The Captain cocked an eye at the endearment and his narrow mouth twitched.
‘I saw she wasn’t well,’ he said slowly. ‘One could hardly miss it. She was shouting, for one thing, don’t you know.’
‘Shouting?’
‘Talking very loudly.’ He dropped his own pleasant voice on the words. ‘She was crimson in the face, waving her arms about and staggering. Since I happened to be there I did what I could, naturally.’ He sipped his drink reflectively. ‘I took her down to the sawbones next door. We made a pretty pair, I can tell you. Heads popped out of every window in the city, or so it seemed to me.’ He laughed at himself, but there was still a trace of resentment lurking in his eyes.
‘Very embarrassing, but all the same a noble act,’ said Campion.
‘That’s what I say,’ put in Renee eagerly. ‘It was nice of him, wasn’t it? Didn’t call me or anything. Just quietly did the right thing. That’s like him. And the doctor was there, you see, but he didn’t help.’
‘No, no, my dear, it wasn’t quite like that.’ With an apologetic glance at the man in the bed, the Captain hastened to counter some earlier complaint. ‘I must be reasonably honest. What actually happened was this. As we came roaring up the street like a copper and a female drunk we found the sawbones on the point of locking up his surgery. With him he had some great lout of a fellow who, to add to the general discomfort, was in floods of tears. They were dashing off to officiate, as far as I could understand, at a birth’ – he paused and added, ‘of some sort.’
It was clear that the scene was returning to him with some vividness and he was viewing it with sour amusement.
‘There we all were,’ he said, ‘on the doorstep. I was looking ineffectual, clutching my old green hat which I probably resemble. The doctor was tired and worried by the intimate symptoms the lout was relating. My lady friend, who was wearing her spring costume – a sugar-sack sari over a flannel petticoat I fancy, Renee?’
‘It was obviously two dresses, dear, not a petticoat. They all wear funny clothes. They’re above clothes.’
‘Miss Ruth was beneath these,’ said the Captain grimly. ‘As more and more safety-pins came adrift, so that much became alarmingly obvious. Well, anyway, there she was, shouting all these figures . . .’
‘Figures?’ demanded Campion.
‘Yes, figures. She was the mathematical one of the family. Didn’t Renee tell you? The police keep asking me “What did she say?” and all I know is that it sounded like figures. She couldn’t articulate, you see. That’s how I knew she was ill and not merely mad.’
‘The doctor ought to have taken her in,’ said Renee. ‘He’s a busy man, we know, but –’
‘Oh, I see his point of view.’ Captain Seton was being obstinately fair. ‘I do admit I thought his behaviour extraordinary at the time, but I was harassed myself, God-dammit. No, he realized that she was as near her own home as made no difference and he thought she’d had a stroke as he’d predicted. He took one look at her and said to me: “Oh, dear. Yes, yes, indeed. Yes. Take her to her room and wrap her up. I’ll come the moment I can.” Mind you,’ he added, directing his queer self-deprecating smile at Campion, ‘by this time the weeping lout, who was a good foot broader than either of us and possibly thirty years younger, was making it exceedingly plain that the doctor was coming with him and not me. He said so with considerable force, as I recall. At any rate I gave way and escorted my titubant doxy, who was now frothing at the mouth, through the crowd which had begun to collect, and up to her room. I placed her in the one chair which did not contain books, tucked a pile of old clothes over her, and slunk down to the kitchen for Renee.’
‘Where he stirred the saucepan I had on the stove, while I went up to her,’ said Miss Roper, smiling at him with deep affection. ‘He’s a good old boy.’
‘Whatever they say,’ finished the Captain for her, and his eyes met hers provocatively and laughed.
‘You drink up and don’t be so greedy for praise,’ she said. ‘Well, Mr Campion, when I got up to her she seemed to be dozing. I didn’t like the way she was breathing but I knew the doctor was coming, and I thought I’d better let her rest, so I put another blanket round her and came away.’
The Captain drained his glass with a sigh. ‘Next time anyone looked at her she was dead,’ he said. ‘Very little trouble to anybody, except me, of course.’
