The Beckoning Lady Page 9

  “Oh no we don’t,” said Minnie without animosity. “The party hasn’t started yet. This is on me. We drink to old friends. I always drink to old friends. Tonker says it’s corny as a toast, but I think we’re so frightened of a bit of corn these days that the children are being brought up on husks. Here’s to you, my dears.”

  Mr. Campion raised his glass to her and the party proceeded.

  “A beautiful wine,” announced Sidney Simon Smith, reassured and pleased about it. “When it’s chilled it will be excellent. You are able to get ice, are you?” He eyed the zinc baths thoughtfully. “What about the smoked salmon? Do you go to Bernard for that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh well, that’s perfect. You have an old house, expensive to run I’m afraid, but it’s very delightful. I do congratulate you. If only you could get this playroom lit by electricity, especially outside. I’ve heard that before and I see how right it is. You could do that, surely, couldn’t you?”

  It was a request rather than a query, and Minnie, who, on half a glass of warm champagne, was becoming more eagle-eyed than ever, put her head on one side.

  “You know, you’re behaving as if you were thinking of asking me if you can bring someone to this party,” she remarked devastatingly. “Who is it?”

  He looked as injured as if she had struck him suddenly.

  “Unfair!” The unspoken protest, shrill and shocked, was almost audible. Minnie appeared to hear it distinctly.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “Out with it.”

  “Oh well.” He looked a little sulky, but the speech had been prepared in his mind and he gave it in its entirety. “I happen to be having some old friends for lunch that day. They are charming people, you will like them. And Lady Amanda will be particularly interested in one of them, Barry Pettington.”

  Amanda was not playing. She was still polite but she was taking no part and her eyes said as much.

  “He’s a director of the firm of Gloagge,” the S.S.S. man persisted, sounding as if he were Santa Claus producing a prize from the sack. “Your firm will know him. They manufacture ball-bearings. And he has,” he added, throwing in a small token for Campion, “a most beautiful wife.”

  “Who else?” demanded Minnie inexorably.

  His eyes met hers with faint exasperation. “Tony Burt and Jack Hare may join us,” he conceded grudgingly. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Burke and Hare!” Minnie looked astounded and Mr. Campion decided to intervene.

  “Burt, not Burke. You’re thinking of the earlier model,” he murmured, and added casually as he turned to the visitor, “it’s quite a comment on our civilisation, don’t you think, that nearly all the new fortunes are founded on scrap?”

  The S.S.S. man laughed. “That’s amusing,” he said, and after a pause, “and true too. Now, Mrs. Cassands—do you like that better than Miranda Straw?—if they should be with me, will it be all right if I bring them in for a drink? They’ll have their wives with them, of course, just to see my friends the Augusts. I told you I was sending them down, didn’t I? They’re very good, you know, and quite unobtainable for parties as a rule.”

  “The Augusts are coming as friends of Tonker’s,” said Minnie. “I know them, and this is the first time I’ve let them come back after that frightful business with little Bill Pitt. Poor child! They might have killed him in that drum. Actually he loved it, little beast, and has lived on it at school ever since, but it was very wrong of them. Yes, of course, bring who you like, but if you can’t find room to sit down at dinner you must give way to the others, because they’ve been properly invited. I’m quite ruthless. I shall make you.”

  “That is so kind.” He sounded completely genuine and indeed obviously was so. “Thank you. I wonder if my car has come yet? I mustn’t keep it waiting.” He finished his drink and went over to the door.

  Minnie followed him—“There it is,” she said. “You’ve got to go, have you?”

  “I think I will.” He seemed slightly more ordinary and natural for the encounter, and much of his relentless force had deserted him. “Good-bye then, until the party. You are really most kind. Do try to get that electric light on. It will make such a lot of difference.” He raised a hand to the others and escaped. “I can get over here alone,” he said, waving at the river.

  “Good,” said Minnie, “that’s right.”

  She came back into the room looking tired. “I’m sorry you got let in for that,” she remarked, eyeing them guiltily. “Or were you entertained? I was. I’d never really met him properly but I’d heard of him such a lot. I suppose he is a spiv, but I should call him a clown.”

