The Return of Mr Campion Page 4

  It was a freezing vigil. He could hear Lance stamping in the mist, swearing softly to himself, but even that supremely comic phenomenon had its unsatisfactory side.

  Campion was shivering and the mist's damp fingers seemed to have stroked his very bones. Suddenly he stiffened. He had heard a rustle behind him and presently there was a movement among the wet leaves, followed by the sharp ring of feet on the stones. Lance swung round immediately, only to drop back in astonishment as a tall figure bore down upon him.

  "Where is it?"

  Neither the words nor the voice came as a complete surprise to Campion, but the unfortunate Lance was taken entirely off his guard.

  "Why, hello, Preen," he said involuntarily. "What the devil are you doing here?" Preen stopped in his tracks, his face a white blur in the uncertain light. For a moment he stood perfectly still and then, turning on his heel, he made to take off without uttering a word.

  "Ah, but I'm afraid it's not quite so simple as that, my dear chap." Campion stepped out of the shadows and, as Preen passed, slipped an arm through his and swung him round to face the startled Lance who was coming up at the double.

  "You can't clear off like this," Campion continued, still in the same affable, conversational tone. "You have something to give Peter Groome, haven't you? Something he rather wants?"

  "Who the hell are you?" As he spoke Preen jerked up his arm and might have wrenched himself free had it not been for Lance, who though completely in the dark had recognized Campion's voice and was quick enough to grasp certain essentials.

  "That's right, Preen," he said, seizing the man's other arm in a bear's hug. "Hand it over. Don't be a fool. Come on, hand it over. Hand it over, my boy, don't be an idiot."

  This double attack appeared to be inspirational. They felt the powerful young man stiffen between then and when he spoke his voice had a tremor in it.

  "Look here, how many people know about this?"

  "The world ..." Lance was beginning cheerfully when Campion forestalled him.

  "We three and Peter Groome," he said quietly. "At the moment Philip Cookham has no idea that Messrs Preen's curiosity concerning the probable placing of Government orders for aircraft parts has overstepped the bounds of common sense. You're acting alone, I suppose?"

  The question went straight to the mark. "Oh, lord, yes, of course." Preen was cracking. "If my old man gets to hear of this I oh, well ..."

  "I thought so." Campion sounded content. "Your father has a reputation to consider. So has our young friend Groome. You'd better hand it over."

  "What?" There was a note of slyness in Preen's question and Campion laughed contemptuously.

  "Since you force me to be crude, whatever it was you were attempting to use as blackmail, my precious young friend. In fact, whatever it may be that you hold over young Groome and were trying to use in an attempt to force him to let you have a look at a confidential Government report concerning the orders which certain aircraft firms are likely to receive in the next six months. In your position you could have made pretty good use of information like that, couldn't you? But what you could have over Groome, I haven't the faintest idea. When I was young it might have been objectionable companions, but that's no longer the fashion, is it? What’s the modern equivalent? An R.D. cheque?" Preen said nothing. He put his hand into an inner pocket and drew out an envelope which he handed to Campion without a word. Mr Campion examined the slip of pink paper by the light of the pencil torch and when he spoke his tone was not pleasant.

  "You kept it for quite a time before trying to cash in on it, didn't you?" he said. "Dear me, that's rather an old trick and it was never admirable. Young men who are careless with their bank accounts have been caught out like that before now. It simply wouldn't have looked good to Peter's legal minded father, I take it? You two seem to be hampered by your respective papas' integrity. Yes, well, you can go now." Preen hesitated, opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Lance looked after his retreating figure and then turned his attention to his friend; his eyes were bright and inquiring in the half-light.

  "But who wrote that note?" he demanded.

  "Victor Preen, of course," said Campion brutally. "He wanted to see the report but he was making absolutely sure that it was young Groome who took all the risks of being found with it. With Preen's special knowledge he only had to glance at the file to get all the information he needed to pick up quite a packet."

  "Victor Preen wrote the note," Lance repeated blankly.

  "Well, naturally," said Campion absently. "That was obvious as soon as I saw the file. He was the only man in the place with the necessary knowledge to make use of it. That's what bothered me in the beginning. I couldn't see what on earth we were in for." Lance made no comment. He pulled his coat collar more closely about his throat and stuffed his hands into his pockets. Campion was tactfully silent.

