“Did you see these presents, Ma’am?”
“Not before they were wrapped! That would have spoiled the surprise!”
“I shall have to see them.” There was a mulish note in the Superintendent’s voice which the lady was too experienced to ignore. “I’ve thought how to do that without upsetting anybody,” she said brightly. “The Brigadier and I will cut the presents from the Tree and Fiona will be handing them round. All Mr Taunton’s little gifts are in the very distinctive black and gold paper I bought from Millie’s Boutique and so, Fiona, you must give every package in gold and black paper not to the person to whom it is addressed but to the Superintendent. Can you do that, dear?”
Miss Poole-Poole seemed to feel the task difficult but not impossible and the trusting smile she gave Oates cut short his objections like the sun melting frost.
“Splendid!” The Dragon’s roar was hearty. “Give me your arm, Superintendent. You shall take me down.”
As the procession reached the hall it ran into the Brigadier himself. He was a large, pink man, affable enough, but of a martial type and he bristled at the Superintendent. “Extraordinary time to do your business – middle of Christmas Day!” he said after acknowledging the introductions.
Oates inquired if he had enjoyed his walk.
“Talk?” said the Brigadier. “I’ve not been talking. I’ve been asleep in the card-room. Where’s old Taunton?”
“He went for a walk, Athole dear,” bellowed the Dragon gaily.
“So he did. You sent him! Poor feller.”
As the old soldier led the way to the open door of the drawing room it occurred to both the visitors that the secret of Lady Larradine’s undoubted attraction for him lay in the fact that he could hear her if no one else. The discovery cast a new light altogether on the story of the encounter with Sampson in the garden.
Meanwhile they had entered the drawing room and the party had begun. As Mr Campion glanced at the company, ranged in a full circle round a magnificent tree loaded with gifts and sparkling like a waterfall, he saw face after familiar face. They were old acquaintances of the dizzy nineteen-thirties whom he had mourned as gone forever when he thought of them at all. Yet here they all were, not only alive but released by great age from many of the restraints of convention. He noticed that every type of head-gear from nightcap to tiara was being sported with fine individualistic enthusiasm. But Lady Larradine gave him no time to look about. She proceeded with her task immediately.
Each guest had been provided with a small invalid table beside his armchair and Oates, reluctant, but wax in Fiona’s hands, was no exception. He found himself seated between a mountain in flannel and a wraith in mauve mink, waiting his turn with the same beady-eyed avidity.
Christmas tree procedure at the Ccraven proved to be well organised. The Dragon did little work herself. Armed with a swagger stick she merely prodded parcel after parcel hanging amid the boughs while the task of detaching them was performed by the Brigadier who handed them to Fiona. Either to add to the excitement or perhaps to muffle any unfortunate comment on gifts received by the uninhibited company, jolly Christmas music was played throughout and under cover of the noise Mr Campion was able to tackle his hostess.
“Where is Taunton?” he whispered.
“Such a nice little man. Most presentable but just a little teeny-weeny bit dishonest.” Lady Larradine ignored his question but continued to put him in the picture at speed, whilst supervising the Tree at the same time. “Fifty-seven convictions, I believe, but only small ones. I only got it all out of him last week. Shattering! He’d been so useful amusing the Brigadier. When he came he looked like a lost soul with no luggage, but after no time at all he settled in perfectly.” She paused and stabbed at a ball of coloured cellophane with her stick before returning to her startled guest.
“Albert. I am terribly afraid poor Mr Taunton took that dreadful jewellery of Maisie Phaeton’s. It appears to have been entirely her fault. He was merely wandering past her house, feeling in need of care and attention. The door was wide open, and he found himself inside, picking up a few odds and ends. When he discovered from all that fuss in the newspapers what it was he had got hold of – how well-known it was, I mean – he was quite horrified and had to hide. And where better than here with us where he never had to go out?”
“Where indeed!” Mr Campion dared not glance across the room to where the Superintendent was unwrapping his black and gold parcels. “Where is he now?”
