C&T Publications Eye On Fine Art Photography - October 2014 | Page 89

Oh yes--I had not told you about the jaw yet. Trehearn found it in the garden last spring when he was digging a pit for a new asparagus bed. You
know we make asparagus beds six or eight feet deep here. Yes, yes--I had forgotten to tell you that. He was digging straight down, just as he digs a
grave; if you want a good asparagus bed made, I advise you to get a sexton to make it for you. Those fellows have a wonderful knack at that sort of
digging.
Trehearn had got down about three feet when he cut into a mass of white lime in the side of the trench. He had noticed that the earth was a little
looser there, though he says it had not been disturbed for a number of years. I suppose he thought that even old lime might not be good for
asparagus, so he broke it out and threw it up. It was pretty hard, he says, in biggish lumps, and out of sheer force of habit he cracked the lumps with
his spade as they lay outside the pit beside him; the jaw bone of the skull dropped out of one of the pieces. He thinks he must have knocked out the
two front teeth in breaking up the lime, but he did not see them anywhere. He's a very experienced man in such things, as you may imagine, and he
said at once that the jaw had probably belonged to a young woman, and that the teeth had been complete when she died. He brought it to me, and
asked me if I wanted to keep it; if I did not, he said he would drop it into the next grave he made in the churchyard, as he supposed it was a
Christian jaw, and ought to have decent burial, wherever the rest of the body might be. I told him that doctors often put bones into quicklime to
whiten them nicely, and that I supposed Dr Pratt had once had a little lime pit in the garden for that purpose, and had forgotten the jaw. Trehearn
looked at me quietly.
"Maybe it fitted that skull that used to be in the cupboard upstairs, sir," he said. "Maybe Dr Pratt had put the skull into the lime to clean it, or
something, and when he took it out he left the lower jaw behind. There's some human hair sticking in the lime, sir."
I saw there was, and that was what Trehearn said. If he did not suspect something, why in the world should he have suggested that the jaw might fit
the skull? Besides, it did. That's proof that he knows more than he cares to tell. Do you suppose he looked before she was buried? Or perhaps--when
he buried Luke in the same grave---Well, well, it's of no use to go over that, is it? I said I would keep the jaw with the skull, and I took it upstairs and fitted it into its place. There's not
the slightest doubt about the two belonging together, and together they are.
Trehearn knows several things. We were talking about plastering the kitchen a while ago, and he happened to remember that it had not been done
since the very week when Mrs. Pratt died. He did not say that the mason must have left some lime on the place, but he thought it, and that it was the
very same lime he had found in the asparagus pit. He knows a lot. Trehearn is one of your silent beggars who can put two and two together. That
grave is very near the back of his cottage, too, and he's one of the quickest men with a spade I ever saw. If he wanted to know the truth, he could,
and no one else would ever be the wiser unless he chose to tell. In a quiet village like ours, people don't go and spend the night in the churchyard to
see whether the sexton potters about by himself between ten o'clock and daylight.
What is awful to think of, is Luke's deliberation, if he did it; his cool certainty that no one would find him out; above all, his nerve, for that must
have been extraordinary. I sometimes think it's bad enough to live in the place where it was done, if it really was done. I always put in the condition,
you see, for the sake of his memory, and a little bit for my own sake, too.
I'll go upstairs and fetch the box in a minute. Let me light my pipe; there's no hurry! We had supper early, and it's only half-past nine o'clock. I
never let a friend go to bed before twelve, or with less than three glasses--you may have as many more as you like, but you shan't have less, for the
sake of old times.
It's breezing up again, do you hear? That was only a lull just now, and we are going to have a bad night.
A thing happened that made me start a little when I found that the jaw fitted exactly. I'm not very easily startled in that way myself, but I have seen
people make a quick movement, drawing their breath sharply, when they had thought they were alone and s