by Mike Ripley
‘Your room’s just as you left it, Mr C.,’ Don announced, ‘barring the necessary hoovering of course, nothing’s been touched, and here’s your key.’
Don pressed a room key on to the bar next to the drink he had just presented. Campion looked at it quizzically.
‘Mr Marchant handed it in after your … er … accident,’ Don supplied.
Campion made a show of being relieved, as if the loss of the key had weighed heavily on his mind. In truth he was mildly amused that someone had gone through his pockets whilst unconscious, but now that Don had provided the opening …
‘Talking of keys, old chap,’ beamed Campion, ‘you offered me a key to your secret passage when I arrived. Is there any chance I could take you up on the offer now? I fancy a little snoop down there before I leave Lindsay.’
Don raised an eyebrow, noting another gem of gossip, and placed a second key on the bar.
‘You’ll be dining with us tonight, Mr C.?’
‘Absolutely, and with a very attractive young lady,’ Campion teased.
‘Miss Fitton will be joining you then?’ Don smirked.
‘I’m sure my secret is safe with you, Don.’ Campion tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially.
‘Your other guest is already here.’ Don nodded towards the rear corner of the bar where Campion had sat only to be disturbed by the Rev. Trump emerging from the panelling. At the table there, nursing a half of bitter, his shoulders hunched, sat Lemuel Walker.
‘I don’t think he will be joining us for dinner,’ said Campion pocketing the two keys and making his way over to the waiting schoolmaster.
‘Thank you for seeing me, Mr Walker.’
‘I only came because Mortimer asked me to,’ said the seated man.
‘I asked Dr Casson to ring you because our last meeting was rather strained and I need your help.’
Campion placed his glass on the table and pulled out a chair, lowering himself gently and wincing as he did so, though Lemuel Walker offered not a shred of sympathy for the invalid.
‘I am not prepared to speak about the Carders. I have said everything I had to say on that subject. I believe you were there at my lecture.’
‘Indeed I was, but I was more interested in what you did after the lecture.’
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ said Walker, but he said it far too quickly.
‘I think you disappeared into the woodwork that night, quite literally: using the not-very-secret secret passages that radiate from the Carders’ Hall.’
‘What if I did? I was merely waiting for the audience to disperse, having made it clear I would not answer any more foolish questions.’
‘And in your subterranean peregrinations, did you stumble in to the passageway that leads to the Vicarage?’
‘What’s your interest in all this, Campion? Just who are you and what are you trying to prove?’
Campion took off his spectacles, produced his handkerchief and with flourishes began to polish the lenses.
‘My trouble, Mr Walker, is that I have a compulsion to tie off loose threads wherever I find them and there seem to be an awful lot lying about in Lindsay Carfax. Moreover, I think they are silken threads from a rather old and dusty spider’s web at the centre of which is something really unpleasant. Oh not you; you are, I feel, very much on the fringe of things. But if you won’t confirm your movements, would you at least describe the underground network in Lindsay for me? That makes it sound a bit like the Piccadilly Line, doesn’t it?’
Lemuel Walker studied Campion intently. Here sat a figure Walker was unfamiliar with: a man who didn’t mind appearing ineffectual if not a bit of an idiot – in fact he seemed to revel in that persona. Walker had not encountered anyone like Campion before, but he was intelligent enough to recognise the steely resolve beneath the casual surface.
‘You can read about the “Carfax Passages”, as the tour guides call them, in any decent guide book. I don’t see why you need …’
‘Please indulge an old man.’ Campion’s tone suggested an order, not a request.
‘Very well, there is little mystery or secrecy about them,’ Walker said reluctantly. ‘They were probably dug in the early eighteenth century and used to hide smuggled goods including woollen fleeces and even live sheep, at a time when …’
Mr Campion put up a hand, as a schoolboy would.
‘Please sir, if you don’t mind, I consider myself to be something of an expert on the ancient crime of ‘owling’ – or at least more of an expert than I was this time last week. Could we skip the history and stick to the geography, please?’
