‘I don’t think . . .’ Hal began stiffly and paused abruptly as the conversation on the lawn took a sudden turn.
As Amanda ceased to speak Mr Campion took her hand and raised it to his lips with a gallantry which might or might not have been derisive. Amanda recovered her hand and hit him. It was no playful salutation but a straight broadside attack delivered with anger, and the noise of the impact sounded clearly in the room.
‘Indeed,’ murmured Gaiogi with an embarrassed laugh, and added instantly ‘Good God!’
Campion had picked up his ex-fiancée and they saw him poised for an instant with the girl over his head. He said something which no one caught, but which possessed that peculiar quality of viciousness which is unmistakable, and then, while they all stared at him, pitched her from him into the deep river with a splash like a water-spout. He did not wait to see what became of her, but swung away and strode up the garden, the imprint of her hand showing clearly on his white face. As they reached the water’s edge they heard the roar of the Lagonda.
Amanda’s comment as she swam ashore and was lifted, breathless and dripping, on to the lawn by a bewildered gathering, was typical of her new mood.
‘Not everybody’s form of humour,’ she said briefly. ‘Will you all go and have a drink while I change?’
Tante Marthe accompanied her and Val made helpless apologies to Hal, who was devastatingly polite.
‘He’s not taking it very well,’ he said. ‘Frankly I was afraid something like this might happen. Anyway, she’ll be out of the country for a bit. It’s really nothing to do with you, Mrs Ferris. Please don’t worry about it. Fortunately there was no one here who could make a gossip paragraph of it.’
‘He’s obviously off his head with worry,’ put in Alan Dell hastily. ‘That résumé which he gave was most enlightening. He evidently knows what the police intend to do. I heard this morning that there was talk of an exhumation order for Ramillies’s body. What he said is quite true. If there is no arrest the inquiry may turn into a long ordeal for all of us. A murder is the one and only thing which cannot be hushed up in this country.’
Amanda’s brother regarded him with a curious little smile on his young mouth.
‘Believe me, I appreciate that,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me I’ll just have a word with my sister.’
Ferdie looked after his retreating figure.
‘There’s not much that that kind of kid in that kind of position couldn’t hush up, is there?’ he said. ‘What was the row about? Anybody know?’
And Gaiogi, who had been listening with his bright eyes on Ferdie’s face, shrugged his shoulders.
‘That is how it should be,’ he said.
Val laughed uneasily.
‘I thought you were going to say, “What is a little murder to disturb an aristocrat?” Gaiogi,’ she murmured.
The Russian looked at her steadily, his round eyes intelligent.
‘Among clever aristos, what is?’ he said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
FERDIE PAUL WAS on the telephone when Mrs Fitch brought Campion in. The room was much tidier than usual and struck cold after the warmth of the summer streets, but Ferdie himself was slightly dishevelled in his anxiety.
‘Well, do what you can, anyway, old boy, won’t you?’ he said into the instrument, his thin voice carrying a world of nervous force and irritability behind it. ‘Yes, I know, but it’s not a pleasant experience for any of us, is it? You were an old friend, that was all.’
He hung up and glanced at Campion, the welcoming smile fading from his face as he saw him.
‘Hullo, you all right?’ he inquired.
‘All right?’ Mr Campion threw himself down in the armchair which Mrs Fitch pulled up for him. He barely remembered to thank her, but she did not seem to notice the omission. ‘Yes, I’m all right. I’m alive, anyway. The corpse-like effect is induced by lack of sleep.’
‘It’s getting you down, is it? I don’t blame you.’ His host was grimly amused. ‘Have a drink. Anna, for God’s sake, dear, get the man a snifter. Don’t hang about. Don’t hang about.’
If Mrs Fitch resented his tone she did not show it. She mixed a drink on the sideboard and carried it to the visitor, who took the glass from her absently and set it down untasted. He looked like a skeleton in a dinner-jacket. There were blue hollows round his eyes, while the skin stretching over his jaws seemed to have pulled his lips back a little. His normal affability had vanished completely and a sort of spiteful recklessness, which was wrong in him, had taken its place. Ferdie watched him, his shiny eyes laughing a little contemptuously in spite of his friendliness.
