More Work for the Undertaker Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Margery Allingham

  Map

  Dedication

  Title Page

  1. Afternoon of a Detective

  2. The Third Crow

  3. Old-fashioned and out of the ordinary

  4. You Have to be Careful

  5. A Little Unpleasantness

  6. Bedtime Story

  7. The Practical Undertaker

  8. Apron Strings

  9. Money Talking

  10. Boy with Bike

  11. The Time for It

  12. Poppy Tea

  13. Legal Angle

  14. The Two Chairs

  15. Two Days Later

  16. Undertaker’s Parlour

  17. High Wind in the Area

  18. Thread from Threadneedle Street

  19. The Snarl

  20. Monkey Talk

  21. Homework

  22. Slip-knots

  23. Vive la Bagatelle!

  24. Through the Net

  25. Up Apron Street

  26. Conjurer’s Stores

  27. Farewell Apron Street

  Copyright

  About the Book

  In a masterpiece of storytelling Margery Allingham sends her elegant and engaging detective Albert Campion into the eccentric Palinode household, where there have been two suspicious deaths. And if poisoning were not enough, there are also anonymous letters, sudden violence and a vanishing coffin. Meanwhile the Palinodes go about their nocturnal business and Campion dices with danger in his efforts to find the truth.

  About the Author

  Margery Allingham was born in London in 1904. She attended the Perse School in Cambridge before returning to London to the Regent Street Polytechnic. Her father – author H. J. Allingham – encouraged her to write, and was delighted when she contributed to her aunt’s cinematic magazine, The Picture Show, at the age of eight.

  Her first novel was published when she was seventeen. In 1928 she published her first detective story, The White Cottage Mystery, which had been serialised in the Daily Express. The following year, in The Crime at Black Dudley, she introduced the character who was to become the hallmark of her writing – Albert Campion. Her novels heralded the more sophisticated suspense genre: characterised by her intuitive intelligence, extraordinary energy and accurate observation, they vary from the grave to the openly satirical, whilst never losing sight of the basic rules of the classic detective tale. Famous for her London thrillers, such as Hide My Eyes and The Tiger in the Smoke, she has been compared to Dickens in her evocation of the city’s shady underworld.

  In 1927 she married the artist, journalist and editor Philip Youngman Carter. They divided their time between their Bloomsbury flat and an old house in the village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy in Essex. Margery Allingham died in 1966.

  ALSO BY MARGERY ALLINGHAM IN THE ALBERT CAMPION SERIES

  The Crime at Black Dudley

  Mystery Mile

  Look to the Lady

  Police at the Funeral

  Sweet Danger

  Death of a Ghost

  Dancers in Mourning

  Flowers for the Judge

  The Case of the Late Pig

  Mr Campion and Others

  The Fashion in Shrouds

  Black Plumes

  Coroner’s Pidgin

  Traitor’s Purse

  The Casebook of Mr Campion

  The Tiger in the Smoke

  The Beckoning Lady

  Hide My Eyes

  The China Governess

  The Mind Readers

  A Cargo of Eagles

  Every character in this book is a careful portrait of a living person, each one of whom has expressed himself delighted not only with the accuracy but with the charity of the delineation. Any resemblance to any unconsulted person is therefore accidental

  To all old and valued clients this book is dedicated with respect and apologies for unavoidable delay in delivery of goods

  More Work for the Undertaker

  Margery Allingham

  Now listen to the tale I’m going to tell you.

  You’ll laugh until you feel you want some breath,

  For people often think it very funny

  When you tell them of a vi-hi-o-lent death!

  More work for the Undertaker,

  Another little job for the Tombstone Maker,

  At the local cem-e-tery they’ve

  Been very, very busy on a brand new grave:

  He won’t be cold this winter!

