Mr Campion's Fault

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Them things’ll stunt yer growth, yer know,’ he said without conviction.

  ‘Too late to worry about that,’ said Luke, lighting up, ‘but I’m cutting down with a view to giving up completely. It could be my New Year’s Resolution this year.’

  ‘Girlfriend don’t approve, is that it?’

  ‘Kathleen’s not keen, she’s made that plain; but then, she’s worth the sacrifice. Six months, by the way.’

  ‘I beg yours?’

  ‘Malkey Maud – you asked if he was still enjoying bed and breakfast at Her Majesty’s pleasure. He got out six months ago.’ Luke was matter-of-fact and coolly professional. ‘And nobody’s seen him since.’

  ‘You think I might have?’ Lugg feigned horror the way a maiden aunt might suddenly discover dirt under a fingernail. ‘If I ’ad, I’d tell yer in a heartbeat, Charlie, Scouts’ honour. I never had no time for that toerag. Banger Maud was a menace to the dregs of society, let alone the decent half.’

  Luke hid a smile at Lugg’s outrage. ‘So, no whispers on the Canning Town grapevine, then?’

  ‘Well, I might not be completely up-to-date, what wiv me moving in more refined circles these days, but I haven’t heard of anyone laying eyes on Malkey since he was sent down. Like I said, nobody was sorry to see him go. Was he expected back in the Smoke?’

  ‘He had a travel warrant for London with his release papers but he never used it.’

  ‘Where was he in jug?’

  ‘For the last two years of his sentence he was in Wakefield,’ said Luke, averting his eyes from the face he knew his fellow drinker would be pulling.

  ‘I gets it now,’ murmured the older man. ‘Wakefield and the Campions, they’re all in Yorkshire, aren’t they?’

  ‘Probably coincidence, just me clutching at straws,’ said Luke, stubbing out his cigarette with such force that the ashtray squealed across the tabletop.

  Lugg pulled back his massive head as if dodging an incoming right cross. ‘Show me a policeman who believes in coincidence an’ I’ll give you change from a nine-bob note! Come on, Charlie, you know me an’ I knows you. That’s too thin to get your juices going, there’s got to be something else.’

  ‘There is,’ said Luke, flexing his arms and shoulders like a weight-lifter, his raincoat straining at the seams, ‘but that’s thin too. For the last year of his sentence, Malcolm Maud shared a cell in Wakefield with a chap called Haydon Bagley. The name won’t mean anything to you; it didn’t to me until recently, ’cos Bagley was a local boy made bad. He never visited London as far as we know, so he never blipped on my radar and he was pretty much second division as a villain.’

  ‘Don’t sound as if he’d be of much interest to Mr C., even if he wasn’t retired, which of course, as we all know, he is.’ As he spoke, Lugg looked flamboyantly around all points of the compass to make sure he was not being overheard.

  Luke began to button his raincoat. ‘Haydon Bagley wouldn’t mean a thing to Campion even if he knew he’d been a cell mate of Malkey Maud. It’s just that Bagley was born and bred in a place called Denby Ash, where Albert and company seem to have pitched their tent.’

  ‘So how’s that related to the price of fish?’ asked Lugg, extending a pugnacious lower lip.

  ‘Bagley finished his sentence and was released two weeks ago and was supposed to be heading home to Denby Ash. He hasn’t been seen or heard of since.’

  ‘Just like Banger Maud,’ said Lugg.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Luke, rising to his feet like a Titan emerging from the sea, ‘and you’re right, I don’t like coincidences.’

  TWELVE

  Prep

  ‘My dear boy, I came with all haste as soon as I heard you’d been arrested,’ said Mr Campion pleasantly, and the staff room fell ominously silent.

  Rupert, conscious that he had an audience, stifled any emotions he had about being confronted by twin figures of authority – his father and a headmaster – and replied coolly: ‘Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. I was merely helping them with their enquiries.’

  ‘But there were fisticuffs, or so I hear,’ said Campion with a twinkle in his smile, ‘so it was a good thing you had Perdita there to protect you …’

  ‘Steady on, Campion,’ said Brigham Armitage, ‘that’s my goddaughter you’re talking about.’

