‘Twenty-five years.’ Campion repeated the words as if they constituted a barrier between himself and sanity. ‘Was it called Grey Peacocks then?’
‘No. That were called Playle’s Farm, after the man ’oo farmed the land. But I remember years before that there was an old man pointed out the carving of the birds on the gatepost and he told me that one time the whole house was called Grey Peacocks. Then it were pulled down. That’s what made me laugh outright when you and the lady came asking for it. You both wanted that and that was pulled down, see?’
‘Very funny,’ agreed Campion acidly. ‘Perhaps you would like to laugh all the way home?’
To do Mr Richart justice he did not care. With five shillings of a foreigner’s money in his pocket a walk of four miles or so was a pleasure. Campion left him swinging down the chase as happy as only a man with a sense of humour can be.
Campion in his fast car came up with the girl at the point where the road forked in the outskirts of the wood. The car was parked on the grass verge and the girl was sitting at the wheel apparently reading a book. Campion told himself that he was in credulous mood and that there was nothing at all extraordinary about the sight of a beautiful young woman, clearly in tears, reading a novel at the wheel of a car which contained the best part of her worldly goods, including bedding. He drew up, waiting for the storm.
It did not come. Instead he received a blow so unfair that it took all the wind out of his sails and left him gasping. She looked over at him, blinked away the worst of the rainstorm, and sniffed pathetically.
‘Oh, don’t tease me any more,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired and there’s such a lot to do before they come. Where is the wretched place, for the love of Mike?’
Campion told his story, or part of it, with convincing exasperation.
‘Our mutual friend, Mr Richart – that’s the man with a laugh – seems to be the only soul on earth who has even heard of it,’ he finished plaintively, ‘and he says that the house was pulled down some twenty-five years ago by some Americans who bought it as a ruin.’
‘Oh, well, he’s wrong about that, anyway,’ said the girl casually, using her driving licence to mark the place in the book she had been reading. ‘I do know that. I was there ten days ago.’
‘What?’
She smiled at him. ‘That’s what makes the whole thing so infuriating,’ she said confidingly. ‘Mother and I came down to see the house on Friday night. It was a dark journey, of course, but we saw all over it, and then he brought us back again.’
‘Who did?’
‘Mr Grey. He brought us down from London. He owns the house.’
‘Are you talking about Grey Peacocks?’ Campion heard his own voice weakening.
‘Well, naturally.’ The girl clearly found him singularly unintelligent. ‘That’s the annoying thing. I’ve got the address, and I’ve even been to the place before, and yet I can’t find it. Roads do look different at night, I know, and we came in a big closed car of Grey’s, but still I was so certain I could manage that I told Mother I’d get the place ready on my own. I’ve got the servants coming down by train tomorrow. I expect there’s a lot of work to be done because it must be in spotless order by the time Mother brings the others next week.’
‘What others?’ demanded Campion, giving up finesse.
‘The Americans we’ve taken it for, of course,’ said the girl. ‘You don’t think we could pay all that for a holiday house for ourselves, do you?’
The ground beneath Campion’s feet reeled, shivered, and afterwards became rather horribly firm. He climbed out of the car and went towards her.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to be depressing, but I do hope you haven’t parted with any cash yet?’
Her dark eyes, which were round and candid and disconcertingly young, met his own, a slightly startled expression in their depths.
‘We paid Mr Grey a deposit,’ she said. ‘Half the amount. Six weeks at seventeen guineas a week. Look here, I hope there’s nothing wrong, because it’s their money, you see. The Americans’, I mean. Mother and I are frightfully hard up. We could never afford –’ She broke off, laughing. ‘This is absurd,’ she said. ‘You frightened me for a moment. Who are you, anyway? Go away if you can’t be helpful. It’s ridiculous, though, because – well – it’s a famous house isn’t it? That’s why we didn’t have references and nor did the agent. Look, it’s all in here, address and everything. I’ve been trying to work out the route, but it doesn’t give it.’
