He took a stick with a red blob on the end of it from some recess in the cupboard and dropped it gently into the glass.
‘There, my friend,’ he said, placing the potion in Campion’s hand. ‘If you’ll excuse me I’ll leave you to enjoy it while I change my waistcoat for something a little less festive.’
Campion sat looking at the glass, conviction of the complete unreality of the whole scene creeping over him.
He reproached himself for undue jumpiness, for seeing innuendoes in innocent remarks. Nevertheless, he did not drink from the glass in his hand but, removing the cherry stick with its burden still attached, sniffed the contents cautiously.
It seemed perfectly normal; a little odd in colour, perhaps, but otherwise very much the ordinary flavoured gin which he had been drinking all the evening.
He was about to replace the cherry when a fleck of white upon it caught his attention. He set the glass down and examined the fruit.
Its secret became obvious almost at once. The hole where the stone had been was now filled with a greyish white paste which certainly did not look wholesome.
Campion stared at it and his emotion was at least half disappointment. The whole ridiculous business was so unbelievably crude. Was this the man who had engineered the death of Mrs Potter? It seemed hardly credible.
He wondered what exactly the stuff was and what symptoms his host might expect him to show when he returned.
He emptied the contents of the glass in the back of the fire and watched it blaze. Most of it was spirit, anyway, he reflected. The cherry he placed carefully in an old envelope from his pocket and stowed it in his wallet.
Max could hardly be hoping him to die in the flat, he decided, however much his methods might have deteriorated. He was still contemplating the amazingly puerile attack when it occurred to him that more than likely Max had no conception of the completeness of his own discovery. He must know now that the authenticity of the later Lafcadios was under suspicion, but he probably had no idea that his part in the deaths in the household had been traced.
In this case was the present attempt so childish after all? Campion shuddered to think of the concoctions he had thoughtlessly swallowed down in the houses of acquaintances.
The subtlety might come later – in the disposal of the body, no doubt. Or perhaps it was one of those slow-working things; a culture, even, although that would be difficult for anyone but a doctor to obtain. It would be interesting to see what Max intended to do next.
Max intended to go to Savarini’s, latest love of the moneyed intelligentsia. That was evident as soon as he returned.
He had changed not only his waistcoat, but his whole suit for a set of darker garments, and seemed very happy.
‘Did you like it?’ he enquired, picking up the glass. ‘Not very much, perhaps?’ he added, as his guest hesitated. ‘You don’t like bitters? I do myself. They seem to give to a drink what minor disappointment gives to life, just that touch of the unsatisfactory which makes it worth one’s going on. It’s nearly half past eight. I must apologize. You must be positively starving.’
Savarini’s was crowded, as usual, and at the little tables, under the famous ceiling painted by du Parc, sat many who had been at the cocktail party. Campion recognized at least a dozen people, including young Farquharson, the shipping heir, dining with a party. He looked hard at his friend and harder at his friend’s friend, and raised his eyebrows questioningly. There was a lot of the snob about young Farquharson.
Max himself had something of a royal entry. Preceded by Joseph, the pontifical head waiter with the mustachios, he strutted among the crowded tables, nodding at every face turned towards him.
Evidently it was to be a special occasion. The table in the alcove of the furthest window was reserved for them, and as they settled down on the upholstered bench they had a complete view of the whole restaurant. Joseph himself superintended their meal, which appeared to have been ordered beforehand. Mr Campion decided that perhaps, after all, he was not expected to die at the dinner.
Max was speaking in his new role of the perfect host.
‘I took the precaution of leaving the food to our good Maître, my dear Campion. We’re to taste the Cantonetti tonight, and to appreciate it one must eat the right things with it. This is to be a gourmet’s meal, a fitting prelude to the discussion of the Lafcadios.’
Campion expressed his willingness to enjoy whatever Joseph should set before them and enquired about the Cantonetti. The name was vaguely familiar to him, but he could not place it.
