The Allingham Case-Book Page 4

  “Wasn’t she!” Mr. Campion laughed. “There were several devouring flames all round them just then, I should have thought. Listen, Charles. If the postman called he reached the house at seven-twenty-five. I think he did call and with an ordinary plain business envelope which was too commonplace for him to remember. It would be the plainest of plain envelopes. Well, who was due at seven-thirty?”

  “Bert Heskith. I told you.”

  “Exactly. So there were five minutes in which to escape. Five minutes for a determined, resourceful man like Peter McGill to act promptly. His wife was generous and easy going, remember, and so, thanks to that decision which you yourself noticed in his face, he rose to the occasion. He had only five minutes, Charles, to escape all those powerful personalities with their jolly, avid faces, whom we saw in the wedding group. They were all living remarkably close to him, ringing him round as it were, so that it was a ticklish business to elude them. He went the front way so that the kindly watchful eye would see him as usual and not be alarmed. There wasn’t time to take anything at all and it was only because Maureen flying through the back garden to escape the back way saw the sheets in the basket and couldn’t resist her treasures that they salvaged them. She wasn’t quite so ruthless as Peter. She had to take something from the old life however glistening were the prospects for—” He broke off abruptly. Chief Inspector Luke, with dawning comprehension in his eyes, was already half-way to the gate on the way to the nearest police telephone box.

  Mr. Campion was in his own sitting-room in Bottle Street, Piccadilly, later that evening when Luke called. He came in jauntily, his black eyes dancing with amusement.

  “It wasn’t the Irish Sweep but the Football Pools,” he said. “I got the details out of the promoters. They’ve been wondering what to do ever since the story broke. They’re in touch with the McGills, of course, but Peter had taken every precaution to ensure secrecy and is insisting on his rights. He must have known his wife’s tender heart and have made up his mind what he’d do if ever a really big win came off. The moment he got the letter telling him of his luck he put the plan into practice.” He paused and shook his head admiringly. “I hand it to him,” he said. “Seventy-five thousand pounds is like a nice fat chicken, plenty and more for two but only a taste for the whole of a very big family.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Us? The police? Oh, officially we’re baffled. We shall retire gracefully. It’s not our business.” He sat down and raised the glass his host handed to him.

  “Here’s to the mystery of the Villa Marie Celeste,” he said. “I had a blind spot for it. It foxed me completely. Good luck to them, though. You know, Campion, you had a point when you said that the really insoluble mystery is the one which no one can bring himself to spoil. What put you on to it?”

  “I suspect the charm of relatives who call at seven-thirty in the morning,” said Mr. Campion simply.

  The Psychologist

  Did you ever see a man set light to money? Real money: using it as a spill to light a cigarette, just to show off? I have. And that’s why, when you used the word ‘psychologist’ just now, a little fish leapt in my stomach and my throat felt suddenly tight. Perhaps you feel I’m too squeamish. I wonder.

  I was born in this street. When I was a girl I went to school just round the corner and later on, after I’d served my apprenticeships in the big dress houses here and in France, I took over the lease of this old house and turned it into the smart little gown shop you see now. It was when I came back to do that I saw the change in Louise.

  When we went to school together she was something of a beauty with streaming yellow hair and the cockney child’s ferocious knowing grin. All we kids used to tease her because she was better looking than we were. The street was just the same then as it is now. Adelaide Street, Soho. Shabby and untidy and yet romantic, with every other doorway in its straggling length leading to a restaurant of some sort. You can eat in every language of the world here. Some places are as expensive as the Ritz and others are as cheap as Louise’s papa’s Le Coq Au Vin with its one dining-room and its single palm in the white-washed tub outside.

  Louise had an infant sister and a father who could hardly speak English but who looked at one with proud foreign eyes from under arched brows. I was hardly aware that she had a mother until a day when that grey woman emerged from the cellar under the restaurant to put her foot down and Louise, instead of coming with me into the enchantment of the workshops, had to go down into the kitchens of the Coq.

