by Mike Ripley
‘Not quite,’ said Mr Campion. ‘At the start of this gothic rigmarole you said it concerned me in a way. Apart from Prunella Redcar, who I think is my great aunt thrice removed and hasn’t seen me since my Christening so far as I know, I can’t see any connection.’
Luke laughed. ‘You’ve got too many relations to keep track of them all. There’s a girl living down there earning a comfortable living by turning out paintings of the place by the dozen. A very choice little item for anyone’s notebook.’ He sketched a well-curved figure in the air. ‘Her name is Eliza Jane Fitton. Do you know her?’
Mr Campion raised his eyebrows and stared blankly into the saloon bar. ‘Eliza Jane,’ he said at length. ‘My wife’s – Amanda’s – niece. She left home to seek her fortune about three years ago and nobody thought she’d have the slightest difficulty about it, whatever she decided to do. As I recall she is that sort of girl.’
Superintendent Luke looked at his watch and indicated that he would accept a final drink. ‘I’m glad about that,’ he said. ‘Her boyfriend, Ben Judd, is the only other name I was given as a chap who might be a Carder.’
Two
Who Knocks?
It was apparent to Mr Campion as soon as he became acquainted with the white-coated barman of the Woolpack at Lindsay Carfax that here was a man who knew all about everything – an accomplishment which he made no attempt to conceal. He was a short man, a well-proportioned miniature, with black hair receding from a shining forehead and much of the repellent confidence of a television soap-powder salesman.
‘They’ve put you in number eight, I see. Old Draughty, we call it. I wouldn’t stand for that if I were you sir – not at the price you’re paying. Tell you what, I’ll have a word with the guv’nor after lunch and get you shifted into number twelve. Twice the size, better bed, same charge and looks over the garden. Leave it to me, sir.’
‘You’re very kind,’ said Mr Campion with proper humility in the presence of such importance, ‘but I’ve unpacked and the fact is I like the view down the street.’
The small bar in which he was standing had been carefully designed to separate the sheep from the goats in the matter of clientele. It was intended for regular customers and those guests who could afford the inflated prices which the hotel charged for food and accommodation, whilst the larger and more obvious saloon with its plethora of old oak and horse brass dealt with the ephemeral coach trade.
Mr Campion, who had placed himself at the end of the curved counter, had the advantage of a strategic position which made him almost invisible, for the sunlight from the window behind him reduced his thin figure to a silhouette. He stood for some time, sipping unhurriedly at his gin and tonic, surveying the half-dozen customers of which only two were identifiable by voice as local. The season was past its peak, it was just after noon, and trade lacked the urgency which precedes the sacred hour of one when the English eat by rigorous convention.
As he signalled for his second drink, he was aware that the barman delayed acceptance of this request by a fraction, waiting until he had caught the eye of the woman who was standing with her back to the man in the corner. She evidently acknowledged the glance, for the barman poured out both orders, placing them on the counter side by side so that both customers were forced to turn towards each other. It was not an introduction but an expertly contrived encounter.
Mr Campion found himself smiling apologetically into a pair of shrewd dark eyes set in a pleasant dimpled face beneath a froth of hair which he suspected had been assisted into premature whiteness.
‘You’re a visitor here?’ said Mrs Clarissa Webster. ‘I hope you’re enjoying yourself?’ She was incapable of speaking to a man without making him acutely aware of her sex and mildly ashamed that it should be the first thought in the presence of such an amiably unselfconscious stranger.
‘Completing my education,’ he said. ‘I always regretted that the author of Jonathan Prentice was a woman. A very masculine mind, don’t you think?’
She twisted her head, giving the question a more flattering attention than it deserved.
‘Perhaps; but she was a poetess too, you know. “Sundials by moonlight telling lovers lies.” Somehow, I feel only a woman could have written that. Would you agree?’
‘Yet she never married.’
‘You’re old enough to know that isn’t always important. She had her men – three or four if you ask me – and understood them very well. That’s why you say she had a man’s mind. You’re a conceited lot. Bless you.’ She emptied her glass, tossed him a smile that intimated that she had enjoyed the interlude and trotted out of the bar leaving a whisper of expensive fragrance tinged with regret at the approach of autumn.
