The Case of the Late Pig (13 page)

‘There’s just one thing,’ I said, as he got into the car. ‘Who was Mr Peters insured with? Do you know?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you off-hand. I think it was the Mutual Ordered Life. I’ll look it up.’

As soon as he had gone I made a suggestion to Leo, and, having got his consent, sent Lugg and a constable down in the car to fetch Miss Effie Rowlandson. They were gone some little time, and when at last they reappeared they brought not only the girl herself but Bathwick also, which was surprising. There was a considerable delay at the gate, and I went out. The vicar had got over his unexpected friendliness towards me of the night before, and I was aware that all his old antagonism had returned.

‘I’m only doing what I’m told, sir,’ I heard the constable protesting as I came up. ‘Besides, the young lady suggested it ’erself only the night before last.’

Bathwick ignored him and turned to me.

‘This is an outrage,’ he said. ‘A young girl subjected to a
disgusting
sight just to satisfy a few inefficient policemen.… I must protest against it; I really must!’

Effie smiled at him wanly. ‘It’s very nice of you, I’m sure,’ she said, ‘but I’ve made up my mind to it; I have, really. You wait here for me,’ she added.

However he was not to be soothed. He protested so much and so vigorously that my interest in him revived, and I wondered what conceivable purpose he could have in making such a fuss.

In the end we left him in the car, and I took the girl into the little mortuary once more. I was never exactly attracted by Effie Rowlandson, but on that occasion I admired her pluck. She was not callous, and the shock must have been considerable, but she kept her head and played her part with dignity.

‘Yes,’ she said huskily, as I drew the sheet over the limp form once more. ‘Yes, it is Roly. I wasn’t in love with him, but I’m sorry he’s dead. I –’

Her voice broke, and she began to cry. She controlled herself within a moment or so, however, and when I took her back to the bewildered Pussey she made her statement.

‘I met him a little over a year ago,’ she said. ‘He had a flat in Knightsbridge, and he used to take me out a lot. We got engaged, or nearly engaged, and then – oh, Mr Campion, you know the rest. I’ve told you.’

Between us we got the story down on paper, and I took her back to the car. Bath wick had climbed out and was waiting for her at the gate. I suppose he saw that she had identified Harris from our faces, for he did not speak to me but, taking her arm, hurried her down the road towards ‘The Feathers’.

Lugg looked after him. ‘Funny bloke,’ he said. ‘Now, where ’ave you got to?’

‘An impasse,’ I said truthfully, and went back to Pussey.

We worked it out while we waited for Professor Farringdon. Pussey put his deductions in a reasonable if not too tidy nutshell.

‘There’s impersonation been going on,’ he said judicially. ‘Sounds like the old story – the good brother and the bad brother. We’ll call ’em Peters and Harris for the sake of simplicity. Peters had the money, and on occasions Harris used to impersonate him; well, that’s been done before. Harris carried on with this little bird under the name of Peters so that if she should look him up or make inquiries she’d find out he was a man of substance. As for the solicitor, he was in a proper muddle, poor gentleman. The two brothers doubtless looked powerful alike to begin with, and of course that poor bloke in there doesn’t look like anything now. What would you say, sir?’

I hesitated. It is never safe to identify a man after twenty-five years, and Kingston had told me that his patient resembled Harris considerably. On the whole, I was inclined to back the Inspector’s theory, with one exception. When he talked of the ‘good brother’ and the ‘bad brother’ as Peters and Harris, I thought he should have reversed the names.

I told him so, and he eyed me. ‘Very likely,’ he said, ‘but that doesn’t get us any nearer, does it? Who’s done they murders? That’s what I’d like to know.’

We stood for a moment in silence looking at one another, and the Professor’s arrival took us by surprise. He came bustling in, a vigorous little Scotsman with short tufty grey hair and the shrewdest grey-blue eyes I have ever seen.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a remarkable amount of bodies, I hear.’

His cheerfulness was disconcerting, and we escorted him to the shed in the yard in silence. As he pored over the man who had called himself Harris, however, his good humour changed, and he turned to me with a very grave face.

‘I heard from Sir Leo what you were suggesting, and I take ma hat off to you,’ he said. ‘It’s a diabolical thing – a diabolical thing.’

‘Then you think –?’ I began.

