CHAPTER VI. THE INQUEST
Tunks lost no time in delivering his gruesome message and in spreading the news of the death. While the village policeman telegraphed to his superior officer at Pierside, the handy-man of the late Captain Huxham adopted the public-house as a kind of St. Paul's Cross, whence to promulgate the grim intelligence. Here he passed a happy and exciting hour detailing all that had happened, to an awe-stricken crowd, members of which supplied him with free drinks. The marsh-folk were a dull, peaceful, law-abiding people, and it was rarely that crimes were committed in the district. Hence the news of the murder caused a tremendous sensation.
Captain Jabez Huxham was well known, and his eccentricity in the matter of planting Bleacres with yearly corn had been much commented