‘The Cantonetti?’ Max appeared suitably shocked. ‘My dear Campion, the greatest gastronomic discovery of the age. The one wine our generation has given to the civilized world. Of course in Roumania, the place of its birth, it has been known for generations, but the disastrous effect of old-fashioned transport ruined it completely. The coming of the aeroplane has altered all that.’
He beckoned Joseph, who, Campion was grieved to see, was positively hovering.
‘Has the Cantonetti arrived?’
‘Quite safely, Mr Fustian, by Monsieur Savarini’s private plane.’
‘And it has been kept at sixty-five?’
‘Sixty-five degrees exactly, Mr Fustian.’
Max nodded his gracious approval. ‘Bring it,’ he said. ‘We’ll have it with the omelette.’
Joseph sped away like one of his own service boys and Mr Campion tried to remember. Among the odd information in the back of his mind there was the word Cantonetti. It was a red wine, he fancied, and the particular possession of a great family, and there was something odd about it, some anecdote, something mildly funny. He gave it up. Whatever it was it had escaped him entirely.
The dinner arrived and Mr Campion privately decided that the cherry in his pocket contained some poison with a delayed action; a botulistic culture, no doubt, or one of the fungus poisons. There were mushrooms in the omelette, which strengthened this idea.
Yes, of course, that was it; one of the fungus poisons. How extremely ingenious, and particularly unpleasant. Also, incidentally, how very hard on poor old Savarini.
He eyed Max thoughtfully as a waiter slid the delectable gold and black mass on to his plate.
‘You like cèpes, I hope?’ enquired his host with something that was surely more than ordinary interest.
Campion decided to play.
‘Very much indeed,’ he said, and Max seemed pleased.
The omelette was just in situ, as it were, when a small procession walked up the room to their table.
Joseph came first, dignified and intent, his eye glassy and his bearing superb. Behind him, and in pathetic imitation, strode a small boy bearing a tray on which stood two beautiful glasses. They were fully ten inches high and lily-shaped, with long slender pedestals and curved lips.
Finally came the Savarini wine waiter, a solemn portly soul, carrying a broad flat basket lined with vine-leaves. In the basket reposed the bottle.
Mr Campion, the most modest of men, was slightly embarrassed by this homage so publicly paid to his stomach.
Joseph made the uncorking an occasion.
The bottle was frankly enormous, and with its dusty sides swathed in a napkin the size of a cot sheet it was probably sufficiently ostentatious even for Max.
‘You are prepared for it, Mr Fustian?’ the head waiter murmured, smiling, as he poured a little of the thick crimson stuff into the host’s glass and filled his guest’s to the lily’s brim.
‘We’ve been in training all day,’ said Max happily. ‘Haven’t we, Campion?’
If four or five cocktails constituted a training for anything Mr Campion supposed he had.
He nodded, and Max raised his now full glass.
‘Your health, my dear Campion,’ he said.
The young man smiled. The toast might have been more appropriate, he thought.
They breathed, savoured, and drank. Joseph still standing before them to give the moment its due solemnity.
The wine was remarkable.
Campion found himself astonished. So much preparation he had feared could only herald a minor disappointment, but this vintage seemed not only to excuse but even to merit any amount of palaver.
It was heavier than the clarets of Bordeaux; deeper in colour and more soft, but without the weight of a Burgundy, and although completely different from either, was yet without eccentricity to alarm the palate.
Mr Campion, who knew the strong vintages of Spain and the old wines of the East, found himself unable to think of anything with which to compare it. It was really a discovery and he gave Max due credit.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ His host leant back, a gleam of pure pleasure in his little dark eyes. ‘The secret is to drink it. Don’t sip it like Tokay, but drink it like the divine draught it is.’
It seemed such excellent advice that Mr Campion took it, reflecting that the fungus poisoning could hardly be expected to take effect for another two or three hours at least.
The Cantonetti was admirably foiled by the tournedos, and after by a curious savoury mess of sweetbreads and chicken liver, and it was not until the end of the third glass when Joseph was superintending presentation of the flat oat biscuits and the little round red cheese of the Danubian plain that Campion noticed anything odd about himself.
