The Case of the Late Pig

'Why go to all the trouble of pretending he died in January?'

'Because,' I said sadly, 'of the insurance, my poppet. Twenty thousand pounds.... He and Kingston were going to do a deal. Tie up with your medical man and let the Mutual Ordered Life settle your money troubles. Kingston met Pig in town and they hatched the whole swindle up between them. Pig invented a wicked brother and laid the foundations by hoodwinking his own solicitors, who were a stuffy old firm at once reputable enough to impress the insurance company and sufficiently moribund to let Pig get away with his hole-and-corner death.

'Neat,' said Janet judicially, and added with that practicalness so essentially feminine, 'Why didn't it work?'

'Because of the fundamental dishonesty of the man Pig. He wouldn't pay up. Once he had collected, he knew he had Kingston by the short hairs and, besides, by then the idea of developing this place had bitten him. I fancy he kept his doctor pal on a string, promising him and promising and then laughing at him. What he did not consider was the sort of fellow he had to deal with. Kingston is a conceited chap. He has a sort of blind courage coupled with no sense of proportion. Only a man with that type of mentality could have pulled off his share in the original swindle. The fact that he had been cheated by Pig wounded his pride unbearably, and then, of course, he found the man untrustworthy.'

'Untrustworthy?' Leo grunted.

'Well, he began to get drunk, didn't he?' I said. Think of Kingston's position. He saw himself cheated out of the share of the profits and at the same time at the complete mercy of a man who was in danger of getting too big for his boots, drinking too much and blowing the gaff. Admittedly, Pig could not give Kingston away without exposing his own guilt, but a man who gets very drunk may be careless. Then there was Hayhoe. The wicked uncle finds the wicked nephew in clover and wishes to browse also. He even instals a telescope on a neighbouring hill-side in the hope of keeping an eye on developments at Highwaters. There is another danger for Kingston. I think the whole ingenious business came to him in a flash, and he acted on impulse moved by fury, gingered up by fear.'

Leo made an expressive sound. 'Terrible feller,' he said. 'Heigh-ho blackmailed him, I suppose, after guessin' the truth?'

'Uncle Hayhoe was bent on selling his discretion, certainly,' I said, 'but I don't think even he guessed Kingston had killed Pig. All he knew was that there was something infernally fishy about the first funeral. He made an appointment with Kingston to talk it over and they chose the empty villa to discuss terms. Kingston killed him there and later on carried him to the cornfield where we found him. He left the knife in the wound until he got him in situ, as it were; that's how he avoided a great deal of the blood.'

Janet shuddered. 'He deceived us all very well,' she said. 'I never dreamed — '

Leo coughed noisily. 'Utterly deceived,' he echoed. 'Seemed a decent enough feller.'

'He was amazing,' I agreed. 'My arrival at dinner that evening must have shaken him up a bit in all conscience, since he'd seen me at the funeral, but he came out with the brother story immediately, and made it sound convincing. The only mistake he made was in moving the body to the river when I said I was going to examine it. He acted on impulse there, you see; he saw his way and went straight for it every time.'

Janet drew back. 'You ought not to have walked into that last trap he set for you,' she said.

'My dear girl,' I said, anxious to defend myself, 'we had to have proof of murder or attempted murder, for as far as proof was concerned he'd got clean away with his first two efforts. All the same, I don't think I'd have been so foolhardy if it hadn't been for Lugg.'

'You'd have looked pretty green if it hadn't been for Gilbert,' she said.

I looked at her sharply, and saw that she was blushing.

'Whippet and I had a word or two on the phone after Kingston had agreed to pick me up at Highwaters,' I admitted. 'He spotted the empty villa and put me on to it. We guessed if there was to be an attempt on me Kingston would take me there. I shouldn't have been so brave without him. Master-mind is fond of life.'

Janet dimpled. She is very pretty when her cheeks go pink.

'Then you know about Gilbert?' she said.

I stared at her. 'How much do you know?'

'A little,' she murmured.

'My hat!' I said.

Leo was on the point of demanding an explanation when we pulled up at the Knights. We found Poppy, Pussey, and Whippet waiting for us in the lounge, and when we were all sitting round with the ice cubes clinking in our tall glasses, Poppy suddenly turned on me.