The Beckoning Lady Read online

  “You like to be known as Mr. Albert Campion,” she said, and although her tone was arch she spoiled any ingratiating effect by keeping her eyes on a really dirty little rosebud which did not care to be detached from its wiry bed. “And you’ve been on holiday at the Mill House with your wife and little son for nearly a fortnight while Miss Huntingforest who lives at the mill is in America. Miss Huntingforest is a New Englander.”

  Mr. Campion made an affirmative noise, or the beginning of one, but she forestalled him.

  “I do like to get everything tidy,” she explained, starting on a solid cross of red carnations. “I know you both knew the village long ago when your wife lived here with Miss Huntingforest, and you were mixed up in all that romantic business when her brother regained the title. But Lady Amanda refers to Harriet Huntingforest as her aunt, and yet Lady Amanda is not an American.”

  “Er—no,” said Mr. Campion.

  “But you both called Mr. Faraday Uncle William,” Miss Pinkerton continued, fixing him suddenly with very clear and intelligent hazel eyes and tapping on the grave with her scissors as if William Faraday was actually visible. “He has been living here at The Beckoning Lady with the Cassands for the past twelve years and Minnie Cassands is half an American.”

  The tall thin man with the very smooth yellow-white hair and the blank expression met her gaze with deceptive mildness.

  “Quite,” he agreed.

  She was misled into sharpness. “Quite?”

  “Quite half. Minnie Cassands’ father was Daniel St. George Straw, who was the second most famous American painter of the Victorian-Edwardian golden age. His great-great-grandmother, so he always said, was Princess Pocahontas, and she was as American as the Eagle.”

  “Was she indeed?” Either she was not interested or she did not believe him. Her mind was still on the family. “Yet Mr. Faraday was no relation?”

  “No.”

  “Nor of yours either.”

  “No.”

  “I see.” It was evident that she gave up for the time being and she continued her work on the flowers. “Eighty-two and he drank, didn’t he?” she remarked just as Campion was turning away. “What a very happy release for everybody.”

  Before this monstrous epitaph Mr. Campion paused aghast. He was no graveyard man by nature and the pompes funèbres had little charm for him, but Uncle William had been Uncle William and he was quite prepared to see him sitting up suddenly among the petals, looking like the mannequin from the cover of Esquire and ‘dotting’, as he would have described it, this ministering female with the half-bottle which was doubtless in his shroud.

  Mr. Campion turned back. “Forgive me,” he said with the gentleness of studied attack, “but who are you?”

  She was not put out, merely amazed. “Oh dear!” she exclaimed, conveying he was a silly man, wasn’t he, “how odd you must have thought me. I’m Pinky.” And then, since he still looked vague, “Mr. Genappe, you know. I’m his secretary, or one of them. I’ve been with him for nineteen years.” The slight bridling movement, the bursting pride and the drop in the voice put him in the picture and explained the ‘wholly more important than thou’ approach. Here was the loyalty of the devotee, the reverence of the acolyte. He realised that the mystique must be money and not the man. She could hardly feel that way about poor old Fanny Genappe, who had not that sort of personality. Goodness knows where he was, poor beast. Sitting on his little rock in the Hebrides watching a bird, very probably, both of them bored as sin.

  Francis Genappe was the most unfortunate of the three last multi-millionaires in Europe, for he had inherited not only his family’s money but also their reputation for philanthropy, two attributes which, taken in conjunction, approximated as far as Mr. Campion could see to the dubious honour of being the original butter in the mouth of the dog. As Campion recollected him, he was civilised, over-sensitive and something of a wit, the last person on earth to have to encounter his fellow-men almost solely through the medium of the heartrending hard-luck story. Doubtless the lady with the scissors was part of his armoured plate. She seemed to have the right surface. He said aloud:

  “I heard he’d bought the farm on the hill. Potter’s Hall, isn’t it?”

  “Not now,” she assured him with a brief kind smile. “Mr. Genappe has so much of the surrounding land that it’s now called the Pontisbright Park Estate, to distinguish it from the Earl’s little holding. He’s your brother-in-law, by the way.”

