The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers Page A

he is, I see.”
    Dr. Baines, a peremptory-looking little man, with a shrewd Scotch face, came briskly up to them. “Good afternoon, Rector. What’s happened here? I was out when your message came, so I—Good Lord!”
    A few words put him in possession of the facts, and he knelt down by the graveside.
    “He’s terribly mutilated—looks as though somebody had regularly beaten his face in. How long has he been here?”
    “That’s what we’d like you to tell us, Doctor.”
    “Half a minute, half a minute, sir,” interrupted the policeman. “What day was it you said you buried Lady Thorpe, Harry?”
    “January 4th, it were,” said Mr. Gotobed, after a short interval for reflection.
    “And was this here body in the grave when you filled it up?”
    “Now don’t you be a fool. Jack Priest,” retorted Mr. Gotobed. “’Owever can you suppose as we’d fill up a grave with this here corpus in it? It ain’t a thing as a man might drop in careless like, without noticing. If it was a pocket-knife or a penny-piece, that’d be another thing, but when it comes to the corpus of a full-grown man, that there question ain’t reasonable.”
    “Now, Harry, that ain’t a proper answer to my question. I knows my duty.”
    “Oh, all right. Well, then, there weren’t no body in that there grave when I filled it up on January 4th—leavin’ out, of course, Lady Thorpe’s body. That was there, I don’t say it wasn’t, and for all I know it’s there still. Unless him as put this here corpus where it is took the other away with him, coffin and all.”
    “Well,” said the doctor, “it can’t have been here longer than three months, and so far as I can tell, it hasn’t been there much less. But I’ll tell you that better when you get it out.”
    “Three months, eh?” Mr. Hezekiah Lavender had pushed his way to the front. “That ’ud be about the time that stranger chap disappeared—him as was stayin’ at Ezra Wilderspin’s and wanted a job to mend up moty-cars and sich. He had a beard, too, by my recollection.”
    “Why, so he had,” cried Mr. Gotobed. “What a head you have on you, Hezekiah! That’s who it is, sure-lie. To think o’ that, now! I always thought that chap was after no good. But who could have gone for to do a thing like this here?”
    “Well,” said the doctor. “If Jack Priest has finished with his interrogation, you may as well get the body dug out. Where are you going to put it? It won’t be a very nice thing to keep hanging about.”
    “Mr. Ashton have a nice airy shed, sir. If we was to ask him, I dessay he could make shift to move his ploughs out for the time being. And it’s got a decent-sized window and a door with a lock to it.”
    “That’ll do well. Dick, run round and ask Mr. Ashton and get him to lend us a cart and a hurdle. How about getting hold of the coroner. Rector? It’s Mr. Compline, you know, over at Leamholt. Shall I ring him up when I get back?”
    “Oh, thank you, thank you. I should be very grateful.”
    “All right. Can they carry on now. Jack?”
    The constable signified his assent, and the digging was resumed. By this time the entire village seemed to have assembled in the churchyard, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the children were prevented from crowding round the grave, since the grown-ups who should have restrained them were themselves struggling for positions of vantage. The Rector was just turning upon them with the severest rebuke he knew how to utter, when Mr. Lavender approached him.
    “Excuse me, sir, but did I ought to ring Tailor Paul for that there?”
    “Ring Tailor Paul? Well, really, Hezekiah, I hardly know.”
    “We got to ring her for every Christian soul dyin’ in the parish,” persisted Mr. Lavender. “That’s set down for us. And seemin’ly he must a-died in the parish, else why should anybody go for to bury him here?”
    “True, true, Hezekiah.”
    “But as for being’ a Christian soul, who’s to