The Beckoning Lady Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Margery Allingham in the Albert Campion series

  Dramatis Personae

  Dedication

  Title Page

  1 Two Dead Men

  2 Love and Money

  3 At the Beckoning Lady

  4 Clots in Clover

  5 Two Alarming People

  6 The Master of the House

  7 The Lion and the Unicorn

  8 Love and the Police

  9 The Helpful Official

  10 The Bottom of the Garden

  11 Lunch in Arcady

  12 The House without a Back

  13 Three in a Row

  14 Fine Goings on

  15 Tonker’s Guests

  16 All Right on the Night

  17 Mr. Campion Exerts Himself

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Campion’s glorious summer in Pontisbright is blighted by death. Amidst the preparations for Minnie and Tonker Cassand’s fabulous summer party a murder is discovered and it falls to Campion to unravel the intricate web of motive, suspicion and deduction with all his imagination and skill.

  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

  More Work for the Undertaker

  The Tiger in the Smoke

  Hide My Eyes

  The China Governess

  The Mind Readers

  A Cargo of Eagles

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  (appearing)

  ALBERT CAMPION, thought to be on holiday in Pontisbright.

  RUPERT, his son.

  DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR CHARLES LUKE, recuperating in Pontisbright.

  TONKER CASSANDS, friend to Campion, inventor of the Glübalübalum, married to Minnie.

  MAGERSFONTEIN LUGG, a London fellow, attracted by Miss Diane.

  OLD HARRY, a country person, protector of Miss Diane.

  SIDNEY SIMON SMITH, alias ‘the S.S.S. man’, a palindromic V.I.P.

  WESTY STRAW, step-great-grandnephew to Minnie, an American subject.

  GEORGE MEREDITH, friend to Westy.

  ‘FANNY’ GENAPPE, a millionaire.

  SUPERINTENDENT FRED SOUTH of the rural C.I.D.

  SOLLY L., a bookmaker.

  WALLY, friend to Tonker.

  THE POLICE CONSTABLE at Pontisbright.

  CHOC, a dog.

  THE IMPERIAL AUGUSTS, a celebrated troupe.

  THE LADY AMANDA, married to Albert Campion, mother of Rupert.

  MINNIE CASSANDS, née Miranda Straw, celebrated woman painter, A.R.A., owner of ‘The Beckoning Lady’, married to Tonker.

  PRUNELLA SCROOP-DORY, in love with Luke.

  EMMA BERNADINE, friend to Minnie, wife to Jake, mother of Blue Drawers and Yellow Drawers, living at the cottage at ‘The Beckoning Lady’.

  MISS PINKERTON, secretary to Genappe, on loan to Smith.

  ANNABELLE, sister to Westy.

  MISS DIANE, alias Dinah, employed by the hour at at the cottage at ‘The Beckoning Lady’.

  MARY, niece to Amanda.

  TOMMASINA, wife to Wally.

  LADY GLEBE, mother to Prune.

  BLUE DRAWERS and YELLOW DRAWERS, twins, daughters to Emma.

  THE HOSTESS AT THE INN.

  Guests, Clowns, Augusts, Rustics, Police, etc.

  (who do not appear)

  WILLIAM FARADAY, alias Uncle William, deceased.

  LEONARD TERENCE DENNIS OHMAN, an official, deceased.

  SIR LEO PURSUIVANT, Chief Constable at Kepesake.

  POPPY, his wife.

  JAKE BERNADINE, a painter, married to Emma.

  Mr. BURT and Mr. HARE, alias The Bodysnatchers, dealers in scrap.

  THE SHEIKH HASSAN-BEN-SABAH, owner of a notorious race track at Merdek, N. Africa.

  Friends, Relations, Enemies, etc.

  This Book is Affectionately Inscribed to my Old Friends and their Merry Wives

  The Beckoning Lady

  Margery Allingham

  None of the characters in this book is a portrait of a living person nor did the incidents here recorded ever take place.

  “It is very unlucky to interfere with a marriage of long standing. If the man doesn’t kill you, you’ll certainly get an earful from the woman.”

  Chief Superintendent Stanislaus Oates in a Lecture to Young Constables

  “But who,” said Florizel at last, “who is this lady who is for ever beckoning?”

  “That,” replied he, “is beyond my knowledge. Some aver that she is Love, or Dame Fortune. Some, honour in the field. Some, the Muse herself. And the old have an unpleasant idea that she is Death. But all I can tell you about her for certain is that her eyes are laughing, and that she is without mercy.”

  CONTES DES FEES

  (from the translation by Anthony Greene, 1929)

  Extract from The Times, Monday, June 19th

  OBITUARY

  MR WILLIAM FARADAY

  Mr. William Makepeace Faraday, author of many amusing librettos, died last Saturday in Pontisbright, Suffolk, at the age of eighty-two.

