The Return of Mr Campion Read online

  Far up over the cliffs behind Mr Campion a cock crowed and the girl straightened.

  "It's getting late," she said unreasonably.

  "Yes," said the man regretfully. "How do you feel about it, Theobald?"

  The dog turned his head slowly, as though loth to take his eyes from the shining water. He sighed, an exaggerated gesture, and got up with dignity. He stretched carefully, each leg separately as dogs do, and then, before Mr Campion's startled eyes, went through a further process of limbering up, which dogs as a rule do not. He raised his left paw and let it dangle alarmingly, as though the bone were actually broken, repeated the exercise with his right, limply dragged his left back-leg behind him and then did the same thing with his right back-leg. He hung his head until his nose was buried in the sand, rolled over on his side with his eyes turned up, and finally, having satisfied himself that every single part of him was in reliable working-order, set off at a portly stroll scarcely faster than his companions, who walked after him.

  They passed out of sight, not with any haste nor yet with the dilatory luxury of those who stroll. They went purposefully, all three of them, as if such a promenade were essential to their career.

  Having watched them go, Mr Campion went back to his hotel feeling a little lightheaded and uncomfortable. The tall houses of the seaside-resort had still the blank eyes of sleepers and he felt like a trespasser in a dormitory.

  As people sometimes do who get up very early in the morning because they cannot sleep, Mr Campion slept most of the day and when, round about cocktail-time, he descended into the lounge the light over the sea was the familiar blue and gold, the esplanade was dotted with parasols and the sands were alive with children of all ages and their colored toys. The magical quality of the dawn had vanished and the world was once more a solid material place of ice-cream vendors, evening papers and white-coated waiters carrying drinks on trays.

  Mr Campion remembered the vision of the morning with self-tolerant amusement and decided that the girl could not have been so beautiful, the old man so formal, nor the dog so well so businesslike.

  This was his first real introduction to the hotel, for he had arrived very late on the evening before, and, as he sat in a corner sipping his sherry, a misgiving nudged him. The wine was good and the room was charming but he began to regret the well-meaning friend who had recommended the place as the ideal retreat for three days' complete rest. The hotel was exactly as the friend had described it, exclusive, quiet and thoroughly English, with good food and superlative service, but Mr Campion had forgotten that the natural corollary to these attributes is, of course, the next best thing to the silence of the tomb.

  Everybody was there, all the dear old familiar faces; the Colonel and his lady drinking in whispers in a corner, the elderly lady and her companion knitting with muted needles, the pleasant, plump Mama with the pretty twin daughters who looked away regretfully when the Colonel's young son glowered at them. The Anglo-Indian widow was there, alone and languishing over an iced drink and a magazine, the two bachelors who did not know each other but who sat close together for protection, the hearty young woman and her girlfriend who lowered their happy healthy voices the moment they laid aside their golf-clubs in the hall and came to join the father of one of them dozing under a palm; these and several others, all exclusive, English and utterly quiet.

  Mr Campion was not himself a jolly person but a long association with all sorts of people in the course of his profession, criminal investigation, had cured him of his native self-consciousness, and it rubbed raw his nerves to be in the presence of so many people who all clearly liked each other or at least considered so scrupulously each others feelings that they were prepared to become virtually dumb lest they offend or discommode any of their own kind. It seemed to him that there must be among people who had in common this one great quality of self-sacrificial politeness other less Spartan grounds for compatibility. Yet he knew, as who does not, that one unguarded remark addressed to a stranger must produce that swift change of color, that guilty glance round, and that frigid commonplace which would but add another layer to the ice.

  It was while he was wondering if a great national disaster would break the barriers, or if a natural phenomenon pink snow, perhaps would shatter this stultifying delicacy, that the chocolate dog came limping into the lounge. He was in a most pathetic condition. His left forepaws hanging helplessly, he dragged himself across the parquet on three faltering legs. Arrived in the center of the room he collapsed with a thud and turned up his eyes.

