The Corpse in the Cellar (14 page)

‘Miss Jarvis, I understand Mr Grimm was your friend as well as your colleague here at the bank, is that correct?' The inspector's question seemed to catch Ruth Jarvis by surprise.

‘Well . . . we went out together.'

‘Nothing more than that? I'm told that over the past few months you and Mr Grimm were almost constant companions.'

‘Yes, I suppose so.'

‘So how serious was this relationship? Had he proposed to you?'

‘No,' she replied quickly. ‘Franklin wasn't interested in marriage. Not just yet, anyway.'

‘And you were?'

There was a long silence. The clock on the bank wall ticked loudly and every eye was fixed on Ruth Jarvis. Finally she nodded, then buried her head in her hands.

Inspector Crispin pulled up a chair, sat down beside her and said, in a quiet, comforting voice, ‘Come along, Miss Jarvis. Whatever the truth is will come out sooner or later. You might as well tell me now.'

When she didn't respond immediately, he added softly, ‘And it might help us to catch Mr Grimm's killer.'

There was another even longer silence, then finally she said, in a voice so small it was almost a whisper, ‘I'm going to have his baby.' With these words she broke down again and shook with silent sobs, her face in her hands.

‘Mrs Ravenswood,' said Crispin, ‘would you be so kind as to fetch a glass of water for Miss Jarvis please?'

‘She needs something stronger than that,' snorted Edmund Ravenswood. ‘This young woman needs a brandy.'

‘Water will do for the moment,' the policeman insisted. ‘Mrs Ravenswood?'

The manager's wife bustled away and returned a few moments later with a glass of water that she handed to Ruth Jarvis, who accepted it with trembling fingers. She sipped the water and started to settle down and pull herself together.

‘Feeling a little better?' asked Crispin gently.

Ruth Jarvis nodded.

‘Did Mr Grimm know you're pregnant?'

Again she nodded.

‘Did he suggest—or did you suggest for that matter—that he should marry you?'

Slowly and haltingly she explained that when he said nothing about marriage, after learning of the pregnancy, she raised the topic. But he was firmly against it. He hinted that she should get rid of the baby while it was still early in the pregnancy. When she insisted that she could never do that—she would have the child—he said he would ‘do the right thing'.

‘And what did he mean by that?' Crispin asked.

‘He talked about money,' sniffed Ruth, dabbing her eyes with a soaking wet handkerchief. ‘He said he'd pay for the baby's support.'

‘A very difficult time for you,' Crispin said sympathetically. ‘Now, let me bring you back to the question I need answered: could Franklin Grimm have committed suicide.'

‘Never,' replied Ruth firmly. ‘He kept telling me that he had big plans, and he wouldn't be staying in Market Plumpton for the rest of his life.'

‘Did he tell you what those plans were?'

‘No.'

‘Or hint?'

‘No.'

Inspector Crispin stood up and paced thoughtfully around the office. ‘Well,' he said at length, ‘if the consensus is that suicide is so very unlikely—and Mr Grimm certainly never left a suicide note—we must consider murder.' He turned to face us and said, ‘Gentlemen, what time did you arrive at the bank yesterday morning?'

‘Shortly after ten o'clock,' said Jack. ‘Perhaps a quarter past—no later.'

‘And what happened then—exactly?'

‘Exactly? Well, Morris and my brother stood in the customer area while I approached the teller's cage and asked the teller—'

‘Mr Grimm?'

‘As you say, Mr Grimm—asked him to make a cash withdrawal from my savings account passbook. He asked for identification. Having none, I suggested the manager, Mr Ravenswood here, might be able to identify me. Miss Jarvis told us that Mr Ravenswood was in the cellar, and Mr Grimm opened the flap in the counter and invited me to follow him.'

‘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 cellar 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.'