He had just decided that the departed driver had been either drunk or certifiably insane in the moment of disaster when the swift crackle of bicycle wheels on the frost behind him made him swing round, and he found himself confronted by another caped figure who came to a wobbling and suspicious halt at his elbow.
‘Now, now, there’s no use you putting up a fight. I ain’t alone, and if I were I’m more’n a match for you.’
The effect of these two thundering lies uttered in a pleasant country voice rendered unnaturally high by what was, no doubt, excusable nervousness, delighted Mr Campion, but unfortunately the folds of his hostess’s rug hid his disarming smile and the country policeman stood gripping his bicycle as if it were a weapon.
‘You’re caught!’ he said, his East Anglian accent bringing the final word out in a roar of triumph not altogether justified. ‘Take off your mask.’
‘My what?’ Mr Campion’s startled question was muffled by his drapery, and he pulled it down to let his chin out.
‘That’s right,’ said the constable with a return of confidence, as his prisoner appeared so tractable. ‘Now, what have you been a-doing of? Answer up. It’ll be best for you.’
‘My good oaf’ – Mr Campion’s tone was forgiving – ‘you’re making an ass of yourself, and I should hold that bicycle still if I were you or you’ll get the back wheel between your legs and fall over it.’
‘Now then, no names, no names, if you please, sir.’ The Law was showing signs of disquiet again, but the bicycle was straightened hastily. ‘You’ll have to come down to see the inspector.’
Mr Campion’s astonishment began to grow visible and convincing, for, after all, the country bobby is not as a rule a night bird of prey.
‘Look here,’ he said patiently, ‘this pathetic-looking mess here isn’t my car.’
‘No, I know that’s not.’ The triumphant note crept into the constable’s voice again. ‘I seen the number as soon as I come up.’
‘Since you’ve observed so much,’ continued Mr Campion politely, ‘would it be tactless to inquire if you’ve noticed that?’
He swung round as he spoke and pointed to his own car, standing like a silver ghost a few yards down the road.
‘Eh?’ The Law was evidently taken by surprise. ‘Oh, you ran into him, did you? Where is he?’
Campion sighed and embarked on the slow process of convincing his captor that the car ahead belonged to him, his licences were in order, and that he was properly and expensively insured. He also gave his own name and address, Colonel Laverock’s name and address, and the time at which he had left the house. By way of full measure he also delivered a short lecture on ‘Cars and How to Overturn Them’, with special reference to the one on the verge, and was finally conducted to his own vehicle and grudgingly permitted to depart.
‘I don’t really know as how you oughtn’t to have come along to find the inspector,’ said the constable finally as he leaned on the low near-side door. ‘You didn’t ought to have been masked. I’ll have to report it. That rug might have been to protect your throat, but then that might not.’
‘That cape of yours may be buttoned up against the cold or it may be worn simply to disguise the fact that your tunic is loosened at the throat,’ retorted Mr Campion, and, letting in the clutch, he drove away, leaving a startled countryman with the conviction that he had actually encountered a man with X-ray eyes at last.
On the by-pass Mr Campion ran into a police cordon, and once again was subjected to a searching inquiry concerning his licences. Having been, in his opinion, held up quite long enough while the police fooled about looking for stolen cars, he said nothing about the overturned one, but drove peacefully home to his flat in Bottle Street and went to bed. His ridiculous encounter with the excitable constable had driven all recollection of the ring from his head and he thought no more about it until it appeared on his breakfast table the following morning.
His man had discovered it in the coat pocket, and, deducing the conventional worst, had set it out with an air of commiseration not altogether tactful; anxious, no doubt, that his employer should remember first thing in the morning any lady who might have refused him on the night before.
Campion put aside The Times with regret and took up the ring. By morning light it was even less beautiful than it had appeared under the moon. It was a woman’s size and was heavy in the baroque fashion that has returned after fifty or sixty years. Some of the stones, which ran all the way round the hoop, were very good and some were not; and as he sat looking at it his eyebrows rose. He was still admiring it as a curio rather than a work of art when his old friend Superintendent Stanislaus Oates rang up from Scotland Yard. He sounded heavily amused.
