“I’ve heard of that incident,” admitted Blick. “Bit stiff, wasn’t it?”
“I believe ’ee, my son! And so ’tis all through—the wimmin is allays deep down at the root o’ all mischievousness,” asserted Benny. “I could tell ’ee more tales o’ wimmin nor you could find in a dozen books, and so I would, only it be time for our parson to come and catechize they young varmints o’ children what you see trooping into my church, and I must go and keep order among they. But I tells ’ee straight, my dear, you seeming a decent and fair-spoken young feller, though no doubt a Londoner, which I don’t hold wi’, that if you wants to get at the bottom o’ this here, you go a-looking for wimmin! Wimmin is at the bottom of all battles, murders, and sudden deaths—and don’t you forget it!”
Blick got no information out of this interview, but it made him think a great deal. He, too, was eminently suspicious about Mrs. Tretheroe. He had forced out of her an admission that von Eckhardstein had gone away with her full knowledge, and it was obvious that she had sent out her search-parties on the day after his fully arranged departure with intent to deceive the police authorities. But he found it difficult to believe that she had any knowledge of the murder; something told him that her first impetuous accusation of Harborough was genuine; genuine, too, he thought was her evident concern when she asked him, only the previous afternoon, if he thought that von Eckhardstein had killed Guy Markenmore. If, then, there was something which she knew, and was keeping back, what was it?—and what was her object in secrecy? From her, he turned to her maid; did Daffy Halliwell know anything? She gave one the impression, thought Blick, of being the sort of woman who had a habit, or the knack, of knowing things.
“And I should say,” he muttered to himself, “she’s a confoundedly clever hand at keeping them close when she does know them!”
That evening, tired of reading local history and topography, he went into the bar-parlour of the Sceptre and sat in a quiet corner. There were several men in the place, small farmers and village craftsmen; if they knew who Blick was, they gave small heed to his presence; their talk was free and unrestrained. For once Grimsdale was not behind his bar; the waitress from the little coffee-room officiated in his stead; she had little to do, and seeing that she looked lonely and somewhat bored, Blick, who was naturally amiable, leaned over the counter and talked to her. But he kept one ear open for anything that was said by the men behind him. His experience was that you may pick up a good deal from a chance remark or stray hint.
The men, of course, were discussing the events of the previous Monday night and Tuesday morning; they had been discussing them for six days, and they would go on discussing them for many days longer—long, Blick felt sure, beyond the proverbial nine.
“’Tis a ’nation queer thing to me,” observed one man, “that such a matter can happen in a Christian country as that a young gentleman do get shot through’s head, and die of that, and nobody don’t know who done it! And what I says, frequent, since that do happen to he, I says again, and will say, and that be—what be the police folk about? Been me, I’d ha’ found him as done that and hanged him so high as our church steeple, before now!”
“Why don’t ’ee find him, then, Bob Gravus?” asked a cynical listener. “Bain’t naught to prevent ’ee!”
“’Tain’t my job, that!” retorted Bob Gravus. “I bain’t a policeman. But,” he added, with a sly wink in Blick’s direction, “if I bain’t mistook, I do allow as that there young gentleman be one o’ these here powerful clever London men, what they calls detectives, and I do s’pose that he very likely know a deal more ’bout this than we do!”
Feeling the eyes of the company on his back, Blick turned towards the last speaker.