Margery Allingham's Mr Campion's Farewell

by Mike Ripley

  ‘We had written permission from the land owner, Gus Marchant, of course, but we were met by a chap called Fuller.’

  ‘The young one or the old one?’

  ‘This one was fairly young, about my age I’d say. He looked like the Territorial type and was a bit snooty when it came to my students. Said he thought a bit of hard digging and a few weeks under canvas would do them good. He made it quite clear he thought we were a bunch of softies. I helped carry the equipment down into Saxon Mills and when they’d got their tents up and a couple of jerry cans of fresh water from the farm, I agreed with Steve Stotter the areas to be excavated. Then we all walked into Carfax, so they could see where the shop was and buy some provisions and I went to meet an old friend for a pint in the local pub.’

  ‘May I ask who your friend was?’

  ‘A chap I was at school with, name of Lemmy Walker. He’s the local schoolteacher out there and he offered to keep an eye on my students!’ Dr Casson’s voice now betrayed a hint of bitterness. ‘But I can’t blame Lemmy for what happened. He was devastated by it, but then he always was a bit of an innocent when it came to drugs.’

  ‘Isn’t that the best way to be?’

  ‘I suppose so, if you’re a village schoolteacher, but I’m afraid we have to accept them as a fact of life among the student population. We’ve had the “summer of love”, flower power and psychedelic music blasting out of our televisions and wirelesses. It should not come as a surprise that young people want to experiment with mind-altering substances.’

  ‘Illegal substances,’ Campion said softly but firmly.

  ‘The law is being used – what was the famous phrase – to break a butterfly upon a wheel? It is the knee-jerk response of reactionary governments who fear a social revolution where the young guard replaces the old.’

  ‘The phrase is a quote from Alexander Pope, but you have given it the ring of a line from a manifesto; a simplistic, naïve and unintelligent manifesto at that. May I be so bold as to suggest it is a slogan you have heard and that you repeat without necessarily understanding or believing?’

  The younger man seemed surprised to be addressed in such a way, but at least had the decency to blush a deep crimson and to avoid meeting Mr Campion’s gaze, which by now had a steely quality.

  ‘It was something Lemmy used to say,’ Casson said hesitantly. ‘He was a great believer in free spiritism among young people.’

  ‘Free spiritism?’ Campion snapped. ‘That’s not even a word let alone a philosophy.’

  ‘Well Lemmy was sincere – or he was back then. He believed that it was possible to free the artistic spirit through hallucinogenic drugs and that freedom acted as a drug in itself. It was the genie let out of the bottle. Once the mind had been liberated, the conventions of a creaking and hypocritical society could no longer repress and suffocate the dynamism of youth.’

  ‘You sound as if you are quoting again,’ Campion pressed him, ‘and although I am of a generation whose opinions no longer matter a fig, allow me to say you are quoting piffle and your attitude seems to condone not only the illegal but the very, very dangerous. Lethal as it turned out.’

  ‘I was not responsible for what happened last year!’ Casson squeaked, retreating into the persona of a guilty schoolboy.

  ‘Then who was?’

  ‘I don’t know! Whoever supplied them with the LSD, I suppose.’ Now the schoolboy was sulking. ‘They knew what they were doing, it wasn’t their first time. For goodness sake, think how many drink-drivers die every year.’

  ‘We now have strict laws about that too,’ said Campion severely, ‘but one irresponsible action does not excuse another. The fact is that two of your students died at Lindsay Carfax and three were taken to hospital and I do not believe they did know what they were doing. As I understand it, they took massive overdoses.’

  ‘Then it was a stupid accident. Whoever supplied them didn’t know what they were doing. Nobody would deliberately take an overdose and no supplier would sell a dangerous overdose. Suppliers like repeat customers, not dead ones.’

  Mr Campion took a deep breath and held it, eventually breathing out slowly in order to calm himself. He thought of the surprisingly large number of occasions in the past when he had heard that somebody-or-other ‘deserved a damn good thrashing’ and he had promised himself that he would never allow advanced age, dishonest politicians or the rate of income tax to persuade him to apply the phrase sincerely. He had kept his promise so far, but with the emotionally withered Mortimer Casson it was going to be a close run thing.

