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?” “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?”