Mr Campion's Seance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Also by Mike Ripley

  Also by Evadne Childe

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  Part One: Evadne Child, 1940

  Chapter Hidden Listed

  Chapter One: Shooting Gallery

  Chapter Two: The Godsiblings

  Part Two: Oates, 1946

  Chapter Three: Victory Parade

  Chapter Four: Dark Moon Over Soho

  Chapter Five: Editorial

  Chapter Six: Riches to Rags

  Part Three: Yeo, 1952

  Chapter Seven: Whistles in the Dark

  Chapter Eight: Loose Ends

  Chapter Nine: Miss Kitto’s Front Room

  Chapter Ten: Remembrancer

  Chapter Eleven: The Honest Job

  Chapter Twelve: No Good News From Ghent or Aix

  Chapter Thirteen: Police Work

  Part Four: Luke, 1962

  Chapter Fourteen: For God and What’s Left of the Empire

  Chapter Fifteen: Boxers

  Chapter Sixteen: Is There Anybody There?

  Chapter Seventeen: Madame Rawnie

  Chapter Eighteen: The Man From Interpol

  Chapter Nineteen: Pearls Before Swine

  Chapter Twenty: The Long Game

  Chapter Twenty-One: Cozenage

  Part Five: Albert Campion, 1965

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Honour Bound

  Sources

  Also by Mike Ripley

  Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion

  MR CAMPION’S FAREWELL *

  MR CAMPION’S FOX *

  MR CAMPION’S FAULT *

  MR CAMPION’S ABDICATION *

  MR CAMPION’S WAR *

  MR CAMPION’S VISIT *

  The Fitzroy Maclean Angel series

  LIGHTS, CAMERA, ANGEL

  ANGEL UNDERGROUND

  ANGEL ON THE INSIDE

  ANGEL IN THE HOUSE

  ANGEL’S SHARE

  ANGELS UNAWARE

  Etc.

  Other titles

  DOUBLE TAKE

  BOUDICA AND THE LOST ROMAN

  THE LEGEND OF HEREWARD *

  Non-fiction

  SURVIVING A STROKE

  KISS KISS, BANG BANG

  * available from Severn House

  Also by Evadne Childe

  A Richer Dust (1933)

  Death in the Diplomatic Bag (1934)

  Murder on Air (1935)

  Here Be Dragons (1936)

  Tears of a Clown (1936)

  Right Body, Wrong Grave (1937)

  The Beauregard Inheritance (1938)

  The Murders at Six Mile Bottom (1939)

  With Smoke and Mirrors (1941)

  The Body in the Blitz (1943)

  Dark Moon Over Soho (1945)

  The Bottle Party Murders (1946)

  Old Bones, New Bones (1947)

  The Coffin Comes Free (1948)

  Burial Mound (1949)

  The Moving Mosaic (1950)

  The Robbers Are Coming to Town (1951)

  Camera Obscuring (1952)

  Murder Imperial (1955)

  The Collector of Skulls (1958)

  Terrifying Angel (1960)

  Pearls Before Swine (1963)

  Cozenage (1966)*

  *Published posthumously

  MR CAMPION’S SÉANCE

  Mike Ripley

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2020

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2021 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2020 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2020 by Mike Ripley.

  The right of Mike Ripley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8961-4 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-710-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0431-8 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described

  for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are

  fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  In his long fictional career (1929–68) at the hands of his creator Margery Allingham, Mr Albert Campion was never a policeman, simply a very gifted amateur detective. He did, however, work closely with a triptych of notable policemen: Superintendent Stanislaus Oates, Detective Chief Inspector P. ‘Freddie’ Yeo and Detective Inspector Charles Luke. All three rose to the very top of their profession over the years and remained, remarkably, on very good terms with Mr Campion.

  Readers familiar with Margery Allingham’s backlist and keen to explore that of Evadne Childe may notice that The Robbers Are Coming to Town was the provisional title of Allingham’s classic, The Tiger in the Smoke, and Pearls Before Swine was the title adopted in 1945 for the American edition of Coroner’s Pidgin. For the uninitiated, the Allingham novels are well worth seeking out. Evadne Childe’s much less accomplished work is rather more difficult to find.

  PART ONE

  Evadne Child, 1940

  Extract from the journals (unpublished) of Evadne Walker-Pyne (née Childe).

  We are alone. The capitulation of the French was accepted with a strange calm. There was more fear (and a touch of panic) at the news of the surrender of poor little Belgium in May, but now the inevitability of it all spreads across the country like a blanket of autumn fog barging aside what looks like being a summer of glorious weather.

