“Did he ride south, in the direction of Winchester — or north, past your sweep, towards Alton?”

“South,” she replied. “He did not pass within my sight at that time.”

I was silent an instant, revolving the intelligence. Julian Thrace had admitted to riding out of the Great House a little after midnight, but would claim that he had gone north in the direction of Alton. Had he indeed murdered Shafto French, this declaration was no more than wisdom. Thrace must assume that Mr. Middleton would freely disclose his presence in Chawton on the night of the murder and his departure at very nearly the hour of French’s death. Had Thrace quitted the Great House by previous arrangement with his victim? Was Thrace the heir as would pay, in Shafto French’s words?

“It was as I stood there, drawing shuddering breaths and attempting to calm my disordered wits,” Catherine persisted, “that the sound of hoofbeats returned.”

“Returned?”

“Even so. The horse drew up near the pond, and after an interval of silence — which might have encompassed a minute or an hour, Miss Austen, I scarcely know — I observed a figure to dismount, and bend over a dark object lying like a felled tree in the grass. Next I knew, the living man was struggling across the Winchester Road with the ankles of the other in his grasp, dragging that mortal weight in the direction of your cottage. I stared through the darkness, my heart in my mouth, for I knew the place to be deserted. I lost sight of them both at the hedge enclosing your property.”

I gazed at Catherine Prowting, aghast at such a want of resolution: “And even then, you did not go to your father with a cry of murder?”

“I did not yet know that French — for it must have been he — was indeed dead, Miss Austen. He might only have been insensible, from the effects of his beating or the drink that might have inspired it. How could I know? I merely stood, in the most dreadful suspense imaginable, by the open window. And presently, the second man returned.”

She paused at this point, as tho’ summoning strength for what she must now say.

“He approached his horse and mounted; and this time he rode in the opposite direction — towards the Great House, and Alton beyond. As he passed by the end of our sweep, I discerned his profile clearly in the moonlight, and knew in an instant whose it was. No other gentleman’s could be so immediately recognisable.”

The path of duty, versus the urgings of the heart.

“You saw Julian Thrace?” I whispered.

“Mr. Thrace?” She blushed with a swift and painful intensity.

“No, no, Miss Austen — it was Mr. Jack Hinton I observed in the Street that night.”

I could not contain my astonishment at this revelation, and must be thrice assured of its veracity before I could take it in. Mr. Hinton! Mr. Hinton, who had professed disdain for the coroner’s proceeding, tho’ sitting pale and silent through the whole; Mr. Hinton, who had affected to abhor violence and the pollution of Chawton’s shades. Mr. Hinton, who called himself the heir of the Hampshire Knights, and who thus might reasonably be styled the object of Shafto French’s greed, did the blackmailing labourer know somewhat to the gentleman’s discredit. And there was the fact of Hinton’s blood tie to James Baverstock, who might have provided a key to our cottage. But Mr. Hinton — the indolent poet of my imagining — seemed the unlikeliest candidate for murder in all the countryside. What could be the meaning of it?

“Why should Jack Hinton kill Shafto French?” I demanded of Catherine.

“I do not know. Perhaps it was. a mistake of some kind.”

“You did not describe a mistake, but an episode of deadly intent. What you witnessed from your window that night was a deliberate act of murder.”

“I know! I cannot account for it! Do you not apprehend that the scene has arisen in my mind hour after hour until I thought I must go mad? Why does one man ever take the life of another?”

“—From jealousy. From greed. From hatred or fear. But Shafto French? Can you think of any reason why Jack Hinton the gentleman should hate or fear the labouring man?”

She was silent, lips compressed. “Only what may be found in the idle talk of any tavern in Alton,” she said at last. “The whole countryside would have it that the child Jemima French now bears is in fact Jack Hinton’s.”

“Good God!” I cried. “There is a motive for murder if ever I heard one. The dead man a cuckold — and no one sees fit to mention it to the coroner?”

She turned scandalised eyes upon me. Cuckold, I must suppose, was the sort of word that should never be mentioned around the dining table at Prowtings.

“I do not credit the story,” she rejoined firmly, “and no more does any sensible person in Alton or Chawton. Jemima was once in service at the Lodge, and was dismissed over some disagreement with Miss Hinton. But rumour has followed her, as it will any pretty girl; and French did nothing by his manners or treatment of his wife to discourage it.”

I have worked all my life, Mrs. French had told me, and am not afraid of it. Brave words for a woman with no more reputation to preserve. Improprieties, Miss Beckford had said, and ill-usage. And so the gossip had come round in a circle: from the Great House to Alton and back again to Prowtings, to form a noose for Jack Hinton’s neck.

“You must assuredly speak to your father,” I told Catherine, “and endeavour to explain why you have waited nearly a week to do so.”

“I know that I am much to blame,” she muttered brokenly, “but pray believe me, Miss Austen, when I declare that it was from no improper desire to shield Mr. Hinton from the full weight of the Law!”

Her accent in pronouncing this final word was so akin to the dignity of her father’s, that I very nearly smiled. “I had thought it possible that you preserved a tendre for the gentleman.”

“A tendre! Indeed, the esteem — the appearance of interest or affection — has been entirely on Mr. Hinton’s side. I may like — I may have respected him once, before I knew— That is to say, any sentiment of regard has been thoroughly done away by Mr. Hinton’s repulsion of my efforts to make all right.”

“Your efforts—? My dear Miss Prowting, do not say that you have informed the gentleman that you observed him to drag a body towards my cottage!”

“But of course I have! I could not so expose him to the censure of his neighbours, or indeed the risk of his very life, without taxing him with all I had seen, and begging him most earnestly to make a clean breast of his guilt to my father in private!”

I stopped short on the very edge of Alton, my feelings almost incapable of expression. “Do you not realise, you silly girl, that where a man has murdered once, he may easily do so a second time, merely to save his own neck? Your life should not have five seconds’ purchase in Mr. Hinton’s company! I only pray God you have not encountered him alone!”

“No,” she admitted, “I had not that courage. Indeed, I have loathed Mr. Hinton’s very presence since the discovery of French’s body in your cellar, and my comprehension of what it must mean. I have pled the head-ache, and taken to my room, excepting the necessity of social obligations that could not be overborne. I spoke to Mr. Hinton in the Great Hall at Chawton last night, and by way of reply, was given to understand that if I preserved any regard for his reputation, I must reveal nothing of what I had seen. He did not go so far as to threaten me—”

“Then he is not so stupid as I believed him.”

“—but neither did he reassure my darkest fears with an explanation that could soften me. He intimated — if you will credit it! — that if I might offer this proof of loyalty and esteem — if I could go so far as to shield him with my silence — that I might reasonably expect to be mistress of the Lodge one day.” She laughed abruptly; no fool Catherine. She should value such an offer as she ought, and know it for a bribe.