‘My dear, didn’t you recognise her? That would have been the last straw for the poor darling! That’s Florence, Dowager Countess of Marle. Philip’s Auntie Flo.’
Mr Campion’s pale blue eyes grew momentarily more intelligent behind his horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘Ah, hence the disgust,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to explain me away. The police are always doing it.’
Juliet turned to him with the wide-eyed ingenuousness of one who perceives a long-awaited opening.
‘You still dabble in police and detection and things, then?’ she said breathlessly and not very tactfully, since his reputation as a criminologist was considerable. ‘Do tell me, what is the low-down on these terribly exciting burglaries? Are the police really beaten or are they being bribed? No one talks of anything else these days. I just had to see you and find out.’
Her companion leant back in the leathery depths of the cab and sighed regretfully.
‘When you phoned me and demanded to be taken to this execrable exhibition I was vain enough to think it was my companionship you were after,’ he said. ‘Now it turns out to be merely a vulgar pursuit of the material for gossip. Well, my girl, you’re going to be disappointed. The clever gentleman doesn’t know a thing and, what’s more, he doesn’t care. Have you lost anything yourself?’
‘Me?’ Juliet’s gratification at the implied compliment all but outweighed her disappointment. ‘Of course I haven’t. It’s only the really worth-while collections that have gone. That’s why it’s so interesting. The De Breuil diamonds went first. Then the Denver woman lost her emeralds and the glorious Napoleon necklace. Josephine Pharaoh had her house burgled and just lost her tiara, which was the one really good thing she had, and now poor old Mrs Dacre has had her diamonds and rubies pinched, including the famous dog collar. Forty-two diamonds, my dear! – each one quite as big as a pea. They say it’s a cat burglar and the police know him quite well, but they can’t find him – at least, that’s one story. The other one is that it’s all being done for the insurance and the police are in it. What do you think?’
Mr Campion glanced at her affectionately and noted that the gold hair under her small black hat curled as naturally as ever.
‘Both stories are equally good,’ he announced placidly. ‘Come and have some tea, or has Philip’s Auntie Flo got spies everywhere?’
Miss Fysher-Sprigge blushed. ‘I don’t care if she has,’ she said. ‘I’ve quarrelled with Philip, anyway.’
It took Mr Campion several minutes – until they were seated at a table on the edge of the Hotel Monde’s smaller dance-floor, in fact – before he fully digested this piece of information. Juliet was leaning back in her chair, her eyes roving over the gathering in a frank search for old acquaintances, when he spoke again.
‘Seriously?’ he enquired.
Juliet met his eyes and again he saw her sophistication vanish.
‘I hope not,’ she said soberly. ‘I’ve been rather an ass. Can I tell you about it?’
Mr Campion smiled ruefully. It was a sign of the end of the thirties, he supposed, when one submitted cheerfully to the indignity of taking a young woman out only to hear about her hopes and fears concerning a younger man. Juliet went on blissfully, lowering her voice so that the heart-searchings of the balalaika orchestra across the floor concealed it from adjoining tables.
‘Philip is a dear, but he has to be so filthily careful about the stupidest things,’ she said, accepting a rhumbaba. ‘The F.O. casts a sort of white light over people, have you noticed? His relations are like it, too, only worse. You can’t talk of anything without getting warned off. The aunt we saw today bit my head off the other evening for merely mentioning these cat burglaries, which, after all, are terribly exciting. “My child,” she said, “we can’t afford to know about such things,” and went on talking about her old White Elephant until I nearly wept.’
‘White Elephant?’ Mr Campion looked blank. ‘The charity?’
Juliet nodded. ‘“Send your white elephant to Florence, Countess of Marle, and she will find it a home where it will be the pet of the family,”’ she quoted. ‘It’s quite an important affair, patronised by royalty and blessed by every archbishop in the world. I pointed out it was only a glorified jumble sale and she nearly had a fit. She works herself to death for it. I go and help pack up parcels sometimes – or I did before this row with Philip. I’ve been rather silly. I’ve done something infuriating. Philip’s livid with me now and I don’t know what’s going to happen when he finds out everything. I must tell somebody. Can I tell you?’