“Of course, I hadn’t the faintest idea what was worrying the man until he confessed,” the Dragon went on stonily. “Then I realised that something would have to be done at once to protect everybody. The wretch had hidden all that frightful stuff in our tool-shed for three months, not daring to keep it in the house and to make matters worse, the impossible person at the end of the garden, Mr Sampson, had recognised him and would keep speaking. Apparently, people in the – er – underworld all know each other just as those of us in – er – other closed circles do.”
Mr Campion, whose hair was standing on end, had a moment of inspiration. “This absurd rigmarole about Taunton getting Sampson to buy him some Christmas gifts wholesale was your idea!” he said accusingly.
The Dragon stared. “It seemed the best way of getting Maisie’s jewellery back to her without any one person being solely involved,” she said frankly. “I knew we should all recognise the things the moment we saw them, and I was certain that after a lot of argument we should decide to pack them up and send them round to her. But, if there was any repercussion, we should all be in it (quite a formidable array, dear) and the blame could be traced to Mr Sampson, if absolutely necessary. You see the Brigadier is convinced that Sampson was there last night. Mr Taunton very cleverly left him on the lawn and went behind the tool-shed and came back with the box.”
“How completely immoral!”
The Dragon had the grace to look embarrassed. “I don’t think the Sampson angle would ever have arisen,” she said. “But if it had, Sampson was quite a terrible person. Almost a blackmailer. Utterly dishonest and inconsiderate. Think how he has spoiled everything and endangered us all by getting himself killed on the one afternoon when we said he was here, so that the police were brought in. Just the one thing I was trying to avoid. When the Inspector appeared this morning, I was so upset I thought of you!”
In his not unnatural alarm Mr Campion so far forgot himself as to touch her sleeve. “Where is Taunton now?”
The Dragon threshed her train. “Really, boy! What a fidget you are! If you must know, I gave him his Christmas present – every penny I had in cash for he was broke again, he told me – and sent him for a nice long walk after lunch. Having seen the Inspector here this morning he was glad to go.” She paused, and a gentle gleam came into her hooded eyes. “If that Superintendent has the stupidity to try to find him when once Maisie has her monstrosities back none of us will be able to identify him I’m afraid. And there’s another thing. If the Brigadier should be forced to give evidence I am sure he will stick to his guns about Mr Sampson being down the garden here at six o’clock last night. He believes he was. That would mean that someone very wicked would have to go unpunished, wouldn’t it? Sampson was a terrible person, but no one should have killed him.”
Mr Campion was silenced. He glanced fearfully across the room.
The Superintendent was seated at his table wearing the strained yet slap-happy expression of a man with concussion. On his left was a pile of black and gilt wrappings, on his right a rajah’s ransom in somewhat specialised form. From where he stood Mr Campion could see two examples amid the rest; a breastplate in gold, pearl and enamel in the shape of a unicorn in a garden and an item which looked like a plover’s egg in tourmaline encased in a ducal coronet. There was also a soapstone monkey and a silver paper-knife.
Much later that evening Mr Campion and the Superintendent drove quietly back to headquarters. Oates had a large cardboard box on his knee. He clasped it tenderly.
He had been silent for a long time when a thought occurred to him.
“Why did they take him into the house in the first place?” he said. “An elderly crook looking lost! No luggage!”
Mr Campion’s pale eyes flickered behind his spectacles.
“Don’t forget the Duchess’s housekeeping money,” he murmured. “I should think he offered one of the widows who really run that place the first three months’ payment in cash, wouldn’t you? That must be an impressive phenomenon in that sort of business, I fancy.”
Oates caught his breath and fell silent once more until presently he burst out again.
“Those people! That woman!” he exploded. “When they were younger they led me a pretty dance – losing things or getting themselves swindled. But now they’re old they take the blessed biscuit! Do you see how she’s tied my hands, Campion?”
Mr Campion tried not to grin.
“Snapdragons are just permissible at Christmas,” he said. “Handled with extreme caution they burn very few fingers it seems to me.” He tapped the cardboard box. “And some of them provide a few plums for retiring coppers, don’t they, Superintendent?”
