The Beckoning Lady Read online

  Mr. Campion stared at him until the fat man began to fidget.

  “Oh all right, all right,” he said at last, “I ain’t comin’ out in leaf. She’s rather my type, though. Vi-vacious. This isn’t arf a funny place, orf the map but it’s got hatmosphere. Let me get ’er down to the local and I’ll tell you anythink you want to know. Don’t you go shaking her up. The idea is to keep the cops away from this ’ouse, isn’t it? Well, I’ll get back to these ’ere flickerers. So long. Be good.”

  He waved a careless hand towards the flower garden.

  “Nachure in the spring,” he said, and rolled off towards the small white gate to the meadow.

  As he vanished behind the barn a strange sound reached the speechless Mr. Campion. Mr. Lugg was singing.

  “Roll me o-ho-hover

  In the clo-ho-ver!”

  II

  Old Straw, Minnie’s father, had transformed the inside of the tithe barn into a studio in 1905, when he was at the height of his fame and had given his mind and about half his money to the enterprise. As Mr. Campion stepped into it on that brilliant afternoon, when the east doors which could accommodate a loaded haywain were open to the sky, he wondered at it afresh. The original building, which was of solid oak and the same size and shape as the parish church, had always proved too expensive to heat, and after various experiments the painter had retired from the struggle and had constructed in the northern transept a studio within a studio.

  This room was built eight feet above the main body of the hall, so that the effect was not unlike a stage-set, with the north window as a drop at the back. A carved balcony, railed and balustered, prevented one from falling from the smaller room to the larger, and turned at one end into an elegant staircase. In winter a partition could be erected behind the rail, leaving a large light room within. It was here that Minnie worked, and as Mr. Campion stood on the red-tiled floor of the main building he could hear Amanda moving tea-cups above. He coughed discreetly.

  “He jests at scars,” he remarked conversationally, “who never felt a wound. Is that an otter that I see before me?”

  There was a moment’s silence and then to his gratification a scramble as someone skidded to the balcony.

  “Deny thy father and refuse thy name,” said a cheerful New England voice forthrightly, “or if thou wilt not, be but sworn by love and I’ll no longer be an old Capulet. The otter’s wrong.”

  A thirteen-year-old face, bright as a buttercup and handled like a loving cup with yellow pigtails, beamed at him over the rail.

  “Hullo, I’m Annabelle. Your wife’s up here. I know nearly all that.”

  “Nice for you,” said Mr. Campion.

  “Yes,” she said airily, “not bad. Come and have some tea. I’m going to fetch the children. We mean to polish the table.” She pointed downwards and he saw for the first time the piece of furniture which was so large that his eye had rejected it. It was a twelve-legged Carolean banqueting board, twenty-five feet long, heavily carved below and smoothly shining above, and it took up half the centre of the main hall.

  “That’s a nice thing,” he said inadequately. “Do you slide on it?”

  “No, we put the twins in padded pants and drag them along,” she said gravely. “They’re over-weight. It’s very useful. I’ll go and get them.”

  “Not yet.” Amanda spoke firmly from the background. “They’re over at the cottage, eating. They’ve got to keep the ballast right.”

  “Okay, but it has to be done.”

  “Later. Have some milk.”

  “No more, thank you. I think I’d better go along to the wherry. There’s only Scat and old Harry Buller there, and it must be constructed properly. Perhaps you’d care to discuss your plans with your husband? He hasn’t done a thing yet, not a thing.” With which thrust she slid down the stairs, granted Mr. Campion a provocative glance, and darted round him out into the green and gold afternoon. She was a true Straw, he noted, but had mercifully escaped the nose.

  He went upstairs and the smell of turps and tea met him like a wave of nostalgia. The room reminded him of any studio possessed by Minnie and Tonker, a shabby, cluttered place full of toys and packed with pictures in all stages of composition. Amanda was kneeling on the mat by an electric kettle, a tea-tray set with different coloured cups in front of her.

  “I knew it wasn’t you,” he remarked pleasantly, “by the hair.”

  “Ah, but I knew it was you,” said Amanda, patting the battered leather sofa against which she leant, “by the fervour. I say, whatever happens on Saturday, this must be the real party. The children are having a whale of a time and so is Minnie. She must be as strong as a horse.”

