The Beckoning Lady Page 15

  Superintendent South, who had been with Luke into the small square room beyond the wash-basins to find the garment, now carried it over to the light. Both police officers were a little at sea, for beside the usual country house paraphernalia of gardening boots, guns, and golf clubs, the cloakroom at The Beckoning Lady had yielded a large red false beard hanging on a hook, a cavalry sword, a racing crash helmet, and a small black human skull which had proved after some excitement to be part of an articulated skeleton such as can be found in most art schools.

  The waistcoat, which had been on a hanger hidden under an oilskin cape, was an impressive affair of tan watered silk, embroidered in a bold masculine pattern of acanthus leaves in bronze, black and white beads. But the embroideress of long ago had never seen her work in use, for the sheets of notepaper which she had used to protect the pattern as she finished it were still tacked in place, and only the final quarter-inch or so remained to be done. The button-holes were made, but as yet there were no cat’s-eyes to correspond with them. Where the pattern remained to be finished the beads were loose.

  South turned it over and finally hung it against his chest for a moment, before comparing it with the bead he carried about. There was no possible doubt about the similarity. He glanced at Luke, who shrugged his shoulders, and the Superintendent returned the waistcoat to its hanger.

  “I should like to see the gentleman actually wearing that tomorrow,” he remarked, “so perhaps we won’t borrow it after all. These beads seem to be all over the place. Ohman could have picked one up anywhere.”

  “Little Doom probably tried the waistcoat up against himself just as you’ve done,” said Emma. “It’s the sort of impudent thing he would do.”

  “Impudent?” Mr. Campion fastened on the word hastily, lest relations became strained. “That’s a new word in connection with Little Doom.”

  “Is it? Then the only person you’ve discussed him with is Minnie, and one doesn’t have to be three detectives to tell that.” Emma began to beat up a bowl of icing as though she disliked it personally. “I expect she simply told you what a help he was, and how he took a load of worry off her shoulders. No one else found him anything but a menace.”

  Her powerful forearm rested for an instant and she pointed a dripping spoon at South.

  “That man was one long prying nose,” she announced. “Hasn’t it occurred to you all that we’re taking your inquisition remarkably calmly? Don’t you think it peculiar that we’re all getting on with our work and letting you poke about as if you were nothing out of the ordinary? Well, let me tell you you’re not. We’re used to this sort of thing. We have it every day. We’re not surprised to open our kitchen doors and find that someone has undone the stove to see how much fuel we’re burning. We’re not astounded to be asked who we’ve telephoned or why, or where the half-bottle of gin that was on the sideboard last week has gone to, or if the new piece of soap in the cloakroom was really necessary. That’s the kind of insane life we’ve been leading, and the reason for it is that Minnie let the little brute into the house and then daren’t get rid of him. If he really is dead, I tell you I’m more than glad. I’m hysterical with joy.”

  Luke made a sudden movement but a hand like a band of steel closed over his arm and he was forced to keep silent as a little sigh escaped the Superintendent.

  “Jake was the only person who treated him with any intelligence,” Emma continued, her round face flushed and her eyes bright. “He started on Jake and Jake threw him on the hive, and that was the last we saw of him in our cottage. Tonker hid from the man and Minnie encouraged him. Minnie always feels that if she suffers she’ll be lucky, that her work will sell, or get better, or something equally idiotic.”

  “Oh I don’t know,” murmured Mr. Campion. “I think Minnie felt she’d like a visible irritant.”

  Emma laughed bitterly. “This way we all shared it, certainly,” she said. “Do you know, he actually came and timed me working on those rooms upstairs? Oh, he did enjoy his little bit of power.”

  South was beaming. “You ought to stop and have a cigarette,” he said, feeling in his pocket and looking hopefully at Campion. “You’ve been working too hard. It’s not worth it. When did you see this difficult gentleman last? Do you remember?”

  “I haven’t spoken to him for some months. We weren’t on speaking terms.” Emma waved Mr. Campion’s cigarette-case away and continued to beat the icing. “I saw him last week on Thursday afternoon, some time between four-fifteen and four-thirty.”

