A Grave Case of Murder

by Roger Bax

  James nodded. “I thought that looked like a shotgun wound. No sign of the weapon, I suppose?”

  “Oh, no. I dare say we shall have trouble about that. There’s a lot of water in these parts—very handy for a murderer. You’d need a thousand men to drag every dike and stream. Then again, the actual murder may have happened miles away.”

  James agreed. “Have you looked over the cottage?”

  “I just put my head in—it seems undisturbed. I’ve posted a man there—you’ll be able to go over it at your leisure.”

  “Good. Now what about these footprints? Anything known?”

  “They’re not going to be much help to you, I’m afraid—I’ve checked them. Fred Pepper, the sexton, who found the body, was wearing rubber boots—you can see his marks all round the grave. The shoe-prints were made by the vicar when he was brought here by Pepper, and by Doctor Wilson. It was unavoidable, of course—they had to satisfy themselves that the man was dead.”

  James eyed the mound of soil without enthusiasm. “And that’s all, eh? Surely whoever brought the body would have left some marks?”

  “There are faint traces that might be the murderer’s,” said Bell glumly. “I imagine they were pretty well washed out by the rain. A bit of bad luck for us, that was. It came on suddenly about seven in the evening and there was a steady downpour until five this morning.”

  “H’m—not very pleasant for the murderer.” A picture came into the inspector’s mind of a man stumbling among the gravestones with a bloodstained corpse in his arms on a stormy pitch-black night. Difficult to believe, except that the body was lying there and somebody must have brought it. “What did Doctor Wilson say about the time of death? Any help?”

  The superintendent shook his head. “He won’t commit himself to anything definite. He says the cooling and rigor would be affected by the rain, and he hasn’t any idea how long the body was exposed to it. The best he can do is between six o’clock and midnight.”

  “I could do as well as that myself,” said James. He considered for a moment. “This chap who discovered the body—Fred Pepper. Do you know if he shifted it at all?”

  “He didn’t touch it, and Doctor Wilson didn’t move it either. The sexton got him the ladder and he climbed down very carefully. Hutton was obviously dead, so there was no need to disturb anything.”

  “Well, that’s satisfactory.” The inspector looked across at the grave again, as though there were something on his mind. “The position strikes me as a bit odd, you know, for a body dropped into a grave. Knees drawn up and back arched. And why face downward? That’s an awkward carrying position. The natural way to carry a body is surely face upward. However, we’ll see. Whose grave is it, by the way?”

  “It was dug for an old chap named George Peckitt,” said Bell. “I’m told he was going to be buried here tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I suppose everybody in the village knew about that?”

  “Must have—you know what these villages are. Except for William Appleby up at the Farm there, Peckitt was the oldest inhabitant, and rather a popular local figure. For that matter, it’s possible the villagers weren’t the only ones who knew about the grave. Anyone passing along the road on Friday could have seen it being dug. Also, visitors sometimes come down here to look at the church—it’s quite famous.”

  “I see.” James continued to stare at the grave with a puzzled expression. “It still doesn’t make much sense, does it? Why should anyone bring a body here? Why put it in a grave that’s going to be used for a funeral in a few hours’ time? The murder was bound to be discovered almost at once. What was the point?”

  “I agree,” said Bell. “A lot of trouble for nothing, if you ask me. If the murderer wanted a hiding place, a safe hiding place, he could have found a dozen round here without the least difficulty. He’d have done far better to shove the body into a dike or bury it in an old peat hole. We might not have found it for months. Still, there’s no accounting for murderers. Once they’re saddled with a body they seem to lose their heads.”

  Maddox gave a little cough. “You don’t think, sir, that perhaps the murderer intended to cover the body with earth and have old what’s-his-name—Peckitt—buried on top of him? That could have been the perfect crime.”

  “You read too many story books, Sergeant,” said James tolerantly. “An ingenious idea, but …” He shook his head. “It’s a shallow grave. He could never have got away with it.”

  “Perhaps he realized that too late, sir. He might have had the intention, and then discovered that the body was too big, or the weather too bad, or something. And once the body was in he’d have had to leave it there—he could never have got it out again, not if he was singlehanded.”

  “I think it’s farfetched,” said James. “Still,” he added graciously, “we’ll keep it in mind. It’s the only theory that makes any sense so far.” The flattened patch of grass beside the grave caught his attention again. “That’s where the body was put down, by the look of it. Have you been round the churchyard, Super? There’s nothing to suggest which way it was brought, is there?”

  “There’s nothing at all conclusive,” said Bell. “There’s a good deal of flattened grass, but it’s impossible to say when it was done or what did it. I imagine the rain was responsible for most of it. Of course, the simplest way would have been to bring the body here in a car and carry it from the lich gate—nice and short. There are several other good approaches, though.” The superintendent took an old envelope from his pocket and began to draw a rough sketch-map of the district. “Here’s the church,” he said. “Well, now, there’s a path starts from the road just by the bus stop, crosses the churchyard past the grave, and leaves at the far corner by a wooden stile. That’s the path we’re standing on now. It continues across the fields and comes out at the village—quite near Hutton’s cottage, as a matter of fact.” He pointed through the trees to where the tops of the Long Wicklen houses were just visible. “See that derelict windmill—that’s where it rejoins the road. It’s used quite a lot by the locals—it’s a short cut. Then there’s another path which branches off from this one just beyond the grave and goes through the iron gate, past the oak wood, and up to the Farm. I’m told that that one’s been there for a thousand years. The monks used to use it.”

