Each guest had been provided with a small invalid table beside his armchair, and Oates, reluctant but wax in Fiona’s hands, was no exception. He found himself seated between a mountain in flannel and a wraith in mauve mink, waiting his turn with the same beady-eyed avidity.
Christmas tree procedure at the Ccraven proved to be well organised. The Dragon did little work herself. Armed with a swagger stick, she merely prodded parcel after parcel hanging amid the boughs, while the task of detaching them was performed by the Brigadier, who handed them to Fiona. Either to add to the excitement or perhaps to muffle any unfortunate comment on gifts received by the uninhibited company, jolly Christmas music was played throughout, and under cover of the noise Mr Campion was able to tackle his hostess.
‘Where is Taunton?’ he whispered.
‘Such a nice little man. Most presentable but just a little teenyweeny bit dishonest.’ Lady Larradine ignored his question but continued to put him in the picture at speed, whilst supervising the Tree at the same time. ‘Fifty-seven convictions, I believe, but only small ones. I only got it all out of him last week. Shattering! He’d been so useful amusing the Brigadier. When he came he looked like a lost soul with no luggage, but after no time at all he settled in perfectly.’ She paused and stabbed at a ball of coloured cellophane with her stick before returning to her startled guest.
‘Albert, I am terribly afraid poor Mr Taunton took that dreadful jewellery of Maisie Phaeton’s. It appears to have been entirely her fault. He was merely wandering past her house, feeling in need of care and attention. The door was wide open and he found himself inside, picking up a few odds and ends. When he discovered from all that fuss in the newspapers what it was he had got hold of – how well known it was, I mean – he was quite horrified and had to hide. And where better than here with us where he never had to go out?’
‘Where indeed!’ Mr Campion dared not glance across the room to where the Superintendent was unwrapping his black and gold parcels. ‘Where is he now?’
‘Of course, I hadn’t the faintest idea what was worrying the man until he confessed,’ the Dragon went on stonily. ‘Then I realised that something would have to be done at once to protect everybody. The wretch had hidden all that frightful stuff in our tool shed for three months, not daring to keep it in the house, and to make matters worse, the impossible person at the end of the garden, Mr Sampson, had recognised him and would keep speaking. Apparently people in the – er – underworld all know each other just as those of us in – er – other closed circles do.’
Mr Campion, whose hair was standing on end, had a moment of inspiration. ‘This absurd rigmarole about Taunton getting Sampson to buy him some Christmas gifts wholesale was your idea!’ he said accusingly.
The Dragon stared. ‘It seemed the best way of getting Maisie’s jewellery back to her without any one person being solely involved,’ she said frankly. ‘I knew we should all recognise the things the moment we saw them, and I was certain that after a lot of argument we should decide to pack them up and send them round to her. But, if there was any repercussion, we should all be in it (quite a formidable array, dear) and the blame could be traced to Mr Sampson if absolutely necessary. You see, the Brigadier is convinced that Sampson was there last night. Mr Taunton very cleverly left him on the lawn and went behind the tool shed and came back with the box.’
‘How completely immoral!’
The Dragon had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘I don’t think the Sampson angle would ever have arisen,’ she said. ‘But if it had, Sampson was quite a terrible person. Almost a blackmailer. Utterly dishonest and inconsiderate. Think how he has spoiled everything and endangered us all by getting himself killed on the one afternoon when we said he was here, so that the police were brought in. Just the one thing I was trying to avoid. When the Inspector appeared this morning I was so upset I thought of you!’
In his not unnatural alarm Mr Campion so far forgot himself as to touch her sleeve. ‘Where is Taunton now?’
