The Corpse in the Cellar (23 page)

Jack made his way into the pub and around towards the kitchen. I stayed on the back lawn, but I strolled slowly closer to the open kitchen window so that I could overhear what went on.

Ruth Jarvis was speaking softly to Annie Jones, and her words were broken up by repeated sobs so that at first I couldn't hear her voice at all clearly. Then I heard a door open and Jack's voice say, ‘I'm sorry. Is this a private conversation?'

‘Yes, Mr Lewis,' replied Mrs Jones sternly. ‘And you really shouldn't just walk into the kitchens.'

‘It's all right, Annie,' interrupted Ruth. ‘He knows. He was there when I told the police about . . . about . . . '

‘Here, borrow my handkerchief,' said Jack, his voice, usually booming and hearty, sounding soft and sympathetic.

‘Thank you, Mr Lewis,' sobbed Ruth. ‘I'm afraid I'm not coping with this very well.'

‘I doubt that anyone would,' said Jack. The sound carrying through the kitchen window suggested that he'd stepped closer. ‘Finding yourself pregnant and unmarried and the baby's father suddenly dead is more than most people could bear.'

‘I'm going to put the kettle on,' said Annie Jones. ‘I know it's silly, but I always feel a good cup of tea will fix almost anything. Will you have a cup of tea with us, Mr Lewis?'

‘That's very kind of you. I'd be delighted. Now, Ruth. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? About this awful business?'

‘If I can help. But I don't think I can . . . '

‘Well, let's see, shall we? So, what kind of a man was Franklin Grimm? The Scotland Yard man, Inspector Crispin, says we're most likely to catch his killer by understanding the victim, so what was he like?'

There was a loud sniff and then Ruth began to speak, slowly and haltingly. ‘He was funny. That was the first thing I noticed about him. He made me laugh. And he was a dreamer; he had great plans for getting to London and making his fortune. But if I was honest I'd have to say he couldn't always be trusted. He let people down.'

‘In what ways?' Jack asked.

‘Often in little, unimportant ways. He'd tell me he'd meet me somewhere and then either arrive an hour late or not turn up at all. The next time I saw him he'd be full of apologies, and very persuasive reasons why this time, just this once, he wasn't able to keep his word. And I wanted to believe him, and so I did. But looking back now I see that it kept on happening, again and again. I must have been a fool.'

‘Did he make enemies in the town?'

‘The other young men couldn't stand him,' Ruth replied with a touch of anger in her voice. ‘They were so dull and slow. It's like they're carved out of a lump of wood. But Franklin was alive, always moving, always dreaming, always catching another gleam of light . . . like a . . . like a blob of mercury sliding across a table. Never still, always changing shape.'

‘Did anyone feel strongly enough to kill him?' Jack probed gently.

‘I don't really know, Mr Lewis,' said Ruth with sound of real puzzlement and uncertainty in her voice. ‘He made some of them jealous, and made some of them feel second-rate. But people don't commit murder for those reasons.'

I heard the sound of a tray being placed on a bench. ‘Here's the tea,' said the publican's wife. ‘But if you're looking at the young men of this town to find your murderer, Mr Lewis, you're looking in entirely the wrong direction.'

‘Where should I be looking?'

There was a pause before she replied, ‘If I tell you, you'll only laugh at me.'

As cups and saucers clinked Jack replied, ‘I promise to take whatever you tell me entirely seriously.'

Annie Jones seemed to think about this, and then she said, ‘Some of us know of the dangers that lurk in the darkness. Some of us have second sight.'

Ruth Jarvis interrupted to say, ‘Annie's wonderful, Mr Lewis. The things she sees, the things she can tell us from the cards. I wouldn't have believed it myself, but she's done the cards for me, and what she told me was so right it sent a shiver down my spine.'

‘Carry on, Mrs Jones,' Jack encouraged.

‘Well—I'll tell you then. Some eighty years ago there was a murder in that building, the one the bank's in now. A horrible murder it was, more like butchery than plain killing. Then the victim was buried in a shallow grave in the cellar of the house. That sort of violence and horror creates psychic shock waves that imprint themselves on their surroundings. That's why houses, and other places, are haunted. The murdered man was a footman named Boris.'

