The Jolly Cricketers is a village inn whose guests and visitors connect it to the covert searches and surveillance surrounding Chimneys. It provides a recognizable point of arrival and lodging for people moving through the area, but the stranger staying there under the name M. Chelles makes it more than a neutral landmark: the inn becomes one of the places through which suspicion circulates.

Setting and Access

Anthony encounters a stranger near a boathouse and gives him directions around the lake, advising him to follow the path toward the village. He asks whether the man is staying at the Jolly Cricketers, and the stranger confirms that he has been there since that morning. The exchange locates the inn along an ordinary route between the grounds and the village, while the stranger’s position behind the boathouse gives the meeting an uneasy edge.

Guests and Suspicion

The stranger is also identified as the man calling himself M. Chelles, a silk traveller lodged at the Jolly Cricketers. Superintendent Battle describes his actions as suspicious. The inn’s significance therefore rests partly on the gap between an apparently ordinary cover—travelling in silk—and the scrutiny directed at the guest’s conduct.

Narrative Function

The Jolly Cricketers anchors the story’s movement between Chimneys and the village. Its mention in conversation helps Anthony place a stranger within the local geography; its role as M. Chelles’s lodging gives Battle a concrete point of reference in an investigation. The inn is not presented as the scene of a major confrontation, but its everyday function as a place to stay makes it useful to the story’s pattern of concealed identities and watchful encounters.