Margery Allingham's Mr Campion's Farewell

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Could I impose on you to look up the names of the two who overdosed?’ asked Campion.

  ‘Stephen Stotter and Martin Rees,’ Bill Bailey snapped out the response. ‘I don’t have to look the names up; I had to tell their mothers what had happened to them.’

  ‘I am so sorry about that,’ said Campion genuinely. ‘A policeman’s lot is rarely a happy one. I presume it was one of the deceased who actually acquired the drugs?’

  ‘It was Stotter, who was sort of the leader of the expedition. The others had no idea where he got the stuff, or who from. If they had, I’d have had the pusher bouncing off the walls of one of our cells before you could say “Peace and Love” and to hell with his civil liberties. All five of them took something that night but it seems that Master Stotter and Master Rees got the lion’s share and it did for them, though I doubt they knew what they were messing with.’

  ‘Their parents must have been devastated,’ Eliza Jane said quietly. ‘I feel guilty because in Lindsay their deaths hardly caused a ripple. One morning the police were all over us and suddenly all the lieabouts started to drift away.’

  ‘We have that effect on some people,’ said Bill Bailey with mock gravity.

  ‘It didn’t really sink in that somebody had actually died. We were just glad to be rid of a nuisance.’

  ‘Don’t upset yourself, my dear. What’s done is done and there’s nothing you could have done about it, so there’s no need to beat yourself up.’

  ‘Listen to the Chief Inspector, Eliza,’ said Campion, reaching out to place a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Sackcloth and ashes were never a good look in any circumstances. Such a story does, however, make our little problems with the anti-social element in Lindsay Carfax hardly amount to a hill of beans, as a wise man once said.’

  ‘But you were right to tell me, Mr Campion. There’s too many things go on over there which never come to light and if you let the small crimes go unnoticed then you can’t expect the big ones to be punished.’ The detective paused and stroked his chin before continuing.

  ‘The problem is, you see, that we might smell something that’s gone off in Lindsay but no one there ever complains about anything. If they’ve got a problem they expect the Carders to take care of things, like last year with the two lads who overdosed. The story was doing the rounds that the Carders had given them nine days to get out of the village, and it was on the ninth day that they went on an acid trip from which Stotter and Rees never returned.’

  ‘You don’t put much faith in that story, do you?’ asked Campion.

  ‘Of course not; it’s stuff and nonsense made up after the fact, but it adds to the legend. I don’t know whether that school teacher fellow is telling the truth about his disappearing on a Nine Days’ Wonder but I’ll bet you won’t find a soul in Lindsay who doesn’t believe it was the work of the Carders. There isn’t a pie in that place they don’t have a finger in.’

  ‘A chap called Marchant seems to own just about everything there,’ Mr Campion observed.

  ‘Maybe not everything, but a good four-fifths,’ DCI Bailey responded, ‘though it doesn’t make him a wrong ’un. In fact Old Gus is well known in the county and in truth he’s no more dangerous than the average Rotarian – and he keeps out of politics, which is to his credit.’

  ‘And you think he’s a Carder – one of the Nine?’

  ‘I’d be amazed in Augustine Marchant wasn’t one of the ruling elite, and the same goes for his old mess-mate and business partner Marcus Fuller.’

  ‘Would a lawyer-chap called Hereward Spindler make up a trio of Carders?’

  ‘That’s either clever observation, good guesswork or just a healthy dislike of lawyers, but you could be right. In fact, I’ve heard it said openly that Spindler is the Carders’ clerk or recorder, or scribe or whatever they call it. When the Carders do good works – and they do – I can see it being useful having the local solicitor on board to sign deeds, allocate funds and so on. To be fair I don’t think he makes any particular secret of the fact.’

  Mr Campion stretched his long legs out in front of his chair and made circular motions with the tips of his shoes.

  ‘What a curious place is Lindsay Carfax,’ he said languidly. ‘It has secret passages which are not only not secret but are openly revealed in tourist guides and on tea-towels and postcards. It is famous for the Humble Box – a secret way of forecasting the weather which, if it ever worked, was a secret which died with its inventor almost two hundred years ago – and it is said to be run by a secret society which isn’t very secret. In fact we’ve just named three of them and we know that Ben Judd was approached to join their ranks, so that would be four.’

