The Corpse in the Cellar (7 page)

When he was satisfied he had successfully executed the combination, he pulled on each of the two locking levers in turn. With a loud clunk each swung into the unlocked position. Helped by Sergeant Donaldson, he then pulled open the heavy steel door.

Ravenswood the bank manager stumbled out.

‘Are you all right, sir?' asked Inspector Hyde.

Ravenswood looked dishevelled, flushed and slightly breathless. ‘Thank you . . . thank you . . . ' was all he could gasp at first. Then he saw the man in the pin-striped suit. ‘Ah, Mr Johnson . . . you've come all the way from Tadminster?'

‘Are you all right, old chap?' asked Mr Pin-stripe.

‘Perfectly well, thank you, sir,' Ravenswood replied. ‘I'm so sorry to have put you to all this trouble.'

‘Not at all, not at all,' said Johnson soothingly.

Behind Ravenswood we could see into the bank's strongroom. It was lit by a single electric light globe. This revealed to the left of the door a stack of lockable safe deposit boxes, and to the right a number of locked metal tubs on trolleys, presumably containing the bank's cash deposits. Between these two arrays was a clear alleyway, and in this alley was a small wooden table containing an open ledger book, a pen and a pot of ink. Presumably this ledger was to sign-in and sign-out customers opening their safe deposit boxes. Under the table was a small tool box and beside it was a single wooden chair with a suit coat draped over the back of it.

‘I feel so foolish,' Ravenswood was saying loudly, ‘allowing something like this to happen . . . it was a customer . . . temporarily upset . . . problem over a loan . . . you know the sort of thing.'

‘Think nothing of it,' said Johnson, patting him on the arm. ‘These things happen. Unfortunately financial difficulties can make some of our customers somewhat fraught or even irrational. You can't hold yourself responsible for the emotional behaviour of one customer.'

‘And I don't want the customer prosecuted,' said Ravenswood hastily, turning to Inspect Hyde. ‘I take it that's why you're here?'

‘Not entirely, sir . . . ' Hyde began.

‘Not good for the bank to be seen to prosecute a customer for a moment's bad judgement due to . . . well, as Mr Johnson said, financial distress,' Ravenswood continued, ignoring the policeman's interruption. ‘So thank you for coming, inspector, but your presence is not really required.'

With these words he turned around and walked back into the strongroom. He fetched his suit coat from the back of the chair, turned off the electric light and walked back out again.

‘Well, we can lock it again now, can't we?' he said to Johnson with a nervous smile. ‘I really don't feel like going back in there for the rest of the day. I've seen quite enough of the inside of that vault just for the moment.'

Ravenswood was babbling nervously, and who could blame him, I thought, after being locked for hours inside his own bank's vault. He and Johnson pushed the heavy steel door closed once more, pressed the locking levers into place and spun the dials of the combination lock.

‘There's more that's been going on here, Mr Ravenswood,' said Inspector Hyde, ‘than just your being locked in the vault.'

‘I've explained about that,' Ravenswood insisted. ‘Young Nicholas Proudfoot was upset about his loan—a young man, afraid of losing his farm, you can understand his emotional stress . . . '

‘That's not why I'm here,' said Hyde more firmly. Ravenswood looked at him blankly and blinked uncertainly. ‘I'm afraid I have to tell you, sir,' continued the policeman, ‘that your teller, young Mr Franklin Grimm, is dead.'

‘Dead?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘But how?'

‘He was stabbed, sir.'

‘Stabbed?'

‘In the neck, sir. He appears to have died instantly.'

‘But . . . I don't understand . . . '

‘None of us quite understand just at the moment, sir—but that's why we're here. That's the matter we're looking into. Now, I'd like everyone to go back up to the office please. Sergeant Donaldson will be locking up the cellar for the time being, and he'll be hanging on to the key. This is now a crime scene.'

