‘That really is something for you to find out. I know nothing of any details.’
‘Why did you wash up the glasses and cups in her room?’
He hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘Frankly I went up because the good woman who looks after us here seemed to expect it. I stood looking at Ruth and reflecting that it was unfortunate that she had inherited the strangely faulty mathematical streak which there is in our family. And at that moment it occurred to me that she must have poisoned herself. I rinsed the vessels in her room, because, I suppose, I didn’t want anyone else to pick up anything dangerous by mistake.’
‘That be hanged for a tale!’ Luke’s credulity snapped with a bang. ‘Are you saying you thought your sister poisoned herself and you didn’t do anything about it, yet as soon as the doctor came in with an anonymous letter you went up like a heath-fire?’
Lawrence ignored him. ‘It was the first document of the kind I had seen,’ he remarked to Campion. ‘The extraordinary hatred in it had a psychological effect upon me. Extraordinarily interesting! I was fascinated, in a literal sense. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that?’
Campion did understand him perfectly and there was a hint of apology in his next question.
‘Am I to believe that the result of your investigations so far is that your niece wrote these things?’
Lawrence turned his head away.
‘If you overheard my conversation with her you must know,’ he said.
‘Have you any evidence at all?’
He turned back at once, his face flushing.
‘My dear sir, my inquiries are my own affair. You can hardly expect me to give you the benefit of them, especially if they concern my own family.’
Campion was silent for some moments.
‘I wonder if I might point out that the process of elimination has its dangers?’ he ventured at last.
Lawrence lost his anger like a surprised child recovering from tears.
‘You think so, do you?’ he demanded with interest.
Campion remained serious. ‘The young are always mysterious,’ he remarked. ‘Even when one feels that one can be reasonably sure of everyone else, they alone remain an enigma.’
Luke could bear it no longer.
‘What has that got to do with it?’
Lawrence answered him.
‘In words of one syllable, when I had made sure in my own mind that no one else in the house could have written the letters, I turned to the one person I did not really know. I observed that she had a secret of some sort.’ His face became rigid with disgust. ‘I did not know then what it was.’
‘Who unravelled that ghastly mystery for you?’ Luke’s amusement was ferocious. ‘The Captain came out with it, I suppose?’
‘Yes. I was speaking to him on another matter and he told me. He put it very crudely. I didn’t believe him and I made him take me to the hospital where this wretched boy is lying, and there we – we found Clytie.’
He looked as though the memory was going to make him physically sick, and once more Mr Campion took charge.
‘I don’t see why you confine your suspicions to the house.’
‘Oh, but that was obvious.’ Lawrence rose, upsetting papers and books as his heavy, loose-jointed fingers unfolded. ‘I’ve gone over and over this,’ he declared, his peculiar voice blaring on the emphasized words. ‘It’s the internal evidence one can’t get away from.’ He shambled over to the chest in the bay of the window. ‘I’ve got a copy of the original letter here somewhere.’ He jerked the drawer out much too far and spilled assorted papers out over the parquet.
‘Forget it.’ Luke was showing signs of strain. ‘I know it by heart.’
‘Do you?’ Lawrence was weaving helplessly above the unholy muddle on the floor.
‘I could recite it this minute,’ the D.D.I. assured him with feeling. ‘The first piece, anyway. I don’t remember any internal evidence.’
‘It was that remark about the flowers.’ Lawrence took a nervous step towards him. ‘Do you remember? After a stream of calumny against the doctor for his “blindness to murder foul and dirty” it went on, “even the lilies cart-wheeled and should have told any but a fool”.’
The intensity of disgust which he infused into the quotation betrayed the shocked excitement which the letters had for him. This sin against the precious written word had in his cosmos an evil all its own.
Luke was deeply interested. ‘I remember it,’ he agreed. ‘When did the cut flowers cart-wheel?’
‘Just before the funeral, and no one was in the hall then but the household. No stranger. Even the undertakers hadn’t arrived.’
‘They were in a wreath, perhaps?’ suggested Campion, who felt that the story needed a midwife.
