Suddenly, the front-door bell began to peal loudly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE FRONT-DOOR bell was answered by Elgin, who came into the drawing-room to announce to the Inspector that the Divisional Surgeon had arrived. The Inspector and Constable Jones immediately accompanied the butler to the front door, where the Inspector had the unenviable task of confessing to the Divisional Surgeon that, as it turned out, there was at present no body to examine.
"Really, Inspector Lord," the Divisional Surgeon said irritably, "Do you realize how infuriating it is to have brought me all this way on a wild-goose chase?"
"But I assure you, Doctor," the Inspector attempted to explain, "we did have a body."
"The Inspector's right, Doctor," Constable Jones added his voice. "We certainly did have a body. It just happens to have disappeared."
The sound of their voices had brought Hugo and Jeremy out from the dining-room on the other side of the hall. Hearing now that the body had disappeared, they could not refrain from making their unhelpful comments. "I can't think how you policemen ever get anything done – losing bodies, indeed," Hugo expostulated, while Jeremy exclaimed, "I don't understand why a guard wasn't put on the body."
"Well, whatever has happened, if there's no body for me to examine, I'm not wasting any more time here," the Divisional Surgeon snapped at the Inspector. "I can assure you that you'll hear more about this, Inspector Lord."
"Yes, Doctor. I've no doubt of that. Good night, Doctor," the Inspector replied wearily.
The Divisional Surgeon left, slamming the front door behind him, and the Inspector turned to Elgin, who forestalled him by saying quickly, "I know nothing about it, I assure you, sir, nothing at all."
Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, Clarissa and Sir Rowland were enjoying overhearing the discomfiture of the police officers. "Rather a bad moment for the police reinforcements to arrive," Sir Rowland chuckled. "The Divisional Surgeon seems very annoyed at finding no corpse to examine."
Clarissa giggled. "But who can have spirited it away?" she asked. "Do you think Jeremy managed it somehow?"
"I don't see how he could have done," Sir Rowland replied. "They didn't let anyone back into the library, and the door from the library to the hall was locked. Pippa's 'Sucks to you' was the last straw."
Clarissa laughed, and Sir Rowland continued, "Still, it shows us one thing. Costello had managed to open the secret drawer." He paused, and his manner changed. "Clarissa," he said in a serious tone, "why on earth didn't you tell the truth to the Inspector when I begged you to?"
"I did," Clarissa protested, "except for the part about Pippa. But he just didn't believe me."
"But, for Heaven's sake, why did you have to stuff him with all that nonsense?" Sir Rowland insisted on knowing.
"Well," Clarissa replied with a gesture of helplessness, "it seemed to me the most likely thing the Inspector would believe. And," she ended triumphantly, "he has believed me."
"And a nice mess you're in as a result," Sir Rowland pointed out. "You'll be up on a charge of manslaughter, for all you know."
"I shall claim it was self-defence," Clarissa said with confidence.
Before Sir Rowland had a chance to reply, Hugo and Jeremy entered from the hall, and Hugo walked over to the bridge table, grumbling. "Wretched police, pushing us around here and there. Now it seems they've gone and lost the body."
Jeremy closed the door behind him, then went over to the stool and took a sandwich. "Damn peculiar, I call it," he announced.
"It's fantastic," said Clarissa. "The whole thing's fantastic. The body's gone, and we still don't know who rang up the police in the first place and said there'd been a murder here."
"Well, that was Elgin, surely," Jeremy suggested, as he went to sit on an arm of the sofa and began to eat his sandwich.
"No, no," Hugo disagreed. "I'd say it was that Peake woman."
"But why?" Clarissa asked. "Why would either of them do that, and not tell us? It doesn't make sense."
The door to the hall now opened, and Miss Peake appeared, looking around her with a conspiratorial air. "Hello, is the coast clear?" she asked. Closing the door, she strode confidently into the room. "No bobbies about? They seem to be swarming all over the place."
"They're busy searching the house and grounds now," Sir Rowland informed her.
"What for?" asked Miss Peake.
"The body," Sir Rowland replied. "It's gone."
