The Corpse in the Cellar by Kel Richards Page B

‘than just your being locked in the vault.’
    â€˜I’ve explained about that,’ Ravenswood insisted. ‘Young Nicholas Proudfoot was upset about his loan—a young man, afraid of losing his farm, you can understand his emotional stress . . . ’
    â€˜That’s not why I’m here,’ said Hyde more firmly. Ravenswood looked at him blankly and blinked uncertainly. ‘I’m afraid I have to tell you, sir,’ continued the policeman, ‘that your teller, young Mr Franklin Grimm, is dead.’
    â€˜Dead?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜But how?’
    â€˜He was stabbed, sir.’
    â€˜Stabbed?’
    â€˜In the neck, sir. He appears to have died instantly.’
    â€˜But . . . I don’t understand . . . ’
    â€˜None of us quite understand just at the moment, sir—but that’s why we’re here. That’s the matter we’re looking into. Now, I’d like everyone to go back up to the office please. Sergeant Donaldson will be locking up the cellar for the time being, and he’ll be hanging on to the key. This is now a crime scene.’
    â€˜You too, gentlemen,’ he said noticing, at last, our presence hovering on the stairs. ‘You shouldn’t even be here,’ he added irritably.
    As I turned to go I looked down and saw that Grimm’s body had been removed. Presumably the police surgeon had come in our absence, made his initial examination and removed the body.
    Upstairs we scattered ourselves around the small office of the bank. We each found a chair or the edge of a desk to sit on while the inspector stood in the middle of the floor in the manner of a master of ceremonies. He cleared his throat and was about to begin when Ravenswood demanded some explanation of what had been happening in his bank while he was locked in the vault.
    â€˜What I have discovered so far,’ replied the inspector, ‘is that the first step that was taken following your unfortunate . . . ah . . . incarceration was a phone call to Mr Johnson here, or one of his colleagues, at the regional headquarters of the bank in Tadminster. In line with bank policy Mr Johnson declined to release the number of the combination lock over the phone, and instead took the first train here so that he could open the vault door himself.’
    â€˜Yes, yes,’ urged Ravenswood, impatient at this slow giving-evidence-in-court police manner.
    Inspector Hyde raised a hand as if asking him to wait and be patient, and then resumed. ‘But before Mr Johnson could arrive, your teller, young Mr Franklin Grimm, seemed to decide that he should position himself in the cellar, on the unlikely chance that he could be of some use to you there. While he was in the cellar alone, and this door here—the only entrance leading to the cellar—was under constant observation by your office girl, Ruth Jarvis, and these three customers, Mr Grimm died from a stab wound.’
    â€˜But . . . but . . . I don’t understand,’ protested Ravenswood.
    â€˜Precisely, sir,’ said Hyde. ‘Just at this moment none of us understand exactly what happened. Or how. Or why. Or who could possibly have done what was done. There was, it appears, a faint cry heard coming from the vicinity of the cellar. When that sound was investigated, Mr Grimm’s body was discovered with a single fatal knife wound to the neck. And the knife that did the damage was nowhere to be found.’
    â€˜What happened to it?’ asked Mr Johnson, clearly gripped by Hyde’s narrative.
    â€˜Ah,’ said the policeman, ‘that’s the crux of the whole matter, sir. Either the knife was carried away by Mr Grimm’s murderer, in which case no one can account for how he got into and out of the cellar; or else, if the wound was self-inflicted, the knife has somehow dissolved into thin air. Either way, what happened was totally impossible.’

EIGHT

    In the long pause