Chapter One
The October wind, which had promised rain all day, hesitated in its reckless flight down the moist pavements to hurl a handful of fine drops at the windows of the drawing room in the big Hampstead house. The sound was sharp and spiteful, so that the silence between the two women within became momentarily shocked, as if it had received some gratuitous, if trivial, insult.
Old Mrs Gabrielle Ivory continued to watch her granddaughter. Her eyes were bright still, as shrewd and black as they had been on an evening nearly seventy years before when they had refused to drop before the stare of another dominant woman who had sat on a little gilt throne at the first Court of the season. Gabrielle Ivory had been quite as forceful as Queen Victoria in her way and certainly very much more beautiful, but now, as she sat in her high chair, surrounded by a lacquer screen and swaddled in grey satin, she was very old.
The girl standing on the rug before her was barely twenty. In her severe dark suit with her foxes dangling from her hand, she looked even younger, yet there was a very definite likeness between them. The eldest and the youngest of the Ivorys both had the family’s beauty, the fine bones and that expression which was sometimes called “straightforward” and sometimes “arrogant.”
“Well?” said Gabrielle. “I’m an old woman, my dear. Nearly ninety. It’s not much use coming to me. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” Her voice was unexpectedly clear in spite of its thinness and there was a quiver of amusement in the final enquiry.
Frances Ivory’s long narrow grey eyes flickered. The old lady was devastatingly right, and it was not going to be easy to explain the sense of dismay which had crept over her at the discovery. Meyrick Ivory, a widower who adored his mother, had brought up his younger daughter to see the old Gabrielle as an almost legendary figure. To his child she had always been presented as the beloved beauty of a golden age, a link with the great Victorians, a creature larger than life in power and importance, so that all through these last perturbing weeks Frances had comforted herself with the recollection that if the worse came to the worst, even though Meyrick himself was half across the world, there was always Gabrielle up at Hampstead. It was hard to realise now that the moment of appeal had come, that she was perhaps just a very old woman, too old and too tired to be disturbed.
The tiny figure in the high chair stirred impatiently, as if she had read her visitor’s thought and was irritated by it. It was an old habit of hers which many people had found disturbing.
“Meyrick is not expected back from China for some time, is he?” she remarked. “How is Robert Madrigal behaving without him? I never liked that young man. Why your insane half-sister married him I cannot imagine. Not a very suitable person to be in charge of The Gallery.” She gave the title the capital letters which were its due. From the early years of the last century, when her own father-in-law, the famous Philip Ivory, had first purchased the fine house off St James’s and had exhibited there the collection of Gainsboroughs which had drawn a world of rank and fashion still in stocks and beavers, 39 Sallet Square had been The Gallery and so it was still, with a history of wealth and prestige behind it unequalled in Europe.
“Well?” The old woman was persistent. “How is he behaving?”
Frances hesitated. “He and Phillida are staying with me at 38, you know,” she began cautiously. “It was Meyrick’s idea. He wanted Robert to be near.”
Mrs Ivory’s narrow lips curled. The mention of the house next door to The Gallery, where she had reigned throughout her career from its heyday in the seventies right up to the fin de siècle, always stirred her.
“So Phillida’s at 38, is she?” she said. “Meyrick didn’t tell me that. You’re finding it difficult to live with her, I suppose? I don’t blame you. I could never abide a fool in the house even when it was a man. A silly woman is quite insufferable. What has she done now?”
“No, it’s not Phillida,” said Frances slowly. “No, darling, I only wish it were.” She turned away and glanced out across the room to the barren trees far over the heath. There was a great deal more to worry about than the shortcomings of her elder half-sister. “Granny,” she began awkwardly, realising that the words were childish and inadequate, “there’s something going on.”
Gabrielle laughed. It was a little tinkling sound, as gently malicious as ever it had been in the great drawing rooms of long ago.
“There always was,” she said.
