The Mystery At Lover's Cave

Roger and Anthony stood in the sitting-room that had been occupied by the Rev. Meadows, while the stout landlady entertained them with a ceaseless flow of reminiscences concerning her late guest. Anthony’s face was already feeling the strain of keeping an expression of polite interest held firmly toward this stream of verbiage; Roger was blatantly paying not the slightest attention. Anthony began to realise why his cousin had been so anxious to bring him.

“Never was a one for making a fuss, neither,” the stout landlady assured Anthony with considerable emphasis. “Not never, he wasn’t! Always got a pleasant word for me when I’d bring his meals in or come to ask him if he wanted anything, like. Make a little joke too, he would, as often as not. Very fond of his little joke, the Rev. Meadows was. Sometimes I couldn’t help but laugh at him, he’d say such comical things. Seems dreadful to think of now, doesn’t it, sir, with the poor gentleman lying stiff and cold in his grave, as you might say?” She paused momentarily for breath.

“Very dreadful,” Anthony agreed, casting a harassed eye at a pink china pig on the mantelpiece.

Roger, who had been gazing thoughtfully out of the low window, turned round. “Did anybody come to see Mr. Meadows before breakfast on the morning of his death?” he asked abruptly.

The landlady was so taken aback that she answered with equal brevity. “No, sir, that there wasn’t.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite sure, sir,” replied the landlady, recovering herself. “You see, I was in me kitchen from⸺”

“Did he have a visitor on the previous day, do you remember?” Roger cut in ruthlessly.

“No, sir; he never had a visitor all the time he was here, not till you came. Very quiet gentleman, he was; very quiet. I remember saying to Mrs. Mullins, not three days before the end, ‘Mrs. Mullins,’ I said, ‘there’s lodgers and lodgers, as you know as well as I do, but the Rev. Meadows, he⸺’ ”

“Did you go to bed early the night before Mr. Meadows’ death?” asked Roger.

“Well, in good time, as you might say,” replied the landlady, instantly directing her steady stream along this new course. “But then I always do. Candle out by ten o’clock’s my rule and always has been. An hour’s sleep before midnight’s worth two after, I always say. Now my husband, when he was alive, would sit⸺”

“So if Mr. Meadows had had a late visitor, you wouldn’t have known?”

“Well, it’s funny you should say that, sir,” said the stout landlady, in no wise disconcerted, “because as a matter of fact I should have known. I should have heard the bell, you see. Because I didn’t get to sleep after all that night, not till it was quite light I didn’t. I had the toothache something chronic. I do get like that sometimes, and then it’s as much as I can do to get a wink of sleep at all. I remember it was that night, because when I heard about poor Mr. Meadows the next morning, well, troubles never come singly, I thought. Not but what I know the toothache oughtn’t to be mentioned in the same breath as⸺”

“But supposing the visitor hadn’t rung the bell,” Roger persisted. “Supposing he’d come round and tapped at this window and Mr. Meadows had gone to the door and let him in. You wouldn’t have known anything about it then, would you?”

“Well, it’s funny you should say that, sir, too, because as it happens I should have. I should have heard them talking in here, you see. My bedroom’s just above this room, and you can hear the voices through the ceiling as plain as plain. Not what they’re saying, I don’t mean, but just the voices. And I know that,” continued the landlady with an air of mild triumph, “because I heard it meself a matter of three weeks ago or more, when someone did come to see Mr. Meadows after I’d gone to bed, just like you said.”

“Oh? Someone did come to see him, eh? But I thought you said he’d had no visitors?”

“Well, I did,” admitted the landlady handsomely, “and that’s a fact. But not having let this one in meself, well, it slipped my memory, I suppose. Yes, the Rev. Meadows did have a visitor one night, and I know that although I’d gone to sleep, because they woke me up with their talking.”

“It was pretty late, then, and they were talking loudly. Good! Have you any idea who it was?”

The landlady hesitated. “No, sir, I couldn’t say that, I’m afraid.”

“What could you say, though?” Roger asked, with his most winning smile.

“Well, sir, I’m not a one for scandal,” said the landlady rapidly; “never have been, and please God never will be. But this I must and will say: if it’d been anybody else but the Rev. Meadows I should’ve gone down to them then and there, in bed though I was and goodness knows tired enough already. My house has always been respectable and I look upon it as me duty to keep it respectable, but seeing it was the Rev. Meadows—well, what’s wrong for other people would be right for him, I thought. Being a clergyman does make a difference, doesn’t it, sir? So I just shut me eyes⸺”

“Do you mean,” Roger put in gently, “that Mr. Meadows’ visitor was a lady?”

