The Case of the Late Pig

'I say, you're fearfully late,' said the last voice I expected, and Gilbert Whippet of all people thrust a pale face out into the moonlight.

I gaped at him, and he had the grace to seem vaguely disturbed to see me.

'Oh ... er ... Campion,' he said. 'Hello! Terribly late, isn't it?'

He was backing into the dark pit of the doorway when I pulled myself together.

'Hey,' I said, catching him by the sleeve. 'Here, Whippet, where are you going?'

He did not resist me, but made no attempt to come out into the light. Moreover, I felt that once I let him go he would fade quietly into the background.

'I was going to bed,' he murmured, no doubt in reply to my question. 'I heard you knock, so I opened the door.'

'You stay and talk to me,' I commanded. 'What are you doing here, anyway?'

In spite of myself I heard the old censorious note creeping into my tone. Whippet is so very vague that he forces one into an unusual directness.

He did not answer me, and I repeated the question.

'Here?' he said, looking up at the pub. 'Oh yes, I'm staying here. Only for a day or two.'

He was infuriating, and I quite forgot the girl until I heard her step behind me.

'Mr Whippet,' she began breathlessly, 'he's gone! The body's gone! What shall we do?'

Whippet turned his pale eyes towards her, and I thought I detected a warning in the glance.

'Ah, Miss Rowlandson,' he said. 'You've been out? You're late, aren't you?'

I was glad to see she wasn't playing, either.

'The body's gone,' she repeated. 'Roly Peters' body is gone.'

The information seemed to sink in. For a moment he looked positively intelligent.

'Lost it?' he said. 'Oh! ... Awkward. Holds things up so.'

His voice trailed away in silence, and he suddenly shook hands with me.

'Glad to have seen you, Campion. I'll look you up some time. Er — good night.'

He stepped back into the doorway, and Effie followed him. With great presence of mind I put my foot in the jamb.

'Look here, Whippet,' I said, 'if you can do anything to help us in this matter, or if you know anything, you'd better come out with it. What do you know about Peters, anyway?'

He blinked at me.

'Oh ... nothing. I'm just staying here. I've heard the talk, of course....'

I caught his sleeve again just as he was disappearing.

'You had one of those letters,' I said. 'Have you had any more?'

'About the mole? Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I have, Campion. I've got it somewhere. I showed it to Miss Rowlandson. I say, it's terribly awkward you losing the body. Have you looked in the river?'

It was such an unexpected question that it irritated me unreasonably.

'Why on earth in the river?' I said. 'D'you know anything?'

In my excitement I must have held him a little more tightly than I had intended, for he suddenly shook himself free.

'I should look in the river,' he said. 'I mean, it's so obvious, isn't it?'

He stepped back and closed the door with himself and Miss Rowlandson inside. I still had my foot there, however, and he opened it again. He seemed embarrassed.

'It's fearfully late,' he said. 'I don't mean to be rude, Campion. I'll look you up tomorrow, if I may, but there's no point in your doing anything at all until you've found the body, is there?'

I hesitated. There was a great deal in what Whippet said. I was itching to get back, and yet there was evidently much he could explain. What on earth was he doing there with Effie Rowlandson, for one thing?

In that moment of hesitation I was lost. He moved forward, and as I stepped backward involuntarily the door was gently, almost politely, closed in my face.

I cursed him, but decided he could wait. I hurried back to the car and turned her. As I raced down to the Police Station I tried to reconcile Whippet's reappearance with the whole mysterious business.

I covered the half mile in something under a minute, and pulled up outside Pussey's cottage at the same moment that another car arrived from the opposite direction. As I climbed out I recognized Leo's respectable Humber. Pepper Junior was driving, and Leo hailed me from the tonneau.

'Is that you, Campion? Most extraordinary business! Pussey told me over the phone.'

I went up to the car and opened the door.

'Are you coming, sir?' I said.

'Yes, my boy, yes. Should have been here before, but I stopped to pick up Bathwick here. Seems to have had a little accident on the way home from our place tonight.'

He put up his hand and turned on the light as he spoke, and I stared down into the pale, embarrassed face of the Reverend Smedley Philip Bathwick, who smiled at me with uncharacteristic friendliness. He was wringing wet. His dinner-jacket clung to him, and his dog-collar was a sodden rag.

'Been in the river, he tells me,' said Leo.

CHAPTER 9. 'AND A VERY GOOD DAY TO YOU, SIR'

'The river?' I echoed, Whippet's idiotic remark returning to me. 'Really?'

Bathwick giggled. It was a purely nervous sound, but Leo scowled at him.

'Well, hardly,' he said. 'I was taking a short cut home across the saltings and I stumbled into one of the dykes. I'd come out without my torch. I made my way back to the road, and Sir Leo very kindly picked me up and gave me a lift.'

It was a fantastic story in view of the moonlight, which was so bright that colours were almost distinguishable, and I thought Leo must notice it. He had a one-track mind, however. His one desire was to get back to the scene of the disappearance.

'Never mind, never mind. Soon get you home now,' he said. 'Pepper'll take you along. Make yourself a hot toddy. Wrap yourself in a blanket and you'll come to no harm.'

'Er — thank you, thank you very much,' said Bathwick. 'I should like nothing better. I feel I must express — '

We heard no more, for Pepper Junior, who doubtless shared his employer's anxiety to get to the scene of the excitement in the shortest possible time, let in the clutch and Bathwick was whisked away.

I was sorry to lose him. His astonishing friendliness towards me was not the least fishy circumstance of his brief appearance.

'Where did you find him?' I asked Leo.

'On the lower road. Nearly ran him down. He's all right — just a duckin'.' Leo was fighting with the catch of the police-station gate as he spoke and appeared profoundly uninterested.

'Yes, I know,' I said. 'But he left Highwaters at about a quarter to ten. I thought Kingston was going to run him home?'

'So he did, so he did,' said Leo, sighing with relief as we got the wicket open. 'Kingston put him down at the White Barn corner, and he said he'd strike his way home across the marshes. Can't be more than five hundred yards. But the silly feller stumbled into a dyke, lost his nerve, and made his way back to the road. Perfectly simple, Campion. No mystery there. Come on, my boy, come on. We're wastin' time.'

'But it's now midnight,' I objected. 'It couldn't have taken him a couple of hours to scramble out of a dyke.'

'Might have done,' said Leo irritably. 'Backboneless feller. Anyway, we can't bother about him now. Got somethin' serious to think about. I don't like monkey-business with a corpse. It's not a bit like my district. It's indecent. I tell you I feel it, Campion. Ah, here's Pussey. Anythin' to report, my man?'

Pussey and Lugg came up together. I could see their faces quite plainly, and I wondered how Bathwick could possibly have avoided seeing a rabbit-hole, much less a dyke.

Pussey, I saw at once, was well over his first superstitious alarm. At the moment he was less mystified than shocked.

'That's a proper nasty thing, sir,' he said, 'so that is, now.'

He led us into the shed and, with Lugg remaining mercifully silent in the background, gave us a fairly concise account of his investigations.