“I don’t see that proves him barmy.” Mr. Campion realized he was floundering in delicate flower-beds, but saw no way of avoiding them.
“But he was going to marry her,” the woman insisted. “He was going to marry her because he’d promised her young husband to look after her. That’s insane, really insane. Mad, I mean. You can’t imagine any modern man in his senses, anybody not in a book, doing that, can you? Not here in England, certainly not Johnny.”
She began on her face again with swift, practised artistry, more than half her mind on the work.
“He broke my heart but it didn’t frighten me when I thought he was in love,” she said. “Now I really do see he’s not and never has been, I’m terrified. He’s unbalanced, what else can it mean?”
Mr. Campion regarded her helplessly. He saw her as she was; shrewd, kind and above all, adult. He could appreciate her bewilderment but hesitated to point out that in a rapidly changing world she was just a little old-fashioned. All the same, he felt it his duty to attempt an explanation. It was a laborious business, and she let him speak uninterrupted for a minute or so. Suddenly he exasperated her.
“Two worlds,” she repeated after him, her voice rising in her indignation. “You too! What’s the matter with you all? If you tell me you’re ‘at war’ I—I’ll hit you, Albert. Good God, aren’t we all at war?”
Mr. Campion sat quiet, and thought about his train, and the green meadows beyond its furthest journey. Eve laughed.
“Sorry, darling,” she said. “It’s all too—too near the heart, I’m afraid. I’m not reliable at the moment. I’ll see what you mean in time.” Presently she added pathetically:
“He’s so angry with me, Albert.”
“Is he?”
“Uh-huh. Furious. Furious with us all, it’s so unlike him. Isn’t it called ‘persecution mania’? He thinks we’re all in some conspiracy against him.”
“To prevent the wedding?”
“Yes. That, and—oh, it must be only that. After all, that’s enough.”
Mr. Campion was frowning. “Did you think there might be something else?” he asked at last.
Eve was busy with an eyebrow pencil. “I wondered,” she said without taking her eyes from the mirror.
“Why did you introduce Susan to young Evers?” said Campion suddenly.
“Me?” She put down the pencil and turned to face him. “I don’t think I did, did I?”
“She says so. At a party, at the Minoan.”
“So that’s where I’d seen her before.” Eve was relieved. “That’s right. She came with a crowd Gwenda brought along. Gwenda’s always bringing people. So I introduced them, did I? Quite likely. I was hostess.”
“It wasn’t part of a plot between you and Gwenda?”
“To get the girl interested in someone her own age? My dear boy!” Eve turned her back on him and went on with her dressing while Campion sat thinking. After nearly twenty-four hours of completely inconsequential happenings, he thought he was beginning to detect a faint, illusive, spider strand of sense in their history.
“Nobody,” he said, “nobody ever killed anyone simply in order to provide an awkward corpse in someone else’s house. I’m not sure of much, but I am of that. Nor do I believe that a deliberate murder is ever done for the sole purpose of providing evidence against a third person. There aren’t many rules, but one of them is that the killer wishes the victim dead. Eve, my dear, do you know anything about an artificial rose and some Woolworth pearls?”
“A rose?”
He remembered she was an actress, but her surprise convinced him.
“An artificial rose, and a great rope of candlegrease peas.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is this, some sort of trick? You’re frightening me, Albert.”
“I don’t mean to, and there’s nothing up my sleeve. Only one more question. What kind of woman is Gwenda?”
“Gwenda?” Eve began to laugh. “You’re absurd. Gwenda is the silliest, woolliest little rabbit in the world. I’ve known her for years. Gwenda’s always rushing about in a self-important panic trying to do something someone else has told her to do, and thinking she’s blazing a trail.”
Mrs. Phipps interrupted her with a reminder of the time, and she submitted to a cloud of net which was passed over her head. As she emerged into the light again and the dresser knelt before her pulling out the folds of her skirt. Campion looked into her face.
