Flowers For the Judge

by Margery Allingham

  Mr Campion inserted the squat key which Mr Samson had made for luck and mastered within a minute or two the simple arrangement of turns and half turns which shot back extremely heavy bolts. The door, which must have weighed a quarter of a ton at the lowest estimation, swung back, and Mr Campion and Ritchie peered into the steel recess within.

  At first sight the contents were not enlightening. Two or three half-calf ledgers, two small notebooks containing addresses and a file of letters were neatly arranged upon the lower shelf. And that was all, save for a package neatly wrapped in green baize and tied with pink tape.

  Mr Campion took it out carefully and unpacked it on the table which Mike had cleared to receive Paul’s body. Inside the baize wrapping was a well-made blue leather case designed to look like a book and very beautifully gilded. Examination proved that it had no lock, but pulled out in two pieces like a card-case and contained a slender manuscript.

  ‘Gallivant,’ Ritchie remarked, looking over Campion’s shoulder. ‘Never examined it. Uncle Jacoby Barnabas very strict. Thought it indecent. Would have destroyed it but for the value. John carries on tradition. Probably dull.’

  Campion turned back the thin octavo sheets which were unbound save for the faded ribbon tied about the centre of the bundle. The brown ink made a spidery but decipherable pattern on the soft rag paper. He read a line or two:

  ‘Gagewell: “O Sir, since Lady Frippet hath a bee in her bonnet, you must allow if the bee’s not a queen the bonnet is at least à la mode.”’

  ‘Clean bit,’ said Ritchie, with that complete simplicity which was the mainspring of his personality. ‘Nothing to help us there. Valuable, of course. Wrote it himself, in his own hand. Insured. Stands at twenty thousand pounds in the balance sheet.’

  Mr Campion raised his eyebrow.

  ‘Along with the office freehold and the printing plant at Gravesend?’ he suggested.

  ‘That’s right,’ the older man agreed. ‘Best place for it. Never liked the classics. Put it away.’

  Campion was some little time repacking the treasure, and Ritchie wandered over to the safe.

  ‘Nothing else,’ he observed, without turning round. ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Whatever it was that made Paul go to the trouble of getting a key of the safe made for him,’ Campion explained as he tied the pink tape round the green baize once more and stowed it away in the safe. ‘There’s only one official key to this elegant invention, I suppose. Who keeps it?’

  ‘Head of the firm,’ said Ritchie. ‘Another tradition. Explains why there’s nothing much kept in it.’

  ‘I see. That means that John had the original key?’

  Ritchie considered.

  ‘Probably Curley,’ he said at last. ‘One or the other. Only a fetish.’

  Mr Campion took off his spectacles and perched himself on the edge of the table.

  ‘It seems very careless to keep the Gallivant there,’ he began. ‘I should have thought the insurance johnnies might have objected to a thing like that.’

  Ritchie’s eyes clouded.

  ‘Ought to go back to the bank,’ he agreed. ‘Fact is, this dreadful business – death, murder, trial, and so on – has probably put the whole thing out of their minds. Very likely haven’t been down here since. Can’t blame them.’

  ‘Oh, it’s usually kept at the bank, is it?’ said Campion, pricking up his ears. ‘When was it put in here? Do you know?’

  Ritchie’s discomfort increased.

  ‘Before Christmas. Silly business. Curley annoyed. Couldn’t really blame her.’

  Mr Campion was patient. Ritchie’s cryptogrammic replies were tantalizing and he was thankful for everybody’s sake that the well-meaning, inarticulate soul had not been subpoenaed for the morrow’s trial.

  After a certain amount of persuasion Ritchie amplified his story.

  ‘Nothing in it,’ he said wretchedly. ‘Paul made an ass of himself over the Gallivant. Wanted to lend it to rare manuscript exhibition. Up against tradition at once. Grand old firm’s vulgar classic. Wouldn’t do. Old-fashioned. Stupid. But John and Curley had last word. Paul not content – silly fellow. Tried to get it from Bank manager. Being partner, succeeded. Curley saw messenger who brought it. Went to John. John furious, backed her up. Gallivant put in safe.’

