Margery Allingham's Mr Campion's Farewell Page 2

  Marchant grunted dismissively.

  ‘Trotting into that clip joint at this hour in the morning regular as clockwork is mad if you ask me. Stark staring raving nuts. Why does she do it?’

  ‘Because she wins. Housekeeping money, you know – nothing very much, but enough for the morning shopping.’

  ‘If she’s got a system why doesn’t she clean up with it? I spent a packet trying to get my own off the ground and came away with a hole in my pocket. That proves she’s mad – if it needed proving. She’s a fairly rich woman yet she spends her mornings – her mornings, not her evenings, you realise – in that dreary hole. Round the bend, like I said.’

  Mr Marcus Fuller did not reply until his friend had turned back towards their table.

  ‘Her system is almost infallible,’ he observed casually. ‘A lot of people here – mostly English women – live by it. It is extremely dull, foolproof, and tolerated by the authorities because it dresses the house – keeps a table going in the mornings when the coach parties come in and want to see real gamblers in action.

  ‘You back on the column – a two-to-one chance – and go on doubling your stake until you make a win. Then you come away with enough money – just – for the groceries or your hair-do or whatever your needs for the day are. All it requires is patience, a little capital and a total lack of interest in gambling. It wouldn’t suit you.’

  Mr Fuller sipped thoughtfully at his paradis terrestre, the brightly coloured fruit drink of the hotel.

  ‘It’s her health that interests me, if you recall, not her mental state.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ve made some enquiries whilst you’ve been disporting yourself. At eighty, you wouldn’t expect her to be strong on the wing. She’s frail, but still quite active, her concierge says. Sees a doctor regularly – a man who specialises in heart conditions, I’m told. A shock, I suppose, would be more dangerous than a chill. That fact may become important in certain eventualities.’

  Marchant’s full-blooded complexion deepened under his newly acquired sunburn. He looked back towards the steps of the casino where a fresh coach load of tourists was streaming towards the avenue of fruit machines which flanked the entrance to the gaming rooms. He shook himself, emptied his glass, and, after a pause, produced a sheet of folded paper from a notecase.

  ‘This came yesterday,’ he remarked. ‘I didn’t happen to use my room last night or I’d have had it sooner. As it is, I’d only just read it before you appeared. I don’t like the sound of it.’

  He skimmed the letter across the table.

  ‘From Clarissa. She’s a good girl – on the sharp side. I like ’em like that. In business, that is.’

  Mr Fuller changed his glasses from a leather case in his breast pocket. He picked up the sheet and examined it with a professionalism which mysteriously transmuted it from a mere letter into a document. It was dated but without preamble.

  I think you should know that Lemmy Walker the schoolmaster has just re-appeared here after being missing for nine days. There was no wild fuss about this because of the school holidays and he mostly looks after himself though he lodges, in two private rooms, with the Thorntons – the one who used to work in the store. Said goodnight to them on the Friday at about ten and told them he was going for a walk. Very strange, I thought. No toothbrush or pyjamas, says Mrs T., and didn’t turn up to two meetings – Ratepayers Protection and Free Youth Club, who are a bunch of commies anyhow. Usually he shoots his mouth off at both, they say. Mrs T. says he walked in just before breakfast yesterday, unshaven and clothes torn, she thinks brambles, and face scratched. Not a word could she get out of him. Nine days. If you can take time off from being a dirty old man, do tell Mr F senior about it. He might know something, which is more than I do. Have fun.

  C.

  P.S. My favourite scent is Ma Griffe.

  Marchant waited ponderously, allowing the information time to be digested. His voice had a belligerent edge.

  ‘Well, what do you know about that?’

  The older man doubled the paper precisely and unfolded it for a second reading.

  ‘A question I might have asked you in other circumstances. If it is significant at all, it is rather disturbing.’

  ‘Not you, then. Not me. Not Simon, surely? Who else? The new boy?’

  Marcus Fuller considered the question and gave it unconditional discharge.

