Mr Campion & Others

by Margery Allingham

  Oates was watching his secretary attending to the formalities of certain official statements when the buzzer on his desk vibrated and Campion’s voice came up to him.

  ‘The address is 39 Welkin Street, Soho,’ it said, sounding thin and far-away as the instrument distorted it. ‘Pleyel recognises my description. The name is Marcel Lautrec. Do you know him? He’s been out of jail for about three months and was last seen with Lefty Rowe and a fellow called Patsy Carver.’

  ‘I know Rowe and Carver.’ The Superintendent’s tone was grim. ‘What’s this 39 Welkin Street?’

  ‘Pleyel says it’s a cheap eating-house with lodgings above. Carver’s wife runs it and Rowe has been staying there. I think we ought to hurry.’

  The policeman’s grey face grew hard and his eyes were no longer kindly.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, and added with a sudden burst of exasperation, ‘what a nerve, Campion! What a thundering nerve!’

  The raid on 39 Welkin Street made Soho history, and that is no easy thing to do. The dark, shabby thoroughfare with its rows of dingy shops and sooty upstairs windows is not a favourite place for the patrolling policeman at any time, but in the evening, when the street lamps are yellow in the blue twilight, it is sometimes avoided by him altogether, and the inhabitants have come to regard it as a stronghold where any inquisitiveness is met with swift discouragement.

  Two police cars swept down the narrow road and stopped with beautiful precision directly outside the entrance to the café with the steamy window and the cracked glass door.

  At the same moment a third car halted in Fern Mews, that unattractive little cul-de-sac which runs along behind the houses in Welkin Street, and from all three vehicles there stepped a number of heavily built men, all distinguished by the same peculiarly purposeful manner.

  Oates took the lead, with Campion close behind him, and it was he who first strode down the narrow aisle between the tables to the curtained doorway behind the counter where the coffee urn boiled.

  The rustle which heralded their appearance turned into complete silence as their escort tramped in behind them, and the company in the little dining alcoves studied their plates or their papers with the complete absorption of those who have decided to withdraw in the spirit if not in the flesh.

  It was the woman who gave the alarm. She confronted them in the narrow staircase, her untidy black-gowned body completely blocking the way.

  ‘Now then, Missus –’ Oates got no further. She screamed and screamed, standing there with her head thrown back and her eyes closed. The noise was deafening. But behind it there were other sounds, swift, furtive movements on the floor above.

  Campion bent his head and ducked under her arm. She hit out at him, but the blow was trifling, and her screams redoubled as a vast plain-clothes man gathered her up and carried her, kicking, into the kitchen.

  Meanwhile Oates and Campion had reached the landing, which was in darkness. There they were met by an odour strange in that house. It swept down upon them from the floor above, the clean, and in the circumstances highly suspicious, odour of fresh air.

  ‘The roof!’ shouted Campion and sped on.

  They caught Lefty Rowe half in and half out of the skylight. Carver was brought in much later after a wearisome chase round the chimney-pots. But it was not in these old acquaintances that Oates and his companion were most interested. There were two locked rooms on the top floor of that ill-ventilated house, each of which contained a bed, and on each bed lay a man who was approximately five feet seven inches in height, fattish, grey-haired, and French.

  There the likeness ended abruptly, for doubles are not easy to find, and although Messrs Rowe and Carver had been clever, they had not been very lucky.

  Marcel Lautrec gave himself up with the resignation of a man who has already spent the best part of his life in jail and sees no other prospect for the future. Nothing, however, prevented him from grumbling.

  ‘It’s my arm,’ he said bitterly, regarding his stiff sleeve. ‘I haven’t got a chance. That’s what happens to a man who loses his arm defending his fatherland.’

  ‘In a street fight in Amiens in 1926,’ interrupted a stolid plain-clothes man, who made no other observation throughout the entire proceedings.

  Lautrec shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘What does it matter?’ he said. ‘It’s my arm that betrays me every time. If I had had both my arms should I have been locked up here?’

  Oates’s grin was sardonic.

