Campion got up. “My dear chap,” he said, “if there’s anything you can say to help, for the love of mike say it. Now’s the time.”
“I don’t know anything, that’s the very devil of it.” Onyer was playing with the coins in his pocket and their noise made a nervous accompaniment to his careful voice. “I heard a silly fiightening rumour, and I don’t mind telling you I thought of Lady Carados in connection with it. In fact Gwenda and I came up a day earlier than we’d arranged for the sole purpose of making an investigation. I made a date to see Gold on the Sunday night and tried to pump him. He was one of the few members of the household left in Town, you see, but I don’t think we did much good except to frighten him. Then I tried to see Eve, but I gathered that Johnny was with her, and I didn’t like to butt in. It was all pretty miserable and mysterious and unlike us all. This marriage upset everybody.”
“It was unexpected?”
“Completely incomprehensible. I believe Gwenda tried to interfere by finding the girl another boy friend. Something idiotic like that. I was furious with her but the marriage did seem so mad to us who knew him. Johnny and Eve—well, it’s gone on for a hell of a time and they do understand each other.” He sighed. “It’s taken me to the fair,” he said, “the old boy’s so altered.”
Campion pricked up his ears. It was the second time that morning he had been volunteered the information.
“In what way?”
Onyer was like a younger brother; afraid of disloyalty yet worried unmercifully.
“He’s—how shall I say it? Withdrawn. To be honest, I thought he’d found out something about his mother’s activities, and when she behaved in that extraordinary fashion moving Moppet, I was certain of it. But now she’s come comparatively clean, and the mystery’s grimmer than ever.”
“She’s come across, has she?”
“Oh, yes. Didn’t you know? As soon as she heard about Dolly, she ‘told all’. She found Moppet’s body in the bedroom, that’s the room behind this one, in the morning when she came to fix the flowers. Dolly was in here working and apparently she threw a sort of fit when she heard the news. Old Lady Carados promptly decided to see to everything, you don’t know her well, do you? Dolly did, that’s the damnable part of it. She played up to the old girl, knowing she’d rise to the occasion.”
He went on talking, walking up and down the room as he spoke, the coins in his pocket ringing their little alarm as they ran through his fingers.
“Dolly seems to have been diabolically clever. She pointed out to the old girl that it looked like suicide, harped on the scandal, and then proceeded to become hysterical. Lady Carados reacted as she must have known she would. She bundled the girl out of the way and proceeded to deal with the situation herself. To do Dolly justice, I don’t think she had any idea of the length to which the good lady would go, but that’s what happened.”
Campion lay back in his chair, and faced defeat. The picture was growing too clear, the details were slipping into place, colours were taking their true daylight value, but there was no escaping the main subject. The principal face remained the same.
“Did you know he might be called back yesterday?” he enquired suddenly.
“Who? Johnny? No, I don’t understand it. As far as everybody knew he was getting married yesterday, and there’s no big flap on as far as I know.”
The elegant young soldier shrugged in his impatience. “I wish I understood it all,” he said.
Campion got up to leave. He had not forgotten that Carados had told him that he had known of the date of his recall, but he saw no point in mentioning it. Onyer had troubles of his own.
He left him, and went downstairs alone. There was no sign of Gwenda and he was about to let himself out when a head appeared round the doorway at the other end of the hall. It belonged to Ricky Silva. He did not speak, but waved his hand carelessly before disappearing again. Mr. Campion paused with his hand on the latch. Another interview promised nothing but a further strain on his already wavering hopes. It was in his temperament to be thorough, however, and his conscience stirred. Ricky was the last possible source of information; after him there was no one, not a soul. He turned reluctantly, and was advancing down the hall when the utter uselessness of the proceeding struck him violently, and he swung round towards the front door again. His hand was on the latch when the man called him.
“I say, Campion.”
“Yes?”
“About my puppet theatre.” Ricky was still in battle-dress and sandals and he came gracefully across the carpet. “Do you think it’s safe down there? Or ought I to go and fetch it? I don’t want to lose it, you see. Some of it was really awfully nice.”
