The Beckoning Lady

by Margery Allingham

  It occurred to Mr. Campion, who was enjoying himself despite his anxiety, that townspeople betray a superstitious attitude towards the sense of smell. It was as though, he reflected, they realised they had lost a valuable asset and felt nervous about it. Certainly South was watching the old man with tremendous interest, while Luke was as dumbfounded as if confronted in fact by a talking hound.

  “Har,” said Old Harry at last, a secret joy lighting up his apple face. “Har. Don’t you notice nothin’, sir?”

  The Superintendent hesitated, but it was clear what was required of him and he took the share by the cray and sniffed at it deeply and noisily.

  “I can’t say I do,” he said at last, offering it to Luke, who declined it with a gesture. “What are you getting at, Dad?”

  Old Harry took the weapon once more and repeated his truly remarkable performance.

  “I’ll take you where that’s bin the last few days,” he volunteered. “That’s lain in wormwood, that’s been near rust, that’s known Johnwort. And that’s smelled the fire,” he added with sudden enthusiasm. “You gentlemen follow me.”

  “You’ll open your mouth too wide and you’ll slip in of it.” The constable spoke involuntarily and the venom behind the statement showed far more clearly than he had intended. Both South and Luke turned slowly round and regarded him with cold appraisal. Fred South returned to Harry.

  “Where is this place where all these things grow, old’un?” he demanded.

  “You gennelmen come with me.”

  “Not yet. Where is it? Where do you think the ploughshare has been?”

  “Battus Dump. That’s the place. ‘At’s where the wormwood grow. Don’t grow no other place, lest in the churchus, and there ain’t no fire there. Battus Dump, Battus Dump, Battus Dump.” Old Harry was dancing a little in his excitement. It was a masterly little cameo, innocent pride, anxiousness to help, simple rusticity, were all knit together with the enthusiasm of a child with a chance to show off.

  The wretched constable, unmasked by witchcraft, made a feeble effort to defend himself.

  “’E’s nothin’ but a silly old man, sir,” he began. “’E—”

  “I know all about that. But you told me that you’d just found this ploughshare lying here, and it’s got dag—I mean doo, under it.”

  The constable took a deep unhappy breath.

  “Could I speak to you private, sir?” This time he had indeed come up against something.

  South led him a yard or so down the lane and a soft but considerably animated conversation took place between them, while the London man smiled tactfully at the toe of his boot and chatted to Mr. Campion about the weather, and the greenery, and how to him the whole place smelled of honey. Old Harry retired to the footpath’s edge and looked earnestly at tracks which not even he could see. When South returned he was angry but triumphant, and the constable, lingering in the background, had a silly smile on his face and dumb misery in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry for that, gentlemen.” South was laughing to himself, as usual, but not quite with his customary enthusiasm. “I think I’ve got the truth now. This silly juggins fell over something on the footpath in this next meadow on Tuesday night this week. He picked it up and carried it to the rubbish dump just outside the village. Yesterday he remembered it, and last night he went back and found it. Then, because the meadow had been searched yesterday, he had the bright idea of planting it here. As for you,” he went on, swinging round on the unsuspecting Harry, “you didn’t smell anything. You saw the constable hunting for the share last night, and put two and two together.”

  “That ain’t right.” Old Harry spoke quietly and even calmly, but an expression of such scarifying malignity darted out of his innocent blue eyes that everybody was made slightly uncomfortable. “Oi don’t think much to talk like that, mister,” the old man continued, using the fearful formula which is the East country’s strongest protest. “Last night I was too drunk to see nothin’, and just now I smelled that as powerfully as I smell you—Richardson’s Violet Bear-cream, that’s what you’ve got on your ’ead. ’Owever, seeing as ’ow you don’t want no help, I’ll bid you good-day.”

  He plodded off through the gate, back to the meadow round the barn. There he glanced back.

  “Sence you feel so ’appy alone, I ’ont show you where that old share has laid these fifteen or twenty years, as I’ve seen with my own eyes.”

