by Mike Ripley
‘You’re sure it’s not a bomb, my dear? My secret admirers always send me bombs on high days and holidays.’
‘It will be something sickly and quite ghastly if past form is anything to go by.’
‘You’ve had love tokens before?’
‘Love tokens? That sounds awfully quaint, Uncle.’
‘I’m considered a very quaint character in some circles,’ admitted Mr Campion, ‘but love tokens have a long and distinguished history. Convicts being transported to Australia used to engrave a little rhyme on coins or bits of scrimshaw for the loved ones they’d left behind: When this you see, remember me. I suspect the same principle holds good even if the art of engraving has been forgotten.’
‘Well, I wish my secret – and unwanted – admirer would go to Australia and bloody well forget where I lived!’
Campion peered over the rims of his spectacles as Eliza Jane drummed the steering wheel with her fingers.
‘I take it that Ben Judd is not the phantom present-giver, then?’ he said.
‘God, no! He would go berserk if he found out. Thankfully, these anonymous little presents turn up when Ben’s away or locked in his studio working. Come on; let’s go see what the pest has left me this time.’
If it was possible to flounce out of a small, low-slung sports car, then Eliza Jane flounced athletically and strode around to the passenger door to help her uncle with his far more laborious exit. When Campion had stretched and bent his back, rather like a cat preparing for its morning patrol in search of breakfast, he reached back into the car for his silver-tipped walking cane which had managed to get itself wedged behind the gear stick.
‘Can’t go without my pilgrim’s staff,’ he said jovially. ‘I could give that bag a poke with it, you know, just in case it is a bomb.’
‘It won’t be anything as interesting as a bomb,’ said Eliza Jane cynically. ‘It will be chocolates, or a houseplant in a grubby pot, or a horrid vase or cheap perfume. Once, I swear, it was a badly-stuffed teddy bear straight off a fairground rifle range.’
The approached the bag together and without hesitating, the girl scooped it up, thrust a hand inside and withdrew a bottle shape wrapped in tissue paper.
‘Things may be looking up,’ she said, ‘this might be something we can drink and not something to be donated to the White Elephant stall at the church fête – anonymously of course.’ But as she tore at the tissue wrapping, her expression changed. ‘Oh no, we can forget that! It’s a Barsac. Ben says that’s the wine stupid women drink with dinner because Babycham and Blue Nun are thought common!’
‘Tell him not to be such a snob,’ Mr Campion chided her. ‘Barsac is next door to Sauternes and they are both very respectable Bordeaux wines.’
‘Dessert wines,’ moaned Eliza Jane, ‘why do men always think girls only like sweet drinks? Port and lemon, rum and blackcurrant, gin and that awful orange squash stuff, whisky and lime cordial … Sometimes I feel like storming into the Woolpack and demanding a pint of best bitter!’
‘I’m not sure Don the barman is a supporter of Drinkers’ Liberation, let alone Women’s Lib and you might just induce a heart attack. You should be grateful, that’s quite an expensive bottle you’ve got there, judging by the price written on the label in French francs. Has your secret admirer been across the Channel recently?’
‘How would I know?’ the girl replied said crossly, thrusting the bottle towards Campion. ‘Here, take the damned thing, I daren’t let Ben find it here as he’ll know I didn’t buy it. He’s very insistent, quite fierce really, that he alone buys our wine. Anyway, the only people I know who’ve been to France recently are old man Marchant and old man Fuller and they always bring presents for Clarissa, but not for little ole me.’
‘So who is your furtive present-giver?’
‘I honestly haven’t a clue,’ said Eliza Jane firmly.
‘Really?’ said Campion softly. ‘I have.’
Mr Campion refused to elaborate there on the doorstep but hinted that he might if Miss Fitton would accept dinner at the Woolpack in recompense for her duties as a chauffeuse. Miss Fitton performed a mock curtsy, attempting Georgian deference despite the shortness of her skirt, and informed her kind suitor that she would be delighted to accompany him to said hostelry but only after she had bathed and changed. They arranged to meet at the inn at eight o’clock, by which time Campion would have reclaimed his room and belongings and have been debriefed by Don.
