Margery Allingham's Mr Campion's Farewell

by Mike Ripley

  ‘She’s Judd’s bit of stuff, isn’t she?’

  ‘Mind your tongue, Hereward!’ Clarissa reprimanded him. ‘Don’t let her hear you calling her anybody’s ‘bit of stuff’. Don’t let me catch you either. I know you think Ben Judd is a thug and an oik, but if Eliza Jane fancies him, that’s her business. If I were her age I might make the handsome Ben my business too, but I’m not, so let them get on with it. Now, what about that lunch?’

  Mr Spindler sniffed loudly.

  ‘So you really have no idea why Campion is here?’

  ‘None. Perhaps if you’d invited him to join us I could have wormed it out of him over coffee and Armagnac.’

  ‘I did suggest it,’ said Gus Marchant as if his manners or his honour required defending, ‘but he wouldn’t have any of it. Said he had to call on somebody – and then he asked directions to the Junior School.’

  ‘Now why do you think he did that?’ asked Hereward Spindler, but answer came there none.

  As the machine guns opened fire, the girls screamed and ran for cover but the attack was merciless, the winged assassins swooping and diving through the massed ranks of innocent victims.

  Mr Campion had quite forgotten how relentless young boys could be when they formed themselves into squadrons of Spitfires and just how loud young girls could be when they screamed, not in fear but in surprise and annoyance at having their perfectly respectable games of hopscotch or skipping interrupted by aerial attack – or the next best thing as imagined by a nine-year-old with arms outstretched for wings and a constant stream of ‘Takkatakkatakka …’ noises which reverberated around the stone walls enclosing – at child-proof height – the playground of the Carders Junior School (Church of England affiliated).

  Across the playground, the school presented itself as a smart, low Victorian building, its brick walls were faced with local flint stone and its roof was of solid Welsh slate. The main entrance, up a flight of three broad steps, was only a few strides away for an adult, but between the wall gate and the door were perhaps twenty children rushing, jostling, ducking and diving, displaying all the sense of direction to be observed in a violently disturbed ants’ nest and Mr Campion hesitated before wading through such a turbulent sea of small humanity.

  He was saved by the bell, or rather a bell – a Victorian wooden-handled brass school bell of which any town crier or pub landlord at closing time would be proud – being wielded with some authority by the tall, gawky and uncertain man he had been lectured by in the Carders’ Hall.

  Lemuel Walker raised and lowered his arm three times in rapid succession and, before the last sonorous note had faded, the skippers, hopscotchers, footballers, and even the Messerschmitt pilots had formed themselves into two orderly crocodile lines – boys on the right, girls on the left – and were preparing to march back to their classroom.

  ‘Can I help you? I’m afraid we only see parents – or grandparents – by appointment out of school hours,’ Walker called across the playground in what Campion presumed was his ‘strict headmaster’ voice – a voice meant to inspire and intimidate rather than inform.

  Mr Campion decided that Walker must have been bullied as a child and had worked hard to get into a position where he could play the bully himself; but it was not a convincing performance.

  ‘I do hope I am not intruding on the school day,’ he said, ‘and I have no wish to disrupt the curriculum. I was hoping to talk to you personally, Mr Walker, about your involvement with the Carders.’

  Walker narrowed his eyes and his body stiffened to such an extent that the school bell in his right hand chimed involuntarily. Quickly he grasped the clapper with his left hand to silence it. When he said nothing, Campion persisted, leaning casually against the school yard wall so that anyone passing by would think they were merely exchanging the pleasantries of the day.

  ‘I do not know who you are, sir, and I have no intention of talking to you in the middle of the school day.’

  Walker’s voice rose half an octave before it cracked.

  ‘I am intruding,’ Campion said quickly, ‘and for that I apologise, as I do for my rudeness. My, name is Campion and I was present at your lecture in the Carders’ Hall. I was hoping we could perhaps meet and discuss your subject further.’

  ‘If you were at my lecture, then you will have heard all that I have to say on that particular subject,’ said Walker, his eyes fixed not on Campion, but on the gate in the wall, as if judging the distance to it and whether he could reach it and somehow defend it if the stranger attempted to enter the playground.

