Police at the Funeral Read online

  ‘Save, of course,’ said Mr Campion, ‘the fewer men the greater share of plunder in the end, so to speak.’

  Marcus jabbed again gloomily at the fire.

  ‘Even that’s no good,’ he said. ‘Strictly in confidence, of course, though I fancy the whole family know this, old Mrs Faraday altered her will some little time ago. Under the new provisions, Andrew Seeley, her nephew by marriage, was to receive nothing at all. When she died, therefore, he must either starve or depend upon the problematic charity of his cousins. It was his own fault. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, you know, but he wasn’t a pleasant customer. A petty cantankerous little person, a strain of the bounder in him. I’ve often felt like kicking him myself. But then, they’re not charming, any of them. The old lady has an element of grandeur about her, and Catherine is quite a kindly soul, although of course I do hate stupidity in a woman. What really frightens me is that I can easily imagine myself feeling like murder if I lived in that house.’

  ‘Julia,’ said Mr Campion, who had listened with astonishment to this recital from the prosaic Marcus. ‘How about Julia? She’s an unknown quantity at the moment. I understand from Joyce that she’s a spinster and difficult.’

  Marcus considered the matter. ‘I’ve never been able to understand whether Julia is unfriendly and deep, or merely unfriendly,’ he said. ‘But to tie a man up, and shoot him, and chuck him in the river when she was known to have been driving home from church – why, my dear fellow, don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I suppose it did happen then?’ said Mr Campion dubiously.

  Marcus shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who can tell?’ he said. ‘Certainly William was the last person who saw him alive. I fancy that if the police found the weapon William would be under lock and key by now.’ He looked up abruptly. Heavy footsteps sounded in the passage outside, and were followed by a discreet tap on the door. The elderly maid reappeared carrying a silver tray with a card on it, disapproval manifest on every line of her face. She presented the tray to Marcus without a word. The young man took the missive in some surprise, and after glancing at it handed it to Campion.

  MR WILLIAM R. FARADAY.

  Socrates Close,

  Trumpington Rd, Cambridge.

  The proximity of the man they had been discussing was brought home to them startlingly by the primly engraved name. Campion turned the card over to discover a few words scrawled in a flamboyant hand cramped to fit the space.

  ‘Shall be greatly obliged if you can spare me a few moments. W.F.’

  Marcus raised his eyebrows as he saw it, and pocketed the card absently. ‘Show him up, Harriet,’ he said.

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘THE FOUR-FLUSHER’

  ‘THIS IS THE point to be considered, then,’ murmured Mr Campion. ‘Is this “Enter a murderer”, or “Innocence appears disguised as Mars”?’

  There was no time for comment. Marcus rose to his feet as the door opened to admit Uncle William.

  He came bustling in, a direct contradiction to any of Campion’s preconceived ideas. Mr William Faraday was a shortish, tubby individual in a dinner-jacket of the ‘old gentleman’ variety, a man of about fifty-five, with a pink face, bright greedy little blue eyes, yellowish-white hair, and a moustache worn very much in the military fashion, without quite achieving the effect so obviously intended. His hands were pudgy, and his feet, in their square-toed glacé shoes, somehow enhanced the smug personality of their owner.

  He strode briskly across the room, shook hands with Marcus, and turned to survey Campion, who had also risen. There was a gleam of welcome in the little blue eyes which changed ludicrously to frank astonishment as he saw the young man. Involuntarily he put on a pair of pince-nez which he wore suspended from a broad black ribbon.

  Marcus effected the introduction and the old man’s surprise increased.

  ‘Campion?’ he said. ‘Campion? Not the – ah – Campion?’

  ‘One of the family, no doubt,’ said that young man idiotically.

  Mr Faraday coughed with unnecessary violence. ‘How do you do?’ he said conciliatingly, and held out his hand. He then turned to Marcus. ‘That dear girl of yours, Joyce, came in just now,’ he observed gustily. ‘I – er – gathered from her, don’t you know, that you might be in this evening, and that’s why I – er – ventured to call. Thank you, my boy.’ He sank into the chair which Marcus set for him and shouted to Campion, who was moving politely towards the doorway: ‘No, no – don’t go, you, sir. Nothing to conceal. I’ve come to have a chat with Marcus about this disgusting scandal.’