  He was born in Cambridge in the late ’sixties, the son of Dr. James Faraday, one-time Master of Ignatius, and Mrs. Caroline Faraday, whom all who knew the University in the days preceding the first World War will remember for her dominant charm and, without ingratitude, for the over-aweing hospitality which she dispensed to the undergraduates of that remote and golden age.

  William Faraday was educated at Charterhouse and St. John’s College, Cambridge, and when he left the University he settled down to a curiously retired existence in the home of his parents, and it was only after the death of his mother in 1932, when he was fifty-nine, that his remarkable talent became evident.

  His first publication, The Memoirs of an Old Buffer, which appeared in 1934, was one of the most successful humorous books of the decade, and in a matter of months he discovered himself a
literary figure, but it was not until the late James Sutane perceived in the volume of pretended reminiscences the ideal libretto for his forthcoming musical show, The Buffer, that William Faraday’s true gift was fully appreciated.

  The Buffer, which ran at the Argosy Theatre for five hundred and twenty-four nights, was followed by many other extravaganzas from his fertile imagination, amongst them Uncle Goat, Sweet Adeline, and the outstandingly successful Harrogate Ho! a revival of which enlivened the late ’forties.

  Mr. Faraday’s influence on contemporary wit has been considerable. His was the charm of artless prevarication, never crude nor overdone, but endearing to those who could appreciate the gentle absurdity of Dignity skating on the thinnest of ice with the placid sangfroid of the truly courageous.

  As a man he was generally beloved, and a host of friends will miss his shy smile and air of bewildered pleasure at their delighted reception of his sly tall stories. His latter years were spent in happy retirement in the country. He was unmarried and died at the house of a friend.

  Chapter 1

  TWO DEAD MEN

  I

  IT WAS NO time for dying. The summer had arrived in glory, trailing fathomless skies and green and gold and particolour as fresh as sunrise, yet death was about, twice.

  All through what was left of the first day, one body lay hidden between the steep sides of the dry ditch, secret on a bed of leaves. From the moment when it had toppled so suddenly from the plank bridge leading to the stile it had vanished from sight. The green waves of ribbon grass and periwinkle which fringed the verges had parted as it passed, to swing up again immediately, so that there was now only one way of catching a glimpse of it. That was to step down on the other side, where the chasm was wider and less overgrown, stoop under the bridge where lichen and black fungus made an evil ceiling, and peer into the translucent tunnel beyond.

  On the second day only one person did that and no one else passed that way at all.

  On the third day in the very early morning, when the sky was a dazzling white and the grass was grey and beaded with dew, there was much unusual foot traffic on the path which led over the stile from the house to the village. Among the first to pass were two rather alarming old women. Each carried a sinister bag, wore very tidy clothes, and spoke with hushed excitement. They rested at the stile, discussing death and the grisly office they had come to perform for it, but neither glanced behind her at the hanging grasses or dreamed for one moment that beneath them lay a second waiting form whose stiffened limbs would have, by that time, taxed all their experience.

  Later on that day, when the sun was up, there was much coming and going. Several people from the house made short cuts to the village, and one shook out a shopping bag over the ditch so that with the dust three small items fell idly through the leaves. These were a pin and a paper-clip and a small bronze bead.

  The undertaker himself walked that way, since the journey was so much shorter from his wheel-wright’s shop than if he had got out his car and gone round by the road. He tripped through the meadows, looking incongruous in his black suit with his rule sticking out of his breast pocket and his face carefully composed for his first glimpse of the bereaved.

  After him, in the afternoon, came the ladies, walking in twos and threes, wearing hats and gloves and carrying kind little notes and nosegays to leave at the door. Nearly all paused on the stile for a first glimpse of the water-meadows, flower-spangled and lace-edged in the yellow light, but not one noticed if there was any new and unusual wear on the planks, or observed that there was something dark and different on the edge of a rusty ploughshare which lay on a bald patch under the oak overshadowing the bridge.

  It was dark before the one person who now knew the way dared to clamber down under the planks and, with head bent to avoid the lichen, lit a single match and held it high. The body was still there.

  It was still there on the next night and the next, but by now it was limp and shrunken into the earth which would not open to receive it.