  For the last nine months we have been in a sinister trance. This ‘Bore War’ has put us all to sleep, although as children have been conceived and born in the time we have been at war, clearly not everyone was bored. And then, whilst we were rubbing the crust from our eyes, our friends and allies disappeared one by one: Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, now France.

  With Edmund gone, I am more alone than most and, if I cannot have my husband at my side, I will not stay in London. I don’t care what the authorities say about whether my journey is necessary or not. I deem it is. I have a mother to care for, after all, so I will de-camp to wildest Essex even if I end up having to walk there.

  Note to Self: Things to do

  (i) Deposit leases, jewellery, Will, so forth, at bank.

  (ii) Warn House Manager about empty flat – see to gas, electric, etc.

  (iii) Dispose of house plants and put out rubbish, cancel milk.
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  (iv) Give forwarding address to postman.

  (v) Stop newspapers. Tip newspaper lad.

  (vi) Leave cash for cleaner with doorman. £5 or £10?

  (vii) Write to Reuben telling him to have car meet me. Ask if Miss Kitto is still in business.

  (viii) Collect laundry. Buy coffee to take to Essex as Mother will not have any. (Also whisky and gin just in case!)

  (ix) Have lunch with Veronica to deliver (final?) manuscript.

  (x) Buy gun oil and clean Daddy’s service revolver. Ask at police station where to buy ammunition.

  ONE

  Shooting Gallery

  ‘But that must have been an absolute hoot, my dear! I mean to say, Evadne Childe, positively the queen of detective-story writers, having to ask the bumbling British policeman for advice on a murder weapon! Surely, it ought to be the other way round, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘If you can’t behave yourself, Veronica, at least keep your voice down. It’s too early to be decently drunk and I have a lot to say to you, so pay attention.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘And don’t give me that look, young lady. You know it doesn’t work on me, and anyway, you have shreds of tobacco in your lipstick, which make you look quite common. No, bottom lip. Oh, come here, I’ll do it. Spit.’

  Had anyone been observing them closely (though no one was), they would have assumed they were witnessing a simple domestic scene and could have been forgiven for thinking this was standard mother-hen behaviour as the older woman held up her napkin for the younger one to wet, daintily, with spittle for a minor, but necessary, cleaning operation.

  The two women were lunching together at a table dangerously close (had they considered it) to the cross-taped glass window bearing the legend Café Bucci which looked out on to Charlotte Street. They were not, however, mother and daughter, but author and ‘publisher’s representative’ respectively and, even though the latter, and younger, of the two was the one having to have her face wiped in public, it would be she who would pay the bill.

  ‘What do you mean by that look?’ asked Veronica huskily, fluttering her eyelashes at the older woman. ‘If you mean my own patented “petulant schoolgirl” look – well, it might not work on you, but it has never failed me when I needed it to persuade a well-filled uniform to buy me a drink or get me into a nightclub. Oh, I’m sorry, Evie, have I shocked you?’

  Evadne Walker-Pyne, better known to the reading public by her maiden name of Evadne Childe, smoothed her napkin back across the lap of her skirt and tried to suppress a smile.

  ‘My dear Veronica, I am, I believe, a highly valued asset to the publishing house which, out of charity I presume, sees fit to employ you. Your duties today consist of buying me lunch and flattering me ceaselessly; if, that is, you want to take possession of your firm’s next bestselling detective story. Do not attempt to shock me with outrageous tales of the sordid goings-on in those dim and dusty clubs you frequent down Dean Street. I am a respectable, middle-aged English woman who earns her own living by writing modestly successful stories of murder and mayhem, and I have visited Egypt on more than one occasion. I am, therefore, unshockable. Though as a writer, of course, I am – purely professionally, you understand – always interested in the less respectable establishments you frequent. I rely on you for my research into the twilight world of the capital’s clubland.’

  Veronica Hatherall crushed out her cigarette into a small metal ashtray and sighed loudly; the sort of sigh practised to perfection by young women with very little to actually sigh about.

  ‘I could shock you if I wanted to,’ she said, producing a small lacquered mirror and lipstick from her purse, ‘with tales of the clubs I visited last year in New York. There were some, off Forty-Second Street, which shocked even me. They’re so much more strict than the ones down Dean Street, if I can put it that way. Really quite aggressively strict, if you know what I mean.’

  Veronica concentrated on repairing her lipstick, airily ignoring her guest, but when the older woman failed to rise to the bait she snapped shut her compact.

  ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that! This Bore War is, well, boring. A girl has to find her thrills somewhere.’

  ‘The war is no longer boring, you foolish little thing! You might think the real shooting war has only just started, but for those on our ships out there on the sea, it began months ago and it was far from boring.’

