"'Tisn't what you're thinking, Mr. Frodo," Milli added hastily. "There was nothing wrong about it--what was between him and me ended when he was betrothed to Miss Celie. But he came to me that night. I'd put Jemmy to bed, and Mum was sleeping too, and we sat quiet-like here in this same room and talked."
"What did he say?" asked Frodo, still amazed.
"He told me he'd quarreled with his missus. They quarreled a lot, but he said this was the last time. He told me how sorry he was at the way he treated me, and how he should've wed me and never minded the scandal. He said I was the one he loved all along and not her, poor girl."
"You feel sorry for Celie?" He would have expected Milli to resent the girl who had married her lover.
"I felt sorry for 'em both," Milli answered. "It wasn't her doing any more'n his. They wasn't suited to each other, that's all, but they couldn't've lived apart, not as Jeb and me do. It'd be too much of a scandal for the fine folk at the Hall!" She sighed. "I told Mr. Merimas I was sorry too at how it turned out, but there wasn't no help for it. He didn't want to go back to his home, but I couldn't let 'm stop the night here and I said so. He must find someplace else to sleep."
"He meant to go to one of his friends' homes," Frodo mused. "Uncle Gorbulac, most likely. That's why he was on the Hedge path at that hour." This minor part of the mystery was easy to understand now: the footpath along the Hedge wasn't the shortest route from Newbury to Bucklebury, but it was the clearest way on a moonless night, especially if Merimas wanted to avoid taking the lane past the cottages, where Celie might be waiting up for him. It might be spooky to be so near the Old Forest alone, but Merimas was a hobbit of little imagination and didn't frighten easily; he wouldn't be in danger of stumbling over uneven ground, rabbit holes, or cartwheel ruts as he would crossing the open fields or following the track past the farms. And, with the Hedge always at his left, he couldn't possibly lose his way in the dark. In the ordinary course of things, it was a sensible choice... but there was a greater danger that night that Merimas had been unaware of until it was too late. "But he never arrived."
"No," Milli agreed softly. "I saw him to the door and we said good-night. He went off and that was the last I saw of him." Her eyes glistened with tears. "The day after next, I heard how he was found killed."
Frodo tried to piece all he had learned together, and fit this remarkable new information into the theories he had already formed. "Do you know who killed him, Milli?"
She shook her head quickly.
"Did Eliduc come here yesterday?"
"Eliduc? The boy who was just killed?" The question surprised and confused her. "No, he was never here, not that I saw. But 'twas Newbury market day yesterday and I was doing my shopping. If he came calling while I was out, I'd miss him. You can ask Mum--maybe she knows."
"What about my Uncle Merimac?"
"Mr. Merimac? Now why would he come here?" Milli looked even more perplexed. "I didn't have two words with him 'm when I was at the Hall, and not one since."
When Frodo left the bungalow, Mrs. Pibble was still working in the garden, taking handfuls of earth from the wheelbarrow and heaping them around flowers she had planted in the half-circle bed beneath the window. The little boy was helping her, carefully patting down the dirt with his tiny, pudgy hands around each green stalk. The old woman gave Frodo another grudging glance as he exited.
As Milli had suggested, Frodo asked her, "Mrs. Pibble, did a young lad call here yesterday afternoon?"
"He did," she answered shortly. "Young gent, like yourself."
"And he asked to talk to Milli?"
"He did," she answered again, "but she warn't home and I told 'm so, and he said he'd come back later. Only, he didn't."
"Did he tell you his name, or say where he was going when he left?"
"No." She turned her attention to another empty flower-bed beside the paving stones of the front walk.
"Has an older gentleman ever called here--about eighty years old, quite fat and imposing-looking, with sandy hair? The late Master's brother."
"I seen 'm in town with the Masters, new 'n' old, but he never came here," she answered, but did not look up from her task of gouging out little holes with her fingers to plant more flowers in.
It struck Frodo as odd that she should use her bare hands to do this work. She'd been breaking up clumps of earth with her fingers when he'd arrived, but many people who gardened did that; many might also plant their flowers and pat down a firm bed for them with their hands, but he had watched Sam often enough to know that a gardener normally used a spade.
"Have you lost your spade, Mrs. Pibble?" he asked her.
"I thought as I left it in the wheelbarrow yesterday," she said without looking up at him, "but I couldn't find blade nor handle of it today."
Frodo walked away from the Pibble smial. He wasn't far from the center of town, but once he left the Pibbles, the lane curved around a small apple orchard, with trees just beginning to froth with white blossoms. There was a low stone wall on one side, and a meadow that sloped down toward the Hedge in the distance, and not a smial or cottage in sight; Merimas could have come and gone this way and never been seen by anyone before he reached Milli's door. But Frodo barely gave these surroundings a thought. His head was whirling with his latest discovery.
Unless Eliduc had taken the spade himself, or Milli or her mother had used it to strike him, then someone else had been in their garden yesterday afternoon to take it and commit murder. Had this person seen Eliduc calling at the smial and realized that, even if he hadn't spoken to Milli, the young hobbit had discovered enough of the truth about Merimas's love affair with her to be dangerous, then followed Eliduc to silence him?
Where had Eliduc gone after leaving Newbury? Knowing that he had called on Milli, Eliduc's next steps were now simple to guess: he'd intended to see her husband, most probably to ask Jebro Todbrush what he knew about Merimas. In broad daylight, Eliduc would take the cart track to the farm, but he'd never gotten so far.
Had the killer wanted to prevent Eliduc from speaking to Jebro? Frodo wondered as he walked along the curving lane toward the Newbury green, where Sam was waiting for him at the High Hay. That made sense of a sort, if a person were desperate enough to keep the relationship between Milli and Merimas secret. But who would go to such lengths as murder over it? He could see Uncle Merry trying to keep the matter secret if Berry had been Milli's lover and her little boy was his grandchild, but with Merimas, the only people concerned were Milli, Celie, and Merimas himself.
Why kill Merimas? Was it because he'd called upon Milli that night and betrayed their old relationship? Had the one who'd seen him enter the house, or leave it later assumed that the two were still carrying on together?
Frodo stopped in his tracks. He'd been wrong. The murderer wasn't Celie, nor Milli, nor anyone who wanted revenge against the Brandybucks for Berry's death. There was another player in that sad little drama of mismatched lovers and unhappy marriages: a jealous husband who'd cast out his wife, believing she had dallied with one Brandybuck, and discovered one night only a week ago that he'd blamed the wrong member of that family for the ruin of his marriage. When Merimas had left Milli, he'd followed his rival to a quiet spot where his actions wouldn't be seen, and-
Frodo didn't see who struck him, only heard the sound of footsteps pattering close behind him, then felt a sharp, sudden pain at the back of his head before he could turn. The world seemed to whirl around him, and he fell; it seemed to take forever before he hit the ground. Strangest of all, he heard Sam's voice shouting his name...
When he opened his eyes, a half-dozen people were in the lane. Chief Muggeredge crouched over him, and shirriffs crowded around Sam, who was standing with Sting drawn. Sam appeared to be pinning a prostrate figure to the base of the orchard wall at swordspoint; Frodo couldn't see who it was, but if his last deductions were correct, he could guess.
"Is it Milli's husband?" he asked. "Jeb Todbrush?"
"That it is, Mr. Baggins!" said Chief Muggeredge. "However did you-?"
But Frodo swooned before he heard the rest of the question.
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