Mr Campion leant forward in his chair. ‘Mrs Faraday,’ he said diffidently, ‘why are you so sure yourself that suicide is not the true explanation of Miss Julia’s death?’
Great-aunt Caroline sighed. ‘Julia and Andrew disliked one another bitterly,’ she said, ‘and if Andrew had murdered Julia and then committed suicide, I do not think I should have been so astonished. But that Julia should kill herself is unthinkable. She clung to life as though she had ever got anything out of it, poor creature, and she certainly had not the physique, nor the opportunity, nor even the strength of character to tie Andrew up and then shoot him and drop him into the river. She was a year older than Catherine, remember, and a heavy cumbersome person who was terrified if she so much as got her feet wet. As to the actual facts, theorizing apart, Doctor Lavrock has diagnosed acute conium poisoning, and the remains of the dose which Julia took are probably in that cup. You can see for yourselves that there is a sediment there.’
She indicated the large blue tea-cup with a small bony hand.
‘Doctor Lavrock wanted to take it away with him,’ she said, ‘but I told him quite firmly that he could leave it safely in my care, and I would hand it over to the police immediately they arrived, which should be at any moment.’
The grim smile which flickered across her lips testified to a battle won. They did not attempt to speak, and she went on, still speaking quietly and in the same impersonal tone.
‘My inquiries,’ she continued, ‘some of which you heard, have revealed one reasonable explanation and one rather curious fact, which may or may not be interesting. Catherine has confessed, however theatrically, to the making of early morning tea every morning for the last two years, a cup of which it was her habit to carry in to Julia, who has the room next to hers. Alice, the housemaid, it appears, knew of this custom. I was talking to her upstairs before I came down to find poor William making that disgraceful scene. Alice, it seems, used to collect the cups from under the two beds, wash them in the bathroom and return them to the little cupboard, where Catherine kept her paraphernalia.’
There was a distinct touch of contempt in the old lady’s voice on the last few words and she answered a criticism which she felt might be passing through their minds.
‘Tea-drinking in the early morning has always appeared to me as an indulgence for which there is nothing but spinelessness as an excuse,’ she said. ‘I have never had it served in my house and I never shall.’ Having made herself quite clear upon this point, Aunt Caroline returned to the more important matter on hand. ‘The second fact I have discovered is strange,’ she said. ‘Alice, a most reliable and intelligent woman for her class, tells me she has noticed a sediment in Julia’s cup every morning for the past six months. Therefore, until the dregs in this cup on my desk are properly analysed by the police, there must remain some element of doubt as to whether Julia was poisoned in her early morning tea or not. Also I must assure you that Julia was not in the habit of taking drugs. That is the sort of secret which no one could keep in a household like this. Well,’ she paused and her quick black eyes rested on Mr Campion’s face, ‘may I expect you this evening? We dine at eight.’
Campion rose to his feet. ‘I shall be delighted to do all I can, Mrs Faraday,’ he said earnestly. ‘But if I am not to be a source of embarrassment to you I must know at least of the existence of the pitfalls into which I may stumble. Besides your immediate household, was there anyone else visiting this house round about the time of Mr Seeley’s disappearance?’
Great-aunt Caroline hesitated and her lips moved ruminatively. Finally she shrugged her shoulders.
‘You have heard already of George Faraday,’ she said. ‘I was afraid this would have to come out. Yes, he was in this house the night before Andrew disappeared. I also saw him in the town when I drove to church the next morning.’
An unusual sternness had come into the old face.
‘I do not wish to have his name mentioned in this case if it can be avoided,’ she said. ‘I do not think for a moment that he could have had any possible interest in Andrew’s death. Certainly he could expect no material benefit from it. The only death which could possibly assist him in any way is my own. Under my will he receives a small annuity, subject to his emigrating to Australia and payable only while he stays there. On the Saturday night before Andrew died he came to borrow money from me and actually obtained ten pounds. That is all I wish to say about him, save that he has no permanent address of which I know.’