  “Did you though?” Luke came back into the enquiry with a rush, and the force of his personality lit up the kitchen and silenced the busy spoon. “How do you know the time so exactly?”

  “Because,” said Emma, looking at him critically for the first time, and responding suddenly to something she saw in him, “my husband and I were in our cottage listening to Mrs. Dale’s Diary on the radio, as we always do at four-fifteen. We like it,” she added defiantly.

  “Do you? So does my mum.” Luke was beaming at her, his eyes alive and bright and his dark face friendly. “So does his wife, I’ll bet,” he added, with a ferocious grin at South. “You were listening, were you? That’s all right. Your husband didn’t tell us that. Come to that, he didn’t tell us much.”

  “Jake doesn’t admit he likes it,” said Emma.

  “I know.” Luke was happier. “He just happens to be doing something quiet in the room when it’s on. That’s natural enough. You saw Little Doom?—this name is going to get me into trouble, I can see that. It’ll sound well if I come out with it in court. You saw Little Doom while you were in your cottage listening to Mrs. Dale? Where was he?”

  “Haring down the drive, apparently for his life,” said Emma calmly.

  “Away from the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone behind him?”

  “No, not a soul. I watched to see. He was all right too. I mean there wasn’t any—he wasn’t hurt.”

  Luke turned enquiringly to Mr. Campion and the thin man answered his unspoken question.

  “He wouldn’t have got very far with the injuries I saw. How do you feel about that. Superintendent?”

  Fred South shook his head. For once he was not laughing. His comic face wore an expression which was almost thoughtful.

  “Was he running away or running to, ma’am?” he said at last. “It’s a different kind of run.”

  Emma did not answer. For the first time her hard brightness had wavered and there was a lot of colour in her face.

  “I—I don’t know,” she said at last.

  “Were you surprised to see him?”

  “Surprised to see Little Doom? I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw him coming down the chimney or up out of the copper! I noticed him particularly that day only because it was unusual for him to be on the drive. As I said, he avoided our cottage after the hive incident, and the donkey didn’t like him. But I wasn’t surprised. In the normal way he came down the footpath from the village, crossed the lane, and took the path across the meadow by the barn to the front door. I didn’t see him arrive, and I was in the cottage all day, so since he left his portrait in the barn, probably he came the way he usually did.”

  “But left running down the drive?” said South.

  Luke was frowning and she took up the palette knife with which she had been spreading the icing and drew a rough plan for him on a slab of sponge cake.

  “Look,” she said, “this is the map of the place. It’s like an arrow in a bow. The lane is straight and the drive is roughly a half-circle on one side of it. It is a very big half-circle, and inside it there is a meadow and the barn and various other outbuildings. Our cottage is down here, about twenty yards from the lower gates. That’s the bow. The footpath from the village is the arrow. It meets the lane in the middle of the half-circle and one can go on into the meadow and along by the barn. Got it? From our cottage we can’t see anyone approaching the house by the barn, because of the hedge and the bank between us
and it.”

  “Wonderful,” said Luke, putting out his hands for the cake, “we’ll take it with us.”

  “I should say so!” Emma was laughing, her temper restored, and the tapping at the door which led into the back kitchen continued for some seconds before anybody noticed it.

  The new arrival proved to be the village constable, a large elderly man, very red and profoundly uneasy. He stooped automatically as he passed through the doorway, as he who habitually wears a helmet must, and looked from one to the other of the plainclothes men anxiously.

  “Could I have a word with you gentlemen in private?” he enquired in a slow, deep, wondering voice. “I’ve come up against something.”

  Luke and South followed him at once but Mr. Campion, seizing the opportunity, lingered.

  “Emma,” he said with the unconvincing carelessness of the would-be borrower, “do you know if there’s any dormital in the house?”

  “Dormital? I should hope not.” She ceased her work to look at him. “Never take that, sweetie. If you happen to mix it with alcohol it’s death, just like that. Or so they say.”

