As Frodo had suspected, Mr. Leekey was a nervous sort of hobbit and didn't stand up well when faced with questions he couldn't answer. He began to fidget when Frodo asked if he knew where his mother was; when confronted with the fact that Sam had been to Cullodown Hills and learned that his mother had last been seen on her way to Gamwich, he burst out hysterically.
"I didn't mean to harm her! But Mother was carrying on so. I was afraid somebody might hear. I put my hanky over her mouth to try and quiet her, like, but then she started to fight. Before I knew how it happened, it was over and done with. I didn't mean it, Mr. Baggins! How'd she get into Mrs. Scuttle's vault? Well, I'd just got the keys back from the Thistlespars after they'd swept up. That was right before Mother came, and it put the idea into my head. After it was dark and the neighbors was asleep, I put her in the cart and took her up. Nobody saw. Why shouldn't she lie there as well as anywhere else?"
After this confession, Leekey collapsed into sobs. While Frodo sat with him, Sam went to fetch Dondo Punbry to have Leekey officially placed under arrest.
"But why'd he kill her, Frodo?" Sam asked after he and Dondo returned and Leekey had been taken away. "It wasn't over the money. He didn't mind sharing with her as long as she was off home. He wouldn't've written to her about it otherwise. Was he afraid once she was here, she'd go about saying why Mrs. Scuttle left him so much money?"
"No, Sam. He was afraid that she'd say something worse than that. I think that he must've told her why Mrs. Scuttle was being so generous to him, and she objected. That's what she was carrying on about when he put a stop to it. Remember, Mrs. Scuttle was still alive when Leekey's mother arrived in Gamwich and was still in her right senses. She might've changed her will even at the last minute. You knew her, Sam. You can guess how she would've responded if she'd learned how she'd been deceived."
Sam could imagine it; his great-aunt would sit up and fight those who'd wronged her until she'd let out her last breath. "But how'd he deceive her?"
"He told me the tale himself. It seemed suspicious to me even then--I thought that the Leekeys were after some payment to keep silent, but that wasn't it at all. That wasn't how he meant to get money. When he first came to Gamwich, Leekey presented himself to Mrs. Scuttle in hopes of gaining employment and advancing himself. Finding Mr. Scuttle dead, he felt free to tell her that her late husband had been his father. It probably seemed like a clever idea at the time, and it was successful. Mrs. Scuttle not only gave him work, which she might've done in any case, but she provided for him in the belief that she was aiding her husband's child. But it wasn't true, and Leekey's mother was the one person living who could say so. She could say that her son was not Mr. Scuttle's. As an honest and respectable woman, she would almost certainly have done so if given the chance. He couldn't let her speak."
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