Their acquaintance was of long standing and each man knew the other well by repute, but this was the first occasion on which they had had actual dealings.
‘He wanted me to go down there,’ said Campion truthfully.
‘Why didn’t you go? You don’t mind a few questions, do you?’ Yeo was smiling affably, but his manner betrayed caution, for as a valued expert and the C.I.D. ‘Super’s’ personal friend Mr Campion merited careful handling.
‘I thought I’d keep out of it.’
‘Quite. Quite. I can understand that.’
The Inspector was satisfied only in part. He tried another line.
‘It’s an A case,’ he observed. ‘We’re out to get him. I saw our Chief Constable and the Assistant Commissioner this morning. I’ve got the whole Force behind me and I can have anyone I like to call on. The case is to get real preference. The man we’re after is dangerous, you see, Mr Campion. I mean you could call him anti-social, couldn’t you? If he’s a private person with facilities for tapping stuff which is nothing more or less than war material, and doesn’t mind whom he does in – well, I mean to say, he must be stopped!’
His earnestness widened his eyes and shortened his nose until he looked like a comedian in the midst of his act.
‘He must,’ he repeated. ‘We’ve got to get him. That woman with the injured leg is in danger. If she dies there’ll be four persons killed, eleven injured, and no one knows how much damage.’
Campion smiled crookedly.
‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘don’t think for a moment that I don’t agree with you. I do. The whole nature of the thing is so preposterous that I don’t think any sane man could argue with you about it. Whatever the circumstances turn out to be, nothing could ever excuse or extenuate such an incredible piece of stupid wickedness. When you get your man you’ll have to hang him. I do see that.’
Yeo shot him a relieved but still puzzled glance.
‘Both Oates and I knew you were sound,’ he said naïvely, ‘but frankly we were wondering if you weren’t holding something back – something that might put us on to a motive, for instance.’
Campion did not respond, and the detective continued after a brief pause.
‘You’ve had time to get to know all that lot down there, and they’re a funny crowd. I can’t help thinking that if there had been anything a bit fishy going on beforehand you’d have noticed it. Something that might have led up to this, I mean. We’re at a great disadvantage coming in only after the event, with the newspapers printing all they can find the instant after they find it. There was that actress woman who died down there … did she fall or did she jump? No one knows, and it doesn’t really matter. Still, it was a funny thing to happen all the same. I don’t like coincidences. It’s silly to pretend they don’t occur, but I don’t like them.’
Mr Campion raised his eyes from his plate.
‘You’re concentrating on White Walls?’
‘Well, yes, in the main.’ Yeo lowered his tone and scowled at the plump Bonini, who was bearing down upon them with hostly affability. The restaurateur altered his course, affronted, and the Inspector, having satisfied himself that he was not overheard, went on with his story.
‘It’s four days now and we’ve been working steadily, with a certain amount of results, of course. As soon as you came out with your piece of information about the bicycle – which saved us quite a bit of time, by the way – I checked up on it and found you were right. Konrad had received the bicycle on the 2nd, nearly a fortnight before the rally, and I found quite a number of people at the theatre, and in other places, who had actually seen the lamp alight. Bit by bit we narrowed it down to the time when he took it to Mr Sutane’s house. There’s a chauffeur there, a decent, sensible chap – I don’t know if you know him? He’s one of these gadgety lads who was very taken by the bicycle. He swears that on the first Sunday Mr Konrad had it down there he, the chauffeur, made a complete examination of it and was particularly impressed by the lamp, which he described to me as “super.” He was able to give me complete specifications and these tallied exactly with those I got from the firm which supplied the machine.’
He paused and Campion nodded his comprehension and approval. The Inspector lit a cigarette.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve covered the lamp all right until the time Konrad left the bicycle in the cloakroom at the house. He went up to Town on the Monday by car. On the following Sunday he came back in a cab with very little time to spare. The evidence is that he rushed up to the room which had been prepared for him, hurried into cycling kit, leaving his other clothes strewn about for someone else to pack – your man, Mr Lugg, was very chatty on that question, by the way – and tore down to the cloakroom, where he snatched his bicycle and rushed off on it, catching the train at Birley by the skin of his teeth. No one noticed the lamp at the time.