The Dragon threshed her train. ‘Really, boy! What a fidget you are! If you must know, I gave him his Christmas present – every penny I had in cash for he was broke again, he told me – and sent him for a nice long walk after lunch. Having seen the Inspector here this morning he was glad to go.’ She paused and a gentle gleam came into her hooded eyes. ‘If that Superintendent has the stupidity to try to find him when Maisie has her monstrosities back none of us will be able to identify him I’m afraid. And there’s another thing. If the Brigadier should be forced to give evidence I am sure he will stick to his guns about Mr Sampson being down the garden here at six o’clock last night. He believes he was. That would mean that someone very wicked would have to go unpunished, wouldn’t it? Sampson was a terrible person but no one should have killed him.’
Mr Campion was silenced. He glanced fearfully across the room.
The Superintendent was seated at his table wearing the strained yet slap-happy expression of a man with concussion. On his left was a pile of black and gilt wrappings, on his right a rajah’s ransom in somewhat specialised form. From where he stood Mr Campion could see two examples amid the rest: a breastplate in gold, pearl and enamel in the shape of a unicorn in a garden and an item which looked like a plover’s egg in tourmaline encased in a ducal coronet. There was also a soapstone monkey and a silver paper-knife.
Much later that evening Mr Campion and the Superintendent drove quietly back to headquarters. Oates had a large cardboard box on his knee. He clasped it tenderly.
He had been silent for a long time when a thought occurred to him.
‘Why did they take him into the house in the first place?’ he said. ‘An elderly crook looking lost! No luggage!’
Mr Campion’s pale eyes flickered behind his spectacles.
‘Don’t forget the Duchess’s housekeeping money,’ he murmured. ‘I should think he offered one of the widows who really run that place the first three months’ payment in cash, wouldn’t you? That must be an impressive phenomenon in that sort of business, I fancy.’
Oates caught his breath and fell silent once more until presently he burst out again.
‘Those people! That woman!’ he exploded. ‘When they were younger they led me a pretty dance – losing things or getting themselves swindled. But now they’re old they take the blessed biscuit! Do you see how she’s tied my hands, Campion?’
Mr Campion tried not to grin.
‘Snapdragons are just permissible at Christmas,’ he said. ‘Handled with extreme caution, they burn very few fingers it seems to me.’ He tapped the cardboard box. ‘And some of them provide a few plums for retiring coppers, don’t they, Superintendent?’
Let Nothing You Dismay!
Ellis Peters
The girl in the patched jeans and the voluminous black sweater got off the bus from Comerbourne at the stop opposite the Sitting Duck at ten minutes past seven in the evening, on the twenty-third of December. It was too early then for the landlord to be doing much business in the bar, too late for any delayed shoppers or honest folk coming home from work to be about the single street of the village, and only one other passenger descended from the ancient bus, and scurried away at once into the darkness, to vanish with the crisp click of a gate-latch and in through a house door just beyond the pub. There was no one to notice the arrival of the girl in Mottisham, and by the time the bus rattled away up the valley road towards its final halt at Abbot’s Bale, a mile further towards the Welsh border, she, too, had vanished into the tree-shrouded darkness of the lane that climbed the slope behind the church.
The long cleft of Middlehope climbs the valley of a border stream, dwindling as it mounts, until the river shrinks into the spring that is its source, the final village of Abbot’s Bale is left behind and nothing remains but the bare moorland and occasional marsh of the watershed between England and Wales. The local bus, family-owned and -driven, turns about at Abbot’s Bale after its final evening run, the driver has a meal, a break, a gossip and a si
ngle pint at the Gun Dog before driving back down the valley to Comerbourne, which is home. Why go further? Over the two bleak miles of the crest there are no houses to be served. The road goes on, and winds its way down to civilisation again on the other side, but for practical purposes Abbot’s Bale is the end of the road.
Even at the more congenial level of the village of Mottisham, population is still sparse, in spite of some new development on the lower slopes, and there was no one abroad to see or hear the girl in the patched jeans as she walked briskly up the winding lane, past one or two lighted cottage windows, towards one of the older houses on the fringe of the village. She was small and lightly built, almost silent on the unpaved road surface, almost invisible in her dark clothing. The night was moonless and overcast, relatively mild for December, though there might well be frost later, in the small hours.