Miss Peake gave her usual hearty laugh. "What a lark!" she boomed. "The disappearing body, eh?"
Hugo sat at the bridge table. Looking around the room, he observed to no one in particular, "It's a nightmare. The whole thing's a damn nightmare."
"Quite like the movies, eh, Mrs. Hailsham-Brown?" Miss Peake suggested with another hoot of laughter.
Sir Rowland smiled at the gardener. "I hope you are feeling better now, Miss Peake?" he asked her courteously.
"Oh, I'm all right," she replied. "I'm pretty tough, really, you know. I was just a bit bowled over by opening that door and finding a corpse. Turned me up for the moment, I must admit."
"I wondered, perhaps," said Clarissa quietly, "if you already knew it was there."
The gardener stared at her. "Who? Me?"
"Yes. You," Clarissa replied.
Again seeming to be addressing the entire universe, Hugo said, "It doesn't make sense. Why take the body away? We all know there is a body. We know his identity and everything. No point in it. Why not leave the wretched thing where it was?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say there was no point in it, Mr. Birch," Miss Peake corrected Hugo, leaning across the bridge table to address him. "You've got to have a body, you know. Habeas corpus and all that, remember? You've got to have a body before you can bring a charge of murder against anybody." She turned around to Clarissa. "So don't you worry, Mrs. Hailsham-Brown," she assured her. "Everything's going to be all right."
Clarissa stared at her. "What do you mean?"
"I've kept my ears open this evening," the gardener told her. "I haven't spent all my time lying on the bed in the spare room." She looked around at everyone. "I never liked that man Elgin, or his wife," she continued. "Listening at doors, and running to the police with stories about blackmail."
"So you heard that?" Clarissa asked wonderingly.
"What I always say is, stand by your own sex," Miss Peake declared. She looked at Hugo. "Men!" she snorted. "I don't hold with them." She turned to to Clarissa. "If they can't find the body, my dear," she explained, "they can't bring a charge against you. And what I say is, if that brute was blackmailing you, you did quite right to crack him over the head, and good riddance."
"But I didn't..." Clarissa began faintly, only to be interrupted by Miss Peake.
"I heard you tell that Inspector all about it," the gardener informed her. "And if it wasn't for that eavesdropping skulking fellow Elgin, your story would sound quite all right. Perfectly believable."
"Which story do you mean?" Clarissa wondered aloud.
"About mistaking him for a burglar. It's the blackmail angle that puts a different complexion on it all. So I thought there was only one thing to do," the gardener continued. "Get rid of the body and let the police chase their tails looking for it."
Sir Rowland took a few steps backwards, staggering in disbelief, as Miss Peake looked complacently around the room. "Pretty smart work, even if I do say so myself," she boasted.
Jeremy rose, fascinated. "Do you mean to say that it was you who moved the body?" he asked incredulously.
Everyone was now staring at Miss Peake. "We're all friends here, aren't we?" she asked, looking around at them. "So I may as well spill the beans. Yes," she admitted, "I moved the body." She tapped her pocket. "And I locked the door. I've got keys to all the doors in this house, so that was no problem."
Open-mouthed, Clarissa gazed at her in wonderment. "But how? Where... where did you put the body?" she gasped.
Miss Peake leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "The bed in the spare room. You know, that big four-poster. Right across the head of the bed, under the bolster. Then I remade the bed and lay down on top of it."
Sir Rowland, flabbergasted, sat down at the bridge table.
"But how did you get the body up to the spare room?" Clarissa asked. "You couldn't manage it all by yourself."
"You'd be surprised," said Miss Peake jovially. "Good old fireman's lift. Slung it over my shoulder." With a gesture, she demonstrated how it was done.
"But what if you had met someone on the stairs?" Sir Rowland asked her.
"Ah, but I didn't," replied Miss Peake. "The police were in here with Mrs. Hailsham-Brown. You three chaps were being kept in the dining-room by then. So I grabbed my chance, and of course grabbed the body too, took it through the hall, locked the library door again, and carried it up the stairs to the spare room."
"Well, upon my soul!" Sir Rowland gasped.
Clarissa got to her feet. "But he can't stay under the bolster for ever," she pointed out.
