Mr Campion's Fault

by Mike Ripley

  Roderick set the recorder then picked up the microphone and held it below Mr Campion’s chin, his face as expectant as the keenest trainee radio reporter.

  ‘My name is Albert Campion of Bottle Street, Piccadilly, London. I am here at Number Eleven, Oaker Hill, Denby Ash and it is Thursday the fourth of December 1969. I am in the presence of other witnesses, whose names and particulars can be supplied, and we swear that this tape recording is an accurate, unadulterated record of the physical phenomena we have experienced tonight and for which we have, at present, no rational explanation.’

  Mr Campion looked up and discovered he had an audience. He beamed at them and said, ‘That should do it. Now keep that tape safe, young Braithwaite. It might be needed in evidence, you never know.’

  ‘What for?’ blurted Arthur Exley, moving closer, protectively, towards Ada. ‘There’s not been a crime here.’

  ‘Oh, not here,’ said Mr Campion, ‘but I’m sure there’s been one somewhere and probably more than one.’

  The three Campions took their leave of Mrs Braithwaite and were followed out of the back door by Arthur Exley, who then muttered that he would just ‘Make sure Roderick’s all right’ and turned back into the house.

  ‘Do I detect that Mr Exley’s presence tonight was not in the role of trade union official or social revolutionary?’ asked Mr Campion.

  ‘Much more basic,’ said Perdita, linking arms with Mr Campion as they negotiated the dark ginnel at the end of the row of houses. ‘I think Arthur has what’s known hereabouts as set his cap at Ada.’

  ‘She’s a fair bit older than he is,’ said Rupert, walking behind them.

  ‘And I am considerably older than your mother,’ Campion replied over his shoulder, ‘but I never held her immaturity against her. Ada will be just as tolerant; she seems a sensible woman. But please don’t tell your mother I said that, and another thing: around here they throw their caps, they don’t set them.’

  ‘At each other?’ Perdita smiled in the darkness.

  ‘I believe the suitor – the gentleman – signals his intentions to the lady by throwing his flat cap into her house through the back door. If she throws it back out his suit is rejected. If the door closes with said cap still inside, a match is made. It’s really quite charming.’

  Perdita squeezed Campion’s arm. ‘So are you,’ she said, her face nuzzling his shoulder.

  They emerged on to Oaker Hill and after the warmth of Ada’s house and the shelter of the ginnel the damp night air cut into them as they crossed the road to where Campion’s Jaguar and Perdita’s Mini were parked.

  As Campion reached his car, he looked back across the road and satisfied himself that he had parked exactly opposite Number Eleven.

  ‘Now let’s see if my experiment worked,’ he said, leaning over the bonnet which shone in the reflected yellow glow of the nearest sodium street light.

  ‘What experiment?’ Rupert asked, his gaze following his father’s pointing finger towards the windscreen and the wiper blades, against which rested an odd assortment of objects.

  ‘While you were buying the wrong sort of chocolates for Mrs Braithwaite,’ said Campion, ‘I did a little shopping of my own.’

  On the bonnet, lying on their sides were a packet of twenty Embassy cigarettes, a tub of Ski yogurt and a bottle of aspirins.

  ‘You will note, my pair of young Watsons, that I have parked parallel to our haunted house. I balanced my few groceries carefully, all the right way up as if still on the shelves of a shop, having waited until a lorry or two thundered by, to make sure that they would not be disturbed by slipstream or vibration. Now look at them: all tipped over as if they’ve been disturbed by some supernatural force.’

  ‘I’m surprised they weren’t pinched by a passing pedestrian,’ said Rupert.

  ‘Ah, my boy, there I trusted to the basic honesty of the Yorkshireman, although I could have had the bad luck to attract the one petty thief in the West Riding who smoked, had a headache and a weakness for fruit-flavoured yoghurt.’

  ‘Is that who the police are after down there?’ said Perdita, her outstretched arm pointing down Oaker Hill to where the road bisected around the Green Dragon pub and a number of vehicles with flashing blue lights were beginning to swarm.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Campion. ‘I wonder what’s going on down there. Drunken shenanigans in the pub or yet more fisticuffs outside the fish shop? And here come reinforcements.’

