The Beckoning Lady Page 6

  “Okay ma’am, I’ll get it as I go by. Any message for the cottage?”

  She examined the list carefully. “No—unless. . . . ‘Tell Jake about stomach’ . . . . Westy, I wonder if that wouldn’t come better from you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well—” she hesitated and her fierce eyes were deeply serious, “—no one minds how a man dresses nowadays, and all that sort of rubbish has gone for good, but sometimes when people haven’t seen one before and they’re new to the place they get sort of embarrassed. Do you see what I mean?”

  Westy began to laugh. He had just reached the age when the full rich absurdity of his elders had burst upon him in glorious treasure-trove.

  “In other words, if Jake won’t shave and doesn’t have a hair cut, he must do up his shirt?” he suggested.

  Minnie’s laughter, which always seemed to take her unawares, burst from her famous nose in a snort.

  “Well, the bottom buttons anyway,” she said, “if he does up the neck. It’s the great bow-tie and hairy belly effect which gives strangers a start. Do you think you could put it to him really tactfully? Be careful. He’s a funny boy. You know what happened once.”

  “When someone tipped him?”

  “Yes, well, that was utterly unforeseen. It’s so unusual nowadays. The poor man was a Jewish box manufacturer and one of Wally’s best clients. He had a Rolls and Jake liked the lines of it, so he showed him how to get it in without scratching it. The man gave him half a dollar and, oh dear!”

  The boy was sympathetically serious. “He hit him, didn’t he?” he said gravely.

  “Hit him!” Minnie was indignant. “Not only did he throw him down so that he was stunned, but he took all his money, about thirty pounds. He sent ten pounds of it to the Artists’ Benevolent Fund right away that afternoon, and threw the rest in the pond. My God, there was a row!”

  “What happened?” Mr. Campion was forced to ask the question in spite of himself.

  Minnie went back to her list. “Oh, Tonker squared it,” she said indifferently. “The man was awfully decent about it. They all came to stay afterwards. Nice noisy people. I painted the daughter. A name like Potter-Higham. Oh Westy, the chairs from the village hall.”

  He nodded. “I’ll talk to Scat. He’s up here working on the Wherry. That’s going to be whacky. Be seeing you.” He padded off, calling in at the pantry on his way.

  “Sent by God,” said Minnie casually. “What on earth would happen without them all? I can’t go tearing about like a two-year-old. Painting the house nearly killed me.”

  “Landscape? That’s a new departure.” Campion was interested and she grinned at him.

  “Don’t be a clot. I mean the house. We colour-washed it, Dinah and I, in April. Didn’t you notice?”

  Mr. Campion regarded her with astonishment. “I thought it looked very nice,” he said.

  “It bleary well ought to,” remarked Diane from the sink, “She did the top and I did the bottom. Gord we was in a mess! And stiff—blimey!”

  “But why?”

  “Because it looked like death,” said Minnie frankly. “We concreted Will’s little terrace as well, and now he’ll never use it. Oh dear, I do miss the old pet, Albert. I keep thinking I hear his little bell. He used to ring when he wanted anything.”

  “And when you took your ’ands out of the water and dried ’em and got in there, ’e’d forgotten what it was,” added Diane, laughing.

  “You saw the room we made him out of the old dairy, did you?” Minnie hoisted herself to her feet. “Come and look. It made it possible. Once he was bedridden we couldn’t manage the stairs. It’s very pleasant. Scat—that’s Scatty Williams’ son, you remember—knocked a south window in for me so that he could see the river.”

  As she spoke she led him out into the garden and along a bricked path to the disused dairy. The door was locked but she produced the key from her pocket and they went in. It had made a charming room which as yet was much as its owner had left it, and all the homeliness and sharp realism of old age was there. There was no design and no pretence, but great comfort and an airiness unusual in such apartments. The new window reached from floor to ceiling and outside there was a little concrete platform just big enough for the high hospital bed to be wheeled out upon it.

  Minnie sat down in the rocking-chair before the window. “I used to sit here and mend, and shout at the old villain,” she said. “He was quite happy, you know, Albert,” she said. “He used to sleep all day and nearly all night, but he wasn’t bored and he wasn’t a fool.”