He stood questioningly, his large youthful eyes raised trustingly.
“It’s perfectly all right, I should think.” Campion was annoyed with himself for being irritated. “It may get a bit damp, but that’s all.”
“Damp? But that would ruin it. How damp? Enough to worry about?”
“No, I should hardly think so.”
“Oh well, in that case I’m sorry you told me, for I shall worry.” He stood wavering. “Oh damn,” he said. Then, becoming aware at last of his ungraciousness, he smiled. “If I don’t think about things like that, I’m all right,” he explained naïvely, “but once I do, they get on my nerves and I get a ‘thing’ about them. I should never have thought of sending it away, to begin with, if it hadn’t been for Dolly.”
“Oh,” said Campion. “When was this?”
“Within the last year. Don’t ask me for dates, for I can never remember them. She had some reason, I suppose. A beastly girl, I got to hate her. I liked her at first, she was so unfeminine, but as one got to know her one saw through that. Johnny trusted her when he shouldn’t have done, so I’m not alone.”
Growing tired of standing he sat down on the stairs, but made no similar arrangement for his visitor. He sat with his knees drawn up, his chin resting on his palms. “She used to use me, I believe,” he said. “I didn’t see it then, but I do now. She used to tell me things, too. She thought I was a child, or half-witted, I believe. I used to let her get on with it. it amused me.”
Inspiration came to Mr. Campion. “Ricky,” he said, “what are you afraid of?”
“Me?” The big eyes were mutinous. “I’m not frightened, why should I be? I’ve done nothing. And it’s no good your bullying me, Campion, because I won’t have it.”
Mr. Campion checked himself. He made a determined effort. “My dear chap, I’m sure you haven’t,” he said laughing. “But I do know the kind of stew a woman like that can cook up for all concerned. One finds one’s been compromised before one realizes it.”
“I’m not compromised!” Ricky was outraged. “Good heavens, I didn’t do a thing. Johnny can’t be angry with me. She only used to talk to me when he helped me with looking after my things. I’m terrified of moth, you know, and she was very good about that. I shall miss her for that. She was frightfully efficient.” He paused reflectively. “But I never really liked her, you know, and I wouldn’t have done a thing for her if she hadn’t been very useful in her way.”
“What kind of things did you do?” enquired Mr. Campion, keeping the conversation simple.
“Me? Nothing. I took a message for her sometimes, that’s all. But when I found out she wanted me to do something that was little short of burglary the other day, I just wouldn’t. I kicked at that. That’s why I got off a day early, though, and came up here to meet her on Sunday morning. I let it out afterwards like a perfect fool. If Johnny gets on to it, he’ll be furious, I know he will, and it’ll be frightfully unfair because as soon as I heard what she really wanted, I refused flatly and went off and stayed with the Bertie Lambley crowd, and they can prove it.”
Mr. Campion held his breath, he dared not speak, and at last his silence was rewarded.
“Imagine,” said Ricky with disgust, “she wanted me to come back here at six o’clock sharp and wait here on the stairs. Then
I was to take some keys she was going to have ready for me and go round to a flat in Church Street, collect some booze without being seen, and lug it off somewhere else. I told her she was demented, and she began to cry, and said it was vital and more than her life was worth and God knows what else. I found it quite harrowing, but I made it jolly clear to her that I wasn’t having any. Thank goodness. That’s what I feel now.” He sighed contentedly. “Thank goodness,” he repeated. “I suppose you’ve guessed whose flat it was, that frightful woman Moppet. I didn’t see what was happening until I heard she’d been found dead. Then I put two and two together. Dolly tried to put her out to get the keys and killed her by mistake, I suppose; found the sleeping stuff didn’t work quickly enough and so smothered her. Then, as she thought she was a murderer anyway I suppose she just went on with it. I thanked my stars I’d had nothing to do with it. What’s the matter?”
The tall, thin man in the horn-rimmed spectacles was holding the balustrade, and his knuckles were white.
“Where were you going to take this stuff?”
