The Beckoning Lady

by Margery Allingham

  “For the last time, Ma,” he said, dropping into the vernacular of his beloved London manor, “forget it. We do not care two penn’orth of gin if you’re married to the King of Siam. Forget the subject of pensions. The only pensions the Sergeant and I are worrying about at the moment are our own, and we shan’t live to collect those if you don’t get on with it. I only want to know if you and Mrs. Cassands spent the whole of that Thursday afternoon together. We don’t care about the morning. We know by the bus when the deceased arrived at Pontisbright. And we don’t really care about the late evening. We just want to know about the afternoon.”

  “I was with ’er from two o’clock until we got Mr. William settled for the night about eleven, and that’s God’s truth.”

  “All the time?”

  “Well, I come in and made the tea, but she was scrubbing the shelves in the boat house then, and she must have stuck to it or she couldn’t have done so much. She’s a good worker, I’ll say that.”

  “I see. Very well.” Luke let snap the elastic band which kept his packet of envelopes together. “Go on. I’ll see you tomorrow, I expect. But don’t worry.”

  “Are yer satisfied?” A damp hand clutched at his sleeve in the gesture now so familiar to him from his years of work amongst the women who were so like her. “You’re not keeping nothink back from me, dear?”

  “No.” He patted her shoulder, which was as solid as a side of bacon. “No. Run along. I’m not laying information. And when I get back I’ll look up your husband for you. He’s dead, you know. Blimey, he’d be about a hundred and ten by all accounts, even if he got away from the bombing, which is unlikely.”

  “’E’d be seventy-three,” she said softly, “and oh, he was a one, ’e was a one. I’m ’appy ’ere. I ain’t ever been ’appy before.”

  “Well then, shut up.” Luke was firm. “Come on, Sergeant. You’ve got your own transport, have you?”

  “Ho, I’ll see to ’im,” said Miss Diane.

  Luke flung himself out of the house and into his little car. But half an hour later he had driven it into the garage at the Mill, and had walked out on to the silent moon-drenched heath alone.

  The stubby train, which was but four coaches long, had waited less than a minute at the single platform before panting off again on its potter through the night. The yellow lamps had flickered palely in the moonlight. The few passengers had bustled away to their waiting cars. Prune had not returned.

  Now, on the springing turf of the heath where the wild thyme and the coltsfoot made the air aromatic, Luke felt younger and more alone than at any time since his babyhood. The world he knew so well, and in which he was counted a sophisticated member, was suddenly set apart from himself so that he could look at it from the outside. It was a new and frightful experience and he had a glimpse for the first time of a state in which colours and comforts and warmths and familiar delights had lost their virtue.

  He was no Shakespearian, nor was he a countryman, so that he was not concerned with being absent in the spring. Bird song and the deep vermilion of the rose meant little to him at any time. But he was now faced with a vista of grey pavements, little bars bright behind raindrops, traffic, excitement, telephone calls, the chances of taking risks, good-tempered dirty faces, friendly words from doorsteps, the smell of new bread rising from a grating, a radio lovesong trilling in the night adding to a city’s enchantments, all of them spoiled, dulled, devitalised for ever.

  He was aware of the whole experience in one terrible revelation, swift and awful, like the discovery that the unforeseen accident has broken one’s back, a peep into emptiness. He threw himself down among the little flowers and the scented herbs, and thrust his forehead into them in an agony of dismay. He was not thinking at all. The little house, the familiar blue overall his mother wore, the tidy curtains and the spotless yard, their inadequacies were too exquisitely painful to bear contemplation at this juncture. Even Prune herself was a vanished dream. There was only one absorbing picture in his mind, himself, shadowy and alone, in a drab flavourless city for ever.

  The night wind blew over him and the earth was kind and he was so tired. He slept like a log. The voices on the road and at the Mill, the cars rustling by, the laughter in the village, they passed without him hearing them at all. He lay there exhausted and out, like a dead man.

  When he awoke it was an hour past dawn on Midsummer’s Day, the day of Tonker’s party. The sky was like a pearl, clear and flawless, the air was thin and cool and breathtaking. His first surprise, even before the black sorrow of the night returned to whisper to him that Prune had found upon inspection that it would never do, was to discover that he was quite warm. He was covered with sacks, and there was a large wild rhubarb leaf over his head. It took him some seconds to grasp the significance of these phenomena, and by that time he had realised that he was not alone.