  ‘Since you’ve raised the subject,’ he said, ‘let me tell you something. You were locked up by your pals because you double-crossed them. They trusted you to do a job and you let them down. Once you’d got your hands on those rubies you weren’t sharing them, were you?’

  Lautrec’s small eyes widened in sudden terror and he began to swear violently in a mixture of Gallic and honest Anglo-Saxon, giving as varied a performance as anyone present had ever heard, which was no mean feat.

  Oates let him run on for a while.

  ‘That’ll do,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t exhaust yourself. You’ve convinced me. Where are the stones? Tucked away in a railway cloakroom? Give the ticket to the boys. Take him along,’ he added over his shoulder, and went into the other room where Campion was bending over the second plump Frenchman, who lay so silent upon the bed.

  Campion straightened himself as Oates appeared.

  ‘He’ll do, I think,’ he said. ‘He’s pretty tough, thank God. His pulse is fairly normal. I think they’ve kept him under with one of the barbituric group. When the doctor comes we’ll get him back to the hotel.’

  The Superintendent stood looking down at the elderly man who was only so very superficially like Marcel Lautrec. His expression was faintly bewildered.

  ‘It’s the infernal impudence,’ he said. ‘That’s what startles me every time, old as I am. Who do these darned crooks think they are? They might have got away with it, you know; that’s the exasperating thing.’

  ‘That’s the terrifying thing, old boy,’ observed Campion soberly, and for once Oates did not correct him.

  It was after midnight when the two of them finally left the Hotel Balsamic. The Superintendent was in cheerful mood. He was so clearly determined to talk that Campion did not attempt to dissuade him and suggested that they should go back to his own Piccadilly flat for a drink. Oates agreed with alacrity, and a few minutes later settled himself by the open window looking down on to the traffic and raised his glass to his host.

  ‘We deserve it,’ he said magnificently. ‘I don’t want to take all the credit. You were very useful. That was quite a touching little scene between father and daughter at the hotel tonight, wasn’t it? The old man’s delighted with her, and well he might be. If it hadn’t been for her he’d have stayed in that Welkin Street hovel until Rowe and Carver had bullied Lautrec into a sense of the realities of life.’

  ‘He did double-cross them, did he?’

  ‘He tried to.’ Oates laughed. ‘They were far too experienced to fall for that sort of game. Lautrec’s a mug. Still, he did us a good turn. He held ’em up by playing the fool. Otherwise the stones would be out of the country by this time. As it is, we’ll get ’em.’

  Campion lay back in his chair.

  ‘It was an ingenious swindle,’ he remarked. ‘Who is the brain there?’

  ‘Rowe. He’s an old con. man and he always fails by falling back on force when cornered. He’s behind the whole thing. He found out that Gerard was coming to London and that no one at Bergère’s knew him personally. There’s a leakage in Gerard’s secretarial staff somewhere, if you ask me. Anyway, Rowe bought that information from someone. He picked up the Frenchman on the train from Paris, boarded the boat with him, and located his cabin. The rest was elementary. Gerard is notoriously a bad sailor, it appears. Rowe went in to help the old man, who was seasick, and mixed him up a dose which made him dopy.

  ‘When they arrived at Southampton the kindly Mr Rowe helped his new friend throu
gh the Customs, and, since he was so ill, gallantly offered to drive him to an hotel. Gerard was taken off his guard and accepted the offer. Meanwhile, Carver was waiting with the car, by arrangement. They put Gerard in the back, where he collapsed, and Rowe got in beside him, ready to give him another shot if he recovered too soon.

  ‘All this was at six o’clock in the morning, mind you, so there was no one much about to get inquisitive. Instead of going to a Southampton hotel Carver drove to London, and when Gerard recovered consciousness he was where we found him.’

  He drew a deep breath and raised his glass again.

  ‘There you are,’ he said; ‘it was impudence, sheer impudence. Gerard’s reputation and temperament made the whole thing possible. He travelled alone, he wasn’t known, he was doing the unusual thing.’