  ‘But Ben didn’t join them,’ protested Eliza Jane.

  ‘No he did not, but it sounds as if they had a vacancy coming up, otherwise they wouldn’t be recruiting. Can Carders be fired or are older ones replaced by faster, sleeker, younger models?’

  Bill Bailey allowed himself a smile. ‘You might have something there, Campion, the Carders may well be looking for new blood.’

  The policeman leaned forward conspiratorially.

  ‘I always suspected that the Carder Kingpin – or Queen I should say – was a certain Lady who exchanged the calling of civic duty and life in that dusty old museum called the Prentice House for bright lights and fine wines on the French Riviera a couple of years ago.’

  ‘You don’t mean Lady Prunella, surely?’

  ‘I surely do. Over eighty, mad as a badger, and living the life of Riley without any visible means of support.’

  ‘Perhaps she has benefited from the exceptionally generous pension scheme for retired Queen Carders, if such she was. I’m distantly related to Lady Prunella, you know.’

  ‘Why does that not surprise me?’

  ‘Funny – that’s exactly what Charlie Luke said. I must have that effect on policeman.’ Campion smiled his Sunday-best idiot smile. ‘So dear old Prunella used to live in the shrine to Esther Wickham, Victorian novelist of this parish, which now seems to have passed into the hands of Hereward Spindler, solicitor of this parish.’

  ‘My thinking,’ said Bailey, ‘is that the Carders like to keep things among themselves, or at least the money-making ones, so it would make sense for one Carder to sell to another.’

  Mr Campion allowed himself a frown.

  ‘Would the sale of the Prentice House, even with its connections to the talented Miss Wickham, raise enough to allow Lady Prunella to acquire the “Riviera touch”?’

  ‘Who knows? If there was a sale it was done privately and secretly. One day Lady Pru was swanning round the county in a 1949 Austin 10 which had seen better days – most of them before 1952 – the next, she’s off to join the jet set, having given her chauffeur, cook and lady’s maid the elbow.’

  ‘I heard yesterday that she haunts the casino in Monte Carlo. She can’t live alone down there, can she?’

  ‘I believe she has employed a companion, who she insists on calling her ‘concierge’ although she probably doesn’t know what the word means. A Swiss woman called Berger and I only know that because she was driving Lady Pru around on her last visit to Lindsay about eighteen months ago when she came back for the Sherman funeral.’

  Mr Campion’s ears pricked up at the name.

  ‘Sherman?’

  ‘Leonard Sherman, died on New Year’s Day last year, well into his seventies. He was the senior member of an old, but hardly distinguished, Lindsay family and a family which has more than its fair share of skeletons in the cupboard in my not-so-humble opinion. They run the local garage. Len’s son Dennis is now in charge and he’s brought in his idiot son Clifford, who is built like the wall of an outhouse and has the brains to match, if you’ll pardon the colourful imagery, Miss Fitton.’

  Bill Bailey waited for Eliza Jane to offer him a weak smile of forgiveness before continuing.

  ‘We never managed to get anything on old Len when he was alive, but Dennis has previous – mostly
to do with dodgy car deals, turning the mileage clock back, swapping good tyres for bald ones, stuff like that – and as for young Clifford, Clifford the gorilla, well, that boy’s a long sentence just waiting to be served. Disturbing the peace, affray, drunk and disorderly – he’s sampled them all, and because he doesn’t know his own strength, he’ll do some serious damage to something or someone one day and his cell will be waiting for him. The curious thing is that everything we ever proved against Clifford or his dad, it was always done away from Lindsay Carfax, or to people who didn’t live there.

  ‘Now I don’t believe that leopards can change their spots and the Shermans, being a bunch of hooligans, are just as likely to behave badly on their home patch. Except nobody complains: it’s as if Lindsay tolerates their behaviour, but if I lived there the last thing I would do is trust them with something valuable like my car.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Campion.