  Evadne Childe spoke quietly and deliberately, but each word carried a weight and force of a pile-driving hammer and Veronica Hatherall recoiled under the impact.

  ‘Oh my God, Evie, I am so sorry. I simply wasn’t thinking. Please forgive me, say you forgive me. You won’t tell Gilpin’s, will you?’

  The girl was contrite and her embarrassment genuine and Evadne Childe had no intention of tormenting her; the fact that she was concerned about her faux pas being reported to her employers, who she knew valued Evadne’s services more than hers, merely emphasized her youth. Outwardly worldly and confident, mentally she was an innocent in the school playground. What could she know about widowhood?

  ‘No, I will not tell Gilpin’s.’ Evadne hoped the girl did not notice the twinkle in her eye. ‘My dear child, it would surely be pointless for a mere vicar’s daughter to try and tell a publisher anything about being rude and tactless to an author?’

  Seven years and seven successful novels had left Evadne Childe in a position of armed neutrality with her publishing house, the firm of J.P. Gilpin and Company of New York and London; a position in which many an author who has tasted early success find themselves.

  It had been Gilpin’s, or JP’s, as they were sometimes known, who had picked up Evadne’s first detective novel, A Richer Dust, for publication initially in America and then in Britain, in 1933. The book had enjoyed more than modest sales and immoderately generous reviews, with Charles Williams, writing in the Westminster Gazette, calling it ‘a singularly agreeable book’ and no less than Dorothy Sayers hailing it as a ‘bloodthirsty yet highly moral debut’ in the Sunday Times. Seven more novels had followed, all with increasing sales and all featuring her detective hero, the resourceful and breathtakingly handsome Rex Troughton, and many who knew her had said it was fate, though Evadne favoured mere chance, that having created a dashing hero on the page who was an amateur sleuth but professional archaeologist, she should then fall in love in life (as well as on the page) with a real archaeologist, Edmund Walker-Pyne.

  In those pages of the popular press which tottered on the knife edge between ‘arts and culture’ and ‘society gossip’, the marriage of a successful female writer of detective stories at the age of forty-seven to a penniless archaeologist, albeit a Cambridge one, some twenty-two years her junior, filled many column inches in that brief period of calm between the Abdication Crisis in England and the rather more significant crisis looming in Europe. Undoubtedly his position as the consort of one of England’s ‘queens of crime’ made Edmund Walker-Pyne’s archaeological excavations in Egypt more newsworthy than usual, especially as it was hinted loudly that they were being funded by the British and American reading public and were no more than an expensive hobby for the dashing Edmund – a hobby which kept him well out of range of the army of young female (pointedly younger than his wife) fans who had come to swoon over the adventures of his fictional alter ego Rex Troughton.

  All thinly veiled sniping ceased abruptly on the outbreak of war when it became publicly known that Edmund, a keen sailor in his youth and a member of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, had abandoned the desert to serve his country on the high seas. Archaeology’s loss was likely to become popular fiction’s gain, as Rex Troughton, it was assumed, would now put his considerable skills as an amateur sleuth to fighting the biggest villain he had yet encountered within a dust jacket.

  There was genuine sympathy for Evadne Childe when the news was released that she had lost both her husband and her muse, as Edmund achieved the unenviable distinction of being among the first British fatali
ties with the war not yet six weeks old. Given the rank of sub-lieutenant, Edmund had been assigned as a signals and communications officer on the passenger steamer SS West Riding, bound for Rangoon, which was a hundred miles off Cape Finisterre when it was shelled and sunk by a surfaced U-boat with the loss of more than sixty passengers and crew. It was little consolation to his widow to learn that Edmund had done his duty and his radio distress calls had been heard by an American steamship which was quickly able to pick up survivors, but not quickly enough to prevent Sub-Lieutenant Walker-Pyne from dying of his injuries in a leaky lifeboat. His body, and the survivors, were unloaded at Bordeaux, and a British consulate official (and avid reader of detective fiction) arranged for interment in the Protestant cemetery there, writing personally to express his sympathies to Evadne Childe, care of her publisher, and offering to assist in arranging a visit to her husband’s grave. It was an offer Evadne politely refused, pointing out that there was a war on, and her journey would not, technically, be necessary as long as the consulate could supply her with a plan of the cemetery and the exact geographical co-ordinates of Edmund’s resting place. A somewhat confused consulate official complied with her wishes to the letter while harbouring the thought that, however intelligent, a bereaved woman was still a woman, and thus unpredictable if not downright inexplicable.

  ‘But it was unthinking of me,’ Veronica said gently. ‘How could I forget Edmund’s heroic sacrifice? You must be very proud of him.’

  Evadne carefully rearranged the cutlery on the table in front of her before replying.