She had left the few lights of the village behind, and the stone wall of a well-treed garden began on her right hand. Fifty yards along the wall was pierced by a modest, square-pillared gateway, its white gate wide open on a drive flanked by old shrubberies. The girl turned in there, and proceeded confidently up the drive until it curved to the left, and for the first time brought into view, clear-cut against the sky and rearing out of the cloudy shapelessness of old trees, the line of the roof and the square bulk of the upper part of the house. A solid, respectable, middle-class house, probably mid-Victorian, a silhouette cut out in black paper against a mount just perceptibly less black. And profoundly silent, to the point of menace.
The girl halted in the cover of the trees, and stood a moment perfectly still, contemplating the unrelieved darkness. Not a light in the entire bulk, outside or in. Even the heaviest of curtains could hardly have sealed in light totally, had there been any to conceal. Still, you never know! The girl marched on boldly, climbed the steps to the front door, and rang the bell. For a moment she stood listening, an ear inclined to the door, but not a sound of any kind responded from within. Appearances were confirmed; the house was empty.
She descended the steps again, and without hesitation set off by the path that rounded the corner of the house, and made for the back premises. Evidently she already knew the ground well enough to know where she could find what she wanted. The garden was old, closely treed, cover available close to the walls on every side but the front. Round at the rear there was a small, rather high window, the kind to be found in cloakroom or scullery or larder, and this one probably as old as the house, never replaced by a more modern and more secure one. Under the bushes that crowded near it the girl dumped the duffle bag from her shoulder, rummaged inside its outer pocket for a moment and produced a long nail-file. Reaching the latch of the window was no problem. An old creeper that covered half of the rear wall had its formidable roots braced almost under the sill, and took her light weight without a quiver as she climbed nimbly to the casement and levered the file in beneath the latch. It rose obligingly easily, and she drew the window open, held by the gnarled stem of the creeper, and slid one slim leg over the sill. The rest of her small person folded itself neatly and followed, and a moment later she was standing on the tiled floor of a small room, apparently a cloakroom, listening to the silence as it settled again gradually after the small agitation of her own movements.
She was in, and she had the house to herself.
Moving with unruffled confidence, she let herself out into a dark passage, and felt her way along it with fingertips brushing the walls, past a kitchen door and towards the front of the house. By this time her eyes were becoming sufficiently accustomed to the darkness to distinguish faintly the broad sweep of the banister rail of the staircase in the wide Victorian hall, and feeling her way along the wall parallel to it she found the light-switch, and was hesitating with her finger on it when the first slight, disturbing sound came to her ears, and she froze where she stood, listening intently.
A car’s engine, quiet and distant as yet, but not so distant as to be on the main road, on the other side of the house from the narrow lane by which she had come. It was coming gradually nearer, cutting through from that road by the short piece that would bring it round to the lane, and to the gate. Her acute ear caught the check and change in the note as it turned into the drive, and the sudden cautious crescendo as it rounded the curve. No doubt about it, someone was at this moment driving up to the front door – No, correction! – past the front door, and on round to the right, deep into the cover of the trees. Wheeling, backing and turning now. Ready for a quick departure?
The girl took her finger hastily from the light-switch instead of pressing it, swooped round the ornate newel-post and went scrambling up the stairs, hands spread to feel her way, and into the first bedroom on that side of the house. The large window showed as a shape of comparative pallor, the curtains undrawn, and prolonged acquaintance with the night had given her a fair measure of vision by this time. Peering down into the open between the house and its encircling trees, she could distinguish movement and form even when the car lights were switched off. Not a car, though, a van, middle-sized, elderly, backed unobtrusively into cover before it halted. And a minute later, after profound, listening silence, the cab doors opened quietly, and two figures slid out and crossed like shifting shadows to the window immediately below the one where she crouched in hiding.