She handed him the book she had been reading and it fell open where she had marked it. Campion took the volume with interest. It was an oldish publication, printed about 1870, and was entitled, with engaging naïveté, ‘Resting-places in the Garden of England’. The make-up was simple. Each chapter, of which there were several dozen, dealt with a different country house, giving its features of interest, something of its history, and a pen-and-ink drawing of some part of its structure. Grey Peacocks, Little Chittering, near Horsham, Sussex, had a long chapter to itself.
Campion stood looking at a somewhat over-careful sketch of the panelled entrance-hall for some time.
‘You say you went here last Friday night, Miss – ah –?’
‘Murphy,’ supplied the girl cheerfully. ‘Ann Murphy. Yes, I did. Mother and I both went. Not last Friday, the Friday before. As soon as the agent showed us this book we both knew it would be just exactly what these Americans would love, and so we phoned up the Cosmopolitan, where Mr Grey was staying, and he asked us to go along to see him. We had a chat with him and then he took us down to see the house and very kindly lent us the book. It’s a lovely place. You see that little hound-gate at the foot of the stairs? Well, it’s still there. And that door leads into the sweetest drawing-room.’ She paused and sighed. ‘It’s ideal,’ she said. ‘Of course it is. And yet I’m rather sorry we took it.’
‘Are you? Why?’ Campion’s interest was almost overanxious.
The girl shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. It’s very silly of me to think of it at all. But Mother heard from an old school friend this morning saying that she’d like to let her place. It’s a pity in a way, because it’s really quite as antique, and it would be cheaper, which would have suited us, because Mother and I are doing the whole thing for a fixed sum, you see. Mother knew the American man years ago, and now he’s a widower left with two grown-up sons who’ve come over for the shooting. Naturally she wants to impress them all and make them comfortable. I mean we don’t want to look like a couple of unbusiness-like fools, do we? I really don’t know why I’m telling you all this, but it is rather unnerving, isn’t it, losing the house like this?’
Campion took another look at the sketch at the beginning of the chapter on Grey Peacocks before he returned the book to the girl, and there was a grim expression in his pale eyes.
‘Tell me, did you pay this deposit to Mr Grey direct?’ he inquired.
‘Yes, yes, we did,’ she said. ‘He was going abroad, you see, and he pointed out that it would save everybody trouble if we did the little transaction, as he called it, there and then and let him see to the agent afterwards. He didn’t bother about our references and we didn’t ask for any from him because we could see the house. Hang it all, we were in it. So Mother gave him a cheque and he gave us a receipt on his notepaper stamped with the Grey Peacocks address. It seemed all right.’
Campion, who had become very thoughtful during the last ten minutes or so, held out his hand.
‘Good-bye, Miss Murphy,’ he said abruptly. ‘The very best of luck in your search. Look here, just if by chance you can’t find the place, the thing to do is to go back to the agent, you know. He’ll always be able to find Mr Grey for you.’
She shook his hand and looked, he thought, a trifle injured by his ungallant desertion, which was certainly sudden. However, mentally consigning her to the care of three stalwart Americans, he did not even look back.
He climbed into the car and drove away without s
o much as a glance or a farewell wave.
Second Cousin Monmouth greeted him without enthusiasm. He had discarded his scarf and was sitting up in his room in the cold, a small tray of drinks on his dressing-table.
‘How much longer have we got to stay in this infernal hole, Campion?’ he demanded before the other man was safely in the room. ‘I shall catch my death, you know. I can feel that. I’ve told mother we should never have come.’
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said Campion briefly. ‘You’re leaving now.’
‘Really?’ The little man bounced off his chair and picked up his scarf. ‘Home, I suppose?’
‘No. You’re going to London. By the way, I hope you’ve got that money still or you’ll stay away from home rather longer than ever before.’
Second Cousin Monmouth stopped in his tracks like a shot bear.
‘Eh?’ he said cautiously. ‘What money?’
‘Six weeks at seventeen guineas a week, Mr Grey.’
There was a long and embarrassing pause.