  Old Harry was lying propped up on one elbow some three yards away. His own bed was of pulled thyme and he rested there contentedly, a long grass stalk between his fine new Government teeth. The Chief Inspector sat up slowly, aware again now of his private sorrow but still himself and still game. The rhubarb leaf slid on to the ground in front of him and he took it up.

  “What’s this for?”

  “To shade yer. Let the full moon soak into yer this time o’ year and you won’t never be the same man again. Not a half of him.”

  Luke stretched his broad shoulders and his dark face was sad.

  “Too late, chum,” he said. “You should have told me before.”

  He fingered the sacks, which were wet with dew.

  “Thank you for these. I was all in.”

  Old Harry accepted the gratitude with an approving nod.

  “They say you’re the Head policeman,” he remarked, slowing his normal high-pitched gabble to a reasonably intelligible pace. “The Head of ’em all, come from Lunnon.”

  “So I am.” Another great packet of worry shouldered its lumbering way back into Luke’s unwilling mind. “How’s your nose? Smelled out anything else since I saw you last?”

  A secret smile, which he was unable to suppress, passed over Harry’s rosy face and he lowered his eyelids coyly as Amanda had noticed before.

  “I dunno,” he said idly, and added as soon as he judged his disinterestedness was sufficiently established, “I reckon you’ll hear of another death today.”

  “Eh?”

  The old man rose with agility and stood for a moment to stare into the white glare of the eastern sky before going off like a cracked alarm clock.

  “Three in a row, three in a row,” he chattered, turning round. “There’s allus three in a row.”

  “Oh.” Luke settled back. If it was a case of superstition only he was not interested. “I don’t know so much about that.”

  “Aha! But I do.” Old Harry was laughing with ancient glee, and all about him stretched the lush green countryside in which there were to every acre a thousand hiding-places, deep and wide and quiet enough to hold so small and worthless a thing as a single unit of mortal clay. “I do. Tha’s the humour of it, I do! I’ll see you later, sir, at the Feast. Good-day.”

  Chapter 14

  FINE GOINGS ON

  I

  IN THE NORMAL way Tonker slept late. Even in these, his late middle years, he was able to lie if unmolested in an amiable torpor from midnight till noon. But on the morning of his party he awoke like a bird at a quarter to six and went down in his dressing-gown to open every outside door in the house. Then he put a record on the gramophone and went out to run up the Union Jack on the flagpole at the north end of the barn.

  Five minutes later, Minnie, aroused by a gale which sent the curtains of the painted bed flapping about her, the Soldiers’ Chorus, and a sense of fury, rose also, and with her Mother-Hubbard over her nightgown strode down to rescue the record, to shut the doors, and to run up the Stars and Stripes at the southern end of the same building.

  An hour later, when the boys had come in, Annabe
lle had appeared already dressed for the party, and breakfast was on the table, there was still no sign of Tonker and a deep general suspicion arose that he had gone back to bed.

  Presently, however, he appeared, a little wet round the legs from the dew but beaming and bearing with him all the papers. Having thoughtfully arranged with the village shop and Miss Diane that she should bring them with her first thing, he had gone down to meet her at the stile.

  He took his seat at the head of the table, adjusted his reading glasses, and turned up his thumbs.

  “It’s all right,” he announced with tremendous satisfaction. “Saved! The Bibful says more than anybody else, of course, but even they are cautious. Would you like to read it, Minnie, or shall I?”

  His wife pushed her hair out of her eyes, gave George Meredith a second egg, passed the butter to Annabelle, took the frying-pan off the stove, rescued the tea-pot, and sat down herself. Her mouth, which had been the least bit tight, relaxed into the ghost of a smile.

  “You read it, Tonker.”

