‘I can understand Beveridge doing it,’ said Campion, ‘but not George standing for it. I suppose he was pretty well oiled.’
‘Must have been,’ grumbled the Inspector, ‘to chuck that gun where he did. I thought old Bowditch would have a fit when he heard where it was all the time. That stopped him laughing,’ he added viciously. ‘By the way, you were quite right about that footprint. I owe you five shillings. And that makes me about four and ninepence out of pocket, I don’t mind telling you. Even you’ve come off better. You’ve got a mermaid.’
‘Modest though I am, I should like to point out that I was right about the “B” too,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Extraordinary what a long time it took the jury to see that,’ he continued. ‘Even when Beveridge explained it himself. Oh, and by the way, Stanislaus, to reopen an old and a sore subject, why didn’t you follow up Uncle William’s alibi at the very beginning? When I hinted it so plainly?’
‘Because I was dead sure it didn’t exist,’ said Stanislaus after a pause. ‘This is a very exceptional case. You wouldn’t have come out of it so well if it wasn’t. I didn’t follow up William’s alibi because I was more than certain he hadn’t got one.’
‘You thought he’d done it?’ said Mr Campion in astonishment.
‘I knew he’d done it,’ said the Inspector. ‘If this had been an ordinary case he would have done it. You don’t have clever lunatics providing false evidence, or half-false evidence, which is worse, in every case you come across, or where would you be? You might as well go bughouse yourself and leave it at that. I’m sorry I was wild with you at the time, Campion, but when you came out with that pub-keeper I felt I was getting past my job. Of course, you know,’ he went on eagerly, ‘even at the finish I didn’t quite believe it, although that last cyanide murder was pretty convincing. It had got the right mixture of cleverness and lunacy – an elaborate, ingenious scheme to kill any old person who happened to be about. But, of course, afterwards, when we went into it and followed up Seeley’s movements, found he’d been a medical student, discovered the retort and a couple of saucepans in the potting shed, and finally got the chemist who sold him the cyanide, it was different.’
‘He distilled the conium himself, I suppose?’ said Campion. ‘Simply boiled a lot of hemlock down? We shall never be able to prove that. Still, I don’t suppose it was difficult.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said the Inspector. ‘You heard old Hastings at the inquest. He said it wasn’t. It probably gave Andrew something to do. Must be a terrible life idling about in a house like that.’
Mr Campion nodded. ‘Typical of him to pick on conium,’ he observed. ‘State poison of Athens. They killed Socrates with it, didn’t they?’
‘I don’t know about Socrates,’ said the Inspector. ‘It made a mess of Socrates Close. It was so simple; that’s what scared me. So was the cyanide. Anyone can get hold of cyanide in England by talking about wasps’ nests and signing their name in a book. No, the only thing Seeley seems to have made a hash of in the poison line was the stuff on the knife. Hastings told me he thought it was some sort of a snake poison, probably scraped off one of those poison arrows people bring back with them from the Gold Coast. He couldn’t locate it. It was very slight. But he said there was something there.’
‘What a blessing he didn’t put an extra dose of his home-distilled conium in the brandy flask and leave it at that,’ said Mr Campion, appalled at the sudden thought.
‘Not ingenious enough,’ said the Inspector. ‘These little extra stunts of his were all afterthoughts – little clever ideas he didn’t want to waste. I say, look out, Campion. No blinding! It’s a beautiful evening. Let’s take our time.’
The young man slowed down obligingly. ‘One more point and my mind will be at rest,’ he said. ‘Surely Uncle Andrew didn’t go to church with a coil of rope, a revolver and a clock weight concealed upon him? Where did he hide them until he was ready for them? I understand how he got rid of his cousin. Uncle William is the kind of man who could be relied upon to jib at walking a couple of miles out of his way, and I should think Andrew was a past master at picking a quarrel with him. But where exactly did he put his paraphernalia?’
‘In the shed by the river,’ said the Inspector. ‘I haven’t dwelt on this point much, because I felt we ought to have noticed something, even if the scent was ten days’ old. But I tell you in confidence we took a brick out of the river, and not one that belonged to the bridge, and I think that brick was the original weight intended for the revolver. But then the clock weight fell down in the middle of dinner and called attention to itself, so to speak. Obviously it occurred to him as being an improvement on the brick. Oh well, it’s all cleared up now, but it’s been a harassing month. I’m on quite a nice little job in Stepney at the moment. Clean case of coining. Seems like a breath of fresh air.’
Mr Campion did not answer, and presently, as they approached the outskirts of the City, the Inspector spoke again.
‘You never would have thought it, would you?’ he remarked. ‘They seemed such nice people.’
But Mr Campion was lost in his own thoughts.
It was not until he was back at his own flat in Bottle Street, with Lugg hovering round him like an excited hen with a lost chick, that he remembered the package which Uncle William had thrust into his hand as he left Socrates Close. He took it out of his pocket now and began to unwrap it slowly. Lugg watched with interest.
‘Another souvenir?’ he said, dubiously. ‘You’ll have a job to beat that lot in the hall. You jught to have took me with you.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said his master feelingly. ‘Be quiet a minute.’
‘Touchy, ain’t yer?’ the big man protested.
Campion ignored him. He had removed the wrappings and there now lay revealed a small wooden box of Tunbridge Wells ware. He picked it up admiringly and lifted the lid. As he caught sight of the contents an exclamation escaped him, and Lugg, who was peering under his arm, was silent with respectful astonishment.
On a nest of quilted pink silk lay a heart-shaped miniature. It was a delicately lovely piece of work, the frame set with small rubies and brilliants.
On the ivory was a portrait of a girl.
Her sleek black hair was parted in the centre and arranged in small curls on either side of her face. Her dark eyes were grave and large, her small nose straight, her lips smiled. She was very beautiful.
It took Mr Campion some time to realize that he held an early portrait of Mrs Caroline Faraday.
This story, the characters in it, and the bridge in the Grantchester Meadows, are figments of the author’s imagination, and have no reference to real incident, living people or topographical facts.
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First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann in 1931
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Margery Allingham, Police at the Funeral
Police at the Funeral Page 28
