The Case of the Late Pig

CHAPTER I. THE INVITATIONS TO THE FUNERAL WERE INFORMAL

The main thing to remember in autobiography, I have always thought, is not to let any damned modesty creep in to spoil the story. This adventure is mine, Albert Campion's, and I am fairly certain that I was pretty nearly brilliant in it in spite of the fact that I so nearly got myself and old Lugg killed that I hear a harp quintet whenever I consider it.

It begins with me eating in bed.

Lord Powne's valet took lessons in elocution and since then has read The Times to His Lordship while His Lordship eats his unattractive nut-and-milk breakfast.

Lugg, who in spite of magnificent qualities has elements of the Oaf about him, met His Lordship's valet in the Mayfair mews pub where they cater for gentlemen in the service of gentlemen and was instantly inspired to imitation. Lugg has not taken lessons in elocution, at least not since he left Borstal in the reign of Edward the Seventh. When he came into my service he was a parole man with a stupendous record of misplaced bravery and ingenuity. Now he reads The Times to me when I eat, whether I like it or not.

Since his taste does not run towards the literary in journalism he reads to me the only columns in that paper which do appeal to him. He reads the Deaths.

'Peters...' he read, heaving his shirt-sleeved bulk between me and the light. 'Know anyone called Peters, cock?'

I was reading a letter which had interested me particularly because it was both flowery and unsigned and did not hear him, so presently he laid down the paper with gentle exasperation.

'Answer me, can't you?' he said plaintively. 'What's the good of me trying to give this place a bit of tone if you don't back me up? Mr Turke says 'Is Lordship is most attentive during the readings. He chews everything 'e eats forty times before 'e swallers and keeps 'is mind on everything that's being read to 'im.'

'So I should think,' I said absently. I was taken by the letter. It was not the ordinary anonymous filth by any means.

Lugg reads horribly and with effect.

The name attracted me.

'Peters?' I said, looking up from the letter with interest. 'R. I. Peters.... Pig Peters. Is it in there?'

'Oh, my gawd!' Lugg threw down the paper in disgust. 'You're a philistine, that's what you are, a ruddy phylis. After a perishing short illness, I keep tellin' you. Know 'im?'

'No,' I said cautiously. 'Not exactly. Not now.'

Lugg's great white moon of a face took on an ignoble expression.

'I get you, Bert,' he said smugly, tucking his chins into his collarless neck. 'Not quite our class.'

Although I realize that he is not to be altered, there are things I dare not pass.

'Not at all,' I said with dignity. 'And don't call me "Bert".'

'All right.' He was magnanimous. 'Since you've asked me, cock, I won't. Mr Albert Campion to the world: Mr Albert to me. What about this bloke Peters we was discussin'?'

'We were boys together,' I said. 'Sweet, downy, blue-eyed little fellows at Botolph's Abbey. Pig Peters took three square inches of skin off my chest with a rusty penknife to show I was his branded slave. He made me weep till I was sick and I kicked him in the belly, whereupon he held me over an unlighted gas jet until I passed out.'

Lugg was shocked.

'There was no doings like that at our college,' he said virtuously.

'That's the evil of State control,' I said gently, not anxious to appear unkind. 'I haven't seen Peters since the day I went into the sicker with CO poisoning, but I promised him then I'd go to his funeral.'

He was interested at once.

'I'll get out your black suit,' he said obligingly. 'I like a funeral — when it's someone you know.'

I was not really listening to him. I had returned to the letter.

It was typewritten on ordinary thin quarto, as are all these things, but it was not ill-spelt and the punctuation was meticulous, which was an unusual feature in my experience. I showed it to Lugg.

He read it through laboriously and delivered himself of his judgement with engaging finality.

'Bit out of the Prayer Book,' he said. 'I remember learning it when I was a nipper.'

'Don't be an ass,' I said mildly, but he coloured and his little black eyes sank into my head.

'Call me a liar,' he said truculently. 'Go on, call me a liar and then I'll do a bit of talking.'

I know him in these moods and I realized from experience that it was impossible to shake him in a theory of this sort.

