The Corpse in the Cellar (11 page)

The dismissal was clear, so we said our goodbyes and walked back out into the farmyard. We heard the front door close and lock behind us. Then we heard a bolt slide into place.

Jack gestured at the door and said, ‘Clearly she has no intention of answering any more questions.'

‘So what now?' asked Warnie.

‘Back to town, I think,' Jack said.

So we made our way back to the road and began to retrace our footsteps.

We hadn't gone far when we rounded a corner and saw, coming towards us, a puffed and red-faced Constable Dixon. He was wiping his forehead with a large white handkerchief and at first he didn't see us. When he did, he gulped and stared saucer-eyed at us. Clearly he could no longer pretend not to be following us. This caused so much cogitation it was almost possible to hear the gearwheels spinning inside his head.

‘Morning,' he puffed as we drew level with him. Then he took off his helmet, scratched his head and said, ‘It'll save me a lot of trouble if you gentlemen would be kind enough to tell where you've been and where you're going now.'

Warnie drew himself up to his full height and blew out his cheeks. ‘I'm not sure it's any of your business, old chap.'

‘Come on,' said Jack sympathetically, ‘we don't want to get our friendly local policeman into trouble with his superiors.' Then he turned to Dixon and said, ‘We've been visiting the Proudfoot farm—trying to find out what caused the scene at the bank yesterday morning.'

Constable Dixon pulled out his small notebook and pencil and dutifully wrote this down. ‘And where might you be going now, sir?' he asked politely.

‘Back to town,' said Jack with a hearty laugh. ‘Come and walk with us, constable.'

The policeman smiled and said, ‘With pleasure, sir. But not the way you came—that's the long way. I'll show you a shorter route.'

‘Lead on, Constable Dixon—we're in your hands!'

As we started out I asked Constable Dixon how he managed to find us.

‘I tracked you, sir,' he said, tapping the side of his nose, ‘like a Red Indian in those James Fennimore Cooper books I used to read when I was a lad—footsteps in the damp soil, that sort of thing. Besides which, starting from the church there are not many roads out of town, so it wasn't really all that hard. I just started in the general direction and looked for any little signs that you might have passed this way.'

He paused to mop his brow again with his large white handkerchief and then complained, ‘It was not a nice thing that you gentlemen did back there—sneaking out of the vestry door of the church and giving me the slip.'

‘Not a nice thing?' grunted Warnie. ‘I like that.' Then he turned to me and said, ‘The hide of the man: he treats us like criminals and then complains when we behave like the perfectly innocent gentlemen we are! Not nice indeed!'

He huffed and puffed and harrumphed for the next minute or two but finally settled down. And Constable Dixon appeared to have decided that it was wise not to say any more on the subject.

When we had walked a hundred yards further on, the policeman pointed to a side road, little more than a cart track, and said, ‘This way is shorter, more direct—it leads down to the stream, and then we can follow the towpath back into town. And if you don't mind my asking—what have your amateur investigations turned up so far? If it's not a secret, that is. Inspector Hyde is bound to ask me, and . . . '

‘We don't want to get you into trouble,' Jack laughed heartily. ‘In the absence of Nicholas Proudfoot we ended up interviewing his wife. She was either not willing or not able to explain whatever lay behind what her husband Nicholas did at the bank yesterday—that volcanically angry performance of his. She talked vaguely about a problem with a loan, and I can't see how that can have anything to do with the murder. At least, not at the moment I can't.'

The policeman thought about this for a while, then he asked, ‘Just now I accused you gentlemen of conducting your own amateur investigations. Now you speak of “interviewing” Mrs Proudfoot. Does this mean you really are playing at being Sherlock Holmes? If you don't mind my asking, that is.'

‘Exactly!' hooted Warnie. ‘Not leaving it up to some chappie from Scotland Yard. If you'd read as many detective novels as I have, you'd know those Scotland Yard chaps never know what's going on. Always has to be someone to tell them!'

‘So you're sort of investigating for yourselves . . . ' It was more a comment than a question from Constable Dixon. ‘Just like those stories in the
Strand Magazine
? Although personally I prefer the Sexton Blake stories myself.'

Jack laughed again and said, ‘Something like that. Although perhaps not quite as energetic as Mr Holmes or some of the others.'

‘My brother,' said Warnie as he slapped Jack on the back, ‘could run rings around Sherlock Holmes for sheer brain power. And he will too.'

‘I'm not sure the officers from Scotland Yard will be happy about that,' moaned Dixon. His face crinkled up like a worried toad—a toad who's just been told his mother-in-law is coming to visit and may be staying some time.

We plodded on in silence while the policeman slowly digested all this. Then the foliage surrounding the cart track we were on opened out as we came to the banks of a fast-flowing stream. Following one side of the bank was a narrow walking path, and down this Constable Dixon led us in single file.

Eventually, having digested what we had told him, he turned around to ask another question. ‘And what did Amelia Proudfoot actually tell you? If you don't mind my asking, that is.'

‘Ask whatever you wish, constable,' said Jack. ‘And the answer is, as I tried to explain, that she told us precious little. We wanted to understand the source of her husband's explosive anger displayed in the bank yesterday, and she was clearly most reluctant to tell us anything. In fact, her reluctance seemed to suggest that she feels she has something to hide—either concerning herself or her husband—that she doesn't want the wider world to know.'

‘Ah, yes,' Dixon nodded sagely, ‘I'm sure you're right, sir. If you don't mind my mentioning this to the officers from Scotland Yard?'

