‘Very clever,’ said Great-aunt Caroline. ‘Of Andrew, I mean. That clock weight fell down in the middle of dinner on the Saturday before he disappeared. He must have taken it immediately. I remember he went out late that night.’ She was silent for some moments, staring in front of her, her eyes narrowed, her hands folded peacefully on the coverlet. ‘I suppose you wonder why I kept Andrew in the house after disinheriting him?’ she remarked suddenly. ‘But I think I was justified. I had one distressing relative who was liable to blackmail me for small sums at any moment in George. I did not wish to create another in Andrew. Although he had no hold of any kind over me, you understand,’ she remarked. ‘I wished to be spared the possibility of unpleasant scenes. Besides,’ she added, fixing Campion sternly, ‘you may have noticed that I have a certain amount of authority over everyone under my roof. I was wrong about Andrew. I should have realized he was mad.’
She stirred restlessly among her embroidered pillows.
‘Tell me,’ she murmured pathetically, ‘is ‘it really necessary for me to leave this house while the place is ransacked by inquisitive policemen? Poor Hugh Featherstone will do me the honour of inviting me to his home, I know that; but I am old and do not want to leave my beautiful bedroom, which gives me a sense of well-being every time I look at it.’
Campion glanced round the magnificent period apartment. It was a wonderful room.
‘I am sorry,’ he said regretfully. ‘But a thorough search must be made. You never know in a case like this; consider the unfortunate George. That was a sheer accident.’
‘Yes,’ said Great-aunt Caroline, suddenly grave, ‘he was poisoned with cyanide, wasn’t he? That must have been just wanton wickedness on Andrew’s part.’
‘That was ingenious too,’ said Mr Campion. ‘We were amazed at first, because, you know, cyanide has such a very distinctive smell. In the ordinary way you would think no man in his senses would get as far as putting it into his mouth by mistake. Cyanide, or prussic acid, is one of the most deadly poisons. People have died from the fumes of it, I believe. Fortunately, however, in George’s case, the explanation was quite obvious. There was a pipe-rack on Andrew’s dressing-table. I noticed it myself when Joyce and I were examining the room. It contained five extremely filthy blackened pipes and very good new one, a temptation to any man. I don’t know if you have noticed,’ he added, ‘the way a man picks up a pipe and sucks it vigorously to make sure the stem is clear? It’s a sort of involuntary movement.’
‘I have,’ said Great-aunt Faraday. ‘A very disgusting habit. I dislike tobacco in any form and in a pipe particularly.
‘Well,’ said Mr Campion apologetically, ‘a pipe is practically the only thing a man puts straight into his mouth. This new pipe in Andrew’s rack had a vulcanite mouthpiece which unscrewed. The wooden part of the stem of the pipe was practically filled with finely powdered cyanide. The Inspector thinks there was probably some piece of easily removable fluff or wool sticking out of the actual mouthpiece, which a man would naturally flick out with his fingers. This obstruction was sufficient to keep the smell of the cyanide in the pipe. A few charred fragments of tobacco in the bowl served the same purpose. After removing the wool, or whatever it was, and knocking out the ash, the natural impulse would be to put the pipe in the mouth and suck vigorously. George must have fallen straight into the trap. I don’t know who Andrew intended it for, but I fancy he thought of the idea – another ingenuity – and could not resist trying it. He does not seem to have liked anyone, though it is certainly to his credit that, as far as we know, he made no attempt upon you or Joyce.’
‘How could he hurt us more than by leaving us with this chaos?’ Great-aunt Caroline said acidly. ‘Andrew was not clever, but he had intuitions. If Marcus had been of my generation – delightful boy though he is – he might have thought twice about marrying a girl who had been involved in such a public scandal, however innocently. But times are changing rapidly. I don’t think Andrew realized that.’
She was silent for some moments, and Mr Campion began to wonder if his audience was at an end, but presently he became aware that she was looking at him speculatively.