  ‘More than improbable. He has no interest in the subject and even less information. We have all seen to that. But if Mrs Webster has her facts correctly co-ordinated – and despite her pulchritude I would describe her as an astute creature – then we are presented with a most peculiar alternative.’

  ‘Meaning what? Take five from five and the answer is nothing, or it was when I was at school.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Mr Fuller, tilting his panama so far forward that it appeared to rest on his eyebrows, ‘the original premise has been inaccurately stated.’

  He peered through narrowed eyes beyond the line of American cars lounging opulently under the palm trees.

  ‘Lady Prunella is leaving already after her morning stint. A single throw must have been productive. As you say, or infer, we can rule her out. You have no suggestion to make – no more of an idea?’

  ‘I just don’t like it. It’s as simple as that.’

  Mr Fuller consulted the slim golden watch on his wrist and a page of notes in microscopic writing at the back of a diary which he produced from his hip pocket.

  ‘I could be back in Lindsay Carfax in time for dinner if I stirred myself. One of us at least should keep an eye open. Simon will have all the facts but he will not have gone further. He will feel guilty because he should have written to me, or called me, rather than leaving it to an inquisitive woman. My young brother is an idle man in some ways – he lacks my initiative.’

  ‘You take it all that seriously? I do myself, but …’

  ‘Yes,’ said the elder Fuller. ‘On reflection, I do. We’re all getting old, Gus – reaching the tricky age when our guard is down and we are inclined to doze. Just the time for fresh blood to appear, and from an unexpected direction. If someone else is starting to play at Nine Days’ Wonders then it must be taken very seriously indeed.’

  He stood up.

  ‘The delectable Miss Annabelle – I think I recall the name correctly – will have exhausted you and your pocket by the end of the week, unless you have a most improbable run of luck at the tables. By then I will know a little more about Walker’s escapade. I may even persuade him to discuss it.’

  ‘And supposing he shuts up like a clam? Others did in their time.’

  ‘Then there is a new factor. If you were a mathematician instead of a grocer you would call it X. We can’t afford it, Gus, as you should know better than anyone. It will have to be identified and cut off before it develops. I shall catch the afternoon Caravelle. Give your inamorata my kindest regards.’

  ‘I don’t go for mysteries. You do. That’s the difference between a policeman and a nosey parker in one word – well, say seven.’

  Superintendent Charles Luke of the Criminal Investigation Department was indulging himself in a favourite relaxation, a perennial attempt to take a rise out of an old friend. He was sitting in the private bar of the Platelayers Arms, a cabin perched above the saloon with a long window looking down upon the general customers. The hostelry itself had survived destruction by a quirk of town planning and reconstruction. Outside there was devastation. Mechanical dinosaurs chewed vast caverns out of the London clay, drills rattled mercilessly and concrete pylons which would soon support an arterial flyover were already dwarfing the little triangle of Victorian dwellings which included the public house. By day, the whole area symbolised progress at its most repulsive; but by seven in the evening, the Platelayers Arms, as peaceful as it had been in 1898 when it was first opened, contained only a handful of regulars.

  Mr Albert Campion provided a contrast to the dynamic energy of the super
intendent. Few heads turned when he came into a room and his eyes, behind his large horn-rimmed spectacles, suggested that whatever thought was in process it was nothing of immediate importance. Grey hair had brought a certain distinction to his thin face but those who did not know him dismissed him, sometimes to their cost, as a vague nonentity.

  ‘A mystery to me,’ said Luke, conjuring an amorphous shape into the air by fluttering his hands, ‘is a pain in the neck, meaning leg-work; reporting in triplicate and prodding strangers until they don’t know if it’s Wappity Goorie night in Peru or the wife’s birthday. Quite different for you. For you it’s like a fat brown trout’ – he made a cast with an imaginary rod – ‘or a rare species of butterfly. If they get away, well, too bad. There’s always the chance of better luck next time.’

  Mr Campion smiled. ‘I thought,’ he said apologetically, ‘that you didn’t deal in mysteries as a rule. Safe-breaking, racketeering, swindling, confidence trickery – these things may be complicated but they’re not mysteries to you?’

