The Case of the Late Pig Read online

  We drove on in silence. I began to feel that my friend, Miss Effie Rowlandson, was going to be a responsibility.

  It was a strange night with a great moon sailing in an infinite sky. Small odd-shaped banks of cumulus clouds swam over it from time to time, but for the most part it remained bland and bald as the knob on a brass bedstead.

  Kepesake, which is a frankly picturesque village by day, was mysterious in the false light. The high trees were deep and shadowy and hid the small houses, while the square tower of the church looked squat and menacing against the transparent sky. It was a secret village through which we sped on what I for one felt was our rather ghastly errand.

  When we pulled up outside the cottage which is also the Police Station, there was only a single light in an upstairs room, and I leant over the back of my seat.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather leave it until the morning?’ I ventured.

  She answered me through clenched teeth. ‘No, thank you, Mr Campion. I’ve made up my mind to go through with it. I’ve got to know.’

  I left them in the car and went down the path to rouse someone. Pussey himself came out almost at once, and was wonderfully obliging considering he had been on the point of going to bed. We conferred in whispers out of deference to the darkness.

  ‘That’s all right, sir,’ he said in reply to my apologies. ‘Us wants a bit o’ help in this business, and that’s the truth now, so it is. If the lady can tell us anything about the deceased it’s more than the landlord of his flat in London can. We’ll go round the side, sir, if you don’t mind.’

  I fetched the others, and together we formed a grim little procession on the gravel path leading round to the yard behind the cottage. Pussey unlocked the gates, and we crossed the tidy little square to the slate-roofed shed which looked like a small village schoolroom, and was not.

  I took Effie Rowlandson’s arm. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering, but she was not a figure of negligible courage.

  Pussey was tact itself. ‘There’s a light switch just inside the door,’ he said. ‘Now, Miss there ain’t nothin’ to shock you. Just a moment, sir; I’ll go first.’

  He unlocked the door, and we stood huddled together on the stone step. Pussey turned over the light switch.

  ‘Now,’ he said, and a moment later swallowed with a sound in which incredulity was mixed with dismay. The room remained as I had seen it that afternoon, save for one startling innovation. The table in the middle of the floor was dismantled. The cotton sheet lay upon the ground, spread out as though a careless riser had flung it aside.

  Pig Peters had gone.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Wheels Go Round

  THERE WAS A long uncomfortable pause. A moment before I had seen Pig’s outline under the cotton clearly in my mind’s eye. Now the image was dispelled so ruthlessly that I felt mentally stranded. The room was very cold and quiet. Lugg stepped ponderously forward.

  ‘Lost the perishin’ corpse now?’ he demanded, and he spoke so truculently that I knew he was rattled. ‘Lumme, Inspector, I ’ope your ’elmet’s under lock and key.’

  Pussey stood looking down at the dismantled table, and his pleasant yokel face was pale.

  ‘That’s a wonderful funny thing,’ he began, and looked round the ill-lit barren little room as though he expected to find an explanation for the mystery on its blank walls.

  It was a moment of alarm, the night so silent, the place so empty and the bedraggled cotton pall on the ground.

  Pussey would have spoken again had it not been for Effie Rowlandson’s exhibition. Her nerve deserted her utterly and she drew away from me, her head strained back as she began to scream, her mouth twisted into an O of terror. It was nerve-racking, and I seized her by the shoulders and shook her so violently that her teeth rattled.

  It silenced her, of course. Her final shriek was cut off in the middle, and she looked up at me angrily.

  ‘Stop it!’ I said. ‘Do you want to rouse the village?’

  She put up her hands to push me away.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. What’s happened to him? You told me he was here. I was going to look at him, and now he’s gone.’

  She began to cry noisily. Pussey glanced at her and then at me.

  ‘Perhaps that’d be best if the young lady went home,’ he suggested reasonably.

