‘Partly. The rest of the stock is genuinely worthless, is it?’
‘Absolutely plugholed. My dear old owl – sorry, I feel I’m getting to know you – it’s utterly in the mire.’
In his new expansiveness Mr Drudge was developing a slight stammer.
‘Do – oh – n’t think we hadn’t thought of that. The Skip was on to it like a sto – oh – at. Even I thought of it. We’ve gone over the scrip with eagle eyes, absolutely eagle. It’s amazing. The old boy never bought a sausage that didn’t pong like a go – oh – at. No wonder my old man had heart failure.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘He wouldn’t see reason. He was obstinate and no one could hold him. Kept on pranging. Never learnt.’
‘Do I understand that all this worthless stuff is distributed among the family?’
‘No such luck. It’s spread round the landscape.’ Mr Drudge’s round grey eyes were serious. ‘Give your mind to this, sir. My old man, who had handled the family’s affairs since the Flood, got written off just before Edward Palinode blew up and went down in flames.’
Campion nodded to indicate partial comprehension.
‘Face it,’ said Clot. ‘My partner, the Skip, knew nothing of any will Edward had made until the tax harpies vultured down for death duties. He showed them the light pretty damned quick and during the engagement he got a bellyful of Palinode. At this point I blew in and he shot me the whole basketful. I got cracking and one of the things I did was to make old Ruth, who wasn’t an utterly unsporting number, understand that she’d be doing more for her loved ones if she left them a fiver each instead of the odd ten thousand in Bulimias or Filippino Fashions, and she re-wrote her homework. However, by the time she died, not long after, the silly kite had spent even the fivers.’
‘I see.’ Mr Campion had begun to feel deeply sympathetic. ‘Could you give me a list of the people who were going to get shares and then had or didn’t have cash?’
‘Definitely. The whole briefing is here. We’ve been going over it ourselves. Take it home and use it as you think fit. Miss Ruth’s trouble was that she loved everybody. She put them all in her will, the jolly old grocer, the chemist, the doctor, the bank manager, the landlady, the undertaker’s son – even her own brother and sisters. The whole family is round the bend, you know, definitely.’
Campion took the folder of carbons and hesitated.
‘Miss Jessica was saying something just now about the Brownie Mine Company,’ he ventured. ‘Wasn’t there a faint rumour of possible life there a few months or so ago?’
‘Whizzo!’ Mr Drudge was admiring. ‘You types know your stuff. There was, just after she died. She held a fairly hefty parcel of the stuff and I felt I was clot by name and clot by nature because I convinced her that the scrip was toilet paper pure and unmedicated. In fact I laid it on so thick that she insisted on leaving it all to an old boy who had pinched her room. One of the lodgers. His name’s in there. Beaton, is it?’
‘Seton.’
‘That’s right. She did it to annoy him. I got the wind up when the rumour eased out, but there you are, it was nothing.’
‘A brutal joke of hers,’ Campion said slowly.
‘God, yes!’ The grey eyes bulged. ‘I told her. I tell ’em all but they don’t hitch on. I tell you what about the Palinodes. I know that breed. Met it in the war. They think everything, think what they feel. You don’t feel so fierce if you only think it. Deep, this, but jolly true. They know what they’d think if anyone played such a stinker on ’em, but they don’t know what the poor clot would feel because they don’t. Got that?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ Campion was looking at him curiously. ‘What did you and your partner make of the Brownie Mine incident? Did you consider it at all?’
‘We gave it our best.’ He was very solemn. ‘Lord, yes, we’re reasonably alert. We rather cared for the idea of the old lodger writing her off as the hope of fortune hove in sight, but then we thought perhaps not. Type would have had to know about the legacy, and there’s no proof that he did. That’s one thing. And then the tip about Brownies was never even a likely starter. Finally, too, the Skip feels that a lad in that position would have hit the besom over the head with a bottle and not fiddled about with beverages. How do you feel?’
Campion considered Captain Seton and the more he thought of him the less he liked the theory.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve read this lot.’