  “Our son is taking to it kindly, I hope?”

  “Very. I last spoke to him when he was sitting on the lawn with an even smaller child, polishing a pile of the most expensive-looking plates. He said ‘Sorry dear, but I must get on.’”

  Mr. Campion sat down. “Interesting,” he said seriously. “Minnie must have harnessed the last wasted energy in the world.”

  His glance fell on the kettle. “Real electricity, eh? That’s an innovation. It must have been quite an effort to get it brought down here from the village.”

  Amanda gave him a thoughtful stare and her honey-coloured eyes were clouded.

  “It’s laid on in here and in two spare bedrooms and the dining-room’ they don’t use,” she observed. “Nowhere else. What’s the matter with Minnie?”

  “Nothing I noticed. She seems remarkably cheerful. At the moment she’s comforting my ghoul friend, Miss Pinkerton from Fanny’s outfit. The poor woman stumbled on the police just as they were raising the body.”

  “Oh dear,” Amanda was sympathetic. “People never look away. But seriously, do you really think that Minnie is all right? The whole place seems to be run like an Alice in Wonderland factory—all crazy union rules.”

  Mr. Campion resumed his spectacles. “It must be something to do with officialdom,” he said. “Everything in the free world is, today. It’ll pass, but at the moment we’re in the midst of it. I know. I’ve lived through the Jazz Age, the Age of Appeasement, the Battle Age. Now it’s the Age of the Official. By the law of averages we ought to move on to something more cheerful next time. Meanwhile, my sweet, I fear we have a more immediate problem.” He hesitated and his eyes grew dark behind his spectacles. “It’s Uncle William. I can’t prove anything yet but I’m terribly afraid someone meant him to go when he did.”

  “Oh Albert, no!” Amanda was sitting back on her heels, her intelligent face paling under its tan. “That’s dreadful,” she said at last. “Are you sure?”

  “Almost. I rather think someone did something very simple and rather horribly offhandedly clever to Uncle William and I take a savage view of that.”

  “Does Minnie know?”

  “No. It would break her heart I think.”

  “Then . . . . . .?”

  “I don’t know.” He raised his head. “Listen. Footsteps. I say, there’s a ferocious draught somewhere.”

  Amanda continued to look troubled but she nodded towards the window, and he saw for the first time that one of the large upper panes was splintered. He eyed it curiously.

  “Someone has chucked something through that from here inside,” he said. “One of Minnie’s labour risks, I should say. I wonder young Annabelle didn’t instruct me to repair that lot pretty smartly.”

  “Who’s pretty smart?” demanded Minnie, striding into the barn. “Good heavens, Albert, can’t you come to tea without finding something awful in the meadows on the way? That poor wretched woman,” she continued, stamping up the stairs and flinging herself into the worn chair opposite him before he could rise. “She’s been shocked out of her wits. A dead tramp, she says.”

  “Tramp?”

  “So Pinky says. A lie-about. Poor chap, I do hope he wasn’t hungry. We could have given him something. Whatever next? Everything seems to happen at these parties. Tea, darling? Bless you, you’r
e saving my life.”

  “Where’s poor Pinky now?” enquired Mr. Campion solicitously.

  “In the drawing-room. Dinah’s with her. I phoned Potter’s Farm—they call it the Pontisbright Park Estate—and told them to send a car for her. All these efficient people go to pieces when they have a physical shock. She’s never seen anything like it before and it’s made her sick. I expect old Lugg is a bit of a horror-monger too, isn’t he? He told her it had been there for weeks, and that she must have passed it every time she crossed the bridge.”

  “What was the lady doing here at all?” enquired Mr. Campion.

  “She was coming to help.” Minnie’s high cheekbones were spotted with colour. “I seem to need a lot of it one way and another. Westy’s mother sent me most of my food or seemed to until recently. Pinky types. She’s employed by Fanny Genappe, but he’s lent her to the man who is handling the transformation of the estate. I think she has plenty of time on her hands, and she offered to help me with any secretarial work I needed. She’s been most attentive.” She shrugged her shoulders, dismissing the subject. “Poor old Fanny,” she remarked after a pause, “it is a shame.”