“Well, I don’t know about that, sir,” said the landlady doubtfully. “I don’t know whether you’d call her a lady. You see, she was talking that loud I could hardly get to sleep again, try as I might. And the Rev. Meadows, he was talking louder than a clergyman ought, if you ask me, sir. Not but what we ought to say any good of the dead, as the saying goes, and the Rev. Meadows always being such a pleasant, soft-spoken gentleman in the ordinary way, but⸺”

“Were they quarrelling, then?”

“Well, I suppose if you put it like that, sir,” said the landlady with reluctance, “they were.”

Roger exchanged a significant look with Anthony. “And you haven’t the least idea who the lady was?” he asked.

“Oh, no, sir; I don’t know who she was. I never saw her, you see, and she didn’t leave nothing behind her, only a handkerchief.”

“She left a handkerchief, did she?”

“Yes, sir; I found it the next morning, when I was doing this room before Mr. Meadows was up. I meant to give it to him to give back to her, but kept putting it off somehow. I thought, perhaps, he mightn’t like me knowing anything about it, you see, him not having said a word about her being here at all; and after all, least said soonest mended, as the saying goes.”

“You haven’t,” said Roger, with elaborate carelessness, “still got that handkerchief by you, have you?”

“Well, it’s funny you should say that, sir, because just as it happens, I have. I kep’ it by me, you see, meaning⸺”

“Would it be too much trouble to let me have a look at it for a moment?” Roger asked in honeyed tones.

“Not a bit, sir,” replied the landlady cheerfully. “I’ll go and get it now, if you wouldn’t mind waiting a minute.”

She bustled out of the room, and Anthony looked at his cousin with raised eyebrows.

“Mrs. Vane, of course?” he said.

“Of course,” Roger nodded. “She could easily get in at that window without being seen.”

“But it’s natural enough, isn’t it? I mean, why the excitement?”

“I’m not excited. And it is perfectly natural. She probably came here several times. But having unearthed a brand-new fact, we may as well find out all there is to be known about it. I admit that I don’t see any fresh development that it can lead to, but there’s no harm in following it up.”

The landlady bustled back again, decidedly the worse for breath, and handed Roger a small piece of cambric entirely surrounded by lace. Roger examined it and silently pointed out to Anthony a small E embroidered in one corner. He turned to the landlady and significantly rattled his loose change.

“I’d like to keep this, if I may,” he told her.

“And welcome,” responded the landlady with alacrity. If her visitors were ready to pay good cash for such an insignificant souvenir of the tragedy, who was she to stand in their way?

“I suppose you can’t say at all definitely which evening it was, can you?” Roger asked, tucking the flimsy thing away in his pocket-book.

“Yes, I can, sir,” returned the landlady, not without triumph. “It was the very night before that poor Mrs. Vane was thrown over the cliff. That fixed it in my memory, like. Wasn’t that a dreadful thing, sir? Really, I don’t know what’s happening to Ludmouth. First Mrs. Vane and then the Rev. Meadows! Do you think that police-inspector is going to find out anything, sir? You being with him last week and all, I thought perhaps⸺”

Roger discouraged her inquisitiveness with gentle firmness and began to prowl round the room. The excuse he had given for his presence, that the dead man was an old friend of his, could be easily stretched to cover any curiosity, bordering on the indecent, which he might display regarding that old friend’s habits and possessions.

A rack on the wall containing three or four pipes arrested his attention, and he drew one out of its socket. “Mr. Meadows was a heavy smoker, wasn’t he?” he remarked.

“Well, it’s funny you should say that, sir,” observed the landlady, who had been following his movements with interest, “because I shouldn’t have said he was, meself, at all. Leastways, not compared with my husband, he wasn’t. He’d smoke his pipe after breakfast, the Rev. Meadows would, and again after his dinner and perhaps a bit in the evening if he felt like it, but not much more than that. Now my husband; you’d hardly ever see him without he had a pipe in⸺”

“But Mr. Meadows had a lot of pipes for so small a smoker?”

“Well, yes, he had, sir; I’d noticed that meself. But he was very funny about his pipes, the Rev. Meadows was. He used to smoke them one at a time, for a week; in roteration, he called it. Very comical about it, he was too. ‘Pipes are like wives, ma,’ he used to say (always called me ma, he did; said I mothered him better than his own mother ever had; a very friendly sort of gentleman, the Rev. Meadows was). Yes, ‘Pipes are like wives,’ he’d say; ‘a man ought never to have more than one of ’em going at a time.’ That was just one of his comicalities, you see. Always full of jokes like that, he was. ‘Pipes are like wives,’ indeed! You see what he meant: a man ought never⸺”