The barman looked after her, washed out the glass and returned to the man in the corner. He had contrived the meeting by long-standing arrangement and hoped it would be profitable.
‘A nice woman that,’ he said. ‘Runs an art shop just down the street. The Medley, she calls it. Her name’s Mrs Webster, Mr Campion, and she’s a widow. Mine’s Don, by the way. Everyone calls me Don. Shall I get you another whilst you’re waiting?’
The thought that his intentions were transparent discomforted him.
‘Not yet, thank you, Don. I’m waiting for a Miss Fitton.’
‘Her?’ For once, the fountain of knowledge was surprised. ‘She’ll be late, so I’d have a large one if I were you. She had an accident last night.’
He swished away pretending to have been summoned from the other bar, leaving Mr Campion torn between curiosity and a strong instinct to make an enemy for life by refusing to ask for details. The problem was solved by the sudden appearance of a girl who materialised in the open door propelled by a single hop. She rested on one leg, steadying herself against the upright, and scanned the few customers between half-closed eyes. Mr Campion moved swiftly to greet his guest.
‘My dear Eliza Jane,’ he said and bent a shoulder towards her. ‘Use this as a crutch – the nearest table I think. The well-informed Don was about to tell me of your trouble, but I’d prefer your own version in due course. What sort of restorative do you use these days?’
She accepted his offer, putting an arm round his neck and hopping with agility to a wheelback chair with splayed arms.
‘Dearest Uncle, could you run to a brandy and ginger ale? It’s not a hangover cure – I’m on the weak and tearful tack this morning.’
She lifted a lock of dark hair with a hint of copper in it from her forehead to display a graze covering a considerable lump on her left temple. ‘That means a lovely black eye before sundown, I’m afraid.’
Mr Campion examined the damage from behind owlish spectacles, noting with concern that her hand was unsteady.
‘I agree,’ he said. ‘It could be a job for a piece of raw steak. In this old world set-up you might try a leech as well – they used to be highly commended. I’m sure the Apothecary stocks them.’
He did not attempt to press her for an explanation but piloted her adroitly by way of lunch, smoothed by banter and small talk, to a frame of mind in which the tension relaxed. Eliza Jane, it was clear, had suffered a shock and was mentally crouching inside herself until her strength returned. She ate dutifully at first, as becomes a well-brought-up niece in the presence of a favourite uncle, but with increasing pleasure. Coffee and a cigarette conjured her first genuine smile.
‘Better now – much better. Come to think of it, I haven’t eaten a thing since yesterday evening.’ She put down her cup. ‘I can feel you itching to know what happened to me, so I’ll tell you the whole shooting match and don’t stop me if you get bored; I want to get it off my chest, for my own satisfaction really. Then I’ll know if it sounds a likely tale or not. Are you all set, or do you want to take Madeira or something with it?’
‘I’ll take it neat,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Start with Ben Judd.’
Her laugh held a tinge of exasperation.
‘Ben? That’s a bit of one-upmanship. I didn’t re
alise the family knew anything about him. Or, have you been sitting around in this dump with your ears flapping? It doesn’t matter. But you’re right. It began with Ben.’ She raised her head, looking beyond her host, conjuring a face into her mind’s eye.
‘Ben is a painter – quite a good one. He’s got something to say and when he’s a bit older he’ll have even more to say and some of his things might even be important. I think so, but I’m not sure. I’m a slick commercial hack, and the awful thing is that I don’t want to be anything else. I don’t kid myself that I’ll ever get a glimpse of the great soul-eating fiend who drives him along. It’s not for me.
‘The trouble is that I paint – I mean actually put the stuff on canvas – much more easily and rather more skilfully than he does. The business of technique tortures him – he fights with the bloody work down to the last flick of splatter.’
She considered her uncle over a gap of forty years.
‘Are you with it, or am I talking jargon that’s missing you by a mile?’