“You dined with Johnny at the Minoan on the night Moppet was killed,” he said. “Did he stay with you all the evening?”
Eve returned his stare. Her face, which possessed so much more than beauty, was very serious. “I don’t know how you know, but the answer is, every minute of the time,” she said deliberately. “Every minute until morning.”
He hesitated. “It may be rather awkward if you have to swear that,” he murmured.
“I can’t help it, I should swear it.”
“However mad he is?” he ventured.
Eve closed her eyes. “Don’t, darling,” she said.
“All right, I won’t. But think what you’re doing.”
“I do,” she whispered, “all the time.”
Mr. Campion left the theatre. So Johnny Carados had an alibi; if it was genuine or not, Eve was sufficiently in love with him to risk everything she considered important to give him it. It was very interesting, and all the more so because the longer he thought about it the more convinced he was that whoever had killed Moppet Stavros, it was not Johnny Carados.
Meanwhile, the trains went by.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHEN MR. CAMPION walked into the Minoan that evening the first person he saw, sitting demurely at a table by himself, was his uncle, the Bishop of Devizes. Mr. Campion’s mother, who had ever been a warrior, not to say a whole panzer division of the Church Militant, had used in her lifetime to speak resentfully of her brother-in-law. She said he was both timid and obstinate, yet in his own domain he was definitely known to be neither. He was a tiny person, soft-voiced and gentle, with the bluest eyes seen out of Scandinavia; but it was typical of him that at that moment it was not he, but the Minoan, which appeared a little out of place.
When Campion presented himself, he was delighted.
“My dear boy,” he said, when the preliminary greetings were complete. “How very pleasant to see you here. I was afraid I was hardly going to see a face I knew this evening; it must be ten years since I ate outside my own Club when visiting London. This place looks very clean.”
It was a most kindly meant observation, but Mr. Campion felt any debt the Minoan owed him was repaid.
“The Parnassus is still on its pillars, I hope, sir?” he enquired.
“The Club? Oh, yes, I’ve just come from there. Yes, indeed, I wonder if I’m a little early.” He consulted a very thin gold watch, and tucked it back in the folds of black silk. “Two minutes,” he said, adding with a sudden mischievous glance, unexpected in one so patently innocent, “you wonder what I’m up to, don’t you? I’ll tell you something, my boy, so do I.”
Inspiration came to Mr. Campion, and a large new section of the jig-saw slid neatly into place.
“You wouldn’t be about to give your opinion on a bottle of wine by any chance?” he ventured.
The Bishop raised his fine eyebrows. “Ah, so you’re in the party. I’m glad of that, very sensible of them. It’s a most extraordinary business, don’t you think?”
It was the second time that day that someone whom Mr. Campion would have supposed to have something better to excite him had professed the same enthusiasm for the mysterious bottle. This time, however, he was not quite so astonished.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I imagine it is.”
The old man laughed his gentle little laugh which had made so many people his slaves in his long life.
“You’re so much more used to this sort of thing than I am,” he said. It was not exactly regret in his voice, but the hint of it was the
re. As an observation it was true; if his uncle meant what Campion thought it did. He felt mildly irritated with Bush for dragging the old man into such a business.
“I would come, you know,” said the Bishop of Devizes, who appeared to add thought-reading to his other accomplishments. “Theodore Bush came to see me last week and I told him I insisted on being present. We must all do what we can in a case like this.”
Mr. Campion gave it up. He could imagine Theo going to Devizes, or indeed to Durbar on the Day of Judgment about a purloined case or so of wine, but that his uncle should come to the Minoan in war time on the same business seemed incredible.
“I don’t think I can have got the full story,” he said.
“Then wait,” said the Bishop. “Wait. Now, is that young man over there our host?”