'All right,' I said. 'What does it mean?'

'Nothing,' he said with equal conviction.

I tried another tack.

'What's the machine?'

He was helpful at once.

'A Royal portable, new or newish, no peculiarities to speak of. Even the E is as fresh as that bit of 'addock you've left. Paper's the ordinary Plantag. — they sell reams of it everywhere. Let's see the envelope. London, W.C.1,' he continued after a pause. 'That's the old central stamp. Clear, isn't it? The address is from the telephone book. Chuck it in the fire.'

I still held the letter. Taken in conjunction with the announcement in The Times it had, it seemed to me, definite points of interest. Lugg sniffed at me.

'Blokes like you who are always getting theirselves talked about are bound to get anonymous letters,' he observed, allowing the critical note in his tone to become apparent. 'While you remained strictly amateur you was fairly private, but now you keep runnin' round with the busies, sticking your nose into every bit of blood there is about, and you're gettin' talked of. We'll 'ave women sittin' on the stairs waitin' for you to sign their names on piller-cases so they can embroider it if you go on the way you are going. Why can't you take a quiet couple o' rooms in a good neighbour'ood and play poker while you wait for your titled relative to die? That's what a gentleman would do.'

'If you were female and could cook I'd marry you,' I said vulgarly. 'You nag like a stage wife.'

That silenced him. He got up and waddled out of the room, the embodiment of dignified disgust.

I read the letter through again after I had eaten and it sounded just as light-headed. Then I read The Times announcement.

R. I. Peters.... It was Pig all right. The age fitted in. I remembered him booting us to persuade us to call him 'Rip'. I thought of us as we were then, Guffy Randall and I and Lofty and two or three others. I was a neat little squirt with sleek white hair and goggles; Guffy was a tough for his age, which was ten and a quarter; and Lofty, who is now holding down his seat in the Peers with a passionate determination more creditable than necessary, was a cross between a small tapir and a more ordinary porker.

Pig Peters was a major evil in our lives at that time. He ranked with Injustice, The Devil, and Latin Prose. When Pig Peters fed the junior study fire with my collection of skeleton leaves I earnestly wished him dead, and, remembering the incident that morning at breakfast, I was mildly surprised to find that I still did.

Apparently he was, too, according to The Times, and the discovery cheered me up. At twelve he was obese, red, and disgusting, with sandy lashes, and at thirty-seven I had no doubt he had been the same.

Meanwhile there was the sound of heavy breathing in the outer room and Lugg put his head round the door.

'Cock,' he said in a tone of diffident friendliness which showed that all was forgiven, 'I've had a squint at the map. See where Tethering is? Two miles west of Kepesake. Going down?'

I suppose it was that which decided me. At Highwaters, in the parish of Kepesake, there lives Colonel Sir Leo Pursuivant, Chief Constable of the county and an extremely nice old boy. He has a daughter, Janet Pursuivant, whom I like still in spite of everything.

'All right,' I said. 'We'll drop in at Highwaters on our way back.'

Lugg was in complete agreement. They had a nice piece of home-cured last time he was there, he said.

We went down in state. Lugg wore his flattest bowler, which makes him look like a thug disguised as a plain-clothes man, and I was remarkably neat myself.

Tethering was hardly en fête. If you consider three square miles of osier swamp surrounding a ploughed hill on which five cottages, a largish house and an ancient church crowd on each other's toes in order to keep out of a river's uncertain bed you have Tethering pretty accurately in your mind.

The churchyard is overgrown and pathetic and when we saw it in late winter it was a sodden mass of dead cow-parsley. It was difficult not to feel sorry for Pig. He always had grand ideas, I remember, but there was nothing of pomp in his obsequies.

We arrived late — it is eighty miles from Town — and I felt a trifle loutish as I pushed open the mouldering lychgate and, followed by Lugg, stumbled over the ragged grass towards the little group by the grave.

The parson was old and I suspected that he had come on the bicycle I had seen outside the gate, for the skirts of his cassock were muddy.

The sexton was in corduroys and the bearers in dungarees.