  Campion nodded. ‘It was neat,’ he admitted. ‘Lautrec was waiting for them in London, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh yes. Rowe got hold of him some weeks ago. He had to use a Frenchman, you see, and someone who would conform at least to a verbal description of Gerard. Lautrec was ideal, save for his arm. His artificial arm is dangerous, but he’s used to concealing it, so they took the risk. Having deposited Rowe and Gerard at Welkin Street, Carver drove to Victoria and carried Gerard’s two suitcases and all his papers on to the station, where Lautrec was waiting for them. Once Lautrec had all the necessary information, hotel reservations and everything, he took a cab to the Balsamic. He had to do that, you see, in case Bergère’s phoned through and found Gerard had not arrived. He signed the register, making such a clumsy attempt at Gerard’s signature that the innocent Mademoiselle thought her father might have been ill when he wrote it. After that he went upstairs, where he left his cases and his travelling gloves, which he had worn for the benefit of the hotel folk. Then he walked out of the building, to hang about until he thought Bergère’s were ready to receive him.’

  ‘Neat,’ said Campion again. ‘It’s a serious thought Oates, but it ought to have come off. Lautrec’s arm let them down.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ agreed the Superintendent dubiously and then, since his host was uncommunicative, added with sudden bluntness, ‘how do you make that out?’

  Campion thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and brought out a pair of crumpled grey cotton gloves. Oates waved them aside.

  ‘You showed me those before,’ he said, ‘I don’t want a lecture. I want to know how you got on to Lautrec. And, what’s more,’ he added complacently, ‘I’m sitting here in this chair drinking your whisky until I do know.’

  Campion took off his spectacles.

  ‘It seemed so obvious to me,’ he said apologetically. ‘The kidnapping and impersonation notion flickered into my head as soon as I found that Gerard had neither bathed nor changed his linen after his journey. With that in mind I looked at the gloves and saw that while the right-hand one was fairly dirty, the left, although it was crumpled and had been worn, was perfectly clean. No ordinary man travels from Paris to London and arrives with one dirty hand and one clean one. There had to be a special reason for it. The obvious explanation was that the man, whoever he was, didn’t use his left hand, presumably because it wasn’t usable. In your office Madeleine Gerard told me that her father was a violinist. That settled it that the gloves were not his. You can do a lot of things with one hand, my good Oates, but playing the violin isn’t one of them. Therefore I took it that the gloves belonged to the impersonator. It was blindingly clear, I thought.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oates again. ‘But even old Pleyel couldn’t pick out the right man when all he had to go upon was an artificial arm.’

  Campion sighed. ‘That wasn’t all,’ he protested mildly. ‘Madeleine had described the real M. Gerard, superficially I admit, but at least she gave us the general impression of the man. Richard Kenway read her description and found that it tallied with his impression of his visitor, yet he, mark you, had only seen the impersonator. I went to Pleyel and asked him if he knew of any confidence man who was (a) French, (b) fifty to sixty years old, (c) plumpish and (d) one-armed. He supplied Lautrec’s name at once and the current intelligence files gave us the rest.’

  Oates laughed. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Funny how I missed that. Well, I think that we can congratulate ourselves, don’t you?’

  Campion did not answer. He did not seem to have heard. There was a scandalised expression in his eyes.

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘this is frightful! Oates, I’ve forgotten Felicity. I left her in your office.’

  ‘The little blonde?’ Oates was mildly interested. ‘She’s all right. I sent her home with a sergeant from the College. Ring her up in the morning.’

  Campion took his advice, but Felicity was out. His afternoon call was more successful.

  ‘My dear, don’t be silly.’ She sounded jubilant as she waived aside his apologies. ‘It was thrilling. I loved it, every minute of it. You’re going to get deluged with praise and bouquets from the Gerards. I’m going to be a bridesmaid.’

  ‘Are you, indeed? The lunch was not so horrific after all, was it?’

  ‘The lunch was a success,’ said Felicity. ‘Got any more rules for me?’

  Campion grinned. ‘Only one,’ he said, ‘and I’m afraid it’s one for me. When you invite a young woman to spend the afternoon inspecting a gallery of modern art with you, don’t get her taken home by a policeman.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ protested Felicity. ‘She liked it.’

