The Beckoning Lady

by Margery Allingham

  Meanwhile, in the dining-room at the Mill, laborious work went on for a long time. Luke let the telephone ring for a minute as he finished a sentence, but he signed to the sergeant that he would take the call himself, and presently rose and wandered out to it.

  “Hullo. Is that you?” Prune’s ridiculous voice was unnaturally subdued.

  “It is.” What with controlling his breath, fighting back fury, and preserving what shreds of dignity remained to him, Luke succeeded in sounding stagy. “Can I help you?”

  “Aren’t you coming to fetch me? It’s terribly late.” Luke had never been murderously angry with a woman in all his life before. Blind unreasoning rage consumed and almost choked him.

  “Why didn’t you telephone before?”

  “Ought I to have? Your mother said that the one thing one must never do is to . . .”

  “Oh, you saw her, did you?” Luke was hunching himself over the telephone as if he was preparing to squeeze into it. His normal vitality was coming back. The little brass ornaments on the mantelshelf over the fireplace began to vibrate at the sound of his voice.

  “Yes. My dress wasn’t done, so I stayed there the night.”

  “At Linden Lea?” Luke, who had the most vivid recollections of the upheaval which had preceded the week-end visit of an aunt way back in 1936, was astounded.

  “Yes. I was asked so I jumped at it. I was going to get in at Brown’s, but your mother said . . .”

  “Where are you now?”

  “At the Rectory, waiting. The Revver and Mama have gone on, ages ago. I’m all ready. I’ve locked up, I’ve—”

  “Wait.” Luke glanced first at his shoes and then at his nails. “Wait. You’re there alone, are you? Stay exactly where you are.”

  “Of course I shall. I’ve been waiting . . . I say Charles, I’ve got the necklace.”

  “What necklace?”

  “The necklace. The jade. The one your uncle brought from Shanghai. Your mother gave . . .”

  “She gave?” Luke nearly hung up, he was so relieved. “Listen,” he roared into the telephone, “listen . . .”

  “I am listening.”

  “All right then. Don’t move.”

  “Very well. But Charles, there’s one thing I must know. What is our attitude towards this murder business?”

  “Our attitude?”

  “Yes dear, ours,” Prune said patiently. “Ours. Ours. The official attitude of the police.”

  “Hold on. That is, ring off,” said Luke, hanging up. “Stay where you are,” he said to the telephone and went back into the room for his jacket. “You’ll carry on then, will you?” He addressed the sergeant absently. “None of this stuff matters a damn, you know. The whole centre of the thing is down there at The Beckoning Lady. I don’t quite see the set-up yet, and it may be a most unfortunate mess, but it can’t be helped. The only thing to do is to plunge straight in and—er, sew it up. Stay here. I’ll get you relieved later.”

  The younger man was looking at him curiously. He was something to see, standing there preening himself like a great black tomcat, his bright eyes gleaming and an obstinate curl at the corners of his mouth. He set his tie straight in the mirror, settled his cuffs, and grinned.

  “Leave it to me,” he announced and went out, only to return immediately for the posy, which he took out of the glass and wrapped in his handkerchief. He looked the sergeant firmly in the eye. “I shall need this,” he said.

  VI

  In the cool silence under the willows, where there was no breeze, the water had slowly penetrated into the billowing skirts which had supported the body and it had begun to sink by the feet. At the same time, a further mass of rushes and sodden blossoms from the trees had swept downstream to join the rest, and because the body was tilted had slid half under it, making a pillow for the dark head. Meanwhile the original dam, never very strong, was straining under the new weight and its hold on the roots was gradually giving way. About five in the afternoon the final tendril holding the tangle broke under the gentle pressure, and very gently the whole terrible burden began to move slowly towards the opening where the leaves ended and the sun shone on a bank of yellow irises further down. . . .

  Chapter 15

  TONKER’S GUESTS

  EDGING HIS WAY adroitly through the crowds on the lawn, Tonker came up behind Minnie at last and slid an arm round her.

