"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Salmon, shaking her head. "Oh, no!—there was no need for that—the doctor, ye see, had been seeing him all day. Oh, no—the cause of death was evident enough, in a way of speaking. Heart."
"Did they bury him here, then?" asked Gilling.
"Two days after," replied Mrs. Salmon. "Kept everything very quiet, they did. I don't believe Miss Chatfield told any of the theatre people—she went to her work just the same, of course. The old gentleman saw to everything—funeral and all. I'll say this for them—they gave me no unnecessary trouble, but still, there's trouble that is necessary when you've death in a house and a funeral at the door, and they ought to have given me something for what I did. But they didn't, so I considered it very mean. Mr. Chatfield, he stayed two days after the funeral, and when he left he just said that his daughter would settle up with me. But when she came to pay she added nothing to my bill, and she walked out remarking that if her father hadn't given me anything extra she was sure she shouldn't. Shabby!"
"Very shabby!" agreed Gilling. "Well, you won't find my clients quite so mean, ma'am. But just a word—don't mention this matter to anybody until you hear from me. And as I like to give some earnest of payment here's a bank-note which you can slip into your purse—on account, you understand. Now, just a question or two:—Did you hear the young man's name?"
The landlady, whose spirits rose visibly on receipt of the bank-note, appeared to reflect on hearing this question, and she shook her head as if surprised at her own inability to answer it satisfactorily.
"Well, now," she said, "it may seem a queer thing to say, but I don't recollect that I ever did! You see, I didn't see much of him after he once got here. I was never in his room with them, and they didn't mention his name—that I can remember—when they spoke about him before me. I understood he was a relative—cousin or something of that sort."
"Didn't you see any name on the coffin?" asked Gilling.
"I didn't," replied Mrs. Salmon. "You see, the undertaker fetched him away when him and his men brought the coffin—the next day. He took charge of the coffin for the second night, and the funeral took place from there. But I'll tell you what—the undertaker'll know the name, and of course the doctor does. They're both close by."
Gilling took names and addresses and once more pledging the landlady to secrecy, led Copplestone away.
"That's the end of another chapter," he said when they were clear of that place. "We know now that Marston Greyle died there—in that very house, Copplestone!—and that Peter Chatfield was with him. That's fact!"