“Benjamin Cripps I be, young master, and sexton I am, and parish clerk, and a mort o’ other offices, and the one man in this here village can’t do without, nohow. Five vicars there’s been in Markenmore i’ my time and here I am—buried four of ’em! They comes and they goes—but I stops. Been parish clerk here five-and-forty years, and my father he was same for nigh as many, and his father before him; he was same, too, but for over fifty, the Crippses, we’ve been in this parish as long as they Markenmores themselves, and buried a sight or ’em, and now I’m going to bury two more. This here church, now, you might say as how we Crippses, it belongs to we—knows all about it, we do, and about most things in this here village. Keeps it—so to speak.”
“And what do you think about this affair, Mr. Cripps?” asked Blick suavely. “A man of your experience will have an opinion. Do you call it a murder, now?”
“Murder I do entitle it, my dear young London man, and a grievous and bloody one! Ain’t going for to say as how young Master Guy was a parrygon of righteousness, ’cause he wasn’t, and didn’t make no pretensions to being one o’ them here saints what we reads about in the prayer-book. But murdered he was, and cruel shameful; and you ain’t got on the real truth o’ the matter I do suppose—no, nor won’t yet awhile. But I hope ’ee will, and I’ll tramp cheerful to hear whoever done it sentenced to be hanged—so I will!”
“You haven’t any idea of your own about it, I suppose?” suggested Blick.
“Ain’t got what you might call precise ideas—yet,” declared Cripps. “But Lord bless ’ee, of course it do be something to do with something rising out of that there young Jezebel at the Dower House!—and I don’t care if she do hear me say so. Her be a terr’ble sinful and scarlet lot, that! I mind she well enough when her pa was vicar here, and her a young lass that should ha’ been minding her hemming and stitching, and such-like women’s work. But her didn’t never take to no such peaceful okkypations; her was allus a-trapesing about wi’ a pack o’ young fellers at her skirts, and a-setting ’em by the ears. Lot o’ trouble her occasioned when she was a girl, and now as soon as her comes back to the place, her starts it again.”
“Then you think Mrs. Tretheroe’s something to do with it?” asked Blick.
“Don’t say hers anything to do wi’ it, active like,” replied the old sexton. “But I do say as how, in my opinion, hers at the bottom of it, one way or another. Lord bless ’ee, some on ’em—young gentlemen—was for fighting each other about her before her was eighteen year old! If it had been i’ the old days, there’d ha’ been a mort o’ they duels fought about her. Her was that sort—first favouring one, and then t’other till they was all mad, like!”
“I suppose Mr. Guy Markenmore was pretty mad about her at that time, eh?” suggested Blick.
“Umph!” said Cripps. “Runned after her a deal, he did, to be sure. But he was a powerful bad ’un for running after women-folk of all sorts, high and low—turned the heads of half the lasses in this village, he did! Lord bless ’ee, he was always a-making love, all round—couldn’t help it, seemed so. Left some aching hearts behind him, did Master Guy when he went away to London town.”
“What, amongst the village girls?” asked Blick.