  Mr Campion was bewildered. It seemed incredible that such a little domestic quarrel in the firm could have any connection with the grave issues at stake. He was silent for some moments, considering. John, he knew, had a fanatical pride in the honour of the firm; Miss Curley might easily have hidden depths of prudery; and Paul certainly seemed to have made a nuisance of himself all round. But compared with the scandal which had burst about their ears the public burning of the Gallivant by the police – an eventuality, after all, unlikely, since authors dead over a hundred years are permitted great licence, on the principle, no doubt, that their work has had time to air – would have been negligible unless –? An idea occurred to him and he looked up, a startled expression in his pale eyes.

  ‘Look here, I’ll have to wander off now, Ritchie,’ he said. ‘I’ve been rather late for the bus all along, but I believe I’m catching up with it now. I shan’t be down at the Old Bailey at the beginning this morning, but I’ll come along later. Keep an eye on Gina, but don’t tell her anything.’

  ‘No,’ said Ritchie, with the obedience of a child, and Campion, looking at him affectionately, wondered how much of the mystery about him he saw and what, if anything, he thought of it.

  It was half-past six on a cold spring morning, with drizzle in the air, when they parted, and Mr Campion went home to bathe and shave, since it was too early to begin his day’s business. He also took the opportunity to submit himself to a patching process, of which Mr Lugg was a past master. The spectacle of that mournful figure, clad solely in a pair of trousers, standing upon a bath-mat at seven-thirty in the morning, a minute pair of surgical scissors in one enormous hand and an even smaller strip of sticking-plaster in the other, was one of those experiences that Mr Campion frankly enjoyed.

  He was sorry that they were not on conversational terms. Mr Lugg was the victim of a two-way complex. His newer self revolted at the unpleasant publicity with which he saw his employer’s name surrounded as the trial progressed, while his elder spirit was deeply hurt that Campion should have enjoyed a scrap in which he had not been permitted to take part.

  ‘There you are,’ he said at last, stepping back from his handiwork. ‘Now I’ve wasted my time on you making you look like a gent again, go and smear yourself with society filth. Roll in it like a dawg – but don’t ask me to clean yer. Mud sticks closer than them patches I’ve put on your dial.’

  ‘Mud of the soul?’ inquired Mr Campion affably.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Lugg warningly. ‘And if we ’ad that charwoman I’ve bin thinking of I’d drive ’ome me contemp’ in the way I was brought up to, even if I ’ave learnt spittin’s not quite the thing.’

  Mr Campion dressed in silence. At nine o’clock he was waiting outside the door of a little office on the third floor of a building in St Martin’s Lane.

  Ex-Detective-Inspector Beth found him there when he came heavily up the stairs to open the little private inquiry office he had established on his retirement.

  ‘Can’t get my assistant to turn up before half-past, Mr Campion,’ he explained as he unlocked the door. ‘My word, if I had him in the Force for half an hour!’

  He paused, inquiry on his round good-natured face.

  ‘Surely we can’t do anything for you, can we? Well, well. I thought they even took in your laundry work down at the Yard these days.’

  ‘Working a little light humour into the act, I see,’ said his visitor approvingly. ‘“Divorce with a laugh” and “Blackmail made fun”? It’s not a bad idea. However, unfortunately, there’s nothing very amusing about the small commission I am about to entrust to you at the moment. It is merely odd.’

  He took a limp brow
n bank-book from his pocket and, opening it, entered into some careful instructions. The ex-inspector was puzzled.

  ‘If it was a case of impersonation – someone taking it out – I could understand it,’ he said. ‘But who cares who pays money in?’

  ‘I do,’ said Mr Campion, who was very tired. ‘I’m a very proud young fellow, and I like to know where my money’s coming from.’

  Beth turned the book over.

  ‘Since when have you been called Dora Phyllis Netley?’ he inquired suspiciously.

  Campion leant forward confidentially.

  ‘You must let a man have his secrets,’ he murmured. ‘Get on to it and let me have a report to-night.’

  ‘To-night? What do you think we are?’ protested his host.

