The Beckoning Lady Read online

  “Well, some parsons are frightfully inefficient. The Revver does get things reasonably tied up. He’s not mental, even if he is my uncle.” The Glebe mouth, which Vandyke captured so well and Gainsborough muffed so badly, drooped with faint self-disparagement. “He was tremendously relieved. He thought they were still quarrelling when she didn’t turn up at the service. The postman told him that it was because she’d got a black eye, but he didn’t believe that, naturally. But he is pleased she phoned because they haven’t spoken for weeks.”

  “Why?” Mr. Campion found himself determined to divert her attention, if he had to shout at her.

  Prune raised brows which were high enough already. “Oh, just one of their things. The Revver is terrified that she might go religious. It’s all those pictures her father painted, I think, lions and lambs and saints and rather nice interiors. But that’s only in his subconscious. He says she’s all alone down there except for the menagerie and that women often go a bit peculiar about that sort of thing at her age.”

  “Does he say this to her?” enquired Mr. Campion with interest.

  “Of course he does.” The drawl went on lazily but her eyes scarcely stirred from the dark brooding face opposite. “He’s always begging people not to be religious. The Bip had to warn him to use caution lest by sheer inadvertence he emptied the church. The Revver says you can be as pi as you like privately, but you mustn’t think too much about it or you may forget yourself and mention it. He was explaining this to Minnie one day in the winter, when she was rather miserable and he’d ploughed down there through the snow to take her the parish magazine, and she said that what he meant, she supposed, was that a Christian gentleman must never run the risk of degenerating into a vulgar Christian. He said that was exactly what he did mean. And she said he was a damned old British humbug.”

  “British?”

  “Yes, that’s what hurt him. He’s Welsh. But she was having one of her American days. Sometimes she’s one and sometimes the other; you never know. And so she went on to mention that in her opinion, speaking as at least half a good American, one had only got to consider the tenets laid down for the English gent to realise exactly what sort of raging brute the animal must be by nature to make such a fuss about conforming to them. Not trampling on old women, and not being cruel to children, and so on. That was the quarrel.”

  She paused and turned slowly to look at him at last.

  “It’s a good thing it’s over,” she droned on seriously, “because Minnie’s really getting more and more peculiar. The village says it’s not religion, it’s blackmail. They know most things but they get it a bit wrong usually.”

  Mr. Campion grinned at her. “You just hear it on the drums, I suppose?”

  “No.” Prune was undisturbed. “I listen. I can’t make friends with the village and I’m no good at bossing them, but I stick around and after a while they just forget I’m there and talk. Are you going to get the glasses for Tonker, or do you want me to do it?”

  Before he could reply there was a crisp rustle behind them and a utility brake, driven with distinction, came to a silent halt on the exact edge of the gravel. Instantly the landscape became full of excitement.

  A somewhat dishevelled Amanda, who looked so like herself at seventeen that Mr. Campion discovered that he was thinking absentmindedly what a silly young fool he was himself, slid out, waved to them briefly to stay where they were, and released a fine mixed bag from the body of the van. A small boy shot out first, followed by a fat, Victorian-looking collie, and finally, amid a shower of lemons, Mr. Magersfontein Lugg himself, garbed tastefully pour le sport.

  Both Amanda and her son wore well-washed boiler-suits whose original rust colour had faded to a pinkish tan. The Pontisbright hair, which can be mistaken for fire when seen under Suffolk skies, flamed on them both, Amanda’s a thought darker now but the boy’s a true ruby shouting in the sun. At that distance they looked absurdly alike, two skinny figures superintending the descent of the others. Apart from the fact that the dog dismounted head foremost and Mr. Lugg did not, the two performances were curiously alike, each operation involving much hesitation and man??uvre.

  The animal belonged to Aunt Hatt and was a black and white long-haired shepherd dog. He was marked like a Panda and now in middle age was of enormous size and almost indistinguishable from one. The crofter from Inverness-shire who had sold him as a puppy to the New England lady had told her distinctly that his name was “Choc”, and, disliking diminutives, she had had it engraved in full upon his collar—“Choc-ice”. He was frighteningly intelligent and assumed he was the party’s sole host. On the other hand, from the way he was dressed Mr. Lugg appeared to infer that he considered himself the sole guest. Taking each garment in order of its first appearance, he wore tennis shoes, a pair of black dress trousers which he was using up, a white linen coat as a badge of office, an open-neck shirt to show his independence, and a hard black hat to make it clear to the natives that he came from a civilised city.

