Margery Allingham's Mr Campion's Farewell

by Mike Ripley

  Campion sank into a crouch, sitting on his heels, pressing his back into the earth wall and listened for the sound of footsteps. He heard something – a shuffling sound and then a loud thudding noise and a yelp of pain – and then the silence returned to the darkness and he allowed himself to exhale.

  To his surprise he saw the outline of his torch lying only inches from his feet, but it was several seconds before his brain informed him that the really surprising thing was that he could see it because there was now light entering the passage.

  Automatically, Campion reached up under his glasses and wiped away the tears to help him focus. The source of the light was, he determined, the passage which led to the Carders’ Hall where he had first hidden; the passage that had ended in a locked door. Now light was flooding in from there like the incoming tide and there were sounds – muffled, but unmistakably human, voices and the slap-slap of hurried footsteps.

  Wearily, Campion let go of one weapon, the camera, and reached for his dropped torch, though he doubted that he had the strength to swing it in anger. Just the effort of reaching out for it had unbalanced him and he had slumped on to his backside.

  ‘Never mind him, bring more light down here,’ ordered a voice Campion vaguely recognised and then there was, again, the crunch of breaking glass and wood as whoever was coming out of the passage trod in the remains of the Humble Box.

  ‘Good God, what sort of devilry has been going on down here?’ said Gus Marchant.

  ‘Quite a bit,’ said Mr Campion turning on the torch and holding it under his chin so the weak beam lit his face from below in the way Boy Scouts frighten themselves when telling ghost stories around the campfire. ‘Welcome to hell.’

  Twenty-One

  Board Meeting

  ‘Aunt Amanda is going to kill me, but only after she’s finished killing you!’

  Campion was in no state, or position, to argue with his niece. Her right arm was around his waist, his left drooping over her shoulder whilst his right side was ably supported by the sturdy Gus Marchant, whose jacket smelled comfortingly of pipe tobacco, rum and Brylcreem – or perhaps Campion’s senses were as exhausted and confused as the rest of him.

  Eliza Jane had followed Marchant out of the passage clutching a bicycle lamp. She had surveyed the scene before her, let out a short, sharp scream and rushed to her uncle’s aid. She and Marchant lifted and then half carried, half dragged Campion into the passage and the light now flooding through the open door from Carders’ Hall.

  As they trod on wood and glass, Marchant grunted: ‘What the hell is this underfoot?’

  ‘The remains of a Humble Box,’ said Campion wearily. ‘A very valuable one.’ Then, as they neared the doorway, he saw Dennis Sherman kneeling by the inert body of his son, who was in a crumpled position resembling a beached and sleeping walrus, and said, ‘What happened?’

  ‘We think Clifford shot up the passage in a blue funk,’ said Marchant without a hint of sympathy, ‘and ran head first into the door and knocked himself out, the idiot. You must have scared the living daylights out of him down there in the dark.’

  ‘My Clifford weren’t never scared of the dark,’ growled the senior Sherman. ‘He’s been scurrying around down here without a torch since ’e was a nipper. There must be sumfink else wrong with ’im.’

  ‘I assure you Clifford was not the one who was scared; but I believe you are right,’ said Campion, ‘there is something wrong with him. I suggest we get him up into the Hall and summon an ambulance urgently.’

  ‘You look as if you need an ambulance more than he does,’ snapped Marchant. ‘Clifford only bashed his head whereas you look like you’ve gone through the ringer.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, just get me out into the daylight and I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Daylight? Moonlight more like it.’

  ‘I seem to have lost track of time,’ sighed Campion.

  ‘It’s not yet nine o’clock,’ said Marchant grumpily. ‘I had only just sat down to a bit of supper when this spitfire of a niece of yours drags me away from hearth and home on a matter of life and death, or so she said.’

  ‘She was very nearly right,’ said Campion, feeling his legs buckle slightly. ‘I really would like to get out into the fresh air, if you don’t mind, but not until someone has telephoned for an ambulance for Clifford.’

