The Corpse in the Cellar by Kel Richards

Author:Kel Richards [Richards, Kel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SPCK
Published: 2015-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

The morning dawned bright and sunny with no sign of rain. After a breakfast of bacon and eggs and thick slices of hot buttered toast and marmalade, I was dispatched to purchase a map. I located what I wanted—a road map of the district—in a small shop on the high street that sold stationery amongst a wide and eclectic range of items.

The elderly proprietor found what I was looking for on a high shelf between a container of tooth powder and a jar of gentlemen’s relish. I took the map back to The Boar’s Head and, to avoid a repeat of the navigating fiasco of the day before, had our publican, Frank Jones, mark in pen on the map the route to the farm that Mrs Proudfoot had called ‘the Farnon place’.

After a second cup of tea, and a careful reconnoitre of the map by Warnie, the three of us set off. We were travelling in the opposite direction to the day before and soon found ourselves walking down a narrow lane with high hedges on both sides.

There was almost no traffic on this small back road. The road itself meandered back and forth, as if following a track first made by a wandering cow that had either a hangover or serious concussion.

We were passed by a horse-drawn wagon, rattling with empty milk cans on the back, and later by a farm worker on foot. He tugged his cap politely in our direction as he gave us a sullen scowl.

We reached our destination after some three-quarters of an hour of brisk walking. Entering through the farm gate we walked up the muddy driveway to the farmhouse that stood on a small rise. Flanking the house on one side was a machinery shed and on the other a row of stables.

We stopped a boy carrying a bucket towards the stables. Like many small boys who live on farms, he looked as if, after carefully washing and dressing in the morning, he had then rolled in mud and leaped into a hay bale. We asked this walking collection of soil samples if Mr Ted Proudfoot was about. He said nothing, but pointed towards the machinery shed, then resumed his errand.

We stood in the wide open doorway to the shed and looked around. It had only one occupant: a tall thin man with his back towards us.

‘Mr Ted Proudfoot?’ Jack said.

Without turning around the man growled in an unpleasant voice that seemed to be missing a tonsil, ‘Who wants to know?’

Jack didn’t reply, but waited in silence until curiosity got the better of the farm worker. When he finally turned around to squint at us, I saw that his dark face had the surly, sullen expression of a dyspeptic bulldog on a bad day—a bulldog that had just received bad news. And his voice suggested a bulldog that had tried to swallow a bone that had got stuck halfway down.

He put down the tools in his hands, straightened up from the unidentifiable piece

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