‘So you’ve been running round the country in disguise, have you?’ he said cheerfully. ‘Like to come in for a chat this morning?’
‘Not particularly. What for?’
‘I want an explanation for a telephoned report which has come in this morning. We’ve been called in by the Colnewych police on a very interesting little case. I’m going over the stuff now. I’ll expect you in half an hour.’
‘All right.’ Mr Campion did not sound enthusiastic. ‘Shall I wear my mask?’
‘Come with your head in a bag, if you like,’ invited the Superintendent vulgarly. ‘Keep your throat wrapped up. There’s nothing like an old sock, they say. Place the toe upon the windpipe and …’
Mr Campion rang off.
Half an hour later, however, he presented himself at the Superintendent’s office and sat, affable and exquisite, in the visitor’s chair. Oates dismissed his secretary and leaned over the desk. His grey face, which was usually so lugubrious, had brightened considerably as Campion appeared and now he had some difficulty in hiding a grin of satisfaction.
‘Driving round the country with a topper over your eyes and a blanket round your neck at three o’clock in the morning,’ he said. ‘You must have been lit. Still, I won’t go into that. I’ll be magnanimous. What do you know about this business?’
‘I’m innocent,’ announced his visitor flatly. ‘Whatever it is, I haven’t done it. I went to dinner with a wealthy and childless godparent. I mention this in case your mercenary soul may not be able to believe that any sober man will motor fifty miles into the wilds of East Anglia for a meal. When I left, my godparent’s wife, who once had tonsillitis as a child and has never forgotten it, lent me a small rug. (It is sixty inches by sixty inches and is of a rather lurid tartan which I am not entitled to wear.) As she will tell you, if you ask her, she safety-pinned this firmly to the back of my neck. On my way home I passed a very interestingly overturned car, and while I was looking at it a large red-faced ape dressed up as a policeman attempted to arrest me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.’
‘Then you don’t know anything about the crime?’ The Superintendent was disappointed but unabashed. ‘I’ll tell you. You never know, you might be useful.’
‘It has happened,’ murmured Mr Campion.
‘It’s a case of robbery,’ went on Oates, ignoring the interruption. ‘A real big haul. The assessors are on to it now but, roughly speaking, it’s in the neighbourhood of twenty thousand pounds’ worth of jewellery and little boxes.’
‘Little boxes?’
‘Snuff-boxes and patch-boxes, enamel things covered with diamonds and what-not.’ Oates sounded contemptuous and Campion laughed.
‘People of ostentatious tastes?’ he ventured.
‘No, it’s a collection of antiques,’ said Oates seriously, and looked up to find Campion grinning. ‘You’re a bit lah-di-blinking-dah today, aren’t you?’ he protested. ‘What is it? The effects of your night on the tiles? Look here, you pay attention, my lad. You were found nosing round the wreckage of a car thought to have been driven by the thief or thieves, and the very least you can do is to try and make yourself useful. Last night there was a bit of a do at St Bede’s Priory, about five miles away from your godpapa’s place. It was a largish sho
w, and the place, which seems to be about as big as the British Museum and rather like it, was full to bursting.’
Campion stared at him.
‘You’re talking about the Hunt Ball at old Allenbrough’s private house, I take it?’ he put in mildly.
‘Then you do know about it?’
‘I don’t know about the robbery. I know about the Ball. It’s an annual affair. Old Porky Allenbrough’s ball is almost an institution, like the Lord Mayor’s Show – it’s very like that in general effect, too, now I come to think of it. I used to attend regularly when I was young.’
Oates sniffed.
‘Well, anyway, there seem to have been close on five hundred people gathered together there,’ he said. ‘They were all over the house and grounds, cars going and coming all the time. A real party, the local Super says it was. All we know is that about two o’clock, just when the crowd was thinning a bit, her ladyship goes up to her room and finds her jewellery gone and her famous collection of antiques pinched out of the glass-fronted cupboard in the boudoir next door to her bedroom.
