J. S. Fletcher

“ One man either turned back to the village (unlikely, thought Blick) or took the right-hand footpath to Selcaster (very probable, Blick considered) ; the other two men, of whom Guy Markenmore was certainly one, took the left-hand path, and climbed the hill-side to Markenmore Hollow. There Guy Markenmore was suddenly murdered, and whichever man it was who was with him, whether the presumed American who had come to the Sceptre at nine o'clock on Monday night, or the man who had been given admittance at two o'clock on Tuesday morning, was the murderer. ”

“ Blick remembered then that Sir Anthony Markenmore and his elder son were to be buried side by side on the next day but one—the old man, accordingly, must be the sexton, Benny Cripps, of whom Grimsdale had just spoken. He entered the churchyard and went up to him; the sexton, a gnarled old fellow of apparently seventy, turned from his two diggers and gave the detective a knowing nod. He sat down on a box-tomb close by, and pulling out a short clay pipe proceeded to light it.
"You be the young London feller what's come here to find out who killed young Mr. Guy, I do hear?" ”

“ Cripps?" asked Blick suavely. "A man of your experience will have an opinion. Do you call it a murder, now?"
"Murder I do entitle it, my dear young London man, and a grievous and bloody one! Ain't going for to say as how young Master Guy was a parrygon of righteousness, 'cause he wasn't, and didn't make no pretensions to being one o' them here saints what we reads about in the prayer-book. ”

“ It would be an easy thing for any one to turn aside from a main road into these solitudes, leave a motor-car in the shadows of some old, unworked pit, or amongst the elms and beeches of a wood, while he came down into the village. Moreover, Blick noticed that on the Ordnance Map were marked several grass tracks across the downs ”

“ I mind she well enough when her pa was vicar here, and her a young lass that should ha' been minding her hemming and stitching, and such-like women's work. But her didn't never take to no such peaceful okkypations; her was allus a-trapesing about wi' a pack o' young fellers at her skirts, and a-setting 'em by the ears. Lot o ' trouble her occasioned when she was a girl, and now as soon as her comes back to the place, her starts it again. ”