“What could you say, though?” Roger asked, with his most winning smile.
“Well, sir, I’m not a one for scandal,” said the landlady rapidly; “never have been, and please God never will be. But this I must and will say: if it’d been anybody else but the Rev. Meadows I should’ve gone down to them then and there, in bed though I was and goodness knows tired enough already. My house has always been respectable and I look upon it as me duty to keep it respectable, but seeing it was the Rev. Meadows—well, what’s wrong for other people would be right for him, I thought. Being a clergyman does make a difference, doesn’t it, sir? So I just shut me eyes⸺”
“Do you mean,” Roger put in gently, “that Mr. Meadows’ visitor was a lady?”
“Well, I don’t know about that, sir,” said the landlady doubtfully. “I don’t know whether you’d call her a lady. You see, she was talking that loud I could hardly get to sleep again, try as I might. And the Rev. Meadows, he was talking louder than a clergyman ought, if you ask me, sir. Not but what we ought to say any good of the dead, as the saying goes, and the Rev. Meadows always being such a pleasant, soft-spoken gentleman in the ordinary way, but⸺”
“Were they quarrelling, then?”
“Well, I suppose if you put it like that, sir,” said the landlady with reluctance, “they were.”
Roger exchanged a significant look with Anthony. “And you haven’t the least idea who the lady was?” he asked.
“Oh, no, sir; I don’t know who she was. I never saw her, you see, and she didn’t leave nothing behind her, only a handkerchief.”
“She left a handkerchief, did she?”
“Yes, sir; I found it the next morning, when I was doing this room before Mr. Meadows was up. I meant to give it to him to give back to her, but kept putting it off somehow. I thought, perhaps, he mightn’t like me knowing anything about it, you see, him not having said a word about her being here at all; and after all, least said soonest mended, as the saying goes.”