Death of a Ghost

by Margery Allingham

  He made mental notes. Bernard, Bishop of Mold, too! And was that the woman who was playing at Daly’s? And there by a stroke of luck was Sir Jocelyn!

  Mr Wolfgang became thoughtful. Sir Jocelyn was on the verge of an appointment to the Household. Unless Mr Wolfgang was mistaken, Sir Jocelyn had worked for some years to attain this honour. It was a tricky business, this appointment. Sir Jocelyn might, very naturally, be anxious to avoid any sort of publicity, much less any which linked his name, however remotely, to something unpleasant. Perhaps the wealthy and ambitious knight would be interested in the suppression of his name from Mr Wolfgang’s snappy little paragraphs?

  The cherubic little blackguard sidled towards his victim.

  Standing alone, his hands behind his back, his feet slightly apart for the more comfortable balancing of his paunch, the man who had bought the picture regarded his purchase gloomily. Would this confounded business have any effect upon the value of the thing? Why didn’t the police come, anyway? It was disgusting: a wealthy man, an important man kept hanging about like this because of a confounded trouble with which he had obviously nothing to do.

  Mr Campion came in so unobtrusively that his reappearance was not noticed, and he spoke to Belle for some moments unobserved.

  ‘I’ve been on to Inspector Oates of Scotland Yard,’ he murmured. ‘It’s quite all right. He says he’s coming round right away, but that meanwhile there’s no point in keeping this crowd here. After all, everybody came by invitation, and anyone who was particularly anxious to escape after – well – after the lights were turned on again could easily have done so. I saw twenty or thirty people go myself.’

  He did not look at her as he spoke. He could not bring himself to face her warm brown eyes swimming in tears.

  She took his arm and drew herself up.

  ‘I’ll tell them,’ she said.

  She moved over towards the door, a solitary figure, very brave and very lonely, standing beneath the portrait of her smiling husband.

  Gradually the whispered talk died away, and all eyes were turned to her enquiringly. She opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her, and, stepping to the door, she pulled it open and stood clinging to the handle, waiting.

  The steady stream began again, moving a little more quickly than before.

  The old woman stood erect, shaking hands mechanically, smiling wanly at the murmured words of commiseration and regret, looking exactly what she was, a very gallant old lady.

  Mr Campion conquered his impulse to remain by her side. There were other things to be done. He disappeared through the door under the balcony, slipped out into the garden by the back way, and by entering the kitchen door in the basement escaped collision with the departing guests.

  He guessed there must be a back staircase, and he found it, and reached the landing outside Linda’s studio without encountering a soul. He stood listening outside the door. Everything within was silent.

  Campion was no fool. Linda had been in an unbalanced nervous condition that afternoon, and he had no illusions concerning her probable state of mind at the present moment. He went in prepared to meet a lunatic.

  He knocked, and, receiving no response, opened the door quietly and stepped into the darkness.

  ‘Linda,’ he said softly.

  There was no reply and he felt round the door for the switch. As the room leapt into sight he realized that, save for himself, it was empty.

  He was just going out again when a door on the other side of the room opened and the girl came out. She was still pale, but seemed remarkably composed. She laid a finger on her lips when she saw him.

  ‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘Rosa-Rosa’s here in my room, asleep. I’ve given her an enormous bromide. She won’t wake for a long time.’

  Mr Campion was prepared for the worst and her words sent a thrill of horror down his spine.

  ‘Good God, Linda! What have you done?’

  The words were forced from him, and he shot past the girl into the little bedroom beyond.

  Rosa-Rosa, her face red and swollen with tears, lay on the bed sleeping naturally enough. Campion went over to her, scrutinized her face, and touched her wrist as it lay upon the coverlet. When finally he straightened himself and turned, Linda was standing in the doorway regarding him, a puzzled expression gradually deepening to horror in her eyes.

  When he went out into the little studio she followed him, and touched his arm.

  ‘What did you mean?’ she demanded breathlessly.

  Campion looked down at her, and his pale eyes behind his spectacles were troubled.

