My host got up, wiping his mouth hastily with a handkerchief. He was the professional salesman at once, bright, friendly, almost a little obsequious.
“Glad to see you, sir,” he said. “What can I do for you? Won’t you sit down?”
I made way to leave but Mr. Cough indicated that he wanted me to stay and I drifted into a corner where I stood watching them. The newcomer seemed delighted.
“I’m so glad to have found you,” he said. “When Mrs. Simmez told me that I’d missed you this morning, I was so disappointed. She said you had some beautiful hymnbooks and I did want to see them. Oh, forgive me, I haven’t introduced myself. This is my card.”
He fumbled in his pocket and brought out an ancient wallet.
“Here we are,” he said. “Mr. William Parkinson, Chantrey Hall, Putney. It ought to have the name of the street on it, but I’ve been there so many years that everybody knows me.”
I glanced at Walter Cough out of the corner of my eye. The whole thing looked a bit fishy to me and, after my brief acquaintance with him, I hoped he was going to get caught. He looked a little put out but not at all suspicious, I was glad to see.
“I did come round this morning,” he said cautiously. “A Mr. Earnshaw told me that you might be interested to see the new hymn-book I’ve just brought out. It’s a beautiful thing, well worth the money.”
“I don’t remember Mr. Earnshaw,” said the visitor, blinking thoughtfully, “but whoever he is he’s quite right. A most awkward thing has happened to me. A local paper has published my obituary notice. I have been very ill, but their interest in me was a little premature.
“This is the first time I’ve been out for some weeks. There’s a little chapel I’m very interested in at the moment and I was going there tonight. In view of everything I thought it would be seemly to make a small present to the place, and when Mrs. Simmez told me that someone had been round to show me some hymnbooks it seemed to me that they had been sent by providence. She remembered your name and I looked you up in the telephone book. Have you one of the volumes here?”
I was glad to see Mr. Cough looked a little shamefaced as he produced that dreadful book, but Mr. Parkinson was not as shocked as I had been. On the contrary he seemed delighted with it.
“The old hymnal of my boyhood,” he said, “and what lovely binding! This is delightful. I can’t think of anything more fitting. I should have written you, of course, but the matter is rather urgent. That’s why I came myself. Have you got fifty copies of this?”
I thought Mr. Cough was going to faint.
“Well yes, I have,” he said. “They’re rather expensive, you know, but one has to pay for a production like that.”
“One does indeed,” said the old man, turning over the monstrosity with an admiration that made me feel a little sick.
“A guinea,” said Walter Cough defiantly.
“Really?” said the visitor. “Yes, well, it’s not dear for a present, is it? Let me see, that’ll be £52.10.0. I think you ought to deliver for that.”
“Oh, I’d be happy to,” said Walter Cough in a tone in which I thought I detected a trace of hysteria. “Any time, day or night, I’d be happy to. Anything to oblige.”
Mr. Parkinson glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece.
“Half-past six,” he said. “I should like them there by eight at the latest. Shall we say a quarter to eight? Bring them to the chapel. I don’t know if you know Baghdad Road?”
“I’ll find it.” Walter Cough was a little too enthusiastic and I thought the visitor must notice his jubilation. However, he was a very old man and there was a simplicity in his bright blue eyes which was the very essence of guilelessness.
“Get off the bus at the Fellowship Arms, Baghdad Road, and walk down about a hundred yards,” he said. “There you’ll find quite a narrow footpath between two houses. If you go down there a little way you’ll come to a gate in a brick wall. It won’t be open but it won’t be locked. If you go through there you’ll find yourself in a garden. You’ll see the chapel at once.
“Take the books to the side door and I’ll be waiting for you. it’s quite a small place. I don’t want people to know the present comes from me, so I’d like to get the books put round before the others arrive. Will you do that? I’ll give you the money there. You’d like cash, wouldn’t you? At a quarter to eight, then.”
Walter Cough showed him out with a perfectly straight face, but when he came back he laughed until he was nearly sick. I have never heard anyone laugh so long or so offensively.
