The Beckoning Lady Page 8

  Chapter 5

  TWO ALARMING PEOPLE

  AS SOON AS Mr. Campion came face to face with Superintendent Fred South he realised that Lugg’s estimate of him was very fair. Here indeed was no amateur. He turned out to be a plump elderly man with the face of a comedian, who dressed in highly coloured tweeds which were disarmingly shabby and a good deal too tight for him. His eyes, which might have been designed by Disney, had tufts over them. His walk was buoyant to the point of exaggeration, and as he shook hands he was smiling all over his face.

  Beside him Lugg appeared subdued and wore the expression of a gun-dog who, much against his better judgment, has brought in something unfortunate—say a prize rooster.

  Mr. Campion met them outside the barn some little distance from the front door and he paused to speak to them while Minnie and Amanda went on ahead.

  “Pleased to meet you.” The Superintendent’s expression was packed with semi-secret entertainment. “The Chief Constable told me to look out for you, so I thought I’d just step across the meadow and touch my cap, so to speak. So to speak,” he repeated absently. As he spoke, his bright glance was darting happily in all directions. It was like a small torch beam flickering over a suspicious corner. “Well sir, we’ve got the nasty thing right out of the way for you. There’ll be a few fellows down there taking pictures and scraping up little bits of nonsense for a little while yet, but it’ll be all tidy in no time. Not a bit of paper left on the grass.”

  He was making no real pretence at deception. The thickest skinned could not have taken the words seriously. But he was not in the least irritated. His irony was hearty and even friendly, and Mr. Campion, who had by this time a vast experience of policemen, became very cautious indeed.

  “What is it, Superintendent?” he enquired gravely. “Murder?”

  “You thought so, Mr. Campion, didn’t you?” Fred South chuckled, apparently with pleasure. “So did I. But we must wait for the doctor to tell us. There’s a hole in the poor bloke’s head as big as a house and we can’t think what it was done with.” He stepped back and his glance ran up and down and round and about where the light was slowly turning to gold, on to the cobbles by the door and back into the barn behind them. On every loose and heavy object, a bootscraper, a spade by the gate, a hoe-head lying in the grass, it paused and rested for a while. “We just can’t think at all,” he said.

  “Any hope of identification?”

  Instantly the smiling eyes met his own. “Hope?” South enquired softly. “There’s always a hope, Mr. Campion, even though every scrap of paper on the fellow has been taken away by some wicked thieving person. His money wasn’t touched. He had two pounds three shillings and fivepence on him, but he hadn’t a watch and he hadn’t a baccy-poke, and there were no shreds of tobacco in the linings of his pockets. I wonder if I could bother you for a cigarette, Mr. Campion?”

  The thin man produced his case gravely and offered it to him. “Sailors,” he said. “Or I have some Laymans.”

  South was still grinning, but he was disappointed. “Thank you very much,” he said helping himself. “I usually smoke Blue Zephyrs,” he added shamelessly.

  “Then you do yourself proud,” murmured Mr. Campion, still very seriously. “The telephone number you want, Superintendent, is Whitehall A-B-A-B, extension two hundred. They’ll tell you anything you want to know about me. Ask after Jean.”

  The countryman’s grin grew broader and broader and his dancing eyes were merrily abashed.

  “That’s one little job done then,” he said meaningly. “How was I to know? Well now, what do you think that is then, Mr. Campion, that dead feller?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea and I can’t imagine. To the best of my belief I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Ha,” said Fred South, “I have.” He took off his green pork-pie hat to scratch his thinning crown. “Blow me, I can’t think where.”

  “Will it be possible to take prints?”

  He nodded, laughing and twinkling with implied confiding. “Surely. He’s nowhere near as far gone as we thought. The doctor says about a week, and he’s never very far wrong. Wonderful nose for a corpse, the doctor. But I don’t think we shall find this fellow’s picture in the library. If I see a wicked man alive or dead, and I ought to know him, I get a kind of pricking here.” He held up his solid red thumb. “I don’t know why. I had an old granny who could do the same kind of thing. A terrible old woman she was. This chap’ll come back to me sooner or later.”