  Mr. Campion was wandering about the room. The pathetic medicines were still on the mantelshelf: talc and old-fashioned pills and a small white box labelled “The tablets.”

  “How did he get here in the first place?” Campion said presently, taking up the box and eyeing its contents through one lens of his glasses. “Did he get left over at a party, or did Tonker bring him to you as a birthday present or something?”

  “No.” She seemed to be wondering about it herself. “Oh, I remember. Of course. He was evacuated. They bombed London.”

  “So they did,” he agreed. “And he drifted down here, then, did he, and just settled?”

  “I suppose he did,” she admitted. “We’d known him for ages before that. He was a good old boy, Albert.”

  “I liked him,” said Campion. “He had such stupendous innocence. What are these things in here?”

  “Those?” She edged round to look at the box he held out to her. “Pluminal, I think. He used to have one a night, sometimes two in the latter part of the time. The doctor gave it to us. He used to take it with his last drink.”

  Mr. Campion put the box back and moved on to the chest of drawers where, in lonely glory, stood Uncle William’s tantalus. The centre bottle had still a quarter-inch of Scotch in it, and from the little drawer below an orange envelope of a kind now familiar in Britain peeped out unblushingly.

  “Football pools?” he enquired. “Did he still do those?”

  “Rather! And he still had a bit on a horse. One of the last things he did was to pay his bookie. Old Solly L., you know. He’s coming to the party. It was a whacking great bill, I’m afraid, but Will paid it and it left him pretty well broke. Solly was overcome. He came down to see him. They had a glorious session. I thought he’d given Will a new lease of life. I filled the pools in, of course. They’re a must, aren’t they?”

  Mr. Campion considered querying this remarkable statement but changed his mind. At the moment, Uncle William’s death was his chief concern. So he said instead:

  “I suppose that window was kept wide all day?”

  “Not lately,” she said sadly. “He’d started getting so cold.”

  Mr. Campion crossed the room to stand beside her, and looked down over the flowers at the stream.

  “Was he insured?” he enquired with uncharacteristic bluntness.

  Minnie glanced at him oddly. “No dear, he wasn’t. He was too old before he thought of it and besides—” she hesitated and finally laughed. “He’d given most of his money to me you know—made it over to me four and a half years ago. That’s why he wanted to live to November. The five-year gift period ended then and there wouldn’t have been death duties to pay. I don’t think it was wrong of me to take it in the first place, do you? I was in a jam and he hadn’t a soul in the world.”

  “I know he hadn’t and, even so, my dear girl, he couldn’t have bought this kind of care for any money on earth.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She sighed. “Oh my dear, I can’t bear it, let’s go out of here and look at some pictures.”

  Mr. Campion was sealing an envelope he had taken from his pocket, and he tucked it away before moving.

  “Doctor sensible?” he enquired casually.

  Minnie rose. “Very young,” she said, “but quite all right. I think he felt we were making a lot of fuss over a foregone conclusion.”

  The tall man smiled at her. “All the same, he
wasn’t surprised when it happened.”

  “Well he was, rather, oddly enough.” Minnie was fastening the window. “So were Gordon Greene and Sir Frederick Hughes. They came down to give the old darling a complete check-up last spring, and they said then he ought to be good for a couple of years. However, go he did, poor pet, so it couldn’t be helped. Well, there it is. Come along.”

  She led him out and relocked the door after them. “I just want to leave it exactly as it was for a bit,” she said.

  Mr. Campion spoke on impulse. The matter had been in his mind for some time, but his curiosity brought it to a head.

  “I was going to approach you professionally, Miranda Straw,” he began. “I was wondering if we ought not to have a portrait of Amanda while her hair is still red.”

  Minnie appeared interested but embarrassed.

  “The full treatment?” she enquired. “I’m afraid it would have to go through Fang’s.”

  “So I should hope. None genuine without,” he agreed lightly as she paused to look at him, her head on one side.

  “I’d love it. There’s something there to put down. I could fit it in too, I think, but it’ll cost you a pretty penny, my lad.”

  He was undisturbed. “I thought it might. But Rupert will bless us later on. I’ll talk to Copley of Fang’s.”