‘Well?’ said Cousin Monmouth at last with an almost creditable attempt at bluster. ‘Well, my boy, what do you know about that little peccadillo, eh?’
Campion’s smile was not condoning.
‘I know you let Aunt Charlotte’s house, Waverly, to a poor wretched mother and daughter, falsely representing to them that it was an ancient structure called Grey Peacocks. You drove them out to Kent, and in the dark they thought they were coming to Sussex.’
‘Not at all.’ The little fat man shook his head. ‘Get the story right if you must be so blessed clever,’ he said. ‘Stick to the facts. There was no false representation about it. Waverly is Grey Peacocks. I’ve known that for years. Some Americans bought it in 1914. They took it down brick by brick and beam by beam and packed it in numbered cases with the idea of putting it up again on the other side. There’s nothing new in that. They’re always doing it. However, in this case the War came and prevented transport, and after the War the original owner had died and his executors sold the thing cheap to a builder who put it up where it stands today. He thought Grey Peacocks was a silly name for a house and called it Waverly. I knew the place had been moved at some time, and the other day I was browsing among some old books in a friend’s library and I recognised a sketch of our front hall in an article on the house.’
‘So you pinched the book and launched out on to this jolly little swindle the moment Aunt was out of the house for a bit,’ put in Campion. ‘You stayed at the Cosmopolitan, saw the agent, hired a car and worked the whole thing while you were supposed to be staying with your sister, I take it?’
Second Cousin Monmouth rose to his feet.
‘I may have borrowed the book,’ he said with dignity. ‘I admit that. But I resent the term “swindle”. I tell you, Campion, I resent that bitterly.’
‘Resent away,’ said his cousin cheerfully. ‘Get your coat on and find your cheque-book. We’re going to the agent’s.’
‘To the agent’s?’ The old man was scandalised. ‘Whatever for? That’s the last place I should have thought of going.’
‘We must pay the deposit back.’ Campion spoke earnestly. ‘Don’t be a fool. It’s that or jug or worse when Aunt Charlotte finds out.’
Cousin Monmouth spun round, his small eyes popping.
‘Good lord, has Mother seen those people?’ The little man hunched his shoulders and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. ‘There’ll be trouble when she does. I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said briefly and sat down on the edge of the table.
Campion was not the type to lecture anybody, much less a man nearly old enough to be his father, but he felt it behove him to say a few words on the unseemliness of robbing the widow and the orphan. Second Cousin Monmouth heard him out in owlish silence, and when it was over he rose to his feet.
‘All right,’ he said earnestly. ‘All right. I’ll pay up. I shouldn’t have done it. I see that now. I’ve seen the light, my boy. The picture you’ve drawn of those two poor little women has made me regret my own hastiness. I’ve felt a fool all day sitting about with my face covered up, afraid lest one of them should come in. A fool and a knave, Campion, that’s what I’ve been. It was a rotten trick. I am bitterly ashamed of myself. I ought not to have behaved like such an outsider.’
He paused in his flow of self-reproach, and Campion, who was entirely unprepared for the performance, eased his own collar uncomfortably.
Second Cousin Monmouth remained in contrite silence all through the drive to London until they actually neared the city. Then he shook his head.
‘Every great criminal makes a fatal slip, Campion,’ he said solemnly. ‘Do you know what has been weighing on my conscience all this time? It’s a very serious and upsetting thought. If I hadn’t been such a fool as to forget I’d left that stamped notepaper in Mother’s bureau, damn me, I’d have got clean away with it.’
10
The Definite Article
‘MY DEAR MAN,’ said Old Lady Laradine, her remarkable voice penetrating the roar of the Bond Street traffic with easy mastery, ‘don’t think you’re going to get away from me once I’ve settled down to a gossip. Come back here at once. Dorothea has got her girl safely engaged to Lord Pettering, I see. You know him, don’t you? Tell me, do you approve?’
Mr Albert Campion bent his lean back once more and peered again into the tonneau of the elderly Daimler, where the redoubtable old lady sat enthroned.
His pale, somewhat vacant face, at which so many criminals had laughed too soon, wore a patient but harassed expression as his fifth attempt to escape was again frustrated.