‘Mr Lugg says he saw the bicycle standing in the cloakroom all the week, but he never thought to examine it. If you ask me, he was lucky. It’s a natural thing to do, isn’t it? – switch on a lamp.’
‘But the grenade couldn’t have been there long.’ Campion was aghast. ‘Think of the danger. There’s a child in the house. Anything might have happened.’
Yeo shook his head knowingly.
‘It all depends who put it there,’ he said. ‘If you ask me, the man who did this job wasn’t the imaginative type. He’s straightforward and ingenious; that’s how I see him. Singletrack mind. He argued that Konrad would ride that bicycle until it grew dark, and then he’d switch on his light and sit there with his head over the lamp until it blew up and killed him. Looked at like that it seems fool-proof, doesn’t it?’
Campion considered the problem unwillingly.
‘It must have been put there on the last morning. Probably the whole lamp was changed and a similar one substituted. Now I think of it, it must have happened like that.’
‘You’re right.’ Yeo was pleased and he beamed upon his guest as at a promising pupil. ‘Major Bloom has had a bit more to say. He’s now prepared to swear that the explosive was in the lamp all right, but the minute fragments of lamp which remain are not consistent with them being part of the actual one supplied with the bicycle, the specifications of which we have from the chauffeur and from the firm which sold it.
‘So, you see, as far as we know for certain someone changed the lamp after Mr Konrad left on the Monday and before he took the bike away on the following Sunday. I agree with you the substitution probably took place towards the end of the time, but we can’t prove it, can we? That leaves us with everybody who came and went in that house for the best part of six days — and, believe me, there’s a crowd of them.’
Campion hesitated.
‘What about after he left the house?’ he suggested dubiously.
‘Impossible. I’ve checked the time he left the door with the time he came flying into Birley station. He could only just have done it. The bicycle was thrown into the guard’s van and the guard remembers sitting near it the whole journey. He nearly fainted when I told him about the grenade. I had to laugh – couldn’t help myself.’
Yeo grinned at the recollection, but frowned again and sighed as the problem presented itself once more.
‘If we could get on to the motive we’d have a definite lead,’ he said, eyeing Campion meaningly. ‘As far as I can gather from the people down there, no one liked Konrad, but his sudden death is the last thing any of them wanted.’
Still Mr Campion refused to be drawn. He sat back in his chair, his face grave and friendly, but he made no suggestion.
Yeo, who was a man of infinite patience, continued the attack.
‘You know the family and the immediate circle, so I needn’t reintroduce them,’ he said. ‘There’s an old man called William Faraday staying there. He was mixed up in that Cambridge case some years ago, wasn’t he? You met him then. He’s a friend of yours. He admits he had no time for Konrad, but he was the author of the show Konrad was appearing
in and he’s drawing big money for the first time in his life. Even if he were the type to go to the length of procuring the grenade and fixing it up I can’t see what he could possibly gain by Konrad’s death, and the scandal might be definitely detrimental to his pocket. The same goes for Mr Sutane, the composer Mr Mercer, and the manager Mr Poyser, who was in the house over the Saturday. Then there’s Mr Petrie, the secretary and publicity fellow; his job depends on Sutane’s success, and he’s not too flush for cash. The servants are out of it, as far as I can see, and the women don’t appeal to me as suspects. Either the wife or the sister could conceivably have done it, but I’m hanged if I see why they should. Konrad doesn’t seem to have gone in for love affairs and, apart from that consideration, the same main deterrents apply equally to them as to the men.’
He shook his head.
‘People don’t go murdering for nothing unless they’re homicidal maniacs. This is the work of a reasonable but callous mentality with a blind spot. Someone who wanted the chap to die and wanted him to go away and die, and didn’t much care where. That’s how I see him. But why he should do it at all I do not know.’
There was silence between them for some time. Mr Campion found he was doing his best not to think at all.
The Chief Inspector leant across and prodded his arm with a blunt forefinger.
‘Faraday’s a friend of yours, but the others aren’t,’ he said. ‘You went to White Walls for the first time less than a fortnight ago?’
Campion grinned.
‘It seems longer.’