  ‘Private and enterprising. I read it on the door,’ said Mr Campion, and hurried away.

  It was just after ten when he reached the British Museum, and he paused for a moment at the foot of the great soot-stained granite flight of steps to feel in his breast pocket. His weariness was making him absent-minded, and just for a moment he could not remember if on changing his clothes he had slipped into his pocket a wallet containing a page of the Gallivant, which he had stolen so shamelessly from beneath Ritchie’s very nose. It was there, however, and he went on thankfully.

  Time at the Museum is given the treatment it deserves from the custodians of the treasure of historic man, and Mr Campion’s godfather, Professor Bunney, did not arrive until late, so that the morning was considerably advanced when the tall pale young man in the horn-rimmed spectacles at last came out between the granite columns.

  Mr Campion walked slowly, accustoming himself to an idea. His godfather had been most helpful and he now knew without a possibility of doubt that the manuscript of the Gallivant in the blue leather box, which was insured for twenty thousand pounds and appeared in the balance-sheet of the famous firm of Barnabas Limited as representing that sum, was certainly not, however genuine its content might be, penned by the hand of Wm. Congreve, dec. 1729, nor was the paper on which it was written manufactured one year earlier than 1863.

  CHAPTER XVI

  The Fourth Chair

  ONE OF THE unexpected things about the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey is that it is perfectly new. The carving above the Judge’s chair, where the great sword hangs, is not an old carving, and the light oak of the contraption so like a Punch and Judy show, which is the witness box, is not worn by the nervous hands of a thousand testators but retains some of the varnished brightness of the cabinet-maker’s shop.

  This newness might perhaps destroy some of the court’s undeniable impressiveness were it not for one significant difference between this particular new room and others of the time.

  Here ancient things have been replaced not by copies vulgarly disguised to appear old, nor yet by new things different in design and purpose from the old out of deference to the changing manners and customs which have altered the surface of life during the past five hundred years, but by new things replacing those worn out in a room where customs and manners do not change and where the business conducted is concerned not with the surface but with that deeply-set unchangeable streak embedded in the rock of civilization which is crime.

  Miss Curley sat beside Gina in the block of seats at the back of the court which is reserved for witnesses and, looking about her, wondered if Mike had been properly fed in Pentonville.

  The two women were wedged in a corner some three rows from the front. Gina, at Cousin Alexander’s hinted instigation, had succeeded in making herself look almost dowdy. Certainly she appeared very young and very tragic, the high collar of her black coat shadowing her pale, distinctive face.

  Immediately before them in the well of the court was the enormous dock, looking as large as and not at all unlike a very superior sheep-pen in a country market.

  Three chairs, the one in the middle a little in front of the others and directly facing the judicial desk, stood lonely and inadequate in the midst of the expanse.

  Beyond was Counsel’s table, already littered with papers and glasses of water, with the jury and witness boxes and the Press table on its left and the solicitors’ table and the bank of expert witnesses on its right.

  Further away still were the clerks’ desks, directly beneath the dais and facing into the well.

  Last of all was the Bench itself.

  The seven chairs on the dais were equidistant and all very much alike, since the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London are entitled to sit. They each had high leather backs emblazoned with the city arms and managed to look impressive even when unoccupied.

  The fourth chair fascinated Miss Curley. It stood between the carved columns, the state sword, hilt downward, immediately above it, while before it, at the wide desk, a little clerk was arranging sheaves of paper.

  The court was full of people. The witness benches were crammed and the public gallery over the solicitors’ table seemed in danger of bursting and jettisoning its load into the dock. Press and solicitors’ tables were full and junior counsel and the clerks were clustering round their own headquarters. Everyone was talking. Men in gowns hurried to and fro with papers, their shoes squeaking noisily on the wood. Now and again a late arrival was thrust into a seat in the witness benches by a fatherly official clad in what appeared to be some sort of police uniform augmented by a beadle’s gown.

  The jury, ten men and two women, looked on at the preparations like an absurdly small audience at an amateur theatrical show which had got completely out of hand and swamped the auditorium. They looked apprehensive and painfully uncomfortable and the foreman, an elderly man with pince-nez and a bald head, mopped his face repeatedly although the morning was inclined to be cold.

