The Corpse in the Cellar (15 page)

‘You definitely couldn't get out?'

With a dry, cynical laugh Ravenswood said, ‘Not unless I was Houdini!'

Crispin turned to us and said, ‘Did Grimm test the locks? Did he try to open the door?'

‘Several times,' I said. ‘It was definitely securely closed and locked.'

‘How many other ways are there into this cellar?'

‘None,' said the bank manager firmly. ‘None at all.'

‘But when this was a private residence I'm told that part of this cellar held coal—so there must be a coal hole somewhere?'

Ravenswood led us all over to a far corner and pointed to a metal plate in the ceiling of the cellar. This, he explained, had once been the coal chute but it was bolted closed, and had been bolted closed for many years. Sergeant Merrivale pulled out a powerful electric torch, climbed up on a box and examined the plate.

‘Heavily bolted,' he said to Crispin. ‘And the bolts are rusted over. This hasn't been opened for years.'

‘So that just leaves—' began the inspector.

‘The door at the top of that flight of stairs,' said Ravenswood, finishing his sentence for him.

‘Do you agree, Merrivale?' said Crispin, turning to his sergeant.

‘There are no concealed doors, or panels, or entrances to secret tunnels—nothing of that sort, sir. I've looked. These walls and floor are solid rock, and that strongroom wall is double brick with a layer of concrete lined with steel on the inside.'

We all looked slowly around the damp stone cellar with its heavy wall dividing the strongroom half from the part where we stood. The total impossibility of the murder of Franklin Grimm loomed before us like some ghostly phantom.

Inspector Crispin pulled a long blue envelope out of his top coat pocket. From this he extracted a single sheet of paper.

‘The police surgeon's report,' he explained. ‘Dr Haydock says that Mr Grimm was killed by a single blow to the neck that severed the carotid artery and penetrated his wind pipe. It was a narrow blade that tore the skin roughly on penetration.'

Ruth Jarvis began to sob again and Edith Ravenswood went over to put an arm around her shoulders.

‘Narrow blade, eh?' said Warnie. ‘Knew a chap in my regiment once who had a knife like that—a stiletto he called it. Said it was Italian. Said lots of Italians carried them.'

‘Dixon, are you there?' called out Crispin.

Dixon's voice came from the dark at the top of the stairs acknowledging his presence.

‘Are there any Italians in Market Plumpton?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Or in the district?'

‘Not that I know of, sir.'

‘When we get back to the station, you should check on that.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Inspector Crispin paced back and forth in silence for a minute or two, then he turned to his sergeant and asked, ‘How carefully has this place been searched?'

‘Very,' replied Merrivale. ‘The local force searched it yesterday, and then I went over it again myself at lunchtime today.'

‘You've done your own search?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And you found no entrance except that staircase?'

‘Correct, sir.'

‘And no trace of a weapon?'

‘None, sir. Mind you,' Merrivale continued, ‘the weapon was obviously small and might have been concealed and carried away.'

‘Yes, there is that.' Inspector Crispin resumed his pacing.

‘Do you need us any longer?' asked Jack.

The policeman sighed heavily and said there was probably nothing more to be accomplished for the time being, but that we were not to leave the district without his permission.

‘In that case,' suggested Warnie, rubbing his hands together, ‘back to the pub for a drink.'

Outside the bank we discovered that black clouds had rolled across a copper-coloured sky and were getting to grips with each other like rugby players packing down in a scrum. A fine, misty rain had begun to fall. We turned up our coat collars and hurried back to
The Boar's Head
. As we stepped into the welcome warmth of a blazing fire, I made some cynical remark about this being an English summer.

‘You have nothing to complain about, young Morris,' said Jack with a grin as we pulled up chairs about the fireplace in the public bar. ‘I had a student from Dartmoor once. He insisted that Dartmoor had the worst weather in the world. When I asked him to describe the climate he said that in Dartmoor they had eleven months of winter—followed by one month of bad weather.'

Warnie chuckled then went to fetch three pints of bitter from the bar.

Flummoxed and frustrated by all this talk of impossible murder, I decided to seize upon Warnie's absence to throw the switch back to philosophy.

‘What you were saying earlier, Jack, about having an encounter with God . . . '

‘Yes?'

‘You see, that's the sort of claim I have great difficulty with. Imagine for a moment—and I don't admit this—but imagine that God exists, that there's a Mind behind the universe, a Big Brain that began it. Imagining that is true, why would such a Being be interested in us?'

Warnie returned and placed the three pints on the table between us. Then he sank back into an armchair and pulled a book out of his coat pocket. It was, I saw, the detective novel he'd mentioned to us:
It Walks by Night
. He was soon engrossed in his mystery.

‘The boot,' said Jack, ‘is on the other foot. Why wouldn't the Supreme Being be interested in us? What makes you think he wouldn't be?'

I shook my head. ‘Come on, Jack—face reality. We live on one tiny planet in a vast universe which contains countless millions of stars and no one knows how many planets. And on this one small, obscure, remote planet we are just one species out of thousands. Surely it's egomania of the worst sort to claim that any Supreme Being could possibly have any interest in us.'

‘Let me answer you with a little story, or fable, or parable.' Jack stopped to light his pipe and then resumed, ‘You regaled me with the four blind men and the elephant story earlier, so let me try this one on you.'