  ‘Do you have any idea who the supplier was?’ he inquired calmly.

  ‘Somebody in Lindsay Carfax,’ the archaeologist said defiantly. ‘Probably the hippies who set up camp there.’

  ‘Could they not have taken the drugs with them?’ Campion asked casually, trying not to sound like a policeman.

  ‘They didn’t have them when we left Cambridge. I told you, I drove them there in the van. They wouldn’t have been “carrying” because if anything had been found on them – if we’d been stopped by the police for any reason – then I would have been in trouble with the college.’

  ‘You would have been acting in loco parentis I suppose.’

  Dr Casson allowed himself a wry smile which verged on a sneer.

  ‘That particular doctrine is under legal review in America, I believe. The times, as they say are a-changing. I was more worried about the insurance policy for the van – and also losing my driver’s privileges if there was trouble. There are few enough in the archaeology department who can drive as it is. As a breed we don’t seem to take to modern things.’

  ‘Apart from fashionable drugs it seems,’ Campion was unable to resist, ‘but you’re sure they obtained them in Lindsay Carfax?’

  ‘They must have. I brought the van back to Cambridge so they were more or less stuck there for the duration. They’d been there about a week when the hippy convoy arrived and set up their camp next to my chaps’ tents. I’m sure one of them was a dealer – the supplier – and so was Lemmy Walker, who tried to befriend them, though the locals called them everything from “lie-abouts” to “dirty gyppoes” and couldn’t wait to set the police on them.’

  ‘Too late to help your diggers, though.’

  ‘Yes, they disappeared quick enough when Stephen and Martin died and I never heard if the police questioned any of them seriously. Lemmy was so upset by the whole business that he sort of … well, blanked it out.’

  It was not, Mr Campion knew, the only thing that Lemuel Walker had deliberately forgotten, but he kept that to himself.

  ‘What happened to the three students who were hospitalised?’ he asked.

  ‘They were sent down of course,’ said Casson coldly, ‘and no doubt their parents gave them hell. I’ve not seen them since the day I drove them over there.’

  ‘And you never saw Stephen Stotter or Martin Rees again?’

  ‘Obviously not. I drove them all there and left them. I’ve never been back to the damned place’

  ‘But did you not say that they had found a starting handle from a car?’

  ‘Yes I did and yes, they did. So what?’

  ‘How did you know about that?’

  Campion pulled out a handkerchief (a brand new one, courtesy of Amanda-who-thinks-of-everything), removed his spectacles and began to polish them.

  ‘It was Lemmy Walker who brought it over one week-end. I’ve still got it somewhere here.’ Dr Casson waved his cigarette vaguely over the chaos of his room. ‘Lemmy had been out at Saxon Mills talking to the hippies and showing an interest in the dig and Steve had shown it to him, making a big joke of it, thinking it might make a good trophy for the common room. Lemmy said he would give it to me the next time he saw me and that’s exactly what he did. Except of course by then, the joke had gone a bit sour. Is it important?’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Campion, ‘but there is one thing that might be and I should have asked a nice policeman but to be hone
st, I forgot. When your party of diggers took the drugs they did, irrespective of how they obtained them, were they in their camp at Saxon Mills?’

  ‘No they weren’t,’ said Casson indifferently. ‘Does it matter?’

  Campion waved a hand dismissively and said, ‘I can always ask a policeman.’

  ‘I don’t know why, but they had left their tents and equipment – equipment which still hasn’t been returned to the department, by the way – and gone into Lindsay Carfax.’

  ‘To buy the LSD?’

  ‘Perhaps. I have no idea. All I know is that they were found the next morning in some sort of barn or warehouse just off the main street. Lemmy told me it was an old storehouse somewhere near the village garage and behind the shop, near a studio run by some loud-mouthed bully of a painter who thinks he’s an artist.’