She paused for dramatic effect then went on, ‘He's been seen in that cellar repeatedly these eighty or more years. Now that he's finally killed a man, his own spirit may be freed from the place where he was doomed. Violence begets violence, Mr Lewis.'

‘I'm sure it often does. But why do you evoke the spirit of this distant murder in this case?'

‘Because it explains everything. Oh, I know the details of what happened that day. Everyone in town does. In a town as small as this, a police constable tells a friend and before you can say Jack Robinson everyone knows. Franklin Grimm was alone in that cellar. You and your friends and Ruth were in the bank, watching the cellar door—and no one went in or out. Mr Ravenswood was locked in the vault behind six inches of steel. He was trapped. And there's no other way in or out—'

‘And Franklin wouldn't take his own life, Mr Lewis, truly he wouldn't,' Ruth Jarvis interrupted.

‘Ruth's quite right,' agreed Annie Jones. ‘Franklin was the last sort of young man to take his own life. Trust me, Mr Lewis, it was a phantom hand and a spectral blade that took his life that day.'

At that moment the loud clump of size twelve boots on the pub floor announced the arrival of Constable Dixon. His face looked more than ever like a lump of puffy dough waiting to go into the oven. The addition of his moustache made him look like a lump of dough with a black caterpillar crawling across it. He informed us that our presence was required at a coronial inquest due to begin in ten minutes.

Then, with a loud wheeze that sounded like air slowly escaping from a deflating balloon, he complained, ‘You gentlemen knew the time of the inquest—you could have gone on your own, you know. Instead I've had two different inspectors barking at me to run and fetch you.'

‘Just relax, old chap,' chuckled Warnie, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘We're obeying orders and quite prepared to be marched under your eagle eye to the scene of the inquest.'

Five minutes later we were back in the church hall for the second inquest in Market Plumpton in two days. The excitement was almost too much for the inhabitants of the town, who once again packed the hall. And once again Harvey Brewer was sitting at a table at the front, shuffling papers, making notes and looking important.

All the seats in the hall were taken and we had to stand halfway down on one side. We chose a spot near an open window because the combination of the warm weather and the sardine-squeeze of human bodies made the atmosphere in the hall stifling. And with all those neighbours loudly gossiping and speculating to each other, the noise was deafening. Until, that is, Mr Harvey Brewer, annoyed that his polite pen tapping for attention was going unheard, rose to his feet and called for silence.

A slightly embarrassed hush settled over the crowd as the coroner resumed his seat.

‘This is a coronial inquiry,' he announced after a suitable delay to re-establish his dignity and his command of the situation, ‘into the death of Mr Nicholas Proudfoot of this parish.'

Then he went through the process of empanelling a coronial jury, but this time the process was swift, and the assembled jury was almost identical to the one of the day before.

The first witness to be called was our old friend Constable William Dixon, who gave an account of the finding of the body. I rather expected one of us to be called to verify his narrative, but it seemed that this time our testimony was not going to be required.

Inspector Gideon Crispin of Scotland Yard was called next to give evidence of the recovery of the body from the river, and the state of the body when found. He also gave evidence concerning the discovery of a suitcase filled with stones in, as he put it, ‘close proximity to the deceased'. This caused a rumble of low murmurs amongst the crowd, although it can hardly have been news to them, given the efficient gossip mechanism of small towns.

Harvey Brewer rapped the table sharply with this pen and the murmurs settled into silence. Inspector Crispin completed his evidence and was excused.

The next witness called was the police surgeon, Dr Stanley Haydock. He gave the cause of death as drowning, explaining the quantity of water found in the lungs, but went on to describe the signs of a blow to the back of the head.

‘Would the blow have been sufficient to render the victim unconscious?'

‘Almost certainly.'

‘So if the victim entered the water in an unconscious state . . . '

‘ . . . that would certainly be sufficient to explain the drowning.'

