‘I did have a word or two with Great Aunt Charlotte,’ he admitted cautiously, ‘but I’m afraid she still clings to the idea that this is the place to operate from.’
The unhappy figure at the top of the stairs groaned.
‘It’s this infernal head of mine, you know,’ he complained wretchedly, ‘as I made it quite clear to everybody at the time. I knew the drive down here in that draughty old car of Mother’s would give me neuralgia, and so it has. I’ve been lying on my bed, and I don’t mind telling you it’s as hard as a board and probably damp. Still, you can’t expect any sympathy for that. That’s Mother all over. If she’d made up her mind to stay in a mission hut at the South Pole there we’d all remain if I’d got pneumonia and you were crippled with rheumatism.’
‘Well, come down into the bar,’ said Campion, softening, against his better judgement, for Second Cousin Monmouth was not a beautiful personality with whom to drink. ‘It must open eventually. All these things happen in time.’
‘That’s an idea.’ The old man brightened visibly through the swathing folds of his scarf, but he changed his mind again almost immediately. ‘Better not,’ he said regretfully. ‘This head of mine is playing me up, don’t you know. Besides, if Mother gets it into her mind that I’ve been drinking there’ll be the devil to pay. I don’t suppose she’ll keep such a tight rein on you, my boy, but I should certainly look out. She’s a very determined woman.’
He spoke wistfully and shuffled back towards his room, leaving Campion ashamed for his Great Aunt.
‘The whole thing is pure tommy rot, anyway. You realise that, don’t you? That at least is obvious. I saw that before we left home.’
Second Cousin Monmouth put his head out of the door to fire the Parthian shot.
‘It’s probably some sort of joke,’ he shouted. ‘As I tell Mother, people do play jokes.’
‘Not on me!’ The retort, coming unexpectedly as it did from the door between them, silenced the older man, who disappeared like a shadow, into his room, and stopped Campion in his tracks.
Lady Charlotte Lawn came out on to the little landing and caught him before he could escape.
‘Well, Albert,’ she said briskly, ‘have you made those inquiries?’
‘Not yet, Aunt. I –’
‘Good heavens, boy, don’t talk to me from the bottom of the stairs as if I were a builder’s labourer on a ladder. Come up here at once.’
Campion pocketed most of his thirty-eight years and went up meekly. He offered the old lady his arm and conducted her back to the sitting-room which she had just commandeered from a reluctant management.
As usual, he found her terrifying. She was small and wiry, with a sharp nose and eyes like a bird’s. He knew for a fact that she must be almost eighty, although there was no indication from her manner or appearance that she was within twenty years of that age.
‘I’ve sent Dorothy down to the kitchen,’ she said briskly. ‘We shall have to eat here and probably spend the night, and I do like to know that my food is prepared in clean cooking utensils. I’ve told her to look at everything.’
‘That should make us all very popular,’ murmured Campion affably.
‘Not at all.’ Great Aunt Charlotte picked him up immediately. ‘Dorothy has been in my service for over forty years and during that time she has acquired some of my tact. We very seldom give offence. Now then, how far have you got on? Have you discovered the house?’
‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t. Not yet. As a matter of fact I had hardly got downstairs from talking to you before.’
‘That comes of gossiping with poor Monmouth,’ said the old lady frankly. ‘You young men will waste time. I’ve noticed it over and over again. From the moment you open your eyes in the morning to the instant you close them at night you dawdle and idle through life like children unless someone comes running behind you the whole time. Of course with poor Monmouth laziness is a disease. You’ve only got to think of his attitude towards this extraordinary business to see that. He thinks it may be a joke. He’d rather be burnt in his bed than stir himself for an instant.’
‘Burnt in his bed?’ said Campion, taken off his guard.
‘Well, why not?’ Great Aunt Charlotte’s stare did not flicker. ‘A serious burglary may easily lead to a fire. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that. They tell me you’re very good at finding out things, but upon my word I can’t say I’m very impressed by your performance so far. You arrived at my house at ten o’clock last night but only after I had sent you five telegrams in succession. I’ve spent most of the night explaining the extraordinary thing that has happened, and then, early this morning, we motored a hundred and forty miles over here and what have you found out? Precisely nothing.’
