Before he visited the Puddlesbys, Sam first stopped by his brother Halfred's farm. As a neighbor to the Puddlesbys, Halfred would know something of their situation and Sam could ask him some of the questions he might have asked them, without imposing too much on a family who had just lost a daughter. If there was local gossip about Lotho and Daisy, Halfred would have heard it. He would also know the exact whereabouts of the Burrows-owned farmland.
Halfred told Sam that he'd seen Lotho around Needlehole once or twice in the past year--having spent his boyhood in Hobbiton, he knew Lotho by sight--but had heard no gossip connecting Lotho with Daisy Puddlesby. The Puddlesbys' eldest daughter was said to be "troublesome" of late; Halfred gathered that this trouble was over some improper suitor the girl had been keeping company with, but if that suitor had been Lotho, he'd never heard a whisper of it.
When he left his brother, Sam next went to have a look at the farmland that had caused so much contention. Some of the fields were in obvious use, freshly tilled and planted, or cows were pastured, but the house, when he found it, was empty. Sam peeked in at the broken windows and tried the front door, then ventured inside the dilapidated barn, but he saw no sign that anyone had been living there. It looked as if the place had not been touched in years.
Only then, after these preliminaries had been completed, did Sam go to the Puddlesby farm. Even though Frodo had sent him specially to ask them about Daisy, he was reluctant to intrude. He knew the family very slightly, to say "hello" to while visiting his brother, and knocked on their door with great diffidence.
To his relief, they were not surprised nor suspicious at seeing him. In fact, they seemed to think it only natural that he should come to pay his respects while he was in the neighborhood. He was welcomed in by Mrs. Puddlesby, who was tearful, and by her husband, who looked angry. The farmhouse only had one parlor, where Daisy had been laid out; after a brief viewing of the body, they took him into the kitchen, where they had received previous visitors that day--neighbors and friends who had also come to offer condolences.
"Funeral's tomorrow," Mrs. Puddlesby informed Sam. "If you're still at your brother's tomorrow, you're welcome to attend."
"No'm, I'm only here for today." Sam expressed his sincerest sympathies on the loss of their daughter, then added, "And I hope they find the one who did this as soon as ever they can. Do your sherriffs know who it was yet?" It was not an unusual question under the circumstances, but since he had an ulterior motive, he felt duplicitous asking it.
"They don't know," Farmer Puddlesby answered scornfully, "but I could tell you, same as I told them. It's that Mr. Sackville-Baggins."
"Lotho Sackville-Baggins?" Sam echoed; he had been struggling to find some way of bringing up the subject of Lotho gracefully, and was surprised that the name should be mentioned so soon.
"He took our lass away," Mrs. Puddlesby confirmed, her eyes filling with fresh tears, "and for no honorable reason, though you couldn't tell Daisy that, poor, foolish creature! We reckon she was going to him when she met her fate."
"But how can that be?" asked Sam. "He's been missing for days."
"Missing!" Puddlesby snorted. "That's what the sherriffs said, but we know just where he is--where he always stays when he comes to see our Daisy. He's been holed up at the old Sackville home."
"The Sackville home?" Sam was growing more astonished by the minute. "Now how d'you know that?"
"Daisy wouldn't tell us where she was going," said Mrs. Puddlesby, "but we guessed as much. Sackville's not three miles away on the Marsh road. He never came here but once, but we always knew when he was staying hereabouts. Daisy would go up and back that way often enough when she had no other reason."
"Aye," her husband agreed. "And if you ask the folk around Sackville, they'll tell you that somebody's been staying up at the old house for weeks now. Who else could it be?"
"Didn't he mean to marry her?" asked Sam.
"He said he did," Mrs. Puddlesby answered, "but we had our doubts."
Farmer Puddlesby nodded sagely. "Fine folk the likes of Mr. Sackville-Baggins wouldn't marry a farm-lass, but you can be sure he meant to have her just the same."
"I heard he was buying that empty farm next over, where you rent the land from the Bagginses and Burrowses, for her," Sam said, feeling duplicitous again.
Both the Puddlesbys looked surprised and curious. "Who told you that?"
"That's the talk around Hobbiton. He's after that farm, isn't he?"
"He's after it, to be sure," Farmer Puddlesby replied. "But if you ask me about it, Sam Gamgee, he didn't want it to set up a home for Daisy. He wanted it for us."
Sam didn't understand. "What? You mean he was going to give it to you?"
"Naught so generous as that! He meant to be our landlord on it. He'd raise our rents, you see, or give over all the land we wanted, if we'd give over Daisy."
"She was of an age to do as she pleased," said Mrs. Puddlesby, "but she would never go where we didn't give our blessings just the same." Tears had brimmed her reddened eyes throughout the conversation, and at this point they began to spill over; she quickly pulled a crumpled handkerchief from the pocket of her apron, and turned away. Sam felt he had pried more than enough. He thanked them for receiving him and left them to grieve in private.
Once he left the Puddlesby farm, Sam took the Marsh road to Sackville. The village of Sackville was no more than a few cottages clustered around a crossroad and a common green with a well. The manor house lay high above it, under the top of a hill that overlooked the Rushock Marsh on one side, and was screened from the view of the villagers by a tall hedge and a grove of trees on the other.
Sam left his pony at the village green and ventured up the hill to the house. In spite of the reports of occupancy, it did not look lived in. The windows were shuttered, and tall weeds grew in the garden and in the untrimmed grass on the roof. It looked far worse than the empty farmhouse he had explored earlier in the day, for it had obviously once been a grand place. Now, it not only had a desolate look of utter abandonment, but the faint stink of a rubbish heap. Sam found it hard to believe that anything but rats had lived in the house for years.
As he stood under the trees by the rusted gate, he was briefly tempted to go up and knock on the front door to see if Lotho answered, but an inner warning stayed him. He suddenly felt how very isolated he was here. If there was a murderer inside this house, anything might happen to him... and no one would know. He hadn't brought a sword with him on this journey, nor even a pocket-knife, and no one was closer than the village below to come to his aid.
Sam stepped quickly back beneath the cover of the trees and glanced at the shuttered windows on either side of the door, wondering if there might be someone behind them, peering out at him. He retreated, continuing to walk backwards until he was a safe distance from the house, then he turned to flee down the slope.
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