  “I thought him a shocker,” said Amanda. “I can imagine him being called anything.”

  “Why a clown?” enquired Mr. Campion.

  “Because clowns are children without innocence.” Minnie spoke with casual authority. “That’s why they’re so awful, truly awful, I mean, and why only children and people in childish mood think they’re funny. I found him rather refreshing. There’s nothing there to clear away first, is there? You see the worst at once. He came to see if the party was going to be good enough for him to bring someone who might be useful to him to it. If young Rupert had had the horrid sophistication to want to do such a thing, he couldn’t have set about it more simply.”

  “He’ll then enter it on his own expense account, no doubt,” said Amanda.

  “Oh no, surely not!” Minnie was horrified. “That would be dishonest.”

  “My dear Minnie, whatever makes you think he isn’t?” Amanda was laughing.

  “I think Minnie’s right.” Mr. Campion spoke slowly. “We’re not talking of ethics, of course, but in a strict legal sense I really doubt if that man ever does anything dishonest.”

  “Then why,” demanded Amanda peremptorily, “does he want to bring those very peculiar people to Minnie’s party? The only thing I know about Burt and Hare is what everybody says about them. Alan calls them rag-and-bone men on the biggest possible scale. He says they tip the housemaids at the back door to give away the family’s old clothes.”

  “Good old Alan!” Campion was laughing. “I think they’d take that as a compliment. That’s charitable.”

  “Why should Smith want to bring them here?”

  Mr. Campion put a hand on her slender shoulder bone. “I don’t know, yet,” he said, “but do you know, I find the question absolutely fascinating. When I find out that I shall be even happier than I am now.”

  Minnie was still thinking about the S.S.S. man. “Such a strange face,” she remarked as she gathered up the dirty glasses. “Like a kid’s, but squashed. I wonder, do you think he could have been overlaid? I mean, it would account for how he got that way, mentally and everything.”

  It occurred to Mr. Campion that she was probably the first and last person in the world to worry about why Sidney Simon Smith saw life entirely and solely from the angle of his own desires. Most people devoted themselves to the problem of how he was getting away with it.

  “I think that must be it, you know.” She sounded satisfied. “It would have bent his face like that, and it would have got it into his head that he must look after himself.” Her snorting laugh escaped her. “I don’t think he’s so awfully clever. He told me one thing he didn’t mean to. He is the client Findahome keeps writing me about. I thought so.”

  They turned to look at her. “They’re estate agents,” she said, “and he told me this house was ’old and expensive to run’, and that’s the term they use.”

  “Why Minnie!” Amanda was appalled. “You’re not trying to sell?”

  “No, they’re trying to buy. That’s why I noticed it.”

  Mr. Campion removed his spectacles. “Do they just write and say your house is old and expensive to run, and so sell it to us?” he enquired.

  “That’s what it amounts to,” Minnie was frowning. “That’s why I suspected they really wanted it. When strange people come up and say what a rotten old place it is, they
usually do.”

  Mr. Campion remained silent as he fitted this new piece of information into the jigsaw in his mind. Minnie hesitated.

  “I’m not really being as bright as all that,” she said, as if it was a confession. “I had another clue. Just before he went abroad Fanny Genappe came to say good-bye, and after he’d told me how fed up he was about his little farm and the larks, he looked round at my house and said ‘Sting ’em, Minnie. Don’t say I said so but you sting ’em when the time comes.’ I hadn’t heard from Findahome then, but when I did I suppose it was obvious, but I didn’t know who exactly was behind it. Now I see, it’s that ’S-P-I-V.”

  “But isn’t he merely acting for Genappe?” Amanda demanded. “Won’t it be Genappe’s money?”

  “That’s almost right.” Minnie put the empty bottle under the bar counter. “That’s why poor Fanny looked so guilty. He felt he was being wicked. Fanny has his own loyalty. He doesn’t sin against money as a rule.”