‘The world is too much with it,’ said Mr Campion regretfully. ‘But I see your point of view – and his.’
‘Good. Then hear this, dearest uncle. Last night Ben and I had a flaming row. It was one of quite a few we’ve had lately, sex quarrels you could call them, I suppose. That’s what they really are, if you want to be basic. But this was an epoch-maker. We didn’t get to hitting each other with bottles – quite – but it came damned close.’
Eliza Jane grimaced as if the idea of using bottles in Round 2 was a distinct possibility and lit another cigarette.
‘The row began in his studio when I’d cooked up a meal and taken quite a bit of trouble over it. Not the easiest place for the Cordon Bleu technique. It’s an old barn at the end of a farm track, and not very well converted. He has a bedroom up above half of it, which used to be a hay loft; and you can get to it by climbing a ladder inside, but it’s much easier to go by an outside wooden staircase which leads to a platform and a perfectly good door. When we got up there the storm, which had been simmering all the evening, burst good and hearty.
‘I was sitting on his bed gibbering and calling him everything I could lay my tongue to when it happened. Someone knocked on the door.’
She paused as if to recall the precise sequence of events.
‘Was that odd?’ asked Mr Campion. ‘I mean, was it very late and therefore unexpected?’
‘God, no. It was late-ish for these parts – about ten I suppose. It was a bit melodramatic because I’d just sworn that I wouldn’t speak to him again and that I’d leap into bed with the first man who showed willing. Then there was this knock, dead on cue as it seemed. Dada-Da-Da.’
‘Someone listening outside?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘I don’t know. The staircase creaks quite a bit when you tread on it, but then we weren’t exactly paying attention. Ben shouted, “Get the hell out” and we got on with the row. After about five minutes when he’d run out of steam he did look out of the door but there was nobody there.
‘About an hour later we were both in full blast again and I was working up to the farewell-for-ever scene when it came the second time. Dada-Da-Da.’
She rapped the table with her knuckles.
‘As far as I was concerned it was just too good an exit line to miss. I said “My chum outside will see me home and he’s welcome to stay” – or something equally damn silly – and flung the door wide open.
‘Again; nobody there. It was a bit uncanny. The stupid part was that we were so obsessed with each other that we really didn’t stop to think how queer it was. It was pitch black outside, but I’d swear nobody could dash down that staircase without making a noise, and if you tried to slide down the handrail it would drop to pieces. I left the door open so that I could see as far as the first step and started to trip down the rest, all hoity-toity. And trip is the word.
‘There was a piece of cord stretched across the third step and I pitched straight down to the paving. I ricked my ankle, barked my skull and I suppose I’m damn lucky not to have broken an arm or a leg.’
‘Or a neck,’ said Mr Campion blankly. ‘I hope Mr Judd came to your rescue?’
‘Ben? Oh yes. He came tumbling after. Or rather, he didn’t, because my weight had snapped the bit of twine, or jerked it away from the nail it was tied to. He didn’t find it until this morning. He was rather good really. He picked me up, bathed my wounds, soaked my ankle and left me severely alone on a couch in the studio for what was left of the night. He thought I was a silly nitwit, probably making a bigger fuss than I needed to, just to get sympathy because I’d taken a toss. He changed his mind when he saw someone had fixed the whole thing up as a rather vicious booby-trap.’
‘It sounds,’ said Mr Campion, ‘as if it caught the wrong victim. Apart from you, has anyone else been having a disagreement with Ben?’
His niece gave her mind to the problem, seeing it from an angle which was new.
‘I can’t think of a soul. He has everlasting rows with Tommy Tucker who shares the studio with him, but they’re just about Art and who gets the space when they both want to do a big canvas. There was an inspector of drains or rates or whatever who got slung out on his ear and complained to the police, and a couple of lieabouts last year whom they’d lent the couch to for a night and who wanted to move in. That was just a simple stand-up fight. And a chap from a London gallery who got a bit patronising. Ben flung a can of paint at him and had to buy him a new suit. All trivial stuff, which could happen to anyone. Nothing serious.’