  “Well, that’s all very clear,” said James. He stood with his back to the road, looking along the path. “What’s that high bank beyond the churchyard?”

  “Oh, that’s the Twenty Foot. It’s a land-drain. They spread out all round here like the veins of a leaf. It joins another stream called Judy’s Lode above the village.”

  James nodded. The time had come, he decided, to have a look round. He walked slowly back along the path to the bus stop and took a few paces along the road in each direction, interested to

  know how much could be seen of the grave by anyone passing. In daylight, he decided, it was plainly visible to anyone with normal eyesight. Then he set to work to explore the churchyard. It was a slow, wet business, and completely unrewarding. As Bell had said, there were plenty of depressions in the grass between the tombstones, but they told no story. The wooden stile came under his close scrutiny, but he found no suggestive marks on the wood—no convenient button or fragment of cloth caught in a splinter. The kissing gate was equally uninformative. There was an almost complete absence of footmarks throughout the churchyard, a state of affairs which James was inclined to attribute more to the long drought than to the erasing powers of the rain.

  Presently he climbed the low stone wall that bounded the churchyard on the side furthest from the road, skirted a narrow field, and clambered up the sloping bank of the Twenty Foot. The drain stretched away on both sides of him as straight as an arrow and as far as he could see. Notwithstanding the drought, it looked pretty deep. There was a path along the top of the bank and he examined its surface carefully, but there were no helpful indications. He dropped down to the water’s edge and walked along by the stream through the
thick grass. Presently he stopped, his attention caught by marks up the bank. Not footmarks, but a faint continuous flattening, as though someone might have scrambled up there at some time. Indefinite, but intriguing! He climbed the bank and looked down the other side. Yes, with a little imagination it was possible to believe that someone had gone down there too. Moreover, looking down from this height it was possible to see something not visible from ground level—a continuation of the trail through the grass at the edge of the narrow field and right up to the churchyard wall. The question was, what had made the track? A dragged body? A man carrying a body, beating the grass down with his feet? Or a couple of small boys taking a short cut home?

  Slowly and carefully he followed the track to the churchyard wall, examining every inch of the ground. There was no mark that was worth a second glance. He straddled the wall and looked down on the other side. The grass grew rankly in a patch of ground that seemed particularly soft. James parted the roots, examining the surface inch by inch. Suddenly he gave a sharp exclamation. Quite near the wall, in a lump of clayey soil, there was the perfect imprint of a shoe. A woman’s shoe, and a distinctive one, for where the heel had bitten into the clay there was a half-moon of leather, by all appearances newly cobbled.

  Marking the spot, James followed the trail into some bushes. The lower branches, he now noticed—for he must have been here during his earlier search—had some broken twigs, but it was impossible to know whether they had been snapped off within the past day or two. There were no more prints. Almost at once he reached the main path, from which he could see the grave.

  Quickly joining the others, he told them of his discovery. The cameraman, who had just finished photographing the corpse and its surroundings from every possible angle, accompanied them to the Twenty Foot and took several shots of the footprint. Maddox was prowling up and down by the wall.

  “I was wondering,” he said, “why there should be just this one print in the whole churchyard, but I can see now. There’s a bit of a stream runs along here by the wall—there must be a spring somewhere. So the ground here would always be soft.”

  “That’s about it,” Bell agreed, “whereas the rest of the ground would be so hard that even after a bit of rain any marks would be superficial and soon washed out.”

  He followed James to the top of the bank and studied the trail which had attracted the inspector’s attention. “If anyone did come this way, Inspector, it must have been by boat.” He gazed thoughtfully along the embankment toward Long Wicklen village. “It’s quite possible, too. As I told you, this drain joins Judy’s Lode, and the Lode runs slap in front of Hutton’s cottage. What’s more, he has a boat—I noticed it when I was there this morning.”

  James was becoming more interested every moment. It was, of course, nothing but surmise that the murderer might have brought his victim this way. That print might have been made weeks ago and have a perfectly innocent explanation, and the trail was far from conclusive. It was, however, suggestive “You know,” he said, “I think I’d like to go over to the cottage right away while everything’s still fresh. I can call at the Farm later.”

  They joined Maddox, who was taking measurements of the print. “Better take a cast, Sergeant, before somebody steps on it,” said James. “After that, will you see about getting the body to the mortuary? Take your time—I particularly don’t want anyone stamping about in the bottom of the grave before I’ve had a good look at it. Doctor Drake will be down to examine the body this afternoon. I’ll see you at the station.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Maddox.

  “If we can give you any help, Chief,” said the superintendent amiably, “we’ll be glad to do what we can.”