  They had walked to the side street where they had parked before Eliza spoke.

  ‘You didn’t tell the nice policeman we were followed here.’

  ‘It quite slipped my mind,’ said Campion airily.

  ‘You were sure of it before,’ challenged the girl.

  ‘Just as sure as you were that the car following us came from Sherman’s Garage.’

  Eliza halted in mid stride and swung on her uncle, prodding him in the chest with a long red fingernail.

  ‘I told you, Sherman’s bought two new Ford Cortina saloons this year and they hire them out for weddings, funerals and so on. I’ve seen them around the village tons of times.’

  Mr Campion caught the stabbing finger in his right hand and gently raised it to his lips.

  ‘Without making any sudden movements or jumps for joy, is it the same Ford Cortina that’s parked on the opposite side of the street about fifty yards behind me? Just peek over my shoulder, at about eleven o’clock.’

  Eliza stood on tiptoe and stretched her neck whilst pretending to accept Campion’s solicitations.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it is and there’s somebody in the driving seat, though I can’t make him out from here.’

  Mr Campion released her hand and offered his arm to escort her the last few yards to her car.

  ‘I took a butcher’s – as an old rogue I know would say – as we passed him and it’s no-one I’ve seen before. He shrank himself down in his seat as we ambled by. Most suspicious, but I got the feeling it was you he didn’t want to see him, not me.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Now? We get in your car and we speed back to Lindsay Carfax to see if we are pursued by a certain Ford Cortina. If we are, I suggest you put your pretty foot down, pull ahead and then turn into one of the many field entrances we passed on the way here. That way we can watch our friend zip by and the followed can become the follower.’

  They reached the little sports car and Eliza unlocked her door and slid in. Campion took his time contorting himself through the passenger door and when comfortably seated found a pair of chunky high-heeled shoes being thrust into his lap.

  ‘Hold on to these for me. I drive faster without shoes,’ explained his niece and Mr Campion did not doubt her for a moment.

  Their plan worked perfectly, with Campion only flinching twice as Eliza took left-hand bends at speed, and before they were half-way back to Lindsay she had drawn well ahead of the Cortina which was, predictably, following in their wake.

  With a cry of ‘Hang on’ Eliza Jane swung the wheel and turned off the road into the entrance to a field where piles of harvested sugar beets awaited collection and provided more than adequate cover for the low-slung sports car. Fortunately the earth beneath its wheels was firm rather than soft, which meant they did not stick there, but Campion’s teeth rattled in his head as the car bumped around to face the road.

  Eliza Jane cranked on the handbrake and switched off the ignition. Fifteen seconds later the Ford Cortina swept by them, the field and the small mountain of sugar beets without pausing.

  ‘Did you get a look at the driver?’ asked Campion, clutching a pair of brown suede platform-soled sandals to his chest.

  ‘Yes I did,’ said the girl grimly, turning to face her uncle. ‘That’s certainly one of the Sherman cars, but it wasn’t a Sherman driving. It was that silly young fool Tommy Tucker who shares the studio with Ben. Now why on Earth would Tommy Tucker be following you?’

  ‘What makes you think he was following me?’ said Mr Campion.

  Nine

  Rough Shoot

  The Wellington boots were a size too large and the long, padded Barbour coat would have snuggled a man of twice Campion’s bulk, but the 12-bore shotgun provided fitted him perfectly. Into a metal plate on the stock was stamped the legend ‘Pietro Beretta Founded in 1526’ and Campion recognised the model as the Silver Hawk, a popular enough gun which, inexplicably, had been discontinued recently by its famous Italian manufacturers.

  He had breakfasted by 7 a.m. and forty-five minutes later he was standing outside the main entrance of the Woolpack wearing a tweed jacket and thick brown corduroy trousers, which he hoped complied with the dress code for a morning of rough shooting in Lindsay Carfax. The previous evening, as he had performed his bar-tendering duties, the loquacious Don had assured him that boots and waterproofs would be provided by the shoot’s patron, Augustine Marchant, and there would be a selection to choose from in the Land Rover arriving to collect him outside Carder’s Hall at eight.