‘Oh, don’t make it sound so awful!’ The pink bows on Miss Roper’s cap quivered. ‘I caught Miss Evadne, Mr Campion, just as she was coming in, and we went up together. That was nearly two in the afternoon, I suppose. Miss Ruth was still asleep but she was making a terrible noise.’
‘Was Miss Evadne helpful?’ inquired Campion.
Renee met his eyes. ‘Well, no,’ she said. ‘Not more than you would expect of her. She spoke to her sister, but when the poor woman didn’t wake she looked about the room and picked up a book from one of the shelves, read a little bit, and then told me to send for the doctor as if I hadn’t thought of it.’
‘When did he come?’
‘Well, it was nearly three. He had to go home after the baby was born. He said it was to get cleaned up, but I think it was to explain to his wife why he was late for his meal. Miss Ruth was dead then.’
There was silence for a moment before the Captain said:
‘He certified a thrombosis. After all, it was what he expected. One can’t blame him.’
‘Yet somebody did.’ Campion made the remark and was surprised to find them both immediately on the defensive.
‘People will talk,’ said Renee as if he had censured her. ‘It’s human nature. Any sudden death makes a lot of stink. “Quick, wasn’t it?” they say, and then “Weren’t you surprised? Nerves of iron, haven’t you?” Or, “Perhaps it’s a blessed relief to you.” It makes me sick.’ Her small face was flushed and her old eyes angry.
The Captain rose and set down his tooth-glass. He was a little pink round the gills himself.
‘At any rate I did not kill the vulgar trollop,’ he said with suppressed venom. ‘I had words with her, I admit it, and I still feel I was within my rights, but once and for all I did NOT KILL HER!’
‘Shush!’ Renee quietened the military voice with the firmness of her authority. ‘Don’t wake the house, dear. We know you didn’t.’
The Captain, thin and compact in his Edwardian robe, bowed to her and then to Campion, and even from him the gesture was theatrical.
‘Good night,’ he said stiffly. ‘Many thanks.’
‘There.’ The old woman let the door close behind him before she spoke. ‘Silly old fool. Now all that’ll have to come out, I suppose. He’s highly strung to begin with and a single drink puts him right on his dig.’ She paused and regarded her adopted nephew dubiously. ‘It was only because of the room,’ she said. ‘Old people are like children. They get jealous. I gave him a nice room when we came here and Ruth always wanted it. She said she’d had it as a child and when she found she couldn’t get any change out of me she had a go at him. That’s all there was to it. Really, I’m not lying. It was too footling to mention.’
She looked so guilty that he laughed at her.
‘How long did the feud last?’
‘Too long altogether,’ she admitted. ‘All the time we’ve been here. It blew up and then cooled down and then started again. You know how these things do. There was nothing in it and although he has said dreadful things about her he was the first to do what he could for her when he saw she was ill. He’s like that. A sweet old Flick when you know him. I’d go bail for him any day.’
‘I’m sure you would,’ he agreed. ‘By the way, is that the awful secret you were going to uncover?’
‘What! Me and the Captain?’ She threw back her head and her laugh was full and deep with amusement. ‘My dear,’ she said with cheerful vulgarity, ‘we’ve lived in the same house for nearly thirty years. You don’t want a detective to find out any secret there. You want a time-machine! No, I was going to tell
you about the coffin cupboard.’
The sleepy Campion was taken off his guard.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.
‘Of course it may not be coffins.’ Miss Roper tipped a teaspoonful of spirit into her glass, added a ladylike splash, and continued airily: ‘It may be anything in that line.’
‘Bodies?’ he suggested helpfully.
‘Oh no, ducky.’ Her tone was reproving but she was quite ten years younger after her laugh. ‘It may be simply wood or perhaps those nasty little trestles they use. I’ve never seen inside. Never had the chance. They always come at night, you see.’
