More Work for the Undertaker

by Margery Allingham

  This exact diagnosis of his precise state of mind was disconcerting. Her swift intelligence was quite as frightening as it was attractive. It occurred to him that honesty was not so much the best as the only policy.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said humbly. ‘I don’t really understand at all. You must let me see the book.’

  ‘I will. But you must understand that, like all important informative books, its appeal, its true appeal, is to a desire of the emotions. I mean if you do not want most terribly to understand a certain kind of love, then you will not get the best out of Plato’s Banquet. In the same way, if you do not want to live more cheaply than you dare to hope, you will not get the essence out of Herbert Boon. He may disgust and bore you. Do I make myself plain?’

  ‘I think perhaps you do,’ he said seriously.

  His glance wandered over the depressing array on the table and back again to her clever, proud face. She was the younger sister by some ten or fifteen years, he guessed.

  ‘Are treacle-tin saucepans Boon’s idea too?’ he inquired.

  ‘Oh yes. I’m not practical myself. I simply obey the writer implicitly. It may be that is why I am successful, more or less.’

  ‘I expect that is so.’ He looked so worried that she laughed at him and another few years slid off her age.

  ‘I have less money than the others, not because I am the youngest, but because I trusted my elder brother Edward to invest the greater part of my inheritance.’ Her tone was primly Victorian. ‘He was a man of ideas and in one way he was more like my mother and myself than are Lawrence and my elder sister Evadne, but he was not very practical. He lost all our money. Poor man, I am very sorry for him. I will not tell you my exact income now, but it is counted in shillings and not in pounds. Yet, by the grace of God and the perspicacity of Herbert Boon, I am not a poor woman at all. I use the intelligence I possess to live in my own way. You may think it is a very odd way, but it is my way, and I do no one any harm. Now do you think I’m a crank?’

  The word shot out at him and pinned him. She was waiting for an answer.

  Campion was not without charm himself. His smile was disarming.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re a rationalist. I might not have guessed that, though. This is the tea, is it? Where do you get the nettles?’

  ‘Hyde Park.’ She spoke casually over her shoulder. ‘There are lots of weeds – I mean herbs – there, if one hunts for them. I made a mistake or two at first. You have to be exact, you know, with plants, and I was quite ill several times, but I’ve mastered it now, I think.’

  The man on the upturned pail looked dubiously at the grey beverage which steamed in the small jam-pot she had handed him.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve been drinking that all the summer. Taste it, and if you can’t bear it I shall understand. But you must read the book. I should like to think I’d made a convert.’

  He did his best. It tasted like death.

  ‘Lawrence doesn’t like it either,’ she confessed, laughing, ‘but he drinks it. And he drinks the yarrow tea I make. He’s very interested but he’s more conventional than I am. He doesn’t really approve of my having no use for money, although I don’t know what he’d do if I had, for he’s none.’

  ‘Yet you like sixpences,’ murmured Campion. He spoke not without thinking, but despite himself, as if she had bewitched him into it. From her triumphant expression he realized with amazement that she had.

  ‘I made you say that,’ she said. ‘I know who you are. I saw you there today under the tree. You’re a detective. That’s why I’m talking to you so frankly. I like you. You’re intelligent. Isn’t it interesting how one can will people to speak? What is it, do you think?’

  ‘Dictatorial telepathy, perhaps.’ Campion was sufficiently shaken to take a sip of nettle tea. ‘Do you will the stout party to give you the sixpences?’ he ventured.

  ‘No, but I never refuse them. She enjoys it so. Besides, they’re very useful. That’s rational too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Utterly. To return to your more magical powers, can you see behind you?’

  He thought he had foxed her but she followed after a moment’s consideration.

  ‘You’re talking of Clytie and her young man who smells of petrol,’ she announced. ‘Well, I knew they were there today. I heard them whisper. But I didn’t look round. They were both playing truant from their jobs or pretending to be on some errand. They’ll both get dismissed.’ She shot a purely human and naughty look at him. ‘I may have to lend them my book. But Boon doesn’t say how to feed babies. That might present a difficulty.’

  ‘You’re a very odd woman,’ said Mr Campion. ‘What are you doing? Showing off?’

