C S Lewis and the Body in the Basement (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 1) (16 page)

It took us the better the part of an hour to circle the town and find ourselves back on the stone bridge over the stream, close to where we had found the body of Nicholas Proudfoot. Here Jack stopped to light his pipe and look slowly around. Once again he seemed fascinated by the powerful branches of the old willow tree that hung over the bridge.

‘Is that a bit of rope caught up in that branch?’ he asked, pointing with the stem of his pipe.

‘It might be,’ I said, shading my eyes and squinting into the sunlight.

Then he transferred his attention to the deep scratch marks on the stone at the centre of the arch.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

Jack said he was trying to imagine the sequence of events as they might have unfolded at the moment when Nicholas Proudfoot died. Warnie quickly lost interest and leaned over the stone parapet of the bridge, staring at the bubbling, fast-flowing water beneath.

‘Might be trout in that stream,’ he said. ‘Sort of place trout tend to like.’

‘We should ask our friendly publican, Frank Jones,’ I suggested, ‘if he ever serves fresh trout.’

‘Jolly good idea,’ said Warnie with a laugh. ‘I love a meal of fresh trout. Preferably pan fried in butter. Have you finished, Jack? Are you ready to move on?’

Jack said he was, tapped out the ashes from his pipe on the stonework of the bridge, and we resumed our walk.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour later we were at the front gate to the Proudfoot farm. Surprisingly it was swinging open.

‘Careless of them,’ muttered Warnie.

We walked up the gravel driveway into the farmyard and were struck once again by the oppressive silence.

‘It’s odd,’ said Jack. ‘There’s not a farmhand around the place—nor an animal.’

‘Well, if they’ve been struggling for money,’ I suggested, ‘perhaps they had to lay off anyone they’d employed, and perhaps even had to sell their stock.’

Jack knocked on the front door. There was no reply, and he knocked again. As on our previous visit, the sound seemed to reverberate through the small stone farmhouse.

‘I’ll scout around,’ Warnie volunteered, and he took off around the corner of the house as Jack knocked again. I wandered across the farmyard and checked the outbuildings. There was no sign of life, and the only piece of machinery I found in the shed was an ancient disc plough designed to be pulled by draught horses.

Warnie returned to report that he’d peered in through the windows and seen no one. ‘It’s deserted all right,’ he concluded.

After a final loud rap on the front door we gave up and made our way back to the road. Here we found a small Morris car had just drawn up and a bulky man in tweeds was squeezing himself out of the driver’s seat.

‘Morning, gents,’ he said in a cheerful greeting. While we watched he opened the boot of the car, pulled out a ‘For Sale’ sign attached to a wooden stake, and drove this into the ground beside the entrance to the Proudfoot farm.

‘Sad business,’ he said as we watched this happening. ‘It’s going on the market to repay a bank mortgage—a foreclosure sale. You gentlemen wouldn’t be interested, would you? Only needs a little hard work to build it up into a going concern again.’

Warnie quickly dismissed any possibility that we were potential buyers.

‘All of this is rather sudden,’ said Jack suspiciously.

The man in tweeds shrugged his shoulders and replied, ‘I’m just the estate agent. If the bank manager tells me the place is to go on the market as a mortgagee sale, I just nod my head and pocket my commission. Good day to you.’

With those words he squeezed himself back into his small car and roared up the country lane in a cloud of blue exhaust smoke.

We walked slowly back towards the town wrapped in thought, trying to make sense of these rapidly moving events.

‘It’s all very strange—selling the farm out from underneath the young widow like this. But does it tell us anything about the murder?’ I asked.

Warnie chewed his moustache in silence for a minute and then said, ‘What if there’s embezzlement involved?’

‘Explain yourself, old chap,’ Jack said.

‘Well, suppose the Proudfoots thought they were keeping up with their payments—struggling, but managing to keep their heads above water—and suddenly they’re told they’re in arrears and the bank is about to foreclose. Now, if the situation was something along those lines, I wonder if Franklin Grimm was siphoning their mortgage payments into his own pocket? From what we’ve heard about Grimm’s character I wouldn’t put it past him. And it would certainly give Nicholas Proudfoot a powerful motive to murder Grimm.’