‘Of course they were.’ He seemed anxious to explain. ‘You see, someone bought a wreath – not a member of the family. We are not demonstrative. The actor Grace, who spends much of his time with our pleasant Miss Roper, sent it, I believe. I understand it was left leaning against the wall at the head of the stairs. In the morning most of the household happened to be in the hall. We were waiting for the undertakers to begin the funeral. I was not going myself; I had some work to finish. But my sisters felt they should put in an appearance. We were all present, even the aged nymph who chars for Miss Roper, when suddenly, something dislodged the obsolete panache and it slid over the edge of the top stair. It was supported by the wall and it came rolling down over and over, scattering petals. It was a ridiculous incident, but I remember the charwoman’s scream. Miss Roper ran forward and caught it and straightened it out as best she could.’
‘What did she do with it then?’ Charlie Luke had been listening to the recital with that mixture of suspicion and anticipation usually reserved for the improper story.
‘Oh, put it on a chair, I think. Certainly, a little tousled, it rested on the coffin when they set out.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It was quite unimportant and yet it is clearly referred to in the letter. It was that which so horrified me. These obscene communications came from amongst us. The hidden lunacy is here.’ He shuddered unaffectedly and his eyes were shocked and vulnerable. ‘It is a very terrible thing. You must be able to see that.’
Luke remained unimpressed. ‘I don’t think you’ve any proof against Miss White,’ he said. ‘That’s just the sort of rum little tale people repeat. Someone who was there told it to someone who wasn’t; that’s all that means.’
Lawrence’s expression grew slowly appalled. His face became crimson with shame and revulsion.
‘You mean they wrote them together – Clytie and that depraved young man?’
‘No, sir, I do not. Can’t you leave your niece out of it? You haven’t a shred of evidence against her. Anybody who saw the wreath roll down the stairs could have told absolutely anybody else. The char may have an auntie who goes in for fancy correspondence. Miss Roper may have chatted in the meat queue.’
‘That I should never believe. Miss Roper is a most superior person.’
Charlie Luke drew a deep breath but decided not to defend himself or Renee. Instead he said abruptly:
‘Why were you watching Captain Seton in the street out here at two o’clock in the morning of the day before yesterday?’
If he hoped to surprise he was unlucky.
‘That was quite infuriating.’ The goose-voice was placid. ‘I heard someone creep past this door and I assumed it was Clytie. She was on my mind because I had had words with her before, that evening. I did not realize she had come into the house, and when at my sister’s suggestion I Cawnthroped I found she was. She resented my interference.’
‘By “Cawnthroped” you mean “looked”, do you?’ Campion suggested hastily as Luke’s dark face showed promise of becoming black.
‘Oh yes. Foolish of me. A family reference you could hardly have been expected to know, although it appears in Elegant Extracts in the third edition.’ He went over to a bookcase and returned wi
th a volume. ‘Mornington Cawnthrope was a kinsman of my mother’s father. Here is the reference.’
‘“Archdeacon Cawnthrope, on losing his spectacles, was requested by his wife to look in a mirror and see them. ‘Ah, that I cannot do,’ quoth the Archdeacon, ‘for if I look I shall not see.’ ‘Yet if you do not look,’ replied the lady, ‘I declare you will not descry them, for they are on your nose all the time.’”’
He closed the book.
‘We always thought that very amusing,’ he said.
Mr Campion cast a sly glance at Luke and was glad he had come. The policeman was looking at Lawrence earnestly and the expression in his eyes was unfathomable.
‘You say you thought you heard Miss White creep past this door very early that morning,’ he said at last.
‘Oh yes, I did.’ Lawrence put down the book with regret. ‘I followed her and I stood watching her as best I could, but it was very unsatisfactory.’ He smiled with charming self-depreciation. ‘You see, I’m practically blind in the dark. I was made to look foolish when she returned at last and it was merely Captain Seton who had gone to post a letter.’
Luke sighed. ‘Did you see if he met anyone on the road by the postbox?’
Lawrence smiled again. ‘I couldn’t see anything at all,’ he said.
