The news that the Earl of Stanoway was permitting the world to see the “Mona Lisa” studies after all, and the usual controversy about whether he should be allowed to sell them across the Atlantic, broke in the spring of the following year. Naturally there was gossip.
People remembered the story of how the first Countess, at the time of her divorce, had taken the drawings and placed them in the Safe Deposit. “Enclosed with this letter is the key of the box,” she had written. “So, don’t accuse me of robbing you. Whenever you want the drawings, come round and apologise and we’ll go together and get them from the vaults. You see, without me, they just won’t let you in. It’s as simple as that, my dear man. Just apologise and then you can go to hell.”
Mr Robbins heard the gossip and tried hard to put two and two together, but with no result, until one day, his eye lighted on a paragraph in one of the more frivolous of the news magazines. It was no more than a caption under a laughing picture of a young brother and sister in fancy dress, the boy dark, the girl very fragile, and both curiously familiar to Mr Robbins.
Recently much in the news because of the proposed sale of a family treasure, Viscount Bluebrooke, son and heir of The Earl of Stanoway, and his sister Lady Sarah are both of an age when there is no greater fun than the stage. They are said to be quite ruthless in the furtherance of their hobby and, I am told, even Lord Stanoway was compelled to grow a vast black beard to suit a recent part. The family motto is in old French and can be translated: ‘Without Impudence I take My Own’.
Mr Robbins looked at the somewhat fuzzy portrait of the young Emir and then at the girl in the magazine. After that he tore them both up into very small pieces.
The Pro and the Con
Mr Campion, stepping out of the cold sunlight of the Monte Carlo square into the dim warmth of the Casino vestibule, saw a plain good-tempered female face which reminded him, for some reason he could not instantly trace, of beautiful food.
He glanced at the woman curiously. She was square and respectable and would have been a natural part of the landscape at any country church fête, but here, among a cosmopolitan crowd, on a late afternoon in the height of the Côte D’Azur season, she was as out of place as a real dandelion in a bouquet of wax orchids.
She did not see him, and he moved on, completed the usual formalities, and wandered into the Grande Salle. He did not cross to the tables but stood watching for a moment, his long thin figure hidden in the shadow of the columns. It was a scene he knew well but one which never failed to thrill him. Apart from the usual large percentage of tourists and wealthy regular visitors there were the professional gamblers, earnest folk with systems, and, of course, the strange and rather terrible old ladies, avid behind their make-up.
However, it was not at these that Mr Campion gazed with such benevolent interest. Here and there among the throng he saw a face he recognised. A woman with grey hair and the carriage of a duchess caught his attention, and he raised his eyebrows. He had not known that Mrs Marie Peeler, alias Edna Marie James, alias the Countesse de Richechamps Lisieux, was out of Holloway already.
There were others to interest him also. At one of the chemin tables he noticed a large man, with very blue eyes and the stamp of the Navy about him, sitting beside a very pretty girl and her father. Mr Campion eyed father and daughter sympathetically and hoped they could afford so expensive an acquaintance.
He had been playing his private game of “spot the crook” for some minutes before he saw Digby Sellers. The man came lounging across the room, his hands in his pockets, his sharp bright eyes peering inquisitively from beneath carefully lowered lids. Considered dispassionately, Mr Campion decided, even for a third-rate con man, his technique was bad. In spite of his unobtrusive clothes he looked at first glance exactly what he was, a fishy little person, completely untrustworthy. Campion marvelled at his success in an overcrowded profession and glanced round for the other figure who should have accompanied him.
Tubby Bream had been Digby Sellers’s partner in crime for so many years that the police of two continents had come to regard them as inseparable. Bream, Mr Campion knew, was generally considered to have the brains of the act. At the moment he was nowhere to be seen and Campion missed that solid, respectable figure with the unctuous manner and the fatherly smile.
Mr Campion suddenly succumbed to an urge to observe Mr Sellers more closely. Moving quietly from his position in the shadow he followed the man out into the vestibule and arrived through the double doors just in time to see him snubbed by the female with the plain sensible face. Campion came upon the scene at the moment when the woman’s plump countenance was burning with maidenly resentment and Mr Sellers was hurrying away abashed.