  They got him to come back with some difficulty. Superintendent South, who had become self-conscious about his favourite and indeed only cosmetic, kept pulling his hat down closer over his head without realising what he was doing, and Luke, supremely tickled, but keeping well to leeward of the witness, set out behind him along the footpath to the stile and the bridge where Little Doom had come so quietly to rest.

  Old Harry walked across the plank bridge, climbed the stile, and dropped down on his knees just beside the post.

  “Now,” he said, “bring that here.”

  South carried the ploughshare carefully over the stile and Luke and Campion leant over the rail behind him. Beside the right-hand post, and half hidden by the long grass, there was a clear triangular shape cut in the moss and the lichen. Root threads were still white in it, and that small grass which had persisted was brown and burned by the suffocating weight of the iron.

  Very delicately, and still using a protecting handkerchief, Old Harry slid the ploughshare into the natural sheath. It fitted exactly, even to the worn edge at one corner.

  “Fifteen year, mayhap twenty. Mayhap that were there when I were a little ole boy. Seen it there a score o’ times. They don’t forge that shape no more. Cray’s shorter now.”

  “Well I’ll be damned,” said South with tremendous satisfaction. “How long since it was taken out of there, Mr. Buller?”

  The use of the name and prefix put Old Harry exactly where he wanted to be, on top. He gave no sign that he had heard, but he swelled a little and became intent on doing his best. He touched the worn place, laid his cheek against it, examined the corpse of a woodlouse he found among the matted roots, and finally ate a piece of the young grass from beside it.

  “Mite more’n a week,” he said finally, which was, as he knew by more ordinary methods, not far out.

  South grunted. “Where did it go after that, I wonder.”

  Old Harry rose up and looked about him. He was far too much of an artist to give himself away, but he was most anxious to continue to shine. After a decent interval he clambered over the stile and went round under the oak tree, where he knelt down and held his head sideways, so that the contours in the dust stood up high in his vision. Suddenly he saw quite plainly what he was looking for and his grunt was astounded quite as much as it was gratified.

  “Come you here, come you here,” he shouted and Luke, who was already on the right side of the stile, leapt down to join him. On being shown how to look he was amazed to see the imprint of the ploughshare not once but several times on the soft crumbling earth. He was fascinated.

  “How did that happen?” he demanded.

  “Once when that fell,” said Old Harry, adding ‘I doubt not’ less he should be misunderstood. “When that was throwed from the Battus’ side.”

  “Battus?”

  “That little old mound or wall, like. That’s the Battus.”

  “I see, chum. And then what? How came the other imprints?”

  Harry shook his head. He was on dangerous ground. “Mayhap that were kicked,” he suggested. “That was lying in the footpath, the policeman said.”

  “It might have been kicked. But it’s been here all right. Take a dekko at this, Mr. Campion. It’s amazing.”

  “Wait, if you don’t mind, Chief.” South was grinning down at them. “I’ve got the inquest at two o’clock. I wonder if you agree with me how this was done? The murderer must have stood here, on the far side of the stile, probably on the step.”

  Luke went over at once and together they worked out the crime with a painst
aking thoroughness which surprised even Harry. The old man enjoyed himself. As a reward for his assistance, and since like Little Doom he was small, they permitted him to be the victim in their reconstruction. Mr. Campion sat in the grass and watched the pantomime, while the constable skulked in the background.

  “That’s it, then,” South announced as he helped Old Harry up out of the ditch for the eleventh time. “The victim followed the murderer on to the bridge, advancing from the meadow. The murderer climbed first and then, looking about for a weapon, caught sight of the ploughshare ready to hand. He snatched it up and, stepping back on to the stile, struck the victim one tremendous blow which sent him reeling against that low rail, so that he fell over down into the greenery below. The murderer next threw the weapon away and it fell under that tree, which is just where it would fall. If the ploughshare fits the wound, we’ve got it. How’s that?”

  Charlie Luke, who was hot and dusty, leant back against the stile and felt for a cigarette.