The doctor was excused and the coroner called loudly for Mrs Amelia Proudfoot. His voice echoed around the hall and died away in silence. Inspector Crispin rose to his feet to explain that Mrs Proudfoot appeared to no longer be in the district and that police had been unable to find her. I felt like raising my hand to say, ‘We also went looking for her, and we couldn't find her either.' But I was not foolish enough to actually do it.

Crispin remained on his feet to ask the coroner to adjourn the inquest while ‘police pursue several lines of inquiry'.

Mr Brewer rapped the table sharply and announced that the inquest was adjourned
sine die
. Then he gathered up his papers and left. The crowd exploded in speculative conversation as they slowly rose and made their way out of the hall. We trailed along behind them. Like dolphins plunging through the wake of a large ship, we were carried along by the human waves of the town's population.

We left the church hall and entered the town square in silence. Jack appeared to be buried deep in thought. I was wondering what it was he was wondering about when I felt a sharp jab in the ribs from Warnie.

‘I say, old chap,' he said, ‘take a look at that.'

Following his pointing finger, I saw Edmund Ravenswood on the far side of the square, dragging his clearly unwilling wife in the direction of the bank.

He had a firm grip on her arm and, being a small woman, she was finding it impossible to resist.

‘Ugly scene,' muttered Warnie. ‘I don't like the look of that.'

‘I quite agree with you, sir,' said Constable Dixon who had, by this time, caught up with us. ‘But my instructions are never to interfere with a domestic unless specifically summoned to do so.'

Edmund Ravenswood fumbled with his keys, got the bank door open, dragged his wife inside and slammed the door closed behind them.

‘What was going on there?' I asked.

‘He was taking her back home,' replied the policeman.

‘Back home from where?'

Constable Dixon repeated the information Merrivale had given us the day before—namely, that they, meaning the police, had been keeping an eye on ‘everyone involved in this case' and so they were aware that Mrs Ravenswood had fled from the marital home and from her unhappy marriage.

‘Fled?' I asked. ‘Where to?'

‘The constable keeping an eye on her said she went to Mrs Brompton's boarding house.'

‘And now she's been dragged back home again,' said Jack. ‘So how did that happen?'

‘I have no idea, gentlemen,' said the beefy constable at our side. ‘No idea at all.'

‘Well, let's find out,' said Jack decisively as if he had suddenly been seized by an idea. ‘Where is this Mrs Brompton's boarding house?'

Dixon pointed to the far side of the square. ‘Just up Holland Lane,' he said. ‘The first corner on the right.'

‘That's where we're going then,' said Jack. ‘Are you coming with us, constable?'

The question brought a doubtful expression to Dixon's face. ‘I think I should go back to the station and report in.'

So he left us, and we headed off in the opposite direction—across the square and down the narrow thoroughfare signposted as Holland Lane. We found the boarding house without difficulty, entered the small hallway and rang the bell.

A few moments later a tall, broad-shouldered, stern-faced woman appeared.

In response to Jack's question she identified herself as the Mrs Brompton who ran the boarding house. When Jack said we'd come because we were concerned for Mrs Edith Ravenswood, she responded warmly, ‘I'm glad someone is. I'm afraid I did the wrong thing by that poor woman.'

‘In what way?' Jack asked.

‘She came here, with a suitcase, late yesterday. She told me the sad story of her unhappy marriage breaking down and asked to stay here for the time being. Well, of course I said yes at once. This morning she broke the news to me that she hadn't actually got any money at the moment—any money at all. She said she was expecting an inheritance, but for the time being could I be patient and wait for payment? Well, that bothered me. I run a business here. I can't afford to keep non-paying guests. So I decided to telephone her husband. I thought he'd have the decency to pay her bills until her inheritance came through.'

‘But it didn't work out that way?'

‘The man's a brute. He came charging into this house demanding to know where his wife's room was. I found him very threatening so I had to tell him which room she was in. Then there was a lot of shouting upstairs. Then he was dragging her downstairs and out the front door. He shouted as he left that I should pack her suitcase and send it across to the bank. I've done the wrong thing, haven't I?'