  Amanda was sitting cross-legged on the mat, her boiler-suit hugging her slenderness. She was still pale but the new subject interested her.

  “I don’t think Aunt Hatt and I will be exactly fond of him if he exploits the village,” she murmured.

  “Fanny?” Minnie was indignant. “Oh, you couldn’t blame Fanny. That really wouldn’t be fair at all. He only bought a little quiet cottage with a few threadbare uplands round it, where the larks nest. That’s all he did. He meant to sneak off there and watch them, but then of course all his dreary money people got hold of him and turned him out, and made him buy up all the land near it, tore the place to pieces and scared away all the larks. It’s always happening to Fanny. As soon as he gets anything he wants they have to snatch it away because it isn’t economic.”

  “But it’s his money,” objected Amanda. “He gets the money doesn’t he?”

  “Oh that old stuff,” said Minnie. She sat for a moment twisting her thin lips, and her piercing eyes were introspective. “It’s not Fanny’s fault.”

  “Then who is to blame?”

  Minnie glanced up, she was frowning still. “I rather imagine it’s a man called Sidney Simon Smith. Do you know him?”

  “Oho!” Mr. Campion sat up. “The S.S.S. man. Is he about?”

  “Very much so. He’s Pinky’s temporary boss. He’s transforming the estate for the Genappe interests. I’ve met him but I wasn’t attracted. What a very modern type he is. Tonker calls him the ‘palindromic V.I.P.’”

  “Why ‘palindromic’?” enquired Amanda.

  Minnie laughed. “You’re supposed to say ‘what!’ and then Tonker says ‘’s P.I.V.’”

  Mr. Campion’s wide mouth twisted. “Sometimes he’s called the ‘Jack in the Boat’.” he murmured. “The one who is doing very nicely. Is he coming to the party?”

  “I expect so.” She seemed to have no feelings in the matter. “Do you remember when there were real parties, Albert?”

  “My hat, yes!” he said fervently. “Twenty of us, as tight as owls on our own exuberance. I remember the one you and Tonker gave down here before you were married, when your father was in Spain. There were stuffed relations all over the house to make it respectable. How crackingly respectable we were! There was a dreadful old lady in bed, some one sitting on the stairs and a very solid-looking person reading The Times in the dining-room. But he had a painted balloon for a head, and when a guest opened the door suddenly the draught caught it and it just sailed away. Who was that who saw it happen?”

  “Someone who didn’t know us very well. I shall never forget his colour. It was the first time I knew the meaning of eau-de-nile.” Minnie was laughing. “I forget his name. All the same, these new shows are great fun. You never know who’s going to arrive, and I do fix it so friends can come too. And then we get to like the new people and they become friends for the next time. It makes the do’s a bit big.”

  “I can see that it might. What is this actually in aid of? Cassands and Co.?”

  “No, this is a Tonker Special.” She was a girl again in her enthusiasm. “It’s a combined Perception and Company Limited and Miranda Straw X-annual Publicity Gala and Fête Champetre. It’s all been audited, vetted, sanctioned and scrutinised, turned inside out and proved to be sound, so our consciences are clear.”

  “Fully tested,” agreed Amanda. “Why X-annual?”

  “Because X is the unknown quantity. We never know when we may have it again.”

  “Eminently reasonable,” agreed Mr. Campion approvingly, “but it sounds like a lot of homework. Tonker and Wally are Perception and Company Limited, aren’t they? What do they actually do?”

  “I think I know that. They’re on a job for Alandel at the moment,” ventured Amanda, referring to the aeroplane manufacturing concern with which she was associated. “They ‘perceive a way,’ don’t they? They’re looking into the sociological aspects of the supersonic bang for us. They’re super P.R. boys with vision, isn’t that it Minnie?”

  The painter leant back in her chair and stretched her long arms above her head.

  “They’re ideas-men,” she said. “A tiny high-powered firm, with no capital to speak of, who have somehow managed to keep independent. They’re rather like a small boy walking through the playground sucking a particularly attractive-looking lolly, but so far they’ve got away with their skins. Obviously they can’t advertise directly, so their best way of doing business is to show their clients to each other, and they have to put on a very good show to get them to play.”