  ‘Try telling that to the A.C.’ Luke pulled down the corners of his mouth and ran a finger along an invisible but well-clipped moustache. ‘You’d find yourself top of the list for retirement. The only mysteries I like are those I hear about second-hand – nothing to do with me. Then I can sit back and let the next man do the worrying. Like the item I’m bringing you right now with a large Scotch and as sure as I’m riding this giraffe.’

  ‘I thought you were leading up to something.’

  ‘I was. None of my business, thank you, but it concerns you in a way.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We’ll come to that. This is a piece of local gossip I picked up last week from an old pal called Bill Bailey who’s head of regional crime, East Anglia. We were talking shop, or he was, after a conference of some sort at Cambridge. You know that area – we both do, come to that. He was talking about Lindsay Carfax. Ever been there?’

  Mr Campion cast his mind back. ‘In my youth,’ he said. ‘It’s a show place, all old oak. Shakespeare’s birthplace, Anne Hathaway’s cottage and Cockington Forges by the dozen. Once a flourishing wool town in the days when monopolies were first invented, which is why it’s nearly all Elizabethan rather than Tudor or earlier. Picture postcards and dainty cottage teas for the tourist trade. Have I missed anything?’

  ‘Quite a packet.’ Luke assumed the tone of a guide rattling out the phrases as if they had been worn smooth by parrot repetition. ‘Birthplace of Esther Wickham, 1821 to 1872, bracketed by many critics with Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen, author of Jonathan Prentice whose fictional home may be seen on our left as we drive by the Carders’ Hall, central architectural gem of the village containing many unique features. On our right the residence and workshop of Josiah Humble, died 1794, inventor of Humble’s Box, admission two shillings. The tour will be resumed after a short interval for refreshment. I thank you one and all for your kind attention.’

  He paused to empty his glass. ‘You get the picture? You should. I went there myself to take it.’

  ‘Vividly,’ said Mr Campion. ‘There must have been a strong magnet to draw you there. Not a mystery by any chance? I thought you didn’t go for them.’

  Luke eased the inside of his collar and shrugged his formidable shoulders.

  ‘Not when they’re dumped on my plate,’ he admitted. ‘But I had a couple of hours free after the conference, so I drove back that way. Bill Bailey made me curious – like a gossipy old woman.’ He parted invisible curtains and peered through the gap with avaricious eyes. ‘I couldn’t resist looking over the other chap’s fence. Not that he’s preserving the game there, if you follow me. If I must come clean, I’m interested because he isn’t – he’s only got two pairs of hands he says and they’re both full.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘Quite a basinful.’ Luke carried two glasses to the little bar where Mrs Chubb, the landlady, was presiding and refilled them. ‘This isn’t classified information, you know. Nothing that anyone couldn’t discover in a good morning session at the Woolpack, which is the name of the local at Carfax. Ancient history most of it.’

  He sat down as if he were chairing a meeting, opening a folio and straightening an imaginary paper with the flat of his hand.

  ‘Carfax isn’t run by the parish council, the rating authority, the sanitary inspector and the local rozzer as you might suppose. They’re there all right and consider themselves pretty fancy.’ His cheeks inflated to create a multi-chinned worthy. ‘The real bosses are the Carders – something to do with wool, four hundred years back. They wound stuff on cards, I suppose; hence the Carders’ Hall and the Carders’ School, now a primary. All tied up with heredity and tradition and no doubt enough mumbo-jumbo to keep the Antediluvian Order of Emus happy for a year. Turn to the East, bang your head on the floor and repeat “Ichabod is my Uncle” three times after me.

  ‘All very comical if you’ve a mind to it but these boys are very fly customers – they’re right on the ball. Boiled down, it comes to this: they’re a syndicate who run this place – which makes a packet – with their own rules. One way or another they probably own most of it. You couldn’t sell a twopenny postcard in Carfax without their written authority. Any undesirable publicity, anything to spoil the image and you’re out – bingo – slap on your backside.’

  ‘You destroy my fondest illusion, Charles. Sordidly commercial, perhaps; but not criminal.’

