Chapter 16
Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a quarter after eight o’clock
to a quarter before ten. While he was there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and
had exchanged Good Night with a farm-worker going home. When Joe went home at five minutes
before ten, he found her struck down on the floor, and promptly called in assistance.
My sister had been struck with something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine. And on the
ground beside her, when Joe picked her up, was a convict’s leg-iron which had been filed asunder.
Knowing what I knew, I believed the iron to be my convict’s iron – the iron I had seen and
heard him filing at, on the marshes – but my mind did not accuse him of having put it to its latest use.
It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon.
The Constables and the Bow Street men from London
72
were about the house for a week or
two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of like authorities doing in other such cases.
They took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas,
and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas from
the circumstances.
Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay very ill in bed. Her sight
was disturbed, so that she saw objects multiplied; her hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also;
and her speech was unintelligible.
73
72
the Bow Street men from London – лондонские сущики с Боу-стрит
73
her speech was unintelligible – её речь была бессвязной
Д. Остин, Ч. Диккенс, С. А. Матвеев. «Гордость и предубеждение / Pride and Prejudice. Great Expectations / Боль-
шие надежды»
37
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: |