He looked haggard and hag-ridden, which made Cobb even more impressed by his calm demeanour and straightforward testimony. He seemed to regard Constance Hungerford as a millstone sent by the Almighty to test his patience and forbearance. Not only did he state that he had indeed visited his sick brother in Streetsville, but added that Dr. Withers had accompanied him, and both had spent the night there. When Cobb pointed out, diffidently, that the marked money had been found in his desk-drawer, Chalmers did not seem surprised. But when pressed for some plausible explanation, he suggested that there were certainly a few citizens in Irishtown and elsewhere among the downtrodden in the city who resented his intrusions into their life, and who might well have decided to implicate him in a crime. Lots of people had seen him and Withers riding west along King Street towards his brother’s home fifteen miles way: so the opportunity was there. “Still,” he said with a resigned smile, “I think they would have kept most of the money, especially the Halifax dollar.”