‘Tell them whatever you wish, constable,' Jack replied. ‘We just want this matter dealt with as swiftly as possible so we can be on our way. When are the experts from the Yard due to arrive?'

‘They should be in Market Plumpton by now, sir. They were due on the morning train.'

Then he asked us why we had taken such a long road out to the Proudfoot farm. Warnie explained that we were following a sketch map provided by the publican, Frank Jones, adding, ‘And we . . . humph . . . found the map a little . . . a little . . . '

‘A little vague and imprecise,' I said. ‘In short, we may have got just a little bit lost for a moment there.' As I spoke I dug into my coat pocket and pulled out Frank Jones's map. When I handed this over to Dixon, he found himself wrestling with its meaning as much as we had done. He turned it upside down and sideways.

‘It's just a lot of squiggles,' said the constable, nodding as if now understanding something that had baffled him. ‘I'm not surprised you had difficulty finding the right road.'

The stream curved around a bend ahead of us, and as we rounded the curve we saw a bridge crossing the water—an old stone bridge. Drawing closer we saw that it connected two other cart tracks on either side of the stream, and standing on one side of the bridge was a pony trap. The pony in the harness was calming chewing on the thick grass on the river bank, but of the owner or driver of the cart there was no sign.

‘I recognise that,' said Constable Dixon. ‘That's Nick Proudfoot's pony trap. Now why would he leave it standing here and walk off? And where's he gone to?'

We all four walked out to the centre of the old stone bridge, with the policeman swivelling his head in all directions looking for the missing man.

‘He can't be far away,' said the constable. ‘He hasn't tied up the horse or anything. The pony might just wander off, taking the cart with him once he's finished his feed. Why would anyone do that?'

We followed the policeman's example, turning around and scouring the landscape with our eyes. For several minutes the only sound was the roaring rush of the fast-flowing stream beneath the bridge. This was yet another puzzle to add to the growing list of puzzles that Market Plumpton was presenting us with.

‘I wonder if that's your answer,' said Jack at last, pointing to a dark shape in the water at the next bend in the stream. It was being bounced by the strong currents but appeared to be caught in a tangle of tree roots.

Warnie was the first to move. He crossed the bridge and pushed through the thick undergrowth on the opposite bank towards the dark shape in the water. The rest of us followed as quickly as we could.

‘It's a body,' Warnie called out from ahead of us. He clambered down the bank, balanced precariously on two large, round stones and grabbed hold of the figure's arms. Then he backed up the bank, pulling the body with him as he came. He dropped it in the long grass and turned it over. We hurried to his side.

The face had been battered and bruised against the stones on the bed of the stream, so the man's identity was not immediately obvious to us. But it was to Constable Dixon. ‘It's Nick Proudfoot,' he gasped.

As soon as he said the name I recognised the man who had burst into the bank the day before. The face looked quite different—behind the scratches and bruises it had the calm of death—but it was the same face.

‘Well . . . well . . . ' puffed the policeman, looking around anxiously as he tried to work out what to do next. ‘Well . . . this is a turn up for the books. Well . . . steps need to be taken here. Something needs to be done.' Probably for the first time in his career the local constable was wrestling with a problem larger than failure to abate a smoking chimney or dropping litter in a public place. And clearly he was out of his depth.

Jack intervened to say, ‘Someone needs to go into town immediately to inform your superiors, constable. But someone needs to stay with the body as well.'

‘Yes, yes, quite right, sir,' huffed Constable Dixon, pulling himself together. ‘So, I'll go into town . . . no, that's not right. I can hardly leave you gentlemen here with the body—on your own, so to speak, without an official keeping an eye on you . . . and on the body . . . ' His voice trailed away.

‘What you mean,' said Jack, with an amused gleam in his eye, ‘is that we're suspects in this murder too.'

‘Well . . . well . . . ' blustered the policeman, ‘it might not be murder. But still, I am in charge of the scene of this . . . this tragedy, and I can hardly leave.'

‘Would you like all three of us to go into town and inform Inspector Hyde?' asked Jack, a teasing note in his voice.

‘All three of you?' Constable Dixon seemed to have sudden and alarming visions of all three of us taking flight and absconding, not something he would enjoy having to explain to his inspector. ‘Ah, perhaps not . . . '

‘I suggest,' said Jack helpfully, ‘that young Morris here—being the youngest among us—would make fastest progress. So why don't you send Morris into town? Just give him directions to reach the police station and he can alert them. Warnie and I will wait here with you, to keep an eye on the body and perhaps to have a look around while we're waiting for reinforcements to arrive. What do you think?'

It took the constable a minute or two of silent thought to work out just exactly what he did think. But in the end he decided that Jack's proposal was the only practical one.

He gave me directions. ‘Just follow this towpath. You'll get to the main road bridge into town—it leads to the high street. Follow that to the town square. The police station's just off the square.'

I double checked his directions and then set off at a jog. I knew I couldn't sprint all the way to town, but I thought I could keep up a fairly steady pace.

To conserve my energy and my breath I varied my pace between a fast walk and a slightly faster trot. As I ran I looked at the stream that was my constant companion. It was, I noticed, quite deep as well as fast flowing, and I wondered how Nicholas Proudfoot had died. Had he drowned? Or had he been dead before he hit the water? And why had Jack talked about ‘this murder'? Couldn't it just have been an accident? What made him think this was a second murder? He must have had a reason, I was sure, but I couldn't immediately see what that reason was.

And if he was right, if this was another murder, how did it connect to the first—the murder of Franklin Grimm? It seemed to me that we were wading into deep, murky, mysterious waters.