Sweet Danger

by Margery Allingham

  The rest of the household still appeared to be asleep, and he returned to his bed cursing himself for his helplessness.

  Had he stayed at the window a moment or so longer, the events of the day might have been considerably precipitated, for almost at the instant that he threw himself disconsolately on to his bed the coach-house doors in the yard below were swung cautiously open, and the nose of Amanda’s new Morris emerged.

  Scatty Williams sat at the wheel while Lugg, exerting his full strength for one of the rare times in his life, pushed the car silently into the yard. Scatty dismounted and together they disappeared into the mill, to return some minutes later, bearing most of Amanda’s new radio equipment and a coil of rope. These were loaded carefully into the back of the car, and the vehicle was then steered silently down the lane.

  Some minutes later, when the two conspirators judged they were out of earshot. they started the engine and drove off, turning down the lower road to avoid the heath.

  For some hours after this secret departure the house and mill were perfectly silent. Even the water in the race was barely flowing, and behind the shuts the sluggish river mounted slowly.

  As with many country mills where the local river boards are lax, there was not sufficient water power to move the wheel at all times, so that Amanda was accustomed to raise the shuts before a bout of work in order that the necessary force could accumulate for her purpose. It seemed that she had a special programme on hand to-day.

  At seven o’clock Mary came down and the kitchen quarters sprang to life, and it was to the pleasant clatter of delf and the sizzle of bacon that Guffy arose and went down, missing for the second time that day a phenomenon which might have given him food for thought.

  He had just passed the landing window when a dishevelled figure barely recognizable as Amanda crept out from among some shrubs in the garden and sprinted the last few steps to the side door. She slipped into the house and gained her own room without being seen. Her costume, which consisted of a bathing dress and a pair of ragged flannel trousers lifted from Hal’s cupboard, was covered with green lichen, and her hair was wild and full of twigs. But there was a gleam of triumph in her eyes and her cheeks were red with excitement.

  She washed and changed with the speed of a revue star, and trotted downstairs, demure and downy, to find Hal and Guffy conferring in the hall. Oblivious of the thought that they might not want her assistance, she joined them, and peered over her brother’s shoulder at the note he held.

  The boy glanced at Guffy enquiringly and, receiving his shrug of acquiescence, handed her the paper.

  ‘Found on Lugg’s pillow this morning,’ he said. ‘His bed hasn’t been slept in either, or else he made it before he went.’

  Amanda read the message aloud. ‘To whom it may concern. I am bunging off. Yours respectfully, Magersfontein Lugg.’

  ‘Poor dear,’ said Amanda.

  ‘Poor dear, my foot!’ said Hal contemptuously. ‘Clearing out just when things are getting exciting. Look here, Amanda, your behaviour up till now has been very bad, but we’re going to give you one more chance. We’ve been talking to the postman this morning, and he tells us that these so-called hikers on the heath have got five fast cars and about a dozen motor-bikes in that white barn on the Sweethearting Road. He’s seen ’em.’

  As Amanda did not seem particularly impressed, he went on:

  ‘There’s more to it than that. When Perry went round with the letters he was naturally curious, so he rode over the heath quite near the tents, and he says he saw a man sitting outside one of them cleaning a revolver. Now what do you say? Archaeologists don’t carry guns in England.’

  ‘Who said they were archaeologists? Come in to breakfast. By the way, Aunt Hatt says old Galley wants everyone to put on clean linen to go to his party. I hope you remembered this morning.’

  It was not until noon, and the heat which the early mist had promised had become a sweltering reality, boding thunder to come, that the second surprise of that amazing day burst upon the people of the mill.

  Guffy was pacing up and down the dining-room in an agony of indecision, struggling with the premonition that something was about to happen, and the sober reflection that hardly anything else could when the car containing a self-conscious policeman and a bluff but didactic inspector arrived.

  Mary, who had spent the morning devoted to household affairs with the sweet womanly abstraction which Mr Randall admired, was the first to interview them. She came bursting into the dining-room a few minutes later, her face pale and her eyes starting.

  ‘It’s the police from Ipswich. They want Farquharson and Eager-Wright.’

  The two young men, who had been lounging in the window-seat, sprang up in astonishment and, followed by Guffy, clucking and anxious as a hen with a brood, hurried into the hall. Hal was already there pressing, with unerring instinct, beer on the perspiring but adamant inspector.

  Amanda, too, had lounged over from the mill, and now stood draped against the doorpost, surveying the scene with calm, childlike eyes.

  ‘Mr Jonathan Eager-Wright?’ enquired the inspector, consulting his notebook, as the young men appeared.

