"Well, you'll know in a minute," retorted Margaret. "And it's no good blinking facts: once you and Peter get an idea into your heads, nothing on God's earth will get it out again. You will make fools of yourselves if you go sleuthing after the unfortunate Mr. Strange. If he is at the root of it the police'll find him out, and if he isn't they'll find that out weeks before you would."
After that, as Peter said, there was nothing to be done but to go and interview the village constable at once. Accordingly he and Charles set out for Framley after lunch, and found the constable, a bucolic person of the name of Flinders, digging his garden.
He received them hopefully, but no sooner had they explained their errand than his face fell somewhat, and he scratched his chin with a puzzled air.
"You'd better come inside, sir," he said, after profound thought. He led them up the narrow path to his front door, and ushered them into the living-room of his cottage. He asked them to sit down and to excuse him for a moment, and vanished into the kitchen at the back of the cottage. Sounds of splashing followed, and in a few moments Constable Flinders reappeared, having washed his earth-caked hands, and put on his uniform coat. With this he had assumed an imposing air of officialdom, and he held in his hand the usual grimy little notebook. "Now, sir!" he said importantly, and took a chair at the table opposite his visitors. He licked the stub of a pencil. "You say you found some person or persons breaking into your house with intent to commit a robbery?"
"I don't think I said that at all," Charles replied. "I found the person in my cellars. What he came for I've no idea."
"Ah!" said Mr. Flinders. "That's very different, that is." He licked the pencil again, reflectively. "Did you reckernise this person?"
Charles hesitated. "No," he answered at last. "There wasn't time. He escaped by this secret way I told you about."
"Escaped by secret way," repeated Mr. Flinders, laboriously writing it down. "I shall have to see that, sir."
"I can show you the spot, but I'm afraid we've already cemented it up."
Mr. Flinders shook his head reproachfully. "You shouldn't have done that," he pronounced. "That'll make it difficult for me to act, that will."
"Why?" asked Peter.
Mr. Flinders looked coldly at him. "I ought to have been called in before any evidence of the crime had been disturbed," he said.
"There wasn't a crime," Peter pointed out.
This threw the constable momentarily out of his stride. He thought again for some time, and presently asked:
"And you don't suspect no one in particular?"
Peter glanced at Charles, who said: "Rather difficult to say. I haven't any good reason to suspect anyone, but various people have been seen hanging about the Priory at different times."
"Ah!" said Mr. Flinders. "Now we are getting at something, sir. I thought we should. You'll have to tell me who you've seen hanging round, and then I shall know where I am."
"Well," said Charles. "There's Mr. Titmarsh to start with."
The constable's official cloak slipped from his shoulders. "Lor', sir, he wouldn't hurt a fly!" he said.
"I don't know what he does to flies," retorted Charles, "but he's death on moths."
Mr. Flinders shook his head. "Of course I shall have to follow it up," he said darkly. "That's what my duty is, but Mr. Titmarsh don't mean no harm. He was catching moths, that's what he was doing."
"So he told us, and for all I know it may be perfectly true. But I feel I should like to know something about the eccentric gentleman. You say he's above suspicion…'
He was stopped by a large hand raised warningly. "No, sir, that I never said, nor wouldn't. It'll have to be sifted. That's what I said."
"… and," continued Charles, disregarding the interruption, "I can't say that I myself think he's likely to be the guilty party. How long has he lived here?"
Mr. Flinders thought for a moment. "Matter of three years," he answered.
"Anything known about him?"
"There isn't nothing known against him, sir," said the constable. "Barring his habits, which is queer to some folk's way of thinking, but which others who has such hobbies can understand, he's what I'd call a very ordinary gentleman. Keeps himself to himself, as the saying is. He's not married, but Mrs. Fellowes from High Barn, who is his housekeeper, hasn't never spoken a word against him, and she's a very respectable woman that wouldn't stop a day in a place where there was any goings-on that oughtn't to be."
"She might not know," Peter suggested.
"There's precious little happens in Framley that Mrs. Fellowes don't know about, sir," said Mr. Flinders. "And knows more than what the people do themselves," he added obscurely, but with considerable feeling.
"Putting Mr. Titmarsh aside for the moment," said Charles. "The other two men we've encountered in our grounds are a Mr. Strange, who is staying at the Bell, and a smallish chap, giving himself out to be a commercial traveller, who's also at the Bell." He recounted under what circumstances he had met Michael Strange, and the constable brightened considerably. "That's more like it, that is," he said. "Hanging about on the same side of the house as that secret entrance, was he?"
"Mind you, he may have been speaking the truth when he said he had missed his way," Charles warned him.
"That's what I shall have to find out," said Mr. Flinders. "I shall have to keep a watch on those two."
"You might make a few inquiries about them," Peter suggested. "Discover where they come from, and what Strange's occupation is."
"You don't need to tell me how to act, sir," said Mr. Flinders with dignity. "Now that I've got a line to follow I know my duty."
"There's just one other thing," Charles said slowly. "You'd probably better know about it."
"Certainly I had," said Mr. Flinders. "If you was to keep anything from me I couldn't act."
"I suspect," said Charles, "that whoever got into the Priory has some reason for wishing to frighten us out of it."
Mr. Flinders blinked at him. "What would they want to do that for?" he asked practically.
"That's what we thought you might find out," Charles said.
"If there's anything to find you may be sure I shall get on to it," Mr. Flinders assured him. "But you'll have to tell me some more."
"I'm going to. A few nights ago a picture fell downn at the top of the stairs, and when we went up to investigate my wife found the upper half of a human skull on the stairs. My brother-in-law and I then discovered a priest's hole in the panelling where the picture had hung, and in it a collection of human bones."
The effect of this on the constable was not quite what they had hoped. His jaw dropped, and he sat staring at them in round-eyed horror. "My Gawd, sir, it's the Monk!" he gasped. "You don't suppose I can go making inquiries about a ghost, do you? I wouldn't touch it - not for a thousand pounds! And here's me taking down in me notebook what you told me about Mr. Titmarsh and them two up at the Inn, and all the time you've seen the Monk!" He drew a large handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped his brow with it. "If I was you, sir, I'd get out of that house," he said earnestly. "It ain't healthy."
"Thanks very much," said Charles. "But it is my firm belief that someone is behind all this Monk business. And I suspect that that skeleton was put there for our benefit by the same person who got into the cellars."
"Hold hard!" said Peter suddenly. "It's just occurred to me that we didn't hear the groan of that stone-slab being opened on the night the picture fell."
They stared at one another for a moment. "That's one up to you," Charles said at length. "Funny I never thought of that. We couldn't have missed hearing it, either. Then…' he stopped, frowning.
The constable shut his notebook. "I'd get out of the Priory, sir, if I was you," he repeated. "The police can't act against ghosts. What you saw that night was the Monk, and the noise you heard…'