  “If you do, I’ll do my damnedest to get it in this year. I’ve got to start on an Australian beauty next month, but the rest can move back one.”

  “Right. I’ll hold you to it. Things are booming, are they? Did I see something about the Boston Art Gallery?”

  Her strange fierce face glowed. “You did, thank God,” she said. “It’s marvellous. Four. Two flower-pieces, Mrs. Emmerson, and Westy. It’s a queer mixture, isn’t it, flowers and women and kids? And yet I suppose you can’t really photograph any of them without either sentimentality or brutality, and mine’s an essentially realistic approach, even if it is a bit individual. Remind me to show you something.”

  They were back in the kitchen again when he put his last question.

  “Have you seen a stranger near here lately, Minnie?” he enquired. “About eight or nine days ago; a man in a raincoat?”

  He got no further. Behind him there was a crash like the end of the world as Miss Diane dropped a zinc bath on the flagstones. In the instant before he swung round he saw that Minnie’s expression of mild curiosity had not changed. However, there was still sensation to come. As if the clatter had been a roll on the drums, a shadow fell over the bright doorway to the yard and Mr. Lugg, breathing like a porpoise, and indeed looking not unlike one, his face dark with exertion, stepped heavily into the room with a limp body in his arms.

  “’Ere’s another,” he gasped as he planted it on the table, where it stirred and moaned. “Cut ’er stay lace. She ain’t ’arf ’ad a shock.” He turned to Miss Diane by instinct.

  “Give us a drink, duck. Anythink but water. I ’ad to carry ’er the last few yards.”

  Mr. Campion’s horrified stare left Lugg for the sufferer on the table and he saw to his astonishment that it was his grave-tending friend of the morning, the secretary to the bird-watching Fanny Genappe, Miss Pinkerton of the Pontisbright Park Estate.

  Chapter 4

  CLOTS IN CLOVER

  I

  WHEN MISS PINKERTON regained command of herself, she became very angry, as people who feel they have been trapped unfairly into a show of weakness often do. Her sensible face was patched red and white, and her nose and mouth were pinched.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Cassands. Thank you, Mr. Campion. I’m perfectly all right, perfectly.” She sounded outraged. “Just leave me alone. I shall lie down for a moment. I don’t want to give any trouble. Just throw me into Mr. William’s old room. I shall be quite myself in a moment. It was coming on it suddenly like that. Really, the police should have warned me. So very, very revolting and unpleasant.”

  “What is it? What’s happened? Pinky, you look like death.” Minnie took her arm firmly and led her into the body of the house. “Come upstairs. You’ll be all right in a moment. What on earth is it?”

  Mr. Campion did not follow them but turned to Lugg, who was sitting on the edge of the sink taking a pull at a brown glass bottle which Miss Diane had miraculously produced from somewhere beneath it.

  “Now what?” he demanded.

  Mr. Lugg handed the empty vessel back to his benefactress, who was looking at him with a hard incurious stare, and wiped his mouth.

  “Thank you, mate,” he said. “I’ll be seeing you again.” Then, heaving himself upright, he winked at his employer and jerked his chins towards the door before lumbering out. “Bloomin’ woman stuck ’er ’ead right over the corp,” he said as they paused by the pump, just out of earshot of the kitchen. Mr. Campion had to screw up his eyes to see at all after the dimness indoors. Out here the light was like diamonds, and Lugg’s face, vast and slightly mischievous, loomed against a blaze of green and white. “It wasn’t nobody’s fault.” The fat man’s growl was lowered confidentially. “She came ’opping along the path like an ole she-’are, sniffin’ this way and that. There we all was, me and the Super and the Sergeant and the bobby and the doctor ’oo’d just arrived. None of us saw her until she was right on top of us. I put up me ’and but I might as well ’ave tried to stop an ’en taking sights of a bit o’ grub. She darted round me and give a refined laugh. ‘Oo, what’s a-goin’ hon ’ere?’ “ He sniffed. “She fahnd out. Just then orf come ’is ’at, and lord luvaduck!”

  “Did she recognise him?” enquired Mr. Campion with interest.

  “Couldn’t say.” Lugg was thoughtful. “Might ’ave done. But just as easy might not. The way ’e was lookin’ I doubt if ’is wife could have took to him.”