Campion took the hold-all Amanda had bought him from the boot of the sports car and watched as Eliza locked the car and then unlocked her front door. Again, she asked him to take charge of the bottle of Barsac – ‘in case Ben pops round and spots it’ – and before he could agree she had thrust it into the hold-all, burying it in folds of green flannel pyjama.
‘Taking alcohol into a public house?’ observed Campion with a smile. ‘It positively reeks of Prohibition and speakeasies in the America of my youth, or perhaps coals-to-Newcastle is the phrase I’m looking for.’
‘I’ll see you later,’ said Eliza Jane, kissing him lightly on the cheek. ‘Don’t let Don stand you too many drinks before I get there.’
‘I will do my very best to resist his generosity.’
With his hold-all in his left hand and his ‘pilgrim’s staff’ in the other, Mr Campion stretched his long legs and strode up the High Street, wincing slightly as the tender muscles in his right thigh reminded him of walking wounded status. But he did not go to the Woolpack directly. As soon as the inn’s ornate frontage came into sight around the bend of the street, he crossed to the other side of the road and continued up the slight hill. Passing the house and museum of Josiah Humble on his left (now fortunately closed for the day, though Campion mentally reached for his wallet), he turned his face to the windows as though absorbing every historical detail. Thus he hoped to be, if not unobserved, at least unrecognised by any prying eyes from the bar of the Woolpack opposite.
He continued past Humble’s as the street curved to the left of the Carders’ Hall which sat in raised isolation, grandly allowing the High Street to flow down either side of its imperious timbers like an island in the stream. In a flight of whimsy, Campion imagined the view from the air would remind him of the Ile de la Cité in Paris with the High Street playing the part of the Seine and the Hall doubling as Notre Dame.
Now hidden from the Woolpack by the regal bulk of the Hall, the flint and stone solidity of St Catherine and St Blaise loomed ahead of him like a jutting architectural jaw offended at the proximity of the Hall with its warm, intricately carved wooden features. But before reaching the church, Campion turned smartly left and through a broken wooden gate which guarded a weed-and-gravel path and bore a pokerwork oak sign announcing ‘The Vicarage’.
It was a cold, plain, grey stone and slate-tiled building with dark windows, seemingly built by Victorians determined to establish a plain counterpoint to the medieval and Tudor richness of the village. The present incumbent was clearly no gardener and, judging by the state of the window frames and front door, no particular fan of do-it-yourself either.
Mr Campion paused on the stoop and briefly turned his head to look behind him; not to see if he was being followed, for he was sure he was not, but to judge the distance from the vicarage to the Carders Hall. Satisfied with his mental calculations, he raised his cane and rapped severely three times. After a minute of muffled thumps and the rattling of a surprising number of bolts and locks, the door was opened by a wide-eyed and rather dishevelled vicar.
‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed the Rev. Leslie Trump as he scanned his visitor from shoes to spectacles.
‘I feel that would be more your department,’ Mr Campion said cheerfully. ‘I would like a quick word on something more earthly, if I’m not intruding of course.’
The Rev. Trump was dressed in jeans, brown leather sandals (and grey socks) and his uniform white polo-neck and black pullover, tucked into the front of which was a blue-and-white striped tea towel employe
d as a napkin.
‘No, not intruding …’ he started hesitantly, ‘… I was just having some cold cuts for my tea and my housekeeper, Mrs Duck, has the evening off. We were not expecting guests …’
Mr Campion moved the holdall slightly behind his legs.
‘Please do not be alarmed by the luggage. I am en route to the Woolpack – which is where we first met.’
‘We did?’
‘You were emerging from one of the famous Lindsay secret passages, in hot pursuit of a suspected intruder, I believe,’ Campion reminded him.
‘Oh yes … yes, of course. You’re Albert Campion. I heard you’d been shot.’
‘A popular rumour, I’m sure, though I assure you I stand before you in fairly rude health and I seek only a brief audience in order to pick your brains on a point of local history.’