  The truculence in his tone would have been comic in any other situation, but his little blue eyes were frightened behind the bluster and he appeared a slightly pathetic, overheated old person, blowing and fuming like the proverbial frog.

  ‘This is a bad business, Marcus, my boy,’ he continued as the others resumed their seats, Marcus taking a high chair in the centre of the group, with Foon at his feet. ‘A very bad business. We shall need good brains to get us out of it without making ourselves the gossip of the whole county. Extraordinarily typical of Andrew,’ he added, with a sudden startling increase of volume in his tone, ‘that he couldn’t even leave this world without making a lot of bother for us all. They kept me up at the police station talking for about an hour this afternoon.’

  He cast an inquiring glance at Mr Campion, and his dubiousness concerning that young man’s possible use in such an emergency was as apparent as though he had spoken it. He returned to Marcus.

  ‘Well, my boy,’ he said, ‘since your father hasn’t come back yet – and after all, he’s getting on a bit now, isn’t he? – what are we going to do about it? I told the police all I knew, which was damned little, between ourselves. They didn’t seem at all satisfied, to tell you the truth, and if I hadn’t known such a thing was impossible I should have suspected them of questioning my story, such as it was. Just like Andrew,’ he repeated. ‘I can see that fellow looking up from Hades, or wherever he is, and laughing at the precious uncomfortable situation he’s got us all into.’

  Marcus, scandalized by this frank admission of the dislike which had existed between the two men, coughed warningly. But Uncle William was not to be detracted from the story he had set himself to tell.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve told Mr – er – Mr Campion here what I told you up at the house this afternoon about Andrew’s idiotic decision to walk home from church. I was held up behind, talking to an acquaintance in the porch – Miss Berry – very pretty girl – and when I came out he’d sent the car on. Otherwise I should have insisted on driving home, and then this whole trouble would have been averted, I suppose. Although why the police think it happened then I don’t know; there doesn’t seem to be any evidence on that point. Still, as I say, you know all that, don’t you, about the words I had with the fool? I told the police that, of course. Most extraordinary! They seemed to think that it was odd that two men of our age should worry themselves about which was the shorter way home. But, hang it, as I said to the man – some fearful bounder in uniform – a fellow doesn’t like to be flatly contradicted, whatever his age is. Besides, my legs were going to suffer. Andrew didn’t carry the weight I do. Bit of a weakling, Andrew. Still, I suppose we must be respectful to the dead.’

  He paused, and sat looking balefully at the two young men before him. Marcus evidently felt no comment was possible. As for Mr Campion, he remained grave and inconceivably vacant, his pale face blank and his long thin hands folded on his knee.

  Uncle William trumpeted his next remark. The time had come, he felt, to get to the point.

  ‘I came down here this evening for three reasons, Marcus,’ he said, ‘In the first place there’s that dear girl of ours – and yours. I don’t think that at the present time the Close is the place for her. Of course I have no authority with young people, but I think if you could put your foot down, my boy, we could get her to go and stay with that pretty little American friend of hers in the town.’

  M
arcus was suddenly taken aback by this implication that he had somehow neglected his duty as a fiancé, and Uncle William, feeling that he had the advantage, continued:

  ‘When I was a young man I wouldn’t see the lady whom I had honoured by asking to become my wife mixed up with a filthy affair like this. See about it tomorrow. Well, that’s one thing. The next is a point I forgot to tell the police, or rather I started to tell ’em, but they changed the conversation, don’t you know. About the time Andrew was supposed to have met his end – that seems to me an important point, doesn’t it to you?’

  He turned a truculent pink face to Mr Campion. That young man smiled at him affably.

  ‘Quite,’ said Mr Campion. ‘By all means.’

