The Allingham Casebook Page 6

  The thin man avoided any hint of sympathy. “You said something about a scapegoat,” he ventured.

  Luke scowled. “That’s the unforgivable bit… I’m not all that stirred by the losses of insurance companies, but some things get under my skin. When Miss Know-All took over the apartment on a Tuesday evening she paused at the porter’s box – partly, no doubt, to let him get an eyeful of the crushed sapphire mink, but ostensibly to tell him that she expected a Mrs Pegg to call in with some laundry and to ask him to send her straight up.”

  Mr Campion’s eyebrows rose behind his spectacles.

  “How old world!”

  “That’s what the porter thought. He’s an intelligent chap, an ex-sergeant called Bravington. He’s had the job for years and, as he said, he was surprised because old women with comfortable London names don’t come trotting round with the washing in these days. Now you have to do it yourself in a machine which looks as if it ought to stand on a pier and show you what the butler saw.”

  “Yet she arrived, I suppose?” Mr Campion was very interested. “Basket and all, no doubt.”

  “Basket and all,” Luke agreed. “It’s a pleasure to work with you, chum. She arrived but, unless I’m losing my grip, she wasn’t an accomplice. I’ve taken her pretty well to pieces, poor old thing, and I think she’s genuine. See how you feel.” He slid off the desk to cross the room to an inner door. “I’ve just been having a session with the two of them face to face,” he explained. “Perhaps I’m round the bend, but I think this one is innocent.”

  He went out to return a moment later with a withered scrap of a woman whose shabby, man’s overcoat was buttoned across an overall as gay as a flower-border. She wore an infant’s knitted cap of pink wool and, to Mr Campion’s incredulous astonishment, still carried a shallow basket complete with a piece of faded chintz tied over its mouth. The moment she spoke, however, she convinced him that if she was an anachronism she was certainly no phoney.

  “You’re looking at me barsket,” she said huskily, her old eyes peering into his own. “I brought it, see, to show the gentleman it wouldn’t hold no fur coat. It couldn’t take it – wouldn’t go in. I see the coat in ’er drorin-room when I called. Lying there on the studiho couch voluptuous it was, like it was alive. It was big, you know, big as an animal.”

  “Just a minute, Ma.” Luke dropped a hand on her shoulder while he spoke to his friend. “Mrs Pegg here used to be a cleaner at Cuppage’s stores and Melanie Miller knew her there. Then early this year Mr Pegg, her husband, had a little – uh – trouble which resulted in the shop dismissing her…”

  “’E went inside for burglary, dear.” Mrs Pegg lowered her voice confidingly, making Mr Campion feel honoured by true friendship. “It ’appens to ’im from time to time although a better man never lived, I’ll say that. But the manager at the store ’ad to put me orf. I was a good worker, ’e said, but he dursent let me ’ave the key, see? Then some of the girls said it was a shame and they give me what work they could. That’s why when Miss Importance says, ‘Oo, could you oblige me by bringin’ my sheets round to my noo flat ternight?’ Well, I did. To ’elp ’er, see? After all, while Pegg’s restin’ I’ve got to live.”

  “Of course.” Luke sounded as if he had known her all his life as indeed he had, in type. “She brought the washing round to Sweetwater Court, Campion, and was admitted to the flat. There she had a drink…”

  “Only one!” Mrs Pegg put in quickly. “She ’ad it ready for me when I come in. ‘Oo, Mrs P,’ she says. ‘I’m just ’aving a nightcap, will you ’ave one?’ Then she poured it out and I drank it while she took the barsket into the bedroom.”

  “She left her own drink unfinished on the table while she did this, I think you said?” Luke put in.

  “That’s right, duck. But I didn’t put nothink in it. I wouldn’t be so wicked for one thing and I ’adn’t got nothink to put for another. Anythink the police found she put there for them to find. When she come back she said ‘Cheers’, knocked the drink back and gave me my money. I come away then and the downstairs doors was locked, so the porter ’ad to open up for me. I wasn’t carryin’ no sapphire mink, boys.” As her husky voice ceased, she stood looking up at them, a bright-eyed bundle as feckless and tousled as the London sparrow she resembled. “’Ow could I?” she demanded.