Campion looked round to see Don Evers standing in the doorway leading to the private part of the building. He smiled at them, and came over. It was evident that he did not know the Bishop, and that he knew rather less than Mr. Campion of the matter in hand. However, there were no explanations. The Bishop was charming and amazingly adroit. He made it clear that he had come up from Devizes to dine with a young man he had never met, having been invited to do so by a third party not yet present, and he refused to see anything unusual in the proceeding. But he would not refer to the now tantalizing bottle, nor allow anyone else to do so. His small talk was masterly, and to Campion’s relief, Don appeared to like him after a certain initial bewilderment.
“We’re eating upstairs,” said the boy at last. “I thought Bush would be here, but I don’t see him yet. Should we go up and let him follow us?”
“I really think we might. Young Carados is to come too, isn’t he?”
Mr. Campion’s uncle was already advancing down the room, his silver head bobbing against Don’s shoulder.
“Do you know Carados, Lieutenant Evers? A most remarkable young man. Very strong in character. A little autocratic, perhaps, but a figure; definitely a figure of our times.”
Campion who was following them saw the colour rise in Don’s face, and was sorry for him. For a man whose only indiscretion appeared to be that he had told his father he had bought a bottle of Burgundy, his punishment seemed unduly severe.
The room they entered was the one in which Stavros had made his tragic statement that morning. It was brighter now, and warm; the lights were comforting and the silver shone. Campion was wondering what had happened to the man when he saw him. He was standing staring down at the table which had been set for five. His head was bowed and he seemed to have shrunk so that his clothes sagged a little. He did not notice Campion immediately. Don and the Bishop were in front of him and Stavros stepped back, bowing slightly. However as he raised his head he came face to face with the thin man in the horn-rimmed spectacles. He was astounded and afterwards afraid. His professional calm deserted him, and colour appeared in patches in his grey face. For an instant he dithered, and then turned impulsively towards a corner of the room as if he were about to rush to it protectingly.
Campion followed his glance, and saw two bottles; two very ordinary black bottles with their corks as yet undrawn. As he looked, Don went over to him.
“I’m in a dilemma, sir,” he said to the Bishop. “Mr. Bush gave me precise instructions that these corks should not be drawn until we were all present, but although I don’t pretend to be an expert I do feel that if we’re to drink the stuff tonight it ought to be decanted very soon. What do you think?”
Stavros hurried over and murmured something to him. Don took up one of the bottles very carefully and glanced at it.
“No,” he said, “no. It’s quite all right, Mr. Stavros, there’s no mistake. This is it. Les Enfants Doux, nineteen hundred and four. I remember that ink scribble, too. Could you send me a corkscrew and a couple of decanters?”
Stavros still hesitated, and then, surprisingly, he shrugged his shoulders and went back to Campion where he paused and looked him full in the eyes.
“What on earth does it matter?” he said, and went out.
He had not lowered his voice, and Don’s incredulity would have been funny in any other circumstances. “It’s got a kind of atmosphere, this place,” he said dryly.
The Bishop laughed. “My dear boy,” he said, “I really can’t tell you how glad I am you are precisely the young man you are. Just let me look at that, will you?” He took the bottle reverently and brought it under the light, where the others joined him, Don doing his best not to look like the small boy who has picked up the rare fossil.
“Oh, yes,” said the Bishop of Devizes, “oh dear me, yes.”
Producing a penknife he attempted to raise a corner of the label. When he was satisfied this was impossible he turned his attention to the cork. For a long time he examined the black seal through a reading glass.
“Yes,” he said again. “Yes, I think so.”
Mr. Campion avoided Don, but the Bishop had no shame.
“Now,” he said, “where’s that corkscrew?”
Old Fred brought it, unholy interest in his bleary eyes, but was bundled out unceremoniously.
“That’s right,” said the Bishop. “We don’t want anyone else here but ourselves. We ought to wait for the others, but I don’t think we will, you know. I don’t—think—so.” He was at work as he spoke, his slender hands revealing practised skill. “No,” he said waving away his host’s offer of assistance, “no, I’ll do it myself, my dear fellow, if you don’t mind. We must have the cork—we must have the cork intact.”
