The Corpse in the Cellar (10 page)

‘I think I can see where we are now,' I said uncertainly. ‘Or where we might be. See this curving line here?' I pointed at the paper. ‘Well, I think that's the road we're on. Ahead of us should be a crossroads, and that's where we turn right.'

Jack and Warnie looked over my shoulder, and then Jack told me to lead on. We walked for perhaps another quarter of a mile and came to a fork in the road. This appeared not to be marked on Frank Jones' map, so we took a chance on the left-hand fork. A hundred yards further on I became convinced we were heading in the wrong direction and persuaded the others to go back and take the other road.

When Warnie grumbled I said, ‘Well, we're supposed to be on a walking holiday, and at least right now we're walking!'

Back at the intersection where I thought we'd gone wrong we headed up the right hand fork instead of the left. A hundred yards later we came to the crossroads, with the ancient oak tree Frank Jones had told us about on the corner.

‘Well done, young Morris,' said Jack, slapping me on the back. ‘You've got us back on track. Now we head right from here, don't we?'

The map said we should, and so we did. Half an hour of brisk walking brought us to a farm gate. Hanging from the roadside letterbox next to the gate was the name ‘Proudfoot'. And just behind some trees we could make out the farmhouse.

‘Well,' said Jack as he unlatched the gate, ‘let's go and see what young Nicholas Proudfoot has to say for himself.'

We walked through and relatched the gate behind us. We hadn't gone far down the farm track when a chorus of dogs began yapping to alert the inhabitants to our arrival, and alert us to the fact that we were stepping on territory that was rightly theirs under the Canine Real Property Act.

Soon the farm dogs were dancing around our feet, telling us that they knew we were strangers and intended to keep an eye on us. Warnie, who has a way with dogs, stopped to talk to them. Soon he was scratching their backs and had become their new best friend.

There was no sign of life at the old stone farmhouse. Its weathered walls were covered with moss and lichen. There was complete silence in the yard in front of the house—apart from the panting, yapping dogs—and the place looked deserted.

Jack knocked on the front door. The sound seemed to echo throughout the house, and for a long time there was no response.

‘There's no one here,' muttered Warnie.

‘No, I definitely heard a sound,' Jack said, and he knocked again. Eventually footsteps could be heard, and the door was opened halfway. The face we saw was that of a young woman with dark eyes and dark hair. In other circumstances she would have been strikingly beautiful, but the most striking thing about her that morning were her eyes—red and swollen from crying.

‘Good morning,' said Jack in his softest and most affable manner. ‘Mrs Proudfoot, isn't it?' She nodded blankly. ‘My name is Jack Lewis; this is my brother Warren and our friend Tom Morris. We just happened to be in the bank yesterday when your husband visited Mr Ravenswood, and we wondered if we could have a word with him please.'

Her only response was to collapse in the doorway in a dead faint.

There was a moment of awkward embarrassment as three single males looked at a fragile young woman lying unconscious at their feet. Jack cupped his hands to his mouth and called out loudly, ‘Hello! Hello! Anyone there?' We waited but there was no response, so Warnie scooped the unconscious young woman up in his arms and carried her inside.

The front door of the farmhouse opened onto a hallway. This hall ran straight through the middle of the cottage, exactly bisecting it. It was what I believe is called in the country a ‘shotgun cottage', meaning you could fire a shotgun through the front door and it would go straight out the back door.

The first door on the right proved to be a small sitting room, filled with over-stuffed armchairs and a lounge. Warnie laid her on the lounge. Then we stopped and looked at each other. The farmhouse was ominously quiet except for the loud ticking of a cabinet clock in the hall. Amelia Proudfoot lay on the lounge as unmoving as if she were in a coma. But at least she was still breathing—we could see that.

I followed Jack's example and stepped into the hallway and called, ‘Hello? Anyone about?' Then I went back out through the front door and called again. The sound of my voice died away in the distance with no response. I came back to the small front parlour, looked at the others and shrugged my shoulders.

Warnie looked down at the young woman, then he looked helplessly at Jack and said, ‘What do we do now?'

‘Morris,' said Jack to me, ‘find the kitchen and put on the kettle. This young lady needs a cup of strong, sweet tea.'

I returned to the narrow hallway and explored. The kitchen was the last door on the right. Inside I found an Aga cooker with its fire burning, so I filled a kettle from a jug of water beside the sink and put it on a hotplate. Then I stoked up the wood fire in the Aga and hunted around for a teapot and the tea caddy. I found both in a side dresser, along with cups and saucers. When the kettle boiled, I made enough tea for the four of us, put the teapot, cups, saucers, a bowl of sugar and a jug of milk on a tray, and carried it back into the front room.

Young Mrs Proudfoot was just starting to move and groan as I re-entered the room. Her eyes flickered open and she suddenly pushed herself bolt upright with a look of terror on her face.

‘Please don't be anxious, Mrs Proudfoot,' Jack said soothingly. ‘We're the visitors who knocked on your door just before you fainted. I hope you don't mind—we've brought you inside and made you a cup of tea.'

She opened her mouth to say something, but the words wouldn't come. She was still a little shaky and reached a trembling hand out to the arm of the lounge to steady herself.

‘Will tea be all right?' asked Warnie. ‘If you like I can hunt around for something stronger—a little brandy perhaps?'

She shook her head. ‘Tea's fine, thank you,' she half-whispered in a weak voice.

‘We do apologise for barging into your house like this,' said Jack, ‘but when you collapsed and no one else seemed to be around, we thought we should do something.'

She nodded and tried to smile.

‘If you'd rather we leave, we will,' Jack offered.

She saw the tray and the crockery I had brought in from the kitchen, shook her head and said softly, ‘No . . . no . . . It's all right. Help yourselves to tea.'

