The Return of Mr Campion Page 9

  Chief among the scare mongers was Ricci himself. It seemed to him that with Francine's transformation some of the virtue of the Process had departed. He could not understand it. He noticed it in every new case he handled.

  "It don' look so good to me," became a catchphrase in the Temple.

  No one else noticed the difference at first but Ricci's dissidence was infectious. Moreover, his enthusiasm had been the mainspring of his business and now its resilience was gone.

  Some of the assistants began to think that they too saw a change. The appointments did not begin to fall off immediately and when they did it was largely because of flaws in the organization. There were careless nesses and quarrels among the assistants.

  Ricci was despairing. After some months of growing dismay he appointed a manager and went to see a doctor. The professional man prescribed immediate rest. Ricci heaved a sigh, deserted the Temple and, locking himself in his flat, began to experiment all over again. It was rumored in the beauty world that he had gone mad. Francine bore it for a long time.

  It was not until the rumors concerning the decline of the Temple of Beauty were terrifying and Petersen reported that Ricci had not eaten for three days or spoken for ten that she decided to act.

  In four months she had made the fundamental discovery that if beauty be not a key to love it is at least the passport to many audacity.

  She left the hotel where Bernstein's had decreed she should live, as a walking advertisement for their product, and presented herself at the flat.

  Petersen admitted her and she went into the spare-room laboratory which was in much the same condition that Ricci's bedroom at Madame Sousa's had been in, so long ago that she had almost forgotten it. Ricci was sitting at the work bench in trousers and singlet, his hands in his pockets. He looked crumpled and there were Grey streaks in his hair.

  Francine went in quietly and sat down. She did not speak but when he turned she looked at him anxiously.

  "Eh?" he said. "Hello, Francine. There's something wrong with the Process. I can't find what it is. The women don' look so good to me. They're not beautiful any more, Francine."

  He spoke jerkily and there was a glaze of weariness over his eyes. He did not appear to realist that it was their first meeting for months. Still she did not speak and he shook his shaggy head mournfully.

  "They were all right. They used to look good. You remember, Francine, they used to be okay. Now I don' know they're not right. They don' look so well. I can't do anything. I'm in the dark. I don' know what's wrong." She made her request and he shrugged his shoulders.

  "Oh, I'll do it for you if you like but it won't be so good. Something's gone wrong with the Process, I tell you. I'm done, Francine. I'm finished."

  As he set about the work wearily with tired fingers which yet had not lost their deftness, he went on talking.

  "You were my first failure. Your face is not so good. I didn't hardly recognize you when you came in. There's something wrong with the Process. I looked at you that night and you weren't beautiful, Francine. That fellow George, he didn't see it. But I did. I saw it at once, and it was wrong. How is George?"

  "I haven't seen him for three months. He's gone to the Manchester branch." Francine's voice came faintly through the linen mask.

  "Huh? I thought you was ..." He paused and added politely, "married to him?"

  "No."

  "He treat you badly, Francine?" Ricci was diffident.

  "No, there was never. He just got me a different job, that's all."

  "Is that so? You mean you was never his girl?" Ricci's interest sounded impersonal but keen.

  "No, never. Of course not."

  "Huh." This time the sound expressed satisfaction. "That's good, eh? Now I do your hair, I think, while the mask does the work."

  He busied himself for some time and seemed engrossed but it became evident at last that he had not entirely dismissed Briesemann from his mind.

  "Eh, that George," he remarked at last. "I don' like that fellow. There was another long pause as he sighed and blew above her head with gusty dissatisfaction.

  "I'm tired, Francine. There's something wrong with the Process. You'll see it for yourself when I take this off. I'll get it right, you know, but it takes time. I've been here months now. I can't find out what's wrong."

  She made a stifled conciliatory sound and he hesitated, running her fine black hair through his fingers before he spoke.

  "You don' want to work for Bernstein," he said at last. "You want to work for Ricci Blomme. I'm not finished, Francine. I'm all right. You want to work for me. Work for me up here."

  "Here?"