The other members of the group I did not notice until afterwards. A funeral is an impressive business even among the marble angels and broken columns of civilization. Here, out of the world in the rain-soaked silence of a forgotten hillside, it was both grim and sad.

As we stood there in the light shower the letter I had received that morning faded out of my mind. Peters had been an ordinary unlovable sort of twirp, I supposed, and he was being buried in an ordinary unloved way. There was really nothing curious about it.

As the parson breathed the last words of the service, however, an odd thing happened. It startled me so much that I stepped back on Lugg and almost upset him.

Even at twelve and a half Pigg had had several revolting personal habits and one of them was a particularly vicious way of clearing his throat. It was a sort of hoarse rasping noise in the larynx, followed by a subdued whoop and a puff. I cannot describe it any more clearly but it was a distinctive sort of row and one I never heard made by anyone else. I had completely forgotten it, but just as we were turning away from the yawning grave into which the coffin had been lowered I heard it distinctly after what must have been twenty years. It brought Pig back to my mind with a vividness which was unnerving and I gaped round at the rest of us with my scalp rising.

Apart from the bearers, the parson, the sexton, Lugg, and myself there were only four other people present and they all looked completely innocent.

There was a pleasant solid-looking person on my left and a girl in rather flashy black beyond him. She was more sulky than tearful and appeared to be alone. She caught my eye and smiled at me as I glanced at her and I looked on past her at the old man in the topper who stood in a conventional attitude of grief which was rather horrible because it was so unconvincing. I don't know when I took such a dislike to a fellow. He had little grey curly moustaches which glittered in the rain.

My attention was distracted from him almost at once by the discovery that the fourth unaccountable was Gilbert Whippet. He had been standing at my elbow for ten minutes and I had not seen him, which was typical of him.

Whippet was my junior at Botolph's Abbey and he followed me to the same school. I had not seen him for twelve or fourteen years, but, save that he had grown, of course, he was unchanged.

It is about as easy to describe Whippet as it is to describe water or a sound in the night. Vagueness is not so much his characteristic as his entity. I don't know what he looks like, except that presumably he has a face, since it would be an omission that I should have been certain to observe. He had on some sort of grey-brown coat which merged with the dead cow-parsley and he looked at me with that vacancy which is yet recognition.

'Whippet!' I said. 'What are you doing here?'

He did not answer and unconsciously I raised my hand to clip him. He never did answer until he was clipped and the force of habit was too much for me. Fortunately I restrained myself in time, recollecting that the years which had elapsed between our meeting had presumably given him ordinary rights of citizenship. All the same I felt unreasonably angry with him and I spoke sharply.

'Whippet, why did you come to Pig's funeral?' I said.

He blinked at me and I was aware of round pale grey eyes.

'I — er — was invited, I think,' he said in the husky diffident voice I remembered so well and which conveyed that he was not at all sure what he was talking about. 'I — I — had one this — morning, don't you know...'

He fumbled in his coat and produced a sheet of paper. Before I read it I knew what it was. Its fellow was in my pocket.

'Odd,' said Whippet, 'about the mole, you know. Informal invitation. I — er — I came.'

His voice trailed away, as I knew it would, and he wandered off, not rudely but carelessly, as though there was nothing to keep him in place. He left the note in my hand by mistake, I was convinced.

I came out of the churchyard at the end of the straggling procession. As we emerged into the lane the stolid, pleasant-looking person I had noticed glanced at me with inquiry in his eyes and I went over to him. The question in my mind was not an easy one and I was feeling around for some fairly inoffensive way of putting it when he helped me out.

'A sad business,' he said. 'Quite young. Did you know him well?'

'I don't know,' I said, looking like an idiot, while he stared me, his eyes twinkling.

He was a big chap, just over forty, with a square capable face.

'I mean,' I said, 'I was at school with an R. I. Peters and when I saw The Times this morning I realized I was coming down this way and I thought I might look in, don't you know.'

He remained smiling kindly at me as if he thought I was mental and I floundered on.

'When I got here I felt I couldn't have come to the right — I mean I felt it must be some other Peters,' I said.