Campion felt himself wince.
‘I’ve been thinking, though,’ he said sternly, ‘and quite frankly, Aunt, if I didn’t know you I should certainly begin to wonder what you were playing at.’
‘Perhaps you would care to explain just exactly what you mean by that?’
Campion was not intimidated. It had been a long and tiring morning and his patience was not inexhaustible.
‘Nothing was stolen, you see,’ he said. ‘That’s always fishy. I am making no vulgar accusations at the moment, but believe me the police always look with deep distrust at the householder whose premises are burgled but not robbed.’
Great Aunt Charlotte smiled.
‘Naturally,’ she said placidly. ‘That was why I didn’t send for the police. That was why I sent for you. Now would you like me to go all over it again?’
‘No,’ said Campion hastily. ‘No, darling, I think I’ve got it all as clear as it’ll ever be. Let me see, you returned yesterday after being away for a fortnight –’
‘Yes. At Tunbridge Wells. Dorothy has been with me, and Monmouth spent the last week there, coming on from his sister’s place in Bedfordshire.’
Once Great Aunt Charlotte was started there was no stopping her. As in certain old musical boxes her tunes always had to be heard to the end.
‘I let my other two maids, Phyllis and Betty, go home on board wages,’ she said. ‘We locked the house, and the gardeners, of course, are not in the grounds after five at night.’
Campion nodded. ‘It’s an old house,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Very easy to burgle.’
‘Waverley is a remarkable house,’ said the old lady. ‘Some of the beams in it must be nearly six hundred years old. That was one of the reasons why I bought it. I remember Monmouth was almost excited by it when we first discovered it over twelve years ago. Still, it’s no use talking about its age. That’s not the point. The fact remains that as soon as I went into the drawing-room last night I knew at once that it had been used while I was away.’
She paused, as she always did at this part of her story, for dramatic effect, but Campion was no longer the perfect audience.
‘That’s all very well, darling,’ he said, ‘but you know it is possible to imagine a thing like that very easily.’
‘Not about my drawing-room.’ The old lady was decided. ‘You see, no one is allowed in it but me. Even Dorothy never dares to clean it unless I’m there. I keep my Spode there and my father’s decorations. It’s a most sacred room. Of course I could tell if it had been used.’
‘You’re sure it had?’
‘Absolutely certain.’ Lady Charlotte Lawn shut her mouth as if it had possessed a zip-fastener, and a brief silence ensued. ‘There was the mark of a glass on my walnut lowboy,’ she said at last, her voice dropping at the enormity of the crime. ‘An odious white ring; I saw it at once. Then there was the cigarette ash in the coal scuttle and of course the notepaper – surely you’re not going to ignore the notepaper?’
Campion hesitated. Yes, of course, she was right. There was the notepaper. The notepaper was the mystery, and even now, at high noon, with an exasperating morning behind him and an impossible evening ahead, he was forced to admit that the notepaper and its unexplained presence
in Great Aunt Charlotte’s walnut escritoire was still mysterious.
He took out his pocket-book and extracted from it the half-dozen sheets of pale blue bond which he had carried away from the Waverley drawing-room. He looked again at the embossed address which had brought Aunt Charlotte herself steaming out of Kent into Sussex with her son and her grand-nephew in tow. There it was, clear and bald and ugly in semi-Old English script.
Grey Peacocks
Little Chittering
near Horsham
Sussex.
‘Burglary or not,’ said Great Aunt Charlotte, ‘someone sat down at my writing-desk and wrote a note there on his or her own notepaper. I want to meet the person who did that. Here we all are at the place. It should be very simple for you to find the house.’
The thin man glanced across the room at her and his wide mouth twisted helplessly as he laughed.
‘Well, the Post Office hasn’t heard of such a house,’ he said regretfully. ‘The postmistress says she’s been here fifteen years and has never heard of any Peacock, let alone a grey one.’