The Rev. Trump’s face, which was that of a cherub with a permanent hangover, brightened with surprise.
‘I have little interest in history, local or otherwise, but to be asked an opinion on any subject in this parish is an irresistible appeal to my vanity. Come in, come in.’
Campion followed the diminutive Trump down a short corridor and into the vicarage kitchen where a bare pine table displayed a half-consumed plate of thick slices of meat of unidentifiable origin surrounded by dollops of pickled red cabbage, a pickled egg and several pickled onions the size of golf balls. Next to the plate and its knife and fork akimbo, was a pint mug of cooling tea and a book – Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan, which Campion knew had little to do with matters piscatorial.
‘Can I get you anything?’ the vicar offered, sweeping an arm towards the huge enamel kitchen range without the slightest conviction that he knew how any of it worked.
‘Thank you, but no,’ said Campion, ‘but I will take a seat to rest my leg, if I may.’
Trump scurried to pull out a plain pine dining chair for him and as he settled on it Campion said, ‘Do continue with your meal. Please accept my apologies for interrupting and I do promise to be brief.’
Once Trump was seated again and had speared a forkful of meat and pickles, he looked at Campion expectantly. ‘How can I help you?’
‘It’s about one of your predecessors – a long time before your time – the Reverend Austin Bonus. I was wondering if you knew the real story.’
‘Everyone in the village does,’ said Trump between chews. ‘He was the vicar here before the Great War and did a disappearing act for nine days, but came back and did great things for the church and the school.’
‘When we first met,’ Campion said smoothly, ‘you implied that you thought Bonus had some sort of hold over that other local institution, the Carders.’
‘Did I?’ Trump swallowed heavily and his face blushed pink. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘I do. You distinctly implied that the Rev. Bonus had threatened to make a stink about the Carders and in return for his silence, the church got a new roof and a new organ.’ Mr Campion used the flat of his right hand on the silver tip of his stick to make slow circling movements, an activity which seemed to hypnotise Leslie Trump. ‘But I think you got it the wrong way round,’ he continued quietly, ‘Austin Bonus didn’t threaten the Carders; they protected him. You might almost say they saved him from himself.’
Leslie Trump had dropped his arms on to the table as if the knife and fork he held had suddenly increased greatly in weight.
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, Mr Campion, or why you think I know anything except the local legend about Austin Bonus. The poor man was dead long before I was born.’
‘But you have access to the church accounts and if you were diligent in your duties, which I am sure you are, you will have looked at them if only for insurance purposes. I think you are well aware of the massive injection of capital which your church received just before the Great War thanks to Austin Bonus and I also suspect you know where it came from. It certainly wasn’t raised by jumble sales and whist drives – not in a village well past the prosperity it had once enjoyed nor from a shrinking congregation.’
‘You appear to have given this matter considerable thought,’ said Trump, narrowing his eyes in a poor attempt at defiance.
‘I have had surplus thinking time recently,’ said Campion, ‘which many say is always dangerous for a man of little brain. Shall I tell you what I think really happened?’
‘I can see you want to,’ the small man said petulantly.
‘Forgive the vanity of old age,’ Campion deferred. ‘I suspect the Rev. Bonus to have been something of a highly-strung fellow, though his heart was in the right place. He is supposed to have had plans to set up a home here for waifs and strays from the East End but there was clearly no money for such project, not with the church in disrepair and the parish no longer rich. This vicarage, which I suspect was built – around 1880?’
Campion paused as Trump nodded in silent agreement.
‘Well with the best will in the world, it’s hardly a lavish building is it? Very basic by Victorian standards but all the parish could afford at the time. It hardly matches the splendour of the fantastic wool church next door, and I know such things should not matter in a perfect world but I suspect the lack of church funds played on Austin Bonus’ mind, perhaps even snapped it.