“Didn’t I handle him?” he said. “He’s one in a million. They’re not all like that. That’s a bit o’ jam. I’ve never had that happen to me before. Now p’raps that’s learnt you. There’s a lot of truth in what the poet says. There is a mug born every minute, a real mug. You can’t say he bought with his eyes shut. He saw it and he liked it. That’s the miracle of this game. A real mug is a genuine mug, he’s a mug all through. He likes being done. He’s satisfied. Now you run along, my dear.”
I left him counting out fifty hymn-books from the great cupboard in the corner, and as I trudged down the road to look for a bus I felt very bitter.
I heard of Mr. Walter Cough again the following morning when I picked up our communal newspaper. A little paragraph at the bottom of one of the news pages caught my attention.
“Man Found Dead on Chapel Steps.”
I read the paragraph with interest. “Walter Cough, 56, itinerant bookseller, of Inkermann Avenue, was found dead on the steps of a mortuary chapel in Baghdad Road, Putney, late last night. Cough was a stranger to the district and is thought to have had a seizure. He was carrying a large parcel of books at the time.”
For two or three days I wondered about Mr. Walter Cough. The whole incident had left a very unpleasant impression on my mind and at last, when I could control the impulse no longer, I went down to Putney and inquired my way to Chantrey Hall.
It was a large, old-fashioned suburban house standing by itself in a big garden in a backwater which was quiet and forgotten. I didn’t like to go in, naturally, but I hung about outside the iron railings which bordered the garden and spoke to an old man who was sweeping up leaves on the other side of the low privet hedge.
“Excuse me,” I said rather nervously, “but does Mr. William Parkinson live here?”
The gardener straightened his back and surveyed me with not unfriendly interest.
“You’ve come too late, miss,” he said. “He’s dead.”
I suppose I looked rather pale because he hastened to soften down the baldness of the announcement.
“Yes, the poor old boy died last Wednesday,” he said, “a week ago today. He was ill for a long time. They had him down at the nursing home. His wife went to stay with relations and the house has been shut up for several days now. There’s no one in but Miss Simmez who caretakes.”
I stood there helplessly. It had been Friday when I had visited Walter Cough and if Mr. Parkinson had died on Wednesday…?
“Is the funeral over?” I said unsteadily.
He nodded. “Yes. They had it from the mortuary chapel in Baghdad Road. There was hundreds came to it.”
“I daresay there were,” I murmured. “He was a great philanthropist, wasn’t he?”
My informant sighed.
“He was,” he said. “But he was wonderful sharp. A wonderful sharp old man, that he was. There weren’t nobody ever got the better of him.”
The Unseen Door
It was London, it was hot and it was Sunday afternoon. The billiard room in Prinny’s Club, Pall Mall, which has often been likened to a mausoleum, had unexpectedly become one.
Superintendent Stanislaus Oates glanced down at the body again and swore softly to Mr. Albert Campion who had just been admitted.
“I hate miracles!” he said.
Campion drew the sheet gently back from the terrible face.
“Our friend here could hardly have been taken by this one,” he murmured
, his pale eyes growing grim behind his horn-rimmed spectacles. “Strangled? Oh yes, I see—from behind. Powerful fingers. Horrid. Who done it?”
“I know who ought to have done it.” Oates was savage. “I know who’s been threatening to do it for months and yet, he wasn’t here. That’s why I sent for you. You like this four-dimensional stuff. I don’t. See anyone in the hall as you came up?”
“About forty police experts and two very shaken old gentlemen, both on the fragile side. Who are they? Witnesses?”
The Superintendent sighed. “Listen,” he commanded. “This club is partly closed for cleaning. The only two rooms unlocked are the vestibule downstairs and this billiard room up here. The only two people in the place are Bowser, the doorkeeper, and Chetty, the little lame billiard marker.”
“The two I mentioned?”
“Yes. Bowser has been in the vestibule all the time. He’s a great character in clubland. Knows everybody and has a reputation for infallibility. You couldn’t break him down in the witness box.”