  Music Hall song sung by the late

  T. E. DUNVILLE, circa 1890

  1. Afternoon of a Detective

  ‘I FOUND A stiff in there once, down at the back just behind the arch,’ said Stanislaus Oates, pausing before the shop window. ‘I always recollect it because as I bent down it suddenly raised its arms and its cold hands closed round my throat. There was no power there, fortunately. He was just on gone and died while I clawed him off. It made me sweat, though. I was a Sergeant Detective, Second Class, then.’

  He swung away from the window and swept on down the crowded pavement. His raincoat, which was blackish with flecks of grey in it, billowed out behind him like a schoolmaster’s gown.

  His eighteen months as Chief of Scotland Yard had made little outward difference to him. He was still the shabby drooping man, who thickened unexpectedly at the stomach, and his grey sharp-nosed face was still sad and introspective in the shadow of his soft black hat.

  ‘I always like to walk this bit,’ he went on with gloomy affection. ‘It was the high spot of my manor for nearly thirty years.’

  ‘And it’s still strewn with the fragrant petals of memory, no doubt?’ commented his companion affably. ‘Whose was the corpse? The shopkeeper’s?’

  ‘No. Just some poor silly chap trying to crack a crib. Fell through the skylight and broke his back. That’s longer ago than I care to think. What a lovely afternoon, Campion. Enjoying it?’

  The man at his side did not reply. He was extricating himself from a passer-by who had accidentally cannoned into him on catching a sudden glimpse of the old Chief.

  The main stream of bustling shoppers ignored the old detective, but to a minority his progress was like the serene sailing of a big river fish from whose path experienced small fry consider it prudent to scatter.

  Mr Albert Campion himself was not unknown to some of the interested glances but his field was smaller and considerably more exclusive. He was a tall man in the forties, over-thin, with hair once fair and now bleached almost white. His clothes were good enough to be unnoticeable and behind unusually large horn-rimmed spectacles his face, despite its maturity, still possessed much of that odd quality of anonymity which had been so remarked upon in his youth. He had the valuable gift of appearing an elegant shadow and was, as a great policeman had once said so enviously, a man of whom at first sight no one could ever be afraid.

  He had accepted the Chief’s unprecedented invitation to lunch with reservations and the equally unlikely proposal that they should go and walk in the park with a stiffening of his determination not to be drawn into anything.

  Oates, who usually walked fast and spoke little, was dawdling and presently his cold eyes flickered upward. Mr Campion, following their gaze, saw that it rested on the clock over the jeweller’s two doors down. It was just five minutes past three. Oates sniffed with satisfaction.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the flowers,’ he said and set off across the road. The Chief leading the way had seen his goal. It proved to be a nest of small green chairs arranged cosily at the foot of a giant beech which made a tent of shadow over them. He cross
ed towards them and sat down, wrapping the tails of his coat over his knees like a skirt.

  The only other living creature in sight at the moment was a woman who sat on one of the public benches which flanked the gravel path. The full sunlight poured down on her bent back and on the square of folded newspaper in which she was so engrossed.

  She was just within normal vision. Her small squat form was arrayed in an assortment of garments of varying length, and as she sat with her knees crossed she revealed a swag of multi-coloured hems festooned across a concertina’d stocking. At that distance her shoe appeared to be stuffed with grass. Wisps of it sprouted from every aperture, including one at the toe. It was warm in the sun but she wore across her shoulders something which might once have been a fur, and although her face was hidden Campion could see elf-locks peeping out from under the yellowing folds of an ancient motoring veil of the button-on-top variety. Since she wore it over a roughly torn square of cardboard placed flat on her head the effect was eccentric and even pathetic, in the way that little girls in fancy dress are sometimes so.

  The second woman appeared on the path suddenly, as figures do in the bright sunlight. Mr Campion, who had nothing else he wished to think about at the moment, reflected lazily that it was gratifying to see how often Nature employs the designs of eminent artists and was happy to recognize a Helen Hopkinson. She was perfect, the little feet, the enormous bust, the tall white hat, half wine-glass, half posy, and above all the ineffable indication of demure ingenuousness in every curving line. He became aware of the Chief stiffening at his side at the instant in which the shining figure paused. The coat, which some ingenious tailor had evolved to give a torso like a jellybag the inoffensive contours of a jug, hesitated as it were in mid-air. The white hat turned briefly this way and that. The small feet fluttered to the side of the woman on the seat. A tiny glove moved forth and back, and then she was in mid-path again, walking on with the same self-conscious if unsteady innocence.