A faint smile passed over Mr Campion’s thin face. ‘You’re quite a nice girl,’ he said, ‘but you won’t stay twenty-one for ever. Stop treating me as though I was a maiden uncle.’
‘You must be thirty-six at least,’ said Miss Fysher-Sprigge brutally, ‘and I’m rather glad, because presumably you’re sensible. Look here, if a man has a criminal record it doesn’t mean he’s always going to be stealing things, does it? Not if he promises to go straight?’
Her companion frowned. ‘I don’t quite follow,’ he said. ‘Age is stopping the brain from functioning. I thought we were talking about Philip Graysby, Auntie Flo’s nephew?’
‘So we are,’ said Juliet. ‘He hasn’t got the record, of course, but Henry Swan has. Henry Swan is – or, rather, was – Philip’s man. He’d been with Philip for eighteen months and been perfectly good, and then this came out about him. Philip said he was awfully sorry, but he’d have to go. Philip couldn’t help it, I suppose – I do see that now – but at the time I was furious. It seemed so unfair, and we had a quarrel. I said some beastly things and so did he, but he wouldn’t give in and Swan went.’
She paused and eyed her companion dubiously. Mr Campion shrugged his shoulders.
‘It doesn’t seem very serious,’ he said.
Juliet accepted the cigarette he offered her and seemed engrossed in the tip of it.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘That part isn’t. But you see, I’m a very impulsive person and I was stupidly cross at the time and so when I had a wonderful idea for getting my own back I acted on it. I got Swan a job with the most respectable person I knew and, in order to do it, I gave him a reference. To make it a good reference I didn’t say anything about the record. How’s that?’
‘Not so good,’ he admitted. ‘Who’s the most respectable person harbouring this human bomb?’
Juliet avoided his eyes. ‘Philip’s Auntie Flo,’ she said. ‘She’s the stiffest, thorniest, most conventional of them all. Philip doesn’t go there often, so he hasn’t seen Swan yet, but when he does and makes enquiries and hears about me – well, it’s going to be awkward. D’you think he’ll ever forgive me? He stands to get a fortune from Auntie Flo if he doesn’t annoy her. It was a silly thing of me to do, wasn’t it?’
‘Not bright,’ agreed Mr Campion. ‘Are you in love with Philip?’
‘Horribly,’ said Juliet Fysher-Sprigge and looked away across the dance-floor.
Mr Campion had spent some time expounding a wise course of action, in which a clean breast to all concerned figured largely, when he became aware that he was not being heard. Juliet was still staring across the room, her eyes puzzled.
‘I say,’ she said unexpectedly, ‘this place is wildly expensive, isn’t it?’
‘I hope not,’ said Mr Campion mildly.
Juliet did not smile. Her cheeks were faintly flushed and her eyes questioning.
‘Don’t be a fool. You know what I mean. This is probably the most expensive place in London, isn’t it? How queer! It looks as though Auntie Flo really has got her spies everywhere. That’s her manicurist over there, having tea alone.’
He glanced casually across the room.
‘The woman sitting directly under the orchestra?’ he enquired. ‘The one who looks like a little bull in a navy hat? She’s an interesting type, isn’t she? Not very nice.’
Juliet’s eyes were still thoughtful.
‘That’s
her. Miss Matisse. A visiting manicurist,’ she said. ‘She goes to dozens of people I know. I believe she’s very good. How funny for her to come to tea alone, here of all places …’
Mr Campion’s casual interest in the small square figure who managed somehow to look flamboyant in spite of her sober clothes showed signs of waning.
‘She may be waiting for someone,’ he suggested.
‘But she’s ordered her tea and started it.’
‘Oh well, perhaps she just felt like eating.’
‘Rubbish!’ said Juliet. ‘You pay ten and sixpence just to sit in this room because you can dance if you want to.’
Her host laughed. ‘Auntie Flo has a pretty turn of speed if she tracked us down here and then whipped round and set her manicuring bloodhound on us, all in half an hour,’ he said.
Juliet ignored him. Her attention had wandered once again.