“I’ve heard of him. He gave me a particularly baleful stare as I came in.”
‘That’s his way. Does it to everybody. He’s become a bit affected as these old figureheads do in time. He’s been a power here for forty years, remember. Surly old chap, but he never forgets a face.”
“Beastly for him. And who’s this?” Campion indicated the white mound at their feet. “Just a poor wretched member?”
“That,” Oates spoke dryly, “is Robert Fenderson, the man who exposed William Merton.”
Campion was silent. The story of the Merton crash, which had entailed the arrest of the flamboyant financier after a thousand small speculators had faced ruin, was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Merton had been taken to the cells shouting threats at Judge, jury and witnesses alike, and photographs of his heavy jaw and sultry eyes had appeared in every newspaper.
“Merton broke jail last night.”
“Did he, by Jove!” Campion’s brows rose. “Was he a member here once?”
“Until his arrest. Knows the place like his own house. More than that, someone sent Fenderson a phony message this morning telling him to meet the club secretary here this afternoon at three. The secretary is away this weekend and knows nothing about it. I tell you Campion, it’s an open and shut case—only Merton hasn’t been here unless he flew in by the windows.”
Campion glanced at the casements bolted against the heat
“He hardly flew out again.”
“Exactly, and there’s nowhere for him to be hidden. Bowser swears that he went all over the club after lunch and found it deserted. Since then he’s been on the door all the time. During the afternoon only one member came in, and that was Fenderson. The only other living soul to cross the threshold was Chetty, who is far too frail to have strangled a cat, let alone a man with a neck like Fenderson’s. Bowser has a perfect view from his box of the street door, the staircase and this door. He insists he has neither slept nor left his seat. He’s unshakeable.”
“Has the unyielding Bowser a soft spot for Merton?”
Oates was nettled. “I thought of that at once, naturally,” he said acidly, “but the evidence is all the other way. One could even suspect Bowser of having a grudge against the chap. Merton made a complaint about him just before the crash. It was a stupid, petty quarrel—something about who should say ‘Good morning” first, member or club servant? Merton is like that, very self important and a born bully. Bowser is a graceless, taciturn old chap, but I swear he’s speaking the truth. He hasn’t seen Merton this afternoon.”
Mr. Campion glanced round the spacious room, its walls lined with cue-racks and an occasional bookcase.
“All of which leaves us with the lame marker, I take it,” he ventured.
“The perishing little fool!” The Superintendent exploded, “He isn’t helping. He’s gone to pieces and is trying to say he hasn’t been here this afternoon. He lives in the mews at the back of the building, and he’s trying to say he played hooky after lunch today—says he thought no one would be in to play. Actually anyone can see what did happen. He dropped in, found Fenderson didn’t want a game, and went out again very sensibly. Now he doesn’t want to appear as the last man to see the poor chap alive. I’ve told him he’s doing himself no good by lying. Hang it all. Bowser saw him.”
“And so…?”
“And so there must be another way into this room, but I’m damned if I see it.” The Superintendent stalked over to the windows again and Campion stood watching him.
“I’d like a word with Bowser,” he murmured at last.
“Have it. Have it by all means.” Oates was exasperated. “I’ve put him through it very thoroughly. You’ll never shake him.”
Campion said nothing, but waited until the doorkeeper came in a few minutes later, stalking gravely behind the sergeant who had been sent to fetch him. Bowser was a typical man of trust, a little shaky now and in his seventies, but still an imposing figure with a wooden expression on a proud old face, chiefly remarkable for its firm mouth and bristling white eyebrows. He glowered at Campion and did not speak, but at the first question a faint smile softened his lips.
“How many times have I seen Chetty come into the club in my life, sir? Why, I shouldn’t like to say—several thousand, must be.”
“Has he always been lame?”
“Why yes, sir. It’s a deformity of the hip he’s had all his life. He couldn’t have done this, sir, any more than I could—neither of us has the strength.”
“I see.” Mr. Campion went over to a bookcase at the far end of the long room and came back presently with something in his hand.