  For a long time we used to exchange birthday cards since neither of us were writers exactly and then even that contact dropped, but I never forgot her and when I came back to the street I was glad to see the name ‘Frosne’ still under the sign of the Le Coq Au Vin. The place looked much brighter than I remembered it and appeared to be doing fair business. Certainly it no longer suffered so much by comparison with the expensive Glass Mountain which Adelbert kept opposite. There is no restaurant bearing that name in this street now, nor is there a restaurateur called Adelbert, but diners-out of a few years ago may remember him, if not for his food, at least for his conceit and the two rolls of white fat which were his eyelids.

  I went in to see Louise as soon as I had a moment to spare. It was a shock, for I hardly recognized her, but she knew me at once and came out from behind the cash desk to give me a welcome which was pathetic. It was like seeing thin ice cracking all over her face, as if by taking her unawares I’d torn aside a barrier.

  I heard all the news in the first ten minutes. Both the old people were dead. The mother had gone first, but the father had not died until some years later and, meantime, Louise had carried everything, including his vagaries, on her shoulders, or that was what I gathered. She did not complain. Things were a bit easier now. Violetta, the little sister, had a young man who was proving his worth by working there for a pittance, learning the business.

  It was a success story of a sort, but I thought that Louise had paid pretty dearly for it. She was a year younger than I was, but she looked as if life had already burned out of her, leaving her hard and polished like a bone in the sun. The gold had gone out of her hair and even the thick lashes looked bleached and tow coloured. There was something else there, too: something hunted which I did not understand at all.

  I soon fell into the habit of going in to have supper with her once a week and at these little meals she used to talk. It was evident that she never opened her lips on any personal matter to anyone else, but for some reason she trusted me. Even so, it took me months to find out what was the matter with her. When it came out, it was obvious.

  The Coq Au Vin had a debt hanging over it. In Mama Frosne’s time the family had never owed a penny, but in the few years between her death and his own, Papa Frosne had somehow contrived not only to borrow the best part of four thousand pounds from Adelbert of the Glass Mountain but to lose every halfpenny of it in half a dozen senile little schemes.

  Louise was paying it back in five-hundred-pound installments. As she first told me about it I happened to glance into her eyes and I saw there one sort of hell. It has always seemed to me that there are people who can stand debt in the same way that some men can stand drink. It may undermine their constitutions, but it does not make them openly shabby. Yet, to others, debt does something unspeakable. The Devil was certainly having his money’s worth out of Louise.

  I did not argue with her, of course. It was not my place. I sat there registering sympathy until she surprised me by saying, suddenly:

  “It’s not so much the work and the worry, nor even the skimping I really hate so much. It’s the awful set-out when I have to pay him. I dread that.”

  “You’re too sensitive,” I told her. “Once the money’s in the bank you can put the cheque in the envelope for once, can’t you?”

  She glanced at me with an odd expression in her eyes; they were almost lead coloured between the bleached lashes.

  “You don’t know Adelbert,” she sa
id. “He’s a queer bit of work. I have to pay him in cash and he likes to make a regular little performance of it. He comes here by appointment, has a drink and likes to have Violetta as a witness by way of audience. If I don’t show him I’m a bit upset he goes on talking until I do. Calls himself a psychologist; says he knows everything I’m thinking.”

  “That’s not what I’d call him,” I said. I was disgusted. I hate that sort of thing.

  Louise hesitated. “I have known him burn most of the money for effect,” she admitted. “There, in front of me.”

  I felt my eyebrows rising up into my hair. “Get away!” I exclaimed. “The man’s not right in the head.”

  She sighed, and I looked at her sharply.

  “Why, he’s twenty years older than you are, Louise,” I began. “surely there wasn’t ever anything between you? You know… like that?”

