This was all; and, as nothing could be proved or even suspected of
him in connection with 'Toinette's disappearance, he was discharged
from custody, although warned to hold himself in readiness to appear
at any moment when he should be summoned.
He had not yet, however, left the room, when one of the audience, a
policeman off duty, stepped forward, and, intimating that he had
something to say, was sworn, and went on to tell how he had been
leaning against a lamp-post at the extreme of his beat, just resting
a bit, in the edge of evening before last, when he saw an old woman
that they call Mother Winch come up the street, carrying a bundle,
and leading a little girl. He knew she hadn't any child of her own;
and the child was dressed very poor; and Mother Winch called her
Judy or Biddy, or some Paddy-name or other; and maybe it was all
right, and maybe it wasn't. It could be worked up easy enough, he
supposed.
So supposed the detective in whose hands the clew was immediately
placed; but when, an hour later, he descended the steps into Mother
Winch's cellar, he found that a keener and a swifter messenger than
himself had already called the wretched old woman to account; and
she lay across the rusty old stove, quite dead, with a broken bottle
of spirit upon the floor beside her, and all the front of her body
shockingly burned.
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