  Miss Rowlandson clung to me. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said. ‘I’m not going down to “The Feathers” in the dark. I won’t, I tell you, I won’t! Not while he’s about, alive.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I began soothingly. ‘Lugg’ll drive you down. There’s nothing to be alarmed about. There’s been a mistake. The body’s been moved. Perhaps the undertaker –’

  Pussey raised his head as he heard the last word.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That was in here an hour ago, because I looked.’

  Effie began to cry again. ‘I won’t go with him,’ she said. ‘I won’t go with anyone but you. I’m frightened. You got me into this. You must get me out of it. Take me home! Take me home!’

  She made an astounding amount of noise, and Pussey looked at me beseechingly.

  ‘Perhaps if you would drive the young lady down, sir,’ he suggested diffidently, ‘that would ease matters up here, in a manner of speaking. I better get on the telephone to Sir Leo right away.’

  I glanced at Lugg appealingly, but he avoided my eyes, and Miss Rowlandson laid her head on my shoulder in an ecstasy of tears.

  The situation had all the unreality and acute discomfort of a nightmare. Outside the shed the yard was ghostly in the false light. It was hot, and there was not a breath of wind anywhere. Effie was trembling so violently that I thought she might collapse.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I said to Pussey, and hurried her down the gravel path to the waiting car.

  ‘The Feathers Inn’ is at the far end of the village. It stands by itself at the top of a hill, and is reputed to have the best beer, if not the best accommodation, in the neighbourhood.

  Effie Rowlandson scrambled into the front seat, and when I climbed in beside her she drew close to me, still weeping.

  ‘I’ve had a shock,’ she snivelled. ‘I’d prepared myself and then it wasn’t necessary. That was one thing. Then I realized Roly got out by himself. You didn’t know Roly Peters as well as I did, Mr Campion. When I heard he’d been killed I didn’t really believe it. He was clever, and he was cruel. He’s about somewhere, hiding.’

  ‘He was dead this afternoon,’ I said brutally. ‘Very dead. And since miracles don’t happen nowadays he’s probably dead still. There’s nothing to get so excited about. I’m sorry you should have had a rotten experience, but there’s probably some very ordinary explanation for the disappearance of the body.’

  I was rather shocked to hear myself talking so querulously. There had been something very disturbing in the incident. The elusiveness of Pig dead was becoming illogical and alarming.

  As we came out of the village on to the strip of heath which lay silent and deserted in the cold secretive light, she shuddered.

  ‘I’m not an imaginative girl, Mr Campion,’ she said, ‘but you read of funny things happening, don’t you? Suppose he was to rise up behind one of these banks of stones by the side of the road and come out towards us.…’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said, even more violently than I had intended. ‘You’ll frighten yourself into a fit, my child. I assure you there’s some perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. When you get into “The Feathers” make them give you a hot drink and go to bed. You’ll find the mystery’s been cleared up by the morning.’

  She drew away from me. ‘Oh, you’re hard,’ she said with a return of her old manner. ‘I said you were hard. I like hard people, I do reelly.’

  Her lightning changes of mood disconcerted me, and I was glad when we pulled up outside the pub. The fine old lath and plaster front was in darkness, which was not astonishing, for it was
nearly midnight.

  ‘Which door is it?’ I inquired.

  ‘The one marked Club Room. I expect it’ll be locked.’

  I left her in the car while I tapped on the door she indicated. For a time there was no response, and I was getting restive at the delay when I heard a furtive movement on the inside. I tapped again, and this time the door was opened.

  ‘I say, you’re fearfully late,’ said the last voice I expected, and Gilbert Whippet of all people thrust a pale face out into the moonlight.

  I gaped at him, and he had the grace to seem vaguely disturbed to see me.

  ‘Oh … er … Campion,’ he said. ‘Hello! Terribly late, isn’t it?’

  He was backing into the dark pit of the doorway when I pulled myself together.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, catching him by the sleeve. ‘Here, Whippet, where are you going?’

  He did not resist me, but made no attempt to come out into the light. Moreover, I felt that once I let him go he would fade quietly into the background.

  ‘I was going to bed,’ he murmured, no doubt in reply to my question. ‘I heard you knock, so I opened the door.’

