Police at the Funeral Read online

  ‘All the jolly fun, in fact,’ murmured Mr Campion.

  She laughed. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

  He consulted the letter again. ‘Hold on, where does Uncle Andrew come in? I see his name is Seeley.’

  ‘I was coming to him. You see, he’s hardly a proper uncle at all. He’s a son of Mrs Faraday’s younger brother. He lost his money in the same swindle as Uncle William, and he came to live at home at about the same time. That must be about twenty years ago.’

  ‘Twenty years?’ Mr Campion looked startled. ‘Haven’t they done anything at all since then? I say, I beg your pardon, you took me off my balance.’

  Joyce hesitated. ‘They were never much good at working,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so, anyway. I think great-uncle realized it: that’s why he left most of his money to his wife, although she had a large fortune of her own. There’s just one thing I ought to explain before I come to the important part. When I say great-aunt manages the show, I mean it literally. The mode of living of the house hasn’t altered since she first set it down about eighteen-seventy. The house is run like clockwork. Everything is just on time. Everyone has to go to church on Sunday mornings. Most of us go by car – it’s a nineteen hundred and thirteen Daimler – but we take it in turns to go with great-aunt, who drives in a victoria in the summer and a brougham in the winter. Old Christmas, the coachman, is nearly as old as she is. But of course everyone knows them and the traffic is held up, so they’re all right.’

  Enlightenment spread over Mr Campion’s ignoble face. ‘Oho! I’ve seen them,’ he said, ‘I was up at Cambridge with Marcus, you know. I saw the turn-out then. Heavens, that’s years ago!’

  ‘If it was a grey horse,’ said Joyce, ‘it’s the same one. Pecker. Pecker, the unsurpassable. Well, wait a minute. Where have I got to? Oh, yes. Well, we all live in Great-uncle Faraday’s house in Trumpington Road, a little way out of the town. It’s that big L-shaped house that stands back on the corner of Orpheus Lane. There’s a high wall all round it. Great-aunt is thinking of having it heightened, because when people come past it nowadays on buses they can see over.’

  ‘Socrates Close,’ said Mr Campion.

  She nodded. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘One of the sights,’ said Mr Campion simply. ‘Or it was in my young days. Yes, that’s all fairly clear in my mind. Now we come to Uncle Andrew.’

  The girl took a deep breath. ‘It really happened last Saturday week, at dinner,’ she said. ‘This is rather awkward to say, but I think you’ll understand. Great-aunt treats the others as dependent children, and naturally, as they’re all rather old and very human, they’re inclined to quarrel in a sulky, old sort of way. That is, all except dear old Aunt Kitty. She’s just sweet and silly and rather helpless. But Aunt Julia bosses her terribly. She also tries to boss the two men and they seem to hate her, and they don’t like each other at all either, and sometimes they sulk horribly for days on end. There’d been one of these quarrels about nothing in the air for about a week, and I think there would have been an absolute row if it hadn’t been for greataunt, who doesn’t allow rows any more than she allows early morning tea, or the gramophone on Sundays.

  ‘Well, when we were having dinner – eight courses and all stiff and solemn, you know – suddenly, just when the atmosphere had become unbearable, and I thought Uncle William was going to forget himself and bang Uncle Andrew over the head with a tablespoon – great-aunt or no great-aunt – and Aunt Julia was on the verge of hysterics, and Aunt Kitty was crying unobtrusively all over her salad, there was the most colossal crash, apparently right in the middle of the room, you ever heard in all your life. Aunt Kitty screamed, like a very small train, and jumped up. Uncle William forgot himself and said “hell” or “damn” or something – I’ve forgotten now. Aunt Julia was just about to settle down into her hysterics, and Uncle Andrew dropped his fork, when great-aunt sat up very stiff in her high-backed chair and rapped on the table with her fingers. She’s got hard bony hands, as though she were wearing tiny ivory thimbles. She said “Sit down, Kitty,” very quietly. Then she turned to Uncle William and said, “Really! You’ve lived in my house long enough to know that I will not have obscene words uttered at my table. Anyhow, all of you ought to know that that clock weight falls down once every fifteen years.” Uncle William said, “Yes, Mother,” and no one spoke at all for the rest of the meal.’