  ‘Well’ – Uncle William grunted – ‘they’ve got it into their heads that Andrew died, or at any rate, was put in the water, at ten minutes past one, presumably on the Sunday. They think that because the fellow’s watch stopped at ten minutes past one. Now I told them, or at least I should have told them if they’d been interested, that the fellow’s watch was always at ten past one – or some other time. The fact was that it was broken, and always had been. It wasn’t a good watch. I don’t know why he had it on him. He hadn’t worn it for years. I know, because I used to twit him about it at one time.’

  ‘You’re sure the watch found on him was this particular watch?’ said Marcus suddenly.

  ‘Oh yes. I identified it at the mortuary. Besides, it had his name on it. Presentation watch. When old Andrew lost his money in a swindling company twenty years ago the company gave him this watch, and a pack of compliments besides, and that’s all he got for his money. A damned dear watch, I used to tell him. That used to annoy him.’ He smiled for a moment reflectively. ‘There. Well, that settles that, doesn’t it?’ he added.

  ‘Then the third thing is rather more serious,’ He coughed and looked about him. It was evident that he felt he had some important revelation to make. ‘If you ask me, it’s the most damned obvious thing I ever saw in my life who did this,’ he said.

  If he expected to make a sensation by this announcement he was certainly successful as far as Marcus was concerned. The young man sat bolt upright, his face white and apprehensive. Uncle William leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Cousin George,’ he said, with a certain amount of satisfaction. ‘I haven’t mentioned it before to a soul. A fellow doesn’t like to incriminate a relative – however distant, thank God – and besides that, there’s my mother to consider. She can’t bear the fellow. Won’t have his name mentioned. I can quite understand it. He’s a blackguard. By the way, I shall have to ask you both to use your discretion when this matter comes out, and not let the old lady know I put you on to the track. My mother’s a very strong-minded woman, and even at my age I shouldn’t like to cross her.’

  The others still waited expectantly, and he repeated the name.

  ‘Cousin George. George Makepeace Faraday. Son of a dissolute brother of my father’s, and a constant source of embarrassment and a trial to the family ever since the Governor – God bless him – died.’

  Marcus glanced at Campion in bewilderment. ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ he said.

  ‘You wouldn’t have.’ Uncle William laughed. ‘We old families, we have our secrets, you know, skeletons like everybody else. I expect your father knows. Don’t know who from, though. My mother wouldn’t soil her lips by mentioning the fellow’s name. Blackmailing four-flusher if ever I saw one!’

  ‘You’ll have to tell us more about this, sir.’ Marcus spoke with some asperity.

  Uncle William cleared his throat. ‘Very little to tell, my boy, except that it’s obvious. There was some scandal connected with this fellow. I’d never heard it. Andrew didn’t know either. Of course I very seldom speak to Catherine or Julia, but I’m sure Catherine’s hare-brained and Julia’s too ill-natured to hold any unpleasant information back for two minutes together. But mother knows, and I expect it’s her secret. I had never heard of the fellow until I came to live at home after my – er – sad reverse when that damned scoundrel Andrew got me to invest my little all in one of his infernal companies.’ He blew his nose loudly and resumed:

  ‘Then I discovered the fellow had a habit of descending upon the family, usually more than half-seas over. I don’t know what happened at these visits, but he used to spend half an hour or so shut up with mother and come out looking as pleased as a couple of fighting cocks. I can only suppose he blackmails her, or begs damned ingeniously. Whatever it is, I wouldn’t like to try it. I don’t know how the fellow gets away with it.’ There was a distinctive note of wistful regret in Uncle William’s querulous tone.

  Marcus interposed. ‘This is all very interesting, sir,’ he ventured, ‘but even supposing George Faraday is – er – not a trustworthy person, what makes you think that he might possibly be the murderer of Mr Seeley?’

  ‘Because,’ said Uncle William triumphantly, ‘he called at the house the day before the Sunday that Andrew got himself killed. I remember it well, because the clock weight fell down at dinner. Very disturbing. George walked in almost immediately afterwards, and he had a long private interview with my mother in the drawing-room before he went off. But he was still in Cambridge on Sunday, because I saw him from the car on our way to church. Tight as an owl at eleven o’clock in the morning. I hope all this won’t have to come out. It’s a crime here to have any relatives who aren’t actually in the services or the ‘Varsity, much less a barrel-shaped, unshaven object in a shiny blue suit and a bowler hat who parades the town in the company of a tramp of the most obvious kind.’