  “Did she scream?”

  “More of a whistle, like a train. Then she started to ’eave. The old Super, ’e’s no amachoor, give me the sign to take ’er away and no loiterin’. I supported of ’er in.”

  He was pleased about something. A fresh masculinity appeared to have been aroused in that well-bolstered breast, and his small black eyes turned towards the door. “Pore ole maid,” he said.

  “Did you find out anything new about the corpse.”

  “Fracture of the occiput. I made that out as I was supporting of her orf. The bloke was only sayin’ the obvious, you could ’ear that. ’E ’adn’t got down to nothing.”

  A foolish little ditty from his undergraduate days crept into Mr. Campion’s mind and mingled with the hum of the bees and the bird song.

  “Sand in his little socks he put

  And wopped her on the occiput”

  “Any sign of a weapon yet?” he enquired.

  “No.”

  “You’d better get back.”

  “In a minute.” The small eyes had developed porcine indignation. “D’you know what you remind me of? A midwife, knowin’ a confinement’s goin’ on in the next room and can’t get at it. For ’eaven’s sake! I thought you’d got private business ’ere to see to.”

  He broke off. A small girl clutching the inevitable bottle to her bosom passed slowly across the end of the yard and vanished into the flower garden. A beatific smile spread over the white countenance.

  “Ho,” he said, “perhaps you know what you are a-doin’ of.” He paused, and added “Sir” as an afterthought. “Yus, I see,” he went on with new enthusiasm, “this ’ere ’ouse must be pertected. I’ll just step back into the kitchen to ’ave a dekko at something I noticed and then I’ll get back to the flics. They call rozzers that in France, did you know? I learnt it on the pickchers.”

  Mr. Campion made no comment but followed him into the cool gloom of the house once more. Minnie and Miss Pinkerton were not visible, but Miss Diane was scrubbing the table, her huge red arms glowing and her earrings shaking until it seemed that the birds upon them must take flight. Mr. Lugg paused at the clean end of the board and leant upon it, his hands placed squarely on the damp surface. Miss Diane promptly ceased
her toil to imitate him, so that they faced one another like poised buffalo, heads down for the charge.

  “I seen you before,” said Lugg without preamble.

  “I thought you ’ad,” she said woodenly, her clear skin bright in the shadowy room.

  The fat man’s eyes were lost as he narrowed them in an effort of recollection.

  “You was on top of one of those ruddy great railway delivery vans, ’orse-drawn,” he said at last. “You was in tight trousers and you ’ad a pinky bow in your ’air, and you was eatin’ a bite of bread and Bovril.”

  “Marmite,” she corrected him, laughing.

  “So it was, I daresay,” he agreed. “We was ’eld up in the traffic for an hour and an ’arf outside the old Mansion ’Ouse. . . . .”

  “You was in your bus. . . . .”

  “Call it a car, missis.” He was affronted. “That was ’is Lordship ’ere’s reconditioned second-’and mechanic’s snip. I was in me shover’s uniform . . .”

  “I know you was,” she said. “It’s years and donkey’s years ago. Fancy you rememberin’. I frew you an orange.”

  Mr. Lugg raised a hand as large as a Bath Chap. “You frew me a happle, my girl,” he said, “and don’t you forget it. Well, I got to git on now. Got a spot of trouble on me ’ands. But—” his eyes wandered to the flower garden whence the child had vanished, “—I’ll be back, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “I’m always ’ere except when I’m at ’ome. Cheery-ho. I thought I’d seen you before when you first come in.”

  “Cheery-ho ducks,” said Mr. Lugg, and smiled at Mr. Campion as they went out together. “’Er and me is old friends.”

  “So I see.” Mr. Campion was amazed by the coincidence. “I’m very glad to hear it because she knows something about that corpse.”

  “Getaway!”

  “I think so. Do you know her well enough to find out what it is?”

  Mr. Lugg began to laugh with a skittishness Mr. Campion never remembered seeing in him before.

  “I never set eyes on ’er before this afternoon in all me natural, Cock,” he said, “but since you arsk, I don’t think she’ll ’ide much from me.”