Miss Peake turned to her. "No, not for ever, of course, Mrs. Hailsham-Brown," she admitted. "But he'll be all right for twenty-four hours. By that time, the police will have finished with the house and grounds. They'll be searching further afield."
She looked around at her enthralled audience. "Now, I've been thinking about how to get rid of him," she went on. "I happened to dig out a nice deep trench in the garden this morning – for the sweet peas. Well, we'll bury the body there and plant a nice double row of sweet peas all along it."
Completely at a loss for words, Clarissa collapsed onto the sofa.
"I'm afraid, Miss Peake," said Sir Rowland, "grave-digging is no longer a matter for private enterprise."
The gardener laughed merrily at this. "Oh, you men!" she exclaimed, wagging her finger at Sir Rowland. "Always such sticklers for propriety. We women have got more common sense." She leaned over the back of the sofa to address Clarissa. "We can even take murder in our stride. Eh, Mrs. Hailsham-Brown?"
Hugo suddenly leaped to his feet. "This is absurd!" he shouted. "Clarissa didn't kill him. I don't believe a word of it."
"Well, if she didn't kill him," Miss Peake asked breezily, "who did?"
At that moment, Pippa entered the room from the hall, wearing a dressing-gown, walking in a very sleepy manner, yawning, and carrying a glass dish containing chocolate mousse with a teaspoon in it. Everyone turned and looked at her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
STARTLED, CLARISSA jumped to her feet. "Pippa!" she cried. "What are you doing out of bed?"
"I woke up, so I came down," said Pippa between yawns.
Clarissa led her to the sofa. "I'm so frightfully hungry," Pippa complained, yawning again. She sat, then looked up at Clarissa and said reproachfully, "You said you'd bring this up to me."
Clarissa took the dish of chocolate mousse from Pippa, placed it on the stool, and then sat on the sofa next to the child. "I thought you were still asleep, Pippa," she explained.
"I was asleep," Pippa told her, with another enormous yawn. "Then I thought a policeman came in and looked at me. I'd been having an awful dream, and then I half woke up. Then I was hungry, so I thought I'd come down."
She shivered, looked around at everyone, and continued, "Besides, I thought it might be true."
Sir Rowland came and sat on the sofa on Pippa's other side. "What might be true, Pippa?" he asked her.
"That horrible dream I had about Oliver," Pippa replied, shuddering as she recollected it.
"What was your dream about Oliver, Pippa?" Sir Rowland asked quietly. "Tell me."
Pippa looked nervous as she took a small piece of moulded wax from a pocket of her dressing-gown. "I made this earlier tonight," she said. "I melted down a wax candle, then I made a pin red-hot, and I stuck the pin through it."
As she handed the small wax figure to Sir Rowland, Jeremy suddenly gave a startled exclamation of "Good Lord!" He leaped up and began to look around the room, searching for the book Pippa had tried to show him earlier.
"I said the right words and everything," Pippa was explaining to Sir Rowland, "but I couldn't do it quite the way the book said."
"What book?" Clarissa asked. "I don't understand."
Jeremy, who had been looking along the bookshelves, now found what he was seeking. "Here it is," he exclaimed, handing the book to Clarissa over the back of the sofa. "Pippa got it in the market today. She called it a recipe book."
Pippa suddenly laughed. "And you said to me, 'Can you eat it?'" she reminded Jeremy.
Clarissa examined the book. "A Hundred Well-tried and Trusty Spells" she read on the cover. She opened the book, and read on. "'How to Cure Warts. How to Get Your Heart's Desire. How to Destroy Your Enemy.' Oh, Pippa – is that what you did?"
Pippa looked at her stepmother solemnly. "Yes," she answered.
As Clarissa handed the book back to Jeremy, Pippa looked at the wax figure Sir Rowland was still holding. "It isn't very like Oliver," she admitted, "and I couldn't get any clippings of his hair. But it was as much like him as I could make it... and then... then – I dreamt, I thought..." She pushed her hair back from her face as she spoke. "I thought I came down here and he was there." She pointed behind the sofa. "And it was all true."