‘I’ll lay it does. They’ve had a packet down there.’ Yeo’s eyes were bright and still friendly. ‘Blest has done well. I’ve had everything out with him, of course. Oates and I have gone over that persecution story from A to Z. That’s how you got into the business in the first place. We know all about that and we’ve taken it into consideration. But however irritated Mr Sutane was, he’d hardly go killing Konrad when he could sack him, would he? Or he might have lost his temper and socked the fellow, but he wouldn’t go messing about with explosives and delayed-action methods. Besides, there wasn’t the time. Blest told Mr Sutane his suspicions on the Saturday after he had located the accomplice, and Konrad met his death on the Sunday. That grenade had to be obtained.’
Campion roused himself with an effort.
‘Where did it come from?’
‘We don’t know yet. Major Bloom’s still working on it.’
For the first time throughout the interview Yeo showed signs of his normal reticence.
‘I seem to be doing all the talking,’ he remarked. ‘What about you saying a few words?’
‘I’ve been agreeing with you.’ Campion spoke carefully. ‘Everything you’ve said I’ve thought myself. I’m in the dark. The crime has astonished me. It’s not the kind of thing I could ever imagine emanating from that house. But if it has, then I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be near it.’
Yeo shrugged his shoulders.
‘That’s where you have the advantage over us professionals,’ he said acidly. ‘I can’t choose myself. I’ve never known you like this, Mr Campion. You’re usually so keen. If I was asked, do you know what I’d say? If I didn’t know you were a comparative stranger to these people I’d say personal feelings were involved. Yet Faraday’s the only friend you’ve got in the bunch, and frankly I can’t for the life of me see how he can be in it.’
‘Look here, Inspector, if I thought I could help you put your hands on the man you want I’d do it.’ Campion’s voice was unexpectedly strained. ‘You must believe that. But I can’t. I do not know. I cannot think of anyone with any motive who could conceivably have done such an appalling, such a stupid thing. You say Blest found the accomplice? Who was he? May I know? It’s a point of professional interest to me.’
‘You can see him if you like.’ Yeo was the soul of affability. His reputation for tenacity had not been lightly won. ‘I’m going to look him up after this. Who do you think it was? Beaut Siegfried, of all people.’
‘No, really?’ It seemed to Campion that he had not heard that florid name since his childhood. ‘The dancing master?’
‘The old haybag himself,’ agreed Yeo disrespectfully. ‘He’s Ballet Master now, by the way. Regular old pressed rose. Blest got him to admit he wrote those invitations. Don’t ask me how. I don’t want to know. I’d get kicked out of the Force if I used some of the methods these private chaps employ. Blest was never more than a divisional inspector, you know. He was a bit too hot for anything. Anyway, he managed old Beaut. Mr Siegfried wrote to Mr Sutane a nice letter of apology for “what was, perhaps, an only too unfortunate practical joke.” Sutane has accepted the apology, Blest says. It was about all he could do in the circumstances. It was a silly trick, enough to make anybody wild.
‘But not murdering wild,’ he added after a pause, and cocked his head at Campion like a terrier at a mousehole.
In the end Mr Campion accompanied the Inspector to the studio in Cavendish Square, accepting the honour in the spirit of good fellowship which he was no less anxious than the police to maintain. After years of the closest and most friendly co-operation with the authorities he felt his present position on the fence very keenly, and his resentment at the combination of circumstances which had forced him to take it up grew deep.
As they came across the fine square in the warm, odoriferous London afternoon Yeo coughed.
‘This is just a little friendly chat. You’re my unofficial Sergeant for the time being. There’s been so many infringements of the regulations already where this chap is concerned that I don’t think another matters very much. You’ll have to lie out of it if you ever see him again. He knows me. We’ve had one or two little chats in our time.’
As they climbed the shallow steps to the graceful Georgian doorway another thought occurred to him.
‘He’s a bit of a sketch,’ he said. ‘Thinks he’s the School of Scandal, or something.’