  Immediately there was a general rustle and a scraping of chairs and then the silence became absolute. The dog looked round him mutely, made a gallant attempt to sit up and beg, collapsed again and, just once, howled, very softly.

  "Poor chap, he's hurt." It was one of the golfing young women. But before her solid brogues could carry her across the floor the Colonel had thrown down his paper, the elderly lady had cast aside her knitting and the two bachelors had risen to their feet. The Anglo-Indian woman was the nearest and was the first to the dog.

  Five minutes later Mr Campion himself joined the anxious throng. The dog was a little better. A committee of experts had examined his foot. The Colonel gave it on his word that no bone was broken. The father of the golfing girl, who, it transpired, owned a pack of hounds, suspected rheumatism and the Anglo-Indian widow was inclined to agree with him. The plump Mama had persuaded the invalid to take a lump of sugar and the elder of the bachelors was holding the basin for her.

  "A nice chap," said the Colonel's son to one of the pretty twins. "What is he?"

  "Spaniel and Labrador, first cross," submitted the younger bachelor.

  "Terrier somewhere there," said the Colonel.

  "Hound, I should say, sir," ventured the elderly lady, "no doubt about it with those ears."

  "A colored gentleman anyway," giggled the prettier twin. "What’s his name?"

  They tried them all and the dog was helpful. At Jack he looked blank, at Jim bewildered. Rover seemed to amuse him, Smith left him cold, Nigger made him beg, but at Henry he barked.

  "That's the name of a friend of his," said the Colonel. "Seen a dog do that before."

  "Rumpelstiltskin?" suggested the elderly lady's companion and all present thought what a very nice woman she was.

  Mr Campion forgot his superiority complex. He cheated.

  "Theobald?" he suggested.

  The dog sat up and stared at him in astonished contempt. Never in all Mr Campion's career had he been faced with a glance of such withering disgust. A nark! The unspoken insult went home and Mr Campion blushed.

  "He doesn't like that, does he?" said the Colonel, laughing. "What is your name, boy? Rex?"

  The abashed Mr Campion turned away from the crowd and came face to face with the girl of the morning. She really was beautiful, he was surprised to see, as beautiful as she had appeared to be that morning. She was looking at him reproachfully, a faintly puzzled expression in her eyes.

  "I'm sorry," he murmured. "So you ought to be," she answered back and pushed through the crowd.

  It took Mr Campion all the evening to get her to himself for the little hotel was now like a parrot-house. Since everybody knew everybody else it was only the late arrivals who were not talking. The Colonel, the elderly lady, her companion and the elder bachelor played bridge in an alcove; the plump Mama and the Colonel's wife chatted happily about their children; the widow listened to the father of the golfing girls; those young women joined the twins, the spare bachelor, the Colonel's son and a group of other young people.

  Mr Campion found the beautiful girl in the hall waiting for the lift. "You're not going up already?" he protested. "It's livening up now. Won't you join us all?"

  She shook her head. "It's not in the con tract." Mr Campion felt helpless. "I'm so sorry about the name," he began, "but you see, I saw you on the sands this morning with Theobald and your?"

  "Father," she supplied. "With your father," he repeated. "I still do
n't understand, you know." The girl laughed. "Don't you? I thought you were a detective."

  "So I am," he said desperately, for the lift was descending. "That's one of the reasons for my disgusting curiosity. Look here, will you promise to give me an explanation tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow we shall be gone," she said and, stepping back into the lift, was whirled up out of his sight.

  But the following morning, when he was lying awake wrestling with a distinct sense of frustration and regret, he was roused by a discreet tapping low down on his door.

  Theobald was in the corridor, fit and hearty, with no trace of paw trouble. He cocked an eye at Campion, gave his tail a perfunctory wag, and dropped a small white slip at his feet before galloping off to the staircase.

  Mr Campion took up the pasteboard and found it to be a professional card neatly engraved. "Theobald and Co.", it ran. "Introductions effected. Hotel service a specialty." On the back, there had been penciled in round 1930 handwriting, a single line. "Prim beach next week."