‘All the servants were downstairs watching the fun, of course, and hadn’t seen a thing. The local police decided it must have been a professional job and they flung a cordon round the whole district. They figured that a crook had taken advantage of the general excitement to burgle the place in the ordinary way. They were very smart on the job, but they didn’t lay hands on a single “pro”. In fact, the only suspicious character who showed up during the whole of the evening was a lad in a top hat with a plaid blanket –’
‘What about that overturned car?’ interrupted his visitor.
‘I’m coming to that,’ said Oates severely. ‘Wait a minute. That car belonged to a very respectable couple who went to the dance and stayed at it. They were just going to leave when the alarm was given and it was then they discovered the car had been stolen. The gardeners who were acting as car-park attendants didn’t remember it going, but then, as they said, cars were moving in and out all the evening. People would drive ’em off a little way to sit out in. It was a real old muddle by the sound of it. The Super told me on the phone that in his opinion every manservant on the place was as tight as a lord the whole evening.’
‘And every lord as tight as a drum, no doubt,’ added Mr Campion cheerfully. ‘Very likely. It sounds like the good old days before the Conferences. I see. Well, the suggestion is that the car was pinched by the burglar, who used it to escape in. What did he arrive in? A howdah?’
Oates sat back and scratched his chin.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s the trouble. The police are in a bit of a difficulty. You see, her ladyship is howling for the return of her valuables, but neither she nor her husband will admit for an instant that one of their guests might be the culprit. That was the awkward thing at the time. A watch was kept on those guests who left after the discovery of the theft, but no one was searched, of course.’
Mr Campion was silent for a moment.
‘These shows are done in parties,’ he remarked at last. ‘People take a party to a ball like that. Porky and his missis would invite a hundred friends or so and ask them each to bring a party. It’s a private affair, you see, not an ordinary Hunt Ball. Allenbrough calls it the Whippersfield Hunt Ball because he likes to see a pink coat or two about. He’s M.F.H. and can do what he likes, and it’s a wealthy hunt, anyway. Yes, I see the trouble. I don’t envy the local super if he has to go round to all old Allenbrough’s pals and say: “Excuse me, but did you include a professional jewel-thief in the party you took to the ball at St Bede’s on the twenty-third last?”’
‘I know. That’s what it amounts to.’ Oates was gloomy. ‘Got any ideas? You’re our Society expert.’
‘Am I? Well, in that capacity let me advise you that such a course would provoke endless correspondence both to the Chief Constable and the heavier daily Press. You’re sure this was a professional job?’
‘Yes. The jewellery was in a wall-safe which had been very neatly cracked and the show cupboard had been opened by an expert. Also there were no finger-prints.’
‘No trade-marks, either, I expect?’
‘No, it was a simple job for a “pro”. It didn’t call for anything sensational. It was simply far too neat for an amateur, that’s all. We’re rounding up all the likelies, of course, but with such a field to choose from the right man may easily slip the stuff before we can get round to him.’
Mr Campion rose.
‘You have all my sympathy. It’s not what you yourself would call a picnic, is it? Still, I’ll ferret round a bit and let you have any great thoughts that may come to me. By the way, what do you think of that?’
He crossed the room as he spoke and laid the many-stoned ring on the desk.
‘Not very much,’ said Oates, turning it over with a dubious forefinger. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘I picked it up in the street,’ said Mr Campion truthfully. ‘I ought to take it to a police station, but I don’t think I will. I’d rather like to give it back to the owner myself.’
‘Do what you like with it, my lad.’ Oates was mildly exasperated. ‘Keep your mind on the important jewellery, because now Scotland Yard has taken over the case it means the Metropolitan area pays for the inquiry; don’t forget that.’
Campion was still looking at the ring.
‘Anyway, I showed it to you,’ he said, and wandered towards the door.
‘Don’t waste your time over trifles,’ Oates called after him. ‘You can have that ring. If anybody asks you, say I said you could.’
