“Dick and me.”
“Name?” said the constable.
“Go on, Jack. You knows me well enough.”
“That don’t matter. I’ve got to do it in the proper way. Name?”
“Harry Gotobed.”
“Hoccupation?”
“Sexton. “
“Righto, Harry. Go ahead.”
“Well, Jack, we was a-openin’ this here grave, which is Lady Thorpe’s grave what died last New Year’s Day, for to be ready for her ’usband’s body, see, what’s to be buried to-morrow. We begins to shovel away the earth, one at each end, like, and we hadn’t got much more than a foot or so below ground level, as you might say, when Dick drives his spade down a good spit, and he says to me, ‘Dad,’ he says, ‘there’s something in here.’ And I says to him, ‘What’s that?’ I says, ‘what do you mean? Something in here?’ and then I strikes my spade hard down and I feels something sort of between hard and soft, like, and I says, ‘Dick,’ I says, ‘that’s a funny thing, there is something here.’ So I says, ‘Go careful, my boy,’ I says, ‘because it feels funnylike to me,’ I says. So we starts at one end and shovels away gentle, and arter a bit we sees something sticking up like it might be the toe of a boot. So I says, ‘Dick,’ I says, ‘that’s a boot, that is.’ And he says, ‘You’re right, Dad, so ’tis.’ So I says, ‘Looks to me like we begun at the wrong end of this here, so to say.’ So he says, ‘Well, Dad, now we’ve gone so far we may so well have a look at him.’ So we gets a-shovellin’ again, still going very careful, and arter a bit more we sees something lookin’ like ’air. So I says, ‘You put that there shovel away and use your ’ands, because we don’t want to spile it.’ And he says, ‘I don’t like.’ And I says, ‘Don’t you be a fool, my boy. You can wash your ’ands, can’t you, when you’ve done?’ So we clears away very careful, and at last we sees him plain. And I says, ‘Dick, I don’t know who he is nor yet how he got here, but he didn’t ought to be here.’ And Dick says, ‘Shall I go for Jack Priest?’ And I says, ‘No. ’Tis Church ground and we better tell Rector.’ So that’s what we done.”
“And I said,” put in the Rector, “that we had better send at once for you and for Dr. Baines — and here he is, I see.”
Dr. Baines, a peremptory-looking little man, with a shrewd Scotch face, came briskly up to them. “Good afternoon, Rector. What’s happened here? I was out when your message came, so I — Good Lord!”
A few words put him in possession of the facts, and he knelt down by the graveside.
“He’s terribly mutilated — looks as though somebody had regularly beaten his face in. How long has he been here?”
“That’s what we’d like you to tell us, Doctor.”
“Half a minute, half a minute, sir,” interrupted the policeman. “What day was it you said you buried Lady Thorpe, Harry?”
“January 4th, it were,” said Mr. Gotobed, after a short interval for reflection.
“And was this here body in the grave when you filled it up?”
“Now don’t you be a fool. Jack Priest,” retorted Mr. Gotobed. “’Owever can you suppose as we’d fill up a grave with this here corpus in it? It ain’t a thing as a man might drop in careless like, without noticing. If it was a pocket-knife or a penny-piece, that’d be another thing, but when it comes to the corpus of a full-grown man, that there question ain’t reasonable.”
“Now, Harry, that ain’t a proper answer to my question. I knows my duty.”
“Oh, all right. Well, then, there weren’t no body in that there grave when I filled it up on January 4th — leavin’ out, of course, Lady Thorpe’s body. That was there, I don’t say it wasn’t, and for all I know it’s there still. Unless him as put this here corpus where it is took the other away with him, coffin and all.”
“Well,” said the doctor, “it can’t have been here longer than three months, and so far as I can tell, it hasn’t been there much less. But I’ll tell you that better when you get it out.”
“Three months, eh?” Mr. Hezekiah Lavender had pushed his way to the front. “That ’ud be about the time that stranger chap disappeared — him as was stayin’ at Ezra Wilderspin’s and wanted a job to mend up moty-cars and sich. He had a beard, too, by my recollection.”
“Why, so he had,” cried Mr. Gotobed. “What a head you have on you, Hezekiah! That’s who it is, sure-lie. To think o’ that, now! I always thought that chap was after no good. But who could have gone for to do a thing like this here?”
“Well,” said the doctor. “If Jack Priest has finished with his interrogation, you may as well get the body dug out. Where are you going to put it? It won’t be a very nice thing to keep hanging about.”
“Mr. Ashton have a nice airy shed, sir. If we was to ask him, I dessay he could make shift to move his ploughs out for the time being. And it’s got a decent-sized window and a door with a lock to it.”
“That’ll do well. Dick, run round and ask Mr. Ashton and get him to lend us a cart and a hurdle. How about getting hold of the coroner. Rector? It’s Mr. Compline, you know, over at Leamholt. Shall I ring him up when I get back?”
“Oh, thank you, thank you. I should be very grateful.”
“All right. Can they carry on now. Jack?”
The constable signified his assent, and the digging was resumed. By this time the entire village seemed to have assembled in the churchyard, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the children were prevented from crowding round the grave, since the grown-ups who should have restrained them were themselves struggling for positions of vantage. The Rector was just turning upon them with the severest rebuke he knew how to utter, when Mr. Lavender approached him.
“Excuse me, sir, but did I ought to ring Tailor Paul for that there?”
“Ring Tailor Paul? Well, really, Hezekiah, I hardly know.”
“We got to ring her for every Christian soul dyin’ in the parish,” persisted Mr. Lavender. “That’s set down for us. And seemin’ly he must a-died in the parish, else why should anybody go for to bury him here?”
“True, true, Hezekiah.”
“But as for being’ a Christian soul, who’s to say?”
“That, I fear, is beyond me, Hezekiah.”
“As to being’ a bit behindhand with him,” went on the old man, “that ain’t no fault of ours. We only knowed to-day as he’d died, so it stands to reason we couldn’t ring for him earlier. But Christian — well, there! that’s a bit of a puzzle, that is.”
“We’d better give him the benefit of the doubt, Hezekiah. Ring the bell by all means.”
The old man looked dubious, and at length approached the doctor. “How old?” said the latter, looking round in some surprise. “Why, I don’t know. It’s hard to say. But I should think he was between forty and fifty. Why do you want to know? The bell? Oh, I see. Well, put it at fifty.”
So Tailor Paul tolled the mysterious stranger out with nine strokes and fifty and a hundred more, while Alf Donnington at the Red Cow and Tom Tebbutt at the Wheatsheaf did a roaring trade, and the Rector wrote a letter.