‘Jolly good show. Don’t hesitate to call on us. We feel our clients are screwy but not bloodstained. Besides, we take a dim view of their massacre. If anyone writes ’em off it ought to be us; that’s our view.’
He was still chatting affably as he conducted his visitor through the outer office to the head of the stairs. Mr Campion remained thoughtful.
‘You haven’t a young man called Dunning on your books, have you?’ he said as they shook hands.
‘Fear not. Why?’
‘No reason at all, except that he has just got himself banged over the head with a bottle or something like it.’
‘Good lord! Same wrap-up?’
‘It would appear so.’
Mr Drudge held on to his moustache. ‘I’m blistered if I see how that fits in,’ he pronounced.
‘So am I,’ said Mr Campion truthfully and they parted.
Out in the Barrow Road it was raining in that curious secret way which is a London speciality. Hurrying passers-by looked as if they had damp sweat patches on every prominent area. Yet there were no visible drops in the air.
Campion walked up Barrow Road. It was the first break he had had in which to give his mind to the various brightly coloured threads which made up the puzzle. He walked for a long time, considering each strand in the tangle, following each loose end as far as it would take him. He was still a long way from the solution when he turned aside to plunge into the web of small roads which must take him back to Portminster Lodge. As he stepped out from the pavement to cross over a narrow side street, a ramshackle truck with a wobbling black hood was advancing towards him down the otherwise deserted way and he paused in the centre of the road to allow it to pass.
Its sudden murderous swerve towards him astounded him, even as his instinctive leap saved his life. The lorry’s swing was completely reckless and impulsive and appeared to be intentional. Campion was as amazed as if the ancient vehicle had snapped at him. The driver made no attempt to stop. After his single abortive dart he scuttled on, the bunched tarpaulin curtains at the back swinging out like pigtails.
In the second before the lurching shape disappeared, Campion caught a fleeting glimpse of its interior. A single packing-case, very long and unusually narrow, lay across the jolting boards, and from the darkness just above it a woman’s plump face peered out at him.
It was Bella Musgrave. She was sitting on the packing case, her podgy body swaying as the truck staggered round the bend and vanished.
The sight of her squatting there, round and sinister, shook him much more than his own narrow escape. In view of her various professions her driver should have been a death’s-head, he reflected grimly, and it occurred to him suddenly that it was probably Rowley who had yielded to the sudden temptation to try and run him down.
He was so certain of this that when he ran into the Bowels, father and son, walking demurely down Apron Street together he was astounded. He was also deeply interested, for whoever the driver had been he had certainly recognized him, which argued that he was an old enemy. This in turn made him a professional practitioner. So far, the professional crook element had been conspicuously absent from Apron Street. Campion was relieved to find a trace of it at last.
14. The Two Chairs
A LITTLE OVER an hour later, when it was very nearly dark and the lights of Apron Street were fairylike among the glistening blue curtains of the wet evening, Mr Campion pocketed the careful letter he had been writing to Superintendent Yeo and let himself quietly out of his bedroom
into the chill gloom of Portminster Lodge.
Long experience had taught him the value of the written word when definite information was being requested, and he was now in search of Lugg, who was to be his messenger.
He tiptoed across the hall and succeeded in getting out of the house without being waylaid by Renee. The iron gate was wet to his touch and the fine rain was well on its way to soaking him by the time he reached the pavement. He was just approaching the chastely decorated window of Jas Bowels’s establishment when he happened to glance back across the road to Apron Street’s gayer side.
The chemist’s doorway was an opal arch in a multi-coloured frame, through which, as he glanced at it, a familiar mountain appeared. Lugg stepped into the road, looked both ways, and hurried back again.
Campion darted across the greasy road after him and stepped out of the street into a small clear space set in the midst of an unbelievable jumble of cartons, bottles, boxes and jars which reached the ceiling on all four sides.
There was a counter, but the effect was no more than a hole in the debris. On his right a recess suggested a dispensary, and beside this a tunnel led to mysterious regions beyond.