‘Did he tell you he’d gone to post a letter?’
‘No, I assumed it. All he told me on that occasion when I reached him in the hall was that his name was not Clytie.’
‘When did you obtain from him the legacy left him by Miss Ruth Palinode?’
The words were spoken quietly enough but their effect was remarkable. Lawrence Palinode shambled backwards, treading on his own feet and all but over-balancing.
‘Who gave you that information?’ he demanded in tremendous excitement. ‘Oh, I see. You guessed it from that letter. Yes, it was in there. That was why I tackled Seton this afternoon. I thought he must have told Clytie – if she was writing the dreadful things, I mean.’
He was incoherent and his hands were shaking.
‘That letter accuses me of robbing him, which is ridiculous. I gave him five pounds, a lot of money, for something “not Peru”.’
‘South American stock, was it?’ Luke was still doing his best.
Lawrence looked at him as if he thought he had gone mad.
‘I don’t think so. All I remember is that they were shares in somebody’s mine, and were, as I told you, perfectly worthless. Our solicitor told my sister so. She left them to Seton to annoy him, since he is notoriously short of money. That was her form of humour, not very enlightened. I bought them from him some weeks ago as soon as he received them. He’s not one of the family and I felt it my duty to see he was not victimized. It is all very well to joke at the right moment, but I thought that tasteless of Ruth.’
He made his explanation with spirit but not frankness. Luke remained dubious.
‘Where are they now?’
‘I have them safe.’
‘Would you sell them again for a fiver?’
‘Certainly not.’ He was uneasy and was taking refuge in a display of irritation. ‘They were part of the family inheritance.’
Mr Campion, who had been sitting quietly for some moments, looked up.
‘Perhaps you have already sold them?’
‘I have not sold them.’ There was an unexpected quality of obstinacy in his denial. ‘They are still in my possession. I shall always refuse to sell them. Have you finished your interrogation, Inspector?’
Luke touched Campion’s shoulder. ‘Okay,’ he said briskly. ‘You’ll remain in the house, won’t you, Mr Palinode? Meanwhile we’ll go up, shall we, sir?’
Lawrence pitched himself untidily into his chair before the desk and upset yet another inkpot.
‘Close the door behind you if you please,’ he said over his shoulder, as he mopped up for the second time. ‘You’re going up to plague Seton now, I suppose. May one ask what for?’
Charlie Luke winked at Campion.
‘We’re going to take a butcher’s hook at him,’ he said happily.
21. Homework
CHARLIE LUKE POURED the last of the water over the Captain’s grey and nodding head.
‘Hopeless,’ he said succinctly and sat back on his heels. ‘The old nitwhisker’s had it. Must have drunk the bottle without counting. He’ll have to sleep that lot off before we get a peep out of him.’
He nodded to the young detective who had been assisting him and together they lifted the old man on to his narrow bed. Mr Campion surveyed an unregenerate scene. Ever since he and Luke had come in, to find the Captain lying in his armchair, a corkscrew and an almost empty whisky bottle at his feet, a glass clutched to his military bosom, and the noise of trumpets issuing from his open mouth, the process of disarrangement had continued.
The young detective, arriving providentially with a message for Luke, had responded to the emergency with experience and enthusiasm. Luke, too, had his private methods of reviving the alcoholic, but the old Captain had defeated them.
Faced with the embarrassing, he had taken refuge in his secret bottle, hoarded carefully in the old leather hatbox, and it had not let him down. At the moment he was away somewhere, temporarily safe from the sordid present.
Charlie Luke stood at the end of the bed, his chin thrust out and his dark face gloomy.
‘Silly old basket,’ he said without animosity. ‘He gave me the cold horribles when I saw him. I thought he’d done a Pa Wilde on me. I don’t entirely care for everybody’s grandpa taking knock-out drops the moment I put my nose in.’
It occurred to Campion that he needed reassurance.
‘I feel it may be Renee that he’s frightened of, don’t you?’
‘Renee?’ Luke glanced round the dismantled room. ‘Lumme! I shall be the enemy there. Clean up a bit while you keep an eye on him, Pollit, will you? We’ll be just across the landing.’