  Mr Campion dismissed the idea as fanciful, though he found disturbing the schoolmaster’s habit of stretching his scrawny neck out of his collar and jutting his chin forward as he spoke almost as if trying to spit his words out.

  ‘Oh, I doubt that, Mr Walker. I think you are something of an authority on local folklore and traditions and as an academic and a researcher, you must have found much more than you could shoe-horn into your Saturday night talk.’

  ‘Whether you think that or not,’ said Walker, his neck bobbing up like that of a startled ostrich, ‘it does not alter the fact that I have nothing more to say on the subject. On that my mind is made up.’

  ‘Could I ask,’ Campion started his attack gently, ‘just one thing?’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘As I understand it, you were quite prepared to talk about the Carders when you agreed to give that lecture some while ago, but now you are obviously reluctant to mention them. Would your reluctance have anything to do with your recent absence – dare I say disappearance – from village society?’

  Walker clearly struggled to hold his composure and apart from that hydraulic neck, his body was rigid.

  ‘If I took off for a few days, what has it got to do with you? Are you from the press?’

  ‘I am not of the press,’ said Campion firmly, ‘and I believe you disappeared for nine days. You were a Nine Days’ Wonder in fact, which I understand is something of a local tradition here in Lindsay, a bit like the Carders in fact.’

  The Walker neck strained to its maximum height and his eyes bulged.

  ‘I have nothing, repeat, nothing, further to say to you or anyone else. Now leave me alone!’

  Thankfully, the last of the children had trooped into the school and had not witnessed their teacher’s outburst but from the door where they had entered, a figure emerged to place a hand on Walker’s shoulder.

  ‘The children are ready for their dinner, Headmaster,’ said Mrs Thornton, resplendent in a bright orange pinafore. ‘You’d better come and say grace so they can tuck in.’

  The teacher turned like an automaton and stepped back into the building. After a ten second glare in Campion’s direction, Mrs Thornton silently followed.

  Mr Campion brushed a speck of dust off the sleeve of his jacket from where he had leaned over the wall and casually began to walk back towards the High Street, wondering why Mr Lemuel Walker was such a frightened man.

  Eliza Jane opened the door to her cottage on Campion’s second knock. She wore a paint splattered boiler suit, which had once been white but was now truly a coat of many colours, wellington boots and to top the ensemble, her hair was encased in a plastic shower cap.

  ‘I knew it must be you, Uncle Dear. Everyone else in Lindsay knows not to disturb me in my lair, not while the light is with me. After about three o’clock, I lose the light thanks to the ridiculously small windows in this chocolate box house. It’s like something out of Hansel and Gretel, but when I suggested putting in skylights or French windows, the Carders said not on my Nellie, as it would spoil the image of the village! Anyway, now you’re here I suppose you’d better come in.’ She paused for breath and opened the door wider.

  ‘Only if you promise not to make me buy a painting,’ smiled Campion, ‘for I think Mrs Webster has already put my name on two, if not three, of your canvases on display at the Medley.’

  ‘Don’t worry, from here I only deal whol
esale, not retail. I wouldn’t dream of diddling Clarissa out of her commission. I wouldn’t dare. Come on in then. I’ll stop for lunch in an hour, but don’t expect me to cook for you two days’ running. I don’t even do that for Ben.’

  Mr Campion stepped over the threshold and in to what had once been a living room but now resembled the disordered paint shop of a garage in a war zone. The air shimmered with the fumes from open paint and varnish pots and bottles of turpentine and white spirit and the floor was a minefield of half-finished canvases, easels leaning at dangerous angles, sheets of rough pencil drawings, half-drunk cups of tea, brushes standing in jars of dark oily liquid, scrunched up pieces of rag and at least three food-smeared plates with knives and forks neatly, if incongruously, placed together.

  ‘I haven’t wished myself on you for a free meal,’ Campion said, plotting a course across the debris strewn floor, ‘but I would like to use your telephone if I may.’

  ‘Sure thing, Uncle, go through, go through. The kitchen’s relatively civilised – I won’t say clean – but it is civilised compared to this, and anyway, that’s where the phone is. And you’re welcome to lunch; I just won’t be cooking anything. I usually pop up to Marchant’s to get the fixings for a sandwich.’