“Yes, I know, but this is rather different.” Frances was taking the plunge. “This is deliberate malice and it’s dangerous. I’m terrified of sounding melodramatic and silly, but I really do think that something irrevocable may happen at any minute and something must be done to stop it. There’s nobody to go to, you see. The staff at the gallery is going to pieces. You can’t blame them in the circumstances…”
“Oh, my dear, not business.” The old woman’s protest contained distaste. “Leave business to men. When I was your age we thought it rather indelicate for females to understand business. That was imbecile, of course, but we were saved a lot of unpleasantness. You should marry. Phillida has no children — a mercy, of course, if there’s anything in heredity — but someone must carry on. Come and talk to me about marriage, not business.”
Frances stiffened. Her suspicion was founded. There was going to be no help here. She turned away.
“Robert has just told me I ought to marry Henry Lucar,” she said. It had not occurred to her that Gabrielle might recognise the name, since Meyrick would hardly have mentioned so unimportant a member of the firm to his mother. The rustle in the high chair came as a surprise therefore.
“Wasn’t that the man who was rescued from Godolphin’s expedition?” demanded the old lady. “I thought he was a baggage man in charge of the camels, or was it mules?”
The girl laughed in spite of herself. “Oh no, darling,” she said. “Be fair. He did go out as Robert’s batman, as a matter of fact, but that’s nothing to do with it. He came back a hero and he’s in the firm now. I don’t like him. Since Daddy’s been away I’ve liked him less. He was always a bit of a smart aleck but just lately he’s surpassed himself, cocky little beast. Still, it really isn’t snobbery that’s made me go on turning him down. I wouldn’t care what he was if I liked him. I just don’t, that’s all.”
She was speaking defensively, repeating the argument she had used to Robert at that astonishing interview just before lunch, and she stood squarely on the leopard rug, looking surprisingly brave and modern in the big room which was so cluttered with forgotten elegancies.
Gabrielle sat up. Marriage was a subject which her generation had entirely understood, and her bright eyes were hard.
“Did this person have the impudence to ask you to marry him?” she enquired.
Frances writhed. The démodé snobbery embarrassed her. It was s
o like great age to get the whole thing out of perspective and to pounce upon a single aspect.
“There was nothing impudent about it, darling,” she protested. “It was only that when Robert began to badger me to take the horrid little brute seriously I added it to these other more serious things that have been happening and I got the wind-up. You can’t blame Lucar for merely asking. Why shouldn’t he?”
“Why?” Mrs Ivory sat very stiffly, the grey lace scarf over her head hanging in graceful lines by her withered cheeks. “Don’t be a fool, girl, and don’t forget yourself. This man Lucar is a servant, or was a servant, until a gratuitous piece of good fortune saved his life and made him notorious. You are a pretty, well-bred, well-educated girl with a great deal of money. It is a ridiculous modern affectation to pretend to disregard money. It does not deceive anybody. No one thinks of anything else at heart. Your mother left you two hundred thousand pounds. That is a fortune. Of course, it’s impudence for the man Lucar to ask you to marry him. Any man who proposed to you is going to be in an embarrassing position unless he is either very wealthy himself or has some special advantage which makes the exchange fair and respectable. This camel man is presuming. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, sentimentalise over him or flatter yourself that he is anything else. Robert appears to be out of his mind. I shall certainly speak to Meyrick when he returns.”
She lay back, closing her eyes after the effort, and the girl stood looking at her, her cheeks flaming. A great deal has been written about the forthrightness of the moderns shocking the Victorians, but there is no shock like the one which the forthrightness of the Victorians can give a modern.
Frances came away.
Meyrick’s Rolls-Royce had never seemed more comfortingly magnificent than it did as she climbed into it out of the irritating wind which snatched at her hat and whipped at her knees. The interview had been worse than useless, and she reproached herself for attempting it. She glanced out of the window at the wet streets and huddled more closely into the corner of the car. She was frightened. That discovery was alarming in itself. It is one thing to go on from day to day with a growing feeling of unrest and suspicion, but quite another to find oneself suddenly convinced of serious trouble and to be in charge, especially when one is not quite twenty and one is alone.
The Allingham Casebook Page 23