  ‘After dinner you opened the door of the grandfather clock,’ said Mr Campion, ‘and you found the clock weight had fallen down. That’s how all we great sleuths sleuth – quickly.’

  She nodded. ‘There was quite a dent in the wood at the bottom of the clock. I asked Alice – she’s the housemaid, she’s been there thirty-five years – and she said great-aunt was quite right, it was fifteen years since it fell, and she was the last person who saw the weight before it disappeared. I know this doesn’t sound very important,’ she hurried on, ‘but I must tell things in their right order or I shall get us both muddled.’

  She was interrupted at this moment by the arrival of Lugg, now resplendent in a grey woollen cardigan. He wheeled a tea-wagon on which was a miscellaneous collection of his own favourite delicacies.

  ‘There you are,’ he said with pardonable pride. ‘Potted shrimp, gentleman’s relish, eggs, and a nice bit of ’am. I made tea. I like cocoa meself, but I made tea. ’Ope you enjoy it.’

  Campion waved him out of the room and he departed, muttering audibly about ingratitude.

  ‘I see from your description of Socrates Close that Lugg must be kept out of this,’ observed Mr Campion.

  Joyce regarded him gravely. ‘It would be as well,’ she admitted. Over the meal she continued her story. Her face was animated, but her anxiety freed her from any suspicion of sensation-mongering.

  ‘Uncle Andrew disappeared on Sunday,’ she said. ‘If you knew our household you’d realize that that was extraordinary in itself. Sunday is the day when Great-aunt Caroline has us under her eye practically the whole time, and if anyone wanted to slip away unnoticed, Sunday would be hardly the time to choose. It was my turn to drive in the four-wheeler. Great-aunt doesn’t change to the victoria until the end of May. Of course we have to start twenty minutes before the others, and they usually go for a drive round afterwards, so that we get home before them. On that Sunday Aunt Julia and Aunt Kitty were home already when we arrived back,’ she went on. ‘Great-aunt Caroline was rather annoyed at that, because she thinks the drive does them good. She asked after the others, and Aunt Julia said that Uncle William and Uncle Andrew were walking home. That was rather curious in itself, because the two old dears had been at daggers drawn for over a week. Great-aunt was very interested. She said she hoped the exercise would do them good, and that they would learn to live together like gentlemen and not a pair of militia officers. She was rather annoyed at lunch time when they hadn’t arrived back, although Aunt Kitty and I had made it as late as we could.

  ‘We were half-way through the meal before Uncle William came in. He was very angry and hot from hurrying, and he seemed very surprised that Uncle Andrew hadn’t got back before him. As far as we could make out from his story Uncle Andrew had insisted on walking home from church when William didn’t want to, had tried to take a ridiculous roundabout road – I think Uncle William said through Sheep’s Meadows. Finally they quarrelled about the route.’

  She paused and glanced at the young man apologetically.

  ‘You know what stupid things people do quarrel about if they don’t like one another.’

  He nodded comprehendingly, and she went on.

  ‘Uncle William was naturally rather reticent about what was said, because a quarrel of that sort always does sound so stupid when you retail it afterwards. But apparently it was all Uncle Andrew’s fault – or so Uncle William said. Uncle Andrew wanted to come home via Grantchester, which is of course an incredibly long way round. Uncle William was cold and rather hungry, and so after walking along for a bit quarrelling violently, Uncle
William said – or says he said’ – she corrected herself hastily – ‘– “you go your own damned way, Andrew, and hang it! I’ll go mine.” So they parted, and Uncle William came back and Uncle Andrew didn’t. And he hasn’t come back yet. He’s simply vanished – there’s no sign of him. He can’t have gone off because he hasn’t any money. I know that, because he borrowed half-a-crown for the collection plate from Aunt Kitty, and great-aunt never lets him have much money anyway, because as soon as he gets it it goes to the bookmakers.’