  But the artist was not quite satisfied for later that evening when Campion was sitting in his dressing-gown writing a note at one of the small escritoires which Florence had so thoughtfully provided in her guest bedrooms, he came in again.

  "Why?" he demanded. "Why me? Why did I get the invitation?"

  "Oh, that was just a question of luggage." Campion spoke over his shoulder. "That bothered me at first, I admit, but as soon as we fixed it on to Preen that little mystery became blindingly clear. Do you remember falling into the carriage this afternoon? Where did you put your elegant piece of gent's natty suit casing? Over young Groome's head. Preen saw it from the corridor and assumed the chap was sitting under his own bag. He had the note delivered to the room of the owner of the new pigskin suitcase. That's how it was, I'll bet on it." Lance nodded regretfully. "Very likely," he said sadly. "Funny thing. I was sure it was the girl." Lance came over to the desk. Campion put down his pen and indicated the written sheet.

  Dear Groome [it ran], I enclose a little matter that I should burn forthwith, if I were you. The package that you left in the inglenook is still there, right at the back on the left-hand side, cunningly concealed under a pile of logs. It has not been seen by anyone who could possibly understand its contents. If you were to nip over very early this morning you could return it to its properly appointed place without any trouble. If I may venture a word of advice, it is never worth it. The author grimaced as he reread his own words. "It's a bit avuncular," he admitted, "but what else can I do? His light is still on, poor chap. I thought I'd stick it under his door and wash my hands of the entire affair." Lance chuckled. He was grinning. "That's fine," he murmured. "Old Mr Campion does his stuff for reckless youth. All we need now is the signature and that ought to be obvious as everything else has been to you, damn you. I'll write it for you. Merry Christmas. Love from Santa Claus."

  "Your point," said Mr Campion. "Game, set and match."

  Editor's Note

  By the last years of the Thirties Margery Allingham was convinced that the quality of her work was now so much improved and her reputation so assured hat she neither needed nor could afford to continue with much "writing with my left hand." In 1938. in a letter to one of her regular and most intimate correspondents, the Classical scholar Russell Meiggs, Fellow of Balliol he looked back only four years to the rime when "I could dictate a 7,000-word film story to Grog from a sick bed with a temperature of 102". And, she added. "I can't do a Strand story like that."

  "The Case is Altered," was published by the Strand in 1938. Mackill's Mystery Magazine reissued it in 1953 and ten years later it was included in The Bedside Book of Murder.

  My Friend Mr Campion

  From my point of view one of the oddest things about my friend Mr Campion is that here we are in 1935, I've known him for eight years and I haven't the faintest idea who he is or what sort of yarn I shall be called upon to retail about him next. I know his name is assumed and, of course, from time to time I have been able to pick up odd pieces of information he has let fall in the course of the various of his adventures I have chronicled, but who he is and what h
is real name is I am not merely not at liberty to divulge: I simply do not know.

  We met first, as later I found out, in what was a highly characteristic fashion. Early in 1927 I was writing The Crime at Black Dudley, a book about an exciting and mysterious affair taking place in a strange, gaunt old house. I was a quarter of the way through the book and the perfectly good hero was behaving very well indeed in the most trying circumstances. There was a dinner-party and I was peacefully describing it when I noticed that there was one character too many or rather that there was a stranger in the little party I had so carefully assembled.

  I don't want it to be thought that I am one of those dear old ladies who just write down the first thing that comes into their heads and hope the finished page will be entertaining. Rather am I one of those pernickety souls who plan and re-plan, who build up and weed out and scrape and niggle away in their minds until they know just exactly what sort of story they are going to write, who the characters are and all about them.

  Moreover, I have very strong views on the subject. I believe that an author who cannot control his characters is, like a mother who cannot control her children, not really fit to look after them. So this stranger at the Black Dudley dinner-table startled me and made me feel terribly uncomfortable.

  Campion butted into the conversation, I remember, with a most unsuitable remark, in tone much too flippant for the grim proceedings, and I became aware of him as vividly as if I had turned my head and suddenly seen him.