  Eager-Wright nodded. ‘Anything I can do?’

  The official regarded him mournfully. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Just stand on one side, will you? That’s right. Now, Mr Richard Montgomery Farquharson? Oh, that’s you, sir, is it? Well, Jonathan Eager-Wright and Richard Montgomery Farquharson, I arrest you both and severally on a joint charge of attempting to obtain under false pretences valuable exhibits from the Brome House Museum, Norwich, on Friday, the 3rd last. I have to warn you that anything you may say will be taken down as evidence against you. Now, gentlemen, I must ask you to come with me. Here are the warrants if you’d care to see them.’

  Guffy was the first to break the frozen silence which followed this announcement.

  ‘Really!’ he exploded. ‘I say, Inspector, this is ridiculous. In the first place Eager-Wright never went near the place, and . . .’

  He broke off in some confusion as he caught Farquharson’s startled glance.

  ‘Anyhow, it’s absurd,’ he finished lamely.

  The inspector thrust his notebook back into his coat-tails and sighed.

  ‘If you’ve anything to say, sir, germane to the issue as they say, then you come back to the station and say it there. I’m sorry, but I must take these gentlemen along.’

  ‘I’ll certainly come.’ Guffy was crimson with indignation and guilty alarm. ‘I’ll phone my friend the County Commissioner, too. This is damnable, officer, frankly damnable.’ He advanced upon his hat on the stand as if it had been an enemy, and Amanda leapt forward.

  ‘Don’t leave us,’ she whispered, with just enough dramatic effect to flatter Mr Randall’s mood. ‘Don’t forget we haven’t even got Lugg now.’

  Guffy stopped in his tracks, and Farquharson, who had heard the appeal, spoke hastily.

  ‘She’s quite right, Randall. You can’t leave the house. Don’t worry, my dear old boy. We’ll be back during the day. These fellows only want a satisfactory explanation. Don’t you, Inspector?’ he added, turning the full force of his lazy, charming smile on the policeman.

  ‘I’m sure I hope you’ll be able to give one, sir,’ said that worthy without much enthusiasm, while his attendant sprite in the helmet smirked irritatingly.

  Eager-Wright joined in the discussion. ‘We’re all right, Guffy,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone my old boy if necessary. Don’t get alarmed. You hold the fort until we return – probably about tea-time. I hope nothing exciting happens until we do get back.’

  ‘You come along, my lad,’ said the inspector, suddenly growing tired of the conversation. ‘You’ll get all the excitement you want.’

  A stricken group stood in the doorway and watched the departure of the police car. Eager-Wright and Farquharson were wedged in the back, the plump inspector between them.

  Guffy passed a trembling hand over his brow. A long line o
f law-abiding squires had produced in him a subconscious horror of the police and their ways which no hardened criminal could equal.

  ‘I ought to go and phone about those fellows,’ he said. ‘Where’s the nearest place?’

  ‘Sweethearting,’ said Amanda promptly. ‘And I don’t think you ought to leave Mary and Aunt Hatt alone. After all, Hal and I aren’t much good in a scrap. It was all right yesterday when we had Lugg and no one was about, but now all those people have arrived on the heath . . .’

  She broke off. Mary frowned at her.

  ‘Nonsense. We’re perfectly all right,’ she said. ‘Amanda, you’re simply behaving ridiculously.’

  Guffy became thoughtful, and his round, good-natured face was troubled.

  ‘She’s right,’ he said at last. ‘Of course, I must stay here. Those fellows can look after themselves. I imagine it’s only a case of a phone call or two, establishing identity or arranging bail. It’s infernally awkward, however. I mean to say, in a sense Farquharson and I are guilty. I wonder how they got hold of our names?’

  No one volunteered any reply to this problem, but Mary sniffed the air suspiciously.

  ‘My cakes,’ she said. ‘They’re in the oven.’

  ‘I – er – I’ll come and help you,’ Guffy offered, following her precipitate flight into the kitchen. ‘It may clear the air a bit,’ he added inanely.

  Hal and Amanda exchanged glances and it seemed to Hal that his sister was definitely more amenable. The sudden depletion in their numbers made for friendliness.

  ‘Come over to the mill,’ she suggested. ‘I’ve something to show you.’

  He followed her dubiously. ‘I didn’t smell burning,’ he said. ‘Did you?’

  ‘No,’ said Amanda. ‘It was camphor. The policemen’s clothes, I think. Didn’t you notice something about those men?’

  ‘What?’ he enquired cautiously.

  ‘That they weren’t real policemen, of course,’ said his sister.