‘Your girl friend swam ashore last night,’ he remarked.
‘Did she?’ Mr Campion was profoundly disinterested.
‘They have nine lives, all of ’em.’ Ferdie was not intentionally tasteless, but the little joke amused him. ‘You forgot the brick,’ he said.
Mr Campion did not smile.
‘You said you wanted to see me?’ he inquired pointedly.
Ferdie raised his eyebrows and turned round to frown at Mrs Fitch.
‘Just a moment, dear,’ he said, every tone in the request indicating that she and everyone else in the world exasperated him unbearably. ‘Shut the door behind you. I’ve asked Mr Campion round here to talk. You don’t mind, do you? We shan’t be long.’
Anna Fitch went out obediently and Ferdie got up and shook his loose clothes.
‘You’re taking that engagement bust of yours too hard,’ he said. ‘I was talking to Georgia on the phone just now. She said Val seemed to be very worried about you. Still, that’s your affair,’ he added hastily as his visitor prepared to rise. ‘I didn’t phone all over London simply to tell you that no woman’s worth it. You’ll discover that in your own time. I’ve got my hands full at the moment. This is all pretty nasty, Campion, isn’t it? Where’s it going to end? We’re in the soup, aren’t we?’
Mr Campion sighed. ‘It’s comforting to find that someone realizes that,’ he said bitterly. ‘These silly women don’t see what’s stewing up for them. They haven’t savoured the Hakapopulous variety of stink. They don’t know what it’s like. Their innocent little snouts don’t register anything stronger than cheating at bridge. The Home Secretary is considering the exhumation petition now, I believe.’
‘Oh, he is, is he? I was afraid that was coming.’ Ferdie spoke gloomily, but his eyes were still bright with interest. ‘I’ve been trying to pull a few strings myself, as a matter of fact, but there’s an ominous frigidity on all sides which doesn’t feel too healthy. Still, supposing the police do get the order through, what can they expect to find? Wasn’t there a P.M. at the time?’
‘Yes, but the police aren’t satisfied.’ Mr Campion made the statement wearily. ‘They’ve got the report of the first P.M. and in it there’s a mention of a hypodermic puncture in the left upper arm, yet the analysis found nothing to account for this. Not unnaturally the police feel they’d like their own man to go over the ground again. They’ve got the viscera from Richmond now, as a matter of fact, and it’s in Wryothsley’s lab., but he wants to see the rest of the cadaver.’ He laughed briefly at the other man’s expression. ‘I’m sorry to be so forthright, but there you are. That’s the sort of detail which next Sunday’s Press is going to dish up with comment. Meanwhile, if there is anything in the body which was overlooked in the first P.M., Wryothsley will find it.’
Ferdie looked up. There’s always a chance that there’s nothing to find,’ he observed, but his optimism was not convincing.
‘The “unknown drug”?’ Mr Campion sounded derisive. ‘Don’t you believe it, Guv’nor. There ain’t no such thing. What they don’t find they’ll deduce, same as I have, and that deduction, if it doesn’t give them proof, will certainly give them the lead they want. It’s going to be an almighty mess.’
Ferdie Paul wandered about the big cold room. His body looked heavier than usual as his shoulders drooped and his chin rested tho
ughtfully on his chest. After a while he came to a pause before Campion’s chair and stood looking down at him.
‘I haven’t any illusions, you know, Campion,’ he said at last. ‘I see the danger. I’ve got the wind up all right. But, if you don’t mind me saying so, my business has trained me to keep a bit quieter about it than yours has. Also, of course, I’m not personally touched by it as you are. I’m not a fool, though. I’ve lived with it for over three weeks and I’ve had my mind working. It’s a question of proof now, isn’t it?’
‘Practically.’ Mr Campion met the other man’s eyes and seemed to make the reservation unwillingly.
