“If the agent as let the property—Mr. Borroughes, I suppose it was—said nothing about it, sir, then there’s no doubt he was very much to blame. The murder was committed in the Great House, where you’ve come to live. Mr. Endacott and his niece were the last tenants.”
CHAPTER II
Mr. Johnson subsided once more into the easy-chair from which he had risen.
“This is most amazing!” he exclaimed. “A murder in the Great House only twelve months ago!”
“It do seem most unaccountable, sir,” the grocer ventured, “that you never heard about it.”
“I was abroad at the time and until a month or so ago,” Mr. Johnson explained, “and it is astonishing how you lose touch with things altogether after a while. I sometimes didn’t open an English newspaper for a week at a time.—Well, well,” he went on, “perhaps that’s the reason why they asked such an extraordinarily low rent for the house.”
“It’s a-many,” the innkeeper observed, “who wouldn’t live there rent free—not that I’m saying that any educated person ought to take notice of such,” he added hastily. “It’s a fine house and the gardens are grand, and I only hope, sir, that you’ll be comfortable and not be put off, so to speak, by a thing that’s passed and gone.”
“And you say that the police have never even made an arrest,” Mr. Johnson asked incredulously. “Surely that’s a very unusual thing in this country?”
“Unusual it may be,” the innkeeper admitted, “but a fact it is, all the same. For weeks afterwards we had gentlemen from Scotland Yard almost living in the place. One stayed here in this very inn and the questions he did ask were surely ridiculous. But there wasn’t one of them clever enough to find out who killed Mr. Endacott.”
The new tenant of the Great House finished his drink in silence and rose to his feet.