  Mr Campion rose with sudden decision. His smile was an echo of Luke’s own. “How indeed?” he murmured. “Charles, it appears to be up to us to prove that point. Perhaps you and I could have a word with porter Bravington?”

  The commissionaire’s cubby-hole in the hallway of Sweetwater Court was built in the panelling, its open hatch giving directly on to the front door. As soon as he saw it, and met the man who kept it, Mr Campion began to share Luke’s bewilderment. Bravington was not the type to let much get past him. His first words confirmed the impression.

  “I saw and spoke to the woman Pegg when she left the building that night and she had nothing in her basket which could have been more bulky than a handkerchief. I noticed particularly. Ever since the trouble here last year I’ve been very careful when dealing with strangers,” he announced, standing stiffly before them in his neat blue uniform, his grey head shorn to the bone in the closest of haircuts. “This block of residences is very well-kept; the landlord is most particular and the upset we had then shook us both properly. I always keep that picture there to remind me.” He stepped back from the entrance to his little room to show them a collection of trophies on the tiny shelf over the heater. Amongst several others there was a framed photograph cut from a newspaper. Mr Campion adjusted his glasses and regarded it with polite interest. It showed nothing but a leather-bound canvas travelling bag resting on an upholstered bench which he recognised as the one in the hall outside.

  “Er… quite,” he said at last.

  Mr Bravington regarded him severely.

  “It was that bag what saved my sight,” he said earnestly. “It was about nine o’clock one morning about this time last year when two young thugs, overgrown louts they were, pushed in here and demanded my keys. One of them took out a bottle of ammonia – to throw in my face, you see? – when Mr Jenner, one of our residents, happened to come down the stairs and see him. Mr Jenner was too far away to reach the youngster but, quick as a flash, he pitched the bag he was carrying straight at the brute and knocked the bottle out of his hand.”

  “And that’s the bag?” Mr Campion looked at the cutting again. “I see the initials – HJ”

  “That’s the bag, sir. Mr Horace Jenner’s bag. He always takes it with him when he goes travelling for his business every Wednesday. He comes back on Fridays; he’s in the art trade. He’s been here for twenty years, same as I have, and his wife is most particular. They’ve got a beautiful flat. She keeps it like a bandbox. If I take anything up there for her she gets me to change my shoes in the vestibule, so I don’t mark the floors. You’ll notice they’re very particular people.”

  “I do. Why did the newspaper men photograph the bag and not Mr Jenner?”

  “Because ’e was above it, sir. ‘The bag saved the porter not me’, he told them, laughing.”

  “Heartily, no doubt,” murmured Mr Campion, absently. “I see. What about the other residents?”

  “We’ve been into that with our customary thoroughness, I’m afraid.” The Chief Inspector spoke with a mixture of pride and regret. “There are very few of them, they’re all on the wrong side of forty-five and have each been living here for ten years or more. The whole of the top floor is occupied by a bed-ridden invalid and his two old sisters. A couple of businessmen, Mr Merton and Mr Long, both in the tea trade, live with their families in the two apartments below. On the floor beneath them is the flat the girl took, with Mr Jenner and his house-proud wife across the hall and below that, on the first stage, there is the town residence of the old Earl of Granchester, which is closed until his lordship returns from South Africa. Each flat was examined on the morning of the robbery. The coat wasn’t
in the building.”

  Mr Campion nodded absently. He knew Luke well enough to be certain that every obvious step had already been taken and that any possibility of an accomplice having been disguised as an early morning deliveryman or postman had been fully explored as a matter of routine.

  “Three people and three people only went out of the building that Wednesday morning before Melanie Miller gave the alarm,” the Chief Inspector went on. “We’ve reduced that point to a complete certainty. Mr Merton and Mr Long left for Mincing Lane together, as they usually did, and Mr Jenner came down alone to catch his train a few minutes after them. Actually, he told us, he was late that particular day and had to wait at Euston Station for a second train but that had no significance.” He paused and spread out his hands. “It’s crazy,” he said. “Either the coat vanished into air or Melanie is right and somehow Mrs Pegg secreted it in her basket and managed to dispose of it afterwards – I don’t know which version I find more unlikely. How do you feel, Campion?”