‘You too, gentlemen,' he said noticing, at last, our presence hovering on the stairs. ‘You shouldn't even be here,' he added irritably.

As I turned to go I looked down and saw that Grimm's body had been removed. Presumably the police surgeon had come in our absence, made his initial examination and removed the body.

Upstairs we scattered ourselves around the small office of the bank. We each found a chair or the edge of a desk to sit on while the inspector stood in the middle of the floor in the manner of a master of ceremonies. He cleared his throat and was about to begin when Ravenswood demanded some explanation of what had been happening in his bank while he was locked in the vault.

‘What I have discovered so far,' replied the inspector, ‘is that the first step that was taken following your unfortunate . . . ah . . . incarceration was a phone call to Mr Johnson here, or one of his colleagues, at the regional headquarters of the bank in Tadminster. In line with bank policy Mr Johnson declined to release the number of the combination lock over the phone, and instead took the first train here so that he could open the vault door himself.'

‘Yes, yes,' urged Ravenswood, impatient at this slow giving-evidence-in-court police manner.

Inspector Hyde raised a hand as if asking him to wait and be patient, and then resumed. ‘But before Mr Johnson could arrive, your teller, young Mr Franklin Grimm, seemed to decide that he should position himself in the cellar, on the unlikely chance that he could be of some use to you there. While he was in the cellar alone, and this door here—the only entrance leading to the cellar—was under constant observation by your office girl, Ruth Jarvis, and these three customers, Mr Grimm died from a stab wound.'

‘But . . . but . . . I don't understand,' protested Ravenswood.

‘Precisely, sir,' said Hyde. ‘Just at this moment none of us understand exactly what happened. Or how. Or why. Or who could possibly have done what was done. There was, it appears, a faint cry heard coming from the vicinity of the cellar. When that sound was investigated, Mr Grimm's body was discovered with a single fatal knife wound to the neck. And the knife that did the damage was nowhere to be found.'

‘What happened to it?' asked Mr Johnson, clearly gripped by Hyde's narrative.

‘Ah,' said the policeman, ‘that's the crux of the whole matter, sir. Either the knife was carried away by Mr Grimm's murderer, in which case no one can account for how he got into and out of the cellar; or else, if the wound was self-inflicted, the knife has somehow dissolved into thin air. Either way, what happened was totally impossible.'

In the long pause that followed Inspector Hyde's statement I heard Warnie whisper just behind me, ‘It was the ghost.' Although I didn't believe him I felt that slight shiver down the spine that we describe as ‘someone just walked over my grave'.

Ravenswood ran his fingers through his dark hair and muttered, ‘This is awful, simply awful. What about poor Ruth? How has she taken it?'

‘She's very distressed, sir, as you'll understand,' explained Hyde. ‘So we sent her home. Sergeant Donaldson escorted her to her mother's house, and that's who's looking after her now.'

‘Poor girl,' moaned Ravenswood. ‘I believe she and Grimm were quite close—more than just work colleagues, if you understand my meaning. Whether there was actually an understanding between them or not I don't know. Perhaps matters hadn't got quite to that point. But they certainly saw each other outside the office.'

‘Thank you for that, sir,' said the inspector. ‘We'll talk to the young lady about that in due course. Now, did Mr Grimm have any enemies? Can you think of anyone who may have wanted him dead? Or who may have benefited from his death?'

Instead of answering, Ravenswood dropped heavily into an office chair and muttered, ‘I just can't take all this in . . . ' His voice trailed away.

Inspector Hyde's manner shifted from that of a police official to something more like that of a friend addressing a fellow member of his golf club—which he probably was, given how small the town was.

‘Now, Edmund,' he said to Ravenswood, ‘pull yourself together, old chap. We need your help if we're to make any progress in this dreadful business.'

‘Yes . . . yes, of course,' the bank manager replied. ‘I'll do whatever I can.'

‘Ravenswood,' said Mr Johnson, from the distant corner where he was standing. ‘Is there anything the bank can do? Would you like us to send in an acting manager for a few days while you get over the shock.'

