It was a fine night with stars and a fine rain-promising wind. The flowers in the cottage garden nodded together like small white ghosts in the shadows and there were whispers in the grass and in the leafy billowings of the trees.
The small house waited with that forlorn secrecy which is the peculiarity of all empty houses. The windows shone like beetles where the starlight touched them and the chimneys showed squat and smokeless against the cloudless sky.
The door of the car opened noiselessly and a figure remained motionless, half in and half out of the driving-seat, as the twin searchlights of a traveller on the high road behind him climbed up to the stars, sank and disappeared again, leaving an inkier blackness behind.
The wind in the trees freshened and the whispering among the leaves grew more intense. The figure moved. It vanished behind the car, melted into the uncertain silhouette, and reappeared an instant later on the other side. There was a moment of tremendous noise as the door-catch clicked. The tiny alien sound seemed to silence the roar in the tree-tops, but there was no other movement. The cottage remained dead and the fussy wind busied itself about it caressingly.
There was a long pause which seemed interminable as the figure remained wedded inextricably to the black shadow which was the car. Afterwards came the sound of effort, breathing, muscles straining, and once the single scrunch of a shoe on the loose flint road. Then out of the larger shadow came the other one. It was monstrous, horrible, a nightmare shape, top-heavy and enormous, limp arms flapping, the head of an elephant, and, when it turned, the great beak of a gigantic bird ending incongruously in a shoe, vividly described against the holey curtain of the sky.
It advanced falteringly down the path until, outside the first window, it turned miraculously into two, a long figure on the ground and a thicker one bending over it.
There was the thin, alarming sound of splintering glass, then another pause while the whole world seemed to listen, then breathing again and the swift rattle of a window-sash and a scrambling sound as the upright figure pressed into the darkness of the house and was swallowed by it.
The night grew older. The wind dropped and sprang up again. On the high road headlights climbed to heaven and shied away again. Down in the river an otter swam by and a rat paddled about in the mud. Amanda’s house crouched beside the figure on the path. They were both very quiet, very lonely, very dead.
The little creak which the door made as it swung open was the creak of wood and started no shuddering questions in the night. A cedar by the field path opposite creaked back in answer.
The breathing had begun again and once more the monster rose up out of the blackness and there was the clatter of a heel on tiles. The door swung wide and the night rushed into the little house, carrying dust and a crumpled leaf or two and a white petal in its surging drapery, which floated over the tea-chest clock, brushed the Van Gogh and scattered the papers on the desk. The monster struggled on. Safe within protecting walls, it was less cautious. It moved more quickly and when it cannoned into the table-ledge it whispered an imprecation. The door of the kitchenette stood open and a circle of glowing blue beads on the top of the stove cast just enough light to show the way in. The monster stooped under the lintel and bowed to the ground.
For a long time there was swift movement in the kitchen. Gloved hands fastened the small window and drew both blinds and curtains. The heavy mat was kicked up over the crack beneath the door and finally the inner door, through which the night still poured, exploring every corner in silent busyness, was closed and the blackness was almost complete.
The man lit a match and found the light switch. Mr Campion lay on the floor. He was breathing regularly and his fair hair was tousled. He looked as if he were sleeping after being very tired. The man who bent over him laid a finger on his pulse and straightened himself immediately. Then he replaced his glove and turned off the lighted gas-jet. Evidently time was precious, for he completed his arrangements hurriedly. He stripped off Campion’s jacket, folded it into a pad, and opened the oven door.
The shining cupboard was partitioned with iron shelves and he removed them hastily, stacking them beside the sink. He arranged the pad carefully over the sharp edge of the oven’s iron surround and returned to the man on the floor. It was not an easy operation to force the head and one shoulder into that tiny cavity while maintaining a fairly natural position, but he accomplished it presently and settled the long thin legs with care, drawing up one knee under the body and pulling the loose trouser-cuff into a likely fold.
He turned on the gas-tap almost as an after-thought and stood back to look at his handiwork while the thirty jets poured choking death into the tiny space. The man he was going to kill stirred. He breathed deeply and at one time seemed to be struggling to rise. Once, even, he spoke. The thick voice was the first human sound in the cottage and it set the walls quivering, but the rushing gas was louder. It swelled up into a roar, a cascade, a relentless torrent of whispering noise. The body on the floor grew still again, the muscles relaxed, and the leg which had been drawn up slithered a little.
The man who stood watching with a handkerchief pressed over his nose drew a visiting card out of his waistcoat pocket and looked at the scribbled message it bore.
‘Amanda – you won’t forget me – Albert.’
It seemed miraculously appropriate and he folded it in two and tucked it into the livid hand which lay across Mr Campion’s breast.