  Editor's Note

  As many another writer of fiction Margery Allingham based many of her characters very closely on characters well-known to her. Theobald, the dog of this story, was one such. The model for this portrait (unusually she allowed to the fictional character the name by which he was known in fact) had entered the D'Arey House family when his dam decided to give birth, in comfort, on a bed. Despite the embarrassment he caused in the village by his persistent and insistent sexuality, Theobald was much-loved.

  He was also the model for Martin Elginbrodde's Ainsworth in The Tiger in the Smoke and the subject of Martin's doggerel:

  I had a dog, a lively-colored mongrel With mild brown eyes and an engaging manner. He had a studious mind and thought Deeply about himself And food and sex. He was also a liar. He wasn't proud: He'd shake hands very proudly With almost anybody not in uniform ... I'd like to talk to him again; Now I'm a soldier we've a lot in common.

  "The Dog Day," was published in 1939 in the Daily Mail, in 1953 in Mackill's Mystery Magazine and was included in the anthology Circumstantial Evidence in 1963.

  The Wind Glass

  After the Japanese had spoken, the Chigwells' warm sitting room was painfully silent for a moment. The three other people present stared at their visitor with embarrassment.

  Edward Chigwell sat very still, his loose, heavy mouth partially open and his bright blue eyes bent almost wonderingly on the yellow face smiling at him across the room. His wife, a large, placid woman with a loose, white skin, smiled at her husband half-apologetically, half-contemptuously. Their daughter, Aieda, sat between her father and the Oriental. She, too, was startled and her smile was false.

  Mr Tio Yasen smiled at them, then a slightly puzzled expression spread across his face and he began to speak again in his soft, almost inflection less voice. "I am afraid I speak at the wrong time," he said. "The customs of our countries are so different. You will forgive me that I am so so," he paused for a moment seeking for the word and finally came out with "unpleasant."

  "I repeat I ask you for your daughter for my wife." He stopped talking but continued to beam at them.

  Slowly Mr Chigwell recovered from his surprise and as he did so a dull red flush crept from under his collar and crept over his face until even his eyes seemed darker. "You want to marry my daughter?" he said loudly, thrusting his hand forward so quickly that the white tip of his cigar fell off on to his thick blunt fingers.

  Mrs Chigwell made a little fluttering gesture towards him but Mr Yasen saw nothing of this; it was with difficulty that he understood the language but his host's direct question put him more at ease. He smiled again. "Yes," he said.

  Carefully Mr Chigwell flicked the ash off his hand and his long mouth turned down shark-fashion into a dubious smile.

  Mr Yasen waited politely. He was considering the result of his decision to take an English wife. He realized the seriousness of the step and the prejudice of his own people, but he had made up his mind and his offer was unhesitant. He glanced at Aieda. The girl sat stiffly toying with her cigarette.

  Leaning back in his chair and surrounding himself with blue, sweet-smelling smoke, Mr Chigwell spoke again. "So you want my daughter, Mr Yasen," he repeated, his deep loud voice echoing coldly round the room. "You've not asked Aieda, I suppose?"

  "Of course he hasn't." Aieda spat out the words irritably. "You know I wouldn't want to marry him."

  The change in the Japanese was almost imperceptible; but a change there was. His smile died, his dark eyes in their narrow sockets almost disappeared under the wrinkled yellow lids, and his thin mobile lips set hard.

  "Well, then," continued Mr Chigwell complacently, "if Aieda doesn't want you, there's no more to be said."

  The Japanese quivered and there was on his wooden face something that was almost surprise. Then his eyelids dropped even lower and he rose to his feet. "I regret," he said simply and, standing by his chair, he made three formal little bows.

  Mr Chigwell nodded graciously. Aieda stared angrily and Mrs Chigwell smiled at Mr Yasen as she would smile at an acquaintance whose name she had forgotten.

  Mr Yasen turned and walked quickly out of the room, his shining shoes making no sound on the polished floor. A moment later they heard the front door shut.