  “It’s no good,” said Amanda, “I don’t see it, and I don’t like it.”

  “You’re just cross.” Minnie shook her head at her. “You think Fanny’s going to spoil the village and that alarms you. Whereas the truth is that old Fanny has simply got so much money that it has become a commodity, and that means it must be used or it becomes so much dangerous waste. His experts have discovered that his toy is too expensive and must be made to earn, so they’ve got in this man Smith to see to it, in much the same way as the latex rubber man called in Tonker to invent the masks. What I just cannot conceive is what the S.S.S. man has thought of. I can’t think what he could do with Potter’s. Make it something awful, like a leper colony, perhaps. The village says a dog track, but that’s wishful thinking. What has he thought of, Albert? Do you know?”

  Mr. Campion met her eyes and looked away. “I’m not sure,” he said, “not sure at all. Are you thinking of selling?”

  “My dear boy,” Minnie’s laugh was infectious, “I’m concentrating very hard indeed on not selling. Where should I go? What a silly life it is, isn’t it? The trouble I have just to live quietly and paint a few pictures!”

  Having tidied the bar, she took her sheaf of notes from her pocket and began to scribble on one of them. Campion looked over her shoulder. “One bot. champers—No!” she had written, and he touched her arm.

  “I ordered a portrait today,” he said. “I’ll stand the brute that one.”

  “Of course! I can query that.” She scored out the exclamation point and added a question mark. “Albert, how clever of you.”

  “Not at all,” he said laughing. “I merely insist on my rights in the new order. And while we’re on the subject, forgive me if I’m interfering but I do hope you’ve got a really good professional accountant? There are good and bad practitioners and a really good one can make the difference between reasonable peace and sheer unadulterated hell in this unenlightened age. Let me put you on to my chap. Aubrey is . . . . .”

  “Oh no dear.” She waved the whole matter away as too difficult. “I haven’t got the temperament. I just do what they tell me and then I know I’m doing right. I don’t mind about that side of it.”

  He stood looking at her, his head tilted and his pale eyes inquisitive. “Is there another side?” he asked at last.

  Minnie grinned. “There was,” she said. “And very alarming too. But that’s all right now. We’ve seen to that. Now where was I? Oh yes, the Palindromic V.I.P. I do wish he hadn’t come here. He’s started me worrying about those wretched lights.”

  “For this place?” enquired Amanda with interest.

  “Yes. We really ought to have something. The subject crops up whenever Tonker has a party. We can have lanterns inside but the outside presents a problem. It’ll be worse this time because the river will be up. We’re going to use the wherry raft as a bridge, but it won’t be terribly safe, especially with the Augusts about.”

  “It sounds terrifying,” said Campion sincerely. “How deep will the river be?”

  Minnie considered. “Not quite two foot just here,” she said. “Not serious, but—well—”

  “Wet,” suggested Mr. Campion.

  “As anything,” she agreed. “Once when we did it before, we drove a car on to the lawn and turned the headlights on, and let the battery down and the people had to stay all night.”

  Amanda turned to the doorway. “I’ll fix you some lights,” she said. “I saw Scatty’s son working on the wherry. He and I could get you quite a blaze.”

  “Could you?” Minnie had the layman’s attitude towards electricity which confuses it with magic.

  “Of course we could.” The prospect of a glorious potter about was too much for Amanda. “I’ll just go and sound him and see what he’s got in the way of flex. Would you care for your name in lights, or The Lady Beckoning? Keep an eye on Rupert, Albert. He’ll have to go to bed soon. I’ll hurry, Minnie. We shall have to rout round the village, I expect.”

  She went off and the older woman looked after her. “That hair with that boiler-suit!” she said. “Isn’t she wonderful! And these ’S-P-I-V’s, Albert, aren’t they extraordinary? However furious one is with them one always finds oneself going to enormous lengths to get them what they want.”

  Mr. Campion laughed and his glance fell on the tumbler which was still on the bar.

  “What about this?”

