this, then publicity's the very thing that's needed."

All this was said in the presence of my mother, who, being by nature as
quiet a body as ever lived, was by no means pleased to know that her
house was, as it were, to be made a centre of attraction. And when Mr.
Lindsey and the police had gone away, and she began getting some
breakfast ready for me before my going to meet Chisholm at the station,
she set on to bewail our misfortune in ever taking Gilverthwaite into the
house, and so getting mixed up with such awful things as murder. She
should have had references with the man, she said, before taking him in,
and so have known who she was dealing with. And nothing that either I or
Maisie--who was still there, staying to be of help, Tom Dunlop having
gone home to tell his father the great news--could say would drive out of
her head the idea that Gilverthwaite, somehow or other, had something to
do with the killing of the strange man. And, womanlike, and not being
over-amenable to reason, she saw no cause for a great fuss about the
affair in her own house, at any rate. The man was dead, she said, and let
them get him put decently away, and hold his money till somebody came
forward to claim it--all quietly and without the pieces in the paper that
Mr. Lindsey talked about.

"And how are we to let people know anything about him if there isn't news
in the papers?" I asked. "It's only that way that we can let his
relatives know he's dead, mother. You're forgetting that we don't even
know where the man's from!"

"Maybe I've a better idea of where he was from, when he came here, than
any lawyer-folk or police-folk either, my man!" she retorted, giving me
and Maisie a sharp look. "I've eyes in my head, anyway, and it doesn't
take me long to see a thing that's put plain before them."