‘Oh, yes. It was a long job, you know, and some of the blocks were in very bad condition. She did so many other things too.’
Oates glanced at Campion.
‘She didn’t keep these things in the studio, then?’
‘All of them?’ said Belle. ‘Oh dear, no. They were much too bulky and too precious. A boy used to fetch one lot and bring another. I remember seeing him often – such a funny little grown-up boy. I wish children never had to work. The blocks were always wrapped up in a green cloth. Claire always had the second lot waiting for him, all packed and ready. She was most particular about them. No one was allowed to touch them except herself. I remember once being in the studio when they arrived and I offered to unpack them for her, but she quite snapped at me. Poor Claire! It was so unlike her that I was quite surprised. She was most conscientious. The blocks were always kept packed up. They used to stand on the bookshelf in their cloth. Max paid her very badly, I’m afraid, but she never complained.’
She sighed and looked down at her plump little hands.
‘She was very kind to me always,’ she said, and added unexpectedly, ‘that poor helpless silly man too. No one to look after him now. She took care of him. The pity of it! The dreadful, wasteful pity of it.’
They were silent and the moment was relieved by the arrival of Lisa with a message from Donna Beatrice.
That good lady, finding herself temporarily eclipsed by other more important matters, had promptly taken to her bed on the ancient principle that if one cannot command attention by one’s admirable qualities at least one can be a nuisance.
Somewhat grudgingly Lisa announced that Donna Beatrice was asking for Belle.
‘She has not eaten,’ she said. ‘She refuses to take anything unless you are there. Shall I leave her until tonight?’
‘Oh no,’ said Belle, getting up. ‘I’ll come. Poor soul,’ she remarked apologetically to Campion, ‘she’s hysterical. It’s very naughty of her. She makes herself so unpopular.’
She went out and Lisa followed. Campion and the Inspector were left alone.
‘She never let anyone unpack those wood blocks except herself,’ said Oates, taking out his notebook. ‘Max paid her very badly, but she never complained. She did a great deal for him, confidential work. What are you thinking?’
‘I was thinking,’ said Campion slowly, ‘that it is more than possible that Max has been in the habit of aiding and abetting Mrs Potter in her unfortunate weakness for some time – months, perhaps even years. Underpaying her and keeping her happy that way. When the occasion arose it was simplicity itself to poison her. It was probably so easy that he couldn’t resist the temptation.’
Oates sighed. ‘It looks like it,’ he agreed, ‘and if so we’ll never get him. If the corpse conspires to shield the murderer, where are you? A couple of these wood blocks wrapped in tissue and baize would make a parcel large enough to hold, say, a flat half-pint, I take it?’
‘Oh, quite, I should say. It’s ingenious, Oates.’
‘Darn ingenious,’ agreed the Inspector. ‘But all conjecture, Campion. Based on strong suspicion, but all conjecture. Not a ha’porth of evidence in the lot. I’ll see the boy, of course. That reminds me: Rennie says that when Mrs Potter was out on the afternoon of the crime he took in a green baize parcel secured by a strap from Salmon’s and left it in her porch. Why did the boy call again in the evening? There’s a chance I may get something out of the kid without disturbing Fustian, which is the last thing to be done at this juncture. Come on, Campion, we’ll get on with it. Nothing more here at the moment.’
Campion next saw the Inspector at noon on the following day in his own chilly room at Scotland Yard.
Oates looked up as the young man came in and hailed him with even more enthusiasm than usual.
‘I’ve seen the boy,’ he said, plunging into the business without preamble. ‘Caught him at the gallery first thing before anyone else arrived. He’s an odd little object – name of Green.’
‘I think I’ve seen him at the shop.’
‘Have you? Oh well, then, you know him. That’s him – funny kid. Not too happy in his job, I fancy. Still, he didn’t say so. Campion …’
‘Yes?’
‘I think you’re right.’
‘Really? What did you get?’
