Mrs. Jones's murderer must be one of his parishioners.
It was a painful thought, but it had to be faced. He had lived so long
shut out from gossip, so deaf to the ever-clicking tongue of rumour,
that he had forgotten how far even small scraps can travel, and that
the news of Mrs. Jones's bolster being a hiding-place for her money
should have spread beyond the village never occurred to him. He was
moved on this occasion as much as a man who has long ago given up
being moved can be, for he had had a really dreadful two days with
Mrs. Morrison, dating from the moment she came in with the news of the
boxing of their only son's ears. He had, as the reader will have
gathered, nothing of it having been recorded, refused to visit and
reprimand Priscilla for this. He had found excuses for her. He had
sided with her against his son. He had been as wholly, maddeningly
obstinate as the extremely good sometimes are. Then came Mrs. Jones's
murder. He was greatly shaken, but still refused to call upon
Priscilla in connection with it, and pooh-poohed the notion of her
being responsible for the crime as definitely as an aged saint of
habitually grave speech can be expected to pooh-pooh at all. He said
she was not responsible. He said, when his wife with all the emphasis
apparently inseparable from the conversation of those who feel
strongly, told him that he owed it to himself, to his parish, to his
country, to go and accuse her, that he owed no man anything but to
love one another. There was nothing to be done with the vicar. Still
these scenes had not left him scathless, and it was a vicar moved to
the utmost limits of his capacity in that direction who went into the
pulpit that day repeating the question "Who is it?" so insistently, so
appealingly, with such searching glances along the rows of faces in
the pews, that the congregation, shuffling and uncomfortable, looked
furtively at each other with an ever growing suspicion and dislike.
The vicar as he went on waxing warmer, more insistent, observed at
least a dozen persons with guilt on every feature. It darted out like
a toad from the hiding-place of some private ooze at the bottom of
each soul into one face after the other; and there was a certain youth
who grew so visibly in guilt, who had so many beads of an obviously
guilty perspiration on his forehead, and eyes so guiltily starting
from their sockets, that only by a violent effort of self-control
could the vicar stop himself fr