  ‘And my daughter-in-law; a most welcome addition to the family.’

  ‘The girl showed spunk,’ growled Raymond Bland from his chair where he sheltered behind an open copy of the Yorkshire Post. ‘Should get credit for standing up to those hooligans just hanging around looking for trouble – there’s few around here who would do that. They turn a blind eye when it’s their own that are involved.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Rupert, ‘I was rather glad Arthur Exley was with us as he set about them with a will and chased them off pretty quickly.’

  ‘That’s a nice twist.’ Campion, who was good with names when he wanted to be, identified the speaker as Bob Ward, the PE master. ‘Students and staff from the privileged posh school being rescued by a militant class warrior. A bit ironic, eh?’

  ‘Keep those opinions to yourself, Mr Ward,’ the headmaster snapped, ‘and just remember that it was two of our pupils that were set upon. They did not go looking for trouble.’

  ‘Where exactly is the lovely Perdita?’ Campion asked calmly.

  ‘She’s in the middle of a Doctor Faustus rehearsal,’ said Rupert, ‘with a dozen adolescent boys, which could go on all afternoon.’

  ‘In comparison,’ Campion observed thoughtfully, ‘a bit of street-fighting probably came as light relief.’

  When Brigham Armitage had telephoned Mr Campion to tell him of the fracas in which Perdita and Rupert had become involved, he apologised for having few factual details to hand except that they were mostly unharmed, that they appeared to have been going to the rescue of two Ash Grange pupils who had been set upon by local thugs who had escaped apprehension on motorcycles and that the police had been involved because one of the boys was the son of a police inspector. To Mr Campion, it seemed a fairly thorough report, given in that regretful tone of a headmaster telephoning a parent to inform them of their offspring’s bad behaviour and, having assured Amanda that no serious harm had come to Perdita or their ‘son-and-heir-to-not-very-much’, he announced that he would go to Yorkshire more than a week before they were expected.

  Lady Amanda objected on the grounds that she had business commitments which would keep her in London, that they would not be expecting him at Ash Grange, that it was a long drive and that the weather in the north would be bad because it always was at this time of year – in fact, Yorkshire was probably already cut off by snowdrifts. Mr Campion countered with the argument that as she would be busy he would have many lonely hours to fill: the George Hotel in Huddersfield had perfectly suitable accommodation available (he had checked); his car had recently been tuned and serviced and would eat up the miles with the speed and grace of the jaguar it was named after; and the BBC’s trusty shipping forecast had assured him that snow ploughs were not yet needed in the West Riding, though for the unknown territory that was the North Riding he could not speak.

  When she realized that her objections were being rapidly overruled, Amanda tried one last time. ‘Exactly what use do you think you will be up in Yorkshire?’ she had asked bluntly.

  ‘Absolutely none,’ Mr Campion had replied with a beatific smile, ‘other than perhaps offering moral support.’

  Lady Amanda’s beautiful eyes had narrowed. ‘You’re bored, darling, aren’t you?’

  ‘Nonsense. OAPs – that’s Over Active Pensioners – such as myself and the dreaded Lugg couldn’t have more on our jolly old plates. Lugg has his Beadle duties at Brewers’ Hall; I have a library full of books which need reading, a posse of charities are chasing me for my patronage, I’ve been meaning to get down to falsifying the family history for years and then, of course, there’s my stamp collection to sort out – and where exactly is Bechuanaland thes
e days? So you see, my dear, I am so overworked I am desperately in need of a holiday.’

  Amanda tried one final parting shot before surrendering to the inevitable. ‘Who on earth goes on holiday to Yorkshire in December?’

  ‘The Easter bunny?’ Mr Campion had replied hopefully.

  Brigham and Celia Armitage had professed delight at Campion’s arrival at Ash Grange, having quickly ascertained that he was not an early substitute for Lady Amanda, whose presence at the end of term Speech Day had already been widely advertised. Once reassured that he was merely acting as advance reconnaissance for the guest of honour, the headmaster had shown Campion in to the Dragons’ Den and introduced those members of staff currently off-duty and enjoying a mid-afternoon tea break.