  Mr. Campion knew he was, but forebore to comment. She was still speaking and still snipping.

  “Lord Pontisbright only owns the Mill and the woodlands, and he lives in South Africa most of the time.” She made it sound a complete explanation. “Potter’s Hall has been utterly transformed now that so much work has been done on it. If you’d care to see it while you’re down here I’m sure Mr. Genappe wouldn’t mind.”

  “Has he seen it?”

  “Not since the alterations. Mr. Genappe is out of England, naturally,”

  Mr. Campion hesitated. This was all very well in its chatty way, but what exactly the good lady thought she was doing fiddling about with Uncle William’s obsequies remained obscure. He indicated the expanse of granite and marble, the ancient crosses and the modern bird-baths.

  “Have you taken over this too?”

  She considered him for a full second and decided it was a joke.

  “Not yet,” she laughed, entering into the jolly spirit of the thing. “We merely pay for it, I expect, through the rates. No, I’m just doing this to help Mrs. Cassands. I always do what I can for her. I’m sure Mr. Genappe would approve of it. She’s always very busy with her house and her painting, so I’m saving her the walk. I’m like that, everyone’s dogsbody.” She shook her neat head. “I can’t think why Mrs. Cassands works so hard at her pictures, but with that extraordinary husband never there I suppose—”

  “She’s an A.R.A.” protested Mr. Campion mildly, giving the institution its due.

  “Oh I know. And Mr. Genappe not only likes her work but has been assured by experts that it’s quite sound and may even appreciate. We’ve bought several canvases as a matter of fact, from Fang’s in Bond Street, but I do think it’s very hard work for her. She never scamps anything. Frankly I wonder that Mr. Cassands doesn’t live more at home instead of flitting in and out wasting his time on idiotic things. That so-called musical instrument of his—well really!”

  The thin man chuckled reminiscently, as did most people now that the brief scarifying popularity of the inspired noise-maker which Tonker Cassands had achieved had faded decently into the shadow of jokes-over. The name was so beautiful. ‘Turn tee tee, turn tee turn—ON my Glü-bal-ü-bal-um!’

  “Don’t!” Miss Pinkerton dropped her scissors and clapped her hands over her ears. “Please don’t. You know what happens. One goes on humming it all day and it’s so silly. Really, that winter when everyone was doing it drove me nearly mad. Horrid vulgar thing! It looked so dreadful.”

  “I don’t know.” Campion wondered idly if there was anything else she could mention which would inspire him immediately to defend it. “One has to put an arm through many of the wind instruments. In this, one merely had to add a leg, that was all.”

  “It wasn’t only that.” She was fluttering with irritation. “There was all that transparent plastic showing the different sized bladders inside. Frightful! And the noise! How he got paid for such a stupid thing I do not know.”

  “Yet it raked in quite a packet, and it’s having quite a vogue in Bongoland now I believe.” It seemed as good an exit line as any and Campion was wandering away when she recalled him once more.

  “They tell me your visitor has returned.”

  Since he merely stared she made it easier for him.

  “The Chief Inspector, tall, quite good-looking. He’s been at the Mill for some little time, recovering from the wounds he got in the Caroline Street raid. He left just before the funeral.”

  “So he did.”


  “But now he’s come back?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause while she regarded him severely. “I hope you don’t think I’m inquisitive.”

  “Good heavens no, that’s the last thing I should think about you,” said Mr. Campion, and he hurried off out of the churchyard and down the road to the heath.

  Chapter 2

  LOVE AND MONEY

  I

  WHILST TAKING ON the whole a poorish view of Miss Pinkerton and her efficiency, Mr. Campion was forced to admit that she had placed her finger on quite a problem. As he stepped off the harebells and white violets which covered the pocket-sized heath and made for the Mill he was considering it himself.