  "Yes." Ricci blurred his words. "I need a girl. I need a girl like you, Francine. Look here, you live here and work for me. You'll like it, Francine. I want you here with me, see? I'm sorry about the window. The idea wasn't so good. I'm not so clever at publicity, maybe. Come back and work for me."

  The speech bubbled out of his mouth and he came round to stand before her, a wildly disheveled figure with a four-days growth of beard and round childlike eyes. Behind the mask Francine was still.

  "Come on, Francine. You stay here, eh?"

  He was frankly wheedling now and he took off the mask and threw on the soothing fomentation of cream as he talked, massaging the cool mass into her tingling skin.

  "I've missed you, Francine. I send for you and you weren't there. Then I remember you'd had the Process and it wasn't so good. Come back 'ere till I get it right again. Just till I get it right. What do you say? Marry me and live 'ere if you like."

  Francine took the towel from his arm and wiped her face. There were high lights on her cheekbones and on the tip of her small nose. Her eyes were clear of cosmetics and her hair was disarranged.

  "I love you Ricci," she said. "Love?" echoed Ricci as though he had never heard the word before. "Love, eh?" Gradually, however, its significance began to dawn upon him. "Love, eh?" he repeated with growing delight. "Eh, eh, Francine, come 'ere to me." When he released her she was breathless and he stepped back to look at her. She was radiant. Shining skin and disordered hair could not disguise it. Her face was alive. She was transfigured, glorious. Ricci gaped.

  "The Process!" he said huskily, his eyes bulging. "The Process, it has returned! By God, look Francine, it has returned! I, Ricci Blomme, I have discovered it! I-eh, Francine, come over 'ere."

  He took her to a mirror. "Look," he commanded, incoherent with excitement. "See what I do for you, eh, Francine? My darling, my little thin one, I make you beautiful. I did it! I, Ricci Blomme."

  Francine put her arms round his neck. "Yes, you did it," she said. "You did it my dear." Ricci sang.

  Editor's Note

  The publishing history of most of Margery Allingham's novels and stories is conveniently evident from her correspondence and from carefully maintained records noting all the significant dates completion, submission to publisher or editor, rejection or acceptance, publication and republication and even fees. Where gaps exist in the chronology they can usually be filled by her sister Joyce.

  There is no such useful record for "The Beauty King," no date no rejection-slip; the pristine typescript, bound in brown paper, was discovered by Joyce Allingham in a D'Arcy House attic after her sister's death.

  Joyce Allingham is confident that "The Beauty King," was written before the Second World War and there is within the story proof that it cannot be dated before 1935, the year in which Jimmy Kennedy and Hugh Williams composed "Red Sails in the Sunset," the popular song that makes up, with "On with the Motley," and the "Song of the Flea," Ricci Blomme's "curious repertoire."

  With the date of composition thus fixed between late 1935 and September 1939 all further refinement is no better than licensed conjecture.

  There were in those years several Press exposes of spurious claims made by beauty-treatment charlatans and of the dubious processes and shabby if sensational advertising techniques used by some manufacturers of cosmetics. It is, therefore, at
least credible that her fiction was unhealthily close to fact, that the man on the Clapham omnibus might reasonably assume that the unflattering description of Bernstein's was intended as a deliberate attack on some all-too-real and all too-powerful cosmetics manufacturers.

  If this be so, if the story once written and revised was filed away for fear of a libel-action and then forgotten then who was the counselor?

  There is no attendant correspondence so it cannot have been Reeves Shaw, in those years her favorite editor, or for that matter any other editor. Her husband had learnt much about the law of libel during his time in Fleet Street but Pip worked with her on all her stories; he would have warned her off before ever she finished the story and certainly he would not have permitted her to waste time on revision. There remains only one candidate, only one person who could have read the story before ever it left D'Arey House and who had the professional expertise to see looming over it the shadow of the Law Courts: Margery Allingham's father.

  So, by a series of deductive leaps as prodigious as any essay in another arena by Baker Street Irregulars and worthy of Albert Campion himself, it is possible to arrive at a date of composition set in the last few months of 1935 or the first eleven of 1936. Herbert Allingham died in December 1936.

