The Case of the Late Pig (7 page)

‘The young woman informed me that she was a great friend of yours, sir, which was why she took the liberty of calling on you so late.’ He spoke sadly, intimating that the rebuke hurt him as much as it did me. He opened the breakfast-room door.

‘Yoo-hoo!’ said someone inside.

Pepper withdrew and Miss Effie Rowlandson rose to meet me.

‘O-oh!’ she said, glancing up at me under fluttering lashes, ‘you’re not really, truly cross, are you?’

I am afraid I looked at her blankly. She was
petite
, blonde, and girlish, with starry eyes and the teeth of toothpaste advertisements. Her costume was entirely black save for a long white quill in her hat, and the general effect lay somewhere between Hamlet and Aladdin.

‘O-oh, you don’t remember me,’ she said. ‘O-oh, how awful of me to have come! I made sure you’d remember me. I am a silly little fool, aren’t I?’

She conveyed that I was a bit of a brute, but that she did not blame me, and life was like that.

‘Perhaps you’ve got hold of the wrong man?’ I suggested helpfully.

‘O-oh no …’ Again her lashes fluttered at me. ‘I
remember
you – at the funeral, you know.’ She lowered her voice modestly on the last words.

Suddenly she came back to me with a rush. She was the girl at Peters’s funeral. Why I should have forgotten her and remembered the old man, I do not know, save that I recollect feeling that she was not the right person to stare at.

‘Ah, yes,’ I said slowly. ‘I do remember now.’

She clapped her hands and squealed delightedly.

‘I knew you would. Don’t ask me why, but I just knew it. I’m like that sometimes. I just know things.’

At this point the conversation came to an abrupt dead-lock. I was not at my best, and she stood looking at me, a surprisingly shrewd expression in her light grey eyes.

‘I knew you’d help me,’ she added at last.

I was more than ever convinced that I was not her man, and was debating how to put it when she made a surprising statement.

‘He trampled on me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know when I’ve been so mistaken in a man. Still, a girl does make mistakes, doesn’t she, Mr Campion? I see I made a mistake in saying I was such an old friend of yours when we’d only met once – or really only just looked at each other. I know that now. I wouldn’t do it again.’

‘Miss Rowlandson,’ I said, ‘why have you come? I – er – I have a right to know,’ I added stalwartly, trying to keep in the picture.

She peered at me. ‘O-oh, you’re
hard
, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘All men are hard, aren’t they? They’re not all like him, though. O-oh, he was hard! Still,’ she added, with a wholly unconvincing attempt at gallant restraint, ‘I ought not to talk about him like that, did I, when he’s dead – if he
is
dead. Is he?’

‘Who?’

She giggled. ‘You’re cautious, aren’t you? Are all detectives
cautious?
I like a man to be cautious. Roly Peters, of course. I used to call him Roly-Poly. That used to make him cross. You’d never guess how cross that used to make him. Poor Roly-Poly! It’s wrong to laugh when he’s dead – if he
is
dead. Do you know?’

‘My dear girl,’ I said. ‘We went to his funeral, didn’t we?’

I suppose I spoke sharply, for her manner changed. She assumed a spurious dignity and sat down, arranging her short black skirts about her thin legs with great care.

‘I’ve come to consult you, Mr Campion,’ she said. ‘I’m putting all my cards on the table. I want to know if you’re satisfied about that funeral?’

‘It wasn’t much to do with me,’ I countered, temporarily taken aback.

‘Oh, wasn’t it? Well, why was you there? That’s pinked you, hasn’t it? I’m a straightforward girl, Mr Campion, and I want a straight answer. There was something funny about that funeral, and you know it.’

‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I’m perfectly willing to help you. Suppose you tell me why you think I can.’

She looked at me steadily. ‘You’ve been to a good school, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘I always think it helps a man to have gone to a good school. Then you
know
he’s a gentleman; I always say that. Well, I’ll trust you. I don’t often. And if you let me down, well, I’ve been silly again, that’s all. I was engaged to marry Roly Peters, Mr Campion, and then he went and died in a hole-and-corner nursing home and left all his money to his brother. If you don’t think that’s suspicious, I do.’

I hesitated. ‘You think it’s odd because he left his brother everything?’ I began.

Effie Rowlandson interrupted me.

‘I think it’s funny he died at all, if you ask me,’ she said.
‘I’d
threatened him with a lawyer, I had really. I had the letters and everything.’

I said nothing, and she grew very pink.

‘Think what you like about me, Mr Campion,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got feelings and I’ve worked very hard to get married. I think he’s done the dirty on me. If he’s hiding I’ll find him, if it’s the last thing I do.’

She sat looking at me like a suddenly militant sparrow.

‘I came to you,’ she said, ‘because I heard you were a detective and I liked your face.’

‘Splendid! But why come here?’ I demanded. ‘Why come to Kepesake, of all places?’

Effie Rowlandson drew a deep breath. ‘I’ll tell you the truth, Mr Campion,’ she said.

Once again her lashes flickered, and I felt that our brief period of plain dealing was at an end.

‘I’ve got a friend in this village, and he’s seen my photographs of Roly Peters. He’s an old man, known me for years.’

She paused, and eyed me to see if I was with her or against her, and apparently she was reassured, for she went on breathlessly:

‘A few days ago he wrote me, this friend of mine did. “There’s a gentleman in the village very like a friend of yours,” he wrote. “If I were you I’d come and have a look at him. It might be worth your while.” I came as soon as I could, and when I got here I found this man I’d come to see had got himself killed only this morning. I heard you were in the village, so I came along.’

I began to follow her. ‘You want to identify him?’ I said.

She nodded resolutely.

‘Why come to me? Why not go to the authorities?’

Her reply was disarming. ‘Well, you see, I felt I knew you,’ she said.

I considered. The advantages of a witness at this juncture were inestimable.

‘When can you be down at the police station?’

‘I’d like to go now.’

It was late for the country, and I said so, but she was adamant.

‘I’ve made up my mind to it and I shan’t sleep if I’ve got it hanging over me till tomorrow. Take me down now in your car. Go on, you know you can. I am being a nuisance, aren’t I? But I’m like that. If I make up my mind to a thing, I fret till I’ve done it. I should be quite ill by the morning, I should really.’

There was nothing else for it. I knew from experience that it is safest to catch a witness as soon as he appears on the scene.

I rang the bell, and told the girl who answered it to send Lugg round with the car. Then, leaving Miss Rowlandson in the breakfast-room, I went to find Janet.

It was not a very pleasant interview. Janet is a dear girl, but she can be most obtuse. When she went to bed, which she did with some dignity a few minutes after I had located her, I went back to the breakfast-room.

Lugg seemed a little surprised when I appeared with Miss Rowlandson. I tucked her into the back of the car, and climbed into the front seat beside him. He let in the clutch, and as we roared down the drive in fourth he leant towards me.

‘Ever see a cat come out of a dawg-kennel?’ he murmured, and added when I stared at him: ‘Gives you a bit of a turn. That’s all.’

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.’