The Case of the Late Pig (12 page)

When judiciously questioned, it became evident that they knew nothing about Hayhoe, but they looked so much like conspirators that I could have borne to stay and chat with them, had I not been so beset by the fear in my mind.

Round about eleven, Leo, Pussey, and I had a conference. We sat round the stuffy little charge-room at the Station and Pussey put the case before us.

‘He didn’t leave by a bus and, he didn’t hire a car, and if he went on foot by any of the main roads he moves a deal faster than any ordinary animal.’ He paused and eyed us.

‘Seems like that’s unnatural he ain’t been seen at all,’ he said. ‘It isn’t as though any strange car ’as been seen goin’ through the village. We ain’t on the road to anywhere here. It’s been a quiet evening, everyone sittin’ out on their door-steps.
Can’t
understand it, unless ’e’s took to the fields.’

I thought of the warm leafy darkness which surrounded us, of the deep meadows and grass-grown ditches, and I was afraid.

Leo was inclined to be relieved. ‘Seems to pin it on to him, this boltin’,’ he said. ‘Extraordinary thing! Took a dislike to the feller the moment I set eyes on him. Must have been skulkin’ in the house all yesterday morning’. Amazin’.’

I didn’t know whether to relieve his mind or enhance his fears and I kept silent. Pussey seemed to catch his superior officer’s mood.

‘Ah well, we’ll get him sure enough,’ he said. ‘Now we know as who we’re lookin’ for we won’t let ’im go. The whole village is on the look-out for ’im and none of us ’ere won’t rest tonight. You go back to your bed, sir. You can leave ’im to us.’

It seemed the only thing to do, but I was loth to go.

‘You’ve searched that hill-top?’ I said.

‘Every inch of it, sir. There’s ’is telescope up there but nothin’ else. Besides, ’e couldn’t get there without bein’ seen. ’E’s got to come right through the village street with every man on the look-out for ’im. No no, you won’t find ’im on that hill-top –’lest ’e’s a mowle.’

I started, and I suppose my face betrayed me, for he explained in deference to my city training.

‘They mowles, they travel underground,’ he said, and I felt suddenly sick.

Before we left he brought up a matter which had gone clean out of my mind.

‘That young lady,’ he began, ‘if she could identify …?’

‘In the morning,’ I said hastily. ‘There’ll be a lot to do in the morning.’

‘Ah ha, you’re right, sir,’ he agreed. ‘There’ll be plenty if we catch un.’

‘There’ll be more if you don’t,’ I said and I went home with Leo.

I was climbing into bed for the first time for forty-eight hours when Pepper appeared with a telephone, which he plugged in by my bed.

‘Doctor Kingston,’ he said, and added, half in commiseration, half in reproach, ‘at
this
hour, sir.…’

Kingston was not only awake but aggressively bright and eager.

‘Hope I didn’t disturb you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been ringing up all the evening. I was down in the village on a case just after dinner and found the whole place seething. I hear you’ve got your man on the run. There’s nothing I can do, I suppose?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ I said, trying to keep polite.

‘Oh, I see.’ He seemed genuinely disappointed. ‘I must apologize for being so inquisitive, but you know how it is. I feel I’ve got a sort of natural interest. You will let me know if anything happens or if I can possibly be of any use, won’t you?’

‘I will,’ I said, but he did not ring off.

‘You sound tired. Don’t overdo it. Oh I say, there’s some funny people staying at “The Feathers”. Strangers. The village doesn’t know if it’s just a case of ordinary immorality or if there’s more to it. The fellow’s name is Greyhound, or something. Like ’em looked into?’

I cursed him for his dull life.

‘They’re spies of mine,’ I said.

‘What? I didn’t quite catch you.…’

‘Spies,’ I said. ‘Mine. I’ve got ’em everywhere. Good night.’

I was awake at six. Lugg called me, protestingly.

‘Conscientious, aren’t you?’ he said derisively. ‘’Ayhoe’s running away from a pack of narks who want to jug ’im for
murder,
but he’s not going to pass up the little appointment ’e’s made with you – Oh dear me no! I don’t think.’

‘All the same I think I’ll go,’ I said. ‘You never know.’

He stood before me, disconsolate, in an outrageous dressing-gown.