  ‘You stay and talk to me,’ I commanded. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

  In spite of myself I heard the old censorious note creeping into my tone. Whippet is so very vague that he forces one into an unusual directness.

  He did not answer me, and I repeated the question.

  ‘Here?’ he said, looking up at the pub ‘Oh yes, I’m staying here. Only for a day or two.’

  He was infuriating, and I quite forgot the girl until I heard her step behind me.

  ‘Mr Whippet,’ she began breathlessly, ‘he’s gone! The body’s gone! What shall we do?’

  Whippet turned his pale eyes towards her, and I thought I detected a warning in the glance.

  ‘Ah, Miss Rowlandson,’ he said. ‘You’ve been out? You’re late, aren’t you?’

  I was glad to see she wasn’t playing, either.

  ‘The body’s gone,’ she repeated. ‘Roly Peters’s body is gone.’

  The information seemed to sink in. For a moment he looked positively intelligent.

  ‘Lost it?’ he said. ‘Oh! … Awkward. Holds things up so.’

  His voice trailed away into silence, and he suddenly shook hands with me.

  ‘Glad to have seen you, Campion. I’ll look you up some time. Er – good night.’

  He stepped back into the doorway, and Effie followed him. With great presence of mind I put my foot in the jamb.

  ‘Look here, Whippet,’ I said, ‘if you can do anything to help us in this matter, or if you know anything, you’d better come out with it. What do you know about Peters, anyway?’

  He blinked at me.

  ‘Oh … nothing. I’m just staying here. I’ve heard the talk, of course.…’

  I caught his sleeve again just as he was disappearing.

  ‘You had one of those letters,’ I said. ‘Have you had any more?’

  ‘About the mole? Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I have, Campion. I’ve got it somewhere. I showed it to Miss Rowlandson. I say, it’s terribly awkward you losing the body. Have you looked in the river?’

  It was such an unexpected question that it irritated me unreasonably.

  ‘Why on earth in the river?’ I said. ‘D’you know anything?’

  In my excitement I must have held him a little more tightly than I had intended, for he suddenly shook himself free.

  ‘I should look in the river,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s so obvious, isn’t it?’

  He stepped back and closed the door with himself and Miss Rowlandson inside. I still had my foot there, however, and he opened it again. He seemed embarrassed.

  ‘It’s fearfully late,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, Campion. I’ll look you up tomorrow, if I may, but there’s no point in your doing anything at all until you’ve found the body, is there?’

  I hesitated. There was a great deal in what Whippet said. I was itching to get back, and yet there was evidently much he could explain. What on earth was he doing there with Effie Rowlandson, for one thing?

  In that moment of hesitation I was lost. He moved forward, and as I stepped backward involuntarily the door was gently, almost politely, closed in my face.

  I cursed him, but decided he could wait. I hurried back to the car and turned her. As I raced down to the Police Station I tried to reconcile Whippet’s reappearance with the whole mysterious business.

  I covered the half mile in something under a minute, and pulled up outside Pussey’s cottage at the same moment that another car arrived from the opposite direction. As I climbed out I recognized Leo’s respectable Humber. Pepper Junior was driving, and Leo hailed me from the tonneau.

  ‘Is that you, Campion? Most extraordinary business! Pussey told me over the phone.’

  I went up to the car and opened the door.

  ‘Are you coming, sir?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, my boy, yes. Should have been here before, but I stopped to pick up Bathwick here. Seems to have had a little accident on the way home from our place tonight.’

  He put up his hand and turned on the light as he spoke, and I stared down into the pale, embarrassed face of the Reverend Smedley Philip Bathwick, who smiled at me with uncharacteristic friendliness. He was wringing wet. His dinner-jacket clung to him, and his dog-collar was a sodden rag.

  ‘Been in the river, he tells me,’ said Leo.

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘And a Very Good Day to You, Sir’

  ‘THE RIVER?’ I echoed, Whippet’s idiotic remark returning to me. ‘Really?’

  Bathwick giggled. It was a purely nervous sound, but Leo scowled at him.