Ricky wriggled to his feet. “I wish I hadn’t talked to you,” he said. “I was to take it somewhere for her, that’s all, and I didn’t, and that’s that.”
Campion cursed himself. “Sorry,” he said. “I was getting interested. She seems to have trusted you.”
“Of course she did. She had to.” Ricky was swinging gracefully on the banisters. “I knew things about her that the others didn’t, you see.”
Campion smiled at him with deceptive amusement. “Where she bought her brogues, I presume?” he suggested.
Ricky flushed darkly. “No, rather more important things than that,” he said spitefully. “For one thing I knew she was secretly married and was terrified of her husband. I was to take the wine to his place. I don’t know why it was so important; Theodore Bush said it couldn’t possibly exist. It was some filthy red stuff I’d never heard of. Les Enfants Doux, was it? She said she was afraid he’d kill her if she didn’t get it back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE BIG CLUB-room of The Red Queen at Chessing was set for the inquest, and the landlord had done what he could. Nothing could remove the comforting smell of beer, of course, but the narrow white scrubbed tables had been rearranged, the spittoons set inconveniently under them, and about seventy-five of the ash-trays put away. The photographs of Free Foresters secretaries and the landlord’s ancestors remained.
Yeo and the County Superintendent, a delightful person, who had a smile for ever hovering on his lantern face, stood talking in a corner with a police doctor, while the jury, very solemn and tidy in its best clothes, as became its public duty, sat waiting.
At the far end of the room, Miss Pork, redder than ever in black, was nodding and glowing at Holly and Peter Onyer who had just arrived with Theodore Bush. The secretary of the Museum of Wine looked a little pale after his recent harrowing experiences, but he still was an impressive figure and his wide tweed coat hung jauntily.
Neither Mr. Campion nor the Coroner was in the room, but they had both been seen to arrive at the inn when those of the jury who wished to do so were viewing the body, and they were supposed, by those interested, to be somewhere in the back with the Chief Constable and Stanislaus Oates.
There were a few spectators, but not many, for the victim had been a stranger, and her manner of dying, by falling from a window, was not unusual. The more extraordinary points of interest in the case had been kept under the helmets of the police and were expected to remain there. The sole purpose of the present proceeding was to get Miss Chivers decently buried, for by the law of the land interment was impossible until the local Coroner had made his enquiry and so released the parish of Chessing from its responsibility. The local authorities were curious to see so many distinguished people present, and Superintendent Beckworth of the County C.I.D. was chaffing Yeo gently on the subject.
“I see you’ve got plenty of witnesses, Superintendent,” he said. “Hasn’t the right one come yet?”
Yeo glanced up at the big moon-faced clock set over the pair of buffalo horns at the end of the room. He was uneasy.
“He’ll be along,” he said without great conviction. “He’s R.A.F. They’ll get him here.”
“If he comes by parachute,” put in the little police doctor a little foolishly, as he glanced at his watch. “I hope he won’t keep us waiting much longer. These are busy times, you know.”
“He’ll come,” said Yeo, but his eyes wandered towards the casement through which there was a fine view of the long straight road, rising up to the ridge a mile away.
On the other side of the room, Miss Pork was equally inquisitive, and Holly was suffering.
“We can’t begin without Lord Carados, because of the formal identification, I suppose,” she said. “I’m surprised the girl had no relations. I thought everyone had relations of a sort. Of course if one’s mad that probably makes it less likely. Still, it makes it very hard on him; I thought he looked most upset at the time, but then we all were. He’ll be very glad to see you here, Major Onyer, and you too, Mr. Bush. What are friends if they’re not with one at awkward moments? It’s most kind of you to come and back him up. He’ll appreciate that, of course. He is late, isn’t he? Perhaps he’s felt he couldn’t face it, but he didn’t seem that sort of man.”
“He’ll come, ma’am,” said Holly, but he, too, looked at the clock and his tone was ominous rather than assured.
Theodore Bush cleared his throat and addressed Miss Pork with a pompousness which he appeared to have decided was her due.