  ‘Marchant’s?’ queried Campion as he picked his way gingerly across the room.

  ‘The village shop-cum-post-office. It’s owned by Gus Marchant, like just about everything else around here, but it’s rather nice that our village general merchant is a Marchant, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I met Mr Marchant this morning and he’s invited me to a shoot on Wednesday.’

  ‘My, you are a fast worker. No wonder Clarissa fancies you like mad.’

  ‘It was at Clarissa’s shop – or should that be ‘emporium’ – that I ran into him.’

  ‘Well you probably would; third Monday of the month is rent day, when the Carders come and demand their tithe.’

  ‘Would you mind,’ Campion said seriously, ‘if we had a chat about that?’

  They compromised and talked while Eliza Jane continued to strive to bring order to the chaos, sometimes working on two canvases at once. Mr Campion, who had promised not to light a cigarette in case of spontaneous combustion given the fume-filled air, secured a perch for himself on a high kitchen stool placed in the doorway so that he could talk to the artist’s back, having first been reassured that the girl was not being rude, but she had commissions to finish. Campion in turn assured her that he had no wish to disrupt her livelihood and he was perfectly comfortable as he approved of hard work and application – and could watch it in action all day long.

  Eliza Jane initiated their dialogue by asking how Campion’s day as a tourist in Lindsay Carfax had gone and she laughed at her uncle’s description of Mrs Thornton popping up ‘like a demented Jill in the Box’ at every turn, solely for the purpose of relieving him of money. (He did not, however, mention Mrs Thornton’s spectral appearance on the shoulder of Lemuel Walker at the school.) And she guffawed as he recounted his kidnapping ‘off the street in broad daylight’ by Mrs Webster.

  Almost as if it had just occurred to him, Mr Campion mentioned casually that it had been Rent Day at the Medley and no less than three rent collectors had turned up, one of whom had been Mr Marchant, who had seemed a very friendly sort of landlord – the sort who took his tenants out for expensive lunches, as well as buying them French perfume. Well that, Eliza had said over her shoulder as she painted, was the magic and the mystery of the Carders: they were secretive, authoritarian, ritualistic, ruthless and cruel, but also honourable, courteous and on occasion generous to a fault. If a business couldn’t pay the rent – though in fact it was more a monthly tithe than a rent – then it wasn’t as if they were thrown out on to the street. As long as they kept quiet and didn’t make a fuss – for the Carders hated fuss – they would find that business improved, more orders came their way, more tourists arrived or perhaps some advantageous lines of credit opened up for them. If they stuck to the unwritten rules and laws of Lindsay Carfax, then they would be alright and perfectly able and happy to pay their tithe in the future. The quid pro quo for any help they received would, of course, be that they returned the favour when asked to by the Carders, as they surely would be.

  ‘And Gus Marchant is a Carder?’ Campion asked, observing the rear view of his niece carefully.

  Eliza Jane didn’t miss a brushstroke.

  ‘Of course he is and he’s probably the Head Carder, or Reichsführer, Caesar, Worshipful Master, Lord High Executioner or First Violin or whatever they call the big cheese when they put their robes on and meet in session. Of course they’d probably cut my tongue out and bury it on a beach at high tide or some such rigmarole just for suggesting that.’

  ‘Interesting that you should sue the word Caesar,’ said Campion, ‘as Mrs Webster referred to them as a triumvirate of the ruling elite.’

  ‘Them? You mean Gus Marchant’s henchmen?’

  ‘An odd little man, who just might be human, called Fuller and a dried old stick of a lawyer called Spindler, who I believe owns the Prentice House.’

  ‘Oh, the odious Hereward … bought the place for a song from the batty Lady Prunella. Yes, he’s one of them, and so is Marcus Fuller.’

  ‘Marchant, Fuller and Spindler – they’re all Carders?’

