Found Dead by Fred M. White

Blake went on his way down the village street in a contemplative frame of mind. He was puzzled and annoyed over this case and in a mood just then to suspect everything and everybody. It occurred to him as strange that this old lady had secured a second lodger almost before the first was gone, and, that at a time of the year when such birds of passage were rare in Watersmouth. Was it possible, he wondered, if there were any sort of connection between these two men. It required no great acumen to know that the man with the black moustache had turned his back hurriedly on the village directly he heard the evidence which Mrs. Whiddon had tendered at the inquest on Richard Grimshaw. He had actually been present during the inquiry, because the old woman had seen him enter the town hall just behind her. Five minutes later, he had vanished, and, almost at once, had left the village and made his way somewhere else by the first available train.

In other words, he had been frightened out of the place, and, much against his will, had absconded. If this meant anything, it meant that he had been forced to disappear long before he had finished his sinister work in Watersmouth. That he would come back sooner or later Blake felt certain.