‘I say,’ she murmured, ‘can you see through that mirror over there? See that man eating alone? I thought at first he was watching Miss Matisse, but I believe it’s you he’s most interested in.’
Her companion turned his head and his eyes widened.
‘Apologies,’ he said. ‘I under-estimated you. That’s Detective-Sergeant Blower, one of the best men in the public-school and night-club tradition. I wonder whom he’s tailing. Don’t watch him – it’s unkind.’
Juliet laughed. ‘You’re a most exciting person to have tea with,’ she said. ‘I do believe …’
The remainder of her remark was lost as, in common with all but one visitor in the room she was silenced by what was, for the Hotel Monde, a rather extraordinary incident.
The balalaika orchestra had ceased to play for a moment or so and the dance floor was practically deserted when, as though taking advantage of the lull, the woman in the navy hat rose from her chair and shouted down the whole length of the long room, in an effort, apparently, to attract the attention of a second woman who had just entered.
‘Mrs Gregory!’ Her voice was powerful and well articulated. ‘Mrs Gregory! Mrs Gregory!’
The newcomer halted as all eyes were turned upon her, and her escort expostulated angrily to the excited maître d’hôtel who hurried forward.
Miss Matisse sat down, and in the silence Mr Campion heard her explaining in a curiously flat voice to the waiter who came up to her:
‘I am sorry. I thought I recognised a friend. I was mistaken. Bring me my bill, please.’
Juliet stared across the table, her young face shocked.
‘What a very extraordinary thing to do,’ she said.
Mr Campion did not reply. From this place of vantage he could see in the mirror that Detective-Sergeant Blower had also called for his bill and was preparing to leave.
Some little time later, when Mr Campion deposited Juliet on her Mount Street doorstep, she was in a more cheerful mood.
‘Then you think if I go to Philip and tell him the worst and say that I’m sorry he’ll forgive me?’ she said as they parted.
‘If he’s human he’ll forgive you anything,’ Mr Campion assured her gallantly.
Juliet sighed. ‘Age does improve the manners,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘I’ll forgive you for disappointing me about the burglaries. I really had hoped to get all the dirt. Good-bye.’
‘Damn the burglaries!’ said Mr Campion and took a taxi home.
Three days later he said the same thing again, but for a different reason. This reason arrived by post. It came in a fragrant green box designed to contain a large flask of familiar perfume and it lay upon his breakfast table winking at him with evil amusement. It was Mrs Dacre’s ruby-and-diamond dog collar and it was not alone. In a nest of cotton wool beneath it were five diamond rings of considerable value, a pair of exquisite ruby ear-clips, and a small hooped bracelet set with large alternate stones.
Mr Campion, who was familiar with the ‘stolen’ list which the police send round to their local stations and circularise to the jewellers and pawnbrokers of the kingdom, had no difficulty in recognising the collection as the haul of the last cat burglary.
The sender of so dubious a gift might have been harder to identify had it not been for the familiarity of the perfume and the presence of a small card on which was printed, in shaky, ill-disguised characters, a simple request and a specious promise:
Get these back where they belong and I’ll love you for ever, darling.
Mr Campion had a considerable respect for the Law, but he spent some time that morning in acquiring a box of similar design but different and more powerful perfume, and it was not until the jewellery was freshly housed and the card burned that he carried his responsibility to Scotland Yard and laid it with a sigh of relief on the desk of Chief Detective-Inspector Stanislaus Oates, his friend and partner in many adventures.
The original wrappings he decided to retain. Its ill-written address might have been scrawled by anyone, and the fact that it was grossly overfranked showed that it had been dropped into a public box and not passed over a post-office counter.
He let the chief, who was a tall, disconsolate personage with a grey face and dyspepsia, recover from his first transports of mingled relief and suspicion before regretting his inability to help him further. Oates regarded him.
‘It’s my duty to warn you that you’re under suspicion,’ he said with the portentous solemnity which passed with him for wit.
Campion laughed. ‘My cat-burglary days are over,’ he said. ‘Or am I the fence?’
