The Corpse in the Cellar (16 page)

‘My name is Lewis,' Jack replied. ‘This is my brother, and our friend Mr Morris. Are you Mr Ted Proudfoot?'

‘What of it?' He made it sound as if we were accusing him of being an anarchist bomb thrower, and he was going to wear the accusation as a proud badge.

‘We were in the bank this week when Mr Franklin Grimm died.'

‘Yeah, I heard about that.' Then a slow smile spread across his face that somehow contrived to make him look even more sinister. ‘And some people say there's no justice in the world.'

‘I gather you were not a friend of Mr Grimm?' Jack asked.

‘Grimm had no friends—only enemies.'

When he stopped on this word, Jack prompted him, ‘Enemies? What sort of enemies?'

‘Two sorts: women he exploited and men he belittled. Other people were only there to serve the nasty, selfish ends of Frank Grimm.' This explanation was followed by a chain of so many expletives that even I, who had just spent three years among the colourfully spoken undergraduates of Oxford University, did not recognise all of them. If a new edition of the English Dialect Dictionary was being planned, I would advise the editors to consult Mr Ted Proudfoot.

‘Anyone who hated him enough to kill him?' Jack persisted.

‘Hundreds of them,' replied Ted Proudfoot with a humourless laugh. ‘But why are you three asking? You're not from the police, are you?'

‘Certainly not!' said Warnie indignantly. ‘Rather the other way round, old chap. Because we were there at the time, the police rather suspect us of having something to do with it. Ridiculous I know, but there you are.'

The young farm worker took some time to process this information. His eyes glazed over and it was almost possible to hear the gearwheels turning inside his head. The effort of his cogitation suggested that some of those gearwheels were rusted and broken from lack of use. But they did eventually produce a result.

‘So you think you can get yourselves out from under by pointing the finger at someone else, is that it?'

‘Well, I suppose if you put it like that . . . ' Warnie began, looking down at his boots and shuffling his feet.

‘We're just trying to “assist the police in their inquiries”, I think is the expression,' said Jack soothingly, ‘so that they'll release us to be on our way.'

‘I'm not gonna help you,' said Proudfoot with finality. ‘I hope whoever killed Grimm gets away with it forever. I hope he gets a medal. I hope the killer lives a long happy life. If you find out who it is, let me know and I'll send him a pound note as a token my gratitude.'

‘But we'd all like to see justice done—' I began. I got no further because at this point Ted Proudfoot stuck two greasy fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. He followed the whistle with a shout of ‘Lightning! Come here, boy!'

In response a large dog came bounding across the farm yard—an enormous black dog that ran to Proudfoot's side and looked up at him as if waiting for the command to kill something. Its lip curled up exposing its razor sharp canines, and it began to salivate at the exciting prospect of having live prey to pursue.

Proudfoot stroked the dog's head as he said to us, ‘You three'll be leaving now.' It was clearly not intended as a polite request. ‘And be sure to close the gate as you go,' he added.

We went.

Standing in the lane in front of the farm gate Warnie grunted, ‘Didn't accomplish much there, I'm afraid.'

‘I'm not so sure,' I said. ‘We saw the man. We formed some estimate of his character. And I for one believe him quite capable of murder.'

‘Suppose so,' Warnie muttered. ‘Well, where to now?'

‘We pay a second visit to young Mrs Amelia Proudfoot, widow of the second murder victim,' Jack said.

‘Are you so certain that Nicholas Proudfoot was murdered then?' I asked.

‘Do you really have any doubts?' Jack asked.

We walked back to the nearest crossroads and stopped while Warnie examined the map and then pointed us down a leafy laneway. The day was rapidly heating up. It looked like turning into one of those steamy days when butterflies look for a shady leaf to land on and let their wings droop. Out in the fields even the most energetic rabbit would lie down in the long grass, rest its chin on its front paws and decide to take it easy for the rest of the day.

But in the shade, out of the direct sunlight, it was a pleasant day for walking.

‘It's supposed to be a walking holiday,' I said cheerfully, ‘and at least we're walking today.'

‘Only around in circles,' Warnie grumbled. ‘Why are we going to see young Mrs Proudfoot again?'

Jack said that it was obvious that the day before she was not telling us everything she could. Perhaps today she would be calmer—more giving, more informative. She might, Jack suggested, have had time to think things through and have decided to tell us what she knew.

It took us the better the part of an hour to circle the town and find ourselves back on the stone bridge over the stream, close to where we had found the body of Nicholas Proudfoot. Here Jack stopped to light his pipe and look slowly around. Once again he seemed fascinated by the powerful branches of the old willow tree that hung over the bridge.

‘Is that a bit of rope caught up in that branch?' he asked, pointing with the stem of his pipe.

‘It might be,' I said, shading my eyes and squinting into the sunlight.

Then he transferred his attention to the deep scratch marks on the stone at the centre of the arch.

‘What are you doing?' I asked.

Jack said he was trying to imagine the sequence of events as they might have unfolded at the moment when Nicholas Proudfoot died. Warnie quickly lost interest and leaned over the stone parapet of the bridge, staring at the bubbling, fast-flowing water beneath.

‘Might be trout in that stream,' he said. ‘Sort of place trout tend to like.'

‘We should ask our friendly publican, Frank Jones,' I suggested, ‘if he ever serves fresh trout.'

‘Jolly good idea,' said Warnie with a laugh. ‘I love a meal of fresh trout. Preferably pan fried in butter. Have you finished, Jack? Are you ready to move on?'

Jack said he was, tapped out the ashes from his pipe on the stonework of the bridge, and we resumed our walk.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour later we were at the front gate to the Proudfoot farm. Surprisingly it was swinging open.

‘Careless of them,' muttered Warnie.