Don laughed. “This is making me homesick,” he said. “This is dad’s performance.”
“Your father is a very sound judge,” remarked Mr. Campion’s uncle without looking up. “Very sound. I don’t altogether agree with some of his theories, but that chapter on the Rhône is masterly. . . . Ah!”
The cork had come out with a ghost of a pop; it was a beautiful sound, regretful, grateful, kind.
“There,” said the old man, placing the bottle cautiously amid the napery. “Now, let us see.”
Mr. Campion, who was quite prepared for a genie to come out of the bottle, by this time looked on with interest, as Don and the Bishop went over the cork with a reading glass. At first they thought it was unmarked, but finally the old man sighed, as he laid a finger on a minute stamp low down on the red-stained side.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I fear so.”
He attended to the remainder of the ceremony himself, the deep bright wine ran into the crystal, caressing it, clinging to it, but the Bishop remained silent, and when he placed the full decanter on the side table, brushed his hands with a napkin, he looked less happy than at any other time during the evening. Don suggested that they opened the second bottle, but the Bishop objected.
“I think Mr. Bush will want to do that,” he said, “but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to satisfy my own curiosity. Where is Bush, by the way? And shouldn’t Carados be here by this time?”
“He certainly should. I’ve been wondering. He was going to get here first.” Don was still good-tempered, but he was puzzled. “Bush was very keen to be here before me; he was going to bring some sherry. He said it was the only thing we dare drink before this. I don’t know him, is he likely to behave this way?”
“No,” said the Bishop. “A most punctilious fellow. Dear me, I hope nothing has happened.”
Campion had been trying to dismiss a faintly nagging anxiety for some time now, but he shook his head. “If it has it would hardly delay Carados too,” he said. “Look, I don’t want to appear unduly inquisitive but even I can hardly miss that there is something unusual about this party. Don’t you think you might explain, sir? Quite apart from everything else, we seem to be behaving rather badly to our host.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m taking it my father has a great hand in this, Mr. Campion.” Don was at his best. “It seems to me that he must have got in touch with Mr. Bush without letting me know; the whole tone of the party has a kin
d of parental flavour. He still feels I need a lot of protection from the seamy side of life. Now I don’t want to be suspicious in any way, but I’m getting an idea that there’s a distinct possibility that this wine has been pinched from somewhere. Am I right?”
“My dear boy, I really must apologize.” The Bishop’s face was as grieved as a mourning cherubim’s. “I wouldn’t have had this happen for worlds. We all did so hope it might never be necessary to tell you. I did point out to Bush that we were putting ourselves in a most invidious position by behaving like this, but as he said there are rather serious complications and strict secrecy is absolutely necessary in the circumstances. I had not met you so I had no idea that we should find a young man of your age so remarkably—er—tolerant and courteous.”
Don was rather startled by the compliment and Mr. Campion came to the rescue. “Is the suspect identified?” he enquired.
“Oh yes, I think so.” The Bishop took up the decanter and sniffed it heartily. “I fear so. We must taste it, of course, but even if one’s palate were the scientifically exact instrument which some of us are stupid enough to hope, even then the other evidence must weigh very heavily. The cork, the seal, and the bottle are all beyond question in my opinion. In fact from those, and from the colour and the bouquet I think I can commit myself and say definitely that this is the genuine Les Enfants Doux of nineteen hundred and four.”
Mr. Campion saw no reason to disagree with him, but wondered, albeit respectfully, where precisely that conclusion might be expected to lead them. Don was more practical.
“I think we’ll have Mr. Stavros in right away,” he said.
“Oh, no. Don’t do that, my dear boy, whatever you do.” The Bishop was firm. “There’s a great deal more to it than that. I promised Bush to leave any explanations we might have to make entirely to him, but since you’ve asked me directly I really do feel I must be allowed to tell you at least the little I know.”
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