  "The Beauty King," was serialized in the Daily Sketch in 1969, three years after the death of its author.

  The Black Tent

  Lord Currier's maternal Uncle John was in the Cabinet and, as he was not slow to tell anyone who could be persuaded to listen, his finger was on the pulse of the world. This remarkable facility clearly did not absorb all his time or energy for, whenever he had the chance, the distinguished old gentleman was eager to quit the Olympian heights to interfere in the affairs of his more important relatives.

  At eleven o'clock one evening in the library of his future mother-in-law's house in Clarges Street, Lord Currier, Tommy to his closer acquaintances, was confiding his relief to his friend Albert Campion. The two were snatching a few moments' respite and whisky-and-sodas whilst on the floor below them, in the rose-decorated ballroom, a ball was in progress in honor of his fiancee, the incomparable Roberta. The music of the Red Hot Cobblers came up to them. Lord Currier set down his glass and blinked at Campion.

  "It was a damned near go," he said solemnly. "The old man's a bachelor of the worst type. I had to tell him I was in love, not buying a horse. You see, it wasn't only her grandfather who got under his skin; he's been reading the Sunday papers and got all sorts of wild ideas about women into his head flighty, dangerous, serpents in disguise, you know the sort of thing. Of course, when I persuaded him to meet Roberta he came to his senses, but it was a near thing."

  Mr Campion settled his lean form on the arm of a gigantic leather chair and adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles. "Uncle John is something of a power, I take it?" he murmured.

  Tommy Currier's mild brown eyes opened to their widest. "Good lord, yes," he said, in some surprise that the matter should have been questioned. "Uncle John is the final and ultimate word. Uncle John pulls the strings. If I'm to have the career in the Diplomatic which my old man has set his heart on, what Uncle John says goes every time."

  "I see. And now, fortunately, Roberta goes?" The younger man sighed ecstatically.

  "She does, bless her," he said. "I must cut along back to the dance or she'll be looking for me. They've got a fortuneteller chap down there. She wants me to consult him and I'm in that state when I'll do anything, anything she asks. Don't hurry. Finish your drink and come down when you feel like it."

  He trotted out of the room, his wide sleek shoulders betraying all the excitement which he kept so successfully out of his round affable face. He was so completely, not to say dementedly happy that he made his companion feel a trifle elderly.

  Left to himself, Mr Campion set down his glass and reflected that Uncle John was an anachronism in an age when a grandfather who had made a fortune out of frozen meat should rightly be nothing but a valuable asset to any pretty young woman.

  The music from the ballroom was not inviting and the library was cool and pleasant. True, the books in the glass fronted cabinets did not look as though they had ever been read, and the great desk in the center of the carpet was obviously never used, but the light was gently diffused and the atmosphere peaceful. Campion was weary. In the company of his friend, Superintendent Stanislaus Oates of the Central Criminal Branch, he had spent the best part of three nights that week in a Grey office in Scotland Yard going over the documents in a particularly exasperating insurance fraud. For three days he had been out of his bed for twenty hours in every twenty-four so that now the quiet depths of the green armchair were irresistibly inviting. He slid into it gratefully. The chair enveloped and concealed him and he lay still.

  A little over half an hour later he awoke quietly with every sense alert. He opened his eyes cautiously and, in the angle of the chair-arm, he glimpsed the heel of a green satin slipper on the carpet. Its owner was fighting with the bottom drawer of the bureau in the corner behind him and was doing her unsuccessful best to be as quiet about the business as was possible. Long practice had taught Mr Campion to move soundlessly. Now he pulled himself up slowly and peered over the arm of the chair.

  The girl kneeling before the bureau was forcing the catch of the bottom drawer back with a long brass paper knife. She was young, that was the first thing he noticed about her, but then he saw that her red hair hung loosely round a small and shapely head, and immediately he noticed that her green dress floated gracefully about a slender, childish figure. He watched her with polite interest and then he saw her slide the drawer open an inch or so, slip in a small hand and draw out what appeared to be a flat package. This she wrapped guiltily in a big Georgette handkerchief. Deeming that the moment had come, Mr Campion coughed apologetically.