“Mr. Bowser,” he said slowly, “look at this. I suggest to you that it is a photograph of the man you really saw come in and go out of the club this afternoon when Mr. Fenderson was already here.”
The old man’s hand shook so violently that he could scarcely take the sheet, but he seized it at last and with an effort held it steady. He stared at it for a long time before returning it.
“No sir,” he said firmly, “that face is unknown to me. Chetty came in and went out. No one else, and that’s the truth, sir.”
“I believe you think it is, Bowser.” Mr. Campion spoke gendy and his lean face wore a curious expression in which pity predominated. “Here’s your unseen door, Superintendent,” he spoke softly. Oates snatched the paper and turned it over.
“Good God! What’s this?” he demanded. “It’s a blank brown page—from the back of a book, isn’t it?”
Mr. Campion met his eyes.
“Bowser has just told us it’s a face he doesn’t know,” he murmured. “You see, Oates, Bowser doesn’t recognise faces, he recognises voices. That’s why he glares until people speak. Bowser didn’t see Chetty this afternoon, he heard his very distinctive step—a step which Merton could imitate very easily. I fancy you’ll find that when there was that little unpleasantness earlier in the year, Merton guessed something which no one else in the club has known. When did it come on, Bowser?”
The old man stood trembling before them.
“I—I didn’t want to have to retire from the club, sir,” he blurted out pathetically. “I knew everyone’s voice. I could still do my work. It’s only got really bad in the last six months—my daughter comes and fetches me home at night. It was Chetty’s step, sir, and I knew he could never have done it.”
“Blind!” The word escaped the Superintendent huskily. “Good Lord! Campion, how did you know?”
It was some time before Mr. Campion could be prevailed upon to tell him, and when he did he was slightly diffident.
“When I first passed through the hall,” he said, “Bowser glared at me as I told you, but as I came upstairs I heard him say to a constable: ‘Another detective, I suppose?”.”
He paused, and his smile was engaging as he flicked an imaginary speck from an immaculate sleeve.
“I wondered then if there was something queer about his eyesight—no offence
, of course, no offence in the world.”
Bird Thou Never Wert
I bought the cage for a bird which never came. My young nephew promised me a parrot and wrote to me from Teneriffe to say it was on its way. A psittacosis scare plus the authorities, however, combined to frustrate his generosity.
It was during the period between the letter from Peter and the disappointing official communication that I acquired the cage and had it sent up to my flat. Even in appearance it was no ordinary contraption. I have a struggling weakness for the baroque and when I saw the lovely monstrosity, part pagoda, part miniature bandstand, hanging in the window of my favourite junk shop I went in and bought it hastily before my good sense could curb my enthusiasm.
In the living-room of my flat it appeared even more arresting than it had done in Robb’s shop. It was very large, for one thing, much larger than I had suspected, and it took up the whole of the circular table in the corner by the second window. There was no other place to put it, and finally it remained there looking very odd beside my prim bookcases and restrained prints: even I was a little taken aback.
I thought perhaps my Roman shawl might cover the cage until Polly or Oliver put in an appearance. After all, bird-cages are frequently covered at night.
I had to go out that evening until a little after nine o’clock, but when I returned I got out the shawl and draped it over the cage. It looked charming, I thought. The brilliant stripes of colour were just what that rather dull corner needed.
Having admired the effect, I sat down at my bureau to correct some proofs. It was an early autumn evening and my windows were closed against the sharpness in the air. The square below is always quiet, but that evening it was silent, and no sound of traffic reached me over the tops of the plane trees, which were casting their last leaves against the violet sky.
I had corrected two galleys and was beginning the third when the thing happened. Behind me in the room someone coughed.
It was not a faint sound, nothing that could be explained away by a mouse in the skirting or a loose window sash: it was a cough, human, personal and very loud, a cough of definite utility. I swung round, my pencil in my hand. Let me say at once that I am not a nervous woman. If I hear a noise at night I take a torch and investigate. My first feeling, I remember, was one of resentment at having my privacy disturbed. Then I saw that my room was still empty.
Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories Page 9