‘Mr Campion,’ she said, ‘— I have grown used to that name, I quite like it – I have said that George blackmailed me. I think enough of you not to want you to believe that I have anything in my family of which I am ashamed. I shall tell you about George.’
There was something in her tone which told Mr Campion that he was being greatly honoured.
‘George,’ said Great-aunt Caroline, ‘was the son of my husband’s brother Joseph.’ The little black eyes grew hard. ‘A despicable character, and a disgrace to his family. This person was shipped off to the colonies many years ago. He returned with a certain amount of money and a wife. They lived in Newmarket, quite near us, you see. She was a peculiar-looking woman and of a very definite type, which we in those days chose to ignore. They had a child, a girl, and when that child was born the rumours that had been rife about the mother, were proved beyond a doubt. By some horrible machination of heredity the stain in the woman’s blood had come out.’ She lowered her voice. ‘The child was a blackmoor.’
Mr Campion had a vision of the painful stir in a society of sixty years before.
Great-aunt Caroline stiffened. ‘They left, of course, and the disgraceful business was hushed up. But to my own and to my husband’s horror, although the first child died, these criminal people had a second. That child was George. You may consider,’ she went on after a pause, ‘that I am foolish in remembering, in feeling it so strongly, but George bears our name and he is always threatening to reveal his half-caste blood, of which he is not in the least ashamed. I admit there is no stain in our side of the family, but people are malicious and notoriously careless in working out relationships, and – a touch of the tar-brush! It is unthinkable.’
As she sat up stiffly, her high lace bonnet adding to her dignity, Mr Campion understood what it was that she considered worse than murder. He said nothing. He felt very honoured by her confidence.
Presently she went on. ‘That is why I am afraid poor Joyce may have given a strange impression by her attitude towards George. You see, she knows this story. Considering her to be by far the most intelligent person of my household, I explained the matter to her in case, in event of my death, the story should come as a shock to her. There, young man, you have the whole explanation.’
Campion hesitated. There was still one point which was bothering him.
‘Mrs Faraday,’ he said, ‘you told me a week ago that you were sure that William was innocent. But you couldn’t have known about Mrs Finch at the time. Forgive me, but how were you sure?’
He feared for one terrible moment that she might be offended, but she looked up at him, a half-humorous smile playing about her mouth.
‘Since you have done so much deduction yourself, young man,’ she said, ‘my reasoning should appeal to you, simple as it is. You may have noticed hanging in the hall downstairs an old panama hat with a turned-up brim. That hat belonged to Andrew. Since you know William, it will not strike you as absurd that this hat was a bone of contention between him and Andrew. Little things may please little minds; they also annoy them. I have known Andrew sulk for a whole day because he had seen William pottering in the garden in that old hat, and William insisted upon wearing it whenever he could get hold of it simply because he liked to be contrary. Andrew did not like the panama worn in the garden, so William always put it on to go out there. Now, when Andrew disappeared, and during the ten days in which he was still missing, William wore this hat in the garden every day. I could see him from my window pottering among the flower-beds, where he does a great deal of damage, they tell me. But after Andrew’s body was discovered, although I have seen William several times in the garden, he has never worn the old panama, but has appeared in his own grey trilby, a thing I have never seen him wear in the garden before in my life. I understood the repugnance he felt for the panama. There is
a primitive strain in us all, which makes us a little afraid of the clothes of the dead. So you see, I knew that Andrew’s death had come as a surprise to William.’
Campion looked at her admiringly. ‘I think you’re the cleverest woman I’ve ever met,’ he said.
The old lady gave him her hand. ‘You are a very good boy,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to desert me for a little while yet. I shall be very much out of my element in Hugh Featherstone’s great barn of a house. You never knew his wife, did you? Such an unyielding, academic soul. I always felt her beds might be hard. Then there’ll be the reporters again. There’ll have to be an inquest on George.’