  “Are you sure you’ve seen him?”

  Fred South nodded again and swayed a little on the balls of his feet. Innuendoes and hidden meanings, each presented with smiles and chuckles, seemed to shoot out of him like sparks. The thin man found him terrifying.

  “I’ve seen the fellow,” South said when he had finished giggling. “I’ve seen him and I’ve got something against him. Yet I don’t think he’s a client of ours. I may be wrong, but I don’t think so. I’ll have him cleaned up and I’ll pore over him.”

  “I wish you luck,” said Mr. Campion. “Do you want to see anybody else here?”

  “No.” The Superintendent was shaking his head in helpless mirth over some joke which he clearly felt they shared. “No, I just wanted to find out if everybody who was here about a week ago is still here and intends to remain here, and I can best do that in the kitchen, I think.” His glance slid to Lugg and he creaked a little as if he was suppressing roars of laughter. “No need to disturb the distinguished lady painter, nor the visiting children, nor the angry artist at the cottage, nor yet his busy missis. They’re all getting ready for a party, I understand. The Chief Constable has got an invite.” He broke off to slap his thigh. “Perhaps we shall all get one.” His smile faded and he moved his head sharply. “Who’s this gentleman coming along now, sir?”

  There had been some little activity before the front door for some time. Miss Pinkerton, evidently explaining that she did not want to give any trouble to anybody, had been helped into the back of the car. Now a sturdy, middle-sized man in a dark city suit was hurrying over the stones towards them.

  “The name is Smith,” murmured Mr. Campion. “He is visiting the new estate on the hill, is not well known to the Cassands family, appears to be collecting the secretary who was sickened by the corpse. Yes,” he added aloud cheerfully, “try the kitchen by all means.”

  “Campion?” Sidney Simon Smith raised his voice while still some yards distant. He appeared to be in a tremendous hurry and certainly wasted no time whatever in ordinary civilities. They received a fleeting impression of a flattened version of the middle-aged pretty-boy face, complete with protuberant blue eyes and corrugated dark brown hair. His urgent voice was remarkably pleasant and friendly. “Campion, have you a car down here?” He came no nearer but hovered, glancing back at the Snipe as if he feared it might leave without him.

  “Not with me.” Mr. Campion, who was old-fashioned and whose only previous meeting with the man had been brief, sounded unusually definite.

  “Shame. Has he got one?” The S.S.S. man indicated the Superintendent, intimating thereby that he was aware of his existence.

  “No. He came by the fields.”

  “What about you?” Lugg got a dazzling smile, equalising, kind.

  “That’s my batman.”

  “Oh I see.” The smile was taken away from Mr. Lugg, who was amused. Smith was signalling to the chauffeur to remain where he was. “I say Campion, is that red-headed girl the Amanda Fitton of Alandel?”

  “Yes.”

  “She says she’s your wife.”

  “So she is.”

  The pretty-boy face crumpled angrily. He had still come no nearer.

  “Nobody told me that. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t cry about it, mate,” Lugg was beginning, but was silenced in time by a look from his employer.

  “There aren’t any cars then?”

  “No.”

  “I see. And Miranda Straw hasn’t one eith
er? Well, wait a minute while I tell the Genappe chauffeur to come back for me. There was no point in him doing the double journey if someone else had a car.”

  He ran off again and they all looked after him.

  “Waste not, want not,” said Superintendent South.

  The three men resumed their conference.

  “This is the only thing I’ve got to show you at the moment, Mr. Campion. Look, a little bronze bead,” South said, opening a matchbox to display it. “It was lying on the body’s shirt, just near the collar, quite loose. My Sergeant happened to see it. I can’t think where it could have come from.”

  Mr. Campion stared at it. It was less than a quarter of an inch across, and flat. It reminded him of a beaded footstool which had stood in the spare bedroom at Uncle William’s mother’s house at Cambridge, when he himself had been a very young man. He handed it back.