There was no sign of Lugg, nor indeed of anyone else, but as his step sounded on the worn linoleum Charlie Luke’s harassed face appeared in the opening above the barricade of merchandise protecting the dispensary. He was hatless and his short wiry black hair was tousled as if he had run his hands through it.
‘This has torn it,’ he said. ‘Where’s the circus, sir?’
Mr Campion sniffed the air. Above the thousand odours which filled the shop there was one which was urgent and alarming and which caught at his throat.
‘No connexion with any other firm. I just dropped in,’ he said. ‘What have you done? Upset the almond essence?’
Luke straightened himself. He was rattled and his eyes were wretched. ‘I’ve done it this time. I ought to be shot, strung up and shot. ’Strewth, I could do it myself! Look at this little lot.’
Campion, peered down into the well of the alcove. He could just see two feet drawn up horribly into the cuffs of striped trousers.
The chemist?’
‘Pa Wilde.’ The D.D.I.’s voice was husky. ‘I wasn’t even questioning him, not as you’d say questioning. I’d hardly begun. He was still behind the counter. He gave me a funny little look . . .’ He made his eyes bulge and turned them slightly upwards, producing a startling picture of helpless underhand terror. ‘. . . Then he nipped round here. He was always very quick on his feet, like a spadger. “Just a minute, Mr Luke,” he said, squeaking as he always did, “just a minute, Mr Luke,” and as I turned towards him, not angrily, not even suspiciously, he pushed something into his mouth and then . . . oh lord!’
‘Hydrocyanic acid.’ Campion stood back. ‘I should come out of it if I were you. It’s powerful stuff and there’s no air in there. Don’t hang over it, for God’s sake. Were you alone?’
‘Not quite, thank God. I had a witness.’ Luke came round through the tunnel into the body of the shop. He was pale and his shoulders were hunched as he played noisily with the coins in his trousers pockets. ‘Your chap Lugg is about here somewhere. We came in together. I met him on the corner, as arranged. I had to go down to the inquest on Edward after you left the Platelayers. Pure formality. Adjourned for twenty-one days. But I had to be there.’
‘Bella Musgrave left here in a van about an hour and a half ago, I should say,’ Campion remarked.
‘You’ve seen Lugg, then?’
‘No. I saw her.’
‘Oh.’ Luke looked at him curiously. ‘So did he. I left him to keep an eye on the place. Like a ruddy fool I decided I’d attend to Pa Wilde myself. Lugg was to wait for me outside the Thespis. Just after four he saw the van drive up and take a packing-case on board. It was heavy and Pa gave the men a hand.’
‘Men?’
‘Yes, there were two of them, both sitting in front. Nothing out of the way about that. Chemists have empties, same as brewers.’
‘Did Lugg see them?’
‘I don’t think close enough to recognize. He didn’t say. He didn’t suspect them at first, but as soon as the case was loaded the old woman hopped out of the shop and into the van after it. Lugg steamed up, hoping to have a chat, but they were away in double-quick time. He got the number, but a fat lot of good that’ll be.’
Mr Campion nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. I jotted it down but it’s bound to be faked. Did he tell you anything about the shape of this packing-case?’
‘Not that I remember.’ Luke had other worries. ‘I’ve sent for the police surgeon this time. I wouldn’t have had this happen, not for a thirty-thousand win in the pools.’
Campion produced a cigarette case. ‘My dear chap, he could hardly have “talked” with more force,’ he said. ‘It’s very suggestive. D’you remember what you said to him exactly?’
‘Yes, it wasn’t much. I came in with Lugg behind me.’ He sketched in a balloon absently with his hand. ‘I said, “Hallo, Pa, what about this girl-friend of yours? D’you know who she is at all?” He said, “Girl-friend, Mr Luke? I’ve not had a girl-friend for thirty years. A man of my age, in this profession, gets a very depressed view of women after a time and that’s a fact.”’ The D.D.I. sniffed. ‘He always said “and that’s a fact.” Kind of signature-tune, poor old basket. I said, “Come, come, Pa, what about Bella, the human teardrop?” He stopped what he was doing, which was mucking about with the little light he used to melt sealing-wax, and looked at me over his nose-nippers. “I don’t follow you,” he said. “That’s one mercy,” said I, “or we should look a couple of daisies. I’m talking about the mourning Musgrave. Don’t be a mug, Pa, she’s just left here with her box.” “Her box, Mr Luke?” he said. “Pa,” said I, “this is coyness. What’s she done? Left you for Jas Bowels?”’