His first indication that he was not perfectly normal was the fact that when Max mentioned Lafcadio for a moment he had the greatest difficulty in remembering who that eminent painter might be.
He pulled himself together. The Cantonetti was evidently much more potent than its sisters of France. He felt irritated with himself, and glanced at Max, who had drunk considerably more of the stuff. Mr Fustian was obviously perfectly sober and was surveying the world with the gracious tolerance of one who has dined wisely quite as much as well.
Mr Campion jibbed at a word and fluffed it badly, and alarm seized that part of his brain which is the last to succumb to alcohol or anaesthetic.
He wondered wildly if he had been drugged in the restaurant, but one glance at Joseph reassured him. That monument of dignity would never connive at anything which might harm the prestige of the beloved business in which he was reputed to have a considerable share.
Besides, he decided furiously, he was not drugged: he was drunk, and moreover he was rapidly becoming more and more deeply sunk into that unenviable state.
Cantonetti. He stared at the bottle. Something about Cantonetti was coming back to him. Now it was gone again. Something – something mildly funny. He knocked over his empty lily goblet and laughed to see the little splinters of fine glass sticking in the cheese.
He pointed out the joke to Max, who laughed too, tolerantly and with graceful good humour.
And then, suddenly, Campion was ashamed of himself and angry that he had broken the glass, and he put his napkin over the cheese and tried to change the subject and talk about pictures. Only he couldn’t think of the names of any artists except a man with an unpronounceable name of whom Max had never heard.
He ate a wheat biscuit, and for an instant his mind cleared. He remembered everything, the cocktail, the cherry in his pocket and the whole ghastly business. He glanced sharply at Max and saw that he was looking at him narrowly.
He felt suddenly cold. It had dawned on him at last. The second degree of subtlety again. The old trick which had been Fustian’s characteristic all along. He had meant his ridiculous poisoned cherry to be discovered: he had laid particular stress on it and had gone out of the room so that it would be discovered, and his victim, poor beast, put off the scent for the real attack.
The real attack lay somewhere in the Cantonetti. Campion wished he could remember. The whole of the main restaurant had become indistinct. He was aware of vast planes of misty, chattering ghosts to whom, he supposed fatuously, he was as invisible as they to him.
Max he knew. Max was just beside him. There was something that Max was going to do that he did not like. He could not remember what it was. It was something that he must stop him from doing. It was all very sad and difficult.
He ate another biscuit.
Out of the gaily-coloured fog which seemed to have enveloped the table he caught a glimpse of Joseph’s face. He felt like laughing at it because it had no body and because it looked so worried. It was saying something to Max to which Campion would have liked to have listened but found it difficult because the waiter was speaking so indistinctly. He caught one or two phrases.
‘He did not take you seriously, Mr Fustian – the strongest head cannot stand it if –’
Max was saying something now. He seemed to be apologizing.
‘Of course I had no idea – he gave me his word –’
Once again Mr Campion became himself, but only for a moment, for the absorbent powers of one small biscuit are not great.
Although his vision was still impaired, the scattered phrases he had heard made sense and awakened his memory.
The Cantonetti.
Old Randall talking about the Cantonetti – ‘most marvellous stuff in the world if you haven’t had any spirit within twenty-four hours. If you’ve had any, though, or especially if you’ve had any gin, then, oh, my hat!’
Campion broke into a sweat. The world was beginning to fade again.
‘If you’ve had any gin –’
Was the mixture a poison? Hardly. Savarini’s would barely risk it.
Confound this idiotic tendency to laugh unreasonably. No – that was it – Randall had said it made one tight but not ordinarily tight. Mr Campion fancied he had said ‘gloriously tight’, or was it ‘fantastically tight’? Well, he was fantastically tight now, and Max was going to do something to him. What was it?? Oh, what was it? Max was going to – Good God, Max was going to kill him!