  “No. No, there wasn’t, Ellie, honestly.” I believed her: she was quite frank about it and as puzzled as I was. “He did speak to Papa once about me when I was a kid. Asked for me formally, you know, as they still did round here at that time. I never heard what the old man said, but he never minced words, did he? All I can remember is that I was kept downstairs out of sight for a bit, and after that Mama treated me as if I’d been up to something, but I hadn’t even spoken to the man—he wasn’t a person a young girl would notice, was he? That was years ago, though. I suppose Adelbert could have remembered it all that time, but it’s not reasonable, is it?”

  “That’s the one thing it certainly isn’t!” I told her. “Next time I’ll be the witness.”

  “Adelbert would enjoy that,” she said, grimly. “I don’t know that I won’t hold you to it. You ought to see him!”

  We let the subject drop, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I could see them both from behind the curtains in my shop window and it seemed that whenever I looked out there was the tight-lipped silent woman, scraping every farthing and there was the fat man watching her from his doorway across the street, secret satisfaction on his sallow face.

  In the end it got on my nerves and when that happens I have to talk, I can’t help it.

  There was no one in the street I dared to gossip to, but I did mention the tale to a customer. She was a woman called Mrs. Marten whom I’d particularly liked ever since she’d come in to inquire after the first model I ever put in my shop window. I made most of her clothes and she had recommended me to one or two ladies in the district where she lived, which was up at Hampstead, nice and far away from Soho. I was fitting her one day when she happened to say something about men and the things they’ll stoop to if their pride’s been hurt and before I’d realized what I was doing I’d come out with the little story Louise had told me. I didn’t mention names, of course, but I may have conveyed that it was all taking place in this street.

  Mrs. Marten was a nice gentle little thing with a sweet face, and she was shocked.

  “But how awful,” she kept saying, “how perfectly awful. To burn it in front of her after she’s worked so hard for it. He must be quite insane. Dangerous.”

  “Oh, well,” I said, hastily, “it’s his money by the time he does that and I don’t suppose he destroys much of it. Only enough to upset my friend.” I was sorry I’d spoken. I hadn’t expected her to be quite so horrified. “It just shows you how other people live.” I finished and hoped she’d drop the subject. She didn’t, however. The idea seemed to fascinate her even more than it had me. I couldn’t get her to leave it alone and she chattered about it all through the fitting. Then, just as she was putting on her hat to leave, she suddenly said: Miss Kaye, I’ve just thought. My brother-in-law is Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. He might be able to think of some way of stopping that fearful man torturing that poor little woman you told me about. Shall I mention it to him?”

  “Oh, no! Pray don’t!” I exclaimed. “She’d never forgive me. There’s nothing the police could do to help her. I do hope you’ll forgive me for saying so, madam, but I do hope you don’t do anything of the sort.”

  She seemed rather hurt, but she gave me her word. I had no faith in it, naturally. Once a woman has considered talking about a thing it’s as good as out. I was quite upset for a day or too because the last thing I wanted was to get involved, but nothing happened and I’d just started to breathe again, so to speak, when I had to go down to Vaughan’s, the big wholesale trimming-house, at the back of Regent Street. I was coming out with my parcels when a man came up to me. I knew he was a dick; he was the type, with a very short haircut, a brown raincoat and that look of being in a settled job and yet not in anything particular. He asked me to come along to his office and I couldn’t refuse. I realized he’d been tailing me until I was somewhere right away from Adelaide Street where someone would have noticed him at once.

  He took me to his boss who was another definite policeman. Quite a nice old boy in his way, on nobody’s side but his own, as is the way with coppers, but I got the impression that he was square on the level, which is more than some people are. He introduced himself as Detective-Inspector Cumberland, made me sit down and sent out for a cup of tea for me. Then he asked me about Louise.

  I got into a panic because when you’re in business in Adelaide Street you’re in business and the last thing you can afford is to get into trouble with your neighbours. I denied everything, of course, said I hardly knew the woman.