  “Really?” he enquired mendaciously. “How do you know?”

  “Know? The papers have been full of it, or they were last winter. I don’t believe you townees read any more. It’s the same as that stuff that ends in sodium. I thought they’d stopped it being sold. I don’t suppose one would kill you if you had a drink some time during the same day, but take a couple or so and an ounce or two of whisky, especially if you’re one of these people whose livers are a bit brown round the edges anyway, and you go out like a light. What do you want that sort of filth for? If you ran about a bit in this air you’d sleep all right.”

  “I see,” he said, sounding deflated. “I only thought Uncle William might have had some.”

  “William? Good heavens, he wouldn’t have had any within a mile of him.” Emma’s glance was concentrated on the pale green glue she was spreading over a cake. “William was petrified of that sort of filth. I used to help Dinah to get him to bed when Minnie had to go to London, and you never heard such a set-out as he used to make over the pluminol which the doctor left him. I told him he’d have to take the best part of a box before it hurt him, but he didn’t believe me. Poor old boy, he did so want to live. Wasn’t it a shame?”

  “A beastly shame,” said Mr. Campion with more feeling than he had intended. “And so is this other business,” he added hastily.

  “Little Doom?” She shrugged her shoulders. “It will be, if it rots up the party. Albert, for heaven’s sake don’t let them spoil my party. I just couldn’t bear it. I mean it. It’s an Orphan’s Outing for me. I shall die if anything stops it. They seem all right, those men. One of them is a bit sensational, isn’t he? Glowing with it. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  Mr. Campion sighed. “Prune,” he said.

  “Prune?” She was appalled. “Oh no, not hopeless love.”

  “’Fraid so. Forget it.”

  “I shall try to. Jake calls her the Snow Queen. I call her the Marble No-Bust. She’s no earthly good to that chap. He’s alive.”

  “So far,” said Mr. Campion sadly, and went off to find the others.

  He came out into the yard just in time to see Amanda standing on the drive talking to a curious gnarled figure whose earth-coloured garments had such a quality of stiffness that the whole man seemed to be made of old wood. They did not appear to be saying very much, but the way they stood suggested the wordless communication peculiar to the countryside. As Campion stepped out of the house the old person moved off in the direction of the barn meadow, and Amanda turned her head towards her husband, who had paused in astonishment. For after he had touched his forehead, one of Old Harry’s thumbs had turned upward in a gesture both modern and explicit.

  Mr. Campion advanced upon his wife and took her gently by the back of the neck.

  “Helping?” he enquired.

  “Justice must be served.” Amanda’s cool voice was dangerously offhand. “I should cut along after Old Harry if I were you. I think you’ll find they’ve got the weapon. What’s all this about Tonker?”

  “You heard it on the bell-bine, I suppose?” Mr. Campion murmured impolitely. “He’s gone to London.”

  “How do the police feel about that?”

  He shrugged his shoulders but his eyes were worried. “It’s not as ugly as it might be, or as it will be if the idiot doesn’t telephone by three o’clock. They know they’re at fault by not asking to see him at once. Anyhow, Wally has promised to stand over him and see he calls the police the moment he appears. But he may easily drift off to lunch before going to the office. You never know with Tonker.”

  To his surprise she grinned. “I like old Tonker. He’s got such a valuable sense of proportion. Oh by the way, you can take it that it was Old Harry who removed all the reading matter from the body. He didn’t do it until he found out who the man was then he thought Miss Diane might be involved so he removed the evidence of identification in case—that’s who that was.”

  “Was it, by George? How’s he going to justify that.”

  “He isn’t. Old Harry hears nothing, sees nothing, says nothing. He’s the proverbial cartload of monkeys. Those papers will never be heard of again. They weren’t valuable and didn’t mean much, and if you try to question Harry you’ll not only never find out anything at all, but all your rabbits will die.”

  “I see. Is it permitted to enquire how you know?”

  “Oh,” said Amanda. “I was born here. I really should go along now, if I were you.”

  “Why?”