  ‘Well, hardly,’ he said. ‘I was taking a short cut home across the saltings and I stumbled into one of the dykes. I’d come out without my torch. I made my way back to the road, and Sir Leo very kindly picked me up and gave me a lift.’

  It was a fantastic story in view of the moonlight, which was so bright that colours were almost distinguishable, and I thought Leo must notice it. He had a one-track mind, however. His one desire was to get back to the scene of the disappearance.

  ‘Never mind, never mind. Soon get you home now,’ he said. ‘Pepper’ll take you along. Make yourself a hot toddy. Wrap yourself in a blanket and you’ll come to no harm.’

  ‘Er – thank you, thank you very much,’ said Bathwick. ‘I should like nothing better. I feel I must express –’

  We heard no more, for Pepper Junior, who doubtless shared his employer’s anxiety to get to the scene of the excitement in the shortest possible time, let in the clutch and Bathwick was whisked away.

  I was sorry to lose him. His astonishing friendliness towards me was not the least fishy circumstance of his brief appearance.

  ‘Where did you find him?’ I asked Leo.

  ‘On the lower road. Nearly ran him down. He’s all right – just a duckin’.’ Leo was fighting with the catch of the police-station gate as he spoke and appeared profoundly uninterested.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘But he left Highwaters at about a quarter to ten. I thought Kingston was going to run him home?’

  ‘So he did, so he did,’ said Leo, sighing with relief as we got the wicket open. ‘Kingston put him down at the White Barn corner, and he said he’d strike his way home across the marshes. Can’t be more than five hundred yards. But the silly feller stumbled into a dyke, lost his nerve, and made his way back to the road. Perfectly simple, Campion. No mystery there. Come on, my boy, come on. We’re wastin’ time.’

  ‘But it’s now midnight,’ I objected. ‘It couldn’t have taken him a couple of hours to scramble out of a dyke.’

  ‘Might have done,’ said Leo irritably. ‘Backboneless feller. Anyway, we can’t bother about him now. Got somethin’ serious to think about. I don’t like monkey-business with a corpse. It’s not a bit like my district. It’s indecent. I tell you I feel it, Campion. Ah, here’s Pussey. Anythin’ to
report, my man?’

  Pussey and Lugg came up together. I could see their faces quite plainly, and I wondered how Bathwick could possibly have avoided seeing a rabbit-hole, much less a dyke.

  Pussey, I saw at once, was well over his first superstitious alarm. At the moment he was less mystified than shocked.

  ‘That’s a proper nasty thing, sir,’ he said, ‘so that is, now.’

  He led us into the shed and, with Lugg remaining mercifully silent in the background, gave us a fairly concise account of his investigations.

  ‘All these windows were bolted on the inside, sir, the same as you see them now, and the door was locked. At a quarter to eleven I went round the station just to see everything was all right for the night, and the body was here then. After that I went in to the front of the house, and I stayed there for some little time until I went up to my bedroom. I was just thinking about bed when Mr Campion here arrived with the young lady and Mr Lugg, and we come round here and made the discovery, sir.’

  He paused, took a deep breath, and Leo spluttered.

  ‘Did the key leave your possession?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Leo’s natural reaction to the story of a miracle is to take it as read that someone is lying. I could hear him boiling quietly at my side.

  ‘Pussey, I’ve always found you a very efficient officer,’ he began with dangerous calm, ‘but you’re askin’ me to believe in a fairy story. If the body didn’t go through the windows it must have gone through the door, and if you had the only key –’

  Pussey coughed. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he began, ‘but Mr Lugg and me we made a kind of discovery, like. This building was put up by Mr Henry Royle, the builder in the Street, and Mr Lugg and me we noticed that several other buildings in this yard, sir, which were put up at the same time, all have the same locks, like.’

  Leo’s rage subsided and he became interested.

  ‘Any of the other keys here missin’?’

  ‘No, sir; but as Mr Royle has done a lot of work hereabouts lately, it doesn’t seem unlikely –?’

  He broke off on the question.