Agatha Christie - Spider's Web

"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."