Oates flipped over the pages of the ragged little book in which he kept his notes.
‘The boy bears out all the other evidence, of course. He used to take those green baize parcels backwards and forwards at irregular intervals. He usually got out to Bayswater in the evening because it was the last thing he had to do and it was a long way. There were two of them, by the way – two bits of baize and two straps, I mean – so that one parcel was always waiting for him when he brought the other.’
‘Did he ever see them packed at the gallery end?’ said Campion.
‘No. I particularly enquired about that. He was not even sure what they contained. Apparently Fustian has a habit of cooking up minor mysteries in the firm. He seems to have impressed the kid with the idea that he’s a sort of art world genius, a great financier pulling strings and starting hares and all the rest of it. These parcels were simply given to Green by Fustian, who packed them himself and who told him that they were very valuable and to be treated with great care. The boy seems to have felt that he was a privileged person to be allowed to touch the things at all. He’s a simple-minded little beggar.’
‘Is that all?’ Campion sounded disappointed.
‘No, not quite. I explained to him, of course, that I was just checking up on all the people who had been to the studio during the day – you must tell ’em something, you know … and he volunteered the information that it was most unusual for him to call at the studio twice on one day, and that it had happened because of a mistake of Fustian’s. Apparently, Green came down with one parcel in the lunch hour and collected the other, which had been left with Rennie. This alteration in the usual time was because that evening he had to meet the five-fifty-eight train at Victoria to collect some prints from Paris. The prints were on silk and they had to be seen through the Customs.
‘When he arrived back at the gallery after the lunch hour Max sent for him and explained that he had put the wrong contents in the parcel, and, therefore, when the kid had completed his mission at Victoria he was to go straight on to the studio and ask for the parcel back. Are you following?’
Campion nodded. His eyes were half-closed behind his spectacles.
‘When the kid got to Victoria the prints had not come. It took him some little time to discover this … about twenty minutes in all, he thinks. Then he went to the studio, arriving there about seven. Lisa gave him the parcel and he took it back to the gallery.’
The Inspector paused and regarded his friend.
‘When he got there Max was waiting for him. The boy was surprised to see him and more surprised still when, after enquiring if he saw Mrs Potter and receiving the reply that he had not, but that Lisa had given him what he wanted, Max gave him a couple of bob. Then the kid went home and that’s all he knows.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Campion.
‘Interesting,’ said the Inspector, still consulting his notes. ‘Oh, by the way, one other little thing. I asked the kid if he knew what was in the parcels. He said no, but after a while, as we got matey, I could see there was something on his mind and presently he came out with it. About three weeks ago he dropped one of those darn parcels he was taking to Mrs Potter on the Tube stairs. He didn’t like to open it to see if any damage was done, and in fear and trembling he took it on. He said he didn’t get into any trouble, as he expected to, but when he handed the thing in he noticed the green cloth was quite wet. I pressed him, but he hadn’t noticed anything else.’
Campion sat up.
‘So we were right,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Oates. ‘As far as we’re concerned the mystery’s solved, but we can’t say so. Exasperating, isn’t it?’
; ‘There’s not enough evidence for an arrest?’
‘Enough! There’s none at all.’
The Inspector rose to his feet and stood looking out of the window.
‘Another unsolved mystery, that’s what the papers say,’ he remarked. ‘In all my experience I only remember one murder case in which the police didn’t know whom they wanted. We haven’t got enough here even to have him up and question him. He’s licked us. While we were deciding if the corpse was poisoned or not he was downstairs in the cloakroom of his gallery washing out the bottle.’
‘If only Potter hadn’t washed out the glass,’ said Campion.
Oates considered. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ he said at last. ‘On the face of it, I admit it looks as though that were the intervention of Providence on the wrong side, but was it? Suppose Potter had behaved like any ordinary sane person on finding his wife. Had a look at her, found she was dead, sent for the doctor and told him the whole story about the whisky drugging. It’s ninety-nine to a hundred he’d have diagnosed heart failure and alcoholic poisoning and we shouldn’t have come into it. It was only the mystery at the beginning that put us on to it at all.’