  Don had offered this helpful information without being asked, clearly and without subtlety in the hope that his gentle questioning about Campion’s day in Bury St Edmunds at police headquarters would be answered in turn. Mr Campion had responded with polite inanities and retired to his room early on the grounds that he had an important Victorian novel to read and, if he had to be up with the lark, at his age he needed his full measure of beauty sleep.

  As it turned out, Mr Campion found himself up not with the larks but with a brace of brewery draymen lowering liquid rations to the Woolpack through a trap door in the pavement and into the dark abyss of the inn’s cellar. Standing under the timbered overhang of the Woolpack’s upper floor, Mr Campion observed their well-oiled routine of transferring wooden casks and metal kegs from their flat-back lorry using ramps and ropes, finding it far more interesting, although considerably noisier, than any dawn chorus of larks ascending. What Campion found especially fascinating was the running commentary between the two burly draymen, once he had tuned his ear to their broad Suffolk accents, as they loudly discussed every detail of their task with a very British air of disparagement lest any passer-by received the impression that they actually took pride in – and enjoyed – their work.

  ‘You got the order straight then, boy?’

  ‘Well I reckon Oi have, but I can’t speak for the bar manager. There ain’t much pleases ’im.’

  ‘Reckon you’re roight there, but let’s not give ’im cause to have us jumping through hoops. Check the manifest before we start droppin’ off.’

  ‘Six crates of loight ale, six of brown plus four of assorted mixers and fruit juices, one kil of bitter, a firkin of strong and a firkin of mild, two elevens of lager, one of stout and a pin of barley wine.’

  ‘Roight, you fetch the empties up and I’ll get the crates off – bloody plastic things. Oi can’t stand ’em. Did Oi ever tell you why they switched to plastic an’ away from good sturdy wooden crates which you could break up for kindling if you were ever caught short lighting a fire?’

  ‘Nylons. You must’ve told me a dozen times or more.’

  ‘That’s roight; it was all them barmaids kept catching their stockings on the nails in ’em, causing laddering. That’s no reason to go to plastic which is no use to man nor beast.’

  ‘They be lasting longer.’

  ‘Be that as it may, but change just for change’s sake is what Oi call it. And now we’ve got these metal casks – aloominium – coming in instead of coopered wooden ones. You can’t put a decen
t flower display in half a metal keg, can you? Make the allotment look loike a junk yard.’

  ‘It’s progress; you can’t foight it.’

  ‘Bugger progress, Oi say. Just leads to confusion. I mean look at these beer kegs. Why they come in ‘elevens’ and ‘twenty-twos’, eh?’

  ‘That’s metric system, that is.’

  ‘It’s a foreign system is what Oi say. What’s wrong with the old way? You knew where you was with that. A hogshead was 54 gallons, a barrel was 36, a kilderkin is 18 and a firkin is 9 gallons. Straightforward, that was.’

  ‘What about a pin then?’

  ‘A pin’s half a firkin, that’s what that is. Four-and-a-half gallons being half of nine gallons. Bleedin’ obvious as it fits in with the system.’

  ‘System that don’t make sense.’

  ‘But it do! Fifty-four, thirty-six, eighteen, nine and then four-and-a-half. Brewers even used to sell beer in butts, which was 108 gallons, though they don’t no more. Yer see the sense, don’t yer? All them numbers, they’s what you call multiples of nine. None of your foreign metric rubbish; everything was divided by nine, that’s the tried and true way of doing it in this country.’

  Mr Campion had barely filed away this nugget of rural wisdom in his cavernous but well-indexed memory, when a mud-splattered, Land Rover screeched to a halt across the street outside Carders’ Hall. A dark-haired man, as tall and rangy as Campion but perhaps thirty years younger, climbed out of the driver’s door and stood in the High Street with hands on hips and feet apart, as if planted there. If there had been any traffic in the street that morning, his shout would have stopped it in its tracks.

  ‘Are you Campion?’