  “Yes, I see that,” he said. “Where do you come in?”

  “Me? Oh, you remember the old Show Sundays of long ago? Tea, sherry, pictures and little pink cakes on the Sunday afternoon before sending-in day? Well, this is a modern version of that. I invite everybody who has anything to do with selling my work, some old clients and some prospective ones. I’ve got Bedger coming from the Lyle, and Van Der Hum and oh—dozens of them. There will be a lot of us. Perception has spent the whole of its allotment on champers and I’m doing the rest.”

  Mr. Campion raised his brows. “Solid champagne?” he enquired.

  She nodded. “I know some people don’t like it, but it’s so easy. And besides—”

  “Besides?”

  “Well, the silliest official would never credit that you’d take a bottle of champagne privately to bed,” she said. “It’d be so difficult, for one thing. But they might be very dubious about gin.”

  “Official?” he was beginning, but she looked away and he changed the subject. “Has Tonker got any surprises for the party?”

  “Dozens.” Her face lit up as it always did when she spoke of her husband. “The prize one is absolutely filthy. Have you heard of Tonker’s Masks? It’s deadly secret, but that doesn’t mean much.”

  “His masks?”

  “Yes. A man’s invented some latex rubber stuff which really is porous. You can breathe through it so it doesn’t make your skin hot. It was too soft for most things, so he went to Tonker to think of something to do with it. Tonker immediately invented a mask which is literally a beauty mask. He calls it the Old Original Skin Deep and you can, unless you’ve got a beak like mine or four or five chins, put on a perfectly new face, padded out where yours needs it, smooth where yours is wrinkled. Conks are disguised and bags concealed. It’s no thicker, except where you need it, than a good foundation of that powder-base stuff, and isn’t so artificial looking. But naturally it’s not alive. Isn’t it a beastly idea? Any one who steals a kiss promptly faints. Tonker thought they’d be so nice for the theatre.”

  Her visitors regarded her in undisguised dismay.

  “How horrible!” said Campion at last. “Have you really seen these things, Minnie?”

  “Of course I have. I helped with the first two. I couldn’t spare the time for any more. Th
ey were fun to play with.” She was lying back in her chair laughing, her eyes watering with amusement. “Tonker and I thought out how to do it, and he got Liz Dean, the beauty woman, to see to the real work. You take a cast of the natural face, you see, and Liz works on it with wax from a sketch of mine. Then you take another cast of that in plaster. Then you make a mould and fill it with the latex, or the inventor does. Then you paint the mask.”

  Mr. Campion ran a finger round the inside of his collar. “It’s got a nasty likely sound,” he said. “But if they have to be made for each person individually they’ll be expensive, probably mercifully prohibitive. We shan’t see many.”

  A crow escaped Minnie. “Don’t you be so sure, my boy. It’s the client’s material, and Tonker has no copyright in the idea. I don’t see why they couldn’t be mass-produced. Famous film-star masks, perhaps, made a bit stretchy to fit anyone whose features were roughly suitable. Can’t you see them in three sizes on sale in the chain stores and all the little gals parading in them? Very likely they wouldn’t fit too well, like those awful bosoms.”

  “Minnie!”

  “I know.” She was still laughing. “It’s one of Tonker’s Frightfuls, like the glübalübalum. He gets them every now and again and they’re always winners. Listen, is that the car from Potter’s? Albert, you can just see the front door if you peek out of that little window at the side there.”

  Mr. Campion rose obediently and craned his neck. “Yes,” he reported. “A Humber Snipe. Chauffeur-driven, and oh yes indeed, Minnie, your friend the palindromic V.I.P.”

  “Mr. Smith?” Minnie sat up, looking apprehensive. “Oh dear, I’d better go down. Tonker says the danger with that man is that he may buy up the firm you’re working for, keep it long enough to sack you, and sell it just in time to be sitting in the office of the next one which grants you an interview. I think you two had better come with me.”

  “I think so too,” muttered Mr. Campion, who had remained at the window. “Here comes Lugg with something which looks ominously like a Superintendent of Police.”