He puffed in silence for a moment and then said, ‘The scene is a scientific research laboratory. Swimming around in fluid in some laboratory glassware are a number of bacteria. These bacteria have the power of thought and speech—well, I did warn you this is a fable—and they have a debate among themselves. These are microscopic bacteria and they are debating whether or not the vast creatures in white coats that loom over them have any interest in them. The negative case is that those creatures in white coats are so unbelievably huge (to tiny bacteria) and clearly so clever and so busy and so important that they could never be interested in anything so small, so tiny, so insignificant as a few bacteria swimming around in nutrient fluid.'

He puffed in silence for a moment, Warnie grunted and turned over a page of his book, and then Jack resumed, ‘The truth is that those bacteria are in a medical research laboratory looking for a cure to a serious disease. And the total attention of that whole laboratory is focused on those few bacteria. All the experimentation and activity, all the thought, all the planning—everything centres on those bacteria. It is all about them.'

‘The point being?' I asked, wiping beer foam from my upper lip.

‘That size is no indicator of significance. A mountain is not more important than a baby just because the mountain is bigger than the baby. What's important is important, regardless of how remote it is or how small it is.'

I thought about this for a moment and then said, ‘Well, I still can't see why God would be interested in us. I still can't understand why the Supreme Being of the entire universe should care about us insignificant little creatures.'

‘In saying that you are telling me something about Tom Morris, but nothing at all about God,' Jack said with a cheerful grin. ‘You're telling me that if you were that big, that powerful, that important you would take no interest in the small, the remote or the (seemingly) insignificant. But what on earth makes you imagine that God's mind works like Tom Morris's mind? If God is far above and beyond us, then his interests and concerns are far above and beyond what we can imagine.'

Jack finished the last of his beer and added, ‘It's certainly staggering and beyond our grasp that God should care for us. But the intricate, interlocking design of the world, perfectly fitted to be inhabited by thinking, upright bipeds—by us—tells us that he does. Even more, the coming of Jesus tells us that he does. It's certainly uncomfortable to feel that we're under some sort of divine microscope, but I'm not interested in what's comfortable—only what's true.'

At that moment Annie Jones walked in wearing an apron and wiping her hands on a tea towel to announce that dinner was served. Five minutes later we were digging into a delicious steak and kidney pie.

‘Let's hope this rain clears up,' said Warnie as he swallowed a mouthful of pastry. ‘We need a fine day for our investigation. What's on the agenda for tomorrow, Jack?'

Before his brother could reply, a large figure in a blue uniform loomed in the doorway.

‘I must say that steak and kidney pie looks delicious,' said Constable Dixon.

‘Are you here to investigate the food?' I asked.

‘Ah, no, sir. At least, not until I'm off duty. Inspector Crispin sent me to tell you that the inquest into the death of Franklin Grimm will be held tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock in the church hall—and to request you gentlemen to be in attendance as your testimony will almost certainly be required.'

Having delivered his message, and spent some more time admiring Annie Jones's cooking, the constable left.

‘Well, that's tomorrow afternoon taken care of,' said Jack, pushing away his empty plate. ‘So I suggest we spend tomorrow morning tracking down Ted Proudfoot, the angry chap Amelia Proudfoot told us about—and then have another chat with Amelia herself. She might be more forthcoming on a second visit.'

The morning dawned bright and sunny with no sign of rain. After a breakfast of bacon and eggs and thick slices of hot buttered toast and marmalade, I was dispatched to purchase a map. I located what I wanted—a road map of the district—in a small shop on the high street that sold stationery amongst a wide and eclectic range of items.

The elderly proprietor found what I was looking for on a high shelf between a container of tooth powder and a jar of gentlemen's relish. I took the map back to
The Boar's Head
and, to avoid a repeat of the navigating fiasco of the day before, had our publican, Frank Jones, mark in pen on the map the route to the farm that Mrs Proudfoot had called ‘the Farnon place'.

After a second cup of tea, and a careful reconnoitre of the map by Warnie, the three of us set off. We were travelling in the opposite direction to the day before and soon found ourselves walking down a narrow lane with high hedges on both sides.

There was almost no traffic on this small back road. The road itself meandered back and forth, as if following a track first made by a wandering cow that had either a hangover or serious concussion.

We were passed by a horse-drawn wagon, rattling with empty milk cans on the back, and later by a farm worker on foot. He tugged his cap politely in our direction as he gave us a sullen scowl.

We reached our destination after some three-quarters of an hour of brisk walking. Entering through the farm gate we walked up the muddy driveway to the farmhouse that stood on a small rise. Flanking the house on one side was a machinery shed and on the other a row of stables.

We stopped a boy carrying a bucket towards the stables. Like many small boys who live on farms, he looked as if, after carefully washing and dressing in the morning, he had then rolled in mud and leaped into a hay bale. We asked this walking collection of soil samples if Mr Ted Proudfoot was about. He said nothing, but pointed towards the machinery shed, then resumed his errand.

We stood in the wide open doorway to the shed and looked around. It had only one occupant: a tall thin man with his back towards us.

‘Mr Ted Proudfoot?' Jack said.

Without turning around the man growled in an unpleasant voice that seemed to be missing a tonsil, ‘Who wants to know?'

Jack didn't reply, but waited in silence until curiosity got the better of the farm worker. When he finally turned around to squint at us, I saw that his dark face had the surly, sullen expression of a dyspeptic bulldog on a bad day—a bulldog that had just received bad news. And his voice suggested a bulldog that had tried to swallow a bone that had got stuck halfway down.

He put down the tools in his hands, straightened up from the unidentifiable piece of farm machinery he'd been tinkering with and walked towards us, wiping his hands on a piece of oily rag.

‘Well? Who are you three then?' he growled. He looked no more likable up close than he had when observed across the distance of the shed.