C S Lewis and the Body in the Basement (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 1) (14 page)

‘Meanwhile,’ said Crispin, looking up at me, ‘you two did what?’

‘Well, we followed, of course,’ volunteered Warnie. ‘No point in us hanging around like a shag on a rock. Or two shags on a rock, I suppose. Or perhaps like two shags on two rocks. Anyway, we followed Jack and the other chappie down the stairs.’

‘You had no particular reason for doing this?’

‘Didn’t think about it really,’ mumbled Warnie. ‘Bit boring standing around waiting, so we followed, if you see what I mean.’

‘And this would have been about twenty past ten I take it?’

‘About that,’ Jack agreed.

‘Now, Mr Ravenswood: you saw Mr Grimm and these gentlemen enter the cellar?’

‘I was in the strongroom, and as I walked out of the vault door, Grimm and Mr Lewis here were just approaching. I remembered Mr Lewis and identified him. Then I noticed these other two standing at the foot of the cellar stairs. I told Grimm in plain terms that they shouldn’t be there. Until I pointed it out I don’t think he’d noticed that they followed him.’

‘Then?’

‘Well, then Nicholas Proudfoot came charging in. Like a bull in a china shop.’

‘This is the young farmer who died this morning?’

‘Yes, I was told about his death. Tragic. Awful business.’

‘So, Mr Ravenswood, what was he so angry about? I’ve been told he was shouting incoherently. But it can’t have been entirely incoherent to you since you were the target of his remarks. What was it all about?’

‘Well, to be honest, there was some problem with the loan I’d advanced to him against a mortgage on his farm. He’d borrowed to buy new equipment, and to improve the fencing and hedging and generally bring the place up to date—it was pretty run down. Then the weather turned nasty for most of a season, and then farm gate prices for produce dropped. So he was in a bit of difficulty.’

‘Had he missed payments?’

‘Yes, more than one—and another payment was due. I told him two days ago, quite bluntly, that I had to foreclose on the mortgage. He didn’t like it at all. He blamed me, but I said it was out of my hands—rules of the bank, that sort of thing. In fact, now that he’s dead, the machinery’s already begun to turn and the bank’s foreclosing on the mortgage immediately.’

Edith Ravenswood spoke up and said, ‘Oh Edmund! That’s terribly unfair on poor Amelia Proudfoot—a widow one day and the farm gone the next.’

Ravenswood shrugged his shoulders, ‘If it was only one payment that had been missed . . . but it’s out of my hands.’

Inspector Crispin intervened to ask, ‘And that’s what his anger was all about?’

‘As far as I could understand it, yes,’ replied the banker. ‘As you said, he was almost incoherent.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, just as I thought he was going to leave, he pushed me into the strongroom and closed the vault door. Took me completely by surprise—right off guard, so to speak.’

‘And you gentlemen saw this?’ Crispin asked, turning back to us three.

We nodded. ‘It was just as Mr Ravenswood described,’ Jack said. ‘As soon as it happened—as soon as the vault door was slammed closed and the combination locks turned—the young man charged up the steps and out of the cellar.’

‘Leaving you three and Mr Grimm. So, what steps did you take?’

Warnie said, ‘Well, that Grimm fellow tried the vault door, but it was definitely locked shut. Wouldn’t budge. So we came upstairs. Grimm insisted that he didn’t have the combination and he’d have to call the bank’s regional office.’

‘That’s right,’ said Ravenswood. ‘Bank policy. In a small branch such as this only the manager has the combination.’

‘And you were locked inside the vault?’

‘Exactly. I was locked inside the vault.’

‘Was there enough air for you to breathe? Were you in the dark, or is there a light?’

‘Oh, there’s an electric light all right. That wasn’t a problem. And a chair for me to sit on—the chair we have there for bank customers when they’re accessing their safe deposit boxes. And it’s a large strongroom, so I would have had hours before the air began to get stale.’

‘So then,’ the Scotland Yard man continued, ‘you three were back up here in the office with Mr Grimm?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ruth Jarvis volunteered. ‘I saw them come back up, and Mr Grimm told me what had happened and then rang Tadminster and asked them to send over one of the managers who had the combination. Then Franklin thought he should go back downstairs again.’