  “Odd,” he murmured.

  The Superintendent pocketed the box. “It probably means nothing at all,” he remarked, his grin reappearing. “You find the strangest things in fields. I found a fried egg once, an ordinary fresh fried egg, still hot, miles and blessed miles from anywhere. There wasn’t a caravan, there wasn’t a fire, there wasn’t a soul in acres and acres, and yet there it was lying in the grass like a daisy. Must have fallen out of an aeroplane.”

  They both looked at him fixedly and he laughed again all over his face.

  “That’s what I put on my report, anyway,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anything else. I only mention it to explain why I say that open fields are very tricky places. Now I’ll trouble you further, Mr. Lugg, if I may. You and me will go round to the back door together and you can introduce me to the help. Here comes the gentleman who understands the value of time. We’ll leave him to you, Mr. Campion. Good-day.”

  They went off together, walking a little way round to avoid Smith, who was hurrying back, his hands in his pockets, as the Snipe slid away.

  “We’re going to see the arrangements for the party,” he announced as soon as he was within earshot. “I’m bringing the Augusts, you know.”

  The Imperial Augusts, that celebrated quintet of clowns who were modelled on the pre-war Parisian Fratellini, had been a non-stop success in London for so long that Mr. Campion was surprised at the proprietorial note.

  “I didn’t know they were one of your ventures.”

  “They’re not. I passed on the message. Tonker Cassands told me to tell them there was a party, and I did.” He smiled briefly and his flat baby face was mildly amused. “I think your wife’s amazingly clever,” he added, and turning to Amanda, with whom they had now caught up, said, “I’ve been telling your good husband I think you’re amazingly clever.”

  “That will please us both,” said Amanda gravely and slid her arm through Minnie’s.

  The S.S.S. man’s attention was recalled to the business in hand.

  “We’re to arrive here for lunch, aren’t we? Or was it four o’clock?”

  “Four,” said Minnie with a firmness which startled her older friends. “Come earlier and you’ll have a long dull patch with nothing but tea to drink and probably children dancing on the lawn. The Augusts aren’t coming until five when they’re going to arrive as a group of artisans in 1890 going down the Thames on a wherry with their girls on a beanfeast. Or that was the programme when last I heard it.”

  They had crossed the lawn to the river’s bank as she spoke and Smith looked into the shallow water trickling over gravel bright as boiled sweets.

  “You’ll never get a wherry down here,” he protested with instant suspicion.

  “Not a real wherry,” she explained earnestly, “but a raft disguised. We shall have more water too. There are sluice gates down there in the fen meadows. We let it out in the ordinary way so no one can fall in and we can get across by the stones. On Saturday the boat house is to be the pub which the beanfeasters are making for—The Prospect of Dunstable, or something. A lot of exciting people are coming, I believe, and certainly all the people I’m fond of are, so it ought to be all right.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said curiously. “Is this river which you let run out our river up at the Estate?”

  “You own the river bank and the stream to midway across,” said Minnie with the same unexpected authority. “If you want to keep it deep up there you can build your own sluices.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have any water here.” He sounded rather pleased at the prospect.

  “If I didn’t have any, you’d have too much,” she said promptly. “There’s quite enough for everybody. And if you contaminate it, you’re fined. Now, we eat over there in the barn.”

  He nodded gravely, as if he were getting it off by heart, but the word had made him dubious.

  “It’s a real studio inside,” she explained hastily. “My father, who was a well-known painter, had it properly converted.”

  “So it’s done rather well, is it?”

  “I think so.”

  “I see. That’ll be all right then.” He turned his attention to the boat house on the opposite bank. “I want to see that,” he announced. “I’ve heard about that.”

  The building, which was made of weatherboard and tiled, had been used on so many occasions as a play-room that it had gradually acquired a very definite character, quite different from its original purpose. For one thing, a small balcony running across the front was approached by an outside staircase, which made the building look as if it possessed two storeys. Under this there was a wide door with windows on either side, and the whole façade was much like one of those utility theatre sets so much in vogue with repertory companies. Indeed, the balcony had been used in its time as a stage by performers as diverse as Tutti and Ben Burp.