  At first sight he was not exactly prepossessing but lately he has looked much better but then he's getting on, all of thirty five, and age is hardening him a bit.

  In 1927 he was just as I then described him: a tall, pale young man with sleek yellow hair, enormous horn-rimmed spectacles and an abysmally foolish expression. As is everyone else who does not know him I was fooled by that expression and I had no idea of the hidden shrewdness, the quick, practiced brain or the lovable disposition concealed beneath that negligible exterior.

  I tried to turn him out of my story; I did not think his line in imbecile chatter an adornment to my sober tale, but all my efforts to shake him off were of no avail. As soon as I got going on a conversation between two characters out leapt an absurd remark and the pale young man was there again.

  Dismayed, I gave up work for a week and thought I had lost him but as soon as I returned to the Black Dudley dinner party there he was, smiling inanely and chattering away like a crosstalk comedian.

  In the end I gave up the struggle and after that he took over possession. The hero, a plumpish young barrister, muffed his high spots and Campion popped up at the last moment and saved the situation very neatly.

  In spite of myself began to like him, he was so resourceful, so courageous and always a perfect little gentleman, but I could not get used to his wisecracks or his habit of saying the silliest thing at the most awkward moment.

  That Black-Dudley business was certainly his affair but I was not happy about him. He seemed to be on some very shady business, for two or three embarrassing moments I thought he was a crook and, because in the penultimate chapter of my book he faded out of the story as suddenly as he had come into it, I never found out quite what his status was.

  I met him next when I was writing Mystery Mile and when( in the first chapter ) I found him on board the SS Elephantine I was pleased to see that he looked a little less effete.

  Of course, I had planned a story with him in mind but in Mystery Mile, as afterward in every Campion story, I did not actually plan his part. From the very beginning he always saw to that himself and now I have come to rely on him in the same way that one relies upon an old and trusted collaborator.

  It was in Mystery Mile that we really got to know each other. Early on he handed out his visiting card:

  Coups neatly executed Nothing sordid, vulgar or plebeian Deserving cases preferred Police no object and in the course of the story I saw for the first time the inside of his flat over the Police Station in Bottle Street and met for the first time Magersfontein Lugg, his gentleman’s man, as he called him.

  I have always liked Lugg. Though by that time I had reached the stage when I took everything Campion told me with a grain of salt, I believed him when he said that Lugg had been a burglar and that he was "a very useful chap." He certainly was extremely useful in the later stages of Mystery Mile and it was then that his huge, white, miserable face became as familiar to me as Campion's own.

  It was down at Mystery Mile that I met Biddy Paget. Campion met her there too and it was all rather uncomfortable for a while because I was rather fond of Campion and, though I could understand Biddy preferring the American, young Marlowe Lobbett, I did not like to see my hero slighted.

  However, although I never thought him quite so lighthearted again, when next we met and he handling a very delicate little job for the Treasury he seemed perfectly happy.

  That story was called by us Look to the Lady and by the Americans The Gyrth Chalice Mystery, and when it was done I thought I knew all there was to know about Campion except his name, but he had a surprise for me. Until I wrote Police at the Funeral I had never seen him handling a murder mystery and I had meant to leave it all to Inspector Stanislaus Oates of Scotland Yard but Campion turned up again in the first chapter, and I must say he astonished me. He subdued his natural exuberance to the gravity of the circumstances and fitted into that grief-stricken, terror-ridden Cambridge household without giving offense to anybody. Moreover, he was decidedly helpful, quite as much so, in fact, as he had been in the hand-to-hand fights in Mystery Mile and Look to the Lady. Frankly, I was delighted to discover that he had a brain capable of genuine observation and deduction as well as his natural ability to wriggle out of a tight corner or worst a dangerous enemy.

  As usual, he got on well with all the other characters from my point of view not the least of his charms he even endeared himself to Great Aunt Caroline and he certainly saved Uncle William from arrest.

