More Work for the Undertaker Read online

  Mr Campion was growing cold.

  ‘Yet the man whose address is on the label had other views?’ he suggested.

  The small eyes did not waver but the pink face deepened in colour, and a rueful smile, which was infinitely confiding, twitched the ugly little mouth.

  ‘Ah, you saw it,’ he said. ‘I’m caught and I may as well admit it. I’m caught proper. He saw your name-plate, Rowley boy. He’s very fly, is Mr Campion. I ought to have known that from all I’ve heard from your Uncle Magers.’

  The idea of Mr Lugg being anybody’s uncle was sufficiently unnerving, but the compliment and the flattering flicker of the eyelids as it was ventured was definitely unpleasant. Campion waited.

  The undertaker let the silence go on a fraction too long. Then he sighed.

  ‘Vanity,’ he said superbly. ‘Vanity. You’d be surprised how often I hear that in church, and yet it don’t seem to have done me the good it might. Vanity, Mr C., that’s what that there name-plate shows you. The vanity of Jas Bowels.’

  Mr Campion was diverted but not beguiled. He said nothing and laid a restraining hand on Miss Roper, who had taken breath for speech.

  Jas saddened. ‘I’ll have to put it to you,’ he said finally. ‘There was a gentleman in this house once that me and the boy took a real fancy to. Am I right, Rowley?’

  ‘As you say, Dad.’ The younger Mr Bowels spoke with emphasis but there was frank curiosity in his eyes.

  ‘Mr Edward Palinode.’ Jas spoke with real relish. ‘A lovely name for a headstone. He was a fine figure of a man too, something like meself. Broad, you see, and wide at the shoulders. They always make a beautiful coffin.’

  The clear eyes regarded Mr Campion thoughtfully rather than with speculation.

  ‘I loved that man, in a professional way. I don’t know if you can understand that, sir?’

  ‘In a glass darkly,’ murmured Campion and could have cursed himself. His tone had betrayed him and the undertaker grew faintly more wary.

  ‘It isn’t easy for one man to see another’s professional pride. It’s an artist’s pride, really,’ he continued with dignity. ‘I used to sit in the lady’s kitchen here and listen to the bombs dropping, and to keep me mind at peace I’d think of work. I’d look at Mr Edward Palinode and I’d think “If you go before me, Mr Palinode,” I’d think, “I’ll do you a treat, I will,” and I meant it.’

  ‘Dad did mean it,’ put in Rowley suddenly, as if Campion’s silence was getting on his nerves. ‘Dad’s a craftsman, that’s what Dad is.’

  ‘That’ll do, boy.’ Jas accepted the tribute and threw it lightly aside. ‘Some people understand these things and some people don’t. What I’m coming to, Mr C., is something you will understand. I did wrong, and in a way I made a fool of meself. Pure vanity, that’s what it was.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ conceded Campion, who was shivering. ‘You’re trying to tell me you made it on speculation, I take it?’

  A happy smile lit up Mr Bowels’s face and for the first time his eyes looked shrewd and alive.

  ‘I see we can talk, you and me, sir,’ he said, dropping the comedy performance like a cloak. ‘I’ve had old Magers all the evening and I thought, “Well, anyone who employs you must know what’s what,” I thought, but I wasn’t sure, you see. Yes, of course, I made it on spec. When Mr Palinode died I took it for granted we should get the order. In fact I started on me masterpiece when he was first took ill. “The time’s come,” I said. “I’ll start on it and if you ain’t ready it’ll keep.” I didn’t realize how long.’ He laughed with genuine amusement. ‘Vanity, vanity. I made it on appro and the perishing old blighter wouldn’t have it. It’s a laugh, really. He’d seen me watching him, see?’

  It was a creditable performance and Mr Campion regretted the necessity to mar it.

  ‘I thought these things were made to measure?’ he ventured.

  Jas was equal to the occasion. ‘So they are, sir, so they are,’ he agreed heartily. ‘But we old experts, we know within a little just from looking. Matter of fact, I made it to fit meself. “You’re no bigger than what I am,” I said, thinking of him. “If you are you’ve deceived me and you’ll ’ave to ’ave a tuck in you.” She’s a lovely job. Solid oak, veneered ebony. If you’ll come over to the shop in the morning, sir, I’ll show her to you in the light.’

