Before the Highmarket folk had well swallowed their dinners, every street in the town, every shop, office, bar-parlour, public-house, private house rang with the news--Mallalieu and Cotherstone, the Mayor and the Borough Treasurer, had been arrested for the murder of their clerk, and would be put before the magistrates at three o'clock.

The Kitely affair faded into insignificance--except amongst the cute and knowing few, who immediately began to ask if the Hobwick Quarry murder had anything to do with the murder on the Shawl.
If Mallalieu and Cotherstone could have looked out of the windows of the court in the Town Hall, they would have seen the Market Square packed with a restless and seething crowd of townsfolk, all clamouring for whatever news could permeate from the packed chamber into which so few had been able to fight a way.

But the prisoners seemed strangely indifferent to their surroundings.

Those who watched them closely--as Brereton and Tallington did--noticed that neither took any notice of the other.

Cotherstone had been placed in the dock first.