“I don’t know you and I don’t want to,” the lady observed to his retreating figure.
The voice and the blush recalled her to Mr Campion’s bewildered mind. On their previous meeting, however, the colour in her face had been occasioned by the heat rather than by embarrassment.
“Why, it’s Rose, isn’t it?” he said.
She turned and stared at him.
“Oh, good afternoon, sir.” There was relief in her tone. “It’s very foreign here, sir, isn’t it?”
“Very,” he agreed and hesitated, remembering just in time that while he might find the presence of Margaret Buntingworth’s invaluable Suffolk cook alone in the Casino at Monte Carlo unexpected, he could hardly say so without the risk of giving offence.
Rose was disposed to chat.
“Alice is coming for me in five minutes,” she remarked confidentially. “I didn’t go right inside because you have to pay, but I thought I’d come into the building because then I can say I have when we get home.”
Mr Campion’s astonishment increased.
“Alice? That’s the housemaid, isn’t it?” he said. “Dear me, is she here too?”
“Oh yes, sir. We’re all here.” Rose spoke placidly. “Me, Alice, the Missus and Miss Jane. We’re all staying at the Hotel Mimosita, sir. I’m sure the Missus would be very pleased to see you if you cared to call.”
His curiosity thoroughly aroused, Mr Campion went down to the Hotel Mimosita without more ado.
Margaret Buntingworth met him with open arms in the literal as well as figurative sense of the term. Rising from her basket chair on the terrace, which imperilled both the vermouth-cassis at her plump elbow and the American seated directly behind her, she welcomed him like a mother.
“Oh, my dear boy!” Her words tumbled over one another as they always did. “Oh, Albert! Oh, my dear! Do sit down. Do have a drink. What a fantastic place! How on earth did you get here? Isn’t it all too absurd? Come into the lounge. It’s cooler, the flies aren’t so filthy and there aren’t such hordes of people.”
The solid American, the only person in sight at this siesta hour, glanced up in mild reproach, but Mr Campion was whisked away.
Margaret was forty-five, natural blonde, plump, vivacious and essentially a countrywoman. As he glanced at her across the small table in the Mimosita’s florid lounge Mr Campion wondered if she had ever grown up. Her china-blue eyes danced with childlike excitement and the ruffles on her ample bosom were fastened with one of the little coral trinkets which are sold to the tourists all along the coast.
“It’s exciting,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to come here but I’ve never had enough money. Morty and I used to talk about Monte Carlo years ago.” She paused and frowned. “I wish Morty were here now,” she added as the thought occurred to her. “He’d tell me what to do in an instant. Still, here we are, and the bills are paid till the end of the week, so I expect it’s all right. It’s marvellous seeing you.”
Mr Campion blinked. He had always thought that the defunct Buntingworth had been christened “George”, but he knew Margaret well enough to realise that she might easily have renamed him in her own mind, or on the other hand might equally well be speaking of the hero of the last novel to take her fancy. The reference to some sort of predicament
disturbed him, however. Margaret was not the sort of person to be trusted with a predicament.
“What happened?” he inquired. “Come into a fortune?”
“Oh no, not so exciting as that.” The blue eyes saddened momentarily before they began to twinkle again. “I’ve let the house, my dear – let it really well.”
Mr Campion tried not to look bewildered.
“Not Swallows Hall?” he asked involuntarily.
She laughed. “It’s the only house I’ve got, my pet. It’s a dear old place but awfully cold in the winter, and of course it is miles from anywhere. It wants doing up too, just now. Modernizing, you know. Re-wiring and central heating and that sort of thing. So, I was delighted when these people took it. They gave me three hundred down and promised me another three hundred at the end of the week. I jumped at it. Wouldn’t you?”
The man in the horn-rimmed spectacles gaped at her.
“Six hundred pounds?” he said faintly. “You’ve sold the place…”
“No, just let it.” Margaret was beaming. “Let it for three months at fifty pounds a week. Isn’t it good?”
“Unbelievable,” said her visitor bluntly. “You ought to be head of the Board of Trade. Any catch in it?”
