The Case of the Late Pig

CHAPTER 15. LUGG GIVES NOTICE

For two days things hung fire; that is to say, for two days we were left in peace — Leo to struggle up from beneath the blow, and Pussey and I to collect what useful scraps of information we could.

The village was bright-eyed and uncommunicative. People went to bed early behind locked doors, and sightseers who came to gape at the corner of the field where the wretched Hayhoe had been found were sent hastily on their way by outraged country folk.

Janet developed a strained expression, Poppy took to her bed, and even Whippet was more solicitous than I had supposed possible. He drifted up to see me at odd hours of the day and sat looking at me in inquiring silence until I packed him off to talk to Janet, who was kind enough to put up with him.

Kingston, of course, was very much in the foreground, and I even found him useful. He was an inveterate gossip, and the laws of libel and slander had no terrors for him.

The first piece of concrete information came from Mr Skinn, the solicitor. The Peters who had died in the Tethering nursing home, it transpired, had not been a poor man, and had also had the perspicacity to insure himself for twenty thousand pounds with the Mutual Ordered Life Endowment. His intention, so Mr Skinn said, had been to borrow upon this policy in order to further some business scheme which he had on hand. As it happened, it had turned out very well indeed for brother Harris.

Concerning Harris we found out very little. He had rented a flat in Knightsbridge under the name of Peters, but he had never been a wealthy man. Our difficulties were enhanced by the confusion in the actual identities of the two men: which was Harris and which was Peters?

In the end I went to Leo. He was sitting in his gun-room, staring mournfully at his magnificent collection of sporting trophies, a mass of papers lying disregarded on his desk.

'We've got ten days, my dear feller,' he said at last. 'The two inquests have been adjourned to give us a breathing space, don't y'know, but that means we've got to get results. There's a lot of talk already. I don't mind telling you, my boy, the feeling round about is that I ought to have called in Scotland Yard at the first. It seemed simple at the beginning, but now, 'pon my soul, I don't know where things are leading. Every morning I wake up wondering what the day's going to bring forth. We've got a killer at large in the village. God knows where he's going to strike next.'

He paused, and when I did not speak he looked at me sharply.

'I've known you since you were a child,' he said, 'and I know there's somethin' on your mind. If you know anythin' and you're waitin' for proof, don't hesitate to tell me your suspicions. I think I could bear anythin' rather than this uncertainty. Can you make any sense out of this puzzle?'

After working with Leo I knew that he was the most eminently trustworthy man in the world, but I hesitated to commit myself just then. It was too dangerous.

'Look here, Leo,' I said, 'I know how the first murder was done, and I think I know who did it, but at this stage proof is absolutely impossible, and without proof we can do nothing. Give me a day or two longer.'

He was inclined to be annoyed at first, and I thought he was going to exercise his authority and force my confidence, but he quietened down at last, and I made my next request.

'Can you get a Home Office order for the exhumation of R. I. Peters, who was buried in the Tethering churchyard last January?'

He looked very grave. 'I could try,' he said at last. 'But, my dear fellow, identification after all this time...' He grimaced and threw out his hands.

'I don't know,' I persisted. 'There are certain circumstances which make rather a lot of difference in that sort of thing.'

He frowned at me. 'Antimony in the body?' he suggested.

'Not necessarily,' I said. 'It's a question of the soil, mostly.' In the end I got my own way, and afterwards I went out to find Kingston.

He was at home, I discovered by telephone, and Lugg and I went up. He received us in his uncomfortable consulting-room with frank delight.

'Lord! you must be having an off day if you come up and see me,' he said reproachfully. 'Can I get you a drink?'

'No,' I said. 'Not now. This is hardly a social call. I want a bit of help.'

His round pink face flushed with pleasure.

'Really?' he said. 'That's very flattering. I had rather begun to feel that I was in the way down there, don't you know. As a matter of fact, I've been conducting a little private inquiry on my own. That's a most mysterious fellow staying down at "The Feathers". Do you know anything about him?'

'Not much,' I said truthfully. 'I knew him a long while ago — we were at school together, as a matter of fact — but I haven't seen him much since.'

'Ah...!' He wagged his head mysteriously. 'Mrs Thatcher says he used to come to see Hayhoe in the early part of the week. Did you know that?'

I hadn't, of course, and I thanked him.

'I'll look into it,' I said. 'Meanwhile, you wouldn't like to take me round your churchyard?'

He was only too anxious, and we left the great barrack of a house, which seemed servantless and neglected. He seemed conscious of its deficiencies, and explained in a shame-faced fashion.

'I manage with a man from the village when I haven't any patients,' he said. 'He's a good fellow, a sort of general odd job man, the son of the local builder, for whom he works when he's not being sexton or my charwoman. When I do get a patient, of course, I have to import a nurse and housekeeper.'

We had wandered on ahead of Lugg, and he turned and grimaced at me.

'It's not much of a practice,' he said, 'otherwise, I suppose, I shouldn't find time for things to be so terribly dull.'