‘Something certainly did, or perhaps he had a revelation or an epiphany. He took a desperate gamble, literally. He seized whatever church funds he could and guided by a shining light or a voice in his head, he made his way to Monte Carlo where he made one spectacular, and spectacularly lucky, bet on the roulette wheel. He returned to Lindsay Carfax with his winnings – a considerable sum in those days – and as he travelled by the cheapest means, I surmise that the round trip took him nine days and thus was a legend born.
‘If the Carders – whoever they were at the time – had any influence on the wayward vicar, it was probably that they helped cover up that initial misappropriation of church funds and kept the story out of the newspapers. It was probable too that Austin Bonus’ conscience was pricking him, once he realised he had behaved quite outrageously. I do not pretend to know what the Bible says about gambling, but Old Bones would have known.’
‘It says surprisingly little,’ volunteered Trump. ‘In Timothy we have ‘Love of money is the root of all evil’ which is a verse most people know but misquote and then in Proverbs it says ‘Wealth gained hastily will dissolve’, though neither specifically mentions gambling.’
‘I bow to your knowledge of Scripture but I think the Reverend Bonus was a decent man who, at the very least knew he had betrayed the trust of his parishioners. I also think the Carders reminded him of the fact that if his escapades made the popular press, his Bishop would come down on him like the proverbial ton of loose roof slates. The money he had won, however, could be wisely spent on the church, a new organ and improvements at the Carders School, all credit, of course, going to the Carders. The true source of the money – Bonus’s bonus if you like – was kept quiet and because the vicar had been missing for nine days, somebody called it a ‘Nine Days’ Wonder’ and it became a sort of trade mark of the Carders, or so they were happy to let people think.’
‘I always assumed it was an old tradition for the Carders to deal in units of nine,’ Trump commented in a disinterested way.
‘My sources – impeccable when it comes to folklore and humbuggery – can find no reference to a ‘Nine Days Wonder’ specific to Lindsay Carfax before the tale of Austin Bonus and as far as we know, he never told anyone his story. Do you know what happened to him?’
‘Only that he left the living of Lindsay in 1915.’
‘He did indeed,’ Campion said, stabbing the point of his cane into the floor. ‘He joined the 5th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment Territorials as a chaplain and went to Gallipoli with them in 1915. He did not return, but the Regimental war diary speaks highly of his courage and compassion under fire.’
‘You say that in a way which indicates you expect m
e to feel guilty about something, Mr Campion. Just what is your interest in this matter?’
‘A little bit of guilt is surely good for us all,’ replied Campion without humour, ‘and my interest in Austin Bonus is purely academic, simply a piece of wood to be cut away so I may see the trees.’
‘And the trees are the Carders?’
‘Some of them, perhaps not all.’
‘Well if you fancy your chances as a lumberjack, I’ll help you lop off a few of their odious branches.’ The small man jutted his jaw pugnaciously, but he still reminded Mr Campion of a consumptive cherub.
‘I do not need your help, Vicar, merely your permission.’
‘Permission to do what?’
‘To burgle your vicarage sometime tonight or tomorrow. It would be awfully helpful if you left the front door unlocked.’
Eighteen
Centre of the Web
On leaving the vicarage, and a slightly bemused Leslie Trump, Mr Campion embraced the gathering dusk and decided to take the longer way back to the Woolpack by circumnavigating the large traffic island on which sat the Carders Hall. He passed the looming church and crossed the road before risking the edge of the village pond, which brought him to the north-east corner of the Carders Hall and opposite the frontage of The Medley where, although closed to commerce, a few low-wattage bulbs had been left on to display the shop’s motley wares to any insomniac art-loving customers. In the distance, down the slope of the street to his left, he could see the lights on in Sherman’s Garage and a vehicle pulling up to its pumps, but Campion turned to his right and, tapping his Pilgrim’s Staff as he went, walked the semi-circle around the Hall, passing the dark and closed up Prentice House, until he was greeted by the warm glow of the Woolpack. Now, perhaps, there would be bunting and brass bands.
He settled for a large gin and tonic ‘on the house of course’ from Don the barman, who seemed genuinely pleased to see the return of his most valuable – in gossip terms – resident, though the bar being almost empty he lacked a suitable audience for his largesse.