One of them spoke, but it was only a wordless murmur. But when the second figure stepped back briefly to look up at the face of the house she saw that he carried something under his arm, and the something had the unmistakable shape of a gun. Shotguns they were carrying, these days, and this was the precise outline of a man with a shotgun, used to it, and probably all too ready to use it at the drop of a hat. A flicker of light reflected briefly from under the wall. They had a torch, and were using it to locate the fastenings of the window. A minute later she heard the sharp, tinkling fall of glass. They were in the house with her.
She took a moment to consider both the room she was in and the alarming possibilities. They had brought a van: that meant larger plunder, pieces of furniture, antiques, silver. But not a very large van, not the kind to accommodate half the contents of the house. They were after chosen pieces. Probably they knew already what they wanted, collectors’ pieces, whatever they had customers for, or could most profitably find customers for. Professionals specialised, handling only what they knew best. And here she was in a bedroom filled with good furniture, and she had better not stay there, if she could find a less likely place to provide desirable loot. And meantime …
She crossed the room to the dressing-table, detected by the ghostly gleam of mirrors. Where they found the light to reflect as they did she had no time to consider. She found what she was searching for in the second drawer, a roll of soft Indian leather as thick as her wrist, tied with brocaded ribbons. Without staying to untie it and confirm what was within, she could feel the shapes of bracelet and brooch and necklace through the silky folds. With luck they wouldn’t even look for this, if clocks and china were what they fancied, but she meant at all costs to retain it if she could. She stuffed it down the neck of her sweater, made for the door and opened it cautiously to listen for what was happening below.
They had not ventured to put on a light, but seemed to know, even by the beam of a torch, carefully shaded, exactly where to find what they wanted. There were voices now, subdued but audible, one gravelly, laconic and professionally calm, one sharp and edgy, and distinctly disquieting in its suggestion of hair-trigger nervousness.
‘Take this an’ all, eh?’ He was close under the stairs, handling glass by the sound of it, but still with the gun under his arm. The gravelly voice swore at him, but still low and placidly.
‘No, leave it! Come on with this clock ’ere, and look sharp.’
The edgy one came, as ordered, but still mutinous. ‘What you turning it up for? That’s good stuff.’
‘Good stuff, but no buyer. Stick to what I know. Safer.’
And there went the clock aforesaid, out through the op
en window, to be stowed away in the van. They were working fast and methodically. The two of them, now, were carrying a piece of furniture between them, very carefully. Some sort of cabinet. They were in and out of other rooms, there was no moment when she had any chance to steal down the stairs in their absence, and get back to the rear of the house, and the open cloakroom window. She would have to sit it out, somewhere as safe as possible, and hope for them to go. How if they decided to come and continue their hunt upstairs?
The girl retreated warily along the dark landing, feeling her way against the wall. Down below her the shaded torch beam focused on the foot of the stairs.
‘What’s up there?’ demanded the nervous voice, uneasy about time passing.
‘His coins. Worth a packet sold in one go.’
‘Dead risky!’ hazarded the doubter, but he was already on the stairs.
‘Got it all set up, safe as houses. They’re going west.’
The girl felt behind her, softly opened the rearmost bedroom door, let herself in with feverish haste and closed it behind her. Flattened against the wall behind the door, she heard them enter the bedroom she had quitted. There were a few minutes of silence, and then the sound of wood splintering, and a murmur of satisfaction. They had got what they had come for. Collectors sometimes allow their pride and joy to be viewed and recorded, whether in professional journals or regional television news programmes, and expert thieves digest and remember every detail. But now surely they would leave, and she could make her own departure once they were clear of the house.
They were out on the landing again with their loot, they must be nearly as eager to leave as she was to hear them go.
‘What else they got up here, then?’ wondered the edgy voice, turning towards where she hid, instead of away. ‘Might as well take a look.’
Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season Page 2