  Today, a newly painted inn sign, “The Half Nelson”, had been framed between the two mock windows of the upper storey, and the rail was hung with little flags.

  Minnie led the way across the river and Smith followed her closely, his polished heels looking odd against the slippery granite. He made something of a to-do about helping Amanda up on the other side, but left her at once while he peered in through a window as Minnie got the door open. Then he stepped closely after her into the light dry room within. Here, the walls were made of varnished match-boarding reminiscent of a waterside hostelry, and were hung with Tonker’s lifelong collection of old playbills and bar trophies. There was no furniture at all save for a bench running round the walls, and the matting over the floorboards was worn, but the effect was pleasant and even sensational, for the entire back wall apart from the window, which overlooked the meadows, was lined with shelves and protected by a shop counter, and the children, unhampered by any false notions concerning the vulgarity of display, had presented the whole of Perception’s contribution to the feast, all fourteen dozen of it, unstrawed and unshrouded on the shelves, bottles above and glasses below. It was an impressive sight, only mitigated by one small item. In the centre of the ten-foot counter top, collected by the thoughtful Westy and arranged by him in a neat row, were the four assorted corkscrews the house possessed.

  Minnie laughed and collected them. “Children are such realists,” she said. “Dear oh dear, it looks a little much put out like that, but welcoming, don’t you think? That’s rather sweet.” She pointed to the darker end of the counter where two sticky bottles of orange cordial and one glass had been carefully preserved against a rainy day. The only other items on the board were a siphon, a used tumbler, and a screw of lead foil from the top of a bottle. Minnie’s eagle glance rested on these, at first casually and then with fixed astonishment. She picked up the glass, sniffed it, and handed it to Campion.

  “What’s that?”

  “Scotch.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She looked about her in bewilderment. “How extraordinary! We haven’t any in the house. Where’s the bottle, anyway?”

  They looked under the counter and round the empty room, but apart from the dazzling display upon the shelves there was no s
ign of alcohol of any kind. It was a ridiculous incident, reminding Mr. Campion irresistibly of the Superintendent’s fried egg. Minnie was puzzled and finally her gaze came to rest, firmly and suspiciously, on what she clearly felt to be the one dubious entity in the vicinity. The S.S.S. man, however, was unaware of her scrutiny. At the sight of the corkscrews his own black suspicions had been aroused. His eyes had moved as Minnie had gathered them up, and now he went round behind the counter and began to read the labels.

  “Hibou ’forty-seven,” he said at last, taking a bottle down and turning to her in surprise. “But that ought to be excellent. Almost too good for a party. That’s Veuve Genet’s second cru imported by White and Brook.”

  “I think it’s all right,” she agreed in astonishment. “Wally and Tonker know quite a lot about that sort of thing. The children put the corkscrews there by mistake.”

  It became evident that he did not believe her. He did not believe her. He did not say so, but his expression remained inquisitive. It was a slightly embarrassing exchange, so that no one was looking at him, and his next move took them all by surprise. His fingers, which had been fidgeting with the bottle moved deftly. The wine was up from its recent handling, but he eased the cork out softly and with a swift and even graceful movement whipped a glass from the shelf behind him just in time.

  “Four of us,” he said, his eyes intent on the frothing neck. “Just right.”

  He poured the awkward liquid with the skill of a sommelier, pushed the glasses towards them, and looked up. Mr. Campion’s face was completely blank. Amanda’s was not so discreet. And Minnie promptly collared the bottle. There was no doubt whatever about the reception of the move, and the man was forced to exert himself. A sheepish expression appeared upon his crushed face and he smiled disarmingly.

  “Perhaps I should have waited to be asked,” he said, his pleasant voice charming them by sheer physical sound. “I think I ought, you know. I know I ought. But I’m so damned greedy that my hand moved instinctively. We drink to the Inland Revenue, don’t we, Mrs. Cassands? Our hosts and masters.”