  ‘What did you mean?’ the girl insisted.

  He passed his hand over his forehead. ‘I don’t know what I thought, Linda.’

  She caught hold of the cupboard door to steady herself.

  ‘Albert,’ she said, ‘you don’t think that I killed Tommy, do you?’

  When he did not answer she drew back from him, her eyes starting with terror.

  ‘Albert, you don’t think I’m insane!’

  When he remained silent, she put her hand up to her mouth as though to stifle a cry.

  ‘What shall I do?’ she said huskily. ‘What shall I do?’

  She suddenly stepped forward and caught him by the shoulders.

  ‘I loved Tommy – at least I suppose I did. And I was angry with him. But not as angry as that – not mad. I’d moved away from him when the lights went out. I was at the other end of the table. I heard someone moving in the darkness and I heard him go down, though I didn’t realize what had happened then, of course. Oh, Albert, you do believe me, don’t you? You do – you do believe me?’

  Campion looked down at her. The world was reeling. This was the last development he had expected, the last eventuality for which he had been prepared. He looked down into her face, saw the agonized appeal in her eyes, and spoke truthfully.

  ‘I do, old dear,’ he said. ‘Heaven help me, I do.’

  CHAPTER 5

  The Facts

  –

  INSPECTOR OATES, sitting in the library at Little Venice, a pad of scribbling paper in front of him, bore a gloomy expression upon his cold, rather weary face. He had spent a trying three hours. There may be Scotland Yard detectives who enjoy wringing secrets from unwilling witnesses and placing their fingers unerringly upon the most likely suspect late on a Sunday evening, but Stanislaus Oates was not among them. He had found the whole business very tedious, very distressing, and probably auguring a lot of trouble.

  His last witness was now on his way from the drawing room, where the family had assembled, and Mr Oates was quite anxious to see him, so that when the door opened and a uniformed constable put his head in to say that Mr Campion was outside he pushed the pad away from him and looked up with interest.

  Albert Campion wandered into the room looking his usual vacant, affable self. If there was a hint of anxiety in his eyes it was hidden by the spectacles.

  The Inspector regarded him solemnly, and Campion was reminded of very much the same scene in a headmaster’s study many years before. There had been the same feeling of apprehension, the same air of calamity, although fortunately the issues at stake had not been nearly so grave.

  ‘Well?’ said Oates, using very much the same inflection that old ‘Buggy’ had chosen, and very nearly the same words. ‘How did you manage to get mixed up in all this? You’ve got a nose for crime. Sit down, won’t you?’

  The fact that Mr Campion and Inspector Oates were old friends never obtruded itself when there were business matters on hand.

  For the first two or three minutes the proceedings were positively formal and Campion’s alarm increased.

  ‘Oates,’ he said, ‘you’re behaving as though it was all over bar the arrest. Is it?’

  Oates shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘It seems very clear, doesn’t it? I’m afraid it’s going to be awkward for you, a friend of the family and that sort of thing. Still,’ he went on more ch
eerfully, ‘we’ve got to collect the evidence. I don’t think we’ve got anything conclusive enough for a conviction. No one saw her do it, you know.’

  Mr Campion blinked. The sudden fulfilment of a fear, however much expected, always comes as something of a shock. He leant back in his chair and regarded the Inspector gravely.

  ‘Oates,’ he said, ‘you’re on the wrong horse.’

  The Inspector looked at him incredulously.

  ‘And you’ve known me all these years,’ he said. ‘You’ve known me all these years and you make a deliberate attempt to impede me in the course of my – whatever it is.’

  ‘Duty,’ said Mr Campion helplessly. ‘No. You’ve known me long enough,’ he went on, ‘to realize, I hope, that I have no conscience in these matters at all. Conscience doesn’t come into it. If I believed that Linda Lafcadio killed her fiancé and I thought any good purpose could be served by throwing dust in your eyes I should do so if I could.’

  The Inspector grunted. ‘Well, we know where we are, don’t we?’ he said, pleasantly. ‘How did you know I’d found out that the girl did it?’