  Another flashing blue light appeared coming down the hill from the Huddersfield road. It was attached to a Morris Minor in blue-and-white police livery which slowed as it approached then parked opposite Campion’s Jaguar to allow a dishevelled DCI Ramsden to climb out of the passenger-side door and wade across the road through the beams of the headlights. Ramsden did not speak until he was within touching distance and several times glanced over his shoulder at the terrace of houses, checking for twitching curtains.

  ‘Have you been here all evening?’ the policeman asked without preliminaries.

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Campion. ‘The three of us plus Mr Exley imposed ourselves on Mrs Braithwaite at Number Eleven. In fact, Mr Exley’s still in there.’

  ‘That’s useful to know, but it was you I was hoping to catch. Did you go and visit Ivy Neal after our little chat this morning?’

  ‘Yes, I did, and it was a most interesting experience.’

  ‘Then we’ll be needing your fingerprints.’

  Rupert and Perdita gasped loudly in synchronized shock, but Mr Campion’s face remained impassive.

  ‘What’s happened, Chief Inspector?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I can’t say for sure just yet and I’d like young Mr Campion and his good lady to go back to Ash Grange and go to bed. You’re staying at The George?’

  Campion nodded.

  ‘Then please go to your room there and speak to no one. I will be in touch as soon as I can. I’ve got to get down to the Common. There’s a body been found in Ivy Neal’s caravan. Most likely it’s hers and it doesn’t sound as if she went quietly.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Investigations

  As neither Rupert nor Perdita had scheduled commitments on the games field or in the rehearsal room the following morning, they embarked on the task Mr Campion had set them before he had driven back to his hotel where he would remain, as he put it, in ‘police purdah’.

  They had gone to bed with something of a sense of disappointment, a feeling that they should have been more impressed, or frightened, by Ada Braithwaite’s poltergeist, coupled with the unease any normal person would feel when told by a policeman that something nasty had happened but not exactly what. They assumed that they would hear no further details of the previous night’s police action until Mr Campion reappeared in Denby Ash. In that, they were completely mistaken.

  Given that there were no more than half-a-dozen telephones in private homes in the whole village, the jungle drums of Denby Ash must have been busy overnight. Certainly by the time breakfast was being served in the school dining room, the two kitchen ladies, the Armitages and the still sleepy, tousle-headed boarders all seemed to have inside knowledge, and numerous theories, on what had happened on the Common the previous night.

  First reports had filtered out from the men changing shifts at the Shuttle Eye and Caphouse pits who passed the Common on their way to or from work and had seen the improvised police cordon around Ivy Neal’s caravan. Then Mrs Somebody-or-other, who cleaned at the Green Dragon, and Mrs So-and-so, who ‘did for’ the vicar and his wife, had compared notes on what they had seen, which was little, and on what they had surmised, which was quite a lot. It was theorized that Ivy Neal had been attacked by burglars (though surely she had little worth stealing); murdered by a spurned lover (although no one could actually remember seeing her with a likely male candidate for that office); had been asphyxiated by a faulty Calor Gas cylinder; had been smothered in her sleep by her vicious cat; that she had been casting a spell – even communing with a minor dev
il or two – which had somehow rebounded.

  The latter theory, thought Perdita, would inevitably be expanded in local gossip to be directly connected with the godless production of Doctor Faustus at the school.

  When asked for their own observations on the terrible rumours by Celia Armitage, Rupert and Perdita limited their answers strictly to the facts. They had seen police cars and flashing lights but from a distance at night and had no idea what they had been investigating.

  They had exchanged a look as if to say ‘Talking of investigating …’ and excused themselves on the grounds that they had errands to run. Fortunately, their first port of call was the staff room where the first dragon to arrive in the den was, as usual, the Rev. Stanley Huxtable, who liked to compose himself in solitude before officiating at each morning’s school assembly.

  ‘Forgive the interruption, Mr Huxtable,’ said Perdita, ‘and we don’t want to break your concentration, but could we have a quick word?’

  ‘Of course, my dear Mrs Campion. Isn’t it absolutely shocking?’