  ‘Not real . . .?’ Hal stared at her, his jaw falling open. ‘But why didn’t you say? We might have stopped them. Good Lord, Amanda, why on earth didn’t you mention it?’

  ‘Because,’ she said darkly, ‘I had my reasons. Come along and I’ll tell you.’

  CHAPTER XVII

  The Crown

  ‘WHAT DO YOU think of it?’ enquired Amanda.

  Her brother, who was squatting among the reeds that fringed the millpool, peered down at the boat hidden so cunningly among the bushes before replying.

  ‘It’s not at all bad,’ he admitted. ‘Who fixed it up?’

  ‘Scatty and I. It’s all part of the scheme. I’m afraid you’ve got to trust me for an hour or two longer, though.’

  ‘I haven’t trusted you for a minute yet,’ he observed drily, his eyes still fixed upon the boat.

  In many ways it was an extraordinary craft. In foundation it consisted of the old ferry punt in which Amanda and Scatty got about in flood time, but its appearance had been considerably changed by a superstructure of light leafy branches and gorse, so that its real character was completely hidden, and while there was sufficient room for four or five people to crouch inside, to the casual observer it resembled nothing so much as a floating bush or a tangle of brushwood which had come adrift from some pile on the bank.

  Amanda pointed downstream to the leafy tunnel ahead.

  ‘In the dusk,’ she said softly, ‘no one from the road would notice that going down, would they? Once I lower the shuts there’ll be enough water to send us downstream with a rush.’

  The boy straightened himself, and eyed her dubiously. ‘I hope for your sake that you’re not playing the fool, Amanda,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not, honestly I’m not,’ she assured him earnestly. ‘I brought you round here to show you this because I may have to ask you to take it down to Sweethearting on your own. You could, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Naturally,’ he said. ‘A good deal better than you could, I should think.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Amanda with unexpected humility.

  Hal was about to enquire further, but he was interrupted. At that moment there sounded clearly and sharply from the other side of the mill the unmistakable crack of a revolver.

  The two young people exchanged sharp, startled glances, and then the boy started off across the meadow to the footbridge, Amanda at his heels. As they reached the yard they heard another shot somewhere in the house, and Aunt Hatt screamed.

  They hurried into the hall at the same moment as the good lady herself appeared at the head of the stairs. She was only partially clad, and a dressing jacket was clutched round her shoulders.

  Mary and Guffy emerged from the kitchen a moment later, and Aunt Hatt screamed again.

  ‘Oh, it’s you two, is it?’ she said with relief as she peered down into the darkness of the hall. ‘Where’s the burglar? Be careful, he’s got a revolver.’

  ‘What burglar, darling?’ Mary stepped forward. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘The burglar was in my bedroom. He stole my garnet necklace,’ said Aunt Hatt with some asperity. ‘It wasn’t of any value, but I had a sentimental regard for it. It belonged to my mother. I’d just set out my things on the bed for the party and I stepped into my clothes closet for my black skirt, when I heard a sound in the room behind me. I came out and there he was, a perfectly strange man in my room, rummaging among the things on my dresser. He snatched the garnet necklace out of my trinket case – it only came back yesterday after having a new clasp – the necklace, I mean, not the box.’

  ‘What happened to the man?’

  ‘He climbed out of the window on to that ledge above the coach-house roof.’ Aunt Hatt was more outraged than frightened and her kindly grey eyes flashed angrily. ‘I shouted at him,’ she said. ‘And he had the impudence to point a gun at me. I stepped back from the window, a little alarmed I suppose, and the next thing I heard was firing. Oh, listen! What was that?’

  Her last words ended on a little squeak of alarm as a third shot shattered the drowsy silence of the mill. Before anyone could speak, there was another report, and another, and another, until it sounded as though there was a pitched battle in the yard.

  Guffy was making for the scene of action, with Mary clinging to his arm to prevent him, when the patch of brilliant sunshine framed by the doorway was obscured by the startling apparition of a strange gunman backing into its shelter. He was firing at some assailant hitherto unseen, and appeared to be a stranger to them all, a little thickset man with a roll of red fat between his coat collar and his cap.

  Guffy disengaged himself from Mary’s restraining hold, and took a flying leap on to the intruder’s back, pinioning his arms to his sides with the grip of a bear. The man swore viciously, and struggled to free himself, but Hal stepped forward and snatched the gun from his hand.

  ‘Here, let me go, can’t yer?’ said their captive, revealing an unexpectedly squeaky voice. ‘Don’t hold me in the doorway. There’s a female lunatic out there with a gun.’