  A smile, singular both for its sweetness and its guile, flickered over the heart-shaped face.

  “Because if you don’t you may miss something rather good. I say, I hope you won’t mind if Lugg and Rupert and I stay here and get on with our work. Honesty Bull will give you and Luke some lunch at The Gauntlett. It ought to be giblet pie.”

  “Why ought to be?” he said.

  “Because it’s Midsummer’s Eve, of course.” Amanda turned on her heel. “I tell you, to get on here you have to know the place.”

  Mr. Campion crossed the drive, let himself through the white gate, and walked round the barn which smelled sweetly of tar in the morning sun. When he reached the lane he paused. A knot of men was standing on the dusty flint surface, looking at something on the bank under the hedge. Luke, South and the constable were waiting for the sergeant-photographer who had gone back in the police car for his gear. Of Old Harry there was no sign at all.

  Luke beckoned Campion over. “Look at this,” he said. “The original not-so-blunt instrument. Same as Cain found out the original trick with. They tell me they leave these about all over the place.” His bright eyes in their triangular sockets opened wide. “No wonder we cockneys think the country dangerous.”

  He pointed to a nest in the rank grass, where lay a ploughshare of the ancient pattern, very long in the shaft or cray, and broad in the wing. Using his handkerchief, although there could be no hope of prints on the gnarled and rusty surface, South picked it up and turned it over.

  “See that?” He pointed to a faintly darker stain on the broad bevel of the straight side of the iron. “This is it, all right. My chaps scoured the meadow as soon as it was light, but they didn’t think of coming right out here in the lane.” He giggled. “Getting very close to the pretty house, isn’t it?”

  “Put there this mornin’.” A small elderly voice, rising from somewhere in the region of their knees, startled everybody. Old Harry had materialised among them and was bending close to the grassy nest. “Put there this mornin’ while the dag was wet.” He straightened himself on the words, but remained a good head and a half shorter than Luke and South, who were both big men. He made the peculiarity greater by keeping very close to them, so that they had to look vertically down upon him while he lifted his shy, rosy face to them like a child.

  “Crikey,” said Luke under his breath.

  But South
, who like all countrymen was not so unwise as to disregard the native, began to grin and sparkle again.

  “That’s what you think, is it, Dad?” he asked civilly enough and shot an enquiring glance at the constable, who had become as wooden as a soldier on parade.

  “Harry Buller, sir. Old-age pensioner. Has worked round about ’ere all his life. Bird-catcher, sir.”

  “Ain’t much I don’t know. I’m a very knowledgeable old man,” said Old Harry, very fairly as Mr. Campion thought.

  The boast, however, delighted South, who was pleased with himself and in kindly mood.

  “How d’you know it was put there this morning, chum?”

  Luke brought a city intelligence to bear. “Did you put it there?”

  “No no. I see you a-lookin’ so I looked, and I see dags under it.”

  “Dags—doo,” said South. “Doo of the morning. Like rain, but it ain’t,” he explained. “I see what you mean, Dad. You don’t think it’s been there long?”

  “No no, grass’d be yellow.” Old Harry appeared to become very excited and he made a curious high-pitched trumpeting sound, scarcely recognisable as words. “Yelleranwhoitanoddmedods, yelleranwhoitanoddmedods, yelleranwhoitanoddmedods.”

  Since everyone else was defeated, the constable, who was sulky and the least bit nervous, was forced to translate.

  “’E says that the grass would be yeller and white beneath the iron, and that there would be slugs, snails and other small vermin under it if it had lain there for any length of time, sir,” he said to Luke, adding mendaciously, “I was wondering along of that myself.”

  Old Harry stretched up a hand which looked like part of a pollarded willow to South.

  “Give I a holt of that, mate,” he commanded, and took the ploughshare, holding it carefully with a handkerchief. “I seen they do this here on the tellyvision,” he remarked with awful cunning. “But that little old tellyvision ain’t never seen what I be a-goin’ to do.” And very solemnly he smelled the iron all over like a dog.