  ‘Ha,’ said Oates softly as she passed them, and they saw her face was pink and virtuous. ‘See that, Campion?’

  ‘Yes. What did she give her?’

  ‘Sixpence. Possibly ninepence. It has been a shilling.’

  Mr Campion looked at his friend, who was not by nature flippant.

  ‘A purely charitable act?’

  ‘Utterly.’

  ‘I see.’ Campion was the most polite of men. ‘I know it’s rare,’ he said meekly.

  ‘She does it nearly every day, somewhere about this time,’ the Chief explained unsatisfactorily. ‘I wanted to see it with my own eyes. Oh, there you are, Super . . .’

  Heavy steps on the grass behind them came closer and Superintendent Yeo, most just if most policemanlike of policemen, came round the tree to shake hands.

  Mr Campion welcomed him sincerely. The two were very old friends and had that deep liking for each other which springs up so often between opposite temperaments.

  Campion’s pale eyes became speculative. Of one thing he was now certain. If Oates had taken it into his grey head to play the goat, Yeo was not the man to waste an afternoon to humour him.

  ‘Well,’ Yeo said with glee, ‘you saw it.’

  ‘Yes.’ The Chief was thoughtful. ‘Funny thing human greed. The exhumation must be reported in that paper if it’s at all recent, but she’s not reading it unless she’s learning it by heart. She hasn’t turned it over while we’ve been here.’

  Campion’s lean chin shot up for a moment and then he bent again over the piece of stick with which he was doodling in the dust.

  ‘Palinode case?’

  Yeo’s round brown eyes flickered at his Chief.

  ‘You’ve been making it interesting for him, I see,’ he said with disapproval. ‘Yes, that’s Miss Jessica Palinode sitting over there, Mr Campion. She is the third sister and she sits on that particular seat every afternoon, rain or shine. To look at she’s what we used to call a “daisy”.’

  ‘And who was the other woman?’ Campion was still intent on his hieroglyphics.

  ‘That was Mrs Dawn Bonnington of Carchester Terrace,’ Oates intervened. ‘She knows it’s “wrong to give to beggars” but when she sees “a woman who has had to let herself go” she just can’t resist “doing something”. It’s a form of superstition, of course. Some people touch wood.’

  ‘Oh give it to me straight,’ grumbled Yeo. ‘Mrs B. walks her dog here on fine afternoons, Mr Campion, and seeing Miss Jessica always sitting there she formed the opinion, not unnaturally, that the poor old girl was down and out. So she made a habit of slipping her something and she was never snubbed. One of our chaps observed the incident was pretty regular and walked over to warn the old thing against begging. As he came up to her he saw what she was doing and he admits quite frankly that it put him off.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘A crossword puzzle in Latin.’ The Superintendent spoke placidly. ‘They run one in a highbrow weekly alongside a couple of others in English, one for adults and one for children. The officer, who is highbrow himself, bless his heart, does the one for kids, and he recognized the page as he approached. It shook him to see her slapping the words in and he walked past her.’

  ‘Ah, but next day when she was only reading a book he did his stuff,’ put in Oates, who sounded happy, ‘and Miss Palinode gave him a fine comprehensive lecture on the ethics of true politeness, and half-a-crown.’

  ‘He doesn’t admit the half-crown.’ Yeo’s small mouth was prim but amused. ‘However, he had the sense to find out her name and where she lived and he had a quiet word with Mrs Bonnington. She didn’t believe him – she’s that kind of woman – and ever after she’s had to do her little act when she’s thought no one was looking. The interesting thing is that he swears that Miss Palinode likes the money. He says she waits for it and goes off livid if Mrs Bonnington doesn’t come. Well, does it attract you, Mr Campion?’

