Goodfellow had been included at Miss Belcher's particular
request. Constable Hosken had been despatched to search the
plantation thoroughly and to report. Two other constables had
arrived, and were coping, in front and rear of the cottage, with a
steady if straggling incursion of visitors from the near villages and
hamlets of St. Germans, Hessenford, Bake, and Catchfrench, drawn by
reports of a second murder to come and stand and gaze at the
premises. The report among them (as I learned afterwards) ran that a
second body--alleged by some to be mine, by others to be Ann the
cook's--had been discovered lying in its own blood in the attic; but
the marvel was how the report could have spread at all, since Miss
Belcher had sworn the two woodmen to secrecy. Whoever spread it
could have known very little, for the sightseers wasted all their
curiosity on the house and concerned themselves not at all with the
plantation.
From the plantation Miss Belcher had led me straight to the house,
and there in the darkened parlour I had told my story, corroborated
here and there by Mr. Goodfellow. In the intervals of my narrative
Miss Belcher insisted on my swallowing great spoonfuls of hot
bread-and-milk, against which--faint though I was and famished--my
gorge rose.
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