‘Then we’ve come to the wrong village.’
‘Well, I thought that myself at first, naturally, but I’m afraid we’ve drawn a blank there too. There is only one Little Chittering in Sussex and this is it.’ He hesitated. ‘You see, Aunt,’ he went on at last, ‘I do hope you’ll forgive me for saying so, but the entire thing is absolutely nuts. The more I think of it the more inclined I am to agree with Monmouth, that it’s some sort of misguided effort at the humorous. Don’t stationers sometimes send round samples of notepaper stamped with fictitious addresses?’
‘They may, young man, but not by the half-dozen quires.’ Aunt Charlotte was not troubling to conceal her contempt. ‘That notepaper was put in my writing-table by someone who intended to write letters there. I’ve got the evidence of my own eyes. If this village is Little Chittering, Sussex, then you can depend upon it that a house called Grey Peacocks is somewhere near at hand. Go and find it. And when you have done so come back in the car and drive me over to make a call on the owners, for I have something to say to them. I know exactly what I want to do, and I do not intend to leave this place until I have done it.’
She dismissed him with a bright little nod and he went downstairs again, irritated by a problem which he felt must obviously have some very simple explanation but which was as yet entirely beyond him.
He found the bar open at last, and stood leaning on the scored oak, looking into his glass with a gloomy and introspective eye. It did not make sense. The picture of any sane criminal breaking into an unoccupied house for the sole purpose of leaving a stack of falsely stamped notepaper in the drawing-room writing-table did not appeal to him as in any way convincing.
The landlord of the Lion was sympathetic, but neither he nor his wife was helpful. They had only been in the place fifteen years, they said apologetically, but in all their time there had been no house called Grey Peacocks in Little Chittering or in any other village nearby.
Regretfully Campion gave it up. He was just formulating an elaborate plan to get Aunt Charlotte temporarily interested in something else while he made a dignified escape back to town when something happened.
First there was the sound of a car braking sharply on the dusty road outside, and then one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen in a long and by no means misspent youth put her head round the door of the bar and said distinctly:
‘Excuse me, but could anyone direct me to Grey Peacocks?’
Instantly there was one of those long silences which inevitably follow a direct question delivered to a room full of acquaintances. Campion felt his scalp rising, and he shot a suspicious glance at his glass before looking at the girl again. She was still there, however, and, meeting his eye, repeated the house name obligingly.
‘Grey Peacocks.’
No one answered her immediately. There was a general exchange of blank glances and several breathy denials, and then somebody cackled behind the window curtain.
The entire company appeared to resent this insult to so attractive a stranger, and a red-faced old man in a dilapidated bowler and collarless pink shirt was hustled out of his shelter there without ceremony.
‘Come on, come on, Mr Richart.’ The landlord was gently reproving. ‘Say what you’ve got to say. Do you know where the house is?’
Mr Richart began to laugh again. He had a face like something seen among the embers of a dying wood fire. A fluffy ash-grey beard and moustache flowed from his flaming cheeks.
‘Don’t act silly,’ said a dour man beside him. ‘Tell the lady if you know, and if you don’t, stop making a fool of yourself.’
Mr Richart’s grin died in anger, and he turned on the girl and directed her in a high-pitched sing-song which sounded frankly vindictive.
‘Half a mile down the road you come to a pair o’ white gates. Don’t goo in they but keep straight on till you come to a mill. Branch off by the side o’ that, goo through the woods, and you’ll come to some owd stone pillars. Goo between they and very likely you’ll come to Grey Peacocks. That’s where that stood when I were last in they gates.’
‘Oh, thank you so much. I’m so sorry to have troubled you.’ The girl flashed a set of glistening teeth at him and was gone, leaving a general sense of gratified chivalry behind her.
Old Mr Richart scrambled into the window again.
‘Piled high wi’ luggage,’ he gloated deliriously. ‘A great Lunnon car piled high wi’ luggage.’ The sight seemed to be too much for him altogether, for he lay back on the settle and laughed until he choked and had to be thumped on the back.
