The small front suburban room in which they talked was a reflection of Miss Cunninghame’s gentility and modestly sufficient means. Its white paint, shining brass, Morris chintz and good furniture were tasteful, old-maidish, and intensely ordinary. Only the appalling water-colours in the narrow gilt frames were individual.
Miss Cunninghame went on talking.
‘Of course,’ she said, the light of self-preservation creeping into her eyes, ‘Mrs Potter was not a friend of mine. I mean we were never intimate, we never talked. I took a few lessons from her from time to time because she seemed such a capable person, and then her background attracted me. John Lafcadio still lives in that little colony – or did,’ she added dubiously, as though even that eminent ghost would hardly survive this last upheaval.
The Inspector remained quiet and alert and Miss Cunninghame was shamed into further speech.
‘So you see,’ she finished lamely. ‘I hardly knew her. Poor soul.’
‘She didn’t confide in you?’ Oates seemed disappointed.
‘Oh, no …’ It seemed for a moment that Miss Cunninghame would leave well alone, but the Inspector’s air of expectancy had its reward. ‘I thought she seemed very odd this afternoon,’ she said suddenly. ‘But if she was going to meet her death so soon afterwards, poor creature, that’s hardly to be wondered at.’
‘Odd?’ enquired Oates, ignoring his informant’s somewhat confused deductions.
Having committed herself, Miss Cunninghame did not draw back.
‘Definitely odd,’ she declared. ‘I told her she looked ill and she was almost angry. Also she was stupid.’
The Inspector’s head straightened. It almost seemed to Campion that his ears pricked forward.
‘When you say stupid, did it seem to you that she was dazed – drugged, I mean?’
Miss Cunninghame’s eyes opened very wide.
‘Drugs?’ she said. ‘You don’t say that she …? Well, really, if I had ever guessed …’
‘Oh no, no.’ The Inspector was very patient. ‘No. I’m only trying to get at the probable cause of Mrs Potter’s death. The doctors have not yet decided the actual cause, and as you were the last person to see her alive, as far as we know, we are naturally anxious to hear how she seemed to you.’
‘I was the last person? Was I really? Oh!’ Miss Cunninghame’s momentary thrill of importance was suddenly damped by a new and disturbing thought. ‘An inquest! I shan’t be called – oh, Inspector, I shan’t be called to give evidence? I couldn’t – I didn’t know her –’
‘We’re not sure of anything yet,’ said Oates mendaciously. ‘Suppose you tell me all you can now.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Anything.’ Campion found Miss Cunninghame’s pathetic terror a little nauseating. ‘Well, she was odd. Distinctly vague. Not herself at all. I tried to get her to talk to me about the – the other trouble – crime, I mean. I was sorry for her and I thought she might be comforted.’
Miss Cunninghame glanced guiltily at the Inspector, but the omnipotent all-seeing powers with which she credited the police were not evinced, and she hurried on.
‘It was then that she seemed stupid. She heard what I said – just a few leading, quite kindly questions, but she was quite, quite blank. I left her at half past four. She didn’t come to the door. I went out alone, but she was all right because I heard the phone ring.’
The Inspector, who had relapsed into melancholy as he realized there was nothing really definite here, suddenly revived.
‘You heard her phone ring at half past four?’ he said, getting out his notebook.
At the sight of this evidence of officialdom Miss Cunninghame grew visibly flustered, but she repeated the fact slowly as though she were dictating to a spelling bee.
‘I heard her phone ring at half past four as I was going out … I also had the impression that she went to answer it,’ she went on more quickly, ‘but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t stop to listen, of course.’
‘Of course,’ agreed the Inspector.
‘But I would have done,’ said Miss Cunninghame with deliberate moral courage, ‘had I known what was going to happen.’
Oates, rather nonplussed at this announcement, paused awkwardly.
