and I can tell you one of ’em straight away, and that’s Mr. Geoffrey Trent.”
Miss Falconer threw up her hands.
“Oh, Humphreys!”
“Sorry, ma’am, but there ’tis. That Flaxman, he knew too much. When that there Miss Margot come after my rope, he needn’t think I didn’t see him a-watching atween the bushes, for I did. Arrh! There he was, and must ha’ heard every word that was said. And one of the things he must ha’ heard was me saying she’d no business to take my rope, and that audacious brat a-calling back, ‘Well then, Geoffrey said I could!’ No two ways but what he heard that, and off between the bushes like a weasel. Well now, maybe you’re wondering what I’m a-driving at. I didn’t say nothing to nobody-it wasn’t any of my business. But there’s some might make it their business-and the kind of business that might put a pretty penny in their pocket.”
“You mean, or you have some reason to believe, that Flaxman was attempting to blackmail Mr. Trent?”
“Arrh! Mr. Trent wouldn’t ha’ liked for to have that piece about the rope repeated. That there brat saying as he told her she could take one of they old crazy things! ’Twould ha’ caused a powerful lot of talk to my way of thinking-him coming in for the money and all!”
“Undoubtedly. But have you any reason to suppose that Flaxman did indeed make an attempt at blackmail?”
He gave her a vigorous nod.
“That’s what I’m a-coming to. When I heard as how Tom had been took I went round to see that Nellie and find out the rights of it. I knew she’d had a good lambasting from her father, and I thought maybe she’d be singing a bit small. Well, there she was, and all the pride gone out of her. Tom had beaten her proper. She couldn’t hardly move without a-calling out. ‘Well, my gal,’ I says, ‘you’ve brought your pigs to a fine market,’ and she bursts out a-crying and says as how everyone is against her. ‘Well,’ I says, ‘blood’s thicker than water, and you’re my grand-daughter and Tom’s my son. There’s a time for hard words, and there’s a time for telling the truth, and if you don’t want your father to hang, that’s what you’ll be telling me now.’ And, when she’d quieted down a bit that’s what she done-and a heap of it not what I’d like to repeat to you ladies. Proper bad lot she’d been, and a pity Tom didn’t take the stick to her afore.
‘A woman, a whelp, and a walnut tree,
The more you beat ’em the better they be.’
That’s a proper good old saying.”