  Mr Campion sighed.

  “If your little Miss Know-All has moved back to Lilac Maisonettes and Mum, I think we should drop in on them, don’t you know,” he murmured. “I see how it was done but I should like to check with the estate office of their buildings.” He grinned suddenly. “That triumphant smile will fade when she is persuaded to hand over the cloakroom ticket, I fancy.”

  “Cloakroom…? What are you talking about?” Luke’s tone was startled and his stare blank. Mr Campion took his arm.

  “Where else can the coat be, Charles?” he said gently.

  “By the way, Bravington, how many bags was Mr Jenner carrying that morning, did you notice?”

  The porter hesitated. “I can’t say, sir,” he said at last. Sometimes he takes a second one. I’m not sure if he had two that morning – but if you’ll forgive me for saying so, I can’t credit what you’re suggestin’. Mr Jenner wouldn’t lend himself to such a thing. He couldn’t have even met the young woman and even if he had, he’d have to have a very strong reason before he helped anybody to that extent – particularly with Mrs Jenner about.”

  Mr Campion nodded, his eyes serious.

  “A very strong reason – yes, indeed,” he agreed. “Well, now, Charles. If you’re still hunting mink, it’s Lilac Maisonettes, and don’t spare the horses.”

  Half an hour later Melanie the Mink and her mother, a vast woman in an apron who confirmed all one’s worst fears for her daughter’s future development, confronted the Chief Inspector and his companion across the kitchen table of their home in Plum Street, North-East. Luke was holding out his hand. “The cloakroom ticket, please,” he insisted. “Who has it? You or your mother?”

  “Me?” Mrs Miller snatched up the cookery book, apparently to defend herself. “Why, I never left home all that day! And I’ve got witnesses to prove it.”

  “I daresay you have,” Luke sounded grim. “I’ll have the ticket from you all the same, if you please. That’s where it is, is it?” He leaned forward and took a slip of paper, folded to make a marker, which protruded from the book’s greasy pages. As the woman watched him he unfolded it upon the table.

  “Euston Station. Left Luggage Office,” he said softly and turned to Campion. “And that’s the neatest trick of the week,” he announced frankly. “What put you on to it?”

  The distressing formalities were over, Melanie was on her way to the station, and Campion and Luke were driving back to Central London together when the man in the horn-rims explained.

  “It merely turned out to be an exercise in deduction on the elementary or classic pattern, don’t you think?” he said modestly. “One follows the rules in these cases and the answer arrives on the penny-in-the-slot principle. When a problem appears to be insoluble because it is contained in a box, one is enjoined to hunt for the sliding panel, starting with any little peculiarity which strikes one as unusual.”

  Luke grinned. “You can cut the lecture,” he said good naturedly. “I couldn’t see anything unusual. That’s what foxed me. What was it that made you think twice?”

  “The woman who forced the porter to change his shoes in the vestibule,” said Mr Campion promptly. “The unusual thing about a woman like that is the fact that the husband puts up with her. As soon as I considered that point I realised that Mr Jenner didn’t live with his house-proud wife all the time. His habit was to spend two and a half days every week somewhere else. Not unnaturally, I asked myself if it were possible that he spent these days in some humbler but happier establishment where the furnishings were not taken so seriously. In Lilac Maisonettes, perhaps. I then looked at the newspaper picture of his bag and I thought that to a very observant eye like Miss Know-All’s it was a distinctive sort of item, its travel stains were defined. The initials HJ too are not uncommon.”

  Luke began to laugh.

  “I get it,” he said. “As soon as we called at the estate office and discovered that there was a traveller living in the next block to the Millers called Herbert Johns – who was away most of the time but who always came home for Wednesdays and Thursdays – I saw it at once. Melanie read about the attempted robbery in the paper and recognized the bag, I suppose. She would. Nosey and remembering, that’s Melanie.”

