Mr. Brotherhood’s housekeeper, Mrs. Bramston, had something of the airs of a landlady. She spoke painfully correct English, far more terrible than the native cockney which it half revealed and half concealed. She commenced where others began, closed doors where others shut them, and recollected instead of remembering. Her final consonants were all sibilant, and seemed to form part of the succeeding word. She was a merciless and largely irrelevant talker, and the opportunity of a stranger’s visit delighted her, self-importance easily triumphing over any regret she may have felt for the apparently deceased. She had no doubt that Reeves was a reporter, but it is probable that she would have opened out quite as readily if he had announced himself as the piano-tuner. “From the _Daily Mail_? To be sure, sir. I’m always fond of looking at a paper myself, and as for the _Daily Telegraph_, I simply revel in it. Called about poor Mr. Brotherood, I suppose; well, there isn’t much doubt what’s come to him, poor soul. . . . Not Mr. Brotherood at all? Don’t you delude yourself, young man; that’s him, sure enough. The police, they wanted me to go and look at the corpse; but I didn’t hardly like to; battered they say it was, something shocking. His clothes? Of course they were his clothes; you don’t think he’d want to be putting somebody else’s clothes on to commit suicide in, do you? That’s the same as he always wore; plain black coat and grey striped trousers, just the same as it was in the papers. . . . What tailor he went to? No, I couldn’t rightly say that; though I’ve had the folding of them many a time; very neat man he was, Mr. Brotherood, in his personal habits. Oh, I dare say there’s others as have clothes like his, only you see the way I look at it is, if the clothes were _on_ Mr. Brotherood, then it’s Mr. Brotherood’s clothes they’ll be, that’s the way I look at it. “A single gentleman? Yes, a single gentleman he was, single and singular, if you’ll pardon the _jeu de mots_. Very singular in his habits. Every Saturday off he’d go, just the same as it was in the papers, and where he went to is more than I can say, though I’ve been looking after him the best part of a year now. Every afternoon from Monday to Saturday he’d come home by the five o’clock train, and then he’d go for his round of golf, and I’d have a bit of cold supper ready for him when he came home. . . .