'Not much,' I said truthfully. 'I knew him a long while ago — we were at school together, as a matter of fact — but I haven't seen him much since.'
'Ah...!' He wagged his head mysteriously. 'Mrs Thatcher says he used to come to see Hayhoe in the early part of the week. Did you know that?'
I hadn't, of course, and I thanked him.
'I'll look into it,' I said. 'Meanwhile, you wouldn't like to take me round your churchyard?'
He was only too anxious, and we left the great barrack of a house, which seemed servantless and neglected. He seemed conscious of its deficiencies, and explained in a shame-faced fashion.
'I manage with a man from the village when I haven't any patients,' he said. 'He's a good fellow, a sort of general odd job man, the son of the local builder, for whom he works when he's not being sexton or my charwoman. When I do get a patient, of course, I have to import a nurse and housekeeper.'
We had wandered on ahead of Lugg, and he turned and grimaced at me.
'It's not much of a practice,' he said, 'otherwise, I suppose, I shouldn't find time for things to be so terribly dull.'
As we passed the Lagonda, which was practically new, he looked at it a little wistfully, and I was sorry for him. There was something half childish in his unspoken envy. He had a genius for wasting time, and we spent some moments looking at it. He admired the engine, the gadgets, and the polish on the bodywork, and quite won Lugg's heart.
In fact we all got on very well together and, being in the mood for a confidant at the time, I took the risk and transferred the honour which I had been reserving for Whippet to himself. We talked about the soil of the churchyard. He was interesting and helpful.
'Yes,' he said, 'it's dry and it's hard, or there's some sort of preservative in it, I think, because I know old Witton, the grave-digger, dragged me out one morning to see a most extraordinary thing. He had opened a three-year-old grave to put in a relation of the dead woman, and somehow or other the coffin lid had become dislodged, and yet there was the body practically in a perfect state of preservation. How did you guess?'
'It's the cow-parsley,' I said. 'You often find it growing in soil like that.'
We went on talking about the soil for some time, and he suddenly saw the drift of my questioning.
'An exhumation?' he said. 'Really? I say! That'll be rather — '
He stopped, suppressing the word 'jolly', I felt sure.
' — exciting,' he added, after a pause. 'I've never been present at an exhumation. Nothing so startling ever happens down here.'
'I can't promise,' I protested. 'Nothing's fixed, and for heaven's sake shut up about it. The one thing that's really dangerous at this stage is gossip.'
'It's a question of identification, I suppose?' he said eagerly. 'I say, Campion, you've got a very good chance. What a miracle he chose this particular place to die in! In ninety-nine cemeteries out of a hundred, you know....'
'Yes, but be quiet,' I said. 'Don't talk about it, for heaven's sake.'
'I won't,' he promised. 'My dear old man, you can rely on me. Besides, I don't see a soul to talk to.'
We got away from him eventually, having discovered what we wanted to know, and he stood watching us until we disappeared down the hill. Lugg sighed.
'Lonely life,' he observed. 'When you see a bloke like that it makes you feel you'd like to take him on a pub-crawl, don't it?'
'Does it?' I said.
He frowned. 'You're getting so lah-di-dah and don't-speak-to-me-I'm-clever, you make me tired,' he complained. 'If I was in your position I wouldn't waste me time muckin' round with corpses. I'd ask a fellow like that up to Town for a week and show 'im the sights.'
'My God,' I said, 'I believe you would.'
He chose to be offended, and we drove home in silence.
The following day, which was the third since Hayhoe had been found, I woke up with a sensation that was half exhilaration and half apprehension. I had a premonition that things were going to move, although had I known in what direction I don't think I should have dared to go on.
It began with Professor Farringdon's report. He came over while I was at the station with Pussey, and made it verbally.
'Aye, it was chloral hydrate,' he said, 'as I told you. It was verra deeficult to decide just how much the man had taken before his death. So there is no way of knowing, you see, whether when yon stone crashed down on his head he was already dead, or if he was merely under the influence of the drug.'
Pussey and I both knew the peculiar properties of chloral hydrate; it is a very favourite dope among con-men, but we let him tell us all over again.
'It'd make him very sleepy, you understand. That's why it's so diabolically useful. If ye came upon a man suffering from a slight attack of this poison, ye'd simply think he was in a deep natural sleep.'
Pussey looked at me. 'All the time he was sitting in that chair, I reckon he was just waiting for the thing to fall upon him, helpless, unable to move. Ah! that's a terrible thing, Mr Campion.'
The Professor went on to dilate upon the fate of Mr Hayhoe.
'Yon was an interesting wound,' he said. 'Remarkably lucky, or delivered by someone who was no fool. It caught him just over the collar-bone, and went straight down into his neck. He must have died at once.'
He went on to describe the knife that had been used, and even drew it for us, or at least he drew the blade. Pussey didn't know what to make of it all, but it fitted in to my theory all right.
I left them together and went on to find Whippet. Neither he nor Effie Rowlandson were at The Feathers when I arrived, but presently he came up alone in his little A.C.
'I've been house-hunting,' he said. 'There's a little villa down the road that interests me. It's empty. I like empty houses. Do you? Whenever I'm in a district I go and look at empty houses.'
I let him ramble on for some time, and when I thought he must have tired of the subject I put my question to him suddenly. If I hoped to surprise him I was disappointed.
'Hayhoe?' he said. 'Oh yes. Oh yes, Campion, I had several conversations with him. Not a nice fellow; he tried to touch me.'
'Very likely,' I said. 'But what did you talk to him about?'
Whippet raised his head, and I looked into his vague pale blue eyes.
'Natural history I think, mostly,' he said. 'Flora and fauna, you know.'
At that moment another great wedge of the jigsaw slipped into place.
'Some are born blind,' I said bitterly. 'Some achieve blindness. And some have blindness thrust upon them. Moles come into the first category, don't they?'
He said nothing, but remained quite still, looking out of the window.
I went back to Highwaters, and there the thing I had not foreseen, the thing for which I shall never forgive myself, awaited me.
Lugg had gone.
His suitcase, containing his few travelling things, had vanished, and on my dressing-table, weighted down by an ash-tray, was a crisp new pound note.
CHAPTER 16. THE RED HAIR
At first I did not believe it. It was the one contingency which had never entered my mind, and for a moment I was completely thrown off my balance. I heard myself blethering around like a hysterical woman. Pepper did his best to help me.
'A telephone call came through to you, sir,' he said. 'I didn't take much notice of it, but I understood it was a London call. Mr Lugg took it, and some time afterwards he came down the back stairs with a suitcase in his hand. He went down to the village by the field path.'
And that was all there was to it. That was all anybody could tell me. The exchange was not helpful. There had been a great many incoming calls. The girl at the Post Office had been run off her feet all day. No, she hadn't listened. Of course not! She never did.