He waved me silent.

‘I wouldn’t dare to give an opeenion without a very careful autopsy,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you were right; I wouldn’t at all.’

I walked over to the other side of the room while he was very busy. At last he straightened his back.

‘Have it sent round to me,’ he said, ‘and I’ll let you know for certain in a day or two. But I think I dare express an opinion – a very tentative one, you understand – that he met his death some little time before he had yon crack over the head.’

I put a question and he nodded to me.

‘Oh aye,’ he said, ‘it was poison. Chloral hydrate, I wouldn’t wonder. That’ – he indicated the terrible indentation of the skull – ‘that was in the nature of a blind. You’ve got a clever man up against you, Mr Campion. Now let’s have a look at the other puir feller.’

CHAPTER 15

Lugg Gives Notice

FOR TWO DAYS
things hung fire; that is to say, for two days we were left in peace – Leo to struggle up from beneath the blow, and Pussey and I to collect what useful scraps of information we could.

The village was bright-eyed and uncommunicative. People went to bed early behind locked doors, and sightseers who came to gape at the corner of the field where the wretched Hayhoe had been found were sent hastily on their way by outraged country folk.

Janet developed a strained expression, Poppy took to her bed, and even Whippet was more solicitous than I had supposed possible. He drifted up to see me at odd hours of the day, and sat looking at me in inquiring silence until I packed him off to talk to Janet, who was kind enough to put up with him.

Kingston, of course, was very much in the foreground, and I even found him useful. He was an inveterate gossip, and the laws of libel and slander had no terrors for him.

The first piece of concrete information came from Mr Skinn, the solicitor. The Peters who had died in the Tethering nursing home, it transpired, had not been a poor man, and had also had the perspicacity to insure himself for twenty thousand pounds with the Mutual Ordered Life Endowment. His intention, so Mr Skinn said, had been to borrow upon this policy in order to further some business scheme which he had on hand. As it happened, it had turned out very well indeed for brother Harris.

Concerning Harris we found out very little. He had rented a flat in Knightsbridge under the name of Peters, but he had
never
been a wealthy man. Our difficulties were enhanced by the confusion in the actual identities of the two men: which was Harris and which was Peters?

In the end I went to Leo. He was sitting in his gun-room, staring mournfully at his magnificent collection of sporting trophies, a mass of papers lying disregarded on his desk.

‘We’ve got ten days, my dear feller,’ he said at last. ‘The two inquests have been adjourned to give us a breathing space, don’t y’know, but that means we’ve got to get results. There’s a lot of talk already. I don’t mind telling you, my boy, the feeling round about is that I ought to have called in Scotland Yard at the first. It seemed simple at the beginning, but now, ’pon my soul, I don’t know where things are leading. Every morning I wake up wondering what the day’s going to bring forth. We’ve got a killer at large in the village. God knows where he’s going to strike next.’

He paused, and when I did not speak he looked at me sharply.

‘I’ve known you since you were a child,’ he said, ‘and I know there’s somethin’ on your mind. If you know anythin’ and you’re waitin’ for proof, don’t hesitate to tell me your suspicions. I think I could bear anythin’ rather than this uncertainty. Can you make any sense out of this puzzle?’

After working with Leo I knew that he was the most eminently trustworthy man in the world, but I hesitated to commit myself just then. It was too dangerous.

‘Look here, Leo,’ I said, ‘I know how the first murder was done, and I think I know who did it, but at this stage proof is absolutely impossible, and without proof we can do nothing. Give me a day or two longer.’

He was inclined to be annoyed at first, and I thought he was going to exercise his authority and force my confidence, but he quietened down at last, and I made my next request.

‘Can you get a Home Office order for the exhumation of R. I. Peters, who was buried in the Tethering churchyard last January?’

He looked very grave. ‘I could try,’ he said at last. ‘But, my dear fellow, identification after all this time …’ He grimaced and threw out his hands.

‘I don’t know,’ I persisted. ‘There are certain circumstances which make rather a lot of difference in that sort of thing.’

He frowned at me. ‘Antimony in the body?’ he suggested.

‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘It’s a question of the soil, mostly.’ In the end I got my own way, and afterwards I went out to find Kingston.

He was at home, I discovered by telephone, and Lugg and I went up. He received us in his uncomfortable consulting-room with frank delight.