  As soon as he reached the ground, he stretched himself gingerly, hitched his trousers, and began to shout at the boy Rupert. His rich voice, thick as the lubricant of his latter years, mingled with the chatter of the mill-race.

  “Leave them lemons and come ’ere. Bottle o’ beer’s gone over in the back. Save the fags or they’ll be as wet as a Brewer’s Calamity. Buck up. Waste not want not. Where d’you think you are? In the Army? We’ve got to do more than sign for this lot.”

  Amanda left them to it and came over to take the chair Campion pulled out for her beside his own. She was brown and dusty and her honey-coloured eyes were dancing. She spread out her oil-stained hands and her heart-shaped face was alive with laughter.

  “Twenty years doesn’t count, apparently,” she said, her high clear voice sounding suitably gratified. “I’m having the resident mechanic’s return. I took down Honesty Bull’s electric pump this morning. He’s still landlord of The Gauntlett and sent you his best respects. I also saw Scatty Williams who used to work for us. He said I could take his television to bits seeing as how I’d designed an aeroplane! Oh I am having a lovely time.”

  “So am I,” said Mr. Campion. “Been to see a grave. There was a ghoul there.” He felt a brute as her smile faded and he patted her apologetically. “Tonker’s coming,” he said to cheer her.

  “Oh but he’s not.” It was her turn to be sorry for him. “We met them in the village. They’re late for the train. They can’t make it this morning but Minnie wants us to go over after lunch, if you don’t mind awfully working very hard. They’re getting ready for the party on Saturday. Hallo Prune.”

  “Hallo.” Prune’s eyes were like a Siamese cat’s in colour and she turned them reluctantly from the unnervingly silent figure of the Chief Inspector and settled herself to behave.

  “It’s still on, is it, the party?” she enquired dreamily. “The Revver thought that Minnie was sounding him about it, to see if it was decent to have it so soon after the funeral, I mean, but he couldn’t be sure. She’s not too happy about it, is she?”

  Amanda appeared to consider the question with great seriousness.

  “I don’t know,” she said at last. “She’s a little bit odd, and she’s hurt her eye or something. But Tonker has no doubts at all. He says it’s been laid on for six months and that his old friend Uncle William would burst like a subterranean magnum at the thought of being the cause, however innocent, of delaying the just consumption of alcohol. He also says that he’s no idea who he’s asked anyway, and so there’s no question of putting anyone off. He’s going to have the party.” She glanced at Campion. “It’s a Perception and Company Limited do. Tonker and Wally have laid it on and the Augusts are coming.”

  Prune stirred. “Last time the Augusts came to one of Tonker’s parties it was clowns v. kids all over the estate, and there was an awful row because somebody’s child got kidnapped and turned up inside the big drum at the grand finale of ‘Socks and Shoes’ at the Hippodrome.”
r />   Amanda nodded gravely. “I heard about that. I heard a lot of peculiar things in the village. Is Minnie all right, Prune?”

  “I think so.” The observation did not sound convincing. “I haven’t seen her for ages, and anyway I expect she’s rather upset about Uncle William. She was very fond of him and he did die very suddenly, and it was only last Friday midnight.”

  “How were they today?” Mr. Campion sounded wistful and a grin split Amanda’s triangular mouth.

  “To be honest, they looked like a seaside picture-postcard,” she said, laughing. “They were wedged in the tub cart together, with the donkey in front looking very knock-kneed. Minnie had her John hat on her grey bob and Tonker was all dressed up for London, and they were roaring with laughter over a game they’d invented. Some woman had written to this morning’s paper to say that her cat was so clever that she always had to spell things in front of it. Tonker was chanting ‘the m-o-k-e s-t-i-n— . .’ and Minnie was trying to shut him up because they were passing the Miss Farrows, and giggling so that the tears were streaming down her nose, you know how they do.”