  ‘Hold him!’ shouted Amanda. ‘Hold him!’

  ‘That’s the man.’ Aunt Hatt advanced menacingly upon the now helpless captive. ‘That’s the man who took my garnet necklace. Make him give it back.’

  ‘Look out!’ bellowed the stranger, suddenly doubling up as footsteps sounded on the stones without. ‘Here she comes. She’s a homicidal maniac, I tell yer.’

  The whole struggling group fell back a pace or two as once again the patch of sunlight vanished, to give place to an extraordinary individual who, revolver in hand, now appeared upon the threshold. It was a gaunt figure clad in a long dark skirt and skimpy blouse, and upon its head an old felt hat was unbecomingly tied with what appeared to be a bootlace. It stood for a moment in the doorway while they gasped at it, and then an unmistakable, slightly pedantic voice said clearly: ‘She walks in beauty like the night. I say, hang on to that fellow. Hysterical little soul, isn’t he? He’s blown a most unbecoming hole through my new
blue bonnet.’

  ‘Campion!’ said Guffy in a strangled voice. ‘Well, I’m damned.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said the new-corner affably. ‘By the way, before we get chatty, let’s tie this fellow up. Amanda, the clothes line.’

  Amanda was the only one of the party who was not temporarily dazed by this unexpected development, and she trotted out into the kitchen obediently.

  Ten minutes later the man who had stolen Aunt Hatt’s garnet necklace in what at first sight appeared an unnecessarily dramatic fashion, was reposing safely under the dining-room table, neatly trussed.

  The party then adjourned to the cool of the hall once more. Guffy was shaken with a mixture of amazement and delight, and an overwhelming sense of relief. No restoration monarchist could have been more delighted at the return of his prince and leader than this foolish, but stout-hearted Grand Vizier of Averna to see the Hereditary Paladin once again.

  Mr Campion sat down on the stairs where he was in the shadow and out of sight of the doorway, while they gathered round him, curious and as yet a little incredulous.

  ‘Mr Campion, you’re wearing my old clothes.’

  Aunt Hatt peered at the skirt as she spoke.

  ‘My landlady gave them to me,’ said Campion casually, indicating Amanda. ‘When I presented myself at her mill some days ago I explained my desire to get about unnoticed in the dusk, and she very obligingly obtained these garments to effect my disguise.’

  Guffy gaped at him. ‘Then you never boarded the Marquisita?’ he said. ‘I knew there was something fishy about that letter.’

  The pale young man, looking somehow less foolish without his spectacles, had the grace to appear penitent.

  ‘I admit my letter was a little misleading,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact that whole incident was rather amusing. The engaging Mr Parrot and I came to a little agreement.’

  As he spoke he kept his eyes fixed upon Guffy’s face as though he was anxious to explain and to apologize.

  ‘I had the toothache, you see,’ he went on airily, ‘and we called in at my flat for a scarf and a coat. Unknown to poor old Parrott (two t’s, he tells me – that’s to make it clear that he’s nothing to do with the other branch of the family) my friend McCaffy was waiting for me in the cupboard wearing my second-best blue suit. I had the best one on, you see. I don’t know if you’re following all this, but there really isn’t time to go into it very fully. Poor old McCaffy’s a delightful soul, on for absolutely anything and one of the very best. He’s always hard up, poor fellow, and occasionally I’m able to put a job in his way. This was one of them. You see, unfortunately for him he resembles me extraordinarily, except in the lower part of the face. To make the likeness more harmful he’s made a study of my more revolting mannerisms, and if he can only wrap up his mouth and his chin he can pass very easily for me. Well –’ he spread out his hands – ‘during the business interview I had with Pop Savanake, or whatever his friends call him, I rang up McCaffy, who was sitting in the outer office of my insurance brokers by appointment in case my interview turned out as I thought it might. As soon as he got my clever message, which was ostensibly to my broker, he handed on as much of it as was good for him to the fellow who does my business, and then doubled round to wait for me in the clothes cupboard. The rest was childish but so pretty. I went into the cupboard with a marble in my cheek and a hanky over it and McCaffy came out with a muffler round his face. He went off with Mr Parrott for a nice sea voyage, with nothing but his passage money home at the end of it, for on examining the sealed orders handed to me by the captain of industry, he discovered them to contain just that. I hung about until it got dark, motor-cycled down to Sweethearting and walked the rest of the way over the fields in the dawn without seeing a soul. Then I burgled the mill and left the rest to Amanda, for whose creditable performance she will be mentioned in my will. By the way, remind me, Amanda, when the fun is over: I must wire McCaffy his passage money to Rio.’