Monks picks up the narrative by offering the information that his mother, before she died, told him all of the secrets. She was not persuaded that Agnes had taken her life, but was obsessed with the notion that there was a male child living. The dying woman's son swore to her that if he ever found such a child, he would hunt down his half-brother with unwavering hatred. "She was right. . . . I began well."
Brownlow adds that Fagin was a former associate of Monks's and was well paid to contrive Oliver's destruction. Part of the fee was to be refunded if the boy was rescued, and for that reason the two plotters went to identify him in the country.
Now Brownlow wants to hear about the locket and ring, and Monks briefly states the facts. Grimwig leads in Mr. and Mrs. Bumble. The couple flatly deny any knowledge of Monks or of a locket and ring. Next, two old pauper women are brought in. They were listening outside the door when Sally died and know that the matron took a paper from the corpse and redeemed a locket and ring from a pawnshop the following day. Sally had also told them that the girl, driven by a sense of approaching death, was striving to reach her lover's grave.
Implicated by this testimony, Mrs. Bumble admits everything. Brownlow states his determination to see that neither of the Bumbles ever holds another position of trust. Bumble cannot at first understand that he is going to lose his "Porochial office." He goes out railing at the law that "supposes that your wife acts under your direction."
