The Case of the Late Pig

'There's not much to go on,' I pointed out. 'The cornfield was bordered by the road, so the murderer would not have far to carry him even if he had to, although of course there's a chance he was killed on the spot. There was a great deal of blood about.'

Leo avoided my eyes. 'I know,' he murmured. 'I know. But what was the feller doing out in the middle of a cornfield with a murderer?'

'Having a very quiet private interview,' I said. 'I should like an opinion on this wound.'

'You shall have it, my boy, you shall have it. The best in the world. Professor Farringdon will be along this morning to see the — ah — other body. This is frightful, Campion — I'm sorry I couldn't get someone at work on him yesterday, but Farringdon was unobtainable, and I didn't want to drag the Home Office into it if I could help it. This makes all the difference, though. 'Pon my soul, I don't know what I ought to do.'

Any helpful suggestion I might have made was cut short by the return of Pussey, who had Kingston in tow. The doctor was excited and ashamed of himself for showing it. My opinion of him as a medical man went down a little as he made a cursory examination of Hayhoe. He was anxious to help and yet loth to commit himself by giving a definite opinion.

'I don't know what it was done with,' he said at last. 'Something narrow and sharp. A dagger, perhaps. One of those old-fashioned things — a trophy.'

I glanced at Leo, and from the expression on his face I knew he was thinking of the fearsome array of native weapons on the walls of the billiard-room at Halt Knights. All the same, I didn't see Poppy in the middle of the night in a cornfield with a dagger; that idea seemed to me far-fetched and absurd.

Pussey seemed to find Kingston's guesses unsatisfactory, and he got rid of him in the end, but with considerable tact.

'It seems like we'd better leave that to the Professor,' he murmured to me. 'Wonderful clever old man, the Professor. I reckon he'll be over in half an hour or so. I don't know what he'll think on us — two on 'em instead of one,' he added naïvely.

Leo turned away, his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his chin on his breast. We followed him into the station and Pussey made all the necessary arrangements for taking statements, making a search of the place where the body was found, and the important inquiries into Mr Hayhoe's past history.

The routine work seemed to soothe Leo.

'I suppose we ought not to have moved him from the spot,' he said, 'until Farringdon arrived. But there seemed no point in leavin' the feller out in the sun hitched up on a spike like that. It was indecent. There's a brutal obviousness about these crimes, Campion. 'Pon my soul, I can't conceive the mind that arranged 'em — anyway, not among my own friends.'

'Ah-h, there's still strangers about,' said Pussey, with the intention of comforting him. 'Likely there'll be someone who's had blood on's clothes. We'll find un. Don't you worry, sir.'

Leo swung away from him and walked over to the window.

'Eh!' he said suddenly, 'who's this?'

Looking over his shoulder, I saw a sleek chauffeur-driven Daimler pull up outside the cottage gate. A tall thin grey-faced man descended and came hesitantly up to our door. A moment or so later we made the acquaintance of Mr Robert Wellington Skinn, junior partner of the ancient and respectable firm of solicitors whose name Kingston had given me.

He was a stiff, dignified personage, and he and Leo took to each other immediately, which was fortunate, or the subsequent interview would certainly have taken much longer and been doubly confusing. As it was, Mr Skinn came to the point in what was for him, I felt sure, record time.

'In view of everything, I thought I'd better come down myself,' he murmured. 'An affair of this sort in connexion with one of our clients is, I can assure you, most unusual. I received your inquiries yesterday; I read the papers last night; I connected the two names immediately — Peters and Harris. In the circumstances I thought I had better come down myself.'

Pussey and I exchanged glances. We were getting somewhere.

'The two men knew each other, then?' I asked.

He looked at me dubiously as though he wondered if I could be trusted....

'They were brothers,' he said. 'Mr Harris changed his name for — ah — no doubt very good reasons of his own, and he is comparatively new to our books. Our principal client was his elder brother, Mr Rowland Isidore Peters, who died in this district last January.'

After a certain amount of delay he went with Leo to view the body, and came back a little green. He was also flustered.

'I wouldn't like to commit myself,' he murmured. 'I saw Mr Peters once twelve years ago, and I saw Mr Harris in London this spring. Those were the only two occasions on which I met either. The — ah — dead man I have just seen resembles both. Do you think I could have a glass of water?'

Pussey pressed him to be more exact, and would have taken him back again, but he refused to go.