A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 23

Just beyond the Coupee he met Gard hurrying towards Sark, and the state of Gard's nose and eye, and his torn coat, caught his eye at once.

"What's this about Tom Hamon?" asked Gard hastily.

"He's dead."

"His wife has just told me so. But how did it happen?"

"They're going to find out at school-house at two o'clock. Any that saw him last night are to be there. You'd better be there."

"I'm going now."

"All right," said Peter, and went on his way into Little Sark.

His way took him to La Closerie. But he was not anxious to meet Mrs.

Tom, so he hung about behind the hedges till Nance happened to come out of the house, and then he whistled softly and beckoned to her to come to him.

Her face was very pale and troubled, and he saw she had been crying.

"I want to speak to you," he said.

"What is it?"

"Come round here. It's important."

"What is it?" she asked wearily again, when she had joined him behind the green d.y.k.e.

"It's this, Nance. You--you know I want you. I've always wanted you--"

"Oh--don't!" she cried, with protesting hand. "This is no time. Peter Mauger, for--"

"Wait a bit! Here's how it is. Doctor says Tom was killed by some one beating his head in with a hammer or something of the kind. Now who beat his head in? Who would be most likely to beat his head in? Not me, for we were mates. Some one that hated him. Some one that he was always quarrelling with--" Her face had grown so white that there was no colour even in the trembling lips. She stared at him with terrified eyes.

"You know who I mean," he said. "If it wasn't him that did it I don't know who it was."

"It wasn't," she jerked vehemently.

"You'd wish so, of course. But--Look here!--I'm pretty sure they met again last night after--"

"Yes, they met, and Tom tried to fight him--"

"Ah--then!"

"And he's gone up at once, as soon as he heard that Tom was found, to tell them all about it."

"Aw!"--decidedly crestfallen at the wind being taken out of his sails in this fashion. "I--I thought--maybe I could help him--"

"Oh you did, did you?"--plucking up heart at sight of his discomfiture.

"And how were you going to help him?"

"If he's gone to make a clean breast of it it's all up, of course. If he'd kept it to himself--"

"He might have run away, you mean?"

"Safest for him, maybe. Up above Coupee there's a stone with blood on it. And I picked up this beside it," and he hauled out the b.u.t.ton and the bit of blue cloth he had found. "I thought, maybe if he knew about these he might think it safest to go."

"Then every one would have the right to say he'd done it, and he didn't.

He knew no more about it than you did."

"I didn't know anything about it."

"Well, neither did he, and he's not the kind to run away."

"Aw, well--I done my best. You'll remember that, Nance. You know what the Sark men are. He'd be safest away. You tell him I say so," and he pouched his discounted piece of evidence and turned and went, leaving Nance with a heavy heart.

For, as Peter said, she knew what the Sark men were--a law unto themselves, and slow to move out of the deep-cut grooves of the past, but, once stirred to boiling point, capable of going to any lengths without consideration of consequences.

And therein lay Gard's peril.

CHAPTER XIX

HOW THE SARK MEN FELT ABOUT IT

Every soul in the Island that could by any means get there, was in or outside the school-house, mostly outside, long before the clock struck two. Never in their lives had they hurried thither like that before.

A barricade of forms had been made across the room. Within it, at the school-master's table, sat the Senechal, Philip Guille, and the Doctor, and old Mr. Cachemaille, the Vicar, ageing rapidly since the tragic death of his good friend, the late Seigneur; beside them stood the Prevot and the Greffier, behind them lay the body of Tom Hamon covered with a sheet.

It was a perfect day, with a cloudless blue sky and blazing sun, and all the windows were opened wide. Those inside dripped with perspiration, but felt cold chills below their blue guernseys each time they looked at that stark figure with the upturned feet beneath the cold white sheet.

Outside the barricade stood Elie Guille, the Constable, and his understudy Abraham Baker, the Vingtenier, to keep order and call the witnesses.

The Seigneur, Mr. Le Pelley, was away or he would undoubtedly have been there too. In his absence the Senechal conducted the proceedings.

In the front row of school-desks, scored with the deep-cut initials of generations of Sark boys, sat the dead man's widow, tense and quivering, her eyes consuming fires in deep black wells, her face livid, her hands clenched still as though waiting for something to rend.

More than one of the men who sat beside her at the desk found, with a grim smile, his own name looking up at him out of the maltreated board.

And one nudged his neighbour and pointed to the name of Tom Hamon, cut deeper than any of the others and with the N upside down.

Very briefly the Senechal stated that they were there to find out, if they could, how Tom Hamon came by his death, and added very gravely, in a deep silence, that after a most careful examination of the body the Doctor was of opinion that death had been caused, not by the fall from the Coupee, which accounted for the dreadful bruises, but by violent blows on the head with a hammer or some sueh thing prior to the fall.

They wanted to find out all about it.

The Doctor stood up and confirmed what the Senechal had said, went somewhat more into detail to substantiate his opinion, and ended by saying, "The head, as it happens, is less bruised than any other part of the body, except on the crown, and that is practically beaten in, and not, I am prepared to swear, by a fall. These wounds were the immediate cause of death, and they were made before he fell down the rocks.

Besides, he went down feet first. The abrasions on the legs and thighs prove that beyond a doubt. Then again, the base of the skull is not fractured, as it most certainly would have been if he had fallen on his head. Death was undoubtedly the result of those wounds in the head. It is impossible for me to say for certain with what kind of weapon they were made, but it was probably something round and blunt."

"Now," said the Senechal, when the Doctor had finished, and the hum and the growl which followed had died down again, "will any of you who know anything about this matter come forward and tell us all you know?"