  ‘I’ll see her now.’

  ‘No, sir.’ The refusal was gentle but adamant. ‘Neither torchlight nor the narrer passage would do her justice. You’ll excuse me, sir, but I couldn’t do it, not if you was the King of England. I can’t bring it in the house either, because some of the old folks might come down and that wouldn’t be the thing at all. No. You’ll excuse of us tonight and in the morning I’ll have her all shined up. And you’ll not only say “She does you credit, Bowels,” you’ll say, but I wouldn’t be surprised but what you’ll add, “Put her on one side, Bowels. She’ll suit me one of these days,” you’ll say. “If not for meself, for a friend.”’

  The face was smiling, the eyes merry, but there were tiny beads of sweat under the hard brim of the black hat. Campion watched with interest.

  ‘It wouldn’t take me a moment to come down,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I buy things much more easily at this time of night.’

  ‘Then we won’t impose on you, sir.’ Jas was brisk. ‘Take her along, boy. We’ve got to get across the road while it’s dark, sir, if you’ll excuse us.’

  He was behaving admirably. There was no panic, no undue haste. Only the sweat betrayed him.

  ‘Is Lugg with you?’

  ‘He’s in bed, sir.’ Once again the blue eyes were child-like. ‘We sat up talking and filling our glasses, mentioning his sainted sister, my late wife, sir, and poor old Magers he got quite overcome. We put him to bed and let him rest.’

  Knowing Mr Lugg’s alcoholic capacity to be as considerable as his emotional range was limited, Mr Campion was surprised. He controlled it, however, and made a last probe.

  ‘I’ve got a man in the house,’ he began. ‘He ought to be on duty. At least let me tell him to give you a hand.’

  The undertaker revealed his mettle. He hesitated.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said at last. ‘It’s kind of you. It surely is. But no, sir. Me and the boy are used to it, you see. If it wasn’t empty, now, well that’d be another story. But there’s only the weight of the wood to carry. Good night, sir. We feel it’s an honour to have met you. See you in the morning, I hope. You’ll excuse me for being so personal, but if you stand by that open window in your thin robe, sir, well. I’ll be seeing you when you won’t be seeing me, if I make meself plain. Good night, sir,’ and he faded quietly into the darkness.

  ‘He’s a very good man,’ whispered Miss Roper as she closed the window on the two figures bumping their way gently up the area steps. ‘He’s thought very highly of in the street, but I never feel I can get to the bottom of him.’

  ‘Ah,’ murmured Mr Campion absently, ‘I wonder what he’s got in the bottom of the Queen Mary?’

  ‘But, Albert, that was a coffin. There wasn’t a body in it.’

  ‘Wasn’t there? Perhaps just a little foreign body,’ said Mr Campion with considerable cheerfulness. ‘And now, Auntie, since we appear to have overcome any initial shyness and can speak from the heart, the stink coming up from your basement can no longer be ignored. Come on, darling, tell me the truth, what’s cooking?’

  ‘Go along with you!’ It was typical of Renee that it was the endearment which she heard most clearly. ‘It’s only old Miss Jessica. It pleases her and doesn’t hurt anybody else. But I won’t have it in the daytime, because she gets in the way and really there is a smell. It’s worse than usual tonight.’

  Campion looked apprehensive. Miss Jessica, as he recalled, was Cardboard Hat, of the park, and, recollecting some of Yeo’s more intimate details of her habits, he hardly liked to think of the possibilities which came into his mind.

  ‘You’ve got a fine old menagerie here
, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘What is she doing?’

  ‘Making little mucks,’ said Miss Roper casually. ‘I don’t think they’re quite medicine. She lives on them.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear. You’re making me feel quite jumpy. We’ve had our bit of excitement tonight. That name on the coffin gave me quite a turn until Mr Bowels explained. You would think Mr Edward wouldn’t have disappointed him. He didn’t have a very good one either, but I didn’t say so. There’s no point in hurting people, is there, when a thing’s done and the bill’s coming in.’

  ‘To return to Miss Jessica,’ Campion sounded chastened, ‘are you telling me she’s distilling?’