  “TAX MAN’S DEATH

  MYSTERY BODY LIES

  SEVEN DAYS ON

  MILLIONAIRE’S FARM

  from

  George Apgeorge

  Pontisbright, Friday

  A lonely man, keeper of many secrets, kept his own dark mystery unsolved in this remote East Anglian village today. Leonard Terence Ohman, (54) ex-temporary civil servant, was a man of few friends. His battered body lay for a week in a deep ditch by a stile on a millionaire’s farming estate at Pontisbright, yet no alarm was raised at his absence. At the inquest this afternoon in the romantically named township of Kepesake, adjourned after formal evidence, only one clue to the mystery was offered. Ohman was until recently a tax collector. His visits to the area which he served never brought good news to those upon whose doors he knocked. He was a man apart, at whose approach neighbours turned their backs. Tonight all is quiet in this old world Tudor village, where the white-faced inhabitants look at each other with an unspoken question in their eyes. Few can have earned sufficient to have merited Ohman’s attention, and it is too soon to tell what tale of fancied right or wrong may be uncovered. Superintendent Fred South, smiling stalwart of . . .”

  “Oh no!” Minnie put down the teapot with a clatter. “Oh no, Tonker, they’re not going to take that line? How frightful! Poor Little Doom was only trying to help.”

  “Do you want to hear any more?” Tonker lowered the paper and eyed her balefully over the top of his glasses. Now that he had come to read the story carefully after merely glancing through it for unwelcome names, he was not quite so cheerful. “It goes on like this for quite a bit, and then there’s a paragraph to say that the estate belongs to Fanny. Are you going to listen?”

  “No.” Minnie spoke with unexpected savagery. “It terrifies me. What are they going to say tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?” Tonker shrugged his shoulders. “Tomorrow the party will be over. We’ll meet tomorrow when it comes. The important thing is, you silly girl, that everything is quite all right for today. This stuff won’t stop anybody coming. Probably bring ’em.” He looked her firmly in the eye and indicated the children, who not unnaturally appeared mildly alarmed. “Don’t spoil everything when it’s going all right,” he protested virtuously. “Accept the gifts of heaven as they arrive. It’s a wonderful morning. If I have time at the end of my life I shall make a point of getting up at this time of year. It’s quite an experience in the meadows. I wouldn’t have believed it. I think it could be capitalised. Er—well, we’ve all got a great deal to do. Boys, have you shut the sluices?”

  Westy turned to him at once, glad of the reassurance. “You don’t have to worry about that one little bit,” he announced cheerfully. “That was done at four a.m. just as the water touched the mark we fixed. We’ve got it trickling through at a rate which George calculates will keep it pretty well exactly at the same level all day. Isn’t that so, George?”

  By turning a dull puce, threatening to choke, and overturning his cup, George Meredith indicated that indeed this was so, and Tonker grunted his satisfaction.

  “That’s all right, then. You’ll get over that shyness one day, Meredith my boy. It’ll drop from you like a cloak. Now we have to check the essentials. Sanitary arrangements, liquor caches, glasses, car park, food, lighting, first-aid equipment, rugs, cushions, garden chairs and so on for people to sit on, in that order.”

  “Tea and washing up,” murmured Westy.

  Tonker scowled. “Women’s work,” he said airily. “What are you wearing?”

  “My Suit.” Westy spoke with reverence.

  Tonker chuckled happily. “I’m not,” he announced, as he glanced up at the clock on the bracket. “Wally can’t get here before eleven, I suppose. Minnie, I did tell you that Wally and Tommasina would be here for lunch?”

  “Who?” Minnie slammed down the paper she had been reading and her eyes, from being merely dark with worry, became pits of horror. “Who’s coming to lunch? Tonker, if you’ve invited—”

  “Wally and Tommasina, my dear. Our oldest friends.”

  “Oh. Oh well, that’s all right then.” She threw the paper on the floor in disgust and picked it up again at once because of the need to keep tidy. “Wally and Tommy are all right. They’ll eat in here and like it, bless them. I don’t mind them.”

  “I trust, my dear—” Tonker spoke with crushing dignity and acid forbearance, “—I trust that you’re not going to ‘mind’, as you put it so charmingly, anybody whomsoever on this tremendous day, because, my sweet and gentle Minniehaha, we have only absolutely everybody we have ever met or heard of coming down all this way to ENJOY themselves, dear. ENJOY is the operative word. Smile,” he added ferociously as he glanced round the table. “Happy carefree smiles. Cut that out, and you might as well call the whole thing off. Understand? There is only one must at a party. Everything must be fun. Nothing unpleasant must occur. No frown, no ugly reminder must intrude to spoil the happiness of all.”