  ‘Wait for it.’ Luke was beginning to glow. ‘Listen to this little lot. Apart from old wives’ tales and a little item thirty years or so back I’d have treated as murder if it had cropped up in my manor, they’re still active – or so the locals think. Last year there was a summer invasion of longhaired deadbeats, and not the best of the species. There’s an arty colony down there and it started innocently enough with a group of swinging Morris dances, pop versions of “Blind Man’s Turnip” – that sort of thing. What with it being fine weather for sleeping rough and the group being quite well known in their way, the real hippy locusts descended and began to make the place look like Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night. Not quite demanding with menaces from the innocent tourists but as near as a toucher. Damned bad for business, according to the Woolpack.

  ‘They say in Carfax – or they did in the couple of hours I was there – that things in those parts go by nines. Nine acres, nine crows, nine pins I shouldn’t wonder. Say a word out of turn and you vanish for nine days and come back not knowing what year it is. The tale is that the word got round that those lay-abouts had been given nine days to clear out – or else. None of them took the slightest notice until the ninth day when a couple of them were found dead in a barn. Overdose of drugs apparently. They were most of them on LSD or pot or stronger stuff but this was something very strong indeed and no one knew who had peddled it. Three more were carted off to hospital. Bill Bailey’s boys came down in strength, and within a week there wasn’t a hippy for miles. It didn’t make headlines because some other tale was getting all the silly season billing – a two-headed monster in the Serpentine or a flying saucer seen over Tunbridge Wells.’

  ‘The Carders got the credit?’

  ‘That’s the idea – or it was Bill Bailey’s anyhow – but he didn’t get to first base with it. For a start, they don’t really know who the present Carders are. They were always a secretive lot, doing quite a bit of good in their heyday – the school for example – but as autocratic as the bosses of a closed shop in the Censors’ Union. The only figure they are sure about is Lady Prunella Redcar, over eighty, reputed to be bonkers and living in the south of France.’

  ‘All the Redcars are mad,’ said Mr Campion unemotionally. ‘I’m distantly related to them.’

  ‘Are you, chum?’ Luke was unabashed. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. I haven’t finished yet.’

  ‘Some stop press news?’

  ‘That’s just about the size of it. A chap by the name of Lemuel Walker, a schoolmaster who sounds a right ch
ip-on-the-shoulder merchant, had started to shoot his mouth off. “Get with it, boys! The twentieth century is nearly over!” Not a popular message in Lindsay Carfax. He disappeared through a trap door as if he was being shaved by Sweeney Todd.’

  ‘For nine days?’

  Luke snapped his fingers.

  ‘Give the gentleman a coconut. Exactly nine days. He turned up last Monday week looking as if he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, resigned from a couple of trouble-mongering societies where he’d been a ball of fire and refused a blind word of explanation. Bill Bailey who got the story from the local copper sent a lad to see him. He stuck to it that he’d decided at ten o’clock one night to go off on a walking tour and he reasoned that a man over twenty-one and a taxpayer was entitled to do as he bloody well pleased. He’d a black eye and sticking plasters all over his face to prove it.

  ‘Now that, chum, is what I’d call a mystery. By all the rules there’s an ordinary little anti-establishment runt – an issue job – who’s been presented with a solid-gold hallmarked 25-carat grievance on a plate. A perfect chance to scream blue murder and “Follow me, comrades! To the barricades!” What does he do? Tells someone he’s very sorry, sir, and he’ll never break bounds again. It’s funny … not ha-ha but super-peculiar.’

  Mr Campion pushed his spectacles back on to the bridge of his nose and took a long drink as an aid to rumination.

  ‘The Hooded Brotherhood descended on him with their black grabbers, held him in a secret dungeon until he’d seen the error of his way and then returned him to his landlady not quite as good as new? An old-fashioned suggestion, but it fits. Do you have a better one?’

  ‘If I – or Bill Bailey come to that – could improve on it I wouldn’t be telling tales out of school. As it is, there’s no complaint, nothing to make a song and dance about and will the arm of the law kindly keep its long nose off the private footpath. Message ends.’