  ‘Is it?’ said a startled Perdita.

  ‘Of course it is – poor Ivy Neal murdered. Not the most popular person in the village but nobody deserves to have their head bashed in like that.’

  The reverend gentleman managed to appear both concerned and slightly smug at the same time.

  ‘We know nothing of that,’ said Rupert, ‘terrible though it sounds. Has it been on the radio?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Huxtable carelessly. ‘Old Twiggy – the Reverend Cuthbertson-Twigg down at St James’ – flagged down my car on the way here and told me about it. Poor chap’s been up most of the night with all the commotion on the Common.’

  ‘Actually, we wanted to talk about something completely different,’ said Perdita, noting the look of disappointment on the cleric’s face. ‘Roderick Braithwaite asked you to perform an exorcism in his mother’s house, didn’t he?’

  ‘Ah, your Faustus … I think he might have been taking his role in your little show far too seriously.’

  ‘Is that why you refused?’

  ‘Not at all, though it is not my area of expertise and I would certainly have thought twice about pandering to the whims of a hysterical teenager.’

  ‘Roderick is the least hysterical teenager I’ve ever known,’ bridled Perdita, ‘and I’m counting myself!’

  ‘Be that as it may, my dear, diocesan protocol had to be observed. Peter Cuthbertson-Twigg is the vicar of Denby Ash, not I.’

  ‘And if he wouldn’t help?’

  ‘Well, as I told the lad, he could always try the Methodists.’

  Mr Campion was drinking tea and eating toast – and absolutely nothing else, despite the persistent lobbying of several matronly waitresses – in the dining room of the George Hotel, when a rumpled and unshaven Chief Inspector Ramsden apologised for disturbing him.

  ‘Hate to say this, Chief Inspector, but you look like hell,’ Campion greeted him as he folded away his copy of the Yorkshire Post.

  ‘Didn’t get much sleep,’ Ramsden mumbled in reply. ‘Bit of a hectic night.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to lighten your burden? I would suggest a large intake of coffee but frankly the tea here is far stronger.’

  ‘Nothing for me, thanks, but you could assist by popping round to the station and allowing us to take your fingerprints – purely for elimination purposes, of course.’

  ‘Happy to oblige; in fact, I’m quite excited about the idea as it would be a novel experience for me. Does that sound heartless? What exactly am I being eliminated from?’

  Though there were only two other diners in the breakfast room – a young woman wearing a pink two-piece suit, her hair and make-up immaculate (job interview, perhaps?) and a beefy, red-faced man reading Exchange & Mart whilst worrying the end of the sausage impaled on his fork (travelling salesman?) – Ramsden lowered his voice to a whisper.

  ‘Ivy Neal was murdered sometime yesterday evening. She was strangled and her caravan was ripped apart as if whoever did it was looking for something. We’re asking around but at the moment it seems like you could be the last person to see her alive.’

  ‘Apart from the murderer,’ said Mr Campion reasonably.

  Ramsden’s face gave nothing away. ‘I have to follow procedure.’

  ‘Of course you do, Chief Inspector. I will come very quietly and very willingly. You will need me to give a statement, I take it.’

  ‘We will, in due course, but the priority is your fingerprints. I have a car outside and we can have you back here in fifteen minutes. I hate to rush you but my fingerprint chaps are waiting to go out on another job.’

  ‘That would be the latest payroll robbery, would it?’

  Campion had posed the question casually but he watched closely for a reaction. Ramsden’s face remained police-issue deadpan, which impressed the older man.

  ‘What makes you say that, sir?’

  ‘Oh, very good, Chief Inspector, a lesser mortal would have said “How did you know that?” thus admitting that there had been another robbery. Forgive me, I am not playing games.’ Campion tapped the folded newspaper on the table with a forefinger. ‘It made the Stop Press in the Yorkshire Post; their Barnsley stringer was on the ball and earning his corn last night.’

  ‘Bloody tuppence-a-line reporters,’ sighed Ramsden, ‘but you’ll hear soon enough, I expect. Yes, there was another robbery last night, a light engineering company in Barnsley. That makes eight in the series so far.’