  ‘That’s the catch,’ said Mr Campion.

  8

  The Longer View

  ON THE DAY that the entrancing Beatrix Lea married her famous leading man, Mr Albert Campion took Mr Lance Feering to re-visit the happy scenes of Mr Feering’s youth.

  The expedition was purely remedial. Throughout their long luncheon Lance had remained mildly depressed. After all, as he said, a broken heart takes at least twenty-four hours in which to mend without a seam and, while he was perfectly prepared to believe that life with a young woman of Miss Lea’s uncontrolled and vituperative tongue might drive a man to suicide, he yet needed a day or two to get used to his merciful deliverance.

  Campion, who had known Lance long before he had become one of the leading designers of stage décor in Europe, was ready to agree, but it occurred to him that a little gentle exercise, judiciously coupled with a rival sentimental regret, might possibly speed up the recovery.

  He was rewarded. As they turned into the web of little streets which floats out like a dusty cap round the neck of the Museum, Lance began to brighten visibly.

  ‘I used to live round here once,’ he remarked casually. ‘Four of us existed in a hovel on the top floor of a house in Duke’s Row. We were all under twenty. Berry was there, and Jorkins, and old Salmon, the poster chap. We were all broke and completely happy. We used to slave away like lunatics, all striving and dreaming of the glorious future when our respective geniuses would be recognised, and we should be rich and eat three times a day. It’s tragic, you know, Campion. Look at us now. All recognised, all successful, and all damned miserable. We’ve got the apple off the top of the tree and the cursed thing’s sour.’

  Campion experienced a sensation of relief. The man was becoming recognisable. Once Lance got going on his time-honoured ‘futility of endeavour’ the next stage, ‘self-expression, the comforter’, was close at hand, and after that it was but a step to that mood of light-hearted good temper laced with high excitement which was his normal state.

  ‘What we all miss now is adventure,’ Lance continued, absent-mindedly crossing the road to reach a familiar turning. ‘When we lived down here it was an adventure to be alive at all. Here we are. That’s the place. Wonderful architecture. Look at that porch and those windows. Look at them!’

  Campion surveyed the row of dusty houses, but even the rose-coloured spectacles of Lance Feering’s reawakening enthusiasm could not restore Duke’s Row to any sort of splendour. The backwater was forlorn and shabby. Fine doors hung open under the ragged elegance of graceful
porches, betraying glimpses of bare and dirty communal hallways within. It was a sad street of decayed mansions, whose rooms were now let out unfurnished at a few shillings a week. Lance strolled down the road.

  ‘I haven’t been here for ten years,’ he said regretfully. ‘All the old crowd must have gone, of course. No one stayed here long. It was a sort of half-way house. If you lived here you were either going up or coming down. I wonder who’s got our old hovel now?’

  He had paused before an open doorway as he spoke and, after a moment’s contemplation, suddenly dived through it and hurried up the fine but unsteady flight of wooden stairs inside. Campion followed dubiously, catching up with him just as he was shamelessly engaged in trying the handle of the door on the top landing.

  ‘I say, is this wise?’ Campion put out a restraining hand, but the door swung open and Feering grinned.

  ‘Empty, by George!’ he said delightedly. ‘This is an omen, Campion. Who knows, it may be the will of Providence that we take this place, and, turning our backs resolutely on the fleshpots, settle down to adventure and art for art’s sake.’

  Campion remained polite but unimpressed. The crumbling attic with the discoloured walls, the wobbling floorboards, and the one dusty window did not attract him. But Feering was his old volatile self again.

  ‘It’s a hole, Campion, I admit,’ he said. ‘It’s a dirty little hole, twice as dark and half the size I thought it was. Yet we all worked in here and slept in this bedroom. Lord, look at it! It’s a cupboard. Salmon, Berry, and I shared this.’

  He had thrown open an inner door and they stepped gingerly into a tiny room in which there was nothing but a broken chair, a cup without a handle, and a portrait of a film star torn from one of the weekly illustrated magazines. Feering’s enthusiasm sagged before this scene of desolation.