  ‘No she’s not, not in my house.’ She flared with indignation. ‘That’s illegal. I may have had a murder in the house but that doesn’t mean I’m going to set up as a law-breaker generally.’ Her squeaky voice shook with irritation. ‘The poor old girl is a bit of a crank, that’s all. She believes in New Food, and so on. I let her go her own way, although she does make me wild when she wants to eat grass and send her rations to the people who tried to kill her two or three years ago. “You do what you like,” I say to her, “but if you want to feed the hungry there’s your own brother downstairs with every bone sticking out through his homespun. Give it to him and save postage.” She says I’m “doomed to insularity”.’

  ‘Where is she? May I go and see her?’

  ‘Dear, you can do what you like. I told you that. She’s annoyed with me at the moment because she thinks I’m a Philistine which I am, so I shan’t come with you. She’s quite harmless and the cleverest of the three in one way. At least she can look after herself. You go down. You can find her. Follow your nose.’

  He grinned and turned his torch on her.

  ‘All right. Go and get your beauty sleep.’

  She patted her lace cap straight at once.

  ‘I need it, do I? Oh, you’re laughing. You are a naughty boy! Yes, all right. I’ll leave the blooming place to you, ducky, loonies and all. I’m fed up with the lot of them. See you in the morning. Be good and I’ll bring you a cupper in bed.’

  She trotted off, a ghost of a warmer world, leaving him alone in the cluttered room. His nose led him to the top of the basement stairs and there almost dissuaded him. Miss Jessica might have been tanning, the atmosphere was so remarkable. He went quietly down into the reasty dark.

  The stairs ended in the nest of doors, one of which was ajar. It led, as he remembered, into the main kitchen in which he and Clarrie Grace had sat talking earlier in the evening. Now it was in darkness, but the sound of regular snoring from the stoveside chair announced that Detective Officer Corkerdale was impervious both to a sense of duty and partial asphyxiation.

  The air was very thick and the uppermost odour was strange as well as unpleasant. It was a whiff of ‘dragons’ lair’; strange and awful.

  A sound from behind the door on his right decided him. He thrust it open cautiously. The room was unexpectedly large, one of those vast back kitchens for which past generations of great feeders had found use. It was stone-floored and white-washed, but unfurnished save for a rough wooden table built out from a wall. On this was a gas ring, two oil stoves and an astonishing array of treacle tins, most of which appeared to be in use as cooking utensils.

  Miss Jessica Palinode, clad in a butcher’s overall, was at work there. She spoke without looking round and before he realized she had heard him.

  ‘Come in and close the door, if you please. Don’t disturb me for a moment. I shan’t be long.’

  It was a fine clear educated voice, more incisive than her elder sister’s, and once again he was pulled up by the family’s remarkable authority. He also noticed a return of the half-childish sense of alarm which he had first experienced when she had looked up as he watched her through the miniature telescope. Here was a real witch if ever there was one.

  Without the cardboard hat her elf-locks flowed freely and not entirely unattractively. He waited in silence and she went on stirring her brew in the treacle tin over the gas ring. With some relief he discovered she was not omniscient but had merely mistaken him for Corkerdale.

  ‘Now I know perfecty well that you should be on guard in the garden,’ she remarked. ‘Miss Roper took pity on you and let you into the kitchen. I shan’t tell on you and I shall expect you not to tell on me. I am not doing anything reprehensible, so your immortal soul, as well as any hopes you may have of promotion are not in jeopardy. I am merely doing my cooking for tomorrow and the next day. Do you understand?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Mr Campion.

  She turned round at once, looked at him with the shrewd intelligence he had noticed in her before, and went back to the tin.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am staying here. I smelled something and came down.’

  ‘No one warned you, I suppose? The inefficiency in this house is quite extraordinary. Well, never mind. I’m sorry if you were disturbed. Now you know what it is you can go back to bed.’

  ‘I don’t think I shall rest,’ said Campion truthfully. ‘Can I help?’

  She considered the offer seriously. ‘No, I don’t think so. All the rough work is done. I do that first, and then one hand-washing does. You can wipe up later, if you like.’

  He took refuge in the child’s resort of merely waiting. When she decided that her tin had boiled long enough she took it off and turned down the gas.