  After that, when we were truly old friends, I chronicled his adventures in the Pontisbright heirloom case (which we called Sweet Danger and the Americans, for some reason, Kingdom of Death). Amanda Fitton turned up during that business and I thought he was going to fall for her and get tied for life to the little baggage, but perhaps the memory of Biddy still rankled; anyway, he escaped to go to the assistance of sweet old Mrs Lafcadio in Death of a Ghost (a title which, if you only think of it, gives away the whole mystery). In that, to date the most ambitious of his efforts, he distinguished himself.

  His latest experience he certainly leads an adventurous life is in another murder case. Campion thinks my account should be called Flowers for the judge and from that title anyone familiar with English legal custom will guess what he has let me in for.

  This is about all I can tell you about Albert Campion. I like him and I like to consider myself his best friend but, even so, to me he is still a mystery. I know he was born on May 20th, 1900. I suspect he was at Rugby he has just a touch of the Rugby manner. He says he went to St Ignatius College, Cambridge, and I know that he embarked on his exciting career in 1924. I know that he belongs to Puffin's Club and to the Junior Greys and that his address is 17a Bottle Street, Piccadilly, London W.l, but who his people are, what his name is and what he does on his holidays, so to speak, alas, I cannot tell you.

  However, he is sometimes indiscreet. Sometimes he lets his tongue run away with him. So you never know. I live in hope.

  Editor's Note

  Taken from the transcript of a broadcast given in 1935.

  Margery Allingham's hope that Campion's occasional indiscretions would reveal to her more about the details of his life was fulfilled, but only minimally. Her conviction that he had survived his early encounters with Amanda Fitton was misplaced. In fact, he did get himself "tied for life to the little baggage."

  The following has never appeared in any edition of Who's Who:

  CAMPION, Albert (pseud; real name known to be Rudolph), "man come about
the trouble"; b 20 May 1900; s of ... and Lady K; m Lady Amanda Fitton; one s; Educ: Tottham, Rugby, St Ignatius Coll., Cambridge (2nd Cl. Hons, History Tripos); served War 1939-45 Intelligence Corps (SOE). Relevant publications: series of biographical studies by Margery Allingham (q.v.) 1929-68 and two by Young man Carter (1969, 1971). Recreations; wine, collecting fine art, otherwise odd. Address: 17a Bottle Street, Piccadilly, London W.l. T: Regent 01300. Clubs: Puffin's, Junior Greys.

  The Dog Day

  There is a time-honored theory that the mysterious, the uncanny, the miraculous, and even the plain honest-to-goodness peculiar are properly appreciated only in a half-light.

  Mr Albert Campion sat on a rock in the blaze of a pure white dawn, reflected on this notion, and rejected it. He rubbed his eyes cautiously with his bathing towel, but the old man, the girl and the dog did not disappear. They remained in earnest consultation just below him on the dazzling sand.

  They had not seen him, and, because it is natural to prefer not to intrude oneself upon any sort of visual phenomenon, he remained perfectly still, his lean body melting into the pinkish crag behind him.

  In all directions there was loneliness, not a sail or a ripple on the glassy water, not a parasol or a beach-pajama on the sand, and in the near distance the planes and pinnacles of the discreet esplanade were as deserted as an empty plate.

  The man and the dog sat facing one another and the girl looked down at them. They were all creatures of that slight fantasy which is the most fantastic of all: the not quite right. The girl was perhaps the most nearly normal, although sheer female beauty of such an idealistic kind is still sufficiently unusual to be surprising. As she stood, her weight on one hip and the dawn light turning her hair to white fire, she was quite sufficiently miraculous to take any ordinary man's breath away. The man and the dog were more unlikely. They were both so astonishingly formal. The man sat on a flat stone in much the same attitude and costume in which he might have presided at a board-meeting. He was a smooth elderly person, meticulously shaved and dressed in pearl-Grey suiting, white shirt and spats. A ring glistened on his little finger and an eyeglass dangled from his neck. The dog sat on the sand and he sat as anyone else might sit, with his legs stretched out in front of him, his only courtesy to dog construction the solid four-inch tail supporting much of his weight like the flap at the back of a photograph frame. He was smooth-haired and chocolate-coloured, with the lines and contours of a miniature carthorse, and he sat and surveyed the sea behind his friend with the thoughtful, contemplative air of one who rests.