Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories

by Margery Allingham

  I got up resolutely. No one in my family has ever suffered from hallucinations and I was disturbed. The whole thing would have to be explained.

  I was halfway across the room to the other window to see whether by some trick of acoustics the sound could have been projected into the room from the square below when the second thing happened.

  “Dear-est,” said a charming, feminine voice which yet had more than a trace of exasperation in it, “must you?”

  I own I stood petrified. The voice was so near.

  “Must,” replied a male voice and giggled.

  It was the giggle which paralysed me. It was so authentic, if I may use such a term, so obviously some real person’s private, individual giggle, and it was beside me in my ear.

  “Brute,” answered the woman’s voice faintly.

  Then there came another sound, the unmistakable rustling of feathers. I stared at the gaudy mound on the round table. The folds of the shawl did not move, but from beneath them came a quiet bird whistle, ending in a rather imperfect replica of a human sneeze.

  Instantly my mind seized on an explanation, improbable enough, but better than the one I was forced to accept afterwards. I whipped off the shawl fully expecting a miracle to have occurred and a beady black eye in a wicked grey head to confront me.

  To say I was disappointed is a ridiculous under-statement. The cage was just as I had last seen it, clean, empty and rather vulgarly ornate.

  I stood for some time, the shawl in my hand. The room was quiet and normal. The electric fire glowed warmly.

  Throwing the shawl upon a chair, I went out to the kitchenette and did a thing I very rarely do at night. I made myself a cup of tea. There is a little mirror over the sink and I caught sight of my face in it. The sight shocked me into my senses again. I looked haggard and as though I had seen a ghost, whereas, of course, I knew I had merely been the victim of some foolish practical joke.

  I went back to the living-room at last, my mind full of hidden radios and concealed tape recorders. I certainly made a thorough search. I found nothing at all. The room was just as it had always been. My somewhat austere type of furnishing, a relic of my Cambridge days, afforded very few hiding places.

  Thoroughly alarmed, I decided to go to bed at once and call in upon my doctor in the morning. I threw the shawl over the cage again and bent to switch off the fire.

  “George—really! I might as well be married to an ape…”

  The woman’s voice, so charming and distinctive with its slight Scots accent, arrested me in the very act of stooping and I remained crouching over the stove, the hairs prickling on my scalp.

  “Un-apeily married,” replied the male voice which I had heard before. It spoke with idiotic relish and chuckled again.

  This time the laughter ended abruptly, and an obviously parrot voice remarked hoarsely:

  “My name is John Wellington Wells,” adding immediately a collection of shrill whistles, a cuckoo call and a realistic hiccup.

  Now thoroughly frightened, but preserving, thank heavens, a modicum of common sense, I got up from the hearthrug and advanced stealthily upon the cage. There was no doubt about it—the voices came from beneath the shawl.

  Even as I approached I could hear the thing, whatever it was, preparing its ghastly impersonations.

  “George dar-Iing…” It was the woman’s voice this time, perfectly reproduced in every intonation, I felt sure.

  Cautiously I raised a corner of the shawl and peered beneath. There was a squawk of rage, a rattle, and then silence. The cage was empty. I saw nothing, not even a shadow.

  Alone in my sitting-room with my skin creeping, I made a series of experiments. Looking back on it I know it was one of the most dreadful hours I have spent, but I am a strong-minded woman and I did not go to my room until I had found out the all-significant fact and had proved it.

  The manifestation, or whatever you care to call it, only occurred when the cage was covered. It was nothing to do with the shawl. A blanket served equally well. Light did not seem to affect it, nor did position. As soon as the cage was covered the dreadful idiot parrot voice within began again.

  There were no more impersonations that evening, only whistles, catcalls and three lines of a hymn repeated in a sing-song.

  At last I took myself in hand. I left the cage uncovered and passed a fitful night in my bedroom behind a locked door.

  The following day I could not bring myself to confide in anyone. Frankly, I did not fancy the task of telling such an utterly ridiculous story.

  As soon as I was alone in the flat, after the daily woman had left, I got out the shawl and covered the cage again. This time there was no result. The cage remained quiet.

  My first feeling was one of intense relief, followed by extreme irritation with myself for permitting my imagination to run away with me. I went out to a lecture that night, still considerably shaken by what I could only feel was a very disturbing trick of the brain.

  I arrived home a little after ten and as soon as I came into the hall I heard the two voices. I stood with my hand on the sitting-