  “And what did the bloke do next? Continue down to the village for a quick one, taking his steam hammer with him?” He frowned and went on talking, the physical power of the man apparent in the very tones of his voice, which set the leaves vibrating. “I’ve not examined this wound, as you know, but I’ve not lived a sheltered life. I’ve seen a few head injuries. What does this relic of the iron age weigh? Three to four pounds at most. One blow from it to kill a normal man stone dead? I don’t believe it. I don’t believe one man in a million could deliver such a blow, even from above with the wind behind him. Come to that, I don’t believe I could do it myself.” Seizing an imaginary Little Doom by the throat, he whirled his arm over his head and brought it down upon his closed left fist. “Solid reinforced rubber, human skulls,” he said.

  Superintendent Fred South did not speak for a moment. His colour had heightened and a gleam, which was apprehensive rather than mocking, had appeared in his twinkling eyes. At length he made a soft, tooth-sucking sound of decision.

  “Constable, you can go and collect my chaps and tell them to bring both cars round to the village end of this path,” he commanded. “Are you going with him, Mr. Buller?”

  “No, I ain’t going walkin’ with he for a while.” Old Harry made a long and ruminative noise of the pronouncement. “And I’m a-goin’ up to The Gauntlett to get myself a pint, and I’m a gointoputatdowntoyou.”

  The final words were so run together that since there was no constable to translate they were unintelligible. He touched his cap and stumped off, smiling, his lashes lying modestly on his rosy cheeks.

  Luke dug in his trousers pockets but Campion shook his head.

  “I think you’ll find all that has been mysteriously laid on,” he murmured. “My crystal tells me that Old Harry has joined your service. You’ll be seeing him again. What is it, Superintendent? Something worrying you?”

  “It ought to.” The man in the tight tweeds sat down on the rail of the bridge and took out a pipe. “It’s been enough trouble to me all my life.” He cast a sly upward glance at Luke. “The long and the short of it is that I can’t bring myself to trust a man until I’ve worked with him for a bit. It’s what you might call a kink in my nature. It affects my memory at times.” He paused, hopefully, but there was an ominous silence, broken only by the rustle of the grasses and the murmur of the bees in the clover. “Of course,” he went on, scratching his ear and grimacing, “a trait like that can be remarkably bad for me. For instance, when a smart young man who, as I can see now, will go far, is sent down by the Central Office—”

  “Oh all right, I’ll buy it.” Luke spoke with sufficient suppressed ferocity to preclude any promise of weakness. “What have you been holding out on me? The P.M. report?”

  “Not the report, son. I’m not barmy if I’m butter-fingered.” South was laughing again, but warily. “It hadn’t come in when we left, but it’ll be waiting for us now. But I did happen to have a word with the County Pathologist on the telephone. You’ll see it all in black and white in a minute. But as far as I could understand from what he told me, our corpse wasn’t very normal, not in the skull.”

  “Oh Lord.” Luke spoke, but both listeners had stiffened abruptly at the intelligence. “Not one of these darned thin-skulled cases?”

  South began to nod like a mandarin, winking and flashing and conveying unspoken secrets through every pore.

  “The thinnest he has ever seen. Equal to the thinnest ever recorded. One forty-seventh of an inch. He said it was only one blow, struck by an iron bar approximately three-quarters of an inch wide, which is about right for the bevel edge of the cray of the ploughshare, and it had about the same effect as a kid hitting an egg with the back of a knife.” He started his teetering giggle again, but smothered it. “So you see,” he said, “any blessed soul could have done it. Ladies as well, if they were cross enough.”

  Chapter 11

  LUNCH IN ARCADY

  CHARLIE LUKE HAD had little sleep, and now that noon was past, three o’clock came nearer and nearer, so that his private worries obtruded into his thoughts, suffocating him with sick apprehension. The case looked as sticky as any he had ever known, and his chances of finding himself Local Enemy No. 1 seemed more than high.

  Mr. Campion was on edge, which was unlike him, and the lush fairyland in which Luke found himself like a cockney on an outing was strange and even alarming in its little surprises. For instance, he had just discovered that the excellent pie which he had enjoyed was made largely of peacocks. The comfortable elderly party who said she was the daughter of the old landlord had just told him so when she came in to apologise for having to serve them in the little back room, since the large front one was crowded. She brought them each a tail feather tip to put in their coats for luck.