‘That’s more like it.’ The chief passed his cigarette case. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to see this lot. But it doesn’t help us very much unless we know where it came from. These “cat” jobs are done by The Sparrow. We knew that as soon as we saw the first one. You remember him, Campion? – a sleek, handsome chap with an insufferable manner. These jobs have his trademarks all over them. Pane cut out with a diamond and the glass removed with a sucker – no finger-prints, no noise, no mistakes.’ He paused and caressed his ear sadly. ‘It’s getting on my nerves,’ he said. ‘The Commissioner is sarcastic and the papers are just libellous. It’s hard on us. We know who and where the fellow is, but we can’t get him. We’ve held him as long as we dared, three separate times this summer, but we haven’t got a thing we can fix on him. I’ve been trusting the stuff would turn up somewhere so that we could work back on him from that angle, but, frankly, this is the first scrap of it I’ve seen. Where’s all the early swag? This was only pinched five days ago.’
Mr Campion remained unhelpful. ‘I got it this morning,’ he said. ‘It just came out of the air. Ask the postman.’
‘Oh, I know …’ The chief waved the suggestion aside. ‘You’ll help us just as much as you can, which means as much as you care to. Some society bit is mixed up in this somewhere, I’m sure of it. Look here, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll put my cards on the table. This isn’t official; this is the truth. Edward Borringer, alias The Sparrow, is living with his wife in digs in Kilburn. They’re very respectable at the moment, just a quiet hard-working couple. He takes classes in the local gym and she does visiting manicure work.’
‘Under the name of Matisse?’
‘Exactly!’ The Inspector was jubilant. ‘Now you’ve given yourself away, my lad. What do you know about Margot Matisse?’
‘Not much,’ his visitor confessed affably. ‘She was pointed out to me as a manicurist at a thé dansant at the Hotel Monde on Tuesday. Looking round, I saw Blower on her trail, so naturally when you mentioned manicurists I put two and two together.’
‘Who pointed her out to you?’
‘A lady who had seen her at work in a relation’s house.’
‘All right.’ The policeman became depressed again. ‘Well, there you are. It’s quite obvious how they’re working it. She goes round to the big houses and spots the stuff and the lie of the land, and then he calls one night and does the job. It’s the old game worked very neatly. Too neatly, if you ask me. What we can’t fathom is how they’re disposing o
f the stuff. They certainly haven’t got it about them, and their acquaintance just now is so respectable, not to say aristocratic, that we can barely approach it. Besides, to make this big stuff worth the risk they must be using an expert. Most of these stones are so well known that they must go to a first-class fellow to be recut.’
Mr Campion hesitated. ‘I seem to remember that Edward Borringer was once associated with our old friend Bertrand Meyer and his ménage,’ he ventured. ‘Are they still functioning?’
‘Not in England.’ The chief was emphatic. ‘And if these two are getting their stuff out of the country I’ll eat my hat. The customs are co-operating with us. We thought a maid in one of the houses which the Matisse woman visits might be in it and so, if you’ve heard a squawk from your society pals about severity at the ports, that’s our work. I don’t mind telling you it’s all very difficult. You can see for yourself. These are the Matisse clients.’
Mr Campion scanned the typewritten page and his sympathy for his friend deepened.
‘Oh yes, Caesar’s wives,’ he agreed. ‘Every one of ’em. Servants been in the families for years, I suppose?’
‘Unto the third and fourth generations,’ said the chief bitterly.
His visitor considered the situation.
‘I suppose they’ve got alibis fixed up for the nights of the crimes?’ he enquired.
‘Fixed up?’ The chief’s tone was eloquent. ‘The alibis are so good that we ought to be able to arrest ’em on suspicion alone. An alibi these days doesn’t mean anything except that the fellow knows his job. Borringer does, too, and so does his wife. We’ve had them both on the carpet for hours without getting a glimmer from them. No, it’s no use, Campion; we’ve got to spot the middleman and then the fence, and pin it on them that way. Personally, I think the woman actually passes the stuff, but we’ve had Blower on her for weeks and he swears she doesn’t speak to a soul except these superior clients of hers. Also, of course, neither of them post anything. We thought we’d got something once and got the Postal authorities to help us, but all we got for our trouble was a p.c. to a viscountess about an appointment for chiropody.’
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