Mr Campion was still digesting these reflections when Oates spoke again.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not a thing on him. He’s got away with it.’
‘What are you going to do? Drop it?’
‘Good Lord, no!’ The Inspector looked shocked. ‘You ought to know more about police procedure than that. We shall go on shuffling about like an old terrier on a stale scent. We shall write each other coldly disapproving letters from department to department. We shall tell each other the facts in confidence and go on worrying round a little less week by week. Then something else will turn up and we shall all be very busy and this will get crowded out.’
The young unhappy face of Dacre as he lay in the little robing-room in Lafcadio’s studio; Mr Potter standing with his back to the shrouded figure of his wife; Belle sitting in the scullery twisting her fingers; these things passed in front of Mr Campion’s eyes and he looked up.
‘At least you can find the motive,’ he said bitterly. ‘Couldn’t you get him on that?’
‘Motive and doubtful circumstantial evidence aren’t enough,’ said the Inspector gloomily, ‘much less the mixture of conjecture and suspicion we’ve cooked up. Besides, there may not be a motive.’
‘What d’you mean?’ The words had crystallized a fear which Campion had been fiercely refusing to recognize.
The Inspector met his eyes for an instant.
‘You know what I mean. Nothing sufficient, not a sane motive.’
Mr Campion studied the carpet.
‘You suggest –’ he began.
‘Look here,’ cut in the Inspector, ‘I admit it’s a disturbing thought, but you know as well as I do that when a chap of that age and type suddenly becomes a killer it means something’s gone radically wrong with his sense of proportion. The cleverer he is the later we get him.’
‘Then you don’t think we can do anything now?’ Campion’s tone was lifeless.
‘No,’ said the Inspector. ‘No, my boy, he’s been too neat. We must wait.’
‘Wait? Good God, what for?’
‘Next time,’ said Oates. ‘He won’t stop at this. They never do. The question is, who is going to annoy him next?’
CHAPTER 18
Dangerous Business
–
THE Coroner was an honourable man, but he was also sensible, with a natural distaste for publicity.
When the court resumed after the postponement, Mrs Potter’s sad little corpse was sat upon by a dozen interested but busy people who, after all the available evidence had been placed before them, brought in a sane but not very satisfactory open verdict.
They found that the deceased had met her death by poisoning by nicotine, but that there was insufficient evidence to show if it were self-administered or no.
The testimony of the tremulous Miss Cunninghame concerning her friend’s behaviour on the last afternoon of her life did much to dispel the jury’s doubt from the public mind at least, and, as there is hardly anything which the average man finds so dull and depressing as a tale of suicide, the whole business faded gently into obscurity.
The Press, which has a gift amounting to second sight for detecting an unsatisfactory story when the first ripe buds are laid upon the editorial table, had relegated the yarn to the final news columns as soon as the customary outcry against police inefficiency had grown stale, and the authorities counted themselves blessed.
Campion and the Inspector alone recognized the situation for what it was, and as the sensation died away and the atmosphere of Little Venice subsided once more into a false peace the younger man at any rate experienced the sensations of a maiden lady who sees the burglar’s boots below the curtain as the last of the neighbours troop back to their homes after the false alarm.
He haunted the house for the next few weeks, drifting in on every conceivable excuse. Belle was always pleased to see him, while Donna Beatrice welcomed him with the thirsty affection of a performer for his audience. Mr Potter remained in his room most of the time, a new uncouth creature with a secret life. Doctor Fettes shook his head over him.
The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable, however, and as time went on even Campion began to see the events here recorded from that detached distance so often miscalled true perspective.
The gentle procession of ordinary life swept them all along and it began to seem as unlikely that violence would ever again assail Lafcadio’s household as it had done on that Saturday evening in April when he and Belle had discussed the morrow’s reception.