  ‘I wonder,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s possible. On the other hand, I am very sympathetic towards Clytie. I was in love myself once, and only once. It was platonic for a very good reason, but it wasn’t, if you understand me, a Banquet. Really hardly a picnic. I was encouraged to make my little intellectual advances and then I discovered that the pleasant intelligent man was using them to torment his wife, with whom he must obviously have been physically in love since otherwise he would hardly have bothered. Being rational but not suicidally generous, I withdrew. However, I am still sufficiently feminine to be entertained by Clytie. Is all this helping you, do you think, to find out who poisoned my sister Ruth?’

  For a moment he did not look up but sat staring at the ground.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘is it?’

  He raised his head and looked into her face, so full of wasted beauty and wasted cleverness.

  ‘You must know,’ he said slowly.

  ‘But I don’t.’ She seemed surprised herself by the admission. ‘I don’t. My magical powers are not very remarkable. Everyone who lives alone as much as I do becomes supersensitive towards the behaviour of the people they meet. Still, I assure you I have no idea who poisoned Ruth. I may as well admit I am not ungrateful to him. You will find that out, so I may as well tell you.’

  ‘She was very trying, was she?’ he said.

  ‘Not very. I hardly saw her. We had very little in common. She was more like my father’s brother. He was a mathematician of genius and went a little mad, I believe.’

  ‘Yet you’re glad she’s dead?’ He was deliberately brutal because he was afraid of her. She was so nice and yet such a terrifyingly and indefinably wrong thing.

  ‘I had cause to fear her,’ she said. ‘You see, the Palinode family is in the position of the crew of a small castaway boat. If one member drinks all his allotted share of water – she was not an alcoholic, by the way – the rest must either watch him die of thirst or share, and we haven’t very much to share, even with the assistance of Herbert Boon.’

  ‘Is that all you’re going to tell me?’

  ‘Yes. The rest you can find for yourself. It’s not very interesting.’

  The thin man in the dressing-gown rose to his feet and put down his jam-pot. He towered over her. She was very small and the rags of attractiveness hung round her like dead petals. His own not insensitive face was passionately grave, the question in his mind appearing much more important than any murder mystery.

  ‘Why?’ he burst out uncontrollably. ‘Why?’

  She understood him at once. A touch of colour came into her grey face.

  ‘I have no gifts,’ she said gently. ‘I am dumb, as the Americans say so penetratingly. I cannot make, or write, or even tell.’ And then as he blinked at her, trying to comprehend the enormity of the thing she was saying, she went on placidly: ‘My mother’s poetry was mainly very bad. I have inherited a modicum of my father’s intelligence and I am able to see that. She wrote one verse, though, which has always seemed to me to say something, although I daresay many people would find it nonsense. It goes:

  “I will build me a house of rushes,

  Intricate; basket-work. Through the stems the wind rushes

  Inquisitive, light-fingered. It torments, i
ts breath crushes.

  I shall not notice it. I shall be busy.”

  You wouldn’t like any more of that tea, I suppose?’

  It was half-an-hour before he got back to his room and he went to bed shivering. The book Miss Jessica had lent him lay on his coverlet. It was ill-printed and impossibly dog-eared, with a crudely stamped cover and end-papers crowded with long out-dated advertisements. He had opened it at random and the passages which he had read still hung in his mind as he closed his eyes.

  CURDS (the residue of sour milk often left by ignorant housewives in bottle or can). These may be made more palatable by the addition of chopped sage, chives, or, as a luxury, watercress. I have myself, for I am not a heavy feeder, existed very comfortably on this mess, taken with a little bread, for days together, varying each fresh day’s dish by the incorporation of a different herb.

  ENERGY. Conserve energy. So-called scientists will tell you it is no more than heat. Use no more of it, then, than you need at any one time. I estimate an hour’s sleep to equal one pound avoirdupois of heavy food. Be humble. Take what is given you, even if the gift is contemptuously offered. The giver is rewarded in his own soul be he virtuous or merely ostentatious. Be calm. Worry and self-pity use up as much energy (i.e., heat) as deep thought. Thus you will be free and no burden to relatives or the community. Your mind will also be lighter and more fit for the contemplation and enjoyment of the Beauties of Nature and the Conceits of Man, both of which are inexpensive luxuries the intelligent can freely afford.