“In all my long experience of Lord Carados, I have never known him disappoint a gathering,” he said. “A few moments late, perhaps, but absent, never.”
“How nice. But, of course, you never can tell with the war,” declared Miss Pork brightly. “I’ve experienced many wars, but this one is far more often inconvenient than any I can remember. Isn’t that so, Inspector? There seems to be so much more going on in it than usual.”
Holly, who was often rendered speechless by Miss Pork, was at a loss once more, and Onyer intervened.
“Yes, by Jove, there is the war,” he said. “He’d have ’phoned if he couldn’t make it, but anything might delay him. Look here, Inspector, if it’s just evidence of identification I can give that as well as anybody.”
“Ah, my dear boy, but perhaps it isn’t,” murmured Theodore Bush. “After all, he came down here with the woman, didn’t he? I don’t know what they’ll want to go into at this juncture, do you?”
“Only cause of death, sir,” Holly spoke briskly. “That’s all these Coroners’ Courts are concerned with. The whole thing shouldn’t take above a half-hour. Oh, there’s Mr. Campion out in the road, I see. No, he can’t see anybody coming, either.”
Peter Onyer turned. “Perhaps I’d better join him,” he suggested.
“I don’t think you’re going to have a chance, sir. Here they come, don’t they?”
Holly was right. The door had opened, and now the Coroner entered followed by the two Chief Constables, Campion bringing up the rear.
“Just sit where you are, please,” the Inspector whispered. “You’ll be called when you’re needed.”
A hush fell over the room and Doctor Forster took his place. He was a small man, thin and shrivelled, who bore, and knew that he bore, a striking resemblance to the best-known portrait of Laurence Sterne. His lips were cruel and his eye-sockets as dark as if they had been painted, but his whole face was rendered less impressive than it might have been by an incipient naughtiness, a lightness, and a vanity which partially explained why such an obvious personality should blossom so obscurely. Before he sat down he glanced round him with brisk professional interest, not at all unlike an actor manager appraising the house on his first entrance. Then he settled himself, took up his pen with a flourish and opened the proceedings in a quiet, intentionally dangerous little voice, rather unpleasant to hear.
Mr. Campion, who had spent the las
t half-hour with him, was not the most attentive member of his audience. He had edged his way to a seat from which he could command a view of the road stretching out like a long grey stair-carpet towards the dark trees on the ridge. It was quite empty, and looked inexpressibly lonely in the fine rain which had begun to fall at midday and now showed no sign of clearing. As he sat, Campion’s lean figure sagged, and the bones of his shoulders showed through his jacket. Every now and again he glanced down the road and at each disappointment the dull light in his pale eyes became intensified. Now that the moment had come, now that his fear was becoming a reality, he was stunned. The full story, as he saw it now, appearing in its true light, was unbearable; one of those tragedies which rankle for a lifetime. Even now with the certainty practically upon him he could not bring himself to believe it. He looked down the road again. It was unbroken and lay lonely and straight as a sword.
Meanwhile the brief inquisition was proceeding. The jury had been sworn, and as each witness made his statement it was taken down in long-hand and signed.
Mr. Campion turned from the window and gave his mind to the inquest. After all, the play was not yet over. He could see Oates sitting forward a little in his chair, and the local Chief Constable fidgeting. Yeo was uneasy, too, and Holly blinked as he strove to appear as bored as the proceedings would normally have rendered him. So far the inquest had taken its ordinary course, and even the Coroner could not make it dramatic. The ancient formula proceeded slowly and painstakingly. The local Inspector gave evidence of the place of death; the police doctor followed, and no medical Latin could hide the simple fact that a woman had fallen from a window into an area and had, by striking her head on a stone coping, broken her neck.
To Miss Pork’s disappointment she was not called, and it was Holly who rose to explain the circumstances of death together with a precise statement of the time.
Mr. Campion had heard a great deal of police evidence in his career, but he was impressed by the Inspector. The statement of fact, just sufficient for credence and not enough to make any sort of picture, was masterly.
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