“Well, I’m wondering.” Mrs Buntingworth’s still pretty face was grave. “The rest of the money hasn’t turned up yet and it’s a week overdue. I wish Morty were here. He’d tell me just the sort of wire to send.”
Mr Campion was still mystified.
“I say,” he said, “don’t think me unkind, but in your part of Suffolk rents are inclined to be cheap, aren’t they?”
“I know.” Mrs Buntingworth was smiling. “That’s the lovely part. These people just came out of the blue and put down the money. They insisted that I took a holiday and they said they didn’t want any of the servants, and when I was hesitating, wondering where I’d go, they suddenly suggested that I took the suite they had booked and couldn’t use. It was rather a wild idea, but Rose and Alice have worked for me for years and years and have never had a decent holiday in their lives, and I suddenly said to myself ‘Well, why not?’ So here we all are.”
“Stop,” murmured Mr Campion who was becoming confused. “Who booked the suite? Who couldn’t use it?”
“The people who’ve taken the house, of course,” said Mrs Buntingworth calmly. “A Mrs Sacret and her husband. I didn’t see him. She and I fixed up everything between us.”
There was a long pause before she looked up. Her natural featherbrained expression had given way to unexpected shrewdness.
“I say,” she said, “do you think it all sounds a bit fishy? I do now I’m here. Frankly, I’ve been trying not to think about it. Mrs Sacret seemed such a nice woman, so rich and friendly. I was fed up. Keeping the place eats up my income and I never have any fun. It was terribly cold, too, and unbelievably dull. So, I fell for the scheme and got so excited that I didn’t really have time to think things out until I got here. We arrived within a week of her seeing the house. Now I’m beginning to wonder. It seems so funny, doesn’t it, anyone wanting to bury themselves at Swallows Hall in the winter? I do wish I had Morty with me.”
Mr Campion endeavoured to be cheerful.
“You’ve got the three hundred pounds, anyway,” he said.
Margaret met his eyes.
“If you ask me, that’s the fishiest part about it,” she remarked, echoing his own private opinion. “I can’t tell you how worried I’ve been. There’s nothing of value in the house, of course, nothing they could steal that would be worth their while, and there can’t be anything hidden there, buried treasure or that sort of thing. Albert, you’re all mixed up with the police. You ought to be able to help me if anyone can. Supposing these people weren’t straight, what could they be up to down at Swallows Hall?”
Mr Campion was silent. In his mind’s eye he saw again the big rambling Tudor house standing in a belt of trees six miles from the nearest village. He imagined it in winter, cold, draughty and damp. He looked at Margaret blankly.
“Heaven only knows,” he said.
Margaret frowned. “I ought not to have let it,” she said. “But they would have it. I refused point-blank at first, but I couldn’t get rid of them. The woman had just set her heart on it, she said, and her offers got better and better until I just had to take it. What shall I do? I’m so far away.”
Mr Campion grinned at her. “I’m on my way home,” he said at last. “I’ve been on a cruise with some people. I left the yacht at San Remo. I’m catching a morning plane from Nice. I’ll reconnoitre a bit for you, shall I?”
Mrs Buntingworth’s relief was childlike.
“Oh, my dear,” she said, “if only you would! You’re so frightfully clever, Albert. Apart from Morty you’re the only person I know who can really deal with difficult situations. Do you remember how wonderful you were the night when the roof leaked?”
Mr Campion modestly ignored the tribute.
“Look here,” he said, “about this Mrs Sacret, what does she look like?”
Margaret considered. “Oh, rather nice,” she said. “About my age, small and dark and soignée, with quite a broad forehead.”
Her visitor’s face grew blank.
“She hadn’t a very faint, not unattractive cast in one eye, I suppose?” he inquired quietly.
Mrs Buntingworth gaped. “How did you know?”
Campion was silent. So, Dorothy Dawson, of all people, was at Swallows Hall, he reflected. Dorothy Dawson had passed as Mrs Tubby Bream before now, and Tubby Bream’s partner, Digby Sellers, was keeping an eye on Margaret Buntingworth’s maid here in Monte Carlo. It was all rather significant.