  ‘Clifford don’t need no ambulance,’ snarled Dennis Sherman, cradling his son’s torso, which was beginning to twitch and spasm. ‘He’s as strong as a Large Black boar. He’ll come round in a minute.’

  ‘I don’t think he will, I’m afraid. I insist you call an ambulance. I have an awful feeling that Clifford may have taken a large dose of the hippy’s favourite drug, LSD and possibly in a dangerous concentration.’

  ‘My Clifford don’t do drugs!’ yelled Sherman père.

  ‘I’m sure he doesn’t, but he does sell them and tonight I think he managed to get some into his eyes. It is, I am told by people who sadly know these things, an accepted method of ingestion for some users, though not in the undiluted strength to which Clifford was exposed. Is there a telephone here?’

  ‘Yes there is,’ said Eliza Jane, ‘in the office at the back of the stage.’

  ‘I will do it,’ said a new voice.

  Campion turned his heavy head and squinted into the light coming down a short flight of steps from the Hall. The angular figure of Hereward Spindler came into focus.

  ‘I rang Hereward and told him to meet us here,’ said Marchant, clearing his throat in embarrassment. ‘I thought we might need a solicitor.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ agreed Campion, ‘I rather think you might.’

  Eliza Jane held on tightly to her uncle’s hands as they sat on the steps of the Carders’ Hall looking down the empty High Street by the light of the fat, full, harvest moon.

  ‘You’re filthy, your clothes are torn and your hair seems to be full of cobwebs, spiders and probably earwigs. In short, I’m glad we don’t run to street lighting in Lindsay – you’re a sight I wouldn’t be seen with.’

  ‘Thank you for your support, my dear,’ Campion said with a smile.

  ‘Support? I was trying to be rude!’

  ‘Ah, the family trait. You Fittons try to be rude but it never quite comes off.’

  ‘I’ll tell Aunt Amanda that!’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t. What I meant – genuinely – was thank you for your help in this rather unpleasant business.’

  The girl allowed herself a snort of derision.

  ‘Unpleasant? That’s drawing it mild, isn’t it? Trapped underground in the dark with that thug Sherman trying to kill you is a bit more than ‘unpleasant’ surely. When does ‘unpleasant’ become ‘downright dangerous’ in your book?’

  ‘From now on,’ said Campion firmly. ‘I am far too old for this sort of thing.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear that. It’s just what Aunt Amanda said on the phone.’

  ‘You rang Amanda?’

  ‘Of course. I rang her this afternoon, before I came to pick you up. She asked what you were planning and I said you were photographing some evidence and then you were on your way home – all fairly straightforward. She said nothing involving you is ever straightforward and unless I wanted to incur the wrath of Fittons past, present and future, I was to keep an eye out for you. Just after I dropped you off at the vicarage, the Shermans’ van passed me coming the other way. I turned off my lights and watched it my mirror. It stopped outside the Humble Museum and that gorilla Clifford got out, unloaded something with a horse blanket over it and carried it inside. I didn’t know what to do and I panicked a bit and charged out to Gus Marchant’s place, screaming blue murder.’

  The pair heard a footstep behind them and turned to see Gus Marchant holding out a china teacup.

  ‘Only water, I’m afraid,’ he said as he offered the cup, ‘but it’s the best we can do. The Hall isn’t licensed, you see, but I could always nip over to the Woolpack for a bottle of medicinal brandy.’<
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  Campion took the cup.

  ‘This is fine, thank you. I think I swallowed half a pound of dirt and cobwebs down there. How’s Clifford?’

  ‘We got him out up the steps with a bit of an effort and we’ve laid him out on a sofa in the reading room. He’s out to the world, quietly burbling away to himself and seems harmless. Dennis is watching over him and Hereward is watching over Dennis. An ambulance is on its way.’

  ‘I hope it arrives in time,’ said Campion soberly.

  ‘You think this LSD stuff is serious?’

  ‘It was for those two Cambridge boys last year.’

  ‘Look here, Campion, what exactly is going on?’ Marchant sat down on the cold stone step next to Eliza Jane. ‘I really am uncomfortable at the thought of dangerous drugs being freely available in my village.’