'He was a big heavy man,' he observed thoughtfully. 'Deep-set eyes, too fat, light lashes, thirty-seven years old, went to a prep, school at Sheepsgate and then on to Totham.'

I was shocked. 'Yes,' I said. That's the man I knew.'

He nodded gloomily. 'A sad business,' he repeated. 'He came to me after an appendix operation. Shouldn't have had it: heart wouldn't stand it. Picked up a touch of pneumonia on the way down and — ' he shrugged his shoulders, ' — couldn't save him, poor chap. None of his people here.'

I was silent. There was very little to say.

'That's my place,' he remarked suddenly, nodding towards the one big house. 'I take a few convalescents. Never had a death there before. I'm in practice here.'

I could sympathize with him and I did. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if Peters had let him in for a spot of cash. He had not hinted at it but I guessed there was some such matter in his thoughts. However, I refrained; there seemed no point in it.

We stood there chatting aimlessly for some moments, as one does on these occasions, and then I went back to Town. I did not call in at Highwaters after all, much to Lugg's disgust. It was not that I did not want to see Leo or Janet, but I was inexplicably rattled by Pig's funeral and by the discovery that it actually was Pig's. It had been a melancholy little ceremony which had left a sort of 'half heard' echo in my ears.

The two letters were identical. I compared them when I got in. I supposed Whippet had seen The Times as I had. Still it was queer he should have put two and two together. And there had been that extraordinary cough and the revolting old fellow in the topper, not to mention the sly-eyed girl.

The worst thing about it was that the incident had recalled Pig to my mind. I turned up some old football groups and had a good look at him. He had a distinctive face. One could see even then what he was going to turn into.

I tried to put him out of my head. After all, I had nothing to get excited about. He was dead. I shouldn't see him again.

All this happened in January. By June I had forgotten the fellow. I had just come in from a session with Stanislaus Oates at the Yard, where we had been congratulating each other over the evidence in the Kingford shooting business which had just flowered into a choice bloom for the Judge's bouquet, when Janet rang up.

I had never known her hysterical before and it surprised me a little to hear her twittering away on the phone like a nest of sparrows.

'It's too filthy,' she said. 'Leo says you're to come at once. No, my dear, I can't say it over the phone, but Leo is afraid it's — Listen, Albert, it's M for mother, U for unicorn, R for rabbit, D for darling, E for — for egg, R for — '

'All right,' I said, 'I'll come.'

Leo was standing on the steps of Highwaters when Lugg and I drove up. The great white pillars of the house, which was built by an architect who had seen the B.M. and never forgotten it, rose up behind him. He looked magnificent in his ancient shootin' suit and green tweed flowerpot hat — a fine specimen for anybody's album.

He came steadily down the steps and grasped my hand.

'My dear boy,' he said, 'not a word ... not a word.' He climbed in beside me and waved a hand towards the village. 'Police station,' he said. 'First thing.'

I've known Leo for some years and I know that the singleness of purpose which is the chief characteristic in a delightful personality is not to be diverted by anything less than a covey of Mad Mullahs. Leo had one thing in his mind and one thing only. He had been planning his campaign ever since he had heard that I was on my way, and, since I was part of that campaign, my only hope was to comply.

He would not open his mouth save to utter road directions until we stood together on the threshold of the shed behind the police station. First he dismissed the excited bobbies in charge and then paused and took me firmly by the lapel.

'Now, my boy,' he said, 'I want your opinion because I trust you. I haven't put a thought in your mind, I haven't told you a particle of the circumstances, I haven't influenced you in any way, have I?'

'No, sir,' I said truthfully.

He seemed satisfied, I thought, because he grunted.

'Good,' he said. 'Now, come in here.'

He led me into a room, bare save for the trestle table in the centre, and drew back the sheet from the face of the thing that lay upon it.

'Now,' he said triumphantly, 'now, Campion, what d'you think of this?'

I said nothing at all. Lying on the table was the body of Pig Peters, Pig Peters unmistakable as Leo himself, and I knew without touching his limp, podgy hand that he could not have been dead more than twelve hours at the outside.

Yet in January ... and this was June.