  Mr Chigwell laughed. "Damned cheek," he said.

  In the long neat road outside Mr Yasen turned and stared back at the lighted window. For a moment he stood quite still in the shadow. He was no longer the polite and impenetrable Japanese, placid and diffident. All this was gone. Tio Yasen had been insulted by a man for whom he had nothing but contempt and by a girl he had wanted and for whom he would have risked the anger of his parents. The faint light of the stars fell upon his upturned face, then Tio Yasen began to laugh softly and turning quickly away he went down the road towards the station.

  For two months Aieda heard no more of him but one stifling hot evening a letter and a parcel were delivered to the shrub encircled villa in the long, orderly road.

  Her curiosity aroused, Aieda took them and tore open the envelope. She read through the note and then handed it to her father with a self-conscious laugh and turned her attention to the parcel.

  Mr Chigwell looked at the note and raised his eyebrows. A slight smile spread over his heavy red face, then he laughed. "The little Jap again, eh? I thought we had seen the last of him."

  "Oh, but we have, Dad," said Aieda, "read what he says. He's going back to Japan and this," she touched the parcel, "is his farewell gift. Poor little fellow, I'm afraid I treated him very badly, but how could I help it?" As she spoke she wrestled with the knot of silk cord which bound the package.

  The stifling heat which all the day had hung over London seemed to Aieda to become more oppressive. The sky was dark and there was no breath of wind in the garden.

  Suddenly the girl shuddered. Her father looked up. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Cold?" Aieda smiled. "No," she said, "I don't know why I shivered. Have you got a knife?"

  The two younger children, Benjamin and Victoria, arrived to see what was happening. With sharp jerks of his knife Mr Chigwell cut the cord in two or three places and Aieda, taking the package from him, pushed back the outer paper. Immediately a faint smell of flowers arose from the bundle and they all sniffed appreciatively.

  Within the brown outer covering there was a quantity of soft tissue-paper printed with quaint oriental pictures and within this something wrapped in a wide embroidered handkerchief.

  Mr Chigwell was amused. "Good Lord!" he said. "Get on with it. What next?" Aieda stripped off the handkerchief and held out a long lacquered box, exquisitely designed and painted. She opened it carefully. Inside was yet another parcel wrapped in a finer and more delicately embroidered handkerchief. The girl laughed. "Wow!" she said. "Can't you see him wrapping it up?"

  She unfolded the handkerchief, disclosing yet another box. Mr Chigwell's amusement increased. "A long farewell, eh, what?" he said.

  Aieda lifted t
he two carved wood fastenings and the lid fell off into her lap Mr Chigwell and the children leaned forward involuntarily.

  "Whatever is it?" said Benjamin putting up his hand towards the box.

  Aieda jerked the box away from him. "Don't touch," she said sharply and added as she pulled out a jumble of painted glass and string. "Look a wind glass."

  There was no stir in the air of the garden and the little wafers of painted glass made no movement but hung silently from the brass ring held between Aieda's thumb and forefinger.

  "Wind glass? What's that for?" Mr Chigwell raised his eyebrows as he examined the ornament.

  "Oh, haven't you seen one? They're too trendy." Aieda laughed. "You see, you hang it up in an open window or somewhere, and when the wind blows it plays see!" She shook the ring slightly and the wind glass tingled.

  Victoria clapped her hands. "Pretty," she said. Benjamin nodded. Mr Chigwell sniffed and lit a cigar. "Oh!" he said. "I see, very charming."

  There was an underlying note of disappointment in his voice which Aieda was quick to recognize. "The poor fellow must have been hard up," she said. "Look, it's chipped here and there and this ring is positively worn thin."

  "Eh?" Mr Chigwell looked at the ring with new interest. Then he held out his hand. "Let's have a look," he said. He examined it carefully for a minute or two. Then he glanced up. "This is a real antique, I shouldn't be surprised," he said, "it's hand painted, anyway."