‘No ghostly knocks before last night?’
‘Not even a screech owl as far as I know. These were good sharp raps – Dada-Da-Da, just like that.’
Eliza Jane stretched her foot tentatively, wincing at the effort.
‘And another funny thing,’ she said. ‘What brings you down here all of a sudden out of the blue? Your letter just said you’d be passing by, but the waiter just now said “You’re number eight, aren’t you sir?” So you’re staying here, at least for the night. I hope you don’t intend to keep an eye on me.’
‘I came down here,’ said Mr Campion, ‘to oblige an old friend who says he doesn’t like mysteries.’
Three
The Nine Carders
‘If you want to see Mr Lemuel Walker, sir, your best chance is right now. You couldn’t have picked a better time. He’s giving the lecture in the Hall this very night – last of the season.’
The omniscient Don jerked his head towards the door of the bar.
‘There’s a card on the notice board giving the list, but the rest are finished. Once a month they have them during the summer, for the schools, the tourists and so on. Sometimes they get quite big shots to come down. At the Craft Festival Sir Philip Trumpington came over to talk about Esther Wickham. A hundred quid they paid for him and made money on it, so I hear. Walker will probably touch for a fiver if he’s lucky but then he’s small stuff, being local and just a schoolmaster.’
It was early in the evening. Mr Campion had escorted his niece to her studio, a long room in one of the innumerable half-timbered cottages on the main street, explored the church, noted the sights he might wish to explore further and paid a dutiful visit to the exterior of the home of revered novelist the late Esther Wickham before returning to the Woolpack in urgent need of refreshment.
His mentor skimmed a green paper ticket across the bar.
‘Here you are, sir, compliments of the management. We get ’em for displaying the ads.’
‘Is there a keen demand?’ enquired Mr Campion.
Don laughed. ‘Not that you’d notice it. Party of twenty having early dinner here – girls’ school near Cambridge. Four of our residents have booked for the same service. There’ll be quite a few from the village I’d say – a dozen, twenty maybe. Nothing to do here at night and Mr Walker’s got himself talked about this past week.’
He cocked a beady eye at the thin man. ‘You know about
that?’
‘I heard a rumour,’ Mr Campion admitted. ‘A nine days’ wonder, I was told. What actually happened?’
The barman was not to be defeated by lack of information.
‘If you ask me, sir, there was a female behind it. Now just to look at Mr Walker you wouldn’t believe that was possible – he’s not what you’d think of as a ladies’ man, but you never know. I’d say he had an arrangement he wanted kept quiet with some little bit of nooky and it went wrong. She blacked his eye for him and gave him one or two across the kisser to be going on with. That’s my opinion. It explains why he won’t talk.’
‘But he is talking tonight,’ said Mr Campion. ‘At 8 p.m. sharp, I see. What’s his subject?’
‘The Carders of Lindsay Carfax – that’s what it says on the bills. If you want to do it in style, sir, why don’t you take the secret passage? Brings you right into the Moot Room where the action is. I could lend you a torch. It might give them something to think about if you popped up that way.’
He slapped a key on to the bar counter. ‘Here you are, sir. It opens both doors – the one in the corner of this room, which you can’t see because of the panelling – and the one at the far end.’
Mr Campion declined the offer. ‘I think I’ll drift along in the usual way. It sounds like a private entrance rather than a secret one.’
‘Hasn’t been secret for years. There are four of them – passages joining up under the Hall – and they have to be kept from flooding in winter or falling in when they change the drains and what-have-you. Todhunters, the builders – they belong to Marchants – do the work. No secret at all. It’s in all the guide books. Sometimes we use it for guests when it’s a bad night and there’s a dance in the big hall. One starts at the Vicarage, one at Humble’s and one at the Prentice House.’
‘All the same,’ said Mr Campion, ‘I think I’ll go by the street. Fresh air, you know.’
He wandered towards the dining room and at five minutes to the hour joined the trickle of seekers after culture which was moving by twos and threes towards the main architectural feature of the village.