  Thirteen

  The Student of Owling

  After his adventure with the emotionless archaeologist as he thought of it, though that did strike him as a chapter heading out of a John Buchan story, Mr Campion felt in need of both a bath and a strong drink. St Ignatius, true to its principle of satisfying the body before ever troubling the mind, provided both and by the time he was be-gowned and striding down to hall, he was refreshed and looking forward to his companion at High Table, assuming that the Master had remembered to invite him.

  Fortunately, Dr Livingstone’s memory had not failed him; or it had been nudged by the imperious Gildart, who officiated at college dinners even out of term and was probably secretly delighted to have another diner to look down upon or scowl at should he pass the port the wrong way or use the wrong cutlery. Even though both scenarios were highly unlikely, Gildart (Junior) struck Campion as having his father’s dedication to waiting patiently for years, if not decades, to pounce on someone committing such a flagrant breach of etiquette.

  It was the Head Porter who, with silent dignity, pulled back a chair so that Campion could be placed next to a small, rotund, ancient frog of a man with long, unkempt white hair seated next to the Master, twirling an empty sherry glass between finger and thumb.

  ‘You must be Campion,’ said the benign amphibian. ‘I’m Christmas at King’s.’

  Mr Campion’s face cracked into a huge grin.

  ‘Do you know, I’m not quite sure what to say to that?’

  ‘Don’t rise to the bait, Albert,’ said the Master. ‘Casper does that just to get his retaliation in first, rather like me introducing myself as “I am the Dr Livingstone you presumed”. To be absolutely accurate –’

  ‘Or as pedantic as usual,’ interjected the squat visitor.

  ‘– allow me to introduce Professor Casper Christmas of King’s College, an establishment you will find by turning left out the college gates and after a few yards its rather ostentatious architecture will present itself on the opposite side of the street.’

  ‘I’ve just remembered why I visit St Ignatius so rarely,’ said Professor Christmas, with a well-practised wrinkling of his brow. ‘The food is passable, the wine cellar excellent and the staff are –’ Here he flounced his long white mane and winked at the statuesque Gildart standing to attention in the wings. ‘– impeccable, dedicated and notoriously underpaid. But, my dear chap, the Fellows … Suffice it to say they leave an awful lot to be desired. I believe you had the misfortune to be an undergraduate here?’

  Mr Campion settled into his chair, and into the game.

  ‘My parents knew from the cradle that I was not clever enough for King’s,’ he said, putting on what Amanda called his “innocent owl” expression, ‘and of course, Oxford was out of the question …’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘… and then someone suggested St Ignatius as the nearest thing to a respectable Borstal and they took me in out of charity and sheltered me for three years, but were less successful when it came to reforming me.’

  ‘Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise,’ the Professor announced.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The chap who invented the Borstal system, formalised in the Prevention of Crime Act of 1908.’

  ‘I’m sorry I did not know that,’ Campion chuckled.

  ‘Don’t apologise, my boy. I’m the historian here. It’s my job to know such things and more.’

  ‘Really, Casper, you are such a show-off,’ said the Master, signalling Gildart to approach, for the table was now as occupied as it was going to be.

  ‘Does the Master require wine?’ the Head Porter enquired in sepulchral tones.

  ‘Yes!’ answered three voices in unison.

  ‘The Master tells me you are not only the best historian currently at this table,’ Campion charmed, ‘but possibly the best in Cambridge.’

  Professor Christmas turned his head like a slowly revolving globe towards Dr Livingstone.

  ‘Only “possibly”, eh, Jolyon? Well I’m certainly the oldest, so de facto I am the historian with the most history. Shall I tell you how I acquired my sobriquet?’ he asked, using the modern French pronunciation.

  ‘Tell Campion if you must,’ said the Master raising his eyebrows, ‘but I’ve heard the story a thousand times. In fact, I’ve heard all your stories a thousand times.’

  The Professor ignored him and rotated his head back towards Mr Campion.

  ‘I became known as “Christmas at King’s” partly because of my surname of course, which is a perfectly common-place surname in certain parts of Essex and Sussex. Nowhere else though, oddly enough. Must be down to East and South Saxons converting to Christianity at the time of St Augustine or thereabouts. Ruggles-Brise, the chap who invented Borstals, he was an Essex man like me; his family are still prominent in the county. But I digress.’