Beaut Siegfried interviewed them in his beautiful studio. He was a thin, elderly man on whom old affectations hung like faded garlands. His Court breeches and silk stockings betrayed ageing, sharp-boned legs, and the shoulders beneath his long-skirted velvet were bent and weak. He had fine white hands and was childishly proud of them, letting them drop into careless, graceful poses whenever he remembered. His face beneath his fluffy hair, which was still brown and still curly, was the face of the traditional withered spinster, prim, lined and spiteful, the eyes slightly prominent and disconcertingly blank.
When they were shown in he was posing with a fiddle, a shaft of sunlight from a high window falling on his bent head. He laid the instrument down with a little sigh as they appeared and advanced across the polished floor to meet them.
‘My dear Chief Inspector,’ he said, ‘this is a pleasure. I am free, too. None of my dear boys and girls will be here till six. They still come to me, you see, and I teach them to move their beautiful bodies with the true grace. But they won’t be here till six o’clock, and so I was able to have you shown in at once. A glass of Amontillado? Just a little one? In my crystal glasses.’
Yeo refused and sat down uninvited, motioning Mr Campion to do likewise.
Siegfried remained posed in front of them, the light playing on his hair and on the soft folds of his coat. There was an irregular board in the floor, Mr Campion noticed, to show him just where to stand if this effect was to be satisfactorily attained.
Yeo regarded his host blandly and with a certain satisfaction, as at a peculiar pet.
‘I came to talk to you about Konrad,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be able to help me.’
‘Konrad?’ Siegfried drew a white hand over his eyes. ‘I can’t think of it,’ he said. ‘I sent some roses, but I can’t think of it. Don’t ask me. He had such a gift, such a spirit! To die so young!’
He had a curious soft voice with a crack in it and a refinement of accent which was oddly not at all unpleasant. Campion found himself wondering what on earth he had
been like at school.
Yeo’s round eyes were amused.
‘Do you know of anyone who didn’t like him?’ he inquired baldly.
‘Oh.’ The dancing master dropped his hand and his sharp, withered face became startlingly inquisitive. ‘Oh. Why do you ask me that?’
‘Because I thought you might know,’ explained Yeo stolidly. ‘He was a star pupil of yours or something, wasn’t he?’
‘Well –’ Siegfried was flattered, ‘– I taught him all I knew. His poise, his grace, his divine spirit were all mine. But his modern technique …. No, I don’t think I can lay claim to that. I used to scold him sometimes for leaving the classical school of sheer beauty for the intricacies of the terrible new rhythm.’
‘Anyway, you knew him,’ Yeo persisted. ‘Had he any enemies?’
Siegfried hesitated, his mouth narrowed and pursed and his eyes growing spiteful.
‘There were people who were jealous of him,’ he said primly.
Yeo waited patiently until, with a shrug of his bent shoulders, which proclaimed as clear as if he had spoken that he was throwing off restraint, Siegfried took the plunge.
‘It may be slander,’ he said. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure; the law’s so ridiculous. But I do think someone ought to be told. I’ll let you know in confidence, Inspector, but I’m not going to be badgered afterwards. The poor boy was persecuted.’
It seemed extraordinary that one wizened old creature could hold so much living forceful venom.
‘Sutane,’ he said. ‘That man Sutane. He’s not a dancer. He’s an acrobat, and the mob have made a god of him. He’s got no soul, no poetry, no spirit at all, and when he saw Benny he was jealous of him. He’s dogged the boy. He’s forced him into his shows and kept him out of sight all because he simply daren’t let him appear.’
He forgot the shaft of sunlight and came a little closer, thrusting his face into the Inspector’s own and bubbling a little at the lips in his excitement.
‘Benny’s been here and cried to me,’ he insisted. ‘If Benny had a good entrance Sutane took it away. If there was an opportunity for costume Sutane disallowed it. If Benny got an ovation Sutane sneered at him. The boy was simply a mass of nerves after a month or two of Sutane. I don’t know what happened at the end. I can’t read the newspapers. They’re disgusting. But whatever it was, Sutane was morally responsible. There, now I’ve told you. My conscience is clear. But do understand I won’t be worried. I won’t make a statement and I certainly won’t go into court. I’ve got my boys and girls to think of. I teach them to be artists in the true sense of the word and I won’t be hindered.’
Dancers in Mourning Page 23