  ‘BONES. The large and nutritious shin-bone of an ox can be purchased for one penny. On the road home from the butcher the Wise Man may descry in the hedge a root of dandelion and, if he is in luck, garlic . . .’

  Mr Campion turned over on his face. ‘Oh God,’ he said.

  8. Apron Strings

  HE BECAME AWARE that the sound which had awakened him was the opening of his door, and that someone, whose hand was still on the knob, was talking in the passage just outside. It was Charlie Luke.

  ‘. . . wasting your time on the roof,’ he was saying with an awkward gentleness. ‘You’ll also break your neck. It may be nothing to do with me and if I’m speaking out of turn I apologize, but – don’t take it like that. I’m only putting you straight.’

  The tone, if not the words, put Mr Campion in the picture. He listened for the reply, but the slender thread of sound, when it came, was unidentifiable.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The D.D.I. sounded out of his element. ‘No, I shan’t tell anybody, of course not. What d’you think I am? The loudspeaker on a railway station? Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss White, I was not aware that I was shouting. Good morning!’

  There was a violent movement outside and the door shuddered open an inch or so, but was closed again as he sent a parting shot after her.

  ‘All I say is, keep your feet out of the wheel.’

  He came in at last looking worried rather than crestfallen.

  ‘Little toffeenose,’ he said. ‘Well, she can’t say I didn’t warn her. Morning, sir. Renee gave me these when I said I was coming up.’ He set a tray containing two cups of tea on the dressing table. ‘It’s a homely little place for a murder, isn’t it?’ he went on, looking round the bedroom. ‘No tea where I’ve been all night. “You’d think there’d be something in all these urns,” I said to the Super, but he didn’t catch on. Well, we got the old blighter up and into Sir Doberman’s galley-pots.’

  He carried Mr Campion’s early morning tea to his bedside and comfortably settled himself on the throne-shaped chair.

  ‘Officially I’m interviewing Renee’s lawyer nephew,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose that tale’s going to wear but I suppose we may as well stick to it as long as we can.’

  He filled the big chair and suited it. His muscles looked like stone under his coat and his diamond-shaped eyes were as bright as if he had spent the night asleep and not waiting in a cemetery.

  ‘Miss Jessica’s spotted me as a sleuth,’ observed Mr Campion. ‘She saw us all in the park.’

  ‘Did she?’ Luke was not surprised. ‘Oh, they’re not barmy, any of them. I told you that. I made that mistake in the first place. They’re not, are they?’

  The thin man in the bed shook his head and his eyes were thoughtful.

  ‘No.’

  Luke took a draught of cool tea.

  ‘Renee has a crazy tale about Pa Bowels last night,’ he began. ‘Some story about him making a coffin on appro for Edward. “That be damned for a tale,” I said.’

  Campion nodded. ‘Yes, I noticed a delicate odour of fish. I don’t see the mechanism, though, do you? Lugg is staying over there, by the way. This should be a job for him. Not very ethical, perhaps, but they’re old enemies. What’s he passing? Tobacco? Or furs, perhaps?’

  The D.D.I.’s face grew dark with anger.

  ‘Old perisher!’ he said. ‘I hate a surprise like that right on my own manor. That won’t do. Smuggling in coffins, the oldest blessed trick in the world. I’ll give him Bowels. I thought I knew this street like the back of my own neck.’

  ‘I may be wrong.’ Campion was careful to avoid a soothing note. ‘His passion would appear to be undertaking. His story may even be true. I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  Luke cocked an eye at him in approval. ‘That’s the difficulty with people like these old blighters round here. The silliest blessed story may be true. I don’t say that Jas isn’t a good tradesman but I don’t know that I’d fall for the great artist stuff.’

  ‘What will you do? Go over the place with a toothcomb?’

  ‘Oh yes, now we know we’ve got him for whatever it is. Unless you’d like him left until this other business is over, sir? A thing like that will keep, of course. We may as well get him with a packet of the stuff and let him have a real holiday.’

