“Did you go to bed early the night before Mr. Meadows’ death?” asked Roger.
“Well, in good time, as you might say,” replied the landlady, instantly directing her steady stream along this new course. “But then I always do. Candle out by ten o’clock’s my rule and always has been. An hour’s sleep before midnight’s worth two after, I always say. Now my husband, when he was alive, would sit⸺”
“So if Mr. Meadows had had a late visitor, you wouldn’t have known?”
“Well, it’s funny you should say that, sir,” said the stout landlady, in no wise disconcerted, “because as a matter of fact I should have known. I should have heard the bell, you see. Because I didn’t get to sleep after all that night, not till it was quite light I didn’t. I had the toothache something chronic. I do get like that sometimes, and then it’s as much as I can do to get a wink of sleep at all. I remember it was that night, because when I heard about poor Mr. Meadows the next morning, well, troubles never come singly, I thought. Not but what I know the toothache oughtn’t to be mentioned in the same breath as⸺”
“But supposing the visitor hadn’t rung the bell,” Roger persisted. “Supposing he’d come round and tapped at this window and Mr. Meadows had gone to the door and let him in. You wouldn’t have known anything about it then, would you?”
“Well, it’s funny you should say that, sir, too, because as it happens I should have. I should have heard them talking in here, you see. My bedroom’s just above this room, and you can hear the voices through the ceiling as plain as plain. Not what they’re saying, I don’t mean, but just the voices. And I know that,” continued the landlady with an air of mild triumph, “because I heard it meself a matter of three weeks ago or more, when someone did come to see Mr. Meadows after I’d gone to bed, just like you said.”
“Oh? Someone did come to see him, eh? But I thought you said he’d had no visitors?”
“Well, I did,” admitted the landlady handsomely, “and that’s a fact. But not having let this one in meself, well, it slipped my memory, I suppose. Yes, the Rev. Meadows did have a visitor one night, and I know that although I’d gone to sleep, because they woke me up with their talking.”
“It was pretty late, then, and they were talking loudly. Good! Have you any idea who it was?”
The landlady hesitated. “No, sir, I couldn’t say that, I’m afraid.”