  “It’s all right. Poppy’s arrived,” he said hoarsely. “Leo locked her in, but she climbed out of the window and changed in the car, the gallant old trout. She’s safe behind the bar, pouring it all over old Tudwick, who is just her cup of tea. Wally has stopped biting his nails and is taking nourishment, so that hurdle’s past.”

  “Oh how good of her.” Minnie was still using her social vocabulary, but as ever her gratitude was sincere. “Dear Poppy, how like her and how very sensible.”

  Tonker grinned wickedly. “Locked her in, eh? That’s a bit much, isn’t it?” Above his high-buttoned blazer his freckled face and deep blue eyes were gay. “It shows you what some marriages are like. He’s standing on his dignity as Chief Constable. Fantastic old buzzard.”

  Minnie regarded him blankly as the significance of the move dawned upon her.

  “Oh Tonker, how frightful! Oh dear, I’d forgotten.”

  “Then go on forgetting,” he said doughtily. “Everybody else is. It’s going with a bang. Fang is looking for you, by the way. Don’t forget your own pictures. I saw some very distinguished-looking birds in the barn. I don’t know ’em, so I suppose you must. Now then, don’t flap. No hurry. Gosh, have you seen Prune?”

  “Prune?”

  He laughed. “I see you haven’t. You must. I wouldn’t have believed it.” He paused abruptly as he caught sight of the posy in her hands. “You’ve got one of those things. A lot of the girls have. Where did you get them?”

  Minnie turned the flowers over. “Old Harry. They’re rather formal and nice, don’t you think?”

  Tonker looked at the bouquet dubiously. “I suppose so,” he said. “Yes, well, why not? I say Minnie, I suppose that bridge is perfectly safe?”

  “The wherry? Oh yes dear, does it look all right?”

  “Very good. But there’s a lot of grass and leaves and stuff collecting against one side. I suppose that can’t be helped.”

  “No.” She was apologetic. “No, I don’t suppose it can. There are always odds and ends floating by in the river. People expect that. Is it bad?”

  “No. Nothing to worry about. Everything’s wonderful. The champers is excellent and I’m glad to see some intelligent child, Annabelle as a matter of fact, has had the sense to set herself up in a soft drink bar. The ice cream was a brainwave too. Who thought of that?”

  Minnie looked startled. “Do you know, I don’t know. I’ve been noticing it. Everyone seems to be eating it. There must be gallons of it.” She was looking round her with swift preoccupied eyes, watching for the lost young woman or the odd man out. “Things just happen at a party like this. It’s very nice. Tonker, there are two people I don’t know, looking at you, just over there by Agnes Glebe.”

  Tonker turned his head. “Ah yes indeed. Be seeing you.” He sailed away, hand outstretched, smile delighted, and Minnie was claimed at once by a very elegant young man who had carried his elders’ most recent fashion for aping the modes and manners of their grandfathers to the alarming point of growing exactly like one of them. He had been designed by Charles Dana Gibson as a foil for a young woman who had vanished, and he looked therefore a little lonely in his loose-jacketed masculinity.

  “Mrs. Cassands, I’ve been sent to fetch you,” he said, taking her firmly by the hand. “There is a very distinguished gathering in your studio. That is over in the barn there.”

  Very cold blue eyes were looking into hers and she controlled a rising panic. It was thirty-five years since she had been confronted by this sort of dominant male, and then he had been elderly.

  “They want you to explain your remarkable pictur
e.” He eyed her again. “They like it very much, so you have nothing to worry about.”

  “What picture?” Minnie demanded, her mind’s eye making a lightning review of the canvases on show, and pausing guiltily at the portrait of Little Doom.

  The young man lowered his voice. “The modern one.”

  “The modern?” In a flash of intuitive divination Minnie remembered Tonker’s unexplained absence before breakfast. She had not glanced at the pictures since. The young man continued to hold her hand in a compelling grip.

  “I think you must come along,” he said.

  “My word yes.” Minnie spoke grimly. “I think I’d better.”

  As they ploughed through the crowd, the young man gripping her elbow so that she should not escape, he made an enquiry in a tone whose studied casualness belonged to other eras besides the turn of the nineteenth century.

  “There’s a girl here. I think her name is Prune.”

  Minnie raised her head. “Was she alone?”