  Mr Campion sat up, a glimmer of interest behind his spectacles. Something in Uncle William’s description of his disreputable cousin had recalled a half-forgotten impression to his memory.

  ‘Mr Faraday,’ he said, ‘not to put too fine a point upon it, would you say that this cousin of yours drinks heavily?’

  ‘Like a sponge,’ said Uncle William emphatically. ‘I’ve known men like that before, in South Africa. Stop at nothing, and always come to a bad end. Invariably wore an Ignatius tie, too, the bounder!’

  Mr Campion’s expression became almost intelligent. ‘Has he got a puffy red face, bright blue eyes, a faint air of respectability about him, and a very deep cultured voice? Height about five feet four, inclined to squareness?’ he said.

  Uncle William stared at the young man with frank admiration.

  ‘’Pon my soul, that’s marvellous,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard of you detective people – you know, about being able to tell whether a man a mile off is a plumber, or a market-gardener, without so much as a pair of field-glasses. Yes, that’s George Faraday to a tee, and especially that bit about a “faint air of respectability”; but that’s misleading – very misleading. There isn’t a white spot in that blackguard’s soul. Ah well,’ he added complacently, ‘every family has its black sheep.’

  Mr Campion glanced slyly at Marcus. That young man looked so startled that Campion had not the heart to explain this apparent feat of clairvoyance. Instead, he smiled with beatific satisfaction, and it was evident that Mr Albert Campion, practitioner in adventure, had gone up in the company’s estimation. In fact, Uncle William became definitely alarmed.

  ‘Nothing much escapes you, sir,’ he said, almost apprehensively.

  ‘Spies everywhere.’ The words leapt to Mr Campion’s lips, but he restrained them. ‘Has this George Faraday been seen in Cambridge since that day?’ he inquired.

  Uncle William leaned forward in his chair and made what he apparently thought was a dramatic announcement.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not a sign of the blackguard! Of course,’ he went on dubiously, ‘I don’t see any motive. I don’t see why he should kill Andrew any more than any of us. Come to that, I don’t see why exactly anyone should kill old Andrew, unless they couldn’t stand the sight of him. And if that’s the motive anybody might have done it. No one could stand the sight of him. Damned unpleasant, cantankerous fello
w, Andrew. I was up at Ignatius with him thirty-five years ago. He muffed his little-go twice, muffed his finals twice, took up medicine, muffed that, and had a shot at the Army, but his physique wasn’t good enough. Then, of course, there was nothing left but the church, but he wouldn’t think of it – no consideration for others, or he might be in a comfortable country living today instead of where he is, lying in the mortuary and making all this fuss.’

  He paused and glanced round him truculently.

  ‘Sorry if I sound hard, but I have no patience with that kind of fellow. Damned dabbler in everything. When he came into his money he lost it, and mine too, in some infernal company promoting scheme. Muffed that so badly that he came out of it with nothing but a presentation watch, and even that seems to be going to cause more bother than it was ever worth.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Well, I’ve said my say, Marcus, and if you see fit to hand on this information about George to the police I wish you’d do it, because I don’t want to upset the old lady by blabbing about the family. I expect you’ll come up to the house tomorrow, and you, sir.’

  He turned to Campion. As he shook hands he attempted in the clumsy, slightly rude manner of the over-bred to placate the young stranger, whose truly miraculous powers he had just witnessed, for any lack of attention he might have shown him.

  ‘D’you know, when I first came in, I was rather startled. I didn’t realize that you were – er – er – in a sort of disguise, and it wasn’t until you gave me that exhibition of really remarkable reasoning that I understood what scientists you fellows are.’

  Marcus escorted him to the other, and just before he went he buttonholed the young man to mutter breathily: ‘I may come up and see you some time, my boy. Little matter I want you to do for me. It’ll keep – it’ll keep.’