He walked down the passage to the kitchen at the back of the house, where he found the landlady fortifying herself with gin. She whisked the bottle out of sight when he appeared, and broke at once into a torrent of words. She knew nothing; and her poor husband, whom the shock would kill, was upstairs in bed with the influenza, and she had been with him for the past hour. All she could take her oath to was that Carpenter was alive at 9.30, because he had shouted up the stairs to her, wanting to know if a parcel of shoes hadn't come for him from the cobbler, as though she wouldn't have put it in his room if it had, as she told him, pretty straight.
"Steady! Could anyone have entered the house without your knowing it?" Hannasyde asked.
"They did, that's all I know," she said sullenly. "If someone got in, it must have been by the area door, and it isn't my blame. Carpenter, he ought to have bolted it when he come in. "Tisn't the first time he's been too lazy to put the chain up. The key's lost. I've been meaning to get a new one made."
"Did he use that door?"
"Yes, he did. Saved trouble, see?"
"Who else is in the house?"
"Me and my 'usband, and my gal, Gladys, and the first-floor front."
"Who is that?"
"A very nice lady. Stage, but she's resting."
"Who is on the ground-floor?"