‘Very, well, I’ll make it short and sweet. If you imagine the Carders’ Hall as the centre of a wheel, then the four spokes, or passages, run to the Humble Museum, the shrine to Ester Wickham that is the Prentice House, here to the Woolpack and, yes, the Vicarage.’
‘The Vicarage is a relatively modern building, though.’
‘True, but it was built on the site of a much older house which had fallen down. The Victorians didn’t try and replicate the Tudor architecture or craftsmanship, more’s the pity, but they made the passage entrance part of a cellar rather than block it off.’
‘I see. And the passages are reasonably passable?’
‘Oh yes. You need a torch of course and they are quite low and they twist and turn somewhat, but they rarely flood and one sees relatively few rats down there.’
Mr Campion rapped a knuckle on the wall panelling beside him.
‘So, if I was to use the Woolpack passage, I could get straight into the cellar of the Vicarage without passing ‘Go’ or collecting £200?’
‘You could, as long as you knew the right exit passage.’
‘Please explain,’ Campion said, all flippancy gone.
‘The Woolpack passage is your entrance passage That takes you to the Carders’ Hall, or rather the cellars under it. Actually, it is one big cellar, rather like a catacomb and it is the hub for the other passages, from the vicarage, Humble’s and the Prentice House. As long as you pick the right passage, you come up at the right destination, but it is very dark and disorientating down there. Very dark …’
Campion watched the schoolmaster’s face intently.
‘Is that where they kept you?’
Lemuel Walker’s eyes widened in horror and the hand holding his glass shook so violently that beer splashed out; but his reaction had not been triggered by Campion’s comment, rather by what the schoolmaster had seen over Campion’s shoulder.
‘I have to go,’ said Walker as he jerked himself upright, shaking the table.
Speechless, Campion watched him scurry to the doorway where, with head down and without a word, he pushed through the small crowd of patrons who had just entered rather loudly and were already calling out their orders to Don.
Campion recognised them all: Gus Marchant, wallet already in hand, Clarissa Webster strategically placed with Marcus Fuller on one arm and his son Simon on the other, and bringing up the rear at a more sedate pace, the sepulchral figure of Hereward Spindler, lawyer of this parish. Mr Campion wondered which one of them had frightened Walker so much and so suddenly.
Perhaps all of them.
They may not have been playing brass instruments and there was no sign of any bunting, but Mr Campion’s official welcoming committee had finally arrived. Gus Marchant clapped his hands on Campion’s shoulders and called loudly for drinks all round. Clarissa Webster, on tiptoes, leaned in far closer than was necessary to kiss him on both cheeks then demanded that Marchant ordered champagne. Marcus Fuller offered a claw to shake and his son Simon, straight faced, nodded politely in curt military fashion. Hereward Spindler said, to no one in particular, that he would much prefer a dry sherry and looked as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world.
Mr Campion restored order to the adoring throng by refusing their hospitality on the grounds that he had to yet to check into his room (‘Number 8 isn’t it, Don?’ to which the barman, now part of th
e throng, nodded in agreement), have a wash, find a clean shirt and get back down to treat his niece to a splendid dinner. After that, however, he would be in party mood and quite willing to demonstrate that his recent injury did not impair his ability to do the Charleston or the Black Bottom, though the Twist might be beyond him.
‘Oh, you must have one drink with us,’ vamped Mrs Webster, ‘so we can welcome you back to the village.’
‘I will, dear lady, I will, but I have promised Eliza Jane dinner and you would all be welcome to join us were it not that we had family affairs to discuss. If you will allow me to fulfil that obligation, then I will be all yours. In fact, your being here has saved me the trouble of gathering you all together in the library later for a demonstration of my amazing deductive powers.’
‘What the devil are you talking about?’ demanded Gus Marchant.
‘What library? We don’t have a library,’ added Mrs Webster.
‘I know you don’t,’ said Campion with a broad smile, ‘but I just couldn’t resist. I’ve always wanted to gather all the suspects in a library.’