‘But when we saw Proudfoot at the bank,’ I protested, ‘it was the manager, Edmund Ravenswood, he was angry with, not Grimm.’

‘Well . . . if he got a demand notice from the bank, the first person he’d blame would be the manager,’ Warnie extemporised. ‘But perhaps when he thought about it he realised that the shark in the water was Grimm.’

‘No, no.’ Jack shook his head. ‘It won’t wash, old chap. Not enough time. We saw Proudfoot furious with Ravenswood, and just minutes later it was Grimm who was murdered. How can he have switched the focus of his fury so quickly?’

‘Quite apart from the question,’ I added, ‘of how he got into the sealed basement of the bank to commit the murder.’

‘Hmm, all a bit difficult,’ Warnie muttered, and we walked for some minutes in silence as we each chewed over this intractable problem.

‘It’s very odd,’ I exclaimed a few minutes later, returning to the question that still troubled me. ‘Foreclosing on the farm so soon after the farmer’s death—it strikes me as very odd, or heavy handed, or something.’

‘Very well then,’ said Jack with a broad grin. ‘Let’s go and ask Ravenswood why he’s done it.’

‘Chap’ll probably throw us out!’ protested Warnie. ‘No reason he should tell us anything.’

‘And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t ask,’ said Jack cheerfully. ‘Come on.’ And with those words he quickened his pace.

When we stood in front of the bank, half an hour later, wilting from the heat and looking to get out of the sun, we found the door closed and the notice tacked up by the police still in place. This, however, did not stop Jack from knocking on the door. When there was no reply, he looked around and found a bell pull to one side.

‘Probably rings in the manager’s flat upstairs,’ he said as he gave it a hefty tug.

We waited patiently and a few minutes later footsteps could be heard on the other side of the door. It opened slightly and Ravenswood’s face appeared.

‘The police have ordered the bank cl—’ he began, then he recognised us. ‘Oh, it’s you three.’

‘We wondered if we could have a chat,’ said Jack, smiling encouragingly, ‘about this whole awful business.’

‘I don’t see why I should talk to you three,’ growled Ravenswood.

‘Is there any reason why you shouldn’t?’ Jack asked pleasantly.

In the long, hot silence that followed, the bank manager’s face resembled one of those books where the images change if you rapidly flick over the pages. His initial irritation and annoyance was replaced by curiosity—with just a hint of cunning.

‘No, I suppose you’re right,’ Ravenswood agreed. ‘We’re all in this together. Come in out of the heat—Edith has just put the kettle on.’

We followed him into the bank and found the thick stone walls were keeping it pleasantly cool. This time he didn’t lead us into the offices and public area on the ground floor, but up the stairs to his flat. At the head of the stairs was a short hallway. Ravenswood opened the first door on the left and showed us into a small but comfortably furnished sitting room.

‘I’ll just go and tell Edith we have guests,’ he said as he hurried away. ‘Make yourselves at home.’

Warnie and I looked at each other and then at Jack. We had no idea what he thought this conversation might achieve or what he wanted to ask the Ravenswoods about. I took an armchair under a window and Warnie followed my example. A warm breeze came through the open window in lazy puffs, as if the door of a baker’s oven was being opened and closed.

Jack paced around the room looking at the pictures on the walls, mostly cheap prints of Landseer paintings. The
Monarch of the Glen
was at one end of the mantelpiece and a portrait of a Newfoundland dog was at the other.

Edmund Ravenswood bustled back into the room followed by his wife Edith, who was carrying a tea tray. He waved Jack to take a seat, and sat down himself at the end of a settee.

‘How do you like your tea, gentlemen?’ he asked as if this was just a social call from old business acquaintances.

As we gave our orders and Mrs Ravenswood took up the teapot to pour our cups, the bank manager continued, ‘I’m sorry, but all I can remember from our last meeting is that two of you are named Lewis and one Morris. Is that correct?’