Campion roused himself. ‘Suppose you tell me what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m trying to.’ She sounded plaintive. ‘I’ve let one of my cellars – the little ones leading off the area round by the front door and not actually in the house at all – to old Mr Bowels the undertaker. He asked me as a special favour and I didn’t like to refuse him as it’s always as well to keep in with people like that, isn’t it?’
‘In case you want a quick box-up at any time? Well, you know best. Never mind, go on. When did all this happen?’
‘Oh, years ago. Months, anyway. He’s very quiet. Never makes any trouble. But I thought you might find it locked and get it open and wonder if the things inside were mine, whatever they are. It might look funny, I mean.’ She was perfectly serious and her eyes, grey and round, met his own placidly. ‘I thought you might possibly hear him and his son down there tonight, as a matter of fact,’ she said.
‘Is he here?’
‘If he isn’t he soon will be. He popped in when you were up with Miss Evadne to say I wasn’t to be nervous if I heard him moving about between three and four. He’s a very thoughtful man. Old-fashioned.’
Mr Campion ceased to hear her. Charlie Luke had surely said that the exhumation of Edward Palinode’s body was fixed for four a.m., but that was at Wilswhich Cemetery. He wondered if he was quite awake until the explanation occurred to him.
‘Of course! They didn’t bury him,’ he said triumphantly.
‘Not Mr Edward. Bowels and Son didn’t. No.’ She looked troubled. ‘Oh, there was a fuss about that! Mr Edward had put it in his will, the thoughtless old man. Didn’t care how much he hurt people’s feelings. The dead don’t. But there it was, all written out. “Having spent grim nights in an abominable cellar listening to the menacing roll of guns and the thunderbolts of enemy attack, with the man Bowels watching me and mentally measuring me up for one of his gimcrack carrion-caskets, I declare that should I die before him, which I would have him know I doubt, I will not have my body interred by him or any member of his insignificant firm.”’
Her imitation was not unskilled and she finished with a gesture.
‘I got it off like a part,’ she explained. ‘It seemed so wicked.’
Her audience appeared delighted.
‘A man of character,’ he observed.
‘Pompous old idiot.’ She spoke with feeling. ‘He was full of smarty ideas and had no manners, even in his grave. He lost the family their money, being so clever. Well, there you are, my dear. If you hear any thumping it’s just the undertaker.’
‘The ultimate reassurance,’ said Campion, and he got out of bed and into a dressing-gown.
‘Are we going to have a look?’ She was so complacent about it that it occurred to him that it might have been her object from the beginning. ‘I’ve never liked to spy on him,’ she murmured confidentially, ‘because there was no excuse and anyway you can’t see from my room. It’s three or four months since he came last.’
In the doorway Campion paused.
‘How about Corkerdale?’ he demanded.
‘Oh, we needn’t worry about him. He’s asleep in the kitchen.’
‘What?’
‘Now, Albert,’ she used his christian name with daring, he felt, ‘don’t be unreasonable and don’t do anything to get the poor man into trouble. It was my idea. I didn’t want him to run into Bowels. “Everybody’s in,” I said, “and it’s the inside you’re watching. You come and sit down in a comfortable chair in the warm.” Of course he came. I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?’
‘Only demoralized a good man.’ Mr Campion sounded cheerful. ‘Come on. Like to lead the way?’
They went softly along the wide landing and down through the house, which was only comparatively silent. The Palinodes slept as they lived, with a fine disregard for the rest of the community. From one room a thunderous sound of snoring reminded Campion that brother Lawrence’s goose-like voice had probably an adenoidal explanation.
On the ground floor Miss Roper paused. The man behind her stopped but his attention had been caught, not by a sound but by an odour. It crept up from the basement, a thin coil of appalling affront. He sniffed and smothered a cough.
‘Good heavens, what is it?’
‘Oh, that’s all right. That’s nothing. That’s only cooking.’ She was deliberately offhand. ‘Can you hear them?’
There was a noise, he heard it now, very far off and muffled, a lumping, scraping sound suggesting hollow wood.
Although there was nothing of the charnel house about the alarming odour from the lower floor, the effect of it in conjunction with the sound was eerie. He started when she touched him.