  ‘You can’t go by that,’ said Mr Campion helpfully. ‘He may have won something. People do sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, but he hadn’t – not then!’ The girl spoke vehemently. ‘You see, that isn’t quite all the story. Great-aunt thinks that backing horses is not only wicked, but rather vulgar, which is slightly more important. So to save most furious rows all round we used to do all we could to keep Uncle Andrew’s little investments as quiet as possible; otherwise there was a dreadful scene. He used to lose his temper with great-aunt and sit snapping out mingy little digs at her until she got really riled and ordered him to his room as if he’d been a schoolboy. Then he had to go. It’s all rather shocking to you, I suppose,’ she added apologetically.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mr Campion politely. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘Well, I usually go round the bedrooms every evening to see that Alice has turned down the beds properly. Of course she always has, but great-aunt likes me to go. When I went into Uncle Andrew’s room on Sunday night there were two or three letters on his table, ready stamped, waiting to be posted, and one half-written one that he had been at work on, I suppose, when the bell for church rang. So you see he couldn’t have meant to go off. You don’t go away and leave half your letters unposted and another unfinished. Anyway, I posted the letters that were sealed, and shut the blotting-pad over the other one. One of them was to his bookmaker. I didn’t notice the others. When he didn’t come back on Monday morning great-aunt was very stern and tight about the mouth. “Bad blood, Joyce,” she said to me. “No sense of personal discipline. Tell your Uncle Andrew to come to the drawing-room to see me the moment he arrives.” Aunt Julia and Aunt Kitty preserved a sedate silence most of the time. I believe Aunt Kitty did say something about “Poor wayward Andrew”, but Aunt Julia was down on her like a ton of bricks. Uncle William was consciously virtuous. I think he rather enjoys Uncle Andrew being away. He can be as pompous as he likes without getting a dig from Uncle Andrew to make him crumple up and look foolish. By the end of the week, of course, we were all rather alarmed, and on Sunday, Aunt Julia said something about going to the police and having an SOS or something broadcast if that could be arranged. But great-aunt was horrified and Uncle William backed her up. She said that Uncle Andrew couldn’t possibly have lost his memory, because no one even faintly connected with the Faradays ever had done such a thing. Aunt said she never had had the police in her house and never would, but that if Aunt Julia was really alarmed she could write round to all the other relatives and tactfully inquire if they’d seen Andrew. Aunt Kitty caused a mild sensation by saying she had already done that, on the Tuesday after Uncle Andrew had disappeared, and that no one appeared to have heard of him. So the matter was dropped for the time being.

  ‘Then on Monday . . .’ – the girl was speaking faster now and her cheeks were very bright – ‘. . . two queer things happened. First of all there was a telegram for Uncle Andrew. Alice brought it straight to me because that was an arrangement Uncle Andrew had with us so that great-aunt shouldn’t know about the bookmaker. Any telegram that came when he was out used to be taken straight to me. I opened it, and it said: “Turkey Carpet won 75–1. Congratulations. Cheque following. Syd.”

  ‘As it was from the bookmaker it didn’t seem to help much, so I put it in the drawer of the writing-table in his room. The next morning I had to look out for the letter.’

  She paused and looked at Mr Campion with unflinching youthful eyes. ‘It wasn’t just curiosity,’ she said, ‘and I didn’t steam it or anything – I just opened it. You see, I thought that if the cheque was for a small amount uncle might be careless about it and not trouble to come back to collect it if it meant a row with great-aunt. But if it was a large amount I thought he would have been watching the papers, would realize how much he’d won and would risk any row that might be coming to him. The cheque gave me a shock. It was for nearly seven hundred and fifty pounds. I put it in the drawer with the telegram and I felt much happier, because I knew – I felt certain – that Uncle would come back during the day. But in the afternoon an idiotic thing happened that terrified me somehow, I don’t know why. A man came to see to the grandfather clock. There’d been some delay over it. And the weight had gone.’

  She looked at the young man dubiously. ‘I suppose that sounds awfully trivial?’

  Mr Campion, leaning back in his chair, regarded her solemnly through his spectacles.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I quite agree with you. That’s rather a beastly thing to happen. You searched for it, of course? Asked everybody?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. We hunted everywhere. But there’s no trace of it, and, you know, they’re difficult things to lose.’