Margaret escorted him to the door of the hotel.
“The odd thing is what on earth these Sacret people can be doing at Swallows Hall if they’re not honest,” she said as they parted. “After all, what can they possibly hope to gain?”
“What indeed?” echoed Mr Campion and it was with a view to elucidating that very point that he wandered into Scotland Yard on the morning after his return home.
Superintendent Stanislaus Oates welcomed him with heavy humour and underlying affection.
“Sellers and Bream?” he said, leaning back in his hard chair behind his scrupulously tidy desk. “Con men, aren’t they? Baker’s the man you want. We’ll have him in.”
He spoke into the house phone and returned to his visitor with a smile.
“You’re quite the little busy these days, aren’t you?” he observed. “All your pals seem to get into trouble some time or other. Do you pick ’em, or just attract suckers naturally?”
“Neither. I am obliging.” Mr Campion put forward the explanation modestly. “Crooks come to the crook conscious; you know that.”
“Ah, but I get paid for it,” said the Superintendent. “Hallo, Baker, this is Mr Campion. He does it for the thrill.”
Inspector Baker, who had just entered, was a square, sober-looking young man who regarded Campion severely but was anxious to assist.
“Those two have split, I think,” he said, glancing at a typewritten sheet in his hand. “Sellers came back from Canada a fortnight ago and left the country three days later. Bream has been in London for the last six months living in a flat in Maida Vale. The Dawson woman was with them. We kept an eye on them in the usual way, of course, and one of our men thought there was something brewing a month or so ago. But the punter got wise and nothing transpired. Now they’ve disappeared and I’m afraid we’ve lost them. If you ask me, they were getting anxious. Bream likes his comforts and usually needs a bit of capital behind him for his little flutters. Funds were rather low, I should think.”
Mr Campion contributed his own small store of information concerning the partnership and the two Yard men listened to him attentively.
“A lonely house?” inquired the Superintendent at last. “Lonely and biggish?”
“It’s certainly lonely and fairly big, but not attractive in winter.” Mr Campio
n spoke feelingly.
“Still, it’s been a good home in its time?” suggested Inspector Baker. “Worth a bit some years ago?”
Campion was still mystified.
“Yes,” he admitted. “Property out there has gone right down, of course, but in its heyday, it might have fetched fifteen or twenty thousand pounds. Still, I don’t see —”
The Inspector met the eyes of his superior officer.
“Sounds like ‘the old home’ again,” he said.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Oates was thoughtful. “Sellers!” he ejaculated suddenly. “That’s it. Sellers met the sucker on the boat coming home from Canada, of course. He, Bream and the woman must have been going to team up in Monte for the season, but when he arrived home he had this scheme all set, having picked it up on the boat. Bream and Dorothy dealt with Mrs Buntingworth and bundled her off to the suite they’d already booked, not being certain of getting her right out of the way by any other method. Sellers followed her to watch things that end, because, of course, he couldn’t appear at the house, while Bream and Dorothy are down there now, I suppose, in the thick of it.”
Mr Campion leant back in the visitor’s chair and stretched his long thin legs in front of him.
“This is all very interesting,” he said mildly, “but I don’t follow it. What exactly do you mean by ‘the old home’?”
“Good heavens, something he doesn’t know at last,” said the Superintendent, his lugubrious face brightening. “You tell him, Baker. I like to see him learn.”
The Inspector fixed his visitor with a chilly eye.
“Well, you see, Mr Campion,” he began, “every now and again a man who has made good overseas returns to this country with the intention of purchasing his old home at all costs. Sometimes he’s foolish enough to talk about it on the boat and a clever crook can get details out of him. During the voyage the crook can usually size up his man and decide if the game is worth the candle. If it is, he arranges for an accomplice to get hold of the house. Sometimes they go so far as to buy it very cheaply, sometimes they just rent it. Anyway, they get possession, and then, since they’ve always been careful to pick a really rich man, they run him up over the deal and clear a packet. If they buy the place it’s not criminal, of course, but in this case, if they’ve merely rented it, they’ll be letting themselves in for false title deeds and heaven knows what.”
The Allingham Casebook Page 13