  ‘Well, it’s the easiest theory,’ said Campion. ‘Not wishing to give offence, Stanislaus. You’re always hot on the easiest scent.’

  ‘You won’t offend me,’ said the Inspector, bridling. ‘But because you’ve been lucky enough to come across a few really interesting cases you expect to have the same experience every time.’

  Something in Mr Campion’s manner had made him slightly uncomfortable, however. In the last case they had worked on together Mr Campion’s fantastic theory had been correct, and the Inspector, who was a superstitious man in spite of his calling, had begun to regard his friend as a sort of voodoo, who by his mere presence transformed the most straightforward cases into tortuous labyrinths of unexpected events.

  ‘Look here,’ he said persuasively, dropping entirely the headmaster manner, ‘a passionate, slightly unbalanced girl goes to meet her fiancé off a boat train. She finds he’s brought a beautiful young Italian home with him, and afterwards discovers that they are married. The young blackguard cheerfully proposes that they shall set up a ménage à trois, which she very properly refuses. The young man comes to a party. She happens to be standing by him, driven insane by jealousy, when the lights go out. Those damned scissors are near her hand. What a filthy weapon, Campion! Did you see ’em? They opened a bit in the heart itself. Killed him instantly, of course. Let me see, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, she was in the dark. She sees her weapon, sees her opportunity. Then she just loses her head and there you are. What could be plainer, what could be clearer than that? It’s so simple. In France, you know, she might get off. It’ll be insanity as it is, I expect.’

  Mr Campion regarded his friend steadily. ‘You know you’d never get a conviction on that,’ he said. ‘It isn’t even circumstantial. You’ve got a possible motive, but that’s all.’

  The Inspector looked at him uncomfortably. ‘I told you I didn’t think there was enough evidence,’ he said. ‘I did say that, didn’t I?’

  Mr Campion leant forward. ‘Leaving the girl out of it for the moment,’ he said, ‘what do you actually know? Have you got any finger-prints on the scissors? Could the blow have been driven home by a woman? Wasn’t it very clever of the murderer to take a single shot in the dark and drive the scissors straight into the man’s heart?’

  Stanislaus Oates rose to his feet. ‘If you’re going to set up as Counsel for the Defence –’ he began.

  ‘I should be doing you a singular service, my dear peeler. Why take an unprofitable theory to your heart just because it happens to be the first one you think of? – or you knew a case once where the same sort of thing happened? Were there any finger-prints?’

  ‘Did you see the scissors?’ countered the Inspector, and as Mr Campion nodded he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh well then, you know. Of course there weren’t. I never saw such stupid things in my life. Absolute waste of good steel.’

  Mr Campion blinked. He had heard a phrase very much like that before, and the scene when Linda and he had stood talking to Dacre and his amazing wife returned to him vividly. Just for an instant his belief in Linda wavered, but, as he recalled the episode in her little studio only a few hours before, his conviction returned.

  ‘Well, that’s disposed of,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How about the blow? Could it have been struck by a woman?’

  ‘I’ve had all that out with Sir Gordon Woodthorpe and old Benson, our man.’ The Inspector’s gloom was returning. ‘It was a most extraordinary blow, Campion. How anybody struck it in the dark I don’t know. It’s practically the only sort of knife-wound that would kill a man instantly – that is, before he had time to make any sound. It entered the body just under the point of the breast-bone and went straight up, skewering the heart completely. The scissors were broad enough and thick enough to destroy the organ at once. I don’t see how anyone could have done it intentionally. I mean, I don’t see how anyone could have been sure that it would come off just like that. Both doctors admitted they wouldn’t have been anywhere near certain of bringing it off themselves. I suppose artists know a good deal about anatomy, but even so she had diabolical luck.’

  ‘Are you sure a woman could have done it?’ ventured the younger man.

  ‘Well’ – the Inspector spread out his hands – ‘my mother couldn’t have done it, and I don’t suppose yours could. But these modern kids are as muscular as boys. The blow was a hefty one – I admit that – but it wasn’t in the kick of a horse class. And you know, Campion’ – he lowered his voice – ‘there’s insanity in the family, isn’t there?’