We did. Then we seated ourselves in the old armchairs, sank back into their cavernous embrace, and sipped on our tea in silence for a few minutes. Eventually the colour began to return to the young woman's face, and she spoke again.

‘You said you wanted my husband, I think?'

‘Yes,' Jack responded, ‘but I take it he's not around.'

‘He's taken the pony trap,' she said, and then added, a little uncertainly, ‘He's gone into town, I think . . . '

Whatever train of thought our question provoked seemed to have an effect on her. She lowered her eyelids and her face lost all its colour and went quite pale again. We sipped our tea in silence for a minute while she regained her composure.

‘Perhaps we can ask you, Mrs Proudfoot,' Jack said after taking another sip of tea, ‘do you know why your husband was so angry with the bank manager, Mr Ravenswood, yesterday?'

‘What did he say?' she asked anxiously.

‘Not a lot,' Warnie said. ‘He was so angry he didn't make a lot of sense. It was quite remarkable really, the way he seemed to be restraining himself. There was clearly a lot of anger there, but he seemed to be bottling it up. All I can really remember is his promising that Mr Ravenswood would end up behind bars. Or something like that anyway. Then, of course, he pushed Mr Ravenswood into the bank vault. Officially I suppose that counts as assault. Not that the police seem very interested in that—they're more preoccupied with the murder.'

‘Murder?' said Mrs Proudfoot in alarm.

‘Ah, haven't you heard?' Warnie continued. ‘That teller chappie, Franklin Grimm, has been murdered. Nasty business. Brutal stab wound.'

Oddly she seemed relieved by this news, as if she had expected him to name a different victim. She sank back into the cushions on the lounge, thoughtfully drinking her tea.

‘So what was your husband so angry about?' Jack pursued.

She blinked and looked at him. She had been so deeply lost in thought that she hadn't heard his question, so he repeated it. But still she didn't reply immediately. She gazed off into the distance and it seemed to me that thoughts were rushing through her head as she tried to puzzle out what had happened—and to decide whether it had any connection with her husband's problems.

Jack repeated his question a third time.

There was another long silence before she replied, ‘There's a loan. We have a loan. It's a mortgage on this farm. If we default we lose the farm . . . ' Her voice trailed away.

‘But there must be more,' Jack prompted.

‘I really don't want to talk about it,' said young Mrs Proudfoot firmly.

‘Do you mind if I ask you about Franklin Grimm?' I said.

She turned towards me. She said nothing, but she was clearly waiting for a question, so I continued, ‘It was a fairly brutal murder, as Warnie said, so can you think of anyone who . . . well, hated him enough, I suppose, to violently kill him?'

Another prolonged silence ensued, broken only by the ticking of the old-fashioned cabinet clock in the hallway. Mrs Proudfoot stared down into her tea for a long time, then she said slowly, ‘Well, there's Ted, I suppose.'

Jack encouraged her to explain, and she said, ‘He's Nick's older brother. He's not a happy man. In fact, he's a bitter man. For a start he resented Nick inheriting this farm. As the oldest in the family he thought it should have gone to him. But he was—well, shiftless is what they say, isn't it? And he drank a fair bit when he was younger. So when their father died, it was Nick who helped his mother run the place. And when she died she left it to Nick. All Ted got was the small amount of money she had in her bank account. It was all very awkward. Nick had the farm but not the money he needed to fix things up around here, and Ted had the money but no intention of putting any of it into the farm.'

She stopped to drink some more tea.

‘But where does Franklin Grimm come into it?' I asked.

‘I was coming to that,' she resumed. ‘Ted was already an angry, bitter young man and then this other business happened. Ted had a girlfriend, Julie Miller—a nice girl. She could have straightened him out, I think. But she never got the chance. Franklin Grimm had a sort of way with girls, and he set his cap at Julie. I think she got swept off her feet by the attention and the charm. It had happened to other girls before her, but I think she believed Franklin Grimm was going to be all hers. He wasn't, of course. Horrible man. His own pleasure was all he cared about.'

She paused again and sipped her tea. It was clear there was more to the story, so we waited.

‘Then Julie disappeared,' young Mrs Proudfoot resumed after a long silence. ‘She left town. No one in Market Plumpton seemed to know where she'd gone. For months we heard nothing. Then, eventually, word came through. Julie's parents were dead, but her aunt and uncle were worried so they asked the police to make some enquiries. They found Julie had died during childbirth. Alone. In a cheap London bed-sit. The baby died too. Well, Ted was distraught, and he made all kinds of threats against Franklin. He was certain it was Franklin Grimm who'd got her in the family way. And it must have been. She wasn't seeing anyone else at the time. Ted got very drunk, night after night. And when he was drunk he always threatened to kill Franklin. But when he sobered up he never did anything about it.'

She put her cup and saucer down on the small polished table in front of her. It was clear that the story was over and she intended to tell us no more.

‘Where might we find Ted,' Jack asked, ‘if we wanted a word with him?'

‘He's a farmhand these days, working on the Farnon place,' she said.

‘Far from here?'

‘I'm afraid so. You need to cross the river and walk around to the east of the town to reach it.'

‘And was Franklin Grimm,' I asked, ‘ever particularly friendly with your husband—or with you?'

She understood the implication in my question and snapped out a sharp reply. ‘Certainly not! He was an odious man and we had nothing to do with him. Either of us.'

In the awkward silence that followed we finished our tea and placed the cups and saucers back on the tray.

Jack stood up and said, ‘We really should take up no more of your time, Mrs Proudfoot.'

‘If you're feeling fully recovered, that is?' Warnie said.

‘Yes, thank you. And thank you for bringing me inside. And for the tea.'