  Minnie sniffed ominously and George Meredith hacked Westy on the shin with sudden violence.

  Breakfast being over, the boys rose, collected Annabelle in passing as if she were an overcoat, and burst out into the yard in a minor explosion.

  “Nerves.” A hoarse high-pitched British voice, which nobody in the house had heard before, spoke from out the whirlwind.

  At the sound of it Minnie looked about her with absentminded superstition, and Tonker growled.

  “Pup,” he said, and rising, went round the table to kiss his wife. “Don’t cry, Minnie. If you cry you’ll get a headache, and if you get a headache you’ll be sick. What’s the matter? Don’t worry. I’m here.”

  Minnie’s smile broke through. “I know you are, God help me, but what about this dreadful business, Tonker? It looks quite terrifying to me. They can’t leave it here. They must go on. Poor little Bossy’s dead. Somebody killed him.”

  Her voice died away and Tonker took up the nearest newspaper again. Despite the flowing folds of his spotted gown, he looked remarkably masculine, and his freckled forearm was sandy-haired and tough.

  “I see what you mean,” he conceded. “It’s got an ugly side, I grant you that. But don’t let it get you down. We’re over the first fence. We’ll take the next when we come to it. Keep your heart up, old gal. All our life has been like this, hasn’t it? Hasn’t it, Minnie? Keep on going. We always have. Courage, old lady.”

  Minnie was dabbing her long nose in a minute mirror and her snorting laugh escaped her.

  “Stop talking to me as if I really was a horse.”

  “That’s better.” Tonker patted her. “That’s my Minnie. That’s the spirit. Now we’ll pull up our socks and make it the best day anybody’s ever had. And you’ll see something will transpire. Something will turn up at the party. Something will come sailing in. I can feel it in my bones. Keep your eyes skinned.”

  “The postman’s brought nothing.” Miss Diane’s cheerful roar reached them from
the outer kitchen. “The postman’s brought nothing, I say. Only a handful of them buff envelopes and a circular from Mr. William’s bookie.”

  “Put them all straight in the boiler!” shouted Tonker in a rage.

  “No you don’t.” Minnie’s voice was equally powerful. “Slip them in the kitchen drawer, Dinah. Oh my God, now I’ve got to see to that lot alone. Damn you Tonker, help me clear away.”

  II

  Miss Pinkerton was quite dead when her body entered the water. The river was deep at that particular point and the stream was a limpid green, sparkling now in the full sun. The body slid in gently, feet first, and the blue cotton dress with the starched petticoats beneath it spread out on the dazzling surface and bore it up, so that like Ophelia she floated for a time, looking strangely comfortable in the glittering bed, her dark head lolling deep in green cushions.

  Since it was now some hours since Westy and George Meredith had almost closed the sluice gates far down in the fen meadows beyond The Beckoning Lady, the flow was very gentle and the body drifted slowly for some fifty yards or so into a tunnel made by a double line of overhanging willows. Here it was cool and secret and the stream grew shallow. Midway along this watery corridor there was a temporary dam caused by a mass of dead rushes which had broken away from a dense bank of them which grew by the Sweethearting Road, and had become entangled in the knotted roots of the old trees.

  It was not much of a dam. Later in the day it would lose its hold, inevitably, and would float on down towards the oasis of flowers where the boat house shone so gaily in its new paint. Yet now it was firmly lodged and was just strong enough to hold up the new piece of flotsam.

  There for a long time the body rested, waiting.

  III

  Old Harry and Miss Diane lived in what Pontisbright was pleased to call a hole. This was no term of opprobrium, but a literal description of a cottage whose thatched eaves were level with the outside world. Behind this dwelling there was an even lower piece of ground, enclosed now with enormous hollyhocks and burgeoning with sufficient greenery to feed a cow. In the midst of this again there was a very small shed, covered with an old and sunken thatch, and inside, safe as a field mouse in its nest, was Old Harry.