  John sat at the solicitors’ table oddly in the picture, his round head held slightly on one side and his long thin neck sticking stiffly out of his elegant grey collar.

  Ritchie was behind Gina and his expression of frightened disgust as he noticed each new evidence of human bondage was pathetic or comic according to the onlooker’s fancy. He showed no signs of fatigue, but his gentle eyes were anxious and his enormous bony hands fidgeted on his knees.

  Among the legal broiling circulating round the court with a familiarity which proclaimed it their own fishpond there was a certain amount of pleasurable anticipation. A cause célèbre at the Old Bailey is bound to have its moments. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lumley, affectionately called ‘Lor Lumme’ by his admirers in the best legal, police and criminal circles, still preserved sufficient humanity in his omnipotence to lose his temper on occasions, and there was a persistent rumour, utterly unfounded, that he cherished a personal antipathy towards Sir Alexander Barnabas.

  Then, in accordance with the custom at poisoning trials at the Old Bailey, the Attorney-General himself, Sir Montague Brooch, was appearing for the Crown and was. leading Sir Andrew Phelps, with Jerome Fyshe and Eric Battersby as juniors.

  There were rumours of last-minute trouble with important witnesses and altogether the prospects looked good.

  Gina sat trembling.

  ‘I’m going to see him – I’m going to see him – I’m going to see him – I’m going to see him –’

  The words made a sing-song pattern completely without meaning in her brain, neither conveying nor expressing any thought at all, but providing a deadening chatter which prevented her from thinking.

  Miss Curley sat forward, straining her eyes to see Counsel’s table. Something was happening and she could see flickers of amusement appearing on dark faces beneath blue-white periwigs.

  A clerk entered, laden with an assortment of paraphernalia which he proceeded to arrange. First a dark cushion was placed carefully on a chair, then a portfolio laid reverently on the table and round it a little ring of oddments carefully set out. Miss Curley discerned a pile of exquisite cambric handkerchiefs, a bottle of smelling salts, another of sal volatile, a box of throat pastilles and a glass of water.

  There wa
s a long pause. The clerk stepped back and gazed expectantly at the doorway behind him. His interest was not unnaturally echoed by those about him, and finally, when everyone in the court was aware that somebody of importance was about to enter, a little door swung open, there was a rustle of an old silk gown, a glimpse of a grey-blue wig, and then, looking like a middle-aged Apollo in fancy dress, Cousin Alexander swept up to the table and sat down.

  Miss Curley waited for the Attorney-General and, disappointed, had allowed her eyes to wander back to Cousin Alexander and away again before she suddenly caught sight of him at the same table and wondered if he had been there all the time.

  The big hand of the court clock reached the half hour and there was a sudden silence, followed by a mighty rustle as everybody rose. The door on the right of the dais opened and an old gentleman in red appeared.

  The squad of wigs bowed, looking slightly comic as black, brown and even pink heads appeared for an instant beneath the queues as necks were bent.

  The Judge returned the bow as he settled himself, not in the fourth chair beneath the sword but in the one beside it, and the untidy little clerk rearranged his papers. The position brought him nearer the jury and the witness box and further from Counsel, and the change was probably pure pernicketiness and the desire to break the symmetry of the design.

  The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lumley, was a large old man with the drooping jowls and bald bony eyesockets of a bloodhound. His upper lip was shaven but he affected a square of close-clipped white hair about as big as a piece of confetti in the centre of his lower one, which gave him a slightly sporting appearance. He was over seventy and forced from time to time to use eyeglasses, which he wore on a wide black ribbon.

  As he sat in his high leather chair his scarlet robe fell sleekly with deep wine-coloured shadows over his heavy form, and his square wig, which was brown and inclined to look as though it were made of the bristles usually fashioned into carpet brooms, overshadowed his face.

  In his hand he held the formal bouquet, the nosegay dating from the time when the air of the court room was not so hygienic as modern cleanliness has made it and a handful of flowers and herbs was at least some barrier between a fastidious gentleman and the plague.