minutes later I started at the sound of a man’s voice, but when I reached the hall I saw that it was Mr Emeris. He was bent with considerable dignity over the lock and the bolts on the street-door. Even in this position he cut a magnificent figure in his brown great-coat with its gold braiding, his dark plush knee-breeches, and tri-corn hat, and with his truncheon dangling from his belt. As village-constable, beadle (in which capacity and carrying a different staff of office, he ushered the other gentle-folks into their pews on Sundays) and sexton, he was a complete parish administration in himself. While I sat at breakfast with my mother in the parlour, I could hear his deep slow tones in the hall murmuring on in a steady, reassuring growl against the voices of Bissett and Mrs Belflower.
“The burglar seems not to have taken anything,” my mother told me. “Last night Bissett found two silver candlesticks near the front door that he must have dropped while he was trying to get out, but nothing else seems to be missing.”
“Oh good. We frightened him away before he had time.”
“Yes,” she replied. “That might be so.”
At that moment there was a knock at the door and Mr Emeris entered backwards, opening the door as little as was necessary to admit his large 24 THE
HUFFAMS
frame and drawing it to immediately behind him, saying to someone in the hall: “I’ll have you say that again later, mistress, thank you kindly.”
He shook his head and sighed as he removed his hat and seated himself, at my mother’s invitation, on the sopha.
“Have you come to any conclusions, Mr Emeris?”
“I reckon I’ve about puzzled it out, ma’am,” he answered with composure.
“Don’t you want to know what I saw?” I cried. For I wanted my moment of importance even though I was determined to conceal the most interesting part of my experience.
“Why I’ve heerd that already from your mither and Mrs Bissett,” he answered. “Now the way I see it, ma’am, is this: he knowed that ladder had been left there. Now Mrs Bissett has told me about one of the slaters, Job Greenslade, as has been workin’ on the roof. It seems he keeps company with your help-maiden, Sukey Podger.”
“I can’t believe Sukey could have been involved!”
“You can’t argue with hard evidence, ma’am. I found summat outside the winder in the airey.”
With a theatrical gesture indicating that we would have to rein back our curiosity, he stood up and went out as my mother and I looked at each other in surprise. When he returned a moment later Bissett, who had been lurking in the hall and obviously ambushed him, came in with him. He was carrying something and my heart missed a beat as I looked at it for it was a mole-spade and the twin brother of the one Mr Pimlott had been using the day before.
“See this, ma’am,” cried Bissett, snatching it from him and brandishing it like an angry Roundhead with a pike-staff; “this is a slater’s tool!”
“Now, now, Mrs Bissett,” the constable said reproachfully, retrieving his piece of evidence. “This is my business, if you please. Now it seems, ma’am, as Job Greenslade and your gal Sukey has been seed often and often at night in the village.”
Bissett added: “Almost every night.”
“In view of that and the ladder being left there and this tool and all, I reckon I’ve got enough to lay an information against him before a Justice and have him took up.”
I had been listening with growing dismay for I knew and liked the young slater: “But it wasn’t Job!” I exclaimed.
“Why, Master Johnnie, you said you didn’t see the man proper so how could you know?” Bissett said quickly.
I dared not admit the truth, but another objection occurred to me: “But Mrs Belflower saw the man and she would have recognised him if it had been Job.”
Bissett and the constable exchanged looks at this and he said: “When you’re as old as I am, young genel’man, you’ll know as