‘Why?’ said Inspector Crispin. ‘That’s not at all clear to me.’

‘He was flustered,’ said Ruth. ‘I think he thought he should be closer to Mr Ravenswood, just in case he might be able to do something to help. There’s a small air vent in the concrete wall of the strongroom—perhaps he wanted to make sure it was open.’

‘So he took off back downstairs. What then?’

Jack took up the story. ‘Before he left he’d issued me with the cash I’d requested and stamped my passbook. But he’d also reported the matter to the police, so Constable Dixon over there had arrived to take our statements. He was doing that when I heard a faint cry from downstairs.’

‘Did the rest of you hear it?’ asked Crispin, casting a glance around the room.

‘No, not a peep,’ said Warnie, ‘but then Jack has unusually acute hearing.’

‘This would have been when—about half past ten?’

‘About that.’

Crispin nodded and went on, ‘So you then went downstairs and found the dead body?’

We nodded.

‘Then if you’ll accompany me, we’ll all go downstairs now,’ said the policeman, ‘to the scene of the crime.’

It turned out that the silent Sergeant Merrivale had the key to the basement door. He turned it in the lock and stood to one side while the rest of us followed Inspector Crispin in single file down the narrow wooden staircase into the bank’s cellar.

Perhaps it was just my imagination, but it felt cold and damp down there. And with only a single light bulb there was a dim, yellow, almost ghostly light that faded away into black shadows in the distant corners. The basement smelled in equal proportions of mildew, mice and mortgages.

‘Timing to begin with,’ said Crispin, once we’d assembled at the foot of the stairs. ‘You’ve suggested it was twenty past ten, or something like that, when you came down here. So Nicholas Proudfoot must have burst in, when? Twenty-five past?’

‘At the very latest,’ Jack said.

‘Mrs Ravenswood: where were you at twenty-five past ten yesterday morning?’

‘Me? Oh, just upstairs, in our flat. Doing some mending.’

‘Was anyone with you?’

‘No, I was alone.’

‘Show me where you three gentlemen were standing,’ said Crispin, turning to us. Warnie and I shuffled back until we were just at the foot of the stairs. Jack took a pace forward towards the vault door, which I noticed was once again securely closed and locked.

‘And Mr Grimm was where?’

‘Immediately in front of where I’m standing,’ Jack said, ‘or perhaps just to one side.’

‘That’s more like it,’ said Ravenswood. ‘If I remember correctly he was standing almost beside you—and I was here, where I am now, immediately in front of the vault door.’

‘Then Mr Proudfoot appeared.’

We nodded.

‘Did anyone try to stop him?’

‘Afraid not,’ Warnie admitted. ‘We were like stunned fish in the fishmonger’s window. Couldn’t believe what we were seeing and hearing. Didn’t move, I’m afraid.’

‘Did you move, Mr Ravenswood?’ asked the Scotland Yard man.

‘Well, I suppose,’ the bank manager admitted, ‘I must have backed away a few steps. He was so wild I didn’t know what he was going to do next—so I backed away a little. That’s how I came to be standing in the open doorway to the vault.’

‘At the end of his tirade Mr Proudfoot pushed you in through the vault doorway?’

‘That’s correct. Caught me right off balance. I staggered backwards, and before I could do anything to stop him he’d swung the door closed on me.’

‘And then he pushed down the locking levers and spun those dial things there,’ said Warnie, pointing at the combination locks.

‘How did he know how to do that?’ asked the Scotland Yard man.

‘His late mother had a safe deposit box in the strongroom,’ Ravenswood explained. ‘It contained her will and the deeds to the farm and so on. Young Nicolas was usually with her when she came to the bank. He’d seen me operate the locking mechanism a number of times.’

‘So then you were locked in,’ continued Inspector Crispin, who was pacing up and down by this time.

‘Securely.’

‘And you couldn’t get out?’