‘I’ll come with you if you like,’ he offered magnanimously. ‘There’s nothing I like better than a long country walk before the dew’s off the grass – cools me feet.’

I sent him back to bed, dressed, and went out. It was one of those fine, clear mornings which promise great heat in the day to come. The sky was opal and the grass was soft and springy underfoot.

I went round by the field path and passed down the village street where I caught a glimpse of the ingenuous Birkin. He gave me the news, or rather, the smiling information that there was none.

‘We’ll be able to get ’im sure enough now the sun’s up,’ he said. ‘We’ll bring ’im back kicking.’

I shivered although the morning was warm.

‘I hope so,’ I said and went on.

The little sunken lane was deserted and it was a pleasant morning for walking, but I found my feet lagging and I entered the hill meadow with the deepest foreboding.

It was a longer climb to the top than I had thought and when I reached the summit I was momentarily relieved. It was clear and bare and I disturbed nothing but a brace of larks resting in the short grass. The old brass telescope was still mounted on its tripod. There was dew on the lenses and I wiped them with my handkerchief.

From where I stood I had a stupendous view of the surrounding country. I could see Halt Knights lying rose-red and gracious on the grey saltings, the river mouth, dazzling in the morning sun, and around it, the little pocket handkerchief fields and meadows, the corn high and green, the
pasture
browned a little by the hot weather. It was a lovely county.

Here and there little farms were dotted and among them the white ribbons of the roads twirled and turned.

I stood there for a long time looking at the scene. It was so peaceful, so quiet, and so charming. There was nothing out of place, nothing frightening or remarkable.

And then I saw it. About half a mile away, in the midst of a field waist high in green corn, there was a dilapidated scarecrow, a grotesque, unnatural creature set up to terrify the not-quite-so-clever rooks.

But about this particular effigy there was a difference. Far from being frightened, the rooks were swarming upon it.

I looked through the telescope and straightened myself a moment or so later, sick and giddy, my worst fears realized. Mr Hayhoe had been found.

CHAPTER 14

The Man they Knew

HE HAD A
wound in his neck, a strong deep thrust over the collar-bone which had severed the jugular, and when we found him he was not pretty to look at.

Pussey and Leo and I stood round the terrible thing hoisted on a piece of broken paling, and the green corn whispered around us.

After the usual preliminaries, the police brought Hayhoe down on a tumbril to the little mortuary behind the Station, and yet another trestle table was prepared there to receive him.

Leo looked pale and shaken, and Pussey, who had been turned up physically by the first sight of my discovery, presented a mottled ghost of his former cherubic self.

When we were alone together in the mortuary shed, standing between the two white-covered things which had come to upset so violently the time-honoured peace of Kepesake, Leo turned to me.

‘This is what you were afraid of?’ he said, accusingly.

I looked at him helplessly. ‘It did go through my mind that something like this might happen. He conveyed that he had definite information, you see.’

He passed his hand over his sparse grey hair.

‘But who? Who’s done it, Campion?’ he exploded. ‘Don’t you see, my boy, a terrible thing is happening. It’s the
strangers
who are getting killed off. The field’s narrowing down to our own people. Good God! What’s to be done now?’

‘There’s not much to go on,’ I pointed out. ‘The cornfield was bordered by the road, so the murderer would not have
far
to carry him even if he had to, although of course there’s a chance he was killed on the spot. There was a great deal of blood about.’

Leo avoided my eyes. ‘I know,’ he murmured. ‘I know. But what was the feller doing out in the middle of a cornfield with a murderer?’

‘Having a very quiet private interview,’ I said. ‘I should like an opinion on this wound.’

‘You shall have it, my boy, you shall have it. The best in the world. Professor Farringdon will be along this morning to see the – ah – other body. This is frightful, Campion – I’m sorry I couldn’t get someone at work on him yesterday, but Farringdon was unobtainable, and I didn’t want to drag the Home Office into it if I could help it. This makes all the difference, though. ’Pon my soul, I don’t know what I ought to do.’

Any helpful suggestion I might have made was cut short by the return of Pussey, who had Kingston in tow. The doctor was excited and ashamed of himself for showing it. My opinion of him as a medical man went down a little as he made a cursory examination of Hayhoe. He was anxious to help and yet loth to commit himself by giving a definite opinion.