  ‘I doubt they were ever free,’ said Campion laconically, ‘but Lindsay Carfax seems to have become a centre for the importation of everyone’s favourite hallucinogen, LSD or ‘Acid’, which I am told is the popular choice of pop stars, film stars and artists, not to mention the young people who copy their every fad and fashion.’

  Campion drained the cup of water and met Marchant’s eyes.

  ‘Your distinguished fellow Carder, Lady Redcar, provides – probably unwittingly – the source of the LSD and the mechanism for transporting it to England in those curious and quite insane valves and flasks that are the guts of a Humble Box. As no one on Earth understands how a Humble Box works, or indeed cares, the chance of one being taken to pieces by an over-zealous customs officer is fairly remote. Lady Prunella is an eccentric English lady with eccentric pieces of English furniture who insists – eccentrically – on it being transported back to England when it needs repair. Every time one is returned here fully loaded with LSD, it is quietly exchanged – using the not-so-secret passages – for one of the Boxes in the Museum, the Prentice House or the Vicarage. I understand there is a reproduction one in The Medley, but the shop was never on the underground passage network. The innocent box is sent back to the south of France for replenishment whilst the box sloshing with Acid is hidden in plain sight on show in the village until a buyer is found, the drug removed – probably down in the passages – and diluted to a non-lethal concentration for retail sale to students, hippies, flower children … whoever is foolish enough to want an out-of-mind experience.’

  ‘But that’s outrageous!’

  ‘Yes it is.’ Campion allowed himself a soft chuckle. ‘To think: you Carders were charging tourists to look at the wonderfully quaint invention of Josiah Humble, but in fact they were admiring the raw materials for a drug factory.’

  ‘I hope you are not making accusations of illegality, Campion.’ Hereward Spindler had materialised from the Hall, standing over them rather like an emaciated ghost.

  Campion looked up at the solicitor and gave him a beatific smile.

  ‘I’m not, but I think the police will. It is, however, perfectly possible that you as the owner of the Prentice House had no idea what your Humble Box may have contained at certain times, just as I am fairly sure that the Rev. Trump never bothered to examine his specimen too closely.’ He raised his empty teacup, ‘pinky’ finger extended, as if to celebrate the arrival of a new idea. ‘In fact, I think Lemmy Walker was on to the scheme and took every chance he got to use the passages for a bit of snooping. The vicar almost caught him at it the night he gave his unbelievably dull lecture on the Carders, despite his Nine Days’ Wonder disappearance. That was meant to put him off snooping and certainly nine days underground with Clifford and Tommy Tucker as dungeon masters would have curtailed my snooping instincts.’

  Eliza Jane reached out a hand and patted Campion on the dirt-covered knees of his trousers.

  ‘Perhaps that wouldn’t have been a completely bad thing, Uncle.’

  ‘You have been talking to your aunt, haven’t you? Still, although that particular cure does not appeal in the slightest, I think she may have a point somewhere in that pretty head of hers.’

  Eliza Jane’s affectionate pat turned into a gentle smack.

  ‘Don’t be patronising!’

  ‘I’m very old,’ Campion riposted. ‘I’m allowed!’

  ‘Excuse me,’ growled Marchant, ‘but this is a damned serious business. Are you saying that Clifford and that Teddy Boy Tucker, whom I’ve never liked, cooked up this whole business between them?’

  ‘No, I am not,’ said Campion, serious again. ‘They were the hired help, there to do the heavy lifting and the driving. The brains belonged to someone else.’

  ‘Do you know who?’ Marchant leaned in closer and even Hereward Spindler could not resist stooping to hear.

  ‘I’m pretty sure, thanks to my niece here.’

  ‘What? What have I said?’

  ‘It was you who pointed out that Clifford delivered the now-destroyed Humble Box to the Humble Museum tonight. Where did he get the keys?’

  ‘Not from the Fullers!’ exploded Gus Marchant. ‘I mean, Marcus owns the place, but Marcus wouldn’t …’

  He stopped mid-breath when he realised Campion was staring intently down the High Street at the headlights of a fast-approaching vehicle.

