The day before, after Mrs. Morrison’s visit, she had been wretched enough, spending most of it walking very fast, as driven spirits do, with Fritzing for miles across the bleak and blowy moor, by turns contrite and rebellious, one moment ready to admit she was a miserable sinner, the next indignantly repudiating Mrs. Morrison’s and her own conscience’s accusations, her soul much beaten and bent by winds of misgiving but still on its feet, still defiant, still sheltering itself when it could behind plain common sense which whispered at intervals that all that had happened was only bad luck.  They walked miles that day; often in silence, sometimes in gusty talk—­talk gusty with the swift changes of Priscilla’s mood scudding across the leaden background of Fritzing’s steadier despair—­and they got back tired, hungry, their clothes splashed with mud, their minds no nearer light than when they started.  She had, I say, been wretched enough; but what was this wretchedness to that which followed?  In her ignorance she thought it the worst day she had ever had, the most tormented; and when she went to bed she sought comfort in its very badness by telling herself that it was over and could never come again.  It could not.  But Time is prolific of surprises; and on Saturday morning Symford woke with a shudder to the murder of Mrs. Jones.

Now such a thing as this had not happened in that part of Somersetshire within the memory of living man, and though Symford shuddered it was also proud and pleased.  The mixed feeling of horror, pleasure, and pride was a thrilling one.  It felt itself at once raised to a position of lurid conspicuousness in the county, its name would be in every mouth, the papers, perhaps even the London papers, would talk about it.  At all times, in spite of the care and guidance it had had from the clergy and gentry, the account of a murder gave Symford more pure pleasure than any other form of entertainment; and now here was one, not at second-hand, not to be viewed through the cooling medium of print and pictures, but in its midst, before its eyes, at its very doors.  Mrs. Jones went up strangely in its estimation.  The general feeling was that it was an honour to have known her.  Nobody worked that day.  The school was deserted.  Dinners were not cooked.  Babies shrieked uncomforted.  All Symford was gathered in groups outside Mrs. Jones’s cottage, and as the day wore on and the news spread, visitors from the neighbouring villages, from Minehead and from Ullerton, arrived with sandwiches and swelled them.

Priscilla saw these groups from her windows.  The fatal cottage was at the foot of the hill in full view both of her bedroom and her parlour.  Only by sitting in the bathroom would she be able to get away from it.  When the news was brought her, breathlessly, pallidly, by Annalise in the early morning with her hot water, she refused to believe it.  Annalise knew no English and must have got hold of a horrible wrong tale.  The old lady was dead