“Harper’s the name, sir,” one of the flat-hats said, handing Inspector Marples a sodden leather wallet. “It was sunk with the mooring blocks, just as you said, sir.”
The inspector stared at him in amazement, then at the wallet. “Harper?” he echoed, looking at Walter Mills, who had shrunk back against a wall.
Slowly a little smile dawned on Inspector Marples’ long thin face. “Weren’t you just telling us of your great love for Noreen Harper?”
But Walter Mills’s eyes were fixed in horror on two of the sergeants who were tugging at one end of the sack. It came away slowly, letting the body flop to the floor. He forced himself to look at it. It didn’t look like Noreen. Dank black hair lay plastered across the forehead of a sallow face. Then he saw that the body was dressed in a man’s suit.
“Noreen Harper’s husband, eh?” said Inspector Marples. “I might have guessed it.”
“I–I didn’t know there was a husband,” Walter Mills stammered.
“Isn’t that what they always say, sergeant?” Inspector Marples said to his assistant.
“Always, sir. Never fails.”
Walter Mills was staring at the dead man and thinking of Noreen. Curly and Noreen, probably at the other side of the world by now, not that it mattered. Nothing mattered now.
“I never knew him,” he said in a tired voice.
“Save it,” Inspector Marples cut in. “Save it for the Old Bailey.”
But Walter Mills didn’t hear him, for there was a singing in his ears as he stood with the smartly cut beard clutched tightly in his hand.
Sheriff Bigelow and the Nickel-Plated Pocket Watch
by G. S. Hargrave
“This,” Deputy Walts was saying, “is definitely very weird.” He chewed at the bottom of his full black mustache in growing perplexity. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d have to call it a definite ten.”
The whole strange business started on a Tuesday morning, late last October. Walts and I were standing in the middle of Oak Knoll cemetery — one of those long-forgotten grave-yards hidden among the stubbled fields of Constantine County — with our collars turned up against the morning chill. Around us there was an acre or so of headstones. Around that, there was a rusting iron fence. Beyond the fence, there was a field of withered cornstalks, a stand of oaks, and a thicket of bramble that a rabbit couldn’t get through.
The earliest arrival at Oak Knoll Cemetery had moldered in the ground for a good hundred and fifty years, disturbed only at monthly intervals by the brief intrusions of a county mowing crew. It would have seemed like a quiet enough place to wait out an eternity.
Until last night, that is.
What we’d found upon our arrival was half a dozen rudely opened graves, and a thoroughly morbid array of scattered bones, decaying bits of cloth, and pieces of crumbling wooden caskets, all mixed in among the first heavy fall of autumn leaves.
It was weird, all right.
“Better get us some pictures,” I said to Walts.
Walts started off down the hill toward where our car was parked. Meanwhile, George Mackey — the county caretaker — limped purposefully in my direction. I prepared myself. I know trouble when I see it coming.
“Jeez, Sheriff Bigelow — just look at this! We ain’ never gonna get ’em all sorted out!”
Not this side of the Second Coming, I thought.
Old George is more than a touch hard of hearing, and tends to shout straight in your face to make up for it. His normal conversational tone was something I could probably learn to live with. His breath, however, was another matter.
I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and made a show of polishing the lenses of my specs, giving me a momentary excuse to tilt my nose from his line of fire. “Just do the best you can, George. Don’t worry — no one will ever know the difference.”
“Hell,” he snapped, “you think they won’t know?” He glared at me for a moment in pop-eyed outrage, then pointedly turned his back. Mumbling to himself, he started off down the hill, his grayed head bobbing with each step. He angrily motioned for his crew to pick up their shovels.
This was going to be some morning.
Walts had come back and was clumsily focusing the Polaroid on a stray femur that lay at his feet. There was a flash and whir. He stood watching the results develop, eyeing the emerging image critically.
“It’s not for the family album, Walts. Just get on with it, okay?”
Walts got on with it.
Down the hillside, Mackey’s helpers were busily tossing bones and leaves into the closest open grave. George howled in fury, demanding a more even distribution of the departed.
After twenty minutes or so, Walts had finished up and was putting the camera back into its case. He glanced up at me. “It was vandals — right?”
I shook my head. “Too much time and energy involved. Vandals might tip over a few headstones, or empty a couple of cans of spray paint. But this? Hell — it would have taken a couple of grown men the whole damn night.”
“But if it wasn’t vandalism, what was it?” Walts’ voice carried a vaguely worried note. He sounded like a man who’s watched too many of those late-night creature-features, and is beginning to entertain some strange ideas.
“Graverobbers?” I shouted. “Satanists? An escaped band of lunatic genealogists? Now how the hell should I know?”
Things were bad enough without bringing Boris Karloff into the picture.
Walts blinked, shying away from this unexpected verbal onslaught like a scolded puppy. All six foot four and two hundred ten pounds of him.
I’m already an old man, and sometimes I fear I’m becoming a crotchety one as well. Or maybe I just need my bran flakes in the morning.
I sighed, motioning toward the squad car. “Lets get back to Mecklin. We’re not going to accomplish anything just standing around here with our hands in our pockets.”
Walts pulled his hands out of his pockets, looking even more miserable than before.
Ten minutes later we were on our way down the curving two-lane toward town. Deputy Walts was no longer talking to me.
At least that gave me some time to think.
The whole thing had me baffled. Walts and I had combed the cemetery thoroughly, failing to turn up so much as a stray footprint or a discarded cigarette butt. Of course old George had trampled all over the place in a frenzy before Walts and I even got there, doing an admirable job of obliterating any evidence that might otherwise have been found. Hell, I thought. He couldn’t have done more damage if he’d tried.
One thing did seem clear, at least: Whoever had been out there had had something pretty definite in mind.
Every grave that had been opened had belonged to a male, and each and every one had died in November, 1939.
Deputy Walts has never been the sort to hold a grudge for long. By Wednesday morning, things between us were pretty much back to normal. Ol’ Walts was as talkative as ever.
We were having breakfast at the Waffle House. I was trying to read the morning edition of the Mecklin Gazette, while Walts expounded his various theories concerning the trouble over at Oak Knoll Cemetery. All between mouthfuls of pancake and sausage.
I briefly entertained the thought that I’d have to offend him again if I ever hoped to get any peace and quiet. Millie Preston came over to freshen my coffee, drawing an admiring glance from Walts and providing for a short break in what was very much a one-sided conversation. As the back of her ruffled skirt retreated, Walts picked right up where he’d left off.