  ‘I don’t think that’s the ambulance,’ he said.

  ‘It will be Marcus,’ said Hereward Spindler behind them. ‘This sounded like Carder business, so I rang him and told him to meet us here. Can’t think what kept him.’

  Mr Campion said nothing, but got carefully to his feet and positioned himself in front of Eliza Jane as the Land Rover pulled up in front of them and Marcus Fuller got out of the driver’s seat and walked towards them.

  He was holding a shotgun.

  If in daylight Marcus Fuller gave the impression of a scrawny and bedraggled bird ready to peck at any crumb in the dust, in the moonlight, wearing a dark raincoat over a white wool pullover and carrying a shotgun, he presented a much more menacing image; a jackdaw or a magpie perhaps, stalking arrogantly across a newly cut field of wheat searching for small and defenceless rodents.

  Gus Marchant jumped to his feet with an energy Campion envied and also placed himself protectively in front of Eliza Jane, who was all-too-aware that Hereward Spindler had edged himself safely behind her.

  ‘There might be a poacher’s moon, tonight, Marcus,’ Marchant boomed jovially, ‘but the High Street’s hardly the place is it, old boy?’

  Marcus Fuller looked at him bemused and then down at the shotgun in his hands, which he seemed to notice he was carrying for the first time.

  ‘Oh I am no poacher, Gus. This is for Campion.’

  Before any of his astonished audience on the Hall steps could say anything, Mr Fuller took two paces towards them and held out the shotgun with both hands as an offering to Mr Campion.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s not loaded,’ he said calmly, ‘and I don’t know if it can be used by the police in their … what are they called? Forensic science, that’s it. Or you might like to keep it as a trophy, as it’s the gun that shot you out at Saxon Mills.’

  Mr Campion took the proffered weapon and nodded in polite but silent thanks.

  ‘Have you lost your marbles, Marcus? You weren’t at the Long Tye shoot and you’ve never liked guns.’

  ‘Oh it’s not mine, Gus, my old friend,’ said Fuller, stepping back around the Land Rover and striding to the other side. ‘It’s Simon’s.’

  Fuller pulled open the passenger door to reveal his brother sitting there wearing a sheepish expression and a large white sling bandage which nursed his plastered arm. He winced as his elder sibling ordered him to get out, as painfully as if he had been gripped and dragged by the ear like a recalcitrant schoolboy being pushed into the headmaster’s study, or in this case made to stand before the judicial-looking Campion and Marchant, with Spindler and Eliza Jane acting as a jury.

  ‘I know you’re the family solicitor, Hereward, and you’re probably going to advise Simon not to say anything which might incriminate him,’ Marcus Fuller
announced in a voice which did not expect either contradiction or answer. ‘Well, you’re too late. He’s told me quite enough to incriminate himself and I intend to make sure the police know everything, for the sake of the family name and for the sake of the Carders. If it means the end of us, then so be it. At least we will go out with a clear conscience.’

  Hereward Spindler cleared his throat in the official and sepulchral way that only officers of the court or undertakers can master. ‘Are you saying, Marcus, that Simon has confessed to some form of crime?’

  Fuller nudged his brother with a finger like a pistol in the small of the back. The downcast younger man shuffled forward until he was no more than a yard from Campion, but his eyes remained fixed on his shoes.

  ‘Simon has confessed to several crimes, including popping off a load of buckshot in the direction of Mr Campion during the shoot on Gus’ farm. That I regard as cowardly and despicable behaviour for someone who is both a Fuller and a Carder. Campion here is perfectly entitled to press charges and I would be happy to appear for the prosecution.’

  ‘I would advise caution, Marcus. You are allowing your emotions to run away with you.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Hereward. We all know you don’t have any emotions, so please don’t lecture me.’ Fuller prodded his son in the back again. ‘Well, Simon, aren’t you going to apologise to Mr Campion?’

  ‘I would prefer an explanation to an apology,’ said Campion relaxing and speaking for the first time since the Fullers had arrived on the scene. When all eyes turned on the younger man, Campion surreptitiously broke the action of the shotgun and glanced down to check that it really was unloaded.