He led the way to Campion’s room.
‘There’s a letter for you from the Super,’ Luke said, throwing it across, ‘and a couple of memos for me from Porky at the station. Now what? Di-dah, di-dah, di-dah – huh!’
He read, as he did everything else, with a great deal of action. The type-written sheets of blue paper vibrated like live things in his hands, and when they flapped over were as wild as washing on a line.
Campion opened his own envelope and he was still engrossed when the D.D.I. rose and moved the blind an inch or so.
‘There’s still a crowd,’ he said. He came back at last to sit by Campion again. ‘I don’t like this situation,’ he said. ‘No one’s making any money out of it. Not real money. I’m talking about Jas’s lark. That’s not right.’
He spread out his memorandum sheets again.
‘Pa Wilde was in debt all round; owed the wholesalers, the gas company, and the bank. We’ve been over everything, and if he was paid for whatever he was doing he certainly didn’t hoard it, pay his bills with it, or, as far as we can see, even eat with it. The doctor’s report here says “undernourished”. Poor old blighter! I liked him because he was so bloody, if you see what I mean.’
‘Blackmail?’ Campion suggested.
‘Seems so.’ Charlie Luke shook his head. ‘May have done anything in his time. He was a chemist, wasn’t he?’ He tipped the contents of an imaginary bottle into the ghost of a glass. ‘May once have slipped somebody the wrong dope or tried to get a girl out of trouble. Either of those would have given someone a hold over him. I’ve been to his shop for a chat dozens of times in the past year, but that was the first occasion when he wrote himself off because of it.’
Campion coughed discreetly.
‘One can’t help feeling he was involved in something reasonably serious, don’t you think?’ he suggested.
‘Maybe.’ The subject appeared to rankle with Luke.
‘Then there’s that couple of worm-shovellers over the road,’ he went on more hopefully. ‘We’re taking them to pieces now. I beg your pard
on, perhaps you’ve got something there?’
He looked so wistfully at Campion’s letter that its owner was sorry to disappoint him.
‘Nothing constructive at all, I’m afraid,’ he said truthfully. ‘I asked a few questions and in almost every case the answer is, vaguely, no. Looky Jeffreys died in the prison infirmary before disclosing anything more about Apron Street save that he did not want to go up it. He was arrested while committing a singularly inefficient burglary, which he is thought to have undertaken alone.’
‘That’s ruddy helpful.’
‘I inquired about Bella Musgrave. She and her two old sisters keep a little dyeing and cleaning agency in Stepney. At the moment she is away from home. Her sisters do not know where she is and they expect her back at any moment. Then there’s this.’ Campion took three closely-typed sheets from the rest. ‘I asked if the chemistry boys could tell us if hyoscine could be obtained from henbane by an amateur. This is their report. Yeo seems to have translated it for us on the bottom here.’
Luke screwed up his eyes to see the pencilled note.
‘“This would appear to mean no,”’ he read aloud and sniffed. ‘Everybody’s helping and nothing’s moving, as the donkey said to the barn door.’
Luke closed his eyes. ‘That chap Lawrence is behaving peculiarly and he certainly can’t talk straight. But do you know what I think about him?’ He opened them again and stared seriously at Campion. ‘I don’t believe he could kill pussy,’ he said. ‘Come in – oh, it’s you, George. Mr Campion, this is Sergeant Picot. He’s been over at Bowels’s. Any luck, George?’
The newcomer exuded reliability and respect for the law and the rights of the citizen as some men exude just the opposite.
‘Evening, sir; evening, sir.’ He got the greetings over with bird-swiftness. ‘Well, we’ve seen them both. We’ve been over the premises again and we’ve taken a thorough look at the books. I can’t find anything wrong.’ He looked the Chief Inspector severely in the eye. ‘It seems a very nicely run business.’
Luke nodded. In dejection he was as picturesque as at the height of exuberance. His shoulders were hunched and some of the life seemed to have vanished even from his hair.
More Work for the Undertaker Page 18