  Inwardly, Mr Campion agreed.

  ‘When I settled in Cambridge, the temptation was for my students to call me “Merry” or even “Mary”, but that didn’t last long. The young bucks didn’t poke fun at a decorated major who had been in charge of a machine-gun battalion, or they didn’t do it more than once, and those who had been in the trenches had more respect. But the year I arrived at King’s was the first time the Nine Lessons and Carols service was held in the Chapel and “Christmas at King’s” became a facet of Cambridge life in more ways than one. The Christmas Eve service is still going and, of course, so am I.’

  ‘So you came up in … that would be 1918?’ Campion ventured.

  ‘As a junior fellow, yes. I was an undergraduate before the war, of course. In fact, my first book was published the day that poor Archduke got himself shot in Sarajevo, though nobody remembers it now. My book, that is, not the Sarajevo thing.’

  ‘And dear old Caspar has never left,’ said the Master.

  ‘Why should I go anywhere? I had been a student at King’s and knew that it was the place for me. I had done enough travelling and seen far too much of life – and death – during the war to last me a lifetime, so coming back to Cambridge in 1918 suited me just fine.’

  ‘And you’ve never been tempted to leave?’ Campion asked politely.

  ‘Got as far as Sawston once; when some fool of a woman tried to get me interested in bicycling, but didn’t like it much.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought we were talking about you not leaving King’s … for some other university,’ stuttered Mr Campion. ‘I didn’t realise … Have you really not left Cambridge in over fifty years?’

  ‘No need for it. Finest minds, finest library and finest publisher, all within strolling distance. Oh, I know that modern historians are falling over themselves to get on the wireless or, even worse, the television, but they’re mostly Oxford men and in any case it would require travelling down to London – quite an appalling prospect. No, I am perfectly happy here in Cambridge. An awful lot of interesting people come here, so I don’t have to go anywhere. You, for instance, Campion; you are quite interesting.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Of course you are. I know your background well enough to refer to you as Albert Campion and that use of any of your many real name
s would likely result in me being sent to the Tower via Traitor’s Gate.’

  ‘Which would be terribly inconvenient,’ Campion chuckled, ‘as it would involve leaving Cambridge.’

  ‘Damned inconvenient, intolerable in fact; that’s why I mind my p’s and q’s in polite company whenever your name crops up.’

  ‘My burning ears radar must be failing. Does my name really crop up?’

  ‘Only occasionally; and not so often these days. When it did I used to say “That’s the nephew of the Bishop of Devizes, isn’t it?” and that seemed stifle all further conversation.’

  ‘I often have that effect on people.’

  ‘I remember you were talked about quite a bit during that Faraday affair before the war. That would be the second war, of course. Terrible business that; mind you, so was the war. I knew Caroline Faraday of course, everyone in Cambridge did. She was, after all the widow of a previous Master of St Ignatius, although quite a distinguished one for a change.’

  ‘Do behave, Casper,’ growled Dr Livingstone.

  ‘I even knew her odious nephew Andrew Seeley, the one who got himself dead in the river, and I was a nodding acquaintance of her son William, the one who went on to write The Memoirs of an Old Buffer, which was quite a humorous read. It was turned into a West End musical I believe, but I never saw it. That would have …’

  ‘Required a trip to London?’ Campion supplied.

  ‘Quite, although there were several charabanc trips from Cambridge to see it. I never knew that quite so many Dons were interested in the musical theatre … still, I don’t for a moment think you got Livingstone here to invite me to table in order to hear my reminiscences, did you?’

  ‘No Professor, I did not, though it would be delightful to hear them all one evening.’

  ‘You would have to set aside more than an evening for that, Albert,’ chimed Dr Livingstone. ‘Casper could reminisce for a month of Sundays without pausing for breath.’

  ‘Unlike most of your guests at high Table,’ sparred the Professor raising an empty glass, ‘who usually die of thirst.’