It was quite clear to both men that any further questioning upon this point could have only one result, and Mr Campion at least appeared satisfied. His next question, however, was also of a delicate nature.
‘Mr William Faraday . . .’ he began, and hesitated.
Once more Great-aunt Caroline came to his rescue. ‘William drinks a little,’ she said, ‘and so did Andrew.’ She spoke quite calmly and they suddenly realized that she had reviewed the situation in all its aspects and was taking them into her confidence as aides and allies, because she felt that in this way only could she muster enough strength to meet the storm which had broken over her.
‘Neither of them was aware that I had any knowledge of this,’ she said. ‘William, I fancy, is the worse of the two. There is also the possibility’ – she lowered her voice and spoke with great deliberation – ‘that William, who is both physically and mentally incapable of murder, may know something about Andrew’s death, although I am certain he was not a party to it. But he was about twenty minutes later for luncheon on the Sunday either than he realized or than he cares to admit, and he has not yet been able to give me a satisfactory explanation for this. I shall look forward to seeing your father when he does arrive, Marcus, and you, Mr Campion, I shall expect to see at my dinner table this evening.’
This was patently a dismissal, and the young men rose to make their departure. In the corridor outside Marcus shot a sidelong glance at Campion.
‘What do you make of it?’ he murmured.
A faint smile spread over Mr Campion’s pale face. ‘I hope I suit,’ he whispered.
In the hall they caught a glimpse of a tall, gloomy individual being shown into the library by the startled Alice, while two of his minions remained stolidly in the passage. Campion’s face lighted up.
‘Ah, the Boys in Blue,’ he said. ‘And Stanislaus Oates at the head of the inquisition. That’s the first piece of luck we’ve had yet.’
CHAPTER 7
THE CONJUROR
MR FEATHERSTONE, SENIOR, allowed a decent pause to elapse after his son’s narrative came to an end and then, arising from his chair, walked slowly across his big private office. When he turned, his extraordinarily handsome face wore an expression of deepest regret. Both Campion and Marcus, the only other occupants of the room, were startled by his quiet observation.
‘So it’s come,’ he said. ‘I wondered when the bad blood in that family was going to show. Forty-seven years have I been in practice and it had to happen at the end of the time. Well, I’ll go down and see Mrs Faraday this afternoon. You say she is taking complete control? An amazing woman – always has been. She is as shrewd and quick as ever she was, but I don’t think there’s a spark of feeling in her body, unless it’s for that little girl of yours, Marcus. It’s a disgraceful business – disgraceful.’
He paused before one of the long windows and looked down upon Regent Street below. The light falling upon his face revealed still more clearly his peculiar nobility of countenance. Mr Featherstone senior’s good looks, a secret vanity of his, were largely responsible for his many years of successful practice, and now, at the age of seventy, he loomed a tall and prophetic-looking personage. His white hair and beard were true silver. His eyes were grey like his son’s, inclined to coldness, and he missed a good deal of what passed before him by refusing steadfastly to wear spectacles. He turned suddenly upon the two young men.
‘You don’t remember old Faraday, of course,’ he said. ‘He would be – let me see now – a
hundred odd if he were still alive. He was the eldest of a large family and the only one of them who was any good at all. The others ran right off the rails. John was a learned man. All the goodness in him seemed to run to that. Quite the opposite of his wife. She has intelligence, a different matter – never confuse the two.’ He paused and went on slowly: ‘I don’t think she actually disliked him. She had a very great respect for him and made a fetish of his importance in a way. Even nowadays when I go there I’m always afraid I shall sit down by mistake in that yellow chair in the library.’
Campion looked up inquiringly and Marcus explained.
‘I ought to have warned you,’ he said. ‘In the library at Socrates Close there’s a big yellow brocade-covered chair. Avoid it like the plague. It was old Faraday’s own chair, you see, and as far as I know no one has ever sat in it since he died, certainly not in Mrs Faraday’s presence. Of course it’s a pitfall for the unwary. It ought to be labelled. But, fortunately, they don’t use that room except on state occasions.’