‘You mean you don’t actually know. Is that it?’ Ferdie was merciless and Mr Campion was forced to hedge badly.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘since Val is so closely involved the police don’t trust me entirely. Why should they? Then this row of my own broke on Friday and, frankly, I made a fool of myself, got tight and that sort of thing, and after the exhibition I put up I fancy the super may be wondering if I’m the white-headed boy after all. Still, I’m fairly well acquainted with police movements. Just now they’re concentrating on the Hakapopulous pair. Inspector Pullen has worked it out that whoever murdered Miss Adamson must have known the restaurant very well or had at least used the back entrance before. They’ve decided that she was killed about eight in the evening. Just now he is spending his time trying to get the Greeks to identify photographs of everyone who has ever had anything to do with the poor wretched girl. Jock Hakapopulous is still as resilient as a sphere of solid rubber, but Andreas, I understand, is showing signs of wear and tear. Those two are holding out because of the accessory-after-the-fact charge, of course.’
Ferdie perched himself on the edge of the table and the light behind his thin hair made his curls look forlorn and inadequate.
‘Campion,’ he said quietly, ‘who do you think it is? Does your idea coincide with mine?’
Mr Campion raised his weary eyes.
‘That’s a very delicate question,’ he murmured cautiously.
‘Because it involves a friend of mine, you mean?’ Ferdie’s driving force was tremendous. The air seemed to quiver with it.
‘Well, yes, there is that aspect, isn’t there?’
‘My dear chap’ – the other man was exasperated – ‘I have many friends but I don’t stand for ’em through thick and thin. I’m not superhuman nor am I a sentimental bloody fool. What put you on?’
‘A quotation from a letter of Sterne’s,’ said Mr Campion. He spoke dreamily and when his host stared at him went on, his tired voice precise and almost expressionless. ‘Lugg, of all people, produced it at four o’clock in the morning. All through this business I’ve been bewildered by a curious hand-of-fate quality which has pervaded the whole thing. I noticed it first when I found young Portland-Smith so very conveniently dead and yet lying in the one spot where no murderer could possibly have put him I said something about it being “like Providence” and Lugg suddenly produced the key. This is the quotation. It gives it to you in one. The truth is startlingly obvious when you consider it. “Providence, having the advantage of knowing both the strengths and the weaknesses of men, has a facility for unostentatious organization undreamed of by our Generals.” It’s a smart-type remark and just like a sophisticated parson, but it contains the key of this business. See it – “Unostentatious organization”? That’s the operative phrase; while the recipe for same is given earlier: “knowing both the strengths and the weaknesses”. That is how it was all done.’
‘My God, you’ve got it, Campion!’ Ferdie was watching him with fascinated interest. ‘I think you’re right. I thought you were three parts fool, but I take it back. This is what I’ve been groping for. This explains how. Yes, I see it in the main, but I thought, when you were talking yesterday, you said that Portland-Smith’s suicide was not intended?’
Mr Campion rose.
‘It wasn’t,’ he said. ‘The intention was merely to get him out of the way of Georgia. He was round her feet. No one knew they were married, remember. You didn’t yourself, even. In the beginning it was simply a little intrigue to break up an engagement of which Georgia was obviously tired and yet which, for some reason or other, she refused to dissolve. There was no great underlying scheme about it. It was just a little plot to end an unwise alliance. Portland-Smith was evidently nuts about the woman and I fancy the idea was either to get it into his head that he could never afford to marry her, or, failing that, to get it into her head that he was unfaithful and not worth worrying about. Anyway, the original plan was merely to make a decisive sort of row between them. Unfortunately the “unostentatious organization” technique was not then perfected and, as with many beginners, the tendency was to work too large, while of course the unknown fact that the two were married altered the whole scale of the thing. However, it provides a fine example of the method itself. The recipe lies in the strengths and the weaknesses, remember. A frame-up was arranged. Portland-Smith was in love with Georgia and she was unkind. Therefore a girl who resembled Georgia had a chance with him. That was a weakness in him. He was a barrister and therefore unable to take any real advantage of the anonymity law, so that he was peculiarly susceptible to blackmail. That was another weakness. Of the two women employed to do the dirty work the elder, who arranged the whole thing and who in my opinion needed no more than