  On the evening of the sixth day there was a quarrel at the stile. Two country lovers met there and the boy was restless and importunate. But the girl, who was at that strange age when every sense is sharpened, took a sudden inexplicable loathing to the place and would not listen. He argued with her and his smooth face was hot and his hair-grease reeked of roses as he nuzzled into her neck. He whispered that the place was so deserted, so hidden with the spreading tree above them making for darkness, and the steep artificial slope of an embankment providing a screen on one side. But her disgust, which was not for him as she supposed, was overpowering and she thrust him off. He caught at her dress as she climbed away but she struck out at him, caught him more sharply than she had intended, and rushed off down the path sobbing, principally in apprehension. He remained where he was, frustrated and hurt, and he was almost in tears when he dragged the packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. He had only two left of the posh kind which, together with the hair-grease, he kept for courting nights, and when he lit the second one he threw the empty carton over his shoulder into the periwinkle fronds. It slid down out of sight and came to rest on a crumpled lapel.

  The boy finished his angry smoking very quickly and kicked the stub into the planks at his feet. Finding he derived a sort of satisfaction from the exercise, he went on kicking, doing a certain amount of damage to the surface of the wood, and afterwards, when he stepped into the meadow, he kept clear of the uncut hay-crop from force of habit but trod the other way under the tree and kicked a lump of iron he found there, lifting it up at last with the toe of one of his best shoes and sending it neatly into the path. It was grey dusk by then and he did not look at the thing at all closely, but suddenly wearying both of the pursuit and of all women turned abruptly and walked back to the village and the telly, which would be showing in the back bar of The Gauntlett.

  He had been gone a full twenty minutes before the watcher, who had been sitting up behind a bramble bush on the high embankment throughout the entire proceedings, came sliding down to the path. Once again the nightly performance with the match took place, but this time the glance in the flickering light was perfunctory and the investigator withdrew hastily and went along the path for the ploughshare. A foot turned it over gently and the match flame spurted once more, but by now the stains which had been dark were brown as the rust on the iron. The feet slipped away.

  A police constable in uniform, taking a walk in the scented night in an unenthusiastic search for something he would have described as “certain activities only natural but about what there have been complaints”, found the ploughshare by falling over it. He picked it up, saw what it was by the light of the stars, and carried it almost into the village. On the outskirts he passed a rubbish dump sunk in the hollow of a dried-up pond and decently screened by shrubs. The constable had size and strength and in his youth could fling a quoit with any man in Suffolk. Spreading his chest, he swung his arm once, twice, and at the third time sent the share with the stain and the single shred of fur-felt still upon it, high and free into the arch of the sky. Seconds later he heard the satisfying crash and tinkle as it came to rest amid a nest of old iron and broken bottles.

  On the seventh day, the one person who had watched over the body robbed it systematically. It was unpleasant work but it was done thoroughly, in daylight at dinnertime, the one sacred hour in rural England when all visiting is taboo and no one walks abroad. There were no observers and it was entirely fortuitous that when the pathetic shred of a thing was again at peace the cigarette carton lay under the withered right hand.

  On the eighth day the inevitable occurred and a large and sagacious dog came into the field.

  II

  “Good-morning. What a nice little funeral it was, wasn’t it? Just the right time of year for flowers. That always makes it so much more gay.”

  The sensible-looking woman with the white collar on her neat cotton frock went on cutting faded blossoms out of the wreaths on Uncle William’s gr
ave, and the wind, which always played round the hilltop church at Pontisbright, ruffled the few strands of grey in her glossy hair.

  Mr. Campion, who was standing rather foolishly holding a belated wreath which the village postman had given him, because he “didn’t think it quite the ticket for the old P.O. to deliver direct”, wondered who on earth she was.

  “That’s another, is it?” she enquired, scarcely glancing up. “Give it here and I’ll see what I can do with it. Dear me, it has got knocked about, hasn’t it?”

  She rose easily to her feet and, taking the tribute with firm capable hands, held it at arm’s length, turning it round to find the card.

  “From all in the Buffer Company, Swansea, to the best old Buffer of all,” she read aloud. “How extraordinary. Oh I see, they’re acting one of his musical comedies. How inefficient theatrical people are, aren’t they? Two days late and not really a very suitable message.”

  “Better than ‘best wishes’,” said Mr. Campion, his pale face flushing slightly.

  She stared at him and laughed. “Oh yes, of course,” she said, only too obviously turning up his card in some mental filing system, “you’re so amusing, aren’t you?”

  Mr. Campion took off his spectacles and gave her what was for him a long hard look. She was coming back to him now. He had seen but not spoken to her. She had sat some pews ahead of himself and Amanda at the funeral service and had worn a black suit and a nice sensible pot hat. She was somebody’s secretary and had one of those nicknames which indicate the somewhat nervous patronage of employers—Jonesy, was it? Or no, he had it now, Pinky, short for Pinkerton.

  Presently, as he had said nothing, she started to tell him about himself in a helpful way, as though he had forgotten his own name or where he was. He thought at first that she was only refreshing her own memory, or airing it, rather, to show him how splendidly efficient she was, but after a moment or so he realised that he had misjudged her and she was merely taking the opportunity to straighten out some of her facts.