‘I will make a note of the yellow peril,’ said Mr Campion.
Old Mr Featherstone turned to look dubiously at the young man who had just spoken.
‘You, Campion,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what good Mrs Faradays thinks you are going to be to her. I don’t know what you think you’re going to do. In my experience, and in everyone else’s for that matter, the only way of making an appalling affair like this even bearable is to deal with it in a routine manner. No amateur jiggery-pokery ever has done anybody any good.’
Mr Campion accepted this gratuitous insult as if it had been a compliment of the highest order. He smiled affably.
‘I’m to be a buffer. Not an old buffer, you know, but a kind of pad – a mechanical apparatus for deadening the forces of a concussion, as in railway carriages. In other words, a sort of private secretary, I suppose.’
Old Featherstone turned a cold and near-sighted eye in his direction.
‘Don’t behave as though you came from Oxford, my boy,’ he said. ‘Both the ‘Varsities engender fools, but thank heaven we endeavour to breed our own special type.’
Marcus glanced apprehensively at Campion. ‘I’m afraid my father is forgetting your reputation,’ he murmured apologetically.
But Featherstone, senior, had no use for any reputation that was under fifty years old.
‘I warn everybody,’ he said testily, ‘this affair is pitch. And in my experience, if you touch pitch you get your hands dirty. I am only concerned in this affair at Socrates Close in an official capacity. There are times when the best of us must be selfish. Marcus, you’re in it even more deeply. I suppose you can’t get Joyce away? She’s not exactly a relative, you know.’
For the first time since Campion had known him a gleam of genuine anger came into Marcus’s eyes.
‘Joyce will do what she thinks and I shall abide by her decision,’ he said uncompromisingly.
The old man shrugged his shoulders. ‘There’s no fool like a young one,’ he observed, ‘whatever they say.’
Mr Campion, who was becoming used to family friction by this time, was prepared for further skirmishes, but the proceedings were cut short by the entrance of an elderly clerk with the announcement that the car was waiting. A short period of bustle followed, while the old man was safely arrayed in his coat and hat and a largish woollen muffler and escorted safely downstairs into his chariot. Marcus came up the stairs looking relieved.
‘Look here, Campion,’ he said, ‘d’you mind coming into my room? It’s more comfortable than this one. Father will be gone for hours. By the way, when do you think this policeman is liable to turn up?’
‘Quite soon now,’ said Mr Campion, getting up and walking across the passage with his friend. ‘He should have got the note I left almost immediately, and when he’s finished his preliminary investigations he’ll come toddling over here, if I know him. You’ll like him. He’s one of the best. I’ve known him for years. By the way, do you put all those famous names on the boxes in there to impress the unwary visitor?’
Marcus did not smile. ‘That’s the only advertising they let us do,’ he said. ‘Here we are.’
The room they entered was the smallest of the three which composed the offices of Featherstone and Featherstone. The house, a converted Georgian residence, was owned by the firm, and the other businesses in the building were of an order and propriety to make them suitable neighbours to such an eminently reputable concern.
It was a square comfortable room, light and airy, lined with panelled bookcases of polished mahogany and furnished with the same appropriate wood. Marcus sat down at his desk and Campion took up a position in the leather arm-chair before the fire.
‘We shan’t be disturbed in here,’ Marcus promised. ‘Important visitors are taken into the old boy’s office. It’s more impressive. Joyce and Ann are meeting here at about half-past four. I said I’d give them a cup of tea.’ He passed his hand nervously over his hair. ‘This business has upset everything,’ he said. ‘It makes you see life from an entirely different angle somehow, doesn’t it?’
‘Life in the newspaper sense,’ observed Mr Campion, ‘is always seen from this point of view. Uncle William must be regarding himself as “today’s human story” by this time.’
‘Muckrakers!’ said Marcus savagely. ‘I always read the murder cases myself, but when it comes to seeing people you know in print it’s rather different.’
Campion nodded absently. ‘I’d like to know just how that woman came to poison herself,’ he said slowly.