When the first trumpet of alarm came so crudely, therefore, it carried with it an element of shock.
Max put forward his ingenuous suggestion to the Lafcadio legatees with all the elaboration and hot air with which he usually invested business matters.
He phoned one morning, made an appointment for three o’clock, arrived at a quarter to four and addressed the little gathering as if they had been a board meeting.
Donna Beatrice, Lisa, Belle, and the impatient Linda sat and listened to him in the drawing-room. Mr Potter, the only other member of the household, and D’Urfey, who was almost one, were excluded at Max’s own suggestion.
The old room, with its comfortable decorations and faded curios, was very gracious and mellow in the afternoon sunlight streaming in from over the canal. Belle sat in her usual chair by the fire, Lisa at her side and Linda hunched up on the rug, while Donna Beatrice took the chaise-longue and prepared to enjoy herself.
Max took the floor, his small graceful figure heightened by importance. His naturally picturesque appearance was considerably exaggerated by his latest sartorial fad, consisting somewhat astonishingly of a fully coloured Victorian fancy waistcoat. This gallant vestment was without question a thing of beauty. Its shades of mauve, old gold, and green were elegantly blended and its workmanship lovely enough to account for its preservation, but on Max’s accentuated form, beneath his flowing tie and in conjunction with his magnificently cut, if somewhat loose, new spring suit, it smacked altogether too much of affectation and the very peculiar, and even Belle, who took a childish pleasure in bright things, regarded its exuberance with doubt.
However, if anyone else was hesitant in his approval, Max himself was obviously sublimely content.
Linda, contemplating him sombrely from beneath her tawny brows, reflected that during the past month or so Max’s conceit and over-emphasis had become noticeably worse. Now and again there was a distinct touch of well-simulated foreign accent in his drawling utterances, and his swagger was becoming Irvingesque.
Looking at him posturing in the dusty sunlight, it occurred to her that it was really remarkable that he should not appear very ridiculous. She thought also that this was certainly not the case. Max Fustian’s old strength, a passionate belief in his own magnificence and a force of personality which thrust t
his illusion upon all he met, had increased with the other eccentricities until the electric atmosphere which emanated from him was frankly disturbing.
His opening remark was typical of this new super-affectation.
‘My dear ladies,’ he said, regarding them as though they were at least partial strangers and not people he had known for twenty years. ‘We have something to face. John Lafcadio’s great memory, which I myself have done so much to preserve, has been desecrated. It will take all my powers, all my skill, to put him back where he belongs. To do this I shall require your cooperation.’
‘Ah!’ said Donna Beatrice with gratified idiocy.
Max shot a patronizing smile in her direction and continued in the same oratorical vein.
‘Lafcadio was a great painter,’ he said. ‘Let us never forget that. A great painter. This calamity, this petty blot upon his household, this little smirch across his memory must not be allowed to make any one of his admirers forget that. A great painter.’
Lisa was listening, her quick dark eyes fixed upon his face in the fascinated stare of imperfect comprehension.
Linda, on the other hand, showed signs of restiveness, and would have spoken had not Belle’s plump hand upon her shoulder counselled her to be still.
Max continued, his head thrown back, the phrases falling lazily from his lips.
He had perched himself upon the arm of the great chair which Lafcadio had always pronounced, without any foundation at all, a part of the belongings of Voltaire. The faded crimson tapestry made a background for Max’s eccentric figure and lent it some of its own gracious magnificence.
‘Of course,’ he said easily, ‘you all realize that it will be impossible to continue the pretty Show Sunday conceit in future years. That amusing little idea has ended unfortunately. Lafcadio’s beautiful work must never enter that tainted studio again. You will probably leave this house, Belle. The name must be preserved from notoriety. That is most important.’
Belle sat up on her chair and regarded her visitor in mild astonishment. Waving her unuttered comment aside, Max went on with supreme confidence.
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