Two days worth of food seems a lot for someone who was supposed to be returning home for their dinner (by which I presume they mean at midday, given the job was extremely local.)
They didn't find our whether he had been at work on the Tuesday morning at all. When he didn't come home Tuesday midday, you would think his wife would have walked up the road to see what he was up to. Perhaps she did and he wasn't there, but there was no way to dicover where he had gone. Persumably the food he had with him had come from his home? Or had he purchased it thinking he was 'running away'? Where were the rest of his tools? At home or where the job was supposed to be being done?
So many questions.
I wondered about the significance of mentioning the farthings were from his child's money box.