‘Seems to have been took funny,’ remarked the landlord to Campion as he let himself out from behind the bar. ‘Wasn’t that the house you wanted, sir? Here, Mr Richart, I you don’t want to carry on like that. You’ll give yourself veins. Come and talk to the gentleman. He’s looking for that house you was telling the lady about.’
This last intelligence proved too much for Mr Richart altogether. He lay panting against the bar with streaming eyes and a mouth like the mask of comedy, emitting faint high-pitched crows of laughter. However, he recovered himself when the landlord got angry, and finally agreed to drive down to the address with Campion to show him the way.
He turned out to be a very silent passenger who was either deaf or contemptuous towards his host’s efforts at conversation. He sat bolt upright in the front of the car, his face glowing and imperturbable, yet every now and again his whole body shook with some deep inward convulsion.
Campion drove quietly, hoping to see the joke.
They passed the white gates and turned by the mill, found the wood and drove for some time through a tunnel of trees until, at a croak from his companion, Campion pulled up before a dark gap in the greenery where two ancient stone posts could just be seen among the tall grasses.
‘Here?’ inquired Campion dubiously.
‘Ah,’ said Mr Richart, his voice shaking with suppressed excitement. ‘This is Grey Peacocks. Scratch away the moss on they stones and you’ll see the pictures of the birds theirselves. Goo on, turn into drive.’
Campion was edging the car slowly round the gatepost when the other car met him as it swooped out and they pulled up with a flurry of brakes, and the bonnets not two inches apart. Peering through his own windscreen, Campion saw a yellow-haired fury backed by a pile of luggage which rose in tiers behind her. She was white with indignation, and her large dark eyes were smouldering wickedly. She backed her overladen car with spiteful deliberation and came slowly alongside until she was level with Campion.
‘I suppose you think you’re terribly funny?’ she said savagely, clipping the words so that they came out packed with venom. ‘Let me tell you I think you’re frankly disgusting and I hope you fall in and k-k-kill yourselves.’
The final quiver in her voice betrayed her, and at Campion’s side Mr Richart let out a whoop of triumph. The girl flushed, included them both in a single glance of witheri
ng hatred, and then, letting in the clutch, swung round Campion’s car at suicidal speed and disappeared back down the tree tunnel in a shower of dust and small stones.
Campion glanced after her with genuine regret. He didn’t know when he had made such a bad impression on a woman at first bow. He turned to Mr Richart.
‘What’s the joke?’ he demanded.
The old man roused himself with an effort from dazed delight and glowed at the prospect of further delectation.
‘Drive on,’ he commanded. ‘Drive on.’
Campion steered his big car down a narrow overgrown chase where briars and laurels almost met across the mossy gravel. It was so overgrown that the midday light was pale green and uncertain. With Mr Richart palpitating at his side a sense of deep misgiving seized Campion.
‘Don’t you think you’d better explain?’ he said ominously.
‘No,’ gasped his passenger, writhing with anticipation. ‘Drive on.’
Campion did not reply. The chase turned abruptly, and he was some seconds negotiating a fallen branch which lay in his path. An instant later he trod sharply on the brakes and brought the great car up on her haunches.
Before them, lying at the end of the drive, in the place where a house might ordinarily be expected to stand, was a large rectangular hole, partly full of water and depressingly overgrown.
Campion looked coldly at Mr Richart, who, now that the cream of the jest was presented to him at last, had scarcely any stomach left for it, but who sat forward, his eyes glazed, a slightly sick expression overlaying his joy.
‘Is this Grey Peacocks?’ inquired Campion.
‘This is where it were,’ said Mr Richart. ‘Noo it’s gorn.’
‘So I see. When did that happen?’
‘When I were a youngish man. He sold that, the old owner did, to some American, and they pulled it down. ’Twere nothing but an old ruin when they bought it. That’s twenty-five years ago, I should think.’
Mr Campion & Others Page 20