  Cumberland wouldn’t have that. I must say he knew how to handle me. He kept me going over and over my own affairs until I was thankful to speak about anything else. In the end I gave way because, after all, nobody was doing anything criminal as far as I could see. I told him all I knew, letting him draw it out bit by bit and when I’d finished he laughed at me, peering at me with little bright eyes under brows which were as thick as a bit of silver fox fur.

  “Well,” he said, “there’s nothing so terrible in all that, is there?”

  “No,” I said, sulkily. He made me feel a fool.

  He sighed and leant back in his chair.

  “You run away and forget this little interview,” he told me. “But just so that you don’t start imagining things let me point out something to you. The police are in business, too, in a way. In their own business, that is, and when an officer in my position gets an inquiry from higher up he’s got to investigate it, hasn’t he? He may think the crime of destroying currency, ‘defacing the coin of the realm’ we call it, is not very serious compared with some of the things he’s got to deal with, but all the same if he’s asked about it he’s got to make some sort of move and make some sort of report. Then it can all be… er… filed and forgotten, can’t it?”

  “Yes,” I agreed, very relieved. “Yes, I suppose it can.”

  They showed me out and that seemed to be the end of it. I’d had my lesson though, and I never opened my lips again on the subject to anybody. It quite put me off Louise and for a time I avoided her. I made excuses and didn’t go and eat with her. However, I could still see her through the window sitting at the cash desk and I could still see Adelbert peering at her from his doorway.

  For a month or two everything went on quietly. Then I heard that Violetta’s boy had got tired of the restaurant business and had taken a job up north. He had given the girl the chance of marrying and going with him and they’d gone almost without saying goodbye. I was sorry for Louise; I had to go and see her. She took it very well and was pretty lucky really, for she got a new waiter almost at once and her number one girl in the kitchen stood by her and they managed. She was very much alone though, and so I drifted back into the habit of going in there for a meal once a week. I paid, of course, but she used to come and have hers with me.

  I kept her off the subject of Adelbert, but one day near the Midsummer’s quarter day she referred to him outright and asked me straight if I remembered I’d promised to be witness on the next pay day. Since Violetta had gone she’d mentioned me to Adelbert, she said, and he’d seemed pleased.

  Well, I couldn’t
get out of it without hurting her feelings and since nothing seemed to turn on it I agreed. I don’t pretend I wasn’t curious: it was a love affair without any love at all, as far as I could see.

  The time for payment was fixed for half an hour after closing time on Midsummer’s Day and when I slipped down the street to the corner the blinds of the Coq were closed and the door was shut. The new waiter was taking a breath of air on the basement steps and let me in through the kitchens. I went up the dark service stairs and found the two of them sitting there waiting for me.

  The dining-room was dark except for a single shaded bulb over the alcove table where they sat and I had a good look at them as I came down the room. They made an extraordinary pair.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those fat little Chinese gods whom people keep on their mantelshelves to bring them luck? They are all supposed to be laughing, but some only pretend and the folds of their china faces are stiff and merciless for all the upward lines. Adelbert reminded me of one of those. He always wore a black dinner jacket for work, but it was very thin and very loose. It came into my mind that when he took it off it must have hung like a gown. He was sitting swathed in it, looking squat and flabby against the white panelling of the wall.

  Louise, on the other hand, in her black dress and tight woollen cardigan, was as spare and hard as a withered branch. Just for an instant I realized how mad she must make him. There was nothing yielding or shrinking about her. She wasn’t giving any more than she was forced, not an inch. I never saw anything so unbending in my life. She stood up to him all the time.

  There was a bottle of Dubonnet on the table and they each had a small glass. When I appeared Louise poured one for me.

  The whole performance was very formal. Although they’d both lived in London all their lives the French blood in both was very apparent. They each shook hands with me and Adelbert kicked the chair out for me if he only made a pretence of rising.