The other man stared at him. ‘You think it was suicide?’ he said. ‘I thought—?’
Campion shook his head. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘That’s the last thing I should say, on the face of it. But it’s evident that Miss Faraday took quite passively a large dose of poison, and this could hardly have been done by mistake in the ordinary sense of the word. The sort of poisons that are kept in large quantities in a household are always of the corrosive kind, spirits of salt, ammonia, carbolic, things quite definitely “not to be taken”. Besides, I’ve never heard of a suicide in which the door of the room was not locked. People like to be alone when they kill themselves. It’s a purely personal affair, anyway.’
‘Quite,’ said Marcus, and was silent.
It was during this pause in the proceedings that the elderly clerk appeared, to announce that a Mr Oates was inquiring for a Mr Campion.
The two young men sprang to their feet as the Inspector came in. That lank, slightly melancholy figure looked even more dejected than usual as he hesitated just inside the door. Campion grinned at him.
‘Come for the body?’
The Inspector’s slow childlike smile, which altered his entire personality, dispelled the discomfort of what might otherwise have been a solemn introduction.
‘I got your note, Campion,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you, Mr Featherstone.’ He took off his raincoat and sat down in the chair Marcus indicated, leaning back gratefully. As he looked at Campion his smile broadened. ‘And I’m glad to see you, too, all things considered,’ he said affably. ‘I suppose you’re on the right side of the law?’
‘I’m not murdering this week, if that’s what you suggest,’ said Mr Campion with dignity.
Marcus looked a little shocked by this conversation, and the Inspector made haste to explain. ‘I’m always running into this man in business,’ he said, ‘and his position is generally so delicate that I never know whether I dare admit to his acquaintance or not.’ He turned to Campion. ‘I hear from Mrs Faraday,’ he said, ‘that you are her personal representative, whatever that may mean. Is this true?’
Campion nodded. The Inspector paused, and Marcus, realizing that whatever the Inspector had to say he had no intention of saying it before him, tactfully withdrew to his father’s office. As the door closed behind him Stanislaus Oates heaved a sigh of relief and took out his pipe.
‘This being the old lady’s representative,’ he began cautiously,
‘does that mean you have some secrets to keep?’
‘No,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Apparently I am all out to “apprehend the perpetrator of this dastardly outrage and bring him to the punishment he so justly deserves”.’
The Inspector grunted. ‘On the level?’ he demanded.
‘Sure. You’re O.K. by me, as we say in the Senate,’ said Mr Campion idiotically. ‘What do you make of it? Dogged anything up yet?’
The Inspector rubbed his chin unhappily. ‘Damn all,’ he said. ‘I knew my luck was going to be out. I’ve been expecting trouble for days. Then there’s that coincidence, me knocking into you with this girl Joyce Blount yesterday. A genuine coincidence always means bad luck for me; it’s my only superstition.’
Campion sat back in his chair, eyeing his friend owlishly. Now, he felt, was hardly the time to acquaint the Inspector with the even more important side of the coincidence in question. Stanislaus Oates went on grumbling.
‘Just because I speak twelve different varieties of Yiddish and can carry on a conversation with a tight Swede sailor, all of which are invaluable in the East End, I get promoted and promptly sent down on a case like this,’ he began. ‘I tell you, Campion, I can handle an East Lane harridan with Czech and Chinese blood in her veins, but that Mrs Faraday is beyond me, you know. She speaks another new language I’ve got to learn. I didn’t do so badly at first. In fact, when she came into that great library I thought I was going to like her. But as soon as we sat down and got started she froze solid—’
‘And you sat there in a yellow brocade chair, looking uncomfortable, no doubt,’ said Mr Campion.
‘Yes,’ admitted the Inspector absently, and sat up a moment later, his eyes narrowing. ‘Here! No monkey tricks, Campion,’ he said. ‘How d’you know it was a yellow brocade chair? It looked imposing. That’s why I chose it.’
‘Big policeman makes fatal error,’ said Mr Campion, laughing, and went on to explain.
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