“Well, the bakehouse is away behind, you go up a long passage from the shop to get to it. Old Ben spent most of his time in the bakehouse, leaving the shop to the lad. But he was a suspicious old cove, and he always had it in his mind that Dick was trying to make a bit out of the business. Couldn’t blame him if he had, the old man kept him short enough. But Dick hadn’t much chance. There’s a cash register in the shop, through which every penny of the takings has to pass.” Mr. Ludgrove nodded. “I know, I’ve often noticed it,” he agreed. “Every afternoon between two and three, when he’d had his dinner, old Ben used to come into the shop and sit at the cash register, checking the takings. And he always smoked a pipe while he was doing it. Queer thing he never smoked in the bakehouse, only just this one pipe in the day. He would smoke it through, then refill it and put it on a shelf in the corner of the shop, ready for the next day. I suppose he done the same thing every day for a dozen years or more. Now, you remember that Friday was poor Jim Tovey’s funeral?” “I do,” replied Mr. Ludgrove. “You remember that I came in to see you that same evening.” “So you did. Well, while I was out, Old Ben comes round to my place to buy a pipe. He only kept one going at a time, and when the old one cracked he bought a new one. Always came to me for them, he did. Ted sold him one of the kind he always has, and out he goes. “Mind you, this is what Ted tells me. The rest of the story, Ted told me last night, after I got back from the Cambridge Arms. Seems young Dick had been in when I was over there and told him all about it. Old Ben goes back to his place, fills his new pipe, and puts it on the shelf ready for his usual smoke on Saturday afternoon. Dick swears nobody touched it in the meantime. The old man was very fussy about his pipe, and it was always left alone. “On Saturday, yesterday, that is, Ben comes back from his dinner a little after two, and the first thing he does is to pick up his pipe and light it. All at once he takes it out of his mouth and cusses. Dick asks him what’s the matter, and he says that the mouthpiece is rough and that he’s scratched his tongue on it. They have a look at the pipe together, and the old man finds a tiny splinter of glass stuck to the mouthpiece. He scrapes it off with a knife, lights his pipe again, and Dick goes out to get his dinner, same as he always does when the old man comes into the shop.” Mr. Copperdock paused, and the herbalist, who had been listening attentively, took the opportunity of putting in a question. “Mrs. Colburn has been dead some little time, I believe?”