  Mr Campion considered Mr Bowels. ‘He’ll expect you,’ he said. ‘My publicity agent would never forgive me, either, if I didn’t show ordinary intelligence.’

  ‘Lugg? I’ve heard of him but we’ve never met. They tell me he’s been inside, sir?’

  ‘Ah, that was before he lost his figure. He did one inartistic little cat-burglary. No, I fancy you’ll have to go over the Bowels emporium if only as a matter of form. If you find anything, he’s a negligible rogue after all this notice.’

  ‘And if we don’t he’ll lie low until he thinks he’s safe, and then we’ll pull him in.’ The D.D.I. took a handful of wastepaper from an inside pocket and picked it over carefully. Once again Campion was impressed by the graphic quality of his every movement. The scribbles became almost loudspeaker announcements as he glanced at them; this was unfortunate, that was unimportant, the other could wait, and so on, all done by fleeting lights and shadows passing over the vivid bony face.

  ‘Hyoscine hydrobromide,’ he announced suddenly. ‘Now then, sir, what are the chances of Pa Wilde and the chemist having a basinful of that in his locker?’

  ‘Small.’ Campion spoke with the authority he felt was expected of him. ‘My impression is that it’s rarely used in medicine. There was a fashion for it some forty years ago as a depressant in cases of mania. It’s the same sort of thing as atropine, but more powerful. It earned its reputation as a poison when Crippen tried it on Belle Elmore.’

  Charlie Luke was not satisfied. His eyes were very narrow above his huge cheekbones.

  ‘You must see that shop,’ he said.

  ‘I will. But I shouldn’t stir him up until you must. Try the doctor.’

  ‘Okay. Very likely.’ He made a mark on the scrap with a very small pencil. ‘Hyoscine hydrobromide. What is it? D’you happen to know, sir?’

  ‘Henbane, I think.’

  ‘Really. What, the weed?’

  ‘I think so. It’s very common.’

  ‘I should think it is, if it’s the plant I mean.’ The undercurrent of force in Luke’s voice was like an accompaniment of growls. ‘I had a crush on the teacher when I was at school and my nature book was on the hot si
de, lovely lined-in drawings. “Yes, Miss, I have worked hard . . . thank you, Miss . . . you ain’t half got a thin blouse on, Miss . . .” Henbane, yes I know, little yellow flower. Awful stink.’

  ‘That’s it.’ Campion felt he was being visited by a dynamo.

  ‘Grows everywhere.’ The D.D.I. was lost in wonder. ‘Damn it, you could find it in the park.’

  Mr Campion was silent for some seconds.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘yes. I suppose you could.’

  ‘But then you’d have to make the muck.’ The D.D.I. shook his dark head on which the curls were as tight as a lamb’s. ‘I’ll try the Doc first, but you’ll have to see Pa Wilde if it’s only to widen your mind. Then I must tackle the bank manager. Have I mentioned him?’

  ‘Oh yes, a neat little soul. I met him for a moment coming out of Miss Evadne’s room. She did not introduce me.’

  ‘If she had she’d have given him a fancy name and you’d have got no further. He’s due for a visit. “The bank can give no information whatever save under subpoena”, that’s what he told me.’

  ‘Meaning it nasty?’

  ‘No.’ The diamond-shaped eyes were serious. ‘He’s right, of course, and I’m all for it in theory. I like to feel my two half-crowns in the Post Office are a deadly secret between me and the girl behind the wire. Still, I don’t see why he shouldn’t tell us a bit in his private capacity, do you?’

  ‘As a friend of the family? Yes, we’ll inquire, anyway. Miss Ruth was spending too much money before she was killed; I’ve got that far. That may be a motive or it may not. Yeo says that money is the only respectable motive for murder.’

  Charlie Luke made no direct comment. He had returned to his little pieces of paper.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said at last. ‘I got all this out of Renee, not without coaxing. Mr Edward paid her three quid per week and got his washing done. Miss Evadne pays the same now. Full board, that is. Mr Lawrence pays two pound for part board. That means damn all, because she won’t see anybody hungry. Miss Clytie pays twenty shillings because that’s all she’s got, poor kid. She doesn’t get lunch. Miss Jessica pays five shillings.’