“Right, sir—got a nice roast chicken for you,” answered Grimsdale. “A beauty!”
Blick laughed, nodded, and went away into the village street. He had an eye for the picturesque, this tracker of criminals, and the little south-country settlement, half as ancient as the hill-sides above it, appealed to him. Markenmore was a place of tiny thatched cottages, set in gardens and orchards, with here and there a substantial farmstead, set back from the road, in its paddock or home-garth; its main feature stood in its midst—a grey old church, whose tower and spire rose high above the elms and poplars that fenced in the churchyard. In these early spring days there was a great sense of peace about these rustic surroundings, and it struck Blick that it seemed odd that he should be there, amidst so much natural serenity, under his present circumstances. Everything just then, from the new flowers and plants in the cottage gardens to the new nests high in the fresh-leaved trees, spoke of life—and his task was to discover the author of a crime, the cause of a violent death.
He was presently reminded of that death and its consequences by the sight of an old man, who, in a nook of the tree-surrounded churchyard, was superintending the digging of two graves. Blick remembered then that Sir Anthony Markenmore and his elder son were to be buried side by side on the next day but one—the old man, accordingly, must be the sexton, Benny Cripps, of whom Grimsdale had just spoken. He entered the churchyard and went up to him; the sexton, a gnarled old fellow of apparently seventy, turned from his two diggers and gave the detective a knowing nod. He sat down on a box-tomb dose by, and pulling out a short clay pipe proceeded to light it.
“You be the young London feller what’s come here to find out who killed young Mr. Guy, I do hear?” he observed, looking Blick over with critical eyes. “A sharp ’un you be at your job, too, I do understand. Well, and I ’low as how you’ve got your work set, my fine young man, I do so! ’Tain’t going to be found out in a day, ain’t that, nor yet in a week. Didn’t make much out at the Coroner’s ’quest, neither—no!”
“You were there, eh?” asked Blick.
“There I was, master, and hear all as was said. And come away about so wise as I did go. Lord bless ’ee, ’tain’t only just starting this here! You’m like one o’ they exploring fellers that goes into furrin parts, setting out, like, on a path that you don’t know the end of!”
“I guess you’re about right,” admitted Blick. “Bit of a tangle, isn’t it?”
”I believe ’ee, my son! And so far as I see, I don’t see no sort of a clue as you can lay hands on to guide ’ee, like. All same, I do have my own opinions—sure! And ain’t going to alter ’em for nobody—not for the King himself, and no disrespect to him, neither.”
Blick sat down by the old man’s side, and lighted his own pipe.
“You’re Mr. Cripps, aren’t you?” he asked. “Sexton, I think?”