In his mind’s eye he saw the headlines on the morrow. ‘Suicide after Broken Engagement.’ ‘Tragic Discovery in Lady Amanda Fitton’s Riverside Cottage.’ That was the strength of the Press; it jumped to the obvious scandal in all scandals. That was the weakness of the Earl of Pontisbright’s position; any scandal in his family was a scandal. Mr Campion had taken his broken heart badly; that had been his weakness. The Lady Amanda Fitton was of sufficient social importance for everyone concerned to sympathize with her youth and to hurry through the inquest, with its inevitable verdict, as swiftly and decently as possible; that was her strength.
Now, however, it was still the time to hurry. The Lagonda in which the cinema commissionaire had seen Mr Campion leave Marble Arch alone must remain where it was, a silent witness for the next passer-by to note, but Caesar’s Court was less than ten minutes by the field path. He took a last look round, satisfied himself that there was no betraying sign for the first inquisitive police constable to observe, and moved quietly to the light switch.
His fingers were actually on the bakelite when he noticed the phenomenon which sent the blood streaming into his face and passed a white-hot hand over his head and spine. The door to the living-room, which was not a foot away from him, was opening inwards, very slowly, and even as he stared at it the stubby nose of a police revolver crept quietly round the jamb.
At the same instant there was a commotion behind him as the food cupboard burst open, as heavy footsteps sounded in the room above, as the garden door was flung wide, as the whole house burst into sudden swarming life, and a young voice, savage with indignation, sounded clearly in his very ear.
‘If you’ve killed the old man I’ll never forgive you, Ferdie Paul,’ said Amanda Fitton.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘PERHAPS YOU’D CARE to be sick, sir,’ said the plain-clothes man helpfully.
Mr Campion declined the invitation gracefully, and Amanda grinned at him. On the other side of the room Mr Lugg, still padding about in stockinged feet, turned away from the Van Gogh, which seemed to fascinate him, and leant over the superintendent’s chair.
‘He put a lot of faith in that solicitor of ’is, didn’t ’e?’ he remarked. ‘It’ll take more than a lawyer to explain that fancy-work in the kitchen. No wonder the pore little legal gent looked a bit on ’is dig. It’s cost the country a mint o’ money, too. That’ll pile it on for Mr Paul. Still, a very nice police turn-out; I will say that. If you’d done a murder cock, you couldn’t ’ave bin looked after better. Busies ’ere, busies round The Soverei
gn watching Mr Paul hang about the theatre until it was time to do ’is bit of telephoning from a call-box, busies in the yard watching Mr Paul gettin’ in the back of the Lagonda, busies phoning up the report, busies on motor-cycles, busies at Caesar’s Court, busies all round the perishin’ country. And yet ’e might ’ave spiked you in that car. I don’t blame you for drivin’ so fast. Still, you would do it. I ’ad a look at you first thing to see if you was dead.’
‘They kept as near the car as they dared.’ Oates looked across at Campion apologetically. ‘You seemed fairly safe while you were going at that pace. I didn’t think he’d attack you, for his own sake. And don’t you talk so much,’ he added glancing round at Lugg. ‘Mr Campion asked for police protection and I gave it to him. The way you tell the story it sounds as if we were all agents provocateurs.’
‘I knew he’d come here.’ Hal Fitton spoke from the fireplace. ‘Amanda and I were both convinced of it. I actually saw him take the idea yesterday. You handed it to him on a plate, of course. I thought you were going to overdo it with that river business. He’s pretty shrewd.’
‘He’s so sharp he cut hisself.’ Sergeant Flood could not resist the observation and hoped the lateness of the hour would excuse the breach of discipline.
‘That’s it exactly,’ said Amanda, beaming at him. ‘That’s what we hoped. What will you do now? Will the Hakapopulous brothers split?’
Oates rose.
‘They might,’ he said. ‘They’d recognize Mrs Fitch, anyway. Still, I don’t think we shall have to bother much about him. He’s a sick man. He may not even come to trial.’
‘That’s what put you on to him, isn’t it?’ Hal glanced at Campion. Now that he had shelved his tremendous dignity of the previous afternoon his youth was very apparent.
Mr Campion stirred himself. He looked ill and exhausted.
‘Oates found it,’ he said. ‘He had the list of people Ferdie Paul had seen in Paris and one of them was Doctor Peugeot, the great diabetic biochemist. That explained a lot. If Ferdie Paul was an insulin-taking diabetic the death of Ramillies ceased to be so much of a mystery. It also explained why he was so happily convinced that he was perfectly safe.’
‘It’s undetectable, is it?’