  “Wear them, and the pie won’t repeat,” she said cheerfully, placing a plate of processed cheese, five dry biscuits and some margarine before them. “Or would you like a junket?”

  “This,” said Luke firmly, seizing the cheese, which he detested but at least had eaten before. “Do you—er—eat a lot of peacocks round here?”

  “Oh no.” She seemed scandalised. “They’re a very rare bird. Old Admiral Bear from Bandy Hall at Girdle has his roast peacock club dinner here every twentieth of June. He’s done it for years and years, and his father before him. He breeds the birds and we cook them. Then on Midsummer Eve we make the pies out of the giblets and the left-overs, and that way every customer gets a taste. That’s why the house is so full today. Oh, there’s a lot goes on at Pontisbright. I made sure young Amanda had told you.”

  “My wife’s at The Beckoning Lady,” volunteered Mr. Campion.

  “Ah yes, with poor Miss Minnie.” She lowered her eyes, as at the mention of a family embarrassment. “Horrid little person,” she said. “Fancy going down there to get done in. Cheek, eh?”

  A shout from the other room sent her hurrying to answer it and they were left alone.

  “I didn’t notice anything peculiar about the pie, did you?” Mr. Campion was not really thinking what he was saying. “I didn’t notice it. Like Lady Macbeth, it should have died hereafter.”

  He was hunting beside him as he spoke and Luke produced a wilted bundle from the floor at his feet.

  “Here are your flowers, if that’s what you want,” he suggested.

  “Oh thank you.” Campion, who had called in at the Mill for them on his way to The Gauntlett, took the herbs with relief and spread them out on the table. “Snap-dragon, that’s all right. But this thing ought to be Wild Liquorice, which is beyond me.”

  “That’s Mint,” said Luke, dragging his mind from his own troubles.

  “I know.” Campion took a piece of stamp-paper from his wallet, affixed it neatly to the woody stem, and wrote “Liquorice (Wild)” on it in small printing. “Then there’s Meadow Saffron,” he said, “which is out of season, so the tiresome chap must have the bulb, and good luck to him. And a sprig of elder, which has to be tied to it. Finally there’s th
is handsome bloom, the best of the lot.”

  “Petunia?”

  “Exactly. I wonder if I could bother you, my dear chap, to take these into the next room for me. Somewhere there you will see a man who looks like Little Doom.”

  “What?”

  “I have it on my son’s authority. He’s probably quite different, but will certainly be a clerkly type, wearing a raincoat—or perhaps not at his meal. Anyway, I think you’ll spot him as well as I should, and if you’d just go over to him and say ‘The Mole Insurance Company?’, and then, when he admits it, ‘The roots for Mr. Whippet’, you will be doing me an eternal service.”

  “Yes, I’ll go.” Luke got up, his dark shiny eyes very curious. “Snap-dragon means ‘No’.”

  “That’s perfectly correct.” Mr. Campion was temporarily jaunty. “You and I have no secrets, Charles, I hope? Snap-dragon, ‘No’. Wild liquorice, ‘I declare against you’. Meadow Saffron, ‘beware of excess’ coupled with Elder, ‘zeal’. And Petunia, ‘keep your promise’. I ought to have added a red red rose.”

  “Which means ‘love’?”

  “How true. It’s a very laborious method of correspondence but it has its uses.”

  “‘No. I declare against you. Beware of excess zeal. Keep your promise. Love,’” said Luke. “That’s a funny message to an insurance company.”

  “Well, is it?” asked Mr. Campion. He was drinking very bad coffee when the Chief Inspector returned looking slightly dazed.

  “I found him,” he announced with frank bewilderment. “Wizened little chap. He took them without batting an eyelid. Said ‘Ow, thank you very much’. I say, there are about forty people in that room, Campion, all eating peacock pie because it’s Midsummer’s Eve. I could do with some coffee.”

  “So could I,” said Mr. Campion with feeling, “but don’t despair. She’s coming back with some of the Admiral’s other left-overs. She says it’s Napoleon and you never know.”