  ‘Insanity? Certainly not. I’ve never heard of any. You’re on the wrong tack here completely, Stanislaus.’

  The Inspector considered a moment before continuing. He sat down at the table and rubbed his moustache the wrong way, an irritating habit he possessed.

  ‘That woman who lives in the house, is she an aunt or something?’ He consulted his notes. ‘Here you are: Harriet Pickering alias Donna Beatrice. I realized she was going to keep me up half the night if I was going to get even the more ordinary facts from her, so I left it till later. Well, she’s a perfectly ordinary hysterical type, there’s no doubt about that. Very near the edge of mania, too, I should say. You must know the woman I mean – wears an acoustic device,’ he went on testily, catching sight of Campion’s blank face. ‘I couldn’t manage her, so I turned her over to the doctors. She told me a cock-and-bull story about seeing lights round my head. Seeing lights round the victim’s head. Something to do with indigo and the viler emotions. She seemed to be in fancy dress too. She may not be certifiable, but – well, she’s not quite compos mentis, poor soul. That was one of the things I wanted to ask you. Who is she? And what is she doing here?’

  Mr Campion did his best to give the Inspector a brief outline of Donna Beatrice’s career as he knew it, during which Oates’s eyes widened and his moustache seemed to be in danger of being rubbed off altogether.

  ‘Really!’ he said at last. ‘Lafcadio’s inspiration? I didn’t know he was that sort of man at all.’

  ‘He wasn’t,’ said Mr Campion. ‘I doubt if he ever treated the lady with anything but the utmost propriety.’

  ‘Oh, well, then, there’s your insanity,’ said the Inspector easily. ‘The whole household is definitely queer. There’s that cook who used to be a model, and those funny people who live in a shed in the garden. Bohemia’s one thing, but this has a respectable veneer. I think you’ll find that there’s insanity somewhere. All round, if you ask me.’

  ‘What about Mrs Lafcadio?’ Campion ventured.

  The Inspector smiled. ‘I wasn’t counting her,’ he said. ‘There’s something very attractive about the real McKie when you meet it. I told her she ought to go and lie down. It’s been a shock, I’m afraid. I want you to go and prepare her for something worse soon. I think we shall have to detain the girl.’

  ‘You’ll be making a very sill
y mistake if you do, on a par with the time when you nearly arrested Uncle William in Cambridge.’

  The Inspector was silent for a little while.

  ‘If you want to get rid of that moustache, why don’t you shave it?’ said Campion.

  The Inspector laughed and dropped his hand.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘it all falls back on routine in the end. That man Rennie seems an intelligent sort of person. I’m getting a list of the guests from him. We shall take a statement from each of them, and you never know, something may turn up. But I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it this time. The girl had the motive and she had the opportunity. I know that’s not conclusive, but it’s nine points out of the ten. Will you go to the old lady, Campion, while I see Rennie? Oh, by the way, you didn’t see anything, did you? I haven’t had a statement from you. Where were you when it happened?’

  ‘In the passage, putting a shilling in the meter.’

  ‘Of course!’ said the Inspector bitterly. ‘Probably the one trained observer in the party out of the room at the psychological moment.’

  He walked over to the door with Campion.

  ‘You see, that meter is another thing,’ he said. ‘No one could have arranged for that light to go out just then. It all points to an impulsive, insane gesture that happened to come off. You work on the line of insanity; you’ll find it there somewhere.’

  ‘If you detain that girl you’ll never prove anything against her,’ said Campion, his hand on the door-knob.

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said the Inspector. ‘Then we shan’t be able to lay our hands on her, but the whole world will know she’s guilty.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ said Mr Campion, and went out.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Gesture

  –

  MR CAMPION went slowly upstairs to the drawing-room reflecting that the situation was impossible. He dreaded the meeting with the family. Belle, he knew, looked to him for comfort, and in the circumstances he had very little to offer her.