‘Practically. A blood sugar test must be taken within five minutes of death to trace anything unusual even. That’s what I meant when I said he’d slipped into it, Oates. It was so abominably simple for him. Once Ramillies had confessed his fear of flying to him, all Ferdie Paul had to do was to tell him the kind of tale he wanted to hear. He had the method of killing in his hand twice a day. He knew enough of Ramillies’s character to realize that the man would hang on until the last minute and finally give way, and he prepared accordingly. He backed his judgment as to what the other man would do. After all, that’s the basis of most business methods. If Ramillies hadn’t been really so frightened, or if he had been a stronger character, he wouldn’t have gone creeping round to Ferdie at the eleventh hour and the scheme would have fallen through. Ferdie put his money on the chance that Ramillies was the sort of man he thought he was, and he happened to be right. I should think he gave him a dose of about two hundred D.S. units and after that nothing could have saved him, unless someone had spotted the condition and dosed him up with some sort of vasopressin, Tonephin or something. As it was, of course, the wretched Ramillies had no idea he was dying.’
‘Paul’s a peculiar sort of chap.’ The old superintendent was buttoning himself into his coat as he spoke. It was nearly dawn and there was a cold mist over the water-meadows. ‘He’s got exalted ideas of his own importance. A lot of them have. It’s the commonest type of what you might call the “elaborate” killer. I’ve seen it before. George Joseph Smith was one of them. They honestly think a bit of their cash or a bit of their convenience is worth someone else’s life. I don’t suppose we shall ever know the full ins and outs of the motive, shall we?’
‘We do. He told me.’ Mr Campion was battling with sleep. ‘I’ll come up in the morning and make a full report. He gave me the whole motive so frankly that I sat there with my eyes popping; terrified out of my life he was going to do me in on the spot. He told me the full truth and fastened it on to Gaiogi Laminoff with a single magnificent lie. Who are Georgia Wells’s parents, by the way?’
‘She’s only got a father,’ said Amanda, who knew everything, as usual. ‘He runs a touring company in Australia and is a bit low, so Georgia keeps him dark. She sends him all her press cuttings. Ferdie didn’t try to palm Georgia off on Gaiogi, did he? The poor little man can’t be more than fifty-five. Did he?’
‘He hardly committed himself.’ Mr Campion spoke wearily. ‘It was in character, though. He told Ramillies the truth, you know, except for the one stupendous lie.’
‘“After four hours you’ll feel fine”,’ said Amanda. ‘He had a sort of sense of humour, but not very kind. What about the woman? Will she stick to him, I wonder?’
Mr Campion glanced at Oates, whose thin lips curled sourly.
‘I don’t think we shall hear of her again,’ he said. ‘She was on her way when Mr Campion left her at the cinema to come here. I’ve seen her sort before. They’re not a wholly bad lot, but they get sort of used to looking after themselves. Paul knew that better than anyone. Oh, he said one funny thing, Campion. He gave me a message for you. I nearly forgot it. He said: “Tell Campion it’s interesting to see this recipe works both ways.” What did he mean by that?’
‘The strengths and the weaknesses of man.’ Mr Campion laughed and there was genuine regret in his tone. ‘He forgot the catch in it, poor lunatic,’ he said. ‘It’s Providence who has the advantage. The rest of us haven’t the divine facility for correct diagnosis. Providence would hardly have fallen for our broken hearts, for instance.’
‘Talking of our broken hearts,’ said Amanda when the last of the company had departed and the Earl of Pontisbright was assisting Mr Lugg to make beds upstairs, ‘where is my ring? It was Aunt Flo’s, you know, and the stones are thought to be real if not large.’
Mr Campion turned out all his pockets and discovered the missing token. Amanda stood balancing it in the palm of her hand and he looked up at her.
‘Go on. Put it on. I’ll be happy to marry you if you care for the idea,’ he said. ‘And then when I’m fifty, and feeling like a quiet life, you’ll go and fall with a thud for some silly chap who’ll give us both hell.’
Amanda hesitated. She looked very young indeed, her red hair standing out like an aureole.
‘Cake love, you mean?’ she said dubiously.
‘Call it what you like,’ he sounded irritable. ‘The only thing is, don’t pretend that it doesn’t exist or that you’re immune.’
Amanda regarded him with great affection.
‘Cake makes some people sick,’ she remarked cheerfully. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do; we’ll pop this to-morrow and buy some apples.’
He brightened.
‘And comfort ourselves,’ he said. ‘That’s an idea. Do you know, Amanda, I’m not sure that “Comfort” isn’t your middle name.’
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The Fashion In Shrouds Page 33