  James thanked him. “Maddox will certainly need a hand with the body. Oh, and there’s another thing—I’d like to have someone stay around the churchyard for the time being. No harm in keeping an eye on the house.”

  Bell gave him a sharp glance. “All right, Chief, I’ll arrange that. By the way, when you do go to Monks Farm, the fellow to ask for is Thomas Appleby. He’s quite a big shot, so watch your step. The old boy’s a centenarian—I don’t imagine he’ll be much use to you. Well, good luck.”

  “I think I shall need it,” said James. “You might ask my driver to take the car to Osier Cottage and tell him I’ll meet him there.” He gave the superintendent a friendly nod, and set off on foot toward Long Wicklen village.

  Chapter Six

  The surface of the field path was worn bare in places and the ground felt sticky underfoot. Someone had evidently been along here recently and from the look of the prints, which were very clear, James judged that it had been Fred Pepper on his way to the churchyard. He made a mental note to check up later. Otherwise there were no marks. He felt certain that, apart from Fred, he was the first person to use the path since the break in the weather, and it seemed quite likely that Hutton had been the last one to use it before the rain. There were certainly no indications that a body had been carried this way. It would not, James decided, have been a good route, for there were two stiles and a narrow plank bridge to negotiate.

  It took him nearly half an hour to reach Osier Cottage, where he found his driver chatting to the constable who had been left on duty. James sent them off to get some bread and cheese in the village and proceeded to explore at leisure. The cottage, he noted, was situated almost at the end of the long straggling street and was at least two hundred yards from the nearest house. Like most of the buildings in these windswept parts, it was low and sturdy. Built of some kind of local stone amalgam, it had a roof of yellow tiles and tiny windows set deep in thick, whitewashed walls. Between the cottage and the road, at the bottom of the sloping front garden, ran the deep waterway known as Judy’s Lode, spanned at this point by a wooden footbridge. On the cottage side, a broad path ran beside the stream. Directly opposite, across the road, was a timber garage with ill-fitting doors. It was unlocked, and James had a good look at the gray sedan inside. It was covered, he saw, with a fine layer of dust. This car, at any rate, had played no part in the events of that wild, wet Saturday night.

  He closed the garage doors and made his way across the footbridge. It was an old and somewhat shaky bridge, and he noticed that on the cottage side a part of one of the handrails had been snapped off, leaving a gap that on a dark night would be dangerous. Tied up to the broken handrail was a small row-boat, battered and weathered but apparently serviceable, with a pair of short oars across the thwarts. In the bottom, a bailing tin floated in several inches of water.

  James clambered on to one of the thwarts and gave the boat a painstaking examination. It told him nothing, however. If a blood-soaked corpse had by any chance been conveyed in it, all traces had been washed away. In the faint hope that the water in the bottom of the boat might react chemically to blood tests, he filled a small glass bottle and put it away in his capacious bag. He also put the bailer on the bridge, to collect on his way back. The grease of fingerprints often survived immersion. The boat itself would have to be gone over later, too.

  Before he climbed out on to the bank, he had a closer look at the broken handrail. The horizontal bar had snapped at a knot—a recent break, judging by the whiteness of the wood—and the broken piece had carried away an upright with it. Considering the thickness of the sound wood, there must have been more than ordinary pressure against it to cause the fracture. A sudden lunge for support by someone trying to lower a dead body into a boat might have done it, James reflected. But that, again, was pure supposition.

  He left the Lode and approached the cottage between two small trim lawns, bordered with flower beds that were still colorful despite the lateness of the season. Either Hutton had been a keen gardener or he had employed a good man to look after the place for him.

  The front door, like the garage, was unlocked—the dead man, though a newcomer to the district, had fallen quickly into country habits. James went in and gazed curiously round. The sitting room was long and low and rathe
r dark—hardly the ideal spot, he would have thought, for a writer to work. It was simply but pleasantly furnished. A single divan covered in yellow cotton occupied one corner and part of a wall. There was a round wooden table on three stout legs, with a shining brass oil lamp in the center and two cane-bottomed chairs tucked under it. Two comfortably shabby armchairs were ranged beside a wide brick fireplace, and a portable typewriter stood beside a bureau with a let-down flap. At an angle to the fireplace, a door opened on to a short steep staircase leading to two tiny bedrooms. The only other door led to the kitchen.

  Methodically, James began to search the ground floor. He glanced through the letters and papers in the bureau, noting with surprise a rather unusual absence of personal correspondence and private documents. The only letter which interested him was a laudatory message from G.H.Q., Cairo, thanking Captain Hutton in somewhat vague terms for unspecified services. James slipped this into his pocket with one or two other papers, and continued his search. In a drawer of the bureau he found a great bundle of typed notes—mainly extracts lifted from military textbooks and various works on the Balkans. The volumes in the big bookcase confirmed the military bias of Hutton’s interests. There was no sign of any original manuscript—Hutton’s book must still have been in the preparatory stage. He opened the typewriter and tapped out a few lines, which he put away with the other exhibits. Having exhausted the possibilities of the sitting room, the inspector went through into the kitchen. There, everything seemed very shipshape, even to the clean enamel bowl turned upside down on the draining board.