The Case of the Late Pig

Through the open door I could see a bed, and on it there was a large, familiar form. The face was uncovered, and as far as I could see the colour was natural. But as I stared at it I saw the thing that sent the blood racing into my face and turned my body cold with the realization of the thing I had not dreamed.

The faded grey-black fluff which surrounds Lugg's bald patch was as red as henna would make it. I saw the truth, the body of one fat man is much like the body of another once the features are obliterated, and what time can do can be done by other agencies. Kingston was going to have a body for his 'jolly' exhumation after all.

I dropped on my hands and knees. Ducking under the blow he aimed at me from his place of vantage behind the door, I caught him by the ankles. I was on his chest with my hands round his throat when I heard the second car pull up and Leo's voice on the stairs.

CHAPTER 17. LATE FINAL

It took three policemen to get Kingston into the car, and when he came up before the magistrates there was an unprecedented scene in the court. At the Assizes his counsel pleaded insanity, a defence which failed, and I think justifiably; but that was later.

My own concern at the time was Lugg. Whippet and I worked upon him until Pussey got us a doctor from a neighbouring village, who saved him after an uncomfortably stiff fight. It was chloral hydrate again, of course. Kingston was not mad enough not to know what he was doing. He did not want any wound showing in his exhibition corpse. What his 'finishing' process was to be, I can only guess, and I do not like to think of it even now.

Lugg told us his story as soon as we got him round. It was elementary. Kingston had simply phoned up Highwaters, made sure from Pepper that I was down in the village, and had then asked for Lugg. To him he gave a message purporting to come from me. According to this, I had work for him to do in town, but I wanted to see him first up at Tethering churchyard, where, Kingston hinted, I had discovered something. Lugg was to pack his bag and nip down the field path to the road to meet Kingston in the car. The pound note was to be left for Pepper in case I could not return. That was all. Lugg fell for the story, Kingston did meet him and the reason they had not been seen was that the doctor's car was far too well known for anybody to notice it.

On arrival at Tethering, Lugg was left in the dining-room, where he was given beer and told to wait. He drank the beer and the chloral which was in it and mercifully remembered no more.

Kingston must have got him upstairs alone and have just completed the hairdressing process when I phoned.

It was a pretty little trap, and Lugg's comments on it when he considered it are not reportable.

'You done it,' he said reproachfully. 'How was I to know you was leadin' the bloke up the garden with your 'come-and-'old-me-'and every five minutes? You stuffed him full of the exhumation, thinking 'e'd go for you, I suppose? Never thought o' me. Isn't that you all over?'

I apologized. 'Let's be thankful you're alive to tell the tale,' I ventured.

He scowled at me. 'I am. Got to shave me 'ead now. What are my London friends goin' to think about that? 'Oliday in the country —  Oh, yes, very likely!'

When we reached this point I thought it best to let him sleep, for there was still much to be done.

During the next twenty-four hours we worked incessantly, and at the end of it the case against Kingston was complete.

It was on the evening of the day on which the exhumation had taken place, that Leo and I went down with Janet to Halt Knights. Leo was still simmering from the effects of that grimly farcical ceremony which had welded the final link in our chain of evidence.

'Bricks!' he said explosively. 'Yellow bricks wrapped up in a blanket and nailed down in a coffin.... 'Pon my soul, Campion, the fellow was an impious blackguard as well as a murderer. Even now, I don't see how he did it alone.'

'He wasn't alone,' I pointed out mildly. 'He had Peters to help him, to say nothing of that fellow who worked for him — the builder's son. In country places the builder is usually the undertaker, too, isn't he?'

'Royle!' Leo was excited. 'Young Royle ... that explains the key of the mortuary. Was the boy in it, do you think?'

'Hardly,' I murmured. 'I imagine Kingston simply managed him. He says his master offered to measure up the body while he did a repair job in the house. The nurse must have been an accomplice, of course, but we shall never get her. She and Kingston got the death certificate between them.'

'You're terribly confusing,' Janet cut in from the back of the car. 'How many brothers were there?'

'None,' I said, 'as the clever young man from London suspected after he'd had it thrust well under his nose, poor chap. There was only the one inimitable Pig.'

Janet will forgive me, I feel sure, if I say here that she is not a clever girl. On this occasion she was obtuse.