  Mr. Campion sighed. “They sound all right. Why does Minnie maintain that ass? Exercise?”

  Prune gazed into the middle distance. “She says a car is out of the question.” She paused and added inconsequentially, “There are fourteen gold frames still in packing-cases in the granary behind the barn.”

  In the silence which greeted this news, vaguely ominous in a countryside which can boast the highest percentage of rare lunatics in the world, Rupert, who had come up unobserved on springing feet, laid a bunch of wilted greenery on his father’s knees.

  “For you,” he said politely.

  “Kind,” conceded Mr. Campion, “and thoughtful. A curious collection. Who sent it?”

  The boy was at the ballet age. He raised his thin arms and danced a little, whilst thinking no doubt of duller means of expression.

  “A man,” he said at last and waved vaguely towards the heath.

  “Rupert went off on his own whilst Lugg was in the Post Office talking to Scatty, and when he turned up again he had these with him. He says someone gave them to him to give to you,” Amanda explained as she leant forward to take one spray from the bunch. “We thought it could be a message, but this is the only one I know—cypress. That means—” she hesitated, “—oh, something silly and unlikely. Death, I think.”

  “Mourning,” a voice at her elbow corrected her, and Charlie Luke sat up suddenly, surprising everybody. For a moment he looked magnificent, poetic even, like the hero in the painting casting aside the restraining garlands of the nymphs. And then the cheerful roar of his personality emerged, starting up like the sudden sound of traffic in a radio programme. “Just a moment, chum, this is right in my manor.”

  His long hand closed over the bunch of leaves and his bright black eyes glanced round the group as he included Prune gently into the party.

  “When I was a kid in south-east London I had a botany mistress,” he announced, sketching her in in silhouette with his free hand. “She was the first woman I ever noticed wasn’t straight all the way up. We all had a crush on her and I used to carry her books.” He favoured them with a smug adenoidal smile, crossed his eyes slightly and sucked in his breath. “We used to bring her flowers, pinch them out of the park when the keepers weren’t looking. She never knew, poor girl. She was most respectable, and a little bit soft, I think, looking back. Well, she had a book about the language of flowers, and I, being smart as paint, got the name of it and borrowed another copy from the public library.” His teeth shone for a second in his dark face. “That ended in tears,” he said. “Well now, what have we here? Rhododendrons. I don’t know what that is. Monk’s-hood. God knows what that means either. Wait a minute. Escoltzia. That’s more like it. That means ‘do not refuse me’. I always had a bit of that in. And pink. Pink.” He looked up. “A pink means ‘make haste’. Mourning? Do not refuse me? Make haste? Sounds like the same old story, guv’nor. Someone is broke again and unusually restrained about it. That’s my translation.”

  Amanda rose and went into the house and a minute later leant out of the casement beneath which they sat. She had a white book lettered in gold and very tattered, in her outstretched hand.

  “I knew we had one long ago,” she said. “Aunt Hatt is amazing. Everything is just where it always was. Look it up, Albert.”

  Mr. Campion took the volume obediently and pushed up his spectacles.

  “The Language and Sentiment of Flowers,” he read. “Published by Messrs. Ballantyne and Hanson, London and Edinburgh 1863, price sixpence. Rhododendron: danger, beware.” He looked up. “Eh? Where’s the other one?” He took the final wilted stalk on which a few purple buds were just observable. “That’s Monk’s-hood, is it, Charles?”

  “Was when I went to school. What does it say? ‘The bums are in?’”

  Mr. Campion turned the pages among which the pressed flowers of earlier heart-throbs lay brown and sad.

  “Monk’s-hood,” he said at last. “Well well. ‘A deadly foe is here’.”

  Behind him Amanda laughed. “Again?” she said.

  Charlie Luke was frowning. He seemed mildly affronted.

  “Mourning—danger—do not refuse me,” he repeated. “That’s a smashing welcome home. Who gave it to you, son?”