  ‘I was aware you were suffering something of a spate of them. A similar M.O. each time, I presume?’

  ‘Every time. They pick small firms, all within a radius of twenty miles or so, and they hit them on a Thursday when the office safe has all the cash for the pay packets they make up on the Friday. They seem to know exactly where to go and they’re in and out quick. Cheeky blighters don’t try to open the safe – they steal the whole flamin’ thing and cart it off. They must have a trolley to move it and a big van to get it away. Then they disappear, safe and all.’

  ‘Any similarities to connect the victims?’

  ‘All small to medium firms, all local: a dye works, a furnishings and furniture manufacturer, a plumbers’ merchant and a small wool mill, but nothing in common.’

  ‘Except they all had a safe and they were all robbed,’ said Campion. ‘Has any of the money surfaced?’

  ‘Difficult to say. The notes were not marked and the rest was a mixture of ones, fives, tens and ten shilling, plus a fair chunk of silver change, which could all be spent in dribs and drabs without anyone noticing. But all in all, whoever’s doing this has got away with getting on for forty thousand pounds and we’ve no idea what they’re doing with it.’

  ‘More to the point,’ said Campion thoughtfully, ‘what are they doing with all those safes?’

  Just as Mr Campion was helping the police with their enquiries, Rupert and Perdita were helping him with his.

  They left Ash Grange just as the bulk of day boys were being disgorged at bus stops on the main road or tumbling from cars turning into and out of the driveway with Grand Prix aplomb – the drivers, invariably fathers now late for work, chiding their offspring with dire warnings not to miss the so-and-so bus again.

  It was a cold, damp and dark morning, only just worthy of the designation daylight, and the junior Campions had dressed accordingly as they now considered themselves Old Yorkshire Hands, if not entirely acclimatized. To supplement the warmest clothing they had brought with them, Celia Armitage had taken pity on them and added (from the school’s Lost Property cache) woollen gloves, scarves and a knitted Beanie hat for Perdita. Rupert had declined the offer of a dark green Balaclava and opted, sensibly, for a multi-coloured ski hat with a bobble on top. He would not, Perdita had observed, be lost in a snow drift, and Rupert had replied that was just as well as it was indeed cold enough for snow.

  Rupert set a brisk, circulation-boosting pace despite repeated punches on Rupert’s shoulde
r as they marched down to the village, in the shadow – had there been any sun – of the Grange Ash muck stack.

  ‘It looks like a pyramid,’ Rupert had said. ‘I wonder if it conceals a pharaoh’s tomb stuffed with wonderful things?’

  ‘I very much doubt that,’ said Perdita through chattering teeth.

  ‘Still, I wouldn’t mind a run up to the peak. Good fitness training and the view from there would be pretty good.’

  ‘A view of low cloud and chimney smoke if you ask me, but if you fancy yourself as Edmund Hillary, go ahead, or I could make you run up and down as punishment like Sean Connery was made to do in that film.’

  ‘You mean The Hill?’

  ‘That’s the one. Probably a better title than The Muck Stack.’

  On that they both agreed and pressed on, careful to cross the bridge over the Oaker Dyke when there was a lull in the thundering lorry traffic, until they arrived at their first destination, the Primitive Methodist chapel. The sign outside indicated that whilst the congregation was clearly devout and enthusiastic in the act of regular worship, they were not so keen that they demanded services at nine in the morning. An additional piece of information was that the ‘Circuit Minister’ was a Mr Henry J. Bamforth, BA (Hons), but there was no indication as to where he could be contacted other than at the specified times of service.

  ‘Do Methodists have vicarages?’ asked Perdita.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ replied Rupert, casting around. ‘I suppose we could ask a passing primitive. Primitive Methodist, that is.’

  ‘But there’s never one around when you want one, is there, darling? Why not pop into the Co-Op, buy a newspaper or something and work your natural charm?’

  Rupert smiled at his wife. ‘But you outclass me hugely when it comes to natural charm.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Perdita gaily,’ but the shop will be full of Denby women and they’ll only want to gossip. You’re a man and you can pretend to be dim, so they’ll take pity on you.’