Frodo put down his stick outside the gate to Gorbulac's smial before he went inside. After the recent assaults on other Brandybucks, it wouldn't do for anyone, even the famous investigator, to be seen going about town brandishing a weapon.
Gorbulac Brandybuck was over fifty, a first cousin to Merimas's late father Marmadas, and a sort of favorite uncle to the younger hobbit. As when Frodo had called on him two days ago to try and find out where Merimas had gone, Gorbulac said he would be glad to do anything that aided in the capture of "my poor boy's" murderer, but he shut his lips tightly with disapproval when he heard Frodo's questions regarding Merimas' courtship of other girls before he married.
"Merimas never misbehaved himself, young Frodo, if that's what you're trying to suggest," he said indignantly. "He was always a proper gentlehobbit in the old-fashioned way, just as his father would've been proud to see him be. He was only a lad of five-and-twenty when Marmadas died, but he promised to look after his mother and sisters as if he were grown and of age, and he did his best for them. He never had time for foolishness, not like so many young Brandybucks these days, running about in all sorts of wild and scandalous ways."
"I'm not suggesting anything disgraceful, sir," Frodo said when he could get a word in. "But I thought that if he'd been sweet on any girl before he was matched to Celie, he might've confided in you about it."
"Now there you're right, my lad, he would've told me if he'd had anyone else in mind for a respectable match--but he didn't! So he couldn't have, and there's no other reason Merimas would court a girl." After some grumbling and filling his pipe, Gorbulac settled down and told Frodo confidentially, "Mind you, I wish there'd been some other suitable girl for him, rather than that little half-Bracegirdle miss who was pushed upon him. She wasn't suited for him at all, but he was bound to do as his mother wanted, as a proper, dutiful son. But he never complained of her, for all her reckless behavior. Time and again, he'd come to sit with me and have a pipe, and I saw he was upset about how she'd played him a fool."
Frodo thought that Merimas must have complained at least a little for Gorbulac to know so much about it.
"I could see there'd be trouble between them one day--and wasn't I right? Now he's dead, poor lad, and has she shed a tear? No. That fast bit of baggage went off to a party and was walking by twilight with some young lad the same day as Merimas's funeral! I saw them myself."
"That was Marleduc," Frodo explained. "He was escorting Celie home from Ivysmial."
"Yes, that's what the lad's father said," Gorbulac answered. "He was there with me--Merimac was seeing us out at the back gate of the Hall, and those two came in across the meadow. Emeliadoc would have it there was nothing scandalous in their walking out together so, but I'd say he has hopes for his son and the widow--and may they have better luck of her than poor Merimas did!"
Gorbulac had more to say on the subject of Celie's disgraceful conduct before and after Merimas's death. While he did not come right out and say that she had murdered her husband, he made it clear that he was certain she was behind it.
When he left Gorbulac, Frodo next visited Salvo Goldworthy, then Ulmo Pogs at his farm on the far side of Buck Hill to the south, but they had even less to tell. If Merimas had ever been involved with another girl, they'd never heard about it. Like Gorbulac, both bore a grudge against Celie, which suggested to Frodo that Merimas had talked to them about his quarrels with her, and may have even told them of his suspicions about Berry and Celie.
It was four in the afternoon when Frodo left the Pogs farm and headed northward on a narrow and deeply rutted cart track that bent and curved around the fences and stone walls that bounded the farm pastures and ploughed fields. He might as easily have taken the path that ran beside the Hedge, which lay a few hundred yards to the east and was frequently used by farmers to reach Newbury, but he'd promised Merry he wouldn't go that way. Even though it seemed unlikely that the murderer was still hanging around the place where Merimas had died, Frodo felt reluctant to go near it alone himself. Now and again, he caught glimpses of the dark wall of yew beyond the trees; the sun was still high, but the sight made him feel uneasy and walk more quickly.
As he approached the point where the cart road met the Hedge lane, he became aware that someone was there ahead of him... waiting for him? Frodo stopped. "Who is it?" he called out nervously, and wished that he'd kept that stick after all. He began to look around for something else he could use to defend himself if necessary.
"'Tis Ted Todbrush," came the answer, and the figure came closer to peer at him. "Is that Mr. Baggins, as is kin to the Brandybucks?"
"Yes, it is," Frodo answered in relief. "I'm going into Newbury. And you?"
"I'm going t'High Hay." The farmer bowed his head to tug his cap. "D'you mind if I walk aside you?"
"No, I'd be glad of some company. We're very near the place where my cousin Merimas was killed, aren't we?"
"I just walked past meself, sir," Tedro agreed.
As they walked toward Newbury, Frodo began to feel nervous again. Tedro seemed like a harmless enough farm-lad, but it occurred to him that Merimas might have met his fate under similar circumstances, encountering a seemingly harmless person in a quiet place. Now that he thought about it, hadn't he glimpsed a hobbit rather like Tedro Todbrush wandering about when he and Melly had met Merry and Pippin in the Bucklebury high street barely more than an hour ago? He also recalled what his cousins had told him about Eliduc's sitting with one of the Todbrushes at the Buckle's Notch after Merimas's funeral.
"The High Hay is your usual haunt," he said. "Do you go into Bucklebury often?"
"Me?" Tedro's eyes were wide at the question. "No, Mr. Baggins. I hardly ever go there."
"But you were at the pub there yesterday, weren't you--or was that your brother?"
"No, sir. 'Twas me." Tedro seemed to feel that this contradiction required some explanation, for he went on, "'Tisn't usual-like for me to stop in there, but Jeb 'n' me was at Mr. Merimas's funeral, and a fine un it was, if I might say so, but afterwards I thought as I'd like sommat to drink and didn't want to walk so far as to Newbury for it. Now Jeb, he said he didn't like to push himself in amongst the fine folk there, but went home ahead o' me."
"I believe you spoke to one of my cousins, Eliduc Brandybuck."
"Was that his name?" asked Tedro. "He didna say, but I guessed as he was a Brandybuck-lad. One o' them lads looks just like t'others, save Master Merry 'mself. When I told this lad how it was Jeb and me as found poor Mr. Merimas over by t'Hedge, he wanted to hear all about it."
This matched Eliduc's account, and Frodo had to admit that it sounded like a perfectly innocuous, if somewhat morbid, topic of conversation between two people who happened to meet by chance in a pub. Nothing mysterious or suspicious in it at all. He began to feel rather silly that he'd been wary of the young farmer. He must be mistaken about the hobbit he'd seen in Bucklebury; it was surely some other farm-lad who'd come into town.
"Did you talk about anything else?" he asked.
"Oh, this 'n' that," Tedro answered diffidently. "Nought much o' concern."
Once they were in Newbury, they went their separate ways--Frodo to visit the shirriffs, and Tedro to the tavern.
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