  “Er—no,” he said sadly, “no, she wasn’t.”

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the lawn Mr. Campion was standing talking with a knot of old friends.

  “Why do these ridiculous parties of old Tonker’s go?” said the woman who was Mrs. Gilbert Whippet and had once been Janet Pursuivant, Sir Leo’s only daughter, with genuine bewilderment in her voice. “Daddy’s heartbroken he can’t be here. It’s some sort of business, I don’t know what. But Tonker really is extraordinary about these do’s. You never know when he’s going to have one. He doesn’t actually invite anybody. There are no servants at all. And yet everybody turns up including, really, the most amazing people. Look at that man over there, for instance. And it’s always a fine day.”

  “It always seems fine,” said Mr. Campion, smiling fondly at her because he was so grateful that she had not married him. “And that man is your father’s Superintendent.”

  “Oh well then—” She was a little pettish because she knew quite well what he was thinking, and although she was very fond of her husband, who was an even vaguer edition of the same type, she held it ungallant of him to be happy too. “Oh well then, consider those people. Who on earth are they?”

  “Look at the light on those trees,” said Mr. Campion hastily, turning her attention in the opposite direction and lowering his voice discreetly. “Those are two of the wealthiest men of the year, Mr. Burt and Mr. Hare and their ladies. And the man with the crushed face is a very influential person called Smith. I shouldn’t worry about them. They’re virtually gate-crashers.”

  Janet could not forbear a well-bred peep. “He doesn’t look happy, anyway,” she said contentedly. “In fact he doesn’t even look bored. He looks sick. Perhaps they’re being difficult. They look as if they’re thinking of buying the place.”

  “Some people are always thinking of buying whatever they’re looking at,” murmured Mr. Campion. “Is Gilbert here?”

  “Yes. Gilbert Whippet, Chairman of the M.O.L.E.” A wraith in pale smoke colour emerged from some point just behind Campion’s left shoulder and proffered a limp hand. “I’m here. I’ve been here all the time. Wouldn’t miss it for worlds. I say Campion, have you seen Prune?”

  “Not today. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I only wondered.” Whippet was blethering, as usual, and Mr. Campion restrained an impulse which dated from his first meeting with him at Totham School, to tread firmly on his foot to keep him from wandering away. “I only wondered,” he repeated. “She used to be such a dull girl.”

  “She’s still a dull girl.” Mr. Campion spoke with unwonted bitterness.

  “Oh no, my dear fellow.” Whippet conveyed what was for him passionate excitement. “Oh no, I don’t agree with you. You’re wrong there.”

  Mr. Campion seized his elbow with much the same force as Minnie’s young man had taken hers, and led him a little apart.

  “How’s the Botany class?” he enquired. “Thank you for your communication. I trust you got mine.”

  Whippet blinked. “Nice of you,” he said vaguely. “I just needed to set our mind at rest, you know. Minnie happy?”

  “I don’t know. Should she be?”

  A faintly puzzled expression, if the term is not too specific, passed a leisurely way over Mr. Whippet’s indeterminate features.

  “Oh yes,” he murmured. “I really think she should be. Do I see Solly L. over there?”

  Campion looked round. Far away, among the confetti-coloured crowd, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a grey bowler hat. When he turned back again Whippet had gone. Mr. Campion set off through the chattering company, but before he could catch up with the grey bowler he was waylaid by no less an obstacle than old Lady Glebe, Prune’s mother, who had ditched The Revver somewhere and was wandering about loose. She was one of those large pleasant old women whose very soft flesh has black patches on its surface, and is attached to the main structure by a series of tight ribbons, one round the neck, one lower down. She stepped nimbly in front of Campion and looked deeply into his eyes with very nice if misguided grey ones.

  “Hallo, young man,” she said flatteringly. “How’s your father?”

  “As well as can be expected,” said Mr. Campion, who had been orphaned for twenty years.

  “I’m so glad, I thought he was dead. I want to see you.” She tucked her arm through his possessively. “This young man of Prune’s . . .?”

  “Yes?” Mr. Campion was defensive.

  “I don’t know him.”

  He hesitated. “He’s a very distinguished man in his own line.”