‘Suspects?’ said Marcus Fuller, close to bluster.
‘Did I say ‘suspects’? I do apologise, I meant Carders, and I suppose it would be only polite to wait for the other two to join us.’
There was a stunned silence in the bar. The atmosphere of bubbling enthusiasm had been replaced by cool uncertainty.
Campion himself broke the silence by picking up his holdall and, using his cane to full effect, limping dramatically towards the staircase which led to the inn’s rooms. As he did so, he called out ‘Toodles!’ without looking back.
In his room, Campion threw his cane and holdall on to the bed and did a rapid inventory of his possessions. Nothing was missing and he was touched to see that a shirt had been washed and ironed, a pair of trousers pressed and his shoes shined. He washed, shaved and changed, revelling in the comfort of familiar clothes, though he would never have criticized Amanda’s choices in the provision of his emergency wardrobe.
Once his tie was neatly knotted and his faithful hairbrush had done its best to bring order to his white locks – still luxuriant enough to be a source of envy among his peers – he took his Olympus camera from its case and checked that he had sufficient film and that his flash unit was in full ‘Watch the Birdy!’ working mode. Then he slung the camera case over his shoulder, grabbed the spurned bottle of Barsac from his hold-all and the copy of Esther Wickham’s The Face of Diligence from his bedside table, and made his way back down to the bar.
The five people he had left in the bar were still there and had been joined by a sixth, Dennis Sherman, and all were fully armed with drinks. As Campion entered, all eyes fixed upon him and he grinned inanely at them in return as he eased his way through them, acknowledging only Don the barman who announced that Miss Fitton was awaiting him in the dining room. As if that was a pre-arranged signal, (and it was), Campion set his course for the dining room, determined not to be diverted or delayed.
To Gus Marchant’s demand that he now – finally – join them for a drink, he merely shook his head. To Mrs Webster’s plea that, surely, he had time for her now, he smiled his Sunday best smile and strode on. Only when Dennis Sherman, wearing an immaculate sports jacket over brown, oil-stained overalls, said ‘Your Jaguar’s all fixed, good as new, Mr Campion, whenever you’re ready to leave’ did Campion pause and acknowledge the garage owner with a polite nod.
He was approaching the entrance to the dining room when he heard two of the male voices say in stage whispers: ‘Damned odd behaviour’ and then ‘Bloody rude if you ask me’ and he stopped in his tracks.
There was an embarrassed silence, the sort of guilty silence usually reserved for when a classroom misdemeanour is about to be publicly revealed, as Mr Campion turned towards the six faces frowning at him. But he spoke only to the sixth face, that of Don behind the bar, which remained professionally inexpressive.
‘I almost forgot,’ said Campion as if he and Don had the bar to themselves, ‘do you have such a thing as an ice-bucket?’
‘Of course we do,’ said Don proudly.
‘And do you have ice?’
‘I’ll see what I can find in the kitchen fridge,’ said Don less confidently.
‘Good man. Put this in it, would you?’ Campion handed over the bottle of Barsac he had been clutching. ‘Just leave it on the bar, please. We’ll be out as soon as we have finished dinner.’
‘I don’t believe it! I think you’ve managed to snub the entire village in one fell swoop.’
Mr Campion smiled benignly at his niece and said: ‘Not the entire village, only the Carders – or most of them.’
‘Did you arrange for them to be here?’
‘Not exactly; I simply made sure that Don knew I was meeting Lemuel Walker here earlier and consequently I attracted quite a crowd. Now let’s enjoy our dinner. I see it’s mutton on the menu tonight – how apt for an inn called the Woolpack – and as we eat it must seem as if we are deep in conspiratorial conversation.’
Eliza Jane bit her bottom lip until a maternal waitress, who enquired politely after Mr Campion’s ‘accident’ (and was assured that he was now ‘fighting fit’), had served them with oxtail soup and bread rolls which had seen better days, none of them today. With a spoon delicately poised halfway to her mouth, she whispered, ‘You do realise they’re all watching us from the bar, don’t you?’
