The Case of the Late Pig

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.

Leo swore, and it seemed to relieve him.

'Oh, well, we shan't get any help there,' he rumbled. 'Wonder you trouble to lock the place at all, Pussey. Damned inefficient. Typical of the whole county,' he added to me under his breath.

But Pussey had more to offer. With considerable pride he led us over the rough grass by the side of the shed to the tarred fence which marked the boundary line of police property. Three boards had been kicked down and there was a clear way into the narrow lane beyond.

'That's new,' he said. 'That's been done tonight.'

A cursory search of the lane revealed nothing. The ground was hard and the surface was baked mud interspersed with tufts of grass. It was Pussey who put the general thought into words.

'Whoever moved him must'a done it between quarter to eleven and twenty-five minutes past. Seems very likely that was done with a car, or a cart. He was a heavy fellow. If you'll excuse me, sir, I think the best thing is for us to wait till the morning and then question all those as live nearby. Seems like we can't do nothing while that's dark.'

In the end we left it at that. Pepper Junior collected Leo and I sent Lugg back with the Lagonda. Pussey went to bed and I walked off down the grassy lane behind the shed. The moon was sinking and already there were faint streaks of light in the east. It was colder and I was in the mood to walk home.

The lane went on for some distance between high hedges. Pussey had given me clear directions how to get on to the road again, and I sauntered on, my mind on the business.

Leo and Pussey, I saw, were outraged. The murder had shaken them up, but this apparently wanton disturbance of the dead shocked them both deeply.

As I thought of it, it seemed to me that this element was perhaps the most enlightening thing I had noticed so far, because, although I knew I had no proof of it, it seemed to me that it constituted a complete let-out for Leo's particular band of friends who had gathered round Poppy in her trouble. Whereas any one of them might quite easily have staged the slightly ludicrous accident which had killed Pig, I could not see any of them dragging his body about afterwards in this extraordinarily pointless fashion.

I was considering those who were left, and Bathwick was figuring largely in my mind, when I turned out of the lane on to a grass field which rose up to form a considerable hill, circular against the skyline. I knew I had to skirt this field and pass through another before I came to the road, if I was to avoid an unnecessary couple of miles.

It was almost dark at the bottom of the hill, and as I plodded on, lost in my thoughts, there came to me suddenly over the brow of the hill a sound at once so human and so terrifying that I felt the hair on my scalp rising.

It was Pig's cough.

The night was very still, and I heard the rattle in the larynx, the whoop, and even the puff at the end of it.

For a moment I stood still, a prey to all the ridiculous fears of childhood. Then I set off up the hill at a double. The wind whistled in my ears and my heart was thumping.

Suddenly, as I reached the brow, I saw something silhouetted against the grey sky. This was so unexpected that I paused to gape at it. It was a tripod with something else which I at first took to be a small machine-gun, and which turned out to be an old-fashioned telescope mounted upon it.

I approached this cautiously, and had almost reached it when a figure rose up out of the earth beside it and stood waiting for me. He was against what light there was and I could only see his small silhouette. I stopped, and for want of something better, said what must have been the silliest thing in the world in the circumstances. I said 'Good-day.'

'And a very good day to you, sir,' answered one of the most unpleasant voices I have ever heard in all my life.

He came towards me and I recognized him with relief by his peculiar mincing walk.

'Perhaps I have the advantage of you, sir,' he began. 'You are Mr Campion?'

'Yes,' I said. 'And you're Mr Hayhoe.'

He laughed, a little affected sound..

'It will serve,' he murmured. 'It will serve. I was looking forward to an interview with you today, sir. I was wondering how I could manage it with a certain amount of privacy. This is a most unexpected pleasure. I didn't expect to find a man of your age wandering about in the dawn. Most young men nowadays prefer to spend the best part of their day in their beds.'

'You're up early yourself,' I said, glancing at the telescope. 'Waiting to see the sunrise?'

'Yes,' he said, and laughed again. 'That and other things.'

It was a mad conversation up there on the hill at two o'clock in the morning, and it went through my mind that he must be one of those fashionable nature-lovers who rush round the country identifying birds. He soon disabused me of that idea, however.

'I take it you are making investigations concerning the death of that unfortunate fellow Harris?' he said. 'Now, Mr Campion, I can be very useful to you. I wish to make you a proposition. For a reasonable sum, the amount to be settled between us, I will undertake to give you certain very interesting information, information which it would take you a very long time to collect alone and which should lead you to a very successful conclusion of the case. Your professional reputation will be enhanced, and I shall, of course, take none of the kudos. Now, suppose we come to terms....'

I am afraid I laughed at him. This is the kind of offer which I have had so often. I thought of the cough I had heard.

'Harris was a relation of yours, I suppose?' I observed.

He stiffened a little and shrugged his shoulders.

'A nephew,' he said, 'and not a very dutiful one. He was quite a wealthy young man, you see, and I — well as you can imagine, I am not the sort of man who normally spends his holidays in a wretched workman's hovel or his evenings trapesing about the barren countryside.'

He was rather a terrible old man, but I was glad I had cleared up the mystery of the cough.

It was then that I remembered something. After all, so far, I myself was the only person to connect Roly Peters with Oswald Harris, with the possible exception of Effie Rowlandson, who merely had her suspicions.

'Let me see,' I murmured, 'that was your nephew Rowland Peters, wasn't it?'

To my intense regret he brushed the inference aside.

'I have several nephews, Mr Campion, or, rather, I had,' he said with spurious dignity. 'I hate to press the point, but I regard this as a business interview. Terms first, if you please. Shall we say five hundred guineas for a complete and private explanation of the whole business? Or, of course, I might split up the lots, as it were.'

While he was rambling on I was thinking, and at this point I had an inspiration.

'Mr Hayhoe,' I said, 'what about the mole?'

A little shrill sound escaped him, but he bit it off instantly.

'Oh!' he said, and there was cautiousness and respect in his voice, 'you know about the mole do you?'