‘This way,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll go in the drawing-room. There’s a window there just above the cellar door. Keep close to me.’
The drawing-room door swung open quietly enough to admit them to a vast shadowy room, faintly lit by the subdued glow of a single far-away lamp outside on the corner of Apron Street.
The bay window taking up most of one end was cut square at the top by the sharp line of a Venetian blind. The noise was much nearer now and as they waited a flicker of light appeared at the bottom of the centre pane.
Campion made his way cautiously through an archipelago of furniture and peered over the final barrier, a set of empty fernpots wired together on a stand.
The coffin appeared suddenly. It swung up vertically on the other side of the glass as someone hoisted it from below to get it clear of the open cellar door. Renee sucked in her breath in a silent scream as she saw it, and at the same moment Campion switched on the torch which hitherto he had thought it wisest not to use.
The broad white beam lit the casket like a searchlight. The sinister headless shape of the thing was made infinitely more repellent by the smoothness and blackness of the wood. It shone like a piano, broad, important and silky with veneer.
The dust-sheet which had been covering it had fallen back and the wide brass name-plate faced them nakedly. The lettering was so bold and legible that its message might have been shouted through a megaphone:
EDWARD BON CHRETIN PALINODE
Born September 4, 1883
Died March 2, 1946
In the silent airless room the two stood staring at it until it heeled gently over and out of sight, while the sound of careful footsteps reached them clearly from the narrow chasm below.
7. The Practical Undertaker
A FACE AS broad and blandly pink as a gammon rasher looked into Mr Campion’s own from the area’s well. In the arc of the torch beam the man appeared large and solid, with wide shoulders and the breast and belly of an ox. Beneath his hard black hat his hair was white and curling, and his heavy chins rested on a glistening starched collar. The general effect was as imposing as a fine new marble tombstone.
‘Good evening, sir.’ His tone was brisk but subtly deferential and a thought knowing. ‘We did not disturb you, I hope?’
‘Think nothing of it,’ murmured the torchbearer magnanimously. ‘What are you doing? Stocktaking?’
A gleam of friendly white appeared from two large teeth and a very round mouth.
‘Not exactly, sir, not exactly, although there are likenesses. It’s all perfectly in order. All above . . .’
‘Ground?’ suggested the thin man helpfully.
‘No sir. Board, I was going
to say. It is Mr Campion I’m addressing, isn’t it? I’m Jas Bowels, at your service any time of the night or day, and this is my son, Rowley boy.’
‘Here, Dad.’ Another face rose into the circle of light. Mr Bowels Junior’s hair was black and his expression was slightly more alert than his father’s, but otherwise he was one of the most aggressively legitimate sons Mr Campion had ever seen. Two or three puffs from the bicycle pump of the years would, he felt, render the two identical.
There was a brief unsatisfactory pause while they stood looking at one another. For once Campion was unhelpful.
‘I’m just taking her across,’ remarked Mr Bowels Senior unexpectedly. ‘We hire the cellar, you see, sir, and I’ve had her in there a month or so while we was full up over the road. Now, I thought, what with one thing and another – the police and that – I’d better get her back home. Looks better. You’ll understand, being a gentleman and used to these things.’
It occurred to Mr Campion just in time that the pronoun was complimentary, as in ship.
‘She looks a very fine affair,’ he said cautiously.
‘Oh, she is, sir.’ Jas betrayed pride. ‘A very special job. One of our de-luxe types. Me and the boy call her the Queen Mary when we’re talking among ourselves. It’s not too much to say that any gentleman who is a gentleman would be proud to be buried in it. It’s like going below in your own carriage. As I always say when asked for an opinion, it’s the last thing you do so you may as well do it right.’
His blue eyes smiled innocently as he spoke.
‘It’s a pity people are so ignorant. You’d think they’d like to see a lovely job like her going across the road at any time, but no, they don’t like it. It worries them, so I’ve got to nip her over when there’s no one about.’
More Work for the Undertaker Page 6