‘I’m Major Lewis,’ said Warnie, ‘British Army. This is my brother Jack—he’s an Oxford don—and this is our friend, young Tom Morris. We only got tangled up in this infernal business because we’re on a walking tour in the district and I (rather carelessly, I’m afraid) dropped Jack’s wallet into a fireplace so he needed some cash.’

‘It’s an awful business, as you say,’ Ravenswood agreed. ‘But I don’t quite understand why you’ve called in to see us—unless it’s to commiserate over this whole dark cloud of tragedy.’

He shook his head sadly, looking, I thought, rather like a second-rate actor in a small provincial company trying to give the socially appropriate response to bad news.

‘The police won’t let us leave the district,’ Jack explained, ‘but we’ve been walking this morning in the country lanes around the town—and we came across the Proudfoot’s farm.’

A silence followed Jack’s announcement as he paused to sip his tea. Then he resumed, ‘We were rather surprised to see it’s already for sale.’

Edith Ravenswood dropped her teaspoon into her saucer with a loud clatter.

‘Oh, Edmund!’ she exclaimed, ‘You haven’t? Not already? Poor Amelia Proudfoot . . . ’

‘Bank business is none of your business, Edith,’ Ravenswood snapped. ‘I’ve told you that before.’

‘But surely you could have waited,’ she protested feebly. A furious glance from her husband silenced her. Edith Ravenswood struck me as an excessively timid and nervous woman.

‘It does seem all very swift,’ said Jack gently, smiling over the top of his tea cup.

‘The bank makes the rules, not me,’ replied Ravenswood in a voice that was a sullen grumble.

There was a still, and rather tense, silence following this remark—a silence that lingered on. Finally Ravenswood broke it by saying, ‘Anyway, I spoke to Amelia Proudfoot myself. She was quite happy for the farm to be sold. With young Nicholas dead it holds too many memories for her. She was happy to get rid of the farm and get away from the place.’

‘When did you speak to her, Edmund?’ his wife asked. ‘I didn’t know you’d been out to their farm.’

‘I don’t report my movements to you, Edith,’ he replied in a way that suggested he was struggling to suppress his anger. In fact, this whole conversation seemed to be provoking him until he looked like a small volcano in a bad mood that was trying hard not to explode while there was company in the house. ‘You knew I was out in the car late yesterday,’ he said, ‘and I don’t have to report to you on where I go or who I see.’

‘No, Edmund,’ she said meekly, turning her head away.

Finding ourselves in the middle of a stormy low pressure system on the domestic front, I looked for something else to talk about.

‘You don’t happen to know where she’s gone to, do you?’ I asked. ‘Mrs Proudfoot, I mean. It’s just that when we were out there the place seemed to be deserted—already completely empty.’

‘How should I know?’ barked Ravenswood abruptly. ‘I’m not her keeper. She wanted to get out of the place, that’s all I know.’

He took a sip of his tea and then seemed to pull himself together. ‘Sorry if I snapped at you then, Mr Morris,’ he said. ‘This whole awful business is getting to me. Getting to all of us, I suppose. Nerves on edge—that sort of thing.’

I told him to think nothing of it, but then I repeated my question, adding that she must have packed and left in an awful hurry.

‘All I know is that she wanted to get away from the memories the place held for her,’ Ravenswood said. ‘I believe she has relatives up north somewhere. I can only assume she caught an early train and is on her way to them even as we speak.’

Jack raised one eyebrow and asked quietly, ‘Even before her husband’s funeral?’

‘Well . . . she’ll . . . obviously come back for that,’ Ravenswood blustered.

‘But who’ll make the arrangements?’ asked Warnie.

‘Not our concern!’ snapped the bank manager. ‘Anyway, nothing can happen until the police release the body and that won’t happen until after the inquest.’

‘And she’ll have to come back for that,’ I speculated.

Edith Ravenswood opened her mouth as if to make a comment, but catching her husband’s eye she thought better of it and said nothing.

We finished our tea making awkward small talk, thanked Mrs Ravenswood and made our departure.

We were still talking about the swift sale of the farm and the immediate departure of Amelia Proudfoot as we walked back into the bar parlour of
The Boar’s Head
.