‘I should jolly well hope so, I want them straining with curiosity,’ replied Campion, ‘and although it is not good manners, I have a book I wish you to read, or at least look at, whilst you eat.’
From his jacket pocket he produced The Face of Diligence and laid it next to Eliza’s soup plate so that their waitress could not fail to see the title.
‘Is this charade absolutely necessary?’
‘Possibly not, but isn’t it fun to discomfit one’s enemies?’
‘Enemies? That lot?’
‘Well, perhaps not all of them, but they all have something to hide.’
‘What?’
‘Perhaps we’ll find out when the second act starts.’
‘And when does the curtain go up on that?’
‘As soon as we’ve finished dinner and joined our friends, or enemies, in the bar when you will have your own starring role, as long as you are happy to go through with it.’
‘Are you sure he’ll come?’
‘Oh, I think we’ve given the jungle drums enough time to get the message out. Are you sure Ben Judd won’t come?’
‘I gave him his orders,’ said Eliza Jane firmly, ‘and I hope to God he sticks to them, because if he turns up here, he’ll blow his top and thump somebody and that’s a certainty. As certain as the fact that the oxtail soup came out of a packet.’
‘Yes, Ben is a bit of a loose cannon,’ said Campion thoughtfully, ‘but if he sticks to the plan, there will be a bit of excitement in it for him later on. Just remember, the objective tonight is to lull the Carders into a false sense of security.’
‘Which of them are Carders?’ the girl returned to whispering mode whilst sneaking a furtive glance towards the bar.
‘Why, all of them,’ said Campion in his normal voice, ‘except Don of course.
‘It was always fairly obvious, wasn’t it?’
As Campion and Eliza Jane tucked in to their dinner, seemingly in intimate and occasionally animated conversation as they did so, the noise level in the bar resembled a continuous rumble if not a soft growl.
‘What is the man up to?’
‘If the man’s got something to say to us, why doesn’t he come out and say it?’
‘We might not want to hear it.’
‘Oh for Goodness’ sake, don’t start with the sackcloth and ashes. We’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘Or illegal.’
‘Others might put a different interpretation on events.’
‘Don’t you start getting cold feet …’
‘Cold feet about what? W
hat have we got to worry about?’
‘Nothing, if we remember our oath and that what we have done has always been to ‘contribute to the common area’.’
‘And that covers a multitude of sins.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Please don’t play the innocent; it simply doesn’t cut the mustard.’
‘Look! He’s got the book.’
‘What book?’
‘One of the Wickham’s.’
‘So what?’
‘Oh dear, you really don’t know, do you?’
‘Know what?’
‘Shut up. Campion knows nothing. He can’t. He’s bluffing.’
‘Bluffing? To what end?’
‘To get a reaction from us. If we all keep our nerve and keep quiet, how can he hurt us?’
‘I don’t know, but I think we’re about to find out. Here he comes.’
Mr Campion settled himself in a captain’s chair, stretched out his right leg with a suitably martyred sigh of suffering, placed the tip of his walking stick between his knees and rested both hands on its silver top. Eliza Jane had, as they had agreed, perched on a bar stool and after a brief struggle to retain as much modesty as possible given the shortness of her skirt, had crossed her legs and anchored herself to the bar with an elbow. Don, without prompting, placed an ice bucket advertising tonic water but containing the bottle of Barsac on the bar in front of her and at her nodded command, set to opening it.
Gus Marchant, feeling the need to exert seniority if not authority, was the first to break the uncomfortable silence.
‘Now what’s all this about, Campion? I feel as we have all been summoned to the headmaster’s study.’
‘That was sort of the atmosphere I was aiming for,’ replied Campion, blinking innocently behind his spectacles, ‘but I see we are not all gathered in yet.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I see only six Carders before me. One cannot be with us and one is not in this country, but that still leaves us one shy. Where is Tommy Tucker?’
Marchant’s face contorted in surprise, then shock, as Clarissa Webster thrust a chair behind his knees.