  Divisional Detective Chief Inspector Charles Luke, with whom he had collaborated in several adventures, was at a turning-point in a career which had promised to be remarkable. He had attained his present rank at an astonishingly early age, and now, after the great shuffle in the C.I.D., seemed almost certain to achieve one of the great prizes and become head of the Flying Squad. The Caroline Street raid in February, which had been as messy a business as Campion could remember, had threatened at first to be a major disaster for Luke but had turned out gloriously. Surgery had saved his left arm, the four flesh wounds had healed more quickly than anybody had expected, and he had emerged from hospital with generous sick leave and a recommendation for the coveted Police Medal, a decoration which is never given by accident. Less than a month ago everything had seemed set-fair for his future.

  Mr. Campion shook his head as he turned in to the path which led to the wooden water-mill and the house beside it. He thought he had never been more dismayed in all his life than on the night before, when he had seen Luke return. Yet the situation had arisen innocently. Charlie Luke’s release from Guy’s Hospital had coincided with Aunt Hatt’s departure for Connecticut, and since Amanda and the family could not get down to Pontisbright immediately it had seemed only reasonable for Luke and Mr. Lugg, Campion’s friend and knave, to come on ahead for a week or so. Luke was to convalesce and Lugg to nurse himself over the first revolting paroxysms of the sentimental nostalgia to be expected on his rediscovery of his favourite place. Campion had thought it impossible that anything irremediable could happen to the two of them in the interval, but the moment he had stepped out of his own car and was experiencing once again the first shock of surprised delight which the sight of the old house always gave him, he had been aware of trouble. Luke had lost his unnatural fragility and was obviously mending fast, but there was something not at all right with him.

  In the normal way the D.D.C.I. was a considerable personality. He looked like a gangster and was a tough. He was six-foot-two and appeared shorter because of the width of his chest and shoulders, and his dark face with the narrow eyes under brows which were like circumflex accents was alive and exciting. He possessed the Londoner’s good temper, which is also ferocious, and a quality of suppressed force was apparent in everything he did. Mr. Campion liked him enormously.

  On that first evening of their joint holiday ten days ago Luke had done his best to appear much as usual when he had welcomed his host on the banks of the mill-race, but Campion was not deceived. He knew panic when he saw it. For some hours afterwards there had seemed to be no conceivable explanation. The village of Pontisbright, straggling round the little green, had appeared as blandly vegetable as ever and a good deal more innocent than Mr. Campion had known it in his time. But on the following morning the mystery had solved itself bluntly. At eleven o’clock the Hon. Victoria Prunella Editha Scroop-Dory had wandered down from the new rectory, where she lived with her mother, widow of the final Baron Glebe, and her mother’s cousin, the Reverend Sam Jones-Jones, who was called ‘The Rewer’ by everybody, and had sat down by the porch. A few minutes later, after a struggle which was very nearly visible, the wretched Luke had taken the chair opposite her. There had been no conversation.

  Campion had been so startled by this unforeseen misfortune that he had not even brought himself to mention the matter to Amanda, who affected to be ignorant of it, and so a whole uncomfortable week had passed with Luke in misery, Campion feeling for him but thoroughly alarmed, and the young woman strolling in each day.

  The sudden death of Uncle William over at The Beckoning Lady, which had saddened them all, had seemed to give Luke sudden resolution. On the day before the funeral he had announced his intention of intruding on their kindness no more, had fetched out his tidy little sports car, and without making any more bones about it bolted for his life. Campion had seen him go with heartfelt relief.

  But on the evening of the day after the funeral, while he was still congratulating himself on a serious danger past, without warning Luke returned. In the soft yellow light, while the sound of the mill-race and the songs of the birds were making the ancient conception of paradise appear both likely and sensible, the familiar car had swung on to the flags before the house and a grim yet hangdog figure had stepped out of it to face him. Luke had, he said woodenly, a few more days’ leave.

