Kepesake, which is a frankly picturesque village by day, was mysterious in the false light. The high trees were deep and shadowy and hid the small houses, while the square tower of the church looked squat and menacing against the transparent sky. It was a secret village through which we sped on what I for one felt was our rather ghastly errand.
When we pulled up outside the cottage which is also the Police Station, there was only a single light in an upstairs room, and I leant over the back of my seat.
'Are you sure you wouldn't rather leave it until the morning?' I ventured.
She answered me through clenched teeth. 'No, thank you, Mr Campion. I've made up my mind to go through with it. I've got to know.'
I left them in the car and went down the path to rouse someone. Pussey himself came out almost at once, and was wonderfully obliging considering he had been on the point of going to bed. We conferred in whispers out of deference to the darkness.
'That's all right, sir,' he said in reply to my apologies. 'Us wants a bit o' help in this business, and that's the truth now, so it is. If the lady can tell us anything about the deceased it's more than the landlord of his flat in London can. We'll go around the side, sir, if you don't mind.'
I fetched the others, and together we formed a grim little procession on the gravel path leading round to the yard behind the cottage. Pussey unlocked the gates, and we crossed the tidy little square to the slate-roofed shed which looked like a small village schoolroom, and was not.
I took Effie Rowlandson's arm. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering, but she was not a figure of negligible courage.
Pussey was tact itself. 'There's a light switch just inside the door,' he said. 'Now, Miss, there ain't nothin' to shock you. Just a moment, sir; I'll go first.'
He unlocked the door, and we stood huddled together on the stone step. Pussey turned over the light switch.
'Now,' he said, and a moment later swallowed with a sound in which incredulity was mixed with dismay. The room remained as I had seen it that afternoon, save for one startling innovation. The table in the middle of the floor was dismantled. The cotton sheet lay upon the ground, spread out as though a careless riser had flung it aside.
Pig Peters had gone.
CHAPTER 8. THE WHEELS GO ROUND
There was a long uncomfortable pause. A moment before I had seen Pig's outline under the cotton clearly in my mind's eye. Now the image was dispelled so ruthlessly that I felt mentally stranded. The room was very cold and quiet. Lugg stepped ponderously forward.
'Lost the perishin' corpse now?' he demanded, and he spoke so truculently that I knew he was rattled. 'Lumme, Inspector, I 'ope your 'elmet's under lock and key.'
Pussey stood looking down at the dismantled table, and his pleasant yokel face was pale.
'That's a wonderful funny thing,' he began, and looked round the ill-lit barren little room as though he expected to find an explanation for the mystery on its blank walls.
It was a moment of alarm, the night so silent, the place so empty and the bedraggled cotton pall on the ground.
Pussey would have spoken again had it not been for Effie Rowlandson's exhibition. Her nerve deserted her utterly and she drew away from me, her head strained back as she began to scream, her mouth twisted into an O of terror. It was nerve-racking, and I seized her by the shoulders and shook her so violently that her teeth rattled.
It silenced her, of course. Her final shriek was cut off in the middle, and she looked up at me angrily.
'Stop it!' I said. 'Do you want to rouse the village?'
She put up her hands to push me away.
'I'm frightened,' she said. 'I don't know what I'm doing. What's happened to him? You told me he was here. I was going to look at him, and now he's gone.'
She began to cry noisily. Pussey glanced at her and then at me.
'Perhaps that'd be best if the young lady went home,' he suggested reasonably.
Miss Rowlandson clung to me. 'Don't leave me,' she said. 'I'm not going down to "The Feathers" in the dark. I won't, I tell you, I won't! Not while he's about, alive.'
'It's all right,' I began soothingly. 'Lugg'll drive you down. There's nothing to be alarmed about. There's been a mistake. The body's been moved. Perhaps the undertaker — '
Pussey raised his head as he heard the last word.
'No,' he said. 'That was in here an hour ago, because I looked.'
Effie began to cry again. 'I won't go with him,' she said. 'I won't go with anyone but you. I'm frightened. You got me into this. You must get me out of it. Take me home! Take me home!'
She made an astounding amount of noise, and Pussey looked at me beseechingly.
'Perhaps if you would drive the young lady down, sir,' he suggested diffidently, 'that would ease matters up here, in a manner of speaking. I better get on the telephone to Sir Leo right away.'
I glanced at Lugg appealingly, but he avoided my eyes, and Miss Rowlandson laid her head on my shoulder in an ecstasy of tears.
The situation had all the unreality and acute discomfort of a nightmare. Outside the shed the yard was ghostly in the false light. It was hot, and there was not a breath of wind anywhere. Effie was trembling so violently that I thought she might collapse.
'I'll be back in a minute,' I said to Pussey, and hurried her down the gravel path to the waiting car.
The Feathers Inn is at the far end of the village. It stands by itself at the top of a hill, and is reputed to have the best beer, if not the best accommodation, in the neighbourhood.
Effie Rowlandson scrambled into the front seat, and when I climbed in beside her she drew close to me, still weeping.
'I've had a shock,' she snivelled. 'I'd prepared myself and then it wasn't necessary. That was one thing. Then I realized Roly got out by himself. You didn't know Roly Peters as well as I did, Mr Campion. When I heard he'd been killed I didn't really believe it. He was clever, and he was cruel. He's about somewhere, hiding.'
'He was dead this afternoon,' I said brutally. 'Very dead. And since miracles don't happen nowadays he's probably dead still. There's nothing to get so excited about. I'm sorry you should have had a rotten experience, but there's probably some very ordinary explanation for the disappearance of the body.'
I was rather shocked to hear myself talking so querulously. There had been something very disturbing in the incident. The elusiveness of Pig dead was becoming illogical and alarming.
As we came out of the village on to the strip of heath which lay silent and deserted in the cold secretive light, she shuddered.
'I'm not an imaginative girl, Mr Campion,' she said, 'but you read of funny things happening, don't you? Suppose he was to rise up behind one of these banks of stones by the side of the road and come out towards us....'
'Shut up,' I said, even more violently than I had intended. 'You'll frighten yourself into a fit, my child. I assure you there's some perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. When you get into "The Feathers" make them give you a hot drink and go to bed. You'll find the mystery's been cleared up by the morning.'
She drew away from me. 'Oh, you're hard,' she said with a return of her old manner. 'I said you were hard. I like hard people, I do reelly.'
Her lightning changes of mood disconcerted me, and I was glad when we pulled up outside the pub. The fine old lath and plaster front was in darkness, which was not astonishing, for it was nearly midnight.
'Which door is it?' I inquired.
'The one marked Club Room. I expect it'll be locked.'
I left her in the car while I tapped on the door she indicated. For a time there was no response, and I was getting restive at the delay when I heard a furtive movement on the inside. I tapped again, and this time the door was opened.