‘But there, I couldn’t know, could I?’ said Miss Cunninghame brightly. ‘I only saw she was worried. And now, Inspector, I needn’t give evidence, need I? I’m really very upset. After all, if we weren’t friends, I’ve visited her for several years, and I was only talking to her about my paintings this afternoon. Death,’ she added with the satisfaction of one who knows herself to be right, ‘is a very dreadful thing.’
‘Yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘Yes, it is.’
Mr Campion and the policeman walked back together through the dusty squares of stolid mansions now reduced to tenements which streak their dreary way from Maida Vale to Bayswater. Oates seemed anxious to talk, a most unusual circumstance, and Campion was more than ready to listen.
‘Funny type, that old woman,’ he remarked. ‘I only seem to meet ’em in murder cases. They manage to wriggle out of everything else. The world’s full of uncharitable people,’ he said irrelevantly.
‘She told us two things,’ said Campion.
Oates nodded.
‘(a) Mrs Potter was worried to the point of being uninterested in the old cat, and (b) she had a telephone call about half past four. The first may or may not mean a thing. The other we may be able to follow up, which may lead us a step further.’ He turned to Campion. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’
‘What’s funny?’
‘The whole darn thing. The two cases one after the other like this. When you phoned me this afternoon I thought we should have it straight in an hour. Homicidal mania on the girl’s part. These descendants of famous men are often a bit unbalanced. But now, d’you know, I’m not so sure.’
Campion forbore to comment and the Inspector went on, his grey face with its shrewd, kindly eyes grave and absorbed.
‘Did that woman strike you as an exaggerator or the reverse? I mean, how worried do you think Mrs Potter was?’
‘Suicide?’ enquired Campion dubiously.
‘Well, I wondered. There’s no evidence either way yet, of course. We don’t even know the cause of death. I hate theorizing. It’s always silly. Still, it’s as well to keep an open mind.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Campion, and his eyes became foolish as the idea, which had been rankling in the back of his head ever since the tragedy, stood out in all its absurdity.
‘Of course,’ muttered the Inspector, striking viciously at some railings with his folded evening paper, ‘there’s that chap Potter. It was nice of Mrs Lafcadio to take him in and pop him into bed like that. He’ll be ready to talk in the morning. We ought not to think, even, until we’ve heard what he has to say.’
‘Both Lisa and the school can’t be lying,’ said Mr Campion.
‘No,’ said Oates. ‘No, that’s right. I’m not losing sight of that. He was up to something.’ He paused and eyed his friend. ‘If that first remark of his when he came in was fake,’ he said, ‘I’ll resign.’
This promise, as it happened, was never carried out, because, of course, Mr Potter had been acting at the time, which was certainly remarkable.
The Inspector idled on.
‘That Italian woman, Lisa,’ he said. ‘A bad witness, but honest, I should say, although you can’t ever be sure. She’s probably right when she talks of poison. If the P.M. doesn’t tell us about that, though, the Home Office analyst will. Amazing chaps, Campion. They bob up in court and swear to the millionth of a grain. Often right, too.’
Campion shrugged with distaste.
‘Poison,’ he said. ‘Bad method at the best.’
‘Um,’ said the Inspector, eyeing him. ‘A knifing and maybe a poisoning. Italians about. It’s worth considering.’
‘Lisa?’ Mr Campion’s expression was of complete incredulity.
‘No, no, I’m not saying anything. I’m not eve
n thinking. I’m just letting my mind run on. I find it pays sometimes. There’s that wife of Dacre’s – an extraordinary kid. D’you know who she is?’
‘Who? Rosa-Rosa?’
‘Yes. One of the Rosinis, my boy. She’s a niece or something of old Guido himself. She’s staying at the store now in Saffron Hill. What do you know about that?’
‘I don’t see how being first cousin to a race-gang connects one with the death of a respectable lady in Bayswater,’ said Campion.
‘Nor do I,’ said the Inspector, sniffing, ‘but it’s worth bearing in mind.’
Mr Campion opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, sighed, and walked on in silence.
‘Out with it,’ said the Inspector without looking round.
Campion shook his head.
