Inspector Inglis called at Miss Anker's cottage in the morning and interviewed both Bella and her lover. From them he heard the whole tale, and was greatly astonished by the recital. Under the circumstances he was inclined to take the jewels into official custody, but Bella refused to give them up; and undoubtedly they were her property left to her by her father, Maxwell Faith. Inglis admitted this, so did not press the point.
Afterwards the inspector examined Silas Pence, and heard from him much the same story as he had told Bella. The preacher was lying on a bed of sickness, as the blow on his head and the many worries he had been through of late nearly gave him brain fever. Of course--and Inglis told him as much--he should have reported at once the death of Huxham, as he had seen the body. But as Pence had not beheld the blow struck, the police could do nothing but admonish. Silas stated that in one point of his story when he confessed to Bella he had been wrong, which was after seeing Edwin Lister enter the Manor--or, as he thought then, Cyril--he had rushed away in the direction of the common in the vain attempt to rid himself of troublesome thoughts. When he returned Mr. and Mrs. Vand were in the kitchen, as Luke proved; and Pence was thus enabled to enter the house. Undoubtedly the guilty pair had left the front door open, so that blame might be cast upon some outsider--on a possible burglar, for instance. When they heard the noise of Pence's flight and found the money gone, they were quite determined to place the blame on a robber. Mrs. Vand confessed this later, although at the time of the robbery she had not dreamed the burglar was the talented young preacher whom she so greatly admired.
But the guilty woman was missing for some days. On inquiry being made it appeared that the Romany girl, bribed by Mrs. Vand to assist her flight, had made a cup of tea for the constable. As Dutton was wet and cold, he drank the tea only too willingly, never suspecting that it was drugged. But it turned out to be dosed with laudanum, and he fell into a deep sleep. Granny Tunks, as she stated on reviving, had attempted to stay the flight of Mrs. Vand and the Romany girl, but the latter had promptly knocked her down with the very chunk of wood with which Mrs. Tunks had struck the half-drowned woman. In this way Granny's sins came home to her.