‘That’s a top of the range vault door, with a double combination lock,’ said Ravenswood. ‘The whole thing is made from heavy duty tempered steel. The vault itself is double brick on the outside with steel cladding on the inside walls.’

‘You definitely couldn’t get out?’

With a dry, cynical laugh Ravenswood said, ‘Not unless I was Houdini!’

Crispin turned to us and said, ‘Did Grimm test the locks? Did he try to open the door?’

‘Several times,’ I said. ‘It was definitely securely closed and locked.’

‘How many other ways are there into this cellar?’

‘None,’ said the bank manager firmly. ‘None at all.’

‘But when this was a private residence I’m told that part of this cellar held coal—so there must be a coal hole somewhere?’

Ravenswood led us all over to a far corner and pointed to a metal plate in the ceiling of the cellar. This, he explained, had once been the coal chute but it was bolted closed, and had been bolted closed for many years. Sergeant Merrivale pulled out a powerful electric torch, climbed up on a box and examined the plate.

‘Heavily bolted,’ he said to Crispin. ‘And the bolts are rusted over. This hasn’t been opened for years.’

‘So that just leaves—’ began the inspector.

‘The door at the top of that flight of stairs,’ said Ravenswood, finishing his sentence for him.

‘Do you agree, Merrivale?’ said Crispin, turning to his sergeant.

‘There are no concealed doors, or panels, or entrances to secret tunnels—nothing of that sort, sir. I’ve looked. These walls and floor are solid rock, and that strongroom wall is double brick with a layer of concrete lined with steel on the inside.’

We all looked slowly around the damp stone cellar with its heavy wall dividing the strongroom half from the part where we stood. The total impossibility of the murder of Franklin Grimm loomed before us like some ghostly phantom.

Inspector Crispin pulled a long blue envelope out of his top coat pocket. From this he extracted a single sheet of paper.

‘The police surgeon’s report,’ he explained. ‘Dr Haydock says that Mr Grimm was killed by a single blow to the neck that severed the carotid artery and penetrated his wind pipe. It was a narrow blade that tore the skin roughly on penetration.’

Ruth Jarvis began to sob again and Edith Ravenswood went over to put an arm around her shoulders.

‘Narrow blade, eh?’ said Warnie. ‘Knew a chap in my regiment once who had a knife like that—a stiletto he called it. Said it was Italian. Said lots of Italians carried them.’

‘Dixon, are you there?’ called out Crispin.

Dixon’s voice came from the dark at the top of the stairs acknowledging his presence.

‘Are there any Italians in Market Plumpton?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Or in the district?’

‘Not that I know of, sir.’

‘When we get back to the station, you should check on that.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Inspector Crispin paced back and forth in silence for a minute or two, then he turned to his sergeant and asked, ‘How carefully has this place been searched?’

‘Very,’ replied Merrivale. ‘The local force searched it yesterday, and then I went over it again myself at lunchtime today.’

‘You’ve done your own search?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you found no entrance except that staircase?’

‘Correct, sir.’

‘And no trace of a weapon?’

‘None, sir. Mind you,’ Merrivale continued, ‘the weapon was obviously small and might have been concealed and carried away.’

‘Yes, there is that.’ Inspector Crispin resumed his pacing.

‘Do you need us any longer?’ asked Jack.

The policeman sighed heavily and said there was probably nothing more to be accomplished for the time being, but that we were not to leave the district without his permission.

‘In that case,’ suggested Warnie, rubbing his hands together, ‘back to the pub for a drink.’

Outside the bank we discovered that black clouds had rolled across a copper-coloured sky and were getting to grips with each other like rugby players packing down in a scrum. A fine, misty rain had begun to fall. We turned up our coat collars and hurried back to
The Boar’s Head
. As we stepped into the welcome warmth of a blazing fire, I made some cynical remark about this being an English summer.

‘You have nothing to complain about, young Morris,’ said Jack with a grin as we pulled up chairs about the fireplace in the public bar. ‘I had a student from Dartmoor once. He insisted that Dartmoor had the worst weather in the world. When I asked him to describe the climate he said that in Dartmoor they had eleven months of winter—followed by one month of bad weather.’