‘It’s wild,’ he said, ‘and yet –’
‘Oh, let’s have it. We’re having an orgy of idiocy, anyway. We’re here, or rather I’m here, to investigate facts, not to day-dream, yet we’ve been happily speculating for the last half-hour like a couple of amateurs. So why not go the whole hog? What’s on your mind?’
Mr Campion considered Max Fustian and the ideas which had crossed his mind concerning him.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘It’s too vague for anything. It was a sort of odour of an idea I had concerning the murder of Dacre, but it doesn’t fit in with this new affair at all.’
‘Motive,’ said Oates vehemently. ‘That’s the only way to connect these two affairs. Find the motive and you find the man … or woman.’
‘Murder and suicide then?’ suggested Campion.
Oates shrugged.
‘Maybe. I hardly think so, though. Then again, what’s the motive for the murder? I tell you what, though,’ he went on, brightening suddenly. ‘If this is a poisoning we’ll get our bird. The Dacre business was spontaneous – impulsive. Anyone could or might have done it. But this is a different caper. This, if it is murder, is premeditated and thought out. It’s not natural for there to be two killers running loose in one family at a time, therefore the odds are on it being the same person, and I don’t believe there’s a man alive able to pull off the two.’
That was the Inspector’s second mistake.
Campion said nothing and Oates strode on faster.
‘Motive,’ he repeated. ‘We’ll get at her – or him – whoever it is, that way.’
They reached the canal and turned into the Crescent. The mock stone planes of Little Venice looked sad and shabby in the lamplight. The splendours of Show Sunday had gone, leaving it melancholy. The blinds were drawn, contrary to custom, and the front door closed. The house was in trouble.
A flashy little car outside gleaming expensively enhanced the shabbiness of the house.
‘Whose?’ enquired the Inspector, nodding towards the shining toy.
‘Max Fustian’s.’ Campion’s tone was wondering.
Oates laughed shortly. ‘Come to confess again, no doubt.’
‘I … I wonder,’ said Mr Campion.
CHAPTER 15
As It Happened
–
MR CAMPION knew that Max Fustian had killed Mrs Potter as soon as he saw him that evening.
He did not arrive at this conclusion by the decent process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process half-way between the two by which one usually gets to know things.
When he saw the man standing on Belle’s hearth-rug, his swarthy face pale to blueness, his quick eyes exultant and his breath a little short, Campion regarded him and thought, ‘Well, he did it.’ And afterwards, ‘God knows why … or how.’
The other occupant of the room at the moment was Donna Beatrice. The Inspector was conferring with the harassed Doctor Fettes downstairs, while Belle was in the kitchen comforting the conscience-stricken Lisa.
The Chosen Apostle of the Higher Urge was dramatizing this new situation but half-heartedly. She sat far back in her chair, her shoulders hunched and her cold eyes stupid.
‘Claire,’ she repeated to herself. ‘Claire!’ And at intervals, ‘So practical. So utterly the last person.’
Max met Campion’s eyes and nodded to him with superb condescension.
‘How extremely lucky you were able to come to Belle’s assistance so soon, my dear Campion,’ he said.
The liquid affectation in his voice sounded a little more pronounced to the young man’s sensitive ear.
‘When I dropped in myself about an hour ago she told me you had been very kind,’ Max continued with the same new, insufferable superiority. ‘I’ve been congratulating myself that I obeyed the impulse to come on here from Seyer’s. One dare not ignore these presentiments.’
For the first time Campion noticed that Max was in gala dress. His morning clothes were miraculously cut, the broadcloth gleamed with silky elegance.
‘Seyer’s?’ he enquired.
‘Private view of the Duchess of Swayne’s pastels,’ said Max briefly. ‘Delicate, you know. Genuine feeling. Selling like hot cakes.’
Campion sat down and looked at him. For the first time in his life he felt unequal to the situation and afraid of giving himself away.
Max was more than merely confident; he was elated. Triumph and something that was surely satisfaction glowed beneath his decent veil of sympathetic grief. Campion felt at a loss.