‘Forgive me, but you’re holding up the traffic rather seriously, you know,’ he ventured mildly. ‘There’s a bus having apoplexy just behind you, and I see a traffic policeman gazing over here with unhealthy interest. Does it matter?’
The old lady swung round to peer out of the window above her head with an agility which was typical of her.
‘Yes, I dislike the police,’ she said briskly. ‘They have a mania for motor-cars. Get in.’
Mr Campion drew back involuntarily.
‘Oh no, really,’ he murmured. ‘I – I’m late for an appointment now. Delightful seeing you. Good-bye.’
The car door swinging suddenly open on top of him silenced his excuses. ‘Where is this appointment?’ The old voice was commanding.
‘Scotland Yard,’ said Campion with what he took to be a flash of inspiration. ‘Terribly important.’
‘Get in then, idiot,’ shouted the old lady. ‘Bullard!’ she screamed to the chauffeur. ‘Scotland Yard! – and drive as fast as you like. It’s official business.’
A moment later Mr Campion, who had no desire to go to the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department anyway, found himself sitting meekly beside his kidnapper as the big car slid quietly out into Piccadilly.
Lady Laradine regarded him with the affectionate pride of an angler for a landed fish.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Now tell me! your friend Lord Pettering is hysterically in love with Dorothea’s girl Roberta, isn’t he? How did he get that abominable uncle of his to agree to the match?’
Mr Campion blinked.
‘Tommy Pettering?’ he repeated with irritating stupidity. ‘Has he an uncle?’
Lady Laradine made a menacing noise in her throat.
‘Don’t you dare to take that line with me, young man,’ she said, prodding his knee with a finger which felt as though it had a thimble upon it. ‘You know as well as I do that Pettering’s mother is determined he shall have a career in the Foreign Office and that old Braithwaite, her brother, who is in the Cabinet, is only willing to arrange everything if he’s allowed to keep the whole family under his thumb. Young Master Thomas has to get his uncle’s permission before he sells a plater, much less gets himself engaged. How did the boy talk his uncle round? You must know.’
Mr Campion was aware of her small faded brown eyes watching him with a shrewdness which was unne
rving, and he stuck resolutely to his usual policy, saying nothing that could possibly be taken down and used against him.
‘I imagine the request was purely formal,’ he murmured cautiously. ‘I don’t know Miss Roberta Pendleton-Blake. There’s nothing against her, is there?’
‘Against Roberta? Of course not!’ the old woman snapped at him. ‘Dorothea is one of my best friends. But the money in that family did come from frozen meat in the last generation and everybody thought that the old uncle, Braithwaite, would put his stupid feet down on that account. So he would have done, of course, if there’d been any breath of scandal. The F.O. is so pristine, isn’t it? But I suppose the meat is something they can bring themselves to forget and forgive. Still, I believe it was touch and go. Tell me, do you like Roberta? She’s my godchild, but you can say what you like.’
Mr Campion patiently repeated his previous announcement that he had not met the Pendleton-Blakes. Lady Laradine was shocked.
‘Oh, my dear, you must,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you’re invited to the dance Dorothea is giving for the girl next week. Mind you come. They’re charming, all absolutely charming, even the husband – but he’s dead, of course. Dorothea is a sweet creature. So original. She uses all the ideas I give her for her parties. I’ve told her she must have the Psychometrist at the next dance. That’s something new to amuse people. It’s so interesting, I think, to have something to do, besides watching the younger people dance. It gives one something to talk about afterwards. You really must meet Dorothea. Oh, how disappointing, here we are.’
Her flow of chatter died abruptly as the Daimler turned on to the Embankment, and her passenger sprang out with uncharacteristic haste. He did not get clean away, however.
‘I’ll wait for you,’ said Lady Laradine, her hand on his coat. ‘I want to hear all the news.’
Mr Campion, who had considered crossing the road, picking up a cab and driving peacefully back to Bond Street, was aghast.
Mr Campion & Others Page 21