  The third man straightened his back and smiled half in apology, half in regret.

  ‘Frankly, no,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s a fascinating case,’ Oates said, ignoring him. ‘It’s going to be one of the classics of its kind. They’re such difficult interesting people. You know who they are, don’t you? When I was a boy even I heard of Professor Palinode, who wrote the essays, and his wife the poetess. These are the children. They’re queer brainy people, all boarding privately in what was once their own home. They’re not easy people to get at from a police point of view, and now there’s a poisoner loose among ’em. I thought it was right down your street.’

  ‘My street has developed a bend,’ Campion murmured apologetically. ‘Where are your young men?’

  Oates did not look at him.

  ‘Well, young Charlie Luke is the D.D.I. in charge,’ he explained. ‘He’s old Bill Luke’s youngest. You’ll remember Inspector Luke. He and the Super here were mates in Y Division. If young Charlie is what I think he is, I don’t see why he shouldn’t pull it off – if he has help.’ He looked at the younger man hopefully.

  ‘We’ll give you all the dope anyway,’ continued Oates. ‘It’s worth hearing. The whole street seems to be in it, that’s such a funny thing.’

  ‘I do apologize, but you know, I fancy I’ve heard most of it.’ The man in the horn-rimmed spectacles considered them unhappily. ‘The woman who owns the house they all live in is an old variety artiste called Renee Roper. She’s an acquaintance of mine. In fact she once did me a very good turn a long time ago when I was having fun and games with some ballet stars. She came to see me this morning.’

  ‘Did she ask you to act for her?’ They spoke together and he laughed.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Renee’s not your bird. She’s just upset at having a murder or two – is it two yet, Oates? – on her nice respectable hands. She invited me to be her star boarder and tidy it all up for her. I felt a lout having to turn her down and as it was I listened to the whole harrowing story.’

  ‘Well!’ The Superintendent w
as sitting up like a bear, his round eyes serious. ‘I’m not a religious man,’ he said, ‘but do you know what I’d call that? I’d call it an omen. It’s a coincidence, Mr Campion, you can’t ignore it. It’s intended.’

  The thin man rose and stood looking out across the sunlit grass to the bundle on the seat and to the flowers beyond her.

  ‘No,’ he said sadly. ‘No, two crows don’t make a summons, Super. According to the adage one needs three for that. I’ve got to go.’

  2. The Third Crow

  One crow means danger; two, strangers; three, a summons.

  ON THE BROW of the rise the thin man paused in his stride and looked back. Below him the scene was spread out in bright miniature, as if it were under the dome of a glass paper-weight. There was the shining grass and the rod of the path, and beyond, no larger now than a puppet, the untidy figure with the mushroom head, a blurred mystery on the dark seat.

  Campion hesitated and then drew from his pocket one of those midget telescopes. When he put it to his eye the woman rushed towards him through the sunny air and he saw her for the first time in vivid detail. She was still bent over the paper on her lap, but in an instant, as if she were aware he watched her, she raised her head and stared full at him, apparently into his eyes. He was much too far away for her to have seen the telescope or even that he faced in her direction. Her face startled him.

  Under the ragged edge of cardboard which showed clearly through the centre parting of the veil it blazed with intelligence. The skin was dark, the features fine and the eyes deep-set, but the outstanding impression he received was of a mind.

  He moved his glass away hastily, aware of his intrusion, and quite by chance became the witness of a minor incident. Behind the woman a boy and a girl had appeared between the bushes. They had evidently come upon her unexpectedly and at the precise moment in which they swung into the bright circle of Mr Campion’s seven-leagued-eye the boy started and caught the girl round the shoulders. They retreated stealthily, walking backwards. The boy was the elder, nineteen or so, and possessed all that clumsy boniness which promises size and weight. His untidy fair head was bare and his pink worried face ugly and pleasant. Campion could see his expression clearly and was struck by the concern in it.