The Corpse in the Cellar by Kel Richards Page A

not wishing to attract too much attention.
    The pin-stripe-suited gentleman was standing in front of the vault door. He first felt the locking bars and checked the door. It was, he found, securely and fully closed and locked. Then he drew a piece of paper from his pocket and, consulting this from time to time, began manipulating the dials of the combination locks. There were two of these, one above the other. He operated each in turn, twisting them to the right and the left and bringing them to rest on a particular number with each turn. This operation took a couple of minutes.
    When he was satisfied he had successfully executed the combination, he pulled on each of the two locking levers in turn. With a loud clunk each swung into the unlocked position. Helped by Sergeant Donaldson, he then pulled open the heavy steel door.
    Ravenswood the bank manager stumbled out.
    â€˜Are you all right, sir?’ asked Inspector Hyde.
    Ravenswood looked dishevelled, flushed and slightly breathless. ‘Thank you . . . thank you . . . ’ was all he could gasp at first. Then he saw the man in the pin-striped suit. ‘Ah, Mr Johnson . . . you’ve come all the way from Tadminster?’
    â€˜Are you all right, old chap?’ asked Mr Pin-stripe.
    â€˜Perfectly well, thank you, sir,’ Ravenswood replied. ‘I’m so sorry to have put you to all this trouble.’
    â€˜Not at all, not at all,’ said Johnson soothingly.
    Behind Ravenswood we could see into the bank’s strongroom. It was lit by a single electric light globe. This revealed to the left of the door a stack of lockable safe deposit boxes, and to the right a number of locked metal tubs on trolleys, presumably containing the bank’s cash deposits. Between these two arrays was a clear alleyway, and in this alley was a small wooden table containing an open ledger book, a pen and a pot of ink. Presumably this ledger was to sign-in and sign-out customers opening their safe deposit boxes. Under the table was a small tool box and beside it was a single wooden chair with a suit coat draped over the back of it.
    â€˜I feel so foolish,’ Ravenswood was saying loudly, ‘allowing something like this to happen . . . it was a customer . . . temporarily upset . . . problem over a loan . . . you know the sort of thing.’
    â€˜Think nothing of it,’ said Johnson, patting him on the arm. ‘These things happen. Unfortunately financial difficulties can make some of our customers somewhat fraught or even irrational. You can’t hold yourself responsible for the emotional behaviour of one customer.’
    â€˜And I don’t want the customer prosecuted,’ said Ravenswood hastily, turning to Inspect Hyde. ‘I take it that’s why you’re here?’
    â€˜Not entirely, sir . . . ’ Hyde began.
    â€˜Not good for the bank to be seen to prosecute a customer for a moment’s bad judgement due to . . . well, as Mr Johnson said, financial distress,’ Ravenswood continued, ignoring the policeman’s interruption. ‘So thank you for coming, inspector, but your presence is not really required.’
    With these words he turned around and walked back into the strongroom. He fetched his suit coat from the back of the chair, turned off the electric light and walked back out again.
    â€˜Well, we can lock it again now, can’t we?’ he said to Johnson with a nervous smile. ‘I really don’t feel like going back in there for the rest of the day. I’ve seen quite enough of the inside of that vault just for the moment.’
    Ravenswood was babbling nervously, and who could blame him, I thought, after being locked for hours inside his own bank’s vault. He and Johnson pushed the heavy steel door closed once more, pressed the locking levers into place and spun the dials of the combination lock.
    â€˜There’s more that’s been going on here, Mr Ravenswood,’ said Inspector Hyde,