  “Oh, I know he is.” She spoke with a warmth which surprised him. “And entertaining. He spent an evening with us, when was it?—the night before last.” She paused to make a deep grunting sound which he assumed to be laughter. “Kept us in stitches,” she said, using the term as if she had just invented it.

  Mr. Campion swallowed. “You liked him?”

  “Oh, very much.” She lowered her voice with elderly wisdom. “So kind. She’s wearing his jewels, you know.”

  “Really?” said Mr. Campion.

  “Quite the finest jade I’ve ever seen.”

  Mr. Campion took a firm hold of himself. She was a Gallantry, he remembered. One must hold on to that.

  “So knowledgeable, that’s what I liked,” the gentle voice continued. “He listened to me as no other young man has ever listened, and I told him all about the societies I belong to, the ones I have my long correspondences with. I told him all about Professor Tarot, and the High Priestess, and Madame Delaware, and that man who runs the Guild of Light—what’s his name, you know him.”

  “I don’t,” said Mr. Campion with some dignity.

  “Ah, perhaps not. But Charles does,” said Lady Glebe with sudden distinctness. “That’s the amazing thing. He knows each one of them personally. Some of them live in his manor—that’s his district, you know, a technical term. He knows them well, and he was able to tell me about them first hand. A most useful man. Prune seems delighted and he’s doing her good. She looks quite pretty today. The Revver pointed it out.”

  When Mr. Campion left her at last he felt giddy, but he was a determined man and he pressed on to where he had last seen the grey bowler. He located it at last just outside the house. The man under it was seated on a low parapet which enclosed a small terrace outside the glass doors of the drawing-room. He was drinking champagne and talking to Amanda. Solly L. was a Jew and a bookmaker of great reputation, and since he was also a sensitive person he had settled his private problems in his own way and always made a point of dressing the part. In figure he was not unlike Mr. Lugg, and it was said of him that he always took a copy of the latest joke drawing from the sporting papers when he visited his tailor. At the moment he made a colourful and splendid figure.

  “No, I don’t like rings,” he was saying to Amanda as Campion came up. “Never wear ’em. Get in the way if they’re big enough to see. Hullo Mr. C. Enjoying yourself? What a day, eh, what a day.”
r />   Mr. Campion sat down beside him and Amanda gave him her glass.

  “It keeps getting filled,” she said. “I don’t quite know how.”

  Solly laughed, the essential sadness of his boldly moulded face brightening with amusement.

  “I do,” he remarked. “Look at ’im. Good old Tonker. He’s conducting this party as if it was a piece of music for massed bands. I’ve been sitting here looking at him while I’ve been chatting to Her Ladyship. It’s beautiful to watch. He does it all by ear.” He nodded to where Tonker was standing in his beautiful blazer, stomach in, rump out, pads springy, and invisible whiskers quivering. He was talking to a group who were laughing at him, and was sipping his wine, but his eyes wandered from time to time and every now and again someone, usually a child—and there seemed to be millions of them—came up to him and received some casual instruction.

  “Do you know what he’s saying?” Solly flicked the ash off a property-sized cigar. “I do. I listened to him once. He says ‘It’s too quiet over in that corner. Go and see why and come and tell me.’ Then it’s ‘Go and get a bottle from Auntie Poppy. She’s only a famous actress and the Chief Constable’s wife. And three or four glasses. And take them up very carefully to the back landing where you’ll find three old gentlemen, one of them’s only Genappe, sitting about smoking. Just hand it to the one who’s awake and come back.’ Then, to a legal eagle who looks as if he’s still on the bench, ‘My dear feller, how charming to see you. And you, and you. You need a drink. I wonder if you’d mind? You see this french window here? Go through it and on the left you’ll see a bureau. Open it and you’ll find all the necessary. Start a little bar. Do you know the Lord-knows-who, and General Whatnot? I’ll bring them over.’” He ducked his head and laughed. “It’s a poem,” he said. “It’s a gift. What a maître he’d make if ever he capitalised it. But he wouldn’t, you know. It’s an art with him, the same as her painting is with his good lady. He’d do anything for his parties, Tonker would. Commit murder. Anything.”