As we passed the Lagonda, which was practically new, he looked at it a little wistfully, and I was sorry for him. There was something half childish in his unspoken envy. He had a genius for wasting time, and we spent some moments looking at it. He admired the engine, the gadgets, and the polish on the bodywork, and quite won Lugg's heart.

In fact we all got on very well together and, being in the mood for a confidant at the time, I took the risk and transferred the honour which I had been reserving for Whippet to himself. We talked about the soil of the churchyard. He was interesting and helpful.

'Yes,' he said, 'it's dry and it's hard, or there's some sort of preservative in it, I think, because I know old Witton, the grave-digger, dragged me out one morning to see a most extraordinary thing. He had opened a three-year-old grave to put in a relation of the dead woman, and somehow or other the coffin lid had become dislodged, and yet there was the body practically in a perfect state of preservation. How did you guess?'

'It's the cow-parsley,' I said. 'You often find it growing in soil like that.'

We went on talking about the soil for some time, and he suddenly saw the drift of my questioning.

'An exhumation?' he said. 'Really? I say! That'll be rather — '

He stopped, suppressing the word 'jolly', I felt sure.

' — exciting,' he added, after a pause. 'I've never been present at an exhumation. Nothing so startling ever happens down here.'

'I can't promise,' I protested. 'Nothing's fixed, and for heaven's sake shut up about it. The one thing that's really dangerous at this stage is gossip.'

'It's a question of identification, I suppose?' he said eagerly. 'I say, Campion, you've got a very good chance. What a miracle he chose this particular place to die in! In ninety-nine cemeteries out of a hundred, you know....'

'Yes, but be quiet,' I said. 'Don't talk about it, for heaven's sake.'

'I won't,' he promised. 'My dear old man, you can rely on me. Besides, I don't see a soul to talk to.'

We got away from him eventually, having discovered what we wanted to know, and he stood watching us until we disappeared down the hill. Lugg sighed.

'Lonely life,' he observed. 'When you see a bloke like that it makes you feel you'd like to take him on a pub-crawl, don't it?'

'Does it?' I said.

He frowned. 'You're getting so lah-di-dah and don't-speak-to-me-I'm-clever, you make me tired,' he complained. 'If I was in your position I wouldn't waste me time muckin' round with corpses. I'd ask a fellow like that up to Town for a week and show 'im the sights.'

'My God,' I said, 'I believe you would.'

He chose to be offended, and we drove home in silence.

The following day, which was the third since Hayhoe had been found, I woke up with a sensation that was half exhilaration and half apprehension. I had a premonition that things were going to move, although had I known in what direction I don't think I should have dared to go on.

It began with Professor Farringdon's report. He came over while I was at the station with Pussey, and made it verbally.

'Aye, it was chloral hydrate,' he said, 'as I told you. It was verra deeficult to decide just how much the man had taken before his death. So there is no way of knowing, you see, whether when yon stone crashed down on his head he was already dead, or if he was merely under the influence of the drug.'

Pussey and I both knew the peculiar properties of chloral hydrate; it is a very favourite dope among con-men, but we let him tell us all over again.

'It'd make him very sleepy, you understand. That's why it's so diabolically useful. If ye came upon a man suffering from a slight attack of this poison, ye'd simply think he was in a deep natural sleep.'

Pussey looked at me. 'All the time he was sitting in that chair, I reckon he was just waiting for the thing to fall upon him, helpless, unable to move. Ah! that's a terrible thing, Mr Campion.'

The Professor went on to dilate upon the fate of Mr Hayhoe.

'Yon was an interesting wound,' he said. 'Remarkably lucky, or delivered by someone who was no fool. It caught him just over the collar-bone, and went straight down into his neck. He must have died at once.'

He went on to describe the knife that had been used, and even drew it for us, or at least he drew the blade. Pussey didn't know what to make of it all, but it fitted in to my theory all right.

I left them together and went on to find Whippet. Neither he nor Effie Rowlandson were at The Feathers when I arrived, but presently he came up alone in his little A.C.

'I've been house-hunting,' he said. 'There's a little villa down the road that interests me. It's empty. I like empty houses. Do you? Whenever I'm in a district I go and look at empty houses.'

I let him ramble on for some time, and when I thought he must have tired of the subject I put my question to him suddenly. If I hoped to surprise him I was disappointed.

'Hayhoe?' he said. 'Oh yes. Oh yes, Campion, I had several conversations with him. Not a nice fellow; he tried to touch me.'

'Very likely,' I said. 'But what did you talk to him about?'

Whippet raised his head, and I looked into his vague pale blue eyes.

'Natural history I think, mostly,' he said. 'Flora and fauna, you know.'

At that moment another great wedge of the jigsaw slipped into place.

'Some are born blind,' I said bitterly. 'Some achieve blindness. And some have blindness thrust upon them. Moles come into the first category, don't they?'

He said nothing, but remained quite still, looking out of the window.

I went back to Highwaters, and there the thing I had not foreseen, the thing for which I shall never forgive myself, awaited me.

Lugg had gone.

His suitcase, containing his few travelling things, had vanished, and on my dressing-table, weighted down by an ash-tray, was a crisp new pound note.