"So he told us, and for all I know it may be perfectly true. But I feel I should like to know something about the eccentric gentleman. You say he's above suspicion…'
He was stopped by a large hand raised warningly. "No, sir, that I never said, nor wouldn't. It'll have to be sifted. That's what I said."
"… and," continued Charles, disregarding the interruption, "I can't say that I myself think he's likely to be the guilty party. How long has he lived here?"
Mr. Flinders thought for a moment. "Matter of three years," he answered.
"Anything known about him?"
"There isn't nothing known against him, sir," said the constable. "Barring his habits, which is queer to some folk's way of thinking, but which others who has such hobbies can understand, he's what I'd call a very ordinary gentleman. Keeps himself to himself, as the saying is. He's not married, but Mrs. Fellowes from High Barn, who is his housekeeper, hasn't never spoken a word against him, and she's a very respectable woman that wouldn't stop a day in a place where there was any goings-on that oughtn't to be."
"She might not know," Peter suggested.
"There's precious little happens in Framley that Mrs. Fellowes don't know about, sir," said Mr. Flinders. "And knows more than what the people do themselves," he added obscurely, but with considerable feeling.
"Putting Mr. Titmarsh aside for the moment," said Charles. "The other two men we've encountered in our grounds are a Mr. Strange, who is staying at the Bell, and a smallish chap, giving himself out to be a commercial traveller, who's also at the Bell." He recounted under what circumstances he had met Michael Strange, and the constable brightened considerably. "That's more like it, that is," he said. "Hanging about on the same side of the house as that secret entrance, was he?"
"Mind you, he may have been speaking the truth when he said he had missed his way," Charles warned him.