Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/30

 in everything, opened her eyes and her mouth and stared hopelessly at her caller. Wedgwood saw that she was a very simple sort, with just enough brains to do her bit; he saw, too, that beyond surface facts he was not likely to get much out of her.

"You don't say!" she exclaimed at last in an awed whisper. "Murdered? Why, whoever would want to murder a quiet man like that?"

"He was a quiet man, was he?" asked Wedgwood.

"You couldn't have found a more peaceable!" declared Mrs. Creech. "Three years he's lodged with me—second floor back he had, and a very nice room, too—and I never had the least cause for complaint. Nor him with me. 'Mrs. Creech,' he said to me more than once, 'you and me just suits each other.' As landlady and lodger, of course he meant. Oh, yes, mister!—as regular in his habits he was as that clock!"

"What was he, Mrs. Creech—what did he do?" enquired Wedgwood.

"He did his work, mister, at the British Museum," replied the landlady. "What it was exactly, I couldn't say; writing work of some sort, I believe. Every morning at nine o'clock he'd set off there, with his little bag full of books and papers, and every evening he'd come