  Rupert, who had been standing before them throughout the incident, had lost interest in the proceedings. He was making a line on the stones with the rubber heel of his sandal. He liked the Chief Inspector, but the particular way his brows went up to points in the middle reminded him of one certain clown in the circus at Christmas who had seemed to him to have a face so exquisitely humorous that he could not think of it without laughing until his midriff hurt. As he had put the question Luke’s brows had shot up, and the mischief was done. Rupert could think of nothing else. He laughed and laughed until he slid under the chair on which Luke sat and was extricated and shaken and sat up still laughing, crimson in the face and hysterical.

  “A man,” was all he could gasp, “just an ordinary man.”

  Meanwhile Luke’s face had grown dark and he became very quiet. So far he had diagnosed a family joke but was not at all sure at whose expense it had been made. Mr. Campion remained thoughtful. Presently he took out a pencil and made a note of the flowers and their meaning on the back of an envelope. As he glanced up he caught sight of the D.D.C.I.’s expression and became instantly apologetic.

  “My dear chap,” he said, “you must think we’re round the bend.”

  Luke turned his head. Amanda had withdrawn and Prune, exhibiting unexpected resource in the matter, had dealt firmly with young Rupert, swinging him up under her arm and carrying him into the house. The two men were alone in the garden.

  “You and who else?” Luke enquired suspiciously.

  “Me and my chum.” Mr. Campion appeared embarrassed. “My correspondent. The lad with the affected handwriting.”

  Luke thrust his hands in his pockets, jangling the coins there. He was standing with his feet wide apart, rising slightly on his toes; the great weight of his shoulders was apparent and his chin was thrust forward aggressively.

  “There’s something terrifying about this place,” he said abruptly. “It’s so beautiful that you don’t notice for a bit that it’s sent you barmy. I feel drunk. All that greengrocery’s quite clear to you, is it? It’s just laid on with the sunshine and the nice voices and the barrel in the cellar, I suppose? Just one of the things you happen to have.”

  Mr. Campion looked more and more unhappy. He was looking at the stones at his feet and retracing with his own toe the line that Rupert had drawn. After a while he looked up.

  “Have you ever thought I was a bit redundant?” he enquired unexpectedly. “My job, I mean. Don’t get this wrong. I don’t mean anything sociological. I’m merely talking of work. Has it ever occurred to you that I don’t do anything that the police couldn’t handle rather better?”

  Luke
coloured. He was laughing, and his eyes and the gleam of his teeth were very bright.

  “No,” he protested, “no, of course not. You’re not a Private Eye and you’re not an amateur. I expect we look on you as an Expert, a chap we call in like a pathologist.”

  “Ye-es.” The pale eyes behind Mr. Campion’s spectacles were hard and surprisingly shrewd. “That’s all very nice of you, but it’s not the whole truth, you know. I have an extensive private practice.”

  “And that green stuff is part of it?”

  “It could be.” Campion was still hesitant. He put his arm through Luke’s and they strolled down the path together, with the Mill on one side and Aunt Hatt’s flower garden on the other. “All policemen aim to be discreet,” he continued at last, “but discretion isn’t a virtue, it’s a gift. I think you have it. Even so I’m not going to make any startling revelations. But because I don’t want you to think that we’re a) laughing at you or b) assing about in fairyland, I’ll explain how my mind is working. First of all I know no more than you do what that message means or where it comes from.”

  “But you think it is one?”

  “It strikes me as a bit much as a coincidence.”

  “Oh, so it does me. It’s a joke.”

  “Ah.” Mr. Campion paused to survey the multi-coloured garden dancing in the restless sunlight. “That’s the likeliest possibility except that the only man I can think of who would play it couldn’t possibly have done it.”

  “Oh. Who’s that?”

  “You.”

  “Me?” Luke was scandalised. “Don’t be silly. Besides I’ve been here all the morning.”

  “I know.” Campion’s grip on his arm tightened. “If it were you, there would have to be a confederate. I don’t think you have one. That leaves me with a straight message from one who knows me well enough to suppose that its inference would reach me.”

  Luke scratched his shorn curls hopelessly. “It’s cock-eyed,” he said, “out of this world. Who on earth. . . .?”

  Campion sighed. “Exactly.” He sounded satisfied. “That is just what I thought. The one person, who might conceivably have sent me a little dig in the ribs like that, is not quite on earth. The reverse, in fact.”