‘No,' replied Ravenswood quickly. ‘That won't be necessary. I'm fine to carry on. I will need another teller until I can recruit and train someone local—if you have someone you can spare from head office?'

‘I'll arrange something,' said Johnson. ‘Leave it to me.'

‘Gentlemen!' snapped Hyde. ‘You can get back to the bank's business shortly, but for the moment there is a man dead, I have a detective from Scotland Yard arriving on tomorrow morning's train, and I need to have a report with sufficient detail that I can hand to him. So, if you don't mind, we'll get on.'

Johnson stepped back to his distant corner and said nothing while Ravenswood simply nodded.

‘And let me remind you, in case you've forgotten, that I've closed this bank to the public. It's now a crime scene. It won't be reopened until our Scotland Yard colleagues are satisfied that they have fully investigated the scene of this tragedy. So let's have no more talk of bank business.'

Ravenswood and Johnson looked suitable chastened. Both nodded their understanding.

‘Now, let me ask you again: can you think of anyone who may have wanted Mr Franklin Grimm dead or who may have benefited from his death?'

Edmund Ravenswood was silent for a moment and then said, ‘Well, Grimm sometimes had an unfortunate manner, and he may have got people's backs up from time to time, but I can't imagine that was reason enough to kill him.'

Inspector Hyde suddenly swivelled around to face Jack, Warnie and me and snapped, ‘And how well did you gentlemen know Mr Grimm?'

‘Not at all,' said Jack firmly. ‘We met him today for the first time.'

‘But you, Mr Lewis,' continued Hyde, ‘have been in Market Plumpton before. And you've had dealings at this bank before. That's correct, isn't it?'

‘Only once before, last year. I was passing through on a walking holiday with two other friends and I called in here to withdraw some money. On that occasion I saw only Mr Ravenswood here.'

‘Do you remember that?' Hyde asked, putting his question to the bank manager.

‘I believe I do,' Ravenswood replied thoughtfully. ‘This is not a busy branch, and I believe I do remember Mr Lewis's visit. If I recollect correctly, he called when Mr Grimm was on his lunch hour so I dealt with him myself.'

At this point Jack protested vigorously that we were mere visitors, passing through, that our role as eyewitnesses was a matter of chance, and that we really had no more to offer. Hyde bristled, but he reluctantly agreed that we could go back to the pub. As long, he said, as we made ourselves available to speak to the man from Scotland Yard tomorrow. So it was that we made our escape from the dark and gloomy bank building, with its high ceilings and dark timber walls, out into the fresh air and sunshine.

Back at
The Boar's Head
, Jack, Warnie and I ordered drinks and went out to the beer garden behind the pub. This was a grassed yard that sloped down from the back door to the rapidly flowing Plum River that circled half the town. Wooden tables and chairs were scattered across the lawn. We found a place in the warm sun not far from the towpath at the water's edge where we could sit down and stretch out our legs.

‘This is looking like a pretty duff holiday,' grumbled Warnie.

Quite right, I thought, but if we can't walk at least we can talk.

‘Now Jack,' I said, ‘we were interrupted this morning when you made that outrageous claim that relativism kills reason. Surely you can't mean that?'

‘I think the truth of that would be obvious even to a sea anemone of average intelligence. If everything is relative—if what is true from your point of view is not true from mine—then the whole category of truth simply ceases to exist and reason has no function. Unless there is a shared objective truth, there's nothing we can reason about together.'

‘Cut it out, you two,' puffed Warnie. ‘We have other problems—problems we ought to do something about.'

‘Such as?' I asked.

‘Well,' said Warnie, ‘obviously we're suspects, and I have no confidence in the police to release us to resume our holiday any time soon. In all the detective novels I've read, the police are complete duffers and they need Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot to step in and solve their mysteries for them. So we can't just leave this to the police.'