“There’s some of the rustics talking about this murder, in the kitchen,” he remarked, with a sly smile. “Would you like to hear what they’ve got to say?” “They wouldn’t talk before me,” said Blick. “I’ll put you where you’ll not be seen,” answered Grimsdale. “Come with me.” He led the detective across the entrance hall, past the bar-parlour, and into a pantry which lay between a private sitting-room and the Inn kitchen. The pantry was unlighted, save for a latticed window set in the kitchen wall; Grimsdale motioned Blick to approach and look through this. “They can’t see you from their side,” he whispered. “But you can see and hear everything from this. Listen!” Blick put his face near the lattice and looked through. Half a dozen labourers, mostly middle-aged or elderly men, sat near a cheery fire in the old-fashioned kitchen. Pots of ale on the tables before them, pipes of tobacco at their lips. They were all typical rustics, gnarled, weather-beaten, some dull of expression, some uncannily shrewd of eye: one such was just then laying down the law. “Ain’t no manner of doubt as how Master Guy was done to death felonious!” he was saying. “Murder that is, and nobody can say as how ’tain’t, sure-ly! But who done that ain’t going for to be found so easy as some med make out. Done in a corner, as you med say, and nobody ain’t the wiser.” “Somebody murdered he, all same,” observed another. “I ’low there ain’t no other way o’ considering the matter than that. But who he be I dunno, and I be mortal sure nobody else don’t know, faith!” “Well, ’tain’t in my conscience for to say as how I b’lieve Master John Harborough, up to Greycloister, done it,” said a third man. “I can’t bring myself for to agree that a gentleman born ’ud be gettin’ out of his bed at three o’clock of a morning for to goo shooting at another gentleman! ’Twould seem a ’nation queer sort of a Christian privilege, would so! Noo—I ain’t agoing to consider that, nohow!” “Then who done it?” asked somebody. Nobody spoke for awhile; then a dark-faced man, who up to this had sat silently smoking in a corner leaned forward. “I reckon naught o’ these Crowner’s quests and a pack o’ lawyers and police fellers!” said he, with decision. “Allus goos a-huntin’ the wrong hare, they does! Don’t us as has lived in these here parts all our lives know well enough that this young man left a pack o’ mortal enemies behind him when he went away, seven years it is agoo? Ain’t there men round about here as had sweethearts and lassies whose heads he turned with his ways? Wasn’t he allus a-making love to all the good-looking young women? Doon’t ’ee tell me!—there’s more nor one man this side the downs as ’ud be glad o’ the chance of getting his knife into Master Guy Markenmore—or a pistol-bullet, either! That’s how he come by his death, so I do think!” There was a murmur of general assent. An old man’s voice arose out of it.