  ‘Well I’d say so, though maybe not on oath as I certainly couldn’t prove it, but Marchant and Fuller – Fuller Senior that is, the brother’s an entirely different kettle of fish – they’re as thick as thieves. As for Spindler, he fits Ben’s description of the Carders’ “Learned Clerk” to a T, though he’d never come out and say it was Spindler who failed so spectacularly to induct him, because he gave his word not to breathe a word. Sometimes I think there’s too much of the Boy Scout in Ben Judd, although he hates it when they refer to him as “boy”.’

  ‘I’m still not clear why Ben was a candidate for the ranks of the Carders,’ said Campion.

  ‘Accident of birth,’ said Eliza, mixing a blue to complete a wedge of skyscape, ‘his mother being a Dyer and therefore – though don’t ask me why – entitled to an honorary seat on the Carder Council or whatever it is.’

  ‘There are supposed to be nine aren’t there?’

  ‘Who knows? It’s part of the mystery, the legend, the myth. I think I know three – Marchant, Fuller and Spindler – isn’t that enough? Isn’t three a quorum for Carders?’

  ‘I suspect, my dear, you are thinking of Musketeers – but let me change the subject. Would you mind if I took a photograph of you?’

  For the first time, Eliza Jane stopped what she was doing; in fact positively froze in her tracks apart from her head which turned slowly to face Campion.

  ‘In this outfit?’

  ‘The artist at work in her studio,’ said her uncle. ‘Your aunt Amanda would love it and it might become an iconic image in the future, when you are famous and your work is selling for millions at Sotheby’s.’

  Eliza Jane took the compliment in her stride and instinctively reverted to the professional artist within.

  ‘If you must, but the light’s not good enough in here if you’re shooting colour unless you’ve got a flash.’

  Campion lifted the camera he still carried over his shoulder and reached into his jacket pocket to produce a small, square block of black leatherette about the size of a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘The new Olympus Trip comes with a handy flash unit,’ he said with a flourish, ‘which runs on tiny batteries and shoehorns on to the top of the camera in a positive trice. Flick the switch to charge it, point and click and you have pictures that would grace any fashion magazine these days – or so I’m told. Damn clever, those Japanese, when it comes to cameras.’

  Eliza Jane put her paint brush between her teeth, placed her hands on her hips and turned her upper torso towards Campion in a provocative pose.

  ‘So you think you’re David Bailey, eh?’ she said, chewing at the paintbrush. ‘Well, I’
m up for it, as they say, but I insist on keeping the shower cap on.’

  ‘A true artist would insist on no less.’

  Mr Campion pointed and clicked and his camera did just what the manufacturer had promised. When he was satisfied he had enough photographic evidence of the young artist at work, he excused himself and retired to the kitchen – an immaculately clean and tidy kitchen – to use the telephone.

  ‘Give my love to Aunt Amanda,’ Eliza shouted over her shoulder.

  ‘I’m not phoning home. I’m ringing the police.’

  ‘Good God, my painting’s not that bad, is it?’

  ‘Not at all. I’m ringing a friend of a friend, based in Bury St Edmunds, to see if I can call on him.’

  Whilst Campion busied himself with the receiver, Eliza joined him and began to fill a kettle and rinse out a teapot.

  ‘That’s me finished for the day, so it’s time for tea. Did you get hold of your friend’s copper?’

  ‘Yes I did and he’ll see me tomorrow. Do you fancy a day out in Bury? Do some shopping perhaps?’

  ‘I might,’ said Eliza busying herself with the tea things. ‘I could do with making myself scarce.’

  She saw Mr Campion’s look of concern.

  ‘Oh don’t come over all concerned and uncle-y. Tommy Tucker’s claiming his share of studio time tomorrow, which means that Ben will be like a bear with a sore head – in fact quite the pig – and he’ll make sure if he can’t work, then I won’t either.’

  ‘The last thing I wish to do is come between temperamental lovers, but if you’re free I’d be glad of the company.’

  ‘Fair enough. Now as we’ve missed lunch, let’s have tea and cake – it’s shop bought I’m afraid.’

  They took their tea in the civilised way, over inconsequential conversation about distant family relatives, the state of the art world and in particular ‘pop art’, music, theatre and cinema. As in the best of houses, even small two-up, two-down cottages which reeked of turpentine, the subjects of money, politics and sex were tactfully ignored.