  There were only two dragons present and they had staked out their territory at either end of the den. Both were nursing cups and saucers close to their chins, giving them plausible excuses for not talking to each other until politeness and the presence of the headmaster and his guest forced them to break their silence. It did not take Mr Campion more than a minute to understand the icy atmosphere he had entered, for though he had never set eyes on Wing Commander Raymond Bland or PE teacher Bob Ward in his life, he knew the types of men they were, or at least the image they chose to project to the outside world. He was confident that somewhere between the blustering of the wing commander, the sarcasm of the PE teacher and the diplomatic interventions of Brigham Armitage, he would get a good sense of the state of affairs in the castle of Ash Grange School, if not in the surrounding kingdom of Denby Ash.

  He asked few questions, no more than two or three, and then did what he did best: he listened, his face a picture of bemused innocence. By the time Rupert appeared wearing a tracksuit and carrying a pair of football boots coated in dried mud, Mr Campion felt himself fully briefed on who-was-who even if not what-was-what. For that, he would interrogate Rupert in private and so offered to accompany him towards his obvious destination – the playing fields.

  With his Crombie coat done up tightly, a green wool fedora firmly screwed in to place and brown leather gloves buttoned at the wrist, Mr Campion felt if not equal to the Yorkshire weather then at least prepared for it. On the drive north the rain had been persistent though at times hardly heavy enough to trouble his Jaguar’s very efficient windscreen wipers, but out on the exposed rugby field he was sure he felt the prick of sharp raindrops needling their way through his protective layers of wool, cashmere and leather. The wind, he decided – simply because the fancy took him – was deliberately sweeping towards him, personally, across the frozen slopes of the black mountain that was the muck stack of Grange Ash colliery.

  A dozen gangling figures in damp rugby kit awaited Rupert’s arrival and with a collective groan obeyed his command that they should run three laps of the field in order to warm up, Mr Campion marvelling at the sullenness of eleven-year-old boys who would rather stand and shiver than get their circulation moving enough so they could feel their extremities. How little the young knew of the simple pleasures of life.

  Rupert had explained that the training session he was supervising that afternoon was little more than an exercise in keeping part of the Lower Fourth occupied, the object being to tire them out before teatime. Much more would be expected of Rupert’s coaching of the First XV for their final competitive match of the term, a match they would somehow have to play without their inspirational captain – and, in truth, only decent player – Andrew Ramsden.

  It had, he explained, been Andrew Ramsden and his friend Roderick Braithwaite – of particular interest to Perdita in the leading man stakes – who had been involved in the fracas outside the fish-and-chip shop, assaulted by persons unknown and for reasons unknown, although neither of those things were strictly true. Rupert felt sure that Arthur Exley had a shrewd idea of the identity of the boys’ attackers, though was saying nothing, and the boys themselves had been evasive to say the least on what they had been up to that evening or why they might have been attacked.

  When Exley and the Campions had charged to the rescue, the two leather-jacketed hooligans had broken off their attack on the boys and fled towards the car park of the Green Dragon, from where they had emerged almost instantaneously astride large motorbikes, roared off down the Wakefield road and into the night.

  The two Ash Grange boys, bloodied and bruised at the fists and boots of their attackers, seemed at first more surprised at the sight of Perdita’s pretty face framed by a dripping plastic rain hood looking down at them rather than in pain. When their administering angel and her assistant, the temporary games master, attempted to get them up and off the wet pavement, however, they gave vent to howls of agony: Andrew clutching his right wrist to his chest and Roderick failing to stand as his left ankle gave way under him. Both boys were bloodied, muddy and their coats were soaked, giving them the appearance of bedraggled dogs that had been ordered, shame-faced, out of a particularly murky river.

  Rupert had half-expected Exley, whom he had pegged as a fearless man of action when defending his own territory, to go charging after the assailants but instead he remained solicitously at Roderick’s side, offering a strong broad shoulder for the boy to lean on. With Perdita putting a comforting arm around Andrew (who would later boast that he had received the better treatment by far), the sad little group decided as if by osmosis to seek safety from footpads and the weather in the nearest, warmest and best-lit sanctuary available.