Her appeal was gracious and ineffably feminine.
‘I shall stay,’ he said. ‘You can leave it all to me.’ She leant back among her pillows and sighed faintly. Campion, assuming that the interview was at an end, rose and made for the door. Great-aunt Caroline’s fine clear voice came to him from the depths of the great pink and gold bed.
‘Heredity is a very extraordinary thing,’ it said. ‘I have always thought that I was a much more intelligent person than your grandmother, dear Emily.’
CHAPTER 25
THE TOKEN
IT WAS SIX o’clock in the evening, over a fortnight later, when the family had been reinstated in a thoroughly overhauled Socrates Close, when Mr Campion approached his Bentley to set out once again for London. He was giving the Inspector a lift, and had arranged to go down to the town to fetch him. Stanislaus Oates had revisited Cambridge for a couple of days at the finish of the affair.
Campion was alone. His adieux had been made. Great-aunt Caroline had given him his last audience. Ann had been visited, and he had received a benison from Joyce and Marcus. Young Christmas had brought the Bentley round to the front door, treating the old car with awe, as well he might, since it was a good six years younger than the Faraday Daimler.
Campion was just about to enter his chariot when a bright pink face, surmounted by a short fringe of stubbly white hair, peered out of the darkness of the porch and Uncle William trotted down the steps towards him.
‘My boy, my boy!’ he said. ‘I thought I’d missed you. Just wanted to have a word with you, you know. I’d like to tell you how grateful I am, for one thing. We Faradays aren’t very grateful as a rule, but I am. You got us out of a devil of a mess and I don’t mind admitting it. I can’t say more than that.’
‘Not at all,’ said Mr Campion, rather embarrassed by this entirely unexpected tribute.
Uncle William shook his head. ‘You can’t fool me,’ he said. ‘Things looked bad at one time. Why, I might have been murdered! A fellow can’t overlook a thing like that.’ A faint smile spread over his face. ‘I was right all along, as a matter of fact. I thought I’d like to remind you. D’you remember what I said to you the first time I saw you, when we were sitting in Marcus’s study? What a damned uncomfortable house that is, by the way. I said, “There’s Andrew lying in the mortuary making all this fuss” – and he was. I was plumb right. Well, good-bye, my boy. I’m grateful. Any time you want a quiet week-end, don’t forget us.’
Mr Campion checked a wild impulse to laugh with commendable fortitude.
‘Thank you,’ he said gravely. ‘Good-bye, sir.’
Uncle William shook hands vigorously. ‘No need to “sir” me, my boy. You called me “Uncle William” once and I liked it. Glad to have you in the family.’ He hesitated. There was plainly something on his mind. At last it came. ‘I’d like to make you a little present,’ he said awkwardly. ‘It isn’t much – haven’t got much. But I’ve heard Marcus say that you’ve got a wonderful collection of curios. I’ve got a little thing here that I brought back from my travels many years ago. If you’ll accept it I shall be very proud.’
Campion, who had some experience of grateful clients and their gifts, was conscious of a strong feeling of apprehension, but he had formed an affection for Uncle William and adopted therefore a suitable expression of modest eagerness. Uncle William was watching him anxiously.
‘Got it just in here,’ he said. ‘Come and have a look.’
His excitement was pathetic, and Campion climbed out of the car, devoutly hoping that the Inspector would grant him a few minutes’ grace. He followed Uncle William up the steps to the porch.
There, on the wooden seat, was a large glass case, and in it, reposing on an uncomfortable bed of conches and dried seaweed, was one of the familiar ‘mermaid skeletons’ which unscrupulous fishermen compose from monkeys’ skulls and torsos and the bones of tropical fish. This ancient fraud was now indicated by Uncle William with pride.
‘Bought it off a fellow in Port Said,’ he said. ‘Struck me as being remarkable then. Does still. Will you take it? I’ve had it for thirty years. Haven’t got anything else of interest.’