  ‘It’s not very difficult, and as a recreation I find it amusing, even,’ she remarked. ‘People make a drudgery of feeding themselves. Either that or it’s a rite with them, something holy before which everything else must give way. That’s very ridiculous. I make it a relaxation and I get on very well.’

  ‘I see you do,’ he said. ‘You’re very alert. That doesn’t suggest improper food.’

  She glanced at him again and smiled. It was the same ineffably sweet and disarming smile with which her brother had favoured him. There was grace in it and true intelligence. He felt she had suddenly and rather unfairly become a friend.

  ‘That’s very true,’ she said. ‘I’d ask you to sit down if there was anything to sit on. But these are Spartan times. What about that pail, if you turned it over?’

  It would have been churlish to refuse such an offer, although the knife-sharp rim in conjunction with his thin dressing-gown produced between them a new form of torture. When he was settled she smiled on him again.

  ‘Would you like a nice cup of nettle-tea?’ she said. ‘We’ll have one in a minute. It’s quite as nice as yerba maté and very good for one as well.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Campion looked more optimistic than he felt. ‘I don’t quite understand, though. What are you doing?’

  ‘Cooking.’ She had a laugh like a nice girl’s. ‘It may seem peculiar to you that I have to do it in the middle of the night in my own home, but there’s an excellent explanation for that. Have you heard of a man called Herbert Boon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There you are, you see. Hardly anybody has. I should not have done so myself but I happened to find his book on a stall. I bought it and read it and it’s made my life possible. Isn’t that remarkable?’

  Since she seemed to expect a reply, he made the prescribed polite noise.

  Her eyes, which were of an odd colour, a brownish-green with a hard line round the irises, regarded him with positive excitement.

  ‘I find it fascinating,’ she said. ‘You see, the title of his book is so cheap and so crude that on first sight one discounts it. It’s called How to Live on One-and-Six. Now, this was written in nineteen-seventeen. Since then the index figure has risen. It still sounds miraculous, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Almost incredible.’

  ‘I know. And yet, this is the delightful part, it only sounds absurd because it’s earthy.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Well, material and commonplace. Now, take A Joy For Ever, or Creative Evolution, or Civilization
and its Discontents, aren’t all those absurd titles if taken as literally as you are taking How to Live on One-and-Six? Of course they are. It occurred to me at the time because I was most anxious to know how to live on a very small sum. It’s all very well to have an intellect and to entertain it, but one must first ensure that one can maintain the machine.’

  Mr Campion stirred uneasily on his pail. He felt that, intellectually speaking, he was having a conversation with someone at the other end of a circular tunnel, and was in fact standing directly back to back with her. On the other hand, of course, it was possible that he had become Alice in Wonderland.

  ‘Everything you say is undeniably true,’ he said cautiously. ‘Do you do it?’

  ‘Not quite. Boon lived in a district slightly more rural. Also, of course, he was simpler in his tastes; something of an aesthete, which I am not. I am my mother’s daughter, I am afraid.’

  Campion remembered the celebrated Mrs Theophila Palinode, poetess of the sixties, with some surprise. He saw the likeness now. This dark vivid face burningly alive with the quest of the sweetly impracticable, had once smiled out at him from the frontispiece of a little red volume on his grandmother’s chest of drawers. Miss Jessica was exactly like her, had her elf-locks been curled into ringlets.

  Her clear forceful voice interrupted him.

  ‘I do nearly,’ she said. ‘I’ll lend you the book. It answers such a lot of people’s problems.’

  ‘I should think it might,’ he said sincerely. ‘Dear me yes. What’s in there, may I ask?’

  ‘In this tin? The thing that’s been smelling rather is over there; it’s embrocation for the grocer’s knee. But this is broth of sheep’s jawbone. Not the whole head, that’s too expensive. Boon says “two under-jaws for a farthing” but then he lived in the country and in slightly different times. The modern butchers are very unhelpful.

  He sat looking at her in shocked astonishment. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘is this necessary?’

  A slow, hard expression spread over her face and he realized he had disappointed her.

  ‘Do you mean am I so poor that I have to live like this, or are you merely inquiring if I am mad?’