  The warm fug and neon strip lights of Willy Elliff’s offered a comforting welcome to the refugees even if the humans inside the chip shop greeted them in shocked and complete silence. It was, Rupert had told his father, as if they had burst into a church at the moment the congregation was receiving the blessing, except that in this church the worshippers were all busy eating rather than praying and the vicar officiating was a tall, thin, cadaverous man with a gaunt face and a toothbrush moustache, who wore a white coat rather than a dog collar and the altar he stood in front of was a range of stainless-steel deep fryers and glass-fronted hot cupboards. Any further spurious similarities to the interior of a church were belied by the arrangements of the pews. There were in fact only two; they were made of wooden planking and they ran along the long sides of the establishment. They were occupied by two couples who were busy eating from newspaper parcels and concentrating on not engaging in conversation. On the north wall of the shop sat an elderly pair, cocooned in damp overcoats and scarves, whilst on the southern bench a brace of teenage girls wearing matching shiny red plastic raincoats over short skirts and knee-length white PVC boots had their heads together so they could whisper confidences as they ate chips with one hand and delicately raised bottles of Vimto to their lips with the other.

  The only sound to mark the arrival of the walking wounded was the crackle and hiss coming from the deep fat fryers until Arthur Exley gruffly ordered the two girls to ‘budge up’ and settled the limping Roderick on to the bench seat next to them. He then turned towards the counter where the white-coated chef de cuisine was standing, open-mouthed, holding an empty wire basket.

  ‘Has tha’ got a phone in here, Willy?’

  The tall stick of a man, who was hardly a potent advertisement for his trade, shook his head. ‘There’s a phone box up by t’club, Arthur, as you well know,’ he said severely. ‘Or there’s one in the public bar of the Green Dragon if it’s urgent.’

  ‘It’s not a social call,’ snapped Exley. ‘These lads need a doctor, mebbe an ambulance, mebbe the police.’

  Perdita, having sat Andrew down next to his friend, was conscious that the shop’s customers – or should that be diners? – were following this exchange with their eyes and heads like a crowd at a tennis match.

  ‘Nothing to do with our Adrian, is it?’

  ‘For once, it’s not, Willy. Mind you, the daft beggar almost ran us over on that bone-shaker of a bicycle of his five minutes since. Late for work again, I see.’

  ‘You see a lot round here, Arthur Exley, and
not all of it’s your business.’

  ‘And you can’t see what’s under your nose, Willy Elliff, unless it’s fish or spuds or batter.’

  Exley scowled at the proprietor but it seemed to have more effect on the two girl diners, who edged nervously further along the bench, than it did on Mr Elliff. The scowl slipped from his face when he turned back to Roderick and said calmly that he would go to the pub and telephone for an ambulance and, whilst that was coming, he would go fetch the boy’s mother if the Campions would stand guard in the meantime.

  Not quite sure what he was ‘guarding’, Rupert naturally agreed but pointed out as delicately as possible that Andrew, his star rugby player, was also injured. Exley cleared his throat – and was the man blushing? – and said that he would naturally make a call to Andrew’s father, Chief Inspector Ramsden, whose number he seemed to know. Perdita’s offer to run all the way back to the school to fetch her car was instantly dismissed by both men and, to Rupert’s amazement, Perdita did not argue.

  As Arthur Exley charged out into the night, the hiss of wet, battered fish submerging in hot fat came from behind the counter as Willy Elliff played his range of fryers and hot cabinets with the dexterity of a concert organist piloting his Wurlitzer.

  Rupert sniffed the air and asked if anyone else fancied something to eat while they were waiting.

  ‘Am I reading this menu correctly?’ asked Mr Campion. ‘Does it actually say whole chicken and chips in the basket?’

  He had insisted that Rupert and Perdita join him for dinner at a suitable ‘local watering hole’ and had selected the Green Dragon on the recommendation of Brigham Armitage, not at all because it was near ‘the scene of the crime’.

  ‘It wasn’t much of a crime,’ said Perdita as she closed her faux-leather bound menu, ‘and yes, they really do give you a whole chicken, though it’s quite a small one, more of a poussin, really.’