‘Lord! you must be having an off day if you come up and see me,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not now. This is hardly a social call. I want a bit of help.’

His round pink face flushed with pleasure.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘That’s very flattering. I had rather begun to feel that I was in the way down there, don’t you know. As a matter of fact, I’ve been conducting a little private inquiry on my own. That’s a most mysterious fellow staying down at “The Feathers”. Do you know anything about him?’

‘Not much,’ I said truthfully. ‘I knew him a long while ago – we were at school together, as a matter of fact – but I haven’t seen him much since.’

‘Ah … !’ He wagged his head mysteriously. ‘Mrs Thatcher says he used to come to see Hayhoe in the early part of the week. Did you know that?’

I hadn’t, of course, and I thanked him.

‘I’ll look into it,’ I said. ‘Meanwhile, you wouldn’t like to take me round your churchyard?’

He was only too anxious, and we left the great barrack of a house, which seemed servantless and neglected. He seemed conscious of its deficiencies, and explained in a shame-faced fashion.

‘I manage with a man from the village when I haven’t any patients,’ he said. ‘He’s a good fellow, a sort of general odd job man, the son of the local builder, for whom he works when he’s not being sexton or my charwoman. When I do get a patient, of course, I have to import a nurse and housekeeper.’

We had wandered on ahead of Lugg, and he turned and grimaced at me.

‘It’s not much of a practice,’ he said, ‘otherwise, I suppose, I shouldn’t find time for things to be so terribly dull.’

As we passed the Lagonda, which was practically new, he looked at it a little wistfully, and I was sorry for him. There was something half childish in his unspoken envy. He had a genius for wasting time, and we spent some moments looking at it. He admired the engine, the gadgets, and the polish on the bodywork, and quite won Lugg’s heart.

In fact we all got on very well together, and, being in the mood for a confidant at the time, I took the risk and transferred the honour which I had been reserving for Whippet to himself. We talked about the soil of the churchyard. He was interesting and helpful.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s dry and its hard, or there’s some sort of preservative in it, I think, because I know old Witton, the grave-digger, dragged me out one morning to see a most extraordinary thing. He had opened a three-year-old grave to put in a relation of the dead woman, and somehow or other the coffin lid had become dislodged, and yet there
was
the body practically in a perfect state of preservation. How did you guess?’

‘It’s the cow-parsley,’ I said. ‘You often find it growing in soil like that.’

We went on talking about the soil for some time, and he suddenly saw the drift of my questioning.

‘An exhumation?’ he said. ‘Really? I say! That’ll be rather – ’

He stopped, suppressing the word ‘jolly’, I felt sure.

‘ – exciting,’ he added, after a pause. ‘I’ve never been present at an exhumation. Nothing so startling ever happens down here.’

‘I can’t promise,’ I protested. ‘Nothing’s fixed, and for heaven’s sake shut up about it. The one thing that’s really dangerous at this stage is gossip.’

‘It’s a question of identification, I suppose?’ he said eagerly. ‘I say, Campion, you’ve got a very good chance. What a miracle he chose this particular place to die in! In ninety-nine cemeteries out of a hundred, you know.…’

‘Yes, but be quiet,’ I said. ‘Don’t talk about it, for heaven’s sake.’

‘I won’t,’ he promised. ‘My dear old man, you can rely on me. Besides, I don’t see a soul to talk to.’

We got away from him eventually, having discovered what we wanted to know, and he stood watching us until we disappeared down the hill. Lugg sighed.

‘Lonely life,’ he observed. ‘When you see a bloke like that it makes you feel you’d like to take him on a pub-crawl, don’t it?’

‘Does it?’ I said.

He frowned. ‘You’re getting so lah-di-dah and don’t-speak-to-me-I’m-clever, you make me tired,’ he complained. ‘If I was in your position I wouldn’t waste me time muckin’
round
with corpses. I’d ask a fellow like that up to Town for a week and show ’im the sights.’

‘My God,’ I said, ‘I believe you would.’

He chose to be offended, and we drove home in silence.

The following day, which was the third since Hayhoe had been found, I woke up with a sensation that was half exhilaration and half apprehension. I had a premonition that things were going to move, although had I known in what direction I don’t think I should have dared to go on.