“No.”
“Nor the other lodgers, so far as you know?”
“No, neither of them.”
“Very well, Mrs. Beckle. We’ll have a word or two with the servant now, and then I’ll get you to come over the house with us.”
Sarah Taffs was the servant’s name. She seemed to have got over her agitation, and was now sullen and uncommunicative. She would say nothing. “You said I needn’t say nothin’ if I didn’t want to, and I won’t.” That was all she would say, and she repeated it again and again. Once, however, in reply to a question as to Foster, she flashed out angrily, “If it’s Mr. Foster you’re after you won’t find ’im. ’E’s a gentleman, ’e is, and I ain’t goin’ to tell you nothin’.” But that was all.
Then Mrs. Beckle showed the inspector, the surgeon, and Hewitt over the house. Everything was in perfect order on the ground floor and on the stairs. The stairs, it appeared, had been swept before the discovery was made. Nevertheless, Hewitt and the inspector scrutinised them narrowly. The top floor consisted of two small rooms only, used as bedrooms by Mrs. Beckle and Sarah Taffs respectively. Nothing was missing, and everything was in order there.
The one floor between contained the dead man’s room, Miss Walker’s, and Foster’s. Miss Walker’s room they had already seen, and now they turned into Foster’s.
The place seemed to betray careless habits on the part of its tenant, and was everywhere in slovenly confusion. The bedclothes were flung anyhow on the floor, and a chair was overturned. Hewitt looked round the room, and remarked that there seemed to be no clothes hanging about, as might have been expected.
“No,” Mrs. Beckle replied; “he has taken to keeping them all in his boxes lately.”
“How many boxes has he?” asked the inspector. “Only these two?”