We walked up the gravel driveway into the farmyard and were struck once again by the oppressive silence.

‘It's odd,' said Jack. ‘There's not a farmhand around the place—nor an animal.'

‘Well, if they've been struggling for money,' I suggested, ‘perhaps they had to lay off anyone they'd employed, and perhaps even had to sell their stock.'

Jack knocked on the front door. There was no reply, and he knocked again. As on our previous visit, the sound seemed to reverberate through the small stone farmhouse.

‘I'll scout around,' Warnie volunteered, and he took off around the corner of the house as Jack knocked again. I wandered across the farmyard and checked the outbuildings. There was no sign of life, and the only piece of machinery I found in the shed was an ancient disc plough designed to be pulled by draught horses.

Warnie returned to report that he'd peered in through the windows and seen no one. ‘It's deserted all right,' he concluded.

After a final loud rap on the front door we gave up and made our way back to the road. Here we found a small Morris car had just drawn up and a bulky man in tweeds was squeezing himself out of the driver's seat.

‘Morning, gents,' he said in a cheerful greeting. While we watched he opened the boot of the car, pulled out a ‘For Sale' sign attached to a wooden stake, and drove this into the ground beside the entrance to the Proudfoot farm.

‘Sad business,' he said as we watched this happening. ‘It's going on the market to repay a bank mortgage—a foreclosure sale. You gentlemen wouldn't be interested, would you? Only needs a little hard work to build it up into a going concern again.'

Warnie quickly dismissed any possibility that we were potential buyers.

‘All of this is rather sudden,' said Jack suspiciously.

The man in tweeds shrugged his shoulders and replied, ‘I'm just the estate agent. If the bank manager tells me the place is to go on the market as a mortgagee sale, I just nod my head and pocket my commission. Good day to you.'

With those words he squeezed himself back into his small car and roared up the country lane in a cloud of blue exhaust smoke.

We walked slowly back towards the town wrapped in thought, trying to make sense of these rapidly moving events.

‘It's all very strange—selling the farm out from underneath the young widow like this. But does it tell us anything about the murder?' I asked.

Warnie chewed his moustache in silence for a minute and then said, ‘What if there's embezzlement involved?'

‘Explain yourself, old chap,' Jack said.

‘Well, suppose the Proudfoots thought they were keeping up with their payments—struggling, but managing to keep their heads above water—and suddenly they're told they're in arrears and the bank is about to foreclose. Now, if the situation was something along those lines, I wonder if Franklin Grimm was siphoning their mortgage payments into his own pocket? From what we've heard about Grimm's character I wouldn't put it past him. And it would certainly give Nicholas Proudfoot a powerful motive to murder Grimm.'

‘But when we saw Proudfoot at the bank,' I protested, ‘it was the manager, Edmund Ravenswood, he was angry with, not Grimm.'

‘Well . . . if he got a demand notice from the bank, the first person he'd blame would be the manager,' Warnie extemporised. ‘But perhaps when he thought about it he realised that the shark in the water was Grimm.'

‘No, no.' Jack shook his head. ‘It won't wash, old chap. Not enough time. We saw Proudfoot furious with Ravenswood, and just minutes later it was Grimm who was murdered. How can he have switched the focus of his fury so quickly?'

‘Quite apart from the question,' I added, ‘of how he got into the sealed cellar of the bank to commit the murder.'

‘Hmm, all a bit difficult,' Warnie muttered, and we walked for some minutes in silence as we each chewed over this intractable problem.

‘It's very odd,' I exclaimed a few minutes later, returning to the question that still troubled me. ‘Foreclosing on the farm so soon after the farmer's death—it strikes me as very odd, or heavy handed, or something.'

‘Very well then,' said Jack with a broad grin. ‘Let's go and ask Ravenswood why he's done it.'

‘Chap'll probably throw us out!' protested Warnie. ‘No reason he should tell us anything.'

‘And there's no reason why we shouldn't ask,' said Jack cheerfully. ‘Come on.' And with those words he quickened his pace.

When we stood in front of the bank, half an hour later, wilting from the heat and looking to get out of the sun, we found the door closed and the notice tacked up by the police still in place. This, however, did not stop Jack from knocking on the door. When there was no reply, he looked around and found a bell pull to one side.

‘Probably rings in the manager's flat upstairs,' he said as he gave it a hefty tug.

We waited patiently and a few minutes later footsteps could be heard on the other side of the door. It opened slightly and Ravenswood's face appeared.

‘The police have ordered the bank cl—' he began, then he recognised us. ‘Oh, it's you three.'

‘We wondered if we could have a chat,' said Jack, smiling encouragingly, ‘about this whole awful business.'

‘I don't see why I should talk to you three,' growled Ravenswood.

‘Is there any reason why you shouldn't?' Jack asked pleasantly.

In the long, hot silence that followed, the bank manager's face resembled one of those books where the images change if you rapidly flick over the pages. His initial irritation and annoyance was replaced by curiosity—with just a hint of cunning.

‘No, I suppose you're right,' Ravenswood agreed. ‘We're all in this together. Come in out of the heat—Edith has just put the kettle on.'

We followed him into the bank and found the thick stone walls were keeping it pleasantly cool. This time he didn't lead us into the offices and public area on the ground floor, but up the stairs to his flat. At the head of the stairs was a short hallway. Ravenswood opened the first door on the left and showed us into a small but comfortably furnished sitting room.

‘I'll just go and tell Edith we have guests,' he said as he hurried away. ‘Make yourselves at home.'

Warnie and I looked at each other and then at Jack. We had no idea what he thought this conversation might achieve or what he wanted to ask the Ravenswoods about. I took an armchair under a window and Warnie followed my example. A warm breeze came through the open window in lazy puffs, as if the door of a baker's oven was being opened and closed.