‘He’s got away with it. He knows he’s safe’. The thought, which was no more than a nebulous irritant at first, slowly grew to a certainty in his mind.
Max went on to talk about the tragedy.
‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘Terrible. One of the most useful of women. One cannot assimilate it somehow.’
He sighed with genuine regret.
Campion raised his eyes to find the man regarding him impudently. There was no hiding it; Max was the master of the hour.
‘Useful!’ said Donna Beatrice, sitting up. ‘Through all the horror that’s the word I’ve been searching for. Claire was useful.’
‘Poor Potter,’ said Campion lamely. ‘He’s badly cut up, I’m afraid.’
He broke off awkwardly. Max was looking at him and smiling. His head was a little on one side and his heavily drawn mouth drooped at one end with what was, unmistakably, tolerant amusement.
Outrage, combining as it does shock, anger, reproach, and helplessness, is perhaps the most unmanageable, the most demoralizing of all the emotions. Campion pulled himself together with difficulty and strove consciously to survey the man in front of him with true impartiality, but the thought which stuck most obstinately in his mind was that Max was very sure of himself and must consider himself absolutely safe.
Donna Beatrice copied Max’s smile but without meaning, and the effect was rather horrible.
Voices on the stairs ended the nightmare and Campion rose as the Inspector and Belle came in.
It was a tottery little old woman who peered round the room from under her white bonnet. The Belle Darling whom Lafcadio had loved, protected, and leant upon was beaten to her knees by the deluge of horror poured down upon her. Campion looked at her and there rose up in his heart genuine ruthless hatred which took possession of him and gave him back the poise and confidence which had temporarily deserted him.
Belle was leaning on the Inspector, who looked as nearly humanly concerned as Campion had ever seen him.
‘Sit down, ma’am,’ he said, using the old-fashioned form of address. ‘Don’t worry. Leave that to us. We’ll see to everything.’
He caught sight of his friend with relief.
‘I’ve got to go down to the mor –. I’ve got to go with Doctor Fettes,’ he said. ‘He’s waiting for me. I’ll leave Mrs Lafcadio with you. See you tomorrow.’
He nodded casually to Max, ignored Donna Beatrice and was gone.
Belle permitted herself to be led to her chair by the fire. Max did not move from the hearth and Campion was shocked to find that it required an absurdly vigorous effort to prevent himself from kic
king the exquisite little figure out of the way. From that moment, however, Belle required all his attention.
‘Albert,’ she whispered, beckoning him to come closer. ‘Listen.’
He dropped down beside her chair and she laid a little plump hand on his shoulder.
‘I’m worried for Linda. If that child comes home to – to this, after the other shock … you see what I mean? See she stays in Paris or else is told before she comes to the house.’
He put up his hand and held hers where it was on her shoulder.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘Leave everything to us. You heard what the Inspector said. Leave everything to us.’
Belle’s brown eyes grew slowly blurred and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
‘Oh, my dear, if I could. If only I could.’
‘Well, why not, Belle?’ Campion was as earnest as he had ever been. The vacuity had vanished from his face, leaving him unexpectedly capable.
Her grip on his shoulder tightened.
‘Albert,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, my dear, for pity’s sake find out and stop it.’
His eyes met hers through her tears.
‘I will,’ he said quietly. ‘I will. I promise, Belle.’
Max did not seem to hear this conversation, or if he did he was not interested. He had moved over to the corner cupboard and was examining the useless ivory baton once presented to Wagner.
The following morning when the Inspector came Campion was still in the house, having taken up his quarters in Linda’s little suite.
Oates sat down on the window ledge, gathering the skirts of his raincoat about him. He was brisk and practical.
‘The inquest is fixed for twelve o’clock,’ he said. ‘Only formal evidence, and a postponement. There’s no need for either of us to turn up. I’m waiting for Fettes to see Potter before I put him through it. Care to come?’
Campion signified his grateful acceptance of the favour and enquired after Belle.
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