  So today, taking it all in all, it was quite understandable that as Mr. Campion strode homewards he was almost afraid to turn the corner. For a blessed moment he thought she was not there. He could see the back of Luke’s close-cropped head above a deck-chair in the covey of them set out on the ancient paving-stones. It was a civilised scene. There were morning papers on the ground and the gleam of hospitable pewter in the dark doorway, and behind, the low half-timbered façade windowed like a galleon and graceful as if it were at sea. Mr. Campion took a step forward and paused. Prune was present after all. She was sitting quietly in the shadows on one of the settles in the porch, and as the wind stirred the limes beside the house a shaft of sunlight flickered over her.

  To modern eyes she was, he thought, as odd a looking girl as one could wish to see. She was very tall, with narrow bones, a white skin, yellow-brown hair, and her family’s distinctive features. Throughout the centuries the Glebe face has had its ups and downs. The young Queen Victoria is said to have observed somewhat brutally that it was ‘particularly becoming in effigy’, but since that time it has not been in fashion. Mr. Campion found it sad.

  Prune’s beauty, he thought, had been bred to express an ideal which was literally medieval. Piety, docility, quiet, might have suited it well enough, but any attempt to invest it with the modern gamin touch was ruinous. The girl was not a brilliant brain but she had grasped that much and at twenty-six had given up trying, only to fall back on precepts which had come down to her with, as it were, the outfit. She kept the nails on her narrow hands short, avoided ornament, and dabbed herself half-heartedly with the kind of lipstick which does not really show.

  This morning Mr. Campion regarded her with helpless irritation. It seemed to him that anyone who had ever had time to think about her must have despaired. The wars had wiped out the Glebe line and the attendant revolutions the last of their fortune. Somewhere in the middle, all the great purposes for which they had bred themselves so carefully appeared to have gone too. Poor wretched girl, she had been born too late, and had arrived, meticulously turned out, for a party which had been over for some time. He understood from The Revver that as a somewhat desperate measure she had been given five years in the W.R.N.S. but had emerged from the experience just exactly the same as when she had enlisted. Looking at her, Mr. Campion was no more surprised than if he had heard that two seasons with the Pytchley foxhounds had left an Afghan practically unchanged. He did not like the present situation at all. Its futility exasperated and alarmed him. In his view, Luke was a fine and useful man, far too valuable to have his progress hindered and his emotional balance endangered by any hopelessly unhappy experience of this sort. He joined them and sat down a little more firmly than was his custom.

  Luke glanced at him but did not speak. He looked quiet and watchful and a good deal less than his age, and Mr. Campion reflected with wry satisfaction that at least he was retaining his capacity to do everything in the most t
horoughgoing way possible. Campion hated it. He had seen Luke with young women before, teasing them, patronising them, showing off like a whole pigeon-loft. This was an entirely new departure. This might do a man harm for life. He regarded Prune with cold anger.

  She met his gaze with a clear blue stare and returned to Luke. She was sitting on a little stool, her long arms round her knees, waiting. She had no coquetry, no subterfuge, no skill; she just thought he was wonderful. Mr. Campion was left to thank his stars that she could be relied on not to say so outright.

  He had no doubt at all that it would pass and that in a week or a month or a year that clear-eyed stare would be directed elsewhere, equally hopelessly. The fact had got to be faced. Prune as a present-day product was uneconomic. In present circumstances she was a menace. At last he cleared his throat.

  “Did you—er—bring any message . . . or anything?” he demanded.

  She blinked thoughtfully, considering him apparently for the first time.

  “Oh yes, I did, as a matter of fact.” Her languid voice, which was a caricature of all such voices and belonged to a much slower world, came softly through the summer air. “Minnie and Tonker are dropping in to see you on their way to Kepesake station this morning. Tonker is having a second-class white burgundy week and will bring some with him. He may be late so will you please have some glasses at the ready?”

  “Oh yes.” Mr. Campion brightened despite his apprehension. “Tonker is still here, is he? I thought he’d gone up. Where did you hear all this?”

  “Minnie phoned The Revver this morning.” Prune seemed disposed to answer questions if she could still look at Charlie Luke. “Just to thank him for getting the funeral safely over, you know.” The remark trailed into silence and Campion grunted.

  “No loose ends?” he suggested helpfully.