  “Not attractive traits,” agreed Mr Campion. “To do her justice, though, I don’t suppose she thought of using the information until she won the mink and was thinking how to beat the insurance people. Then she sought out Jenner and applied the acid.”

  “Before she took the flat?”

  “Oh, no!” Campion looked scandalised. “Jenner wasn’t in it until the very last moment. I’m sure of that. She shocked him into it. That’s how she got him to play. I think you’ll find, Charles, that when Mr Jenner said goodbye to his fussy wife and stepped out of his front door that Wednesday morning, he walked unexpectedly into the arms of a young woman whom he recognised with horror as a neighbour in his other life. I think all the woman did was to hand him a canvas travelling bag, remarkably like the one he was carrying, and say softly but doubtlessly very clearly: ‘Put this in the cloakroom at Euston for me, Mr Johns. You can drop the ticket through the letter box at mother’s when you go home to Lilac Mansions tonight.’”

  “Phew!” Luke shook his head. “That must have been a facer. He fell for it, poor chap. The request did not appear criminal, of course. All the same, he shouldn’t have done it. It was asking for trouble.”

  Mr Campion cocked an eye at him.

  “He might have asked for even more trouble if he had retreated into his apartment with Melanie after him,” he murmured.

  Luke’s eyes widened. “You’ve got something there!” he said heartily. “She might not have changed her shoes in the vestibule, might she? That wouldn’t do!”

  One Morning They’ll Hang Him

  It was typical of Detective Inspector Kenny, at that time DDI of the L Division, that, having forced himself to ask a favour, he should set about it with the worst grace possible. When at last he took the plunge, he heaved his fourteen stone off Mr Campion’s fireside couch and set down his empty glass with a clatter.

  “I don’t know if I needed that at three o’clock in the afternoon,” he said ungratefully, his small eyes baleful, “but I’ve been up since two this morning dealing with women, tears, simple stupidity and this perishing rain.” He rubbed his broad face and presented it scarlet and exasperated at Mr Campion’s back. “If there’s one thing that makes me savage it’s futility!” he said.

  Mr Albert Campion, who had been staring idly out of the window watching the rain on the roofs, did not glance round. He was still the lean, somewhat ineffectual-looking man whose appearance had deceived so many astute offenders in the last twenty years. His fair hair had bleached into whiteness and a few lines had appeared round the pale eyes which were still, as always, covered by large horn-rimmed spectacles, but otherwise he looked much as Kenny first remembered him – “Friendly and a little simple – the old snake!”

  “So, there’
s futility in Barraclough Road too, is there?” Campion’s light voice sounded polite rather than curious.

  Kenny drew a sharp breath of annoyance.

  “The Commissioner has phoned you? He suggested I should look you up. It’s not a great matter – just one of those stupid little snags which has some perfectly obvious explanation. Once it’s settled, the whole case is open-and-shut. As it is, we can’t keep the man at the station indefinitely.”

  Mr Campion picked up the early edition of the evening paper from his desk.

  “This is all I know,” he said holding it out, “Mr Oates didn’t phone. There you are, in the Stop Press, Rich Widow in Barraclough Road West. Nephew at police station helping investigation. What’s the difficulty? His help is not altogether wholehearted perhaps?”

  “Ruddy young fool,” he said, and sat down abruptly. “I tell you, Mr Campion, this thing is in the bag. It is just one of those ordinary, rather depressing little stories which most murder cases are. There’s practically no mystery, no chase – nothing but a wretched little tragedy. As soon as you’ve spotted what I’ve missed, I shall charge this chap and he’ll go before the magistrates and be committed for trial. His counsel will plead insanity and the jury won’t have it. The judge will sentence him, he’ll appeal, their Lordships will dismiss it. The Home Secretary will sign the warrant and one morning they’ll take him out and they’ll hang him.” He sighed. “All for nothing,” he said. “All for nothing at all. It’ll probably be raining just like it is now,” he added inconsequentially.