‘I don’t know what it was done with,’ he said at last. ‘Something narrow and sharp. A dagger, perhaps. One of those old-fashioned things – a trophy.’

I glanced at Leo, and from the expression on his face I knew he was thinking of the fearsome array of native weapons on the walls of the billiard-room at Halt Knights. All the same, I didn’t see Poppy in the middle of the night in a cornfield with a dagger; that idea seemed to me farfetched and absurd.

Pussey seemed to find Kingston’s guesses unsatisfactory, and he got rid of him in the end, but with considerable tact.

‘It seems like we’d better leave that to the Professor,’ he murmured to me. ‘Wonderful clever old man, the Professor. I reckon he’ll be over in half an hour or so. I don’t know what he’ll think on us – two on ’em instead of one,’ he added naïvely.

Leo turned away, his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his chin on his breast. We followed him into the station and Pussey made all the necessary arrangements for taking statements, making a search of the place where the body was found, and the important inquiries into Mr Hayhoe’s past history.

The routine work seemed to soothe Leo.

‘I suppose we ought not to have moved him from the spot,’ he said, ‘until Farringdon arrived. But there seemed no point in leavin’ the feller out in the sun hitched up on a spike like that. It was indecent. There’s a brutal obviousness about these crimes, Campion. ’Pon my soul, I can’t conceive the mind that arranged ’em – anyway, not among my own friends.’

‘Ah-h, there’s still strangers about,’ said Pussey, with the intention of comforting him. ‘Likely there’ll be
someone
who’s had blood on’s clothes. We’ll find un. Don’t you worry, sir.’

Leo swung away from him and walked over to the window.

‘Eh!’ he said suddenly, ‘who’s this?’

Looking over his shoulder, I saw a sleek chauffeur-driven Daimler pull up outside the cottage gate. A tall thin grey-faced man descended and came hesitantly up to our door. A moment or so later we made the acquaintance of Mr Robert Wellington Skinn, junior partner of the ancient and respectable firm of solicitors whose name Kingston had given me.

He was a stiff, dignified personage, and he and Leo took to each other immediately, which was fortunate, or the
subsequent
interview would certainly have taken much longer and been doubly confusing. As it was, Mr Skinn came to the point in what was for him, I felt sure, record time.

‘In view of everything, I thought I’d better come down myself,’ he murmured. ‘An affair of this sort in connexion with one of our clients is, I can assure you, most unusual. I received your inquiries yesterday; I read the papers last night; I connected the two names immediately – Peters and Harris. In the circumstances I thought I had better come down myself.’

Pussey and I exchanged glances. We were getting somewhere.

‘The two men knew each other, then?’ I asked.

He looked at me dubiously as though he wondered if I could be trusted.

‘They were brothers,’ he said. ‘Mr Harris changed his name for – ah – no doubt very good reasons of his own, and he is comparatively new to our books. Our principal client was his elder brother, Mr Rowland Isidore Peters, who died in this district last January.’

After a certain amount of delay he went with Leo to view the body, and came back a little green. He was also flustered.

‘I wouldn’t like to commit myself,’ he murmured. ‘I saw Mr Peters once twelve years ago, and I saw Mr Harris in London this spring. Those were the only two occasions on which I met either. The – ah – dead man I have just seen resembles both. Do you think I could have a glass of water?’

Pussey pressed him to be more exact, and would have taken him back again, but he refused to go.

‘Really, I see no point in it,’ he said. ‘I think you can take it that, in my opinion, the dead man is Mr Harris. After all, there’s no reason to suppose that it shouldn’t be. He called himself Harris down here, did he not?’

We let him cool down, and when he was more at ease I asked him cautiously about the dead man’s estate.

‘I really couldn’t say, without reference to my books,’ he protested. ‘I know Mr Harris received a considerable sum of money under his brother’s will. I can let you know the figures tonight. There was personal property, and of course, the insurance, as far as I remember. It all seemed perfectly in order to me at the time.’

Pussey was relieved. ‘Anyway, we’ve cleared up his identity, that’s one thing,’ he said. ‘No doubt on it; can get on with the P.M.’

Leo and I escorted the solicitor back to his car. The unfortunate man was shaken by his experience, as well he might be, but he was an obliging soul and before he left, he promised to let us know full details of the two estates.