Mr Campion seemed overcome. ‘It’s awfully good of you,’ he began nervously.
‘Then you take it, my boy.’ Uncle William’s delight was childlike. ‘I put all my things out on my bed,’ he went on confidentially. ‘Looked at ’em. Chose that. Couldn’t give you anything I’d like better myself.’
Mr Campion accepted the gift in the spirit in which it was made, and together he and Uncle William hoisted the unwieldy trophy into the back of the Bentley. They then shook hands again.
Mr Campion had just started the engine when Uncle William recollected his other mission.
‘Here, wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I nearly forgot. Mother told me to give you this. You’re not to open it until you get home. I think she thinks you’re a child. Still, we must humour the old lady. Here you are.’
He slipped a packet into the young man’s hand and stepped back from the car.
‘I shall see you when you come down for the young people’s wedding,’ he shouted. ‘That’ll be coming along in the summer. Hope to be able to read you the first chapter of my memoirs by then. I’m writing ’em, you know. That newspaper fellow put the idea into my head, only he wanted me to write ’em for his newspaper – right in the middle of all this business. I didn’t thank the fellow for his impertinence at the time, but afterwards it occurred to me that a recently-bound book would bring credit to us all. It’ll give me something to do. Shan’t have many people to talk to while Kitty’s in that nursing home. Still, perhaps it’s as well. I’ve got to look after myself. I’m still under the doctor, you know.’ His little blue eyes flickered. ‘I shall stick to my nightcap whatever he says. Good-bye, my boy. If there’s ever anything I can do for you let me know.’
‘Good-bye,’ said Mr Campion. He let in the clutch and drove slowly out of the gates of the quiet old house, lying peaceful and innocent in the evening light. Uncle William stood on the steps and waved his handkerchief.
Stanislaus Oates was inclined to be truculent at the delay, but the sight of the ‘mermaid’ restored his good humour to such an extent that Mr Campion felt it had justified itself already.
‘What’s the penalty for speeding with a Chief-Detective Inspector in the front seat?’ he inquired as they struck the open road to Bishop’s Stortford and the City.
‘Death,’ said the Inspector solemnly. ‘Same as with any other passenger. Take it easy. I want to lean back and feel at peace with the world once more.’
‘I don’t know what you’ve got to grumble about,’ said Campion. ‘You’ve come out of this very well. My godson will be able to read all about his father in the enthusiastic Press. The Press had a good innings, by the way. I say, did it ever occur to you, Stanislaus, that your coincidence hunch was quite justified? If you and I hadn’t both chosen Tomb Yard for a rendezvous on that particular Thursday you would have had a conversation with Cousin George. He would have tried to sell you the first rights in his little mystery story. You would have got it all out of him without paying, and the riddle of Andrew’s death would have been solved on the day that his body was found.’
Stanislaus considered this remark gravely. ‘Very likely,’ he admitted at last. ‘Of course, you can’t p
ut too much faith in that old blackguard Beveridge’s story, although it went down so well at the inquest. That fellow George had a nerve, if a half of what Beveridge says is true. Fancy hiding the gun and then singling me out – probably because I’d just got promotion – to come and tell his rotten story to. He thought we might strike a deal, I suppose. I got the kudos, he got the cash.’
‘Ingenuity seems to run in the family,’ remarked Mr Campion. ‘Beveridge is an interesting character, too. I think, perhaps his intense admiration for George was the most extraordinary thing about him.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the Inspector. ‘That flashy type does appeal to a simple imagination. What does strike me as extraordinary is that the old devil should have had the nerve to pinch the dead man’s hat. I know he tore out the lining – I know he battered it. But fancy seeing a man commit suicide, watching your friend destroy the evidence to make it look as much like murder as possible, and then rolling jauntily off in the corpse’s bowler, only pausing to bury your old hat under a heap of leaves a few hundred yards down the path!’
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