to have the idea as a money-making scheme put up to her, had a passion for money and that particular type of mind which can see the sufferings of others and regard them without comprehension, seeing them only as an interesting spectacle. That in her was a strength. Unfortunately, however, the blindness which made it possible for her to have undertaken the project at all was too much for the scheme altogether. Unconscious of the effect she was really having on Portland-Smith, she hounded the poor beast to death, and her boss, the original perpetrator of the little row, found Georgia’s unwanted fiancé permanently removed. Whether this astounding success encouraged him or not I don’t like to think, but I imagine that, once one has accustomed oneself to the idea of causing death, the convenient finality of that means of disposing of an obstacle might outweigh all other considerations. Anyhow, when Ramillies became a howling nuisance, the “unostentatious organization” method was put into practice again. Again the strengths and the weaknesses of men were all carefully utilized. Ramillies was so afraid of flying that he believed in the perfectly preposterous story of a drug which would make him feel seedy for four hours and magnificent for twenty-four. That was a weakness. Caesar’s Court is one of the few places in England where the organization is so perfect that, should anything arise there which the manager desired to hush up, every possible facility for doing so could be instantly afforded him. That was a strength. Then there were interested Government officials there who could lend their influence to avoid any scandal if there seemed no real cause for one. That was the strength of the occasion. It was all very prettily thought out. Think of the doctor. Juxton-Coltness is an unmitigated snob and he was flattered by the invitation to Caesar’s Court and availed himself of it promptly. That was a weakness in him. He is anxious to please all important people and is in the peculiar position of having the kind of fashionable practice which permits him to take little risks which an ordinary G.P. might hesitate about. That is a strength. See what I mean?’
‘Yes, I do. You’re right, thunderingly right.’ Ferdie was trembling in his interest. ‘What about the last case?’
‘Caroline? Oh, that was the same thing. I mean, it was done in the same way. But it was a murder of necessity. Caroline attempted to blackmail her old colleague of the Portland-Smith business and, since anything that involved that elder woman would of necessity also involve the man, the old original god in the machine, she had to be silenced. This time the strengths and the weaknesses were brilliantly employed. He was becoming more experienced, I suppose. Caroline needed money badly. She had no job, no protector. This need blinded her to the tremendous danger of going alone to the Ha
kapopulous restaurant. However, she had been there before with her colleague to interview Portland-Smith and she thought she was going to meet a woman, the woman who had stood by the telephone while the wretched girl rang me up as a threat. Still, real need of money was her weakness. Then the Hakapopulous brothers could not afford an inquiry into their business. They were people who simply could not risk a murder investigation on their premises. That was their weakness. But their strengths were equally useful. Those two are crooks with the real crook temperament which half enjoys a tremendous risk. Also they are experienced. They’ve cleared up a mess and destroyed evidence before. Added to this, they’re both used to police cross-examination and they know all the answers.
‘There you are. That’s how the whole thing was done, by brilliant, unostentatious organization. He organized his crimes and relied on the strengths and the weaknesses of other people, none of whom had the least idea of the way in which they were being used, to protect him. The fact that he could do it shows the sort of chap he is: shrewd, sophisticated, quite without conscience and probably under the impression that he’s superhuman, in which respect he’s insane, of course.’
His voice died away and there was silence in the room.
‘The man’s a genius,’ said Ferdie presently and sighed. ‘Look how he runs that place,’ he added. ‘What a pity, Campion! What a cracking pity!’
Mr Campion lay back in his chair again. He looked exhausted.
‘Have you known this long?’ he inquired at last.
‘It’s been forcing in on me for a bit. I’ve been afraid of it, yes. After all, when you’re in the thick of a thing like this you can’t help your mind working on it, can you?’
‘Got any ideas?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking.’ Ferdie paused and looked at his visitor. ‘Forgive me, old chap, but I haven’t really taken you seriously before. I’ve been working on an idea of my own. I didn’t know how he’d done it, you see; all I knew was that he must have done it, and of course I saw why.’
The Fashion In Shrouds Page 31