It would have appeared that Mr Campion took the Superintendent’s final offer seriously, for he replaced the trinket carefully in his waistcoat pocket before turning into the nearest telephone booth, where he rang up that unfailing source of Society gossip, old Lady Laradine. After listening to her for a full two minutes, while she asked after every relative he had in the world, he put the question he had in mind.
‘Who is Gina Gray? I’ve heard the name, but I can’t place her. Gray. Gray with an A.’
‘My dear boy! So pretty! Just the girl for you. Oh no, perhaps not. I’ve just remembered she’s engaged. Announced last month. Still, she’s very charming.’ The old voice, which was strong enough to penetrate any first-night babel in London, rattled on, and Campion felt for another twopence.
‘I know,’ he shouted. ‘I know she’s lovely, or at least I guessed she was. But who, who is she? Also, of course, where?’
‘What? Oh, where is she? With her aunt, of course. She’s spending the winter there. She’s so young, Albert. Straight down from the shires. The father owns a row of Welsh mountains or something equally romantic.’
‘Who?’ bellowed Mr Campion through the din. ‘Who, my good gramophone, is the aunt?’
‘What did you call me, Albert?’ The famous voice was dangerously soft.
‘Gramophone,’ said Mr Campion, who was a great believer in the truth when the worst had come to the worst.
‘Oh, I thought you said … never mind.’ Lady Laradine, who had several grandchildren and regarded each new arrival as a personal insult, was mollified. ‘I do talk very fast, I know, especially on the phone. It’s my exuberant spirit. You want to know who the aunt is. Why, Dora Carrington. You know her.’
‘I do,’ said Campion with relief. ‘I didn’t realise she had a niece.’
‘Oh, but she has; just out of the nest. Presented last year. A sweetly pretty child. Such a pity she’s engaged. Tell me, have you any information about Wivenhoe’s son? No? Then what about the Pritchards?’
She went on and on with the relentless energy of the very bored, and it was not until Mr Campion ran out of coppers that the monologue came to an end.
It was late in the morning, therefore, when Mr Campion presented himself at the charming Lowndes Square house which Dora Carrington had made her London home.
Miss Gina Gray only decided to see him after a considerable pause, during which, he felt, old Pollard, the bu
tler, must have worked hard vouching for his desirability.
She came into the lounge at last, looking much as he had thought she might, very young and startled, with frank, miserable eyes, but dark, curling hair instead of the sleek blonde he had somehow expected.
He introduced himself apologetically.
‘It’s rather odd turning up like this out of the blue,’ he said, ‘but you’ll have to forgive me. Perhaps you could think of me as a sort of long-lost elderly relative. I might have been your uncle, of course, if Dora had taken it into her head to marry me instead of Tubby, not that the idea ever occurred to either of us at the time, of course. Don’t get that into your head. I only say it might have happened so that you’ll see the sort of reliable bird I am.’
He paused. The alarm had died out of her eyes and she even looked wanly amused. He was relieved. Idiotic conversation, although invaluable, was not a luxury which he often permitted himself now that the thirty-five-year-old landmark was passed.
‘It’s very nice of you to come,’ she said in a polite, small voice. ‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing. I came to return something I think you’ve lost, that’s all.’ He fished in his pocket and drew out the ring. ‘That’s yours, isn’t it?’ he said gently.
He had expected some reaction, but not that it would be so violent. She stood trembling before him, every tinge of colour draining out of her face.
‘Where did you get it?’ she whispered, and then, pulling herself together with a desperate courage which he rather admired, she shook her head. ‘It’s not mine. I’ve never seen it before. I don’t know who you are either, and I – I don’t want to. Please go away.’
‘Oh, Gina Gray!’ said Mr Campion. ‘Gina Gray, don’t be silly. I’m the original old gentleman with the kind heart. Don’t deny the irrefutable.’
‘It’s not mine.’ To his horror he saw tears in her eyes. ‘It’s not mine. It’s not. It’s not. Go away.’
She turned and made for the door, her slender, brown-suited figure looking very small and fugitive as she ran.
Mr Campion & Others Page 4