  The girl in the green dress stiffened and there was a moment of painful silence, then she turned and rose quietly to her feet. Campion found himself looking into a small, intelligent face which in a year or so would blossom inevitably into beauty. He judged her to be at the most fifteen years old. Her face was now very red and her Grey-green eyes were angry and alarmed, but she was not without courage and her first remark was as bald as it was unexpected and it had in it a strong element of truth which silenced Campion.

  "It's nothing to do with you," she said, then banging the drawer shut she fled the room before Campion could stop her, leaving the paper knife on the carpet. Mr Campion pulled himself together and went quietly down to the ballroom.

  He was mildly startled and just a little conscious of his own invidious position. He was a guest of the prospective son-in-law of the house and as such should have been doing his duty on the dance-floor and not sleeping peacefully beside a Tantalus in the library. Yet he was aware that young women who open bureau drawers with paper knives and run off with mysterious packages wrapped in Georgette handkerchiefs constitute a responsibility which cannot be altogether ignored. He went to look for the girl.

  The white and gilt ballroom was hot and smelt like a florist's shop. Everyone Mr Campion had ever met round a dinner-table seemed to be present with her daughter, but of the little girl in the green dress there was no trace at all. Once he thought he caught a glimpse of her small, heart-shaped face across the room, but on struggling through the throng towards this young woman he discovered that he was mistaken and that it was not she but Roberta Pelham herself, radiant and excited, her arm through the arm of her fiance.

  Mr Campion turned into an anteroom to find air and was thereupon astonished to be confronted by nothing less than a black velvet tent, hung with gilt fringe and topped impressively by a brass Directoire eagle. The tent was an incongruous contraption in this high-ceilinged Georgian room and he stood blinking at it for some seconds before it dawned on him that this must be booth of the fortuneteller Thomas had been talking about.

  Mr Campion was turning away when the tent curtain parted and old Lady Frinton, who by his reckoning should h
ave known a great deal better at her age, came out in a flutter.

  "Oh, my dear!" she exclaimed, pouncing on him happily. "My dear! The creature's too astonishing! Phillida was inspired to engage him. She took my advice, of course. I told her it needs something original to make these young-people affairs faintly tolerable for adults. Come and sit down and I'll tell you everything he told me or nearly everything the stupid man. So amusing!" She chuckled reminiscently, seized his arm and was leading him away when her old eyes, which were sharp and shrewd enough in all conscience, caught his interested expression and she swung round to see what had attracted him.

  The floating skirt of a green dress flickered for a moment at the further end of the room and a heart-shaped face surmounted by auburn hair appeared for an instant, only to catch sight of Mr Campion and disappear again. The Dowager Lady Frinton raised her eyebrows.

  "Albert!" she said. "My dear boy! A child? Well, it's an extraordinary thing to me but I've noticed it over and over again. You clever men are absolutely devastated by immaturity, aren't you? Still, fifteen ... dear boy, is it wise?"

  "Do you know who she is?" Campion forced the inquiry in edgeways but did not for an instant dam the flow of chatter for which the old lady was justly famous.

  "Who she is?" she exclaimed, her eyes crinkling. "My dear man, you don't mean to say you haven't even met! But how touchingly romantic! I thought you young people managed these things very differently nowadays. Still, this is charming, tell me more. You just looked at each other, I suppose? Dear me, it takes me back years."

  Campion regarded her helplessly. She was like some elderly, fat, white kitten, he thought suddenly, all fluff and wide smile.

  "Who is she?" he repeated doggedly.

  "Why, the child, of course of ..." Lady Frinton was infuriating. "Little what's her name Jennifer, isn't it? My dear man, don't stand looking at me like a fish. You know perfectly well who I mean. Roberta's sister, Phillida's youngest daughter. Yes, Jennifer, that's the name. So pretty. Devonshire, isn't. It?"