He stared at Max now, Max grotesque and misshapen with a yellow haze round him. He looked so ridiculous like that that Mr Campion could not think of anything else. He laughed uproariously.
Max echoed him, and so did the people behind the curtain of coloured lights. Everybody laughed like anything. It was all very jolly.
Campion flew out of the restaurant, a most exhilarating experience. His feet did not touch the ground, but he hit the top of a chair once with his knee and knocked it over. No one minded. Everyone was so happy, nearly as happy as himself. They were all giggling except Joseph. Joseph’s face was gloomy and shocked, and very humorous floating about without its body.
Max was there close beside him, but not flying. Max was walking rather fast, bobbing up and down and knocking into one, but he was happy, too, and did not care.
Only once Campion remembered what it was that Max was going to do, and that was when in the foyer he suddenly saw young Farquharson’s face not a foot from his own. The startled expression on the familiar face sobered him, and he clutched at the man’s arm as though it were the proverbial straw, which of course it very well might have been.
‘I’m – I’m in danger,’ he said seriously, and Farquharson’s face split into a smile.
‘I know you are, old boy,’ he said. ‘In danger of falling down if you don’t look out.’
Then Max was there again, silly Max in his comic clothes. Mr Campion roared with laughter at him and flew on.
Outside it was lovely.
The wet streets shone as the lamps raced by. All connexions with the sordid trappings of earth deserted Mr Campion. He was a disembodied spirit, and Max was his mortal guide.
Of course there were amusing incidents. There was the time when Max lurched against him and he fell over on a street refuge, and a policeman helped to pick him up and told him to be careful. And there was the man at the Embassy who told him he wouldn’t like it inside because everyone would be in evening dress, and laughed when he offered to take off his waistcoat.
There was the excruciatingly humorous moment when his aunt’s butler in Grosvenor Square did not recognize him at first and rushed away and shut the door when he did.
By and by the glory diminished. Campion realized that he was walking, and not
walking too well either. Then he noticed his hands were filthy from the refuge incident and he had lost his gloves.
He became increasingly aware of Max about this time. Max was hurrying, he fancied. He was not talking so much either. Mr Campion began to distrust Max. At the back of his mind there was something that warned him not to like Max. Something most unpleasant about the fellow; he couldn’t remember at all what it was.
They were in a darker part of the town now. There were not nearly so many lovely dancing lights. It was familiar, though. Very familiar.
Max spoke.
‘Now we must go to see that girl in Watford,’ he said clearly.
‘No,’ said Mr Campion definitely.
‘In Bushey, then.’
‘In Bushey but not Watford,’ agreed Mr Campion indistinctly, and for some reason which he could not bother about.
‘How will you get to Bushey? You don’t know, do you?’
Max’s voice was different, more compelling. It hardly seemed to Mr Campion that it was a voice at all, but rather the promptings of his own mind.
‘No,’ he said foolishly. ‘No, I don’t know.’ The remark seemed at the moment to sum up a great tragedy.
‘Ask,’ said the voice again. ‘Ask at the club.’
This wonderful suggestion seemed to solve all Mr Campion’s troubles. Then, marvel of marvels, there was the club right in front of him.
He staggered to the steps and had great difficulty in climbing up them. Max was no longer with him. But the idea was still fixed in his mind: how to get to Bushey? How the hell to get to Bushey?
He put it to old Chatters sitting in his box, his newspaper on his knee.
But Chatters was stupid and seemed to want him to go away, although he did not say so. Puffins was a rotten club, he decided. A rotten, stuffy club.
He went out again and fell down the steps, and Chatters came and helped him up, but the fool was not clear about the way to Bushey but wanted to call a taxi and send him home.
There were no taxis, though, and Mr Campion got away from him and wandered down the road into the dark, and then Max was there again.
Mr Campion did not like him, and said so, and Max seemed very anxious to hurry suddenly. He gave him a drink from his brandy flask, which was kind and generous of him, and showed Mr Campion that he was at heart a decent fellow.
Death of a Ghost Page 23
