"He complained of saucerites."
"Oh dear," protested Mr Campion. "Not flying saucerites!"
"No error!" Luke's grimace confirmed Mr Campion's diagnosis. "He seemed to us to have it badly. We started off by thinking what a nice old boy he was, so polite, so sensitive, so sensible. Then, just when he had us eating out of his hand, an extraordinary expression came over his face and out it all came. Men from Mars. He didn't mind them himself, he said, but he couldn't think they'd do the country much good. The alarming thing was that he made it all sound so very factual. According to him, sometimes they made a mass descent on the roofs, sometimes they just sat on the stairs outside his flat and wouldn't move, and sometimes he only heard them making a wet sort of whistling which he took to be their way of trying to talk. They had globular eyes, he said, scaly skin and great splay feet like ducks. And, as he talked, all the time he had this insane look on his face."
"Poor fellow!" Mr Campion spoke with feeling.
"Weren't we all!" Luke was unmoved. "We had troubles enough of our own, and after we'd heard his tale for the third time then he began to telephone us in the small hours. The novelty had worn off and we began to think we'd have to pull him in, and that meant doctors and committal proceedings and almost certainly angry relatives." Luke shook his dark head. "We made the usual discreet inquiries and the more we learned about Mr Theodore Hooky the stickier it all looked. He was a bit of a recluse but he was in all the reference-books with lots of letters after his name and he belonged to several of the fancier clubs. We waited but there were no complaints from anyone else and Mr Hooky kept his troubles just for us. We didn't go round to his place but each time he talked to us we fobbed him off with promises. It was all we could do and after the first few days we sort of got used to him. He became just one of those things."
Luke sighed: "And then, one day I went into Mossy's for some cigarettes and ran into him coming out. It was the first time I had ever seen him in the street. I said, 'Good evening'. He stared, eyed my feet in his crazy way, and shot past, leaving me somehow uncomfortable."
He glanced down at his huge black shoes and grinned. "Quack quack," he said. "That's all I was thinking when Mossy started up. I didn't listen to her at first but after a bit I heard her say: 'He was the surgeon and she didn't half look lovely. You could see his hands shake. It was in color and they were both green. Sinister it was."
Luke gave a remarkable imitation of a soft, thick London voice trembling with remembered thrills and there was in his bright eyes an innocent glee which was infectious.
"That caught me," he said. I don't know why, and I said, "Who was?" "Why, he was," she said. "That man who's just gone out. He's an actor." I said, "Get away!" but she stuck to it. She said she had seen him at the cinema and his name was Martin Treower and he played bit-parts. "He's always the one who's all strung-up," she said. "He's in my annual; I'll show you." And she did too.
Luke's eyes widened. "It took a bit of time but she got down under the counter and came out with some film annual, and we went through it together. I didn't believe her, you know, but she found what she was looking for, a half-page illustrated article. I couldn't believe my eyes but there was no getting away from it. There it was, 'Martin Treower: The Man with the Lunatic Face'. It seems he was a character-actor specializing in neurotic parts, and they showed a line of thumbnail portraits of him, each of them showing him in a different costume, but all with the same unforgettable crazy expression. He was the Mad Surgeon, the Insane Butler, the Demented Executioner. He'd made a study of it. The moment he put on that expression even the least intelligent member of any audience knew he was round the bend and that nothing he said could be relied on."
Luke began to laugh. "I was standing there gaping when Mossy lit a squib under me. He's just finished a part, I expect, because he came in for a copy of the paper all those actors take when they're out of work. Blow me down! I didn't stop running!"
He rubbed his long hands together and the vigor of the gesture brought the bustle of that long-ago evening into the private bar of the Platelayer's Arms.
"We got 'em all right," said Luke, "but it was touch and go because I couldn't get George to believe me. He thought we ought to go round to the attic flat first to contact the real Theodore Hooky, but that would have been fatal. There simply wasn't time. George gave way at last and we did the thing properly. We posted three men outside the building and my mate and I went into the Society's house and just waited. At two in the morning they came up the fire-escape four of them right into our arms."