  Campion nodded. ‘This is very interesting,’ he said. ‘When did you decide to call in outside help of some sort?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ she said. ‘I waited all Monday night, and all Tuesday, and all yesterday morning, and I got more and more frightened. I went to great-aunt, but she was still adamant about the police. In the end I persuaded her to let me put the whole thing in Marcus’s hands. He was horribly superior about it, of course, but in the end he put me on to you and here I am.’

  ‘Ah, Marcus,’ said Mr Campion. ‘How does he come into it exactly? He’s rather immature to be the family lawyer, isn’t he?’

  The girl smiled. ‘I suppose he is,’ she agreed, ‘but you mustn’t tell him that. As a matter of fact it’s his father, old Hugh Featherstone, who is great-aunt’s real solicitor, but he’s very old and so naturally Marcus does most of the work.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Why exactly do you want to find Uncle Andrew?’

  The suddenness of his question startled her a little, and she answered after a moment or two of hesitation.

  ‘I don’t, frankly,’ she said at last. ‘That is, not personally, if you see what I mean. Uncle Andrew isn’t a lovable character. But then nor are any of them really, except perhaps poor Aunt Kitty, or great-aunt herself in a terrifying way. The house is quieter without Andrew. But I want to find him because I’m frightened. I want to know that he’s all right, that something terrible hasn’t happened.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Campion slowly. ‘I suppose you’ve taken some steps – you made inquiries yourself? You’ve looked for him? I mean he hasn’t sprained his ankle in a ditch or he isn’t staying at the “Boar”?’

  She looked at him reproachfully. ‘Oh, of course, I’ve done that,’ she said. ‘But I tell you there’s absolutely no trace of him. I haven’t gone round making a fuss, you know, because naturally – well, gossip gets round fast enough in a place like Cambridge without one helping it. I’m afraid you’ll think it rather a cheek of me coming to you with so little to tell you. But – oh – I don’t know – I’m afraid—’

  Mr Campion nodded. ‘You’re afraid that something more serious than an ordinary accident has happened to him,’ he said, and added with disarming frankness, ‘and besides, you’ve something else on your mind, haven’t you? Now the Inspector isn’t here, won’t you tell me – who was the man in the yard who gave you such a shock?’

  The girl started and turned to him, the colour very bright in her cheeks.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I was lying to you before. I did recognize him. But he’s nothing to do with this. Please forget all about him.’

  Mr Campion did not answer for some moments, but remained staring in front of him, a completely vacant expression on his face. Then he glanced up at her.

/>   ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘But I think we ought to start square. I loathe going into things with my eyes shut.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘He had nothing to do with it,’ she said. ‘Please forget him. Are you going to help me or not?’

  Mr Campion rose to his feet. She feared that he was debating how to make a polite refusal without sounding sulky, when Lugg appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Telegram,’ he said. ‘The kid’s waiting. Any answer?’

  Campion tore open the orange envelope and spread out the flimsy sheet of paper within.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘this is from Marcus. A real Cambridge telegram. Must have cost a fortune. Listen. “Can you come back with Joyce at once? Rather terrifying developments here. Would appreciate your professional assistance in the matter. I am having your room prepared for you in anticipation. See evening papers. The ‘Comet’, if I know them. Marcus.”’

  Joyce sprang to her feet and looked over his shoulder.

  ‘Terrifying developments,’ she said huskily. ‘Oh, what’s happened? What’s happened?’

  Campion turned to Lugg, who was watching the scene from the doorway with a certain professional interest.

  ‘No reply,’ he said. ‘By the way, you might drop out and get a Comet.’

  ‘The late special is in the kitchen,’ said Mr Lugg majestically. ‘And I think I know what you’re lookin’ for. ‘Arf a tick.’

  Two minutes later he returned. ‘’Ere you are,’ he observed, pointing to a paragraph at the top of a front page column. Joyce and Campion read the headlines together.

  FAMOUS SCHOLAR’S NEPHEW FOUND

  SHOT DEAD IN RIVER

  MISSING FOR TEN DAYS