He was acting the scene as he recalled it and his ferocious good humour was vivid and rather dreadful.
‘I saw him begin to shake,’ he went on, ‘and I thought he was unexpectedly windy, but it didn’t register on me as it ought to have done.’ He pushed a hand over his face and through his hair as if he were trying to rub the whole thing off his head. His voice was doleful.
‘I told him, “Don’t deny the girl, chum. We’ve seen her and her little black handbag.” God knows why I put that bit in. Lugg had just mentioned it to me as we came up the road, I suppose. Anyway, it was that which did it. After I said that he gave me the little look I’ve told you about and said, “Just a minute, Mr Luke,” and came over here. I could see his head through all these corn-cures. I actually saw him put the stuff in his mouth, and even then I didn’t catch on. There was no reason for it, you see. Then he made a noise like a pheasant and went down among the bottles, while I stood here like a perishing pillar-box with my mouth wide open.’
‘Unnerving,’ Campion agreed. ‘What was the gallant Lugg doing?’
‘Standin’ like a gasometer, with me mouth shut,’ said a thick voice from the tunnel. ‘What did you expect us to be? Mind readers? There was no reason for it, cock. He must ’ave ’ad a conscience like a salmon tin in a dust bucket. The gentleman ’ere hadn’t even raised his eyebrows, let alone ‘is little finger.’
Luke swung round on Campion.
‘I can’t believe it was necessary,’ he said. ‘I mean I can’t believe he’d done anything very serious. He hadn’t the guts. The hyoscine may have come from here.’ He waved a hand at the farrago around them. ‘But I never suspected him of administering it.’ He walked round into the dispensary again and beckoned to Campion to follow him.
As they stood looking down at the hideous body, which in contorted death seemed so much smaller than it could reasonably have been expected to be in life, he shrugged with sudden impatience.
‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘I can’t show you what I mean. He was a silly, vain old chap, not the size for anything big. That’s no more like the poor beast than a heap of old clothes. Se
e that little dyed moustache? That was the pride of his life.’ He bent over the undistinguished face which was now a deep and bluish red. ‘Looks like a piece of fluff picked up on a bus.’
Campion was thoughtful. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t so much what he’d done as what he knew,’ he suggested. ‘Did you recognize the men who drove off with Bella, Lugg?’
‘I don’t know.’ The fat man spoke softly. ‘I was some way down the street, you see. The chap who first ’opped out and came in ’ere was a puffick stranger, that I do know. But the second chap, ’oo must ’ave bin driving – the truck faced up the street, away from me – did remind me of someone. Peter George Jelf, that was the name that came into me ’ead. Reunion, that’s what this case is, cock.’
‘Dear me.’ Mr Campion spoke mildly. ‘As you say, how the old faces gather. Yes indeed.’
He returned to Luke, his eyes narrowed.
‘The Fuller gang was just before your time, I fancy,’ he murmured. ‘Peter George Jelf was third in command until he went down for seven years on a robbery-with-violence charge. He was never a first-class mind, as they say in some circles, but he was very thorough and not without courage.’
‘’Ired malefactor,’ put in Lugg with relish. ‘The judge said that, not me. This chap today ’ad ’is way of walking. It might not ’ave been ’im but I think it was.’
The D.D.I. made a note on the tattered packet he had drawn from his pocket.
‘That’s another little question for the back room, if H.Q. is answering any more questions for me. A poor view is going to be taken of this lot and I don’t blame them. I’d sack myself . . . if I had a good man to take over.’
‘Have you got a mite of bicarb?’
The question, uttered from just inside the doorway, startled them both. Mr Congreve stood teetering on the mat, his lips wobbling and his wet eyes bright and shrewd.
More Work for the Undertaker Page 13