  She took it up and sniffed it again. “That’s more peculiar than you think,” she said. “It really is. Jake doesn’t drink spirits and neither does Emma. The children would hardly have a bottle of whisky, and I haven’t any. The siphon belongs to the orange squash, and so does the glass I suppose. It does look as though someone came in, opened a bottle he’d brought, and poured a drink.”

  “Could anybody walk into the place and out again without being seen?”

  “Oh yes.” She spoke without any doubt whatever. “It’s the country, you know. I often find people wandering about looking for me. If the policeman comes to see if I’ve paid my dog licence, the chances are I find him on the stairs . . . which reminds me, Albert, that poor tramp. I saw you with the detective. What’s he like? I had a very soft spot for the old Superintendent but this man is new. What do you think of him?”

  Mr. Campion considered Fred South. “Rather an impressive item,” he said at last.

  “Thank God for that.” Minnie showed her weariness. “Come on,” she said, “children first, and then, at last, pictures. He can be relied upon to see to all that, then, can he?”

  “Who?”

  “This man South.”

  “Oh yes,” said Mr. Campion slowly, a considerable shadow passing over his affable face. “Oh yes, he’ll see to everything. He’s that sort of chap.”

  Chapter 6

  THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE

  IT WAS MOONLIGHT when Mr. Campion sat in the yard with his arm round Amanda and wondered if the scene was quite true. It was one of those nights which only a capricious climate can achieve, and then only occasionally. The soft sweet-scented wind stirred the fresh leaves without noise, and the silver highlights on barn and tree were liquid and still warm with the day’s gold. Behind them the kitchen, lit by oil-lamps, looked like a Dutch painting. Minnie sat at the table having a final conference with her henchmen, Westy and the friend he had brought from school, who were laying in stores apparently for a night’s camping.

  Supper was over, the dishes were dried, the younger children sorted out and restored some to their parents who had called for them, and some to the cottage. Mr. Campion had indulged in a mild flirtation with the twins, whose names were so far as he knew Yellow Drawers and Blue Drawers, and had been gratified to discover that they were Emma Bernadine’s contingent. Annabelle the beautiful was in her bed and Rupert, with Choc on the floor beside him, had been put to sleep on Minnie’s. Amanda was waiting for her new ally, Scat, son of her old henchman Scatty Williams. He had slipped down the village on silent sneaker-shod feet to post a letter for Mr. Campion, to pick up a plug, and to
fetch the station wagon from the Mill.

  “You say you rang and rang the Mill and there was no reply?” murmured Mr. Campion at last. “Luke’s still out then, the old . . . otter hunter.”

  Amanda closed the clasp knife she was holding and thrust it into a pocket.

  “That was hours ago,” she objected reasonably. “It was still sunny when we put Rupert on the bed in Minnie’s room. I’ve not telephoned since for fear of waking him. He must have passed out quite peacefully. There hasn’t been a sound from him. Anyway, I’ve told Scat that if he sees a light in the Mill house he’s to knock. I think Charlie Luke will feed himself. Don’t be so jealous.”

  Mr. Campion stiffened. “I’ll chuck you in the river for that. What a monstrous thing to say.”

  “All right,” said Amanda with dignity, “but it’s a perfectly sensible reaction. It’s always jolly frightening when one’s friends fall in that sort of love.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they’re never the same again, are they? A fusion of metals and all that. I mean, love isn’t a cement, it’s a solvent. Look at Minnie and Tonker.”

  Her own peculiar quality of inspired common sense comforted him and surprised him, as it always did.

  “The only thing is,” she went on, “that like any other Act of God it can’t be helped.”

  Mr. Campion looked at the barn in the moonlight. “It’s such a pity. He’s such a good chap, so sound. If it had been any other girl in the world, almost, it might have been the making of him. But this can only mean an upset at a time when he’s due to make a great effort, and a chip on his shoulder for the rest of his life.”

  Amanda remained silent for a moment or so and all the little stirrings in the garden became audible in the night.

  “Prune is a strange girl,” she said at last. “It’s only that incipient inferiority complex—the other-people-think-so-even-if-I-do line—which I find depressing.”