"What on earth are you talking about?" The pretty girl who had been watching Luke's excitement with growing bewilderment spoke involuntarily. "Who came up the fire-escape? Where? What for?" Luke beamed at her. "My dear, you have forgotten the Father of All Fish," he said happily. "The Guild wanted it, remember? The Society wouldn't part with it. So, strictly in the cause of science, of course, as they explained later to the magistrate, a party of interested young gentlemen decided to nip in and take it for themselves. They made the most elaborate preparations. Had to. The tank was twelve feet deep. So two of them wore kit suitable for the operation. By the time we got hold of them they did indeed look like Men from Mars. They'd decided to go through the roof because the doors were too public, the locks too good and the windows barred. It was as simple as that."
Mr Campion took off his spectacles and his light eyes were dancing with interest.
"How very ingenious of them to employ that actor to prepare the ground," he said. "Mr Hooky was the one and only witness who was almost certain to see them on the roof. It would have been his natural instinct to call the police."
"And the police would have given him a rocket," put in Luke with relish, "a rocket of which the police would never have heard the last. We'd have been fooled, just because our simple minds had been prepared for just that sort of call at just that sort of time from the Man with the Lunatic Face." A smile narrowed his wide mouth and he glanced at the girl. "No one in the Met felt like advertising that bit, that's why Mr Martin Treower was never prosecuted. We just rechristened him and hid him in the files."
"Re-christened him?" The girl took the cue he offered and Luke's eyelids drooped. "Maybe it's because we're Londoners," he quoted contentedly, "but he's there all right under Treower, Martin, actor. The man with the cuckoo clock!"
Editor's Note
Old men do not forget; they reminisce. With every year Margery Allingham was becoming increasingly sensitive to the difficulties which she had laid in store for herself when, long-since, she had decided to allow her perennial cast to age (but not Lugg, he just "kept up with the times.") In 1955 when this story was written, Campion was in his fifty-sixth year and Luke "as old as God," neither of them was any more fitted for the duties of a modern detective which, only three years later, Campion, his zest for wordplay undimmed, would describe as hopping about, pulling guns and shooting lines. Accordingly she set the protagonists to the convenient and comfortable business of looking back at a case remembered from their younger days and Campion to contributing to the solution from the comfort of an armchair.
The Curious Affair in Nut Row was originally published by the Evening News in the year when it was written and was reprinted in Edgar Wallace's Mystery Magazine in 1966.
What to do with an Aging Detective
I came out of my interview with Mr Albert Campion feeling rather sad. He had been so nice. As we parted he took my hand.
"My dear girl," he said, looking at me with that kindly wryness which no longer wrung my heart. "How can I?"
"Can you what?" I was abrupt with him.
"Well ..." He was still modest, still shy, still a trifle vague, not to say incoherent for a modern world. "Hop about. Pull guns and shoot lines. Pretend I like the police ... I mean, everybody knows how old I am. You saw to that, fixing it as the same age as the century so we shouldn't get muddled. I'm not complaining, dearest. I only point out that by the time the next tale comes out I'll be ..." he blushed fai
ntly, "well, sixtyish."
"Yes," I murmured, coloring faintly myself. "Yes, I see. Don't you like the police any more?"
"Not awfully." The pale eyes betrayed a blue severity I had not noticed long ago. "They're all right. Good chaps doing their job I suppose but it's a tatty old job, sweetie. Don't you think so?"
"No." I said hastily, kissing him firmly and pushing him back inside his flat door in Bottle Street. "No, I don't. If I did we'd neither of us be here. Bless you, see you soon. You get set in your armchair."
With which injunction I came away and was wandering along the damp pavements wondering why it was that the four years difference in our ages should make such an appalling difference to our outlooks and if it was to be my turn next, when the little accident happened.
I had taken a short cut through a mews and as I passed below one of the tiny flats above the garages which lined the path, an upper window opened and someone shaking a large traveling rug out of it, dropped it neatly over my head. He came thundering down to extricate me and as I fought my way out of the folds I saw to my astonishment an old friend who I had thought must be dead by this time. Magersfontein Lugg, vast, white and walrus-mustached loomed before me.
"Hello, duck," he said. "Come to supper? There's a tin of herrings on the table only opened this morning." He led the way up a rickety wooden staircase to a largish room which had been converted only too obviously from the stable loft it once had been. Its only furniture was three huge Victorian wardrobes set round the walls and in the center a kitchen table and one wooden chair. On the table there was the inevitable tin and also a fine array of cleaning materials, clothes brushes and so on, all the paraphernalia of the valet's trade. I kept looking at Lugg in astonishment and he met my gaze, unwinking. Finally I could bear it no longer.
"Magers," I said brutally. "I don't want to hurt your feelings but by my calculation, and my goodness I ought to know, you must be about one hundred and two. What do you think you're doing?"
He regarded me with hurt astonishment as if a fond mother yak had suddenly slapped her youngster for no reason.
"Dain'?" he said. "Going about my business same like you ought to be. I'm a man's gent an' I'm gent-ing. See this 'ere horse rug? It's one of two wot was woven special for 'is Majesty King Edward the Seventh and 'is good Lady. Gord-bless them both! They 'ad one and this here's the other. Nice, ain't it? Half inch thick."
"Lugg!" I said aghast. "You haven't left Albert not without telling me?"
"Left the ale guvnor!" Great drops of sentiment glistened on the bald forehead. "Nah! I wouldn't leave the ale dear for a fortune. I'm on loan."
I looked about me nervously. The large mahogany doors, tight closed, seemed suddenly sinister. "Who who to? No time machines, Magers! No monkey tricks with the century."
"Not on your Nellie!" He was scandalized. "Not me. This is 1958 aright. No I'm just doing a bit for young Chris. He come into this 'ere clobber left him by the valet of 'is great-uncle Edwin and I'm helping them to look after it." He flicked open one of the glowing mahogany doors and my glance rested on a dark line of shrouded coats, each in its Holland cover. Below them was a line of narrow leather toes, opulent in the light; chestnut, tan, ebony, ash.
He closed the door with a sigh. "They fit Chris, see?" he said. "Old Cherrystone 'oo 'ad 'ad 'em left to him by Sir Edwin, watched over young Chris from the day he was born hoping he'd grow the right size. Very tall Sir Edwin was. Tall and narrower with one shoulder higher than the other."
"Oh dear!" I said involuntarily. "What a pity. Everything has to be altered I suppose?"
"No. I show him how to 'old himself."
"I see." I was aware of a sneaking sympathy for the young man, whoever he was. "What is the rest of his name?" Lugg glanced about him with the conspiratorial air I knew so well. "Do you remember that brewer of the ole guvnors?"
"Of Albert Campion's?" I found I was lowering my voice also.
He nodded. "The one who was dropped on his head at Eton. Chris is his youngest. He's a nice lad. Got no money. Works hard as a PRO. Very fashionable, quite up to date. Stick around. It might be worth your while, I'll make something of him, I shouldn't wonder."
"I think you might," I muttered. I was bewildered. "Lugg, who are you? I mean if Albert has got older, why haven't you?" He took up a slender shoe the color of a conker and began to bone it. He was a trifle amused I thought.
"Wot a question to ask!" He said presently. "You should keep up with the times. Us in the Know is all reading the Greeks these days. You should have a basin full yourself when the washing's done. You was sweet on Albert in the ole days. He was an ideal of yours like, wasn't he?" He leered at me. "I wasn't, was I?"
"Hardly!" He was insufferable and I thought once again as I have a thousand times up and down the years, what a cracking old horror he is. To my dismay I started to tell him so.
"You're such an impossible snob!" I burst out. "You're a figure of fun and fantasy, only interested in junk and cleaning up and ..."
"Exactly!" He stood there nodding at me his eyes gleaming with fearful knowingness. "Exactly. Some think I'm not quite the article and some think the considerable difference between me and St Anfony's Pig is precisely the difference between you and Flaubert. Is there anything else you'd like to say whilst you're about it?"
"No. No of course not." I muttered hastily, anxious not to offend him. "I was only wondering when you were going to get round to being your age."
An expression of great spitefulness spread over his moon face.
"We've you do, my lady," he said. "Jest exactly when you do. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Now, do you want to be introduced to young Chris or don't you?
"I sharnt ask you twice. He'll be along any minute now. What about it?" What could I do?
Editor's Note
Margery Allingham had been for twenty years a regular contributor mostly with reviews of new novels to Lady Rhondda's political and literary weekly when, in 1958, Time and Tide published this cri de coeur.
Albert Campion was now in his fifty-ninth year. Magersfontein Lugg, "a figure of fun and fantasy," had never been susceptible to the ordered calculations of the Registrar General. Middle-aged and yet ageless even at his first appearance, still after almost forty years so he remained and even the dear girl who had seen to it that everybody knew Campion's age was confused when now she tried to apply the sordid arithmetic of time to the "cracking old horror," Campion's adjutant. "I had thought (he) must be dead by this time," and again "by my calculations, and my goodness I ought to know, you must be about one hundred and two," yet if the rumor was true which she herself had put about that Lugg had been given his un-Christian name to commemorate his father's service as sergeant in South Africa, Lugg was by mundane accounting about the same age as Campion.
Margery Allingham was only fifty-four years old but she had been writing crime-fiction for more than thirty years and she was convinced that "the purely material aspect of crook adventure has been beaten to a pulp." She wanted the new and the strange. Perhaps there was a touch of the wistful in the comparison which, in the Time and Tide confession thinly disguised as story, she had allowed to Lugg: "Some think the difference between me and St Antony's Pig is precisely the difference between you and Flaubert."
Four years later she produced something "new and strange." The China Governess and in 1965 The Mind Readers, new and very strange. Many of the familiar characters appear in these two novels but most of them peripherally and Campion more as philosophizing observer than an investigator.
Margery Allingham died on June 30th, I 966 but Campion survived. Pip completed her unfinished manuscript Cargo of Eagles and, in the three years left to him, he wrote two more Campion novels, Mr Campion's Farthing and Mr Campion's Falcon (US title, Mr Campion's Quarry).
JACK MORPURGO was born in London and educated at Christ's Hospital and at universities in Canada, the United States and Britain. He began his career as a writer whilst on active service in the Middle East
and forty years later one of his wartime short stories was selected for inclusion in Penguin New Writing 1940-50. Since the War he has been active in a variety of professions; as broadcaster, as publisher, as Assistant Director of the Nuffield Foundation,# as adviser on publishing to several Asian governments, as Director General of the National Book League, as Professor of American Literature at the Universities of Geneva and Leeds but always as writer. A frequent contributor of articles, reviews, short stories and light verse to the Times Literary Supplement and to many periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic and in Australia, his books include biographies of contemporaries (Barnes Wallis; Allen Lane: King Penguin), histories (The Penguin History of the United States), travel books (American Excursion; The Road to Athens; Venice) and editions of works by Marlowe, Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Keats, Cobbett, Fenimore Cooper and Lewis Car roll.
In 1980, Professor Morpurgo was given the Yorkshire Post Special Literary Award for distinguished services to literature and publishing on both sides of the Atlantic.
For many years a close friend of Margery Allingham and her husband Young man Carter and for some time their neighbor, he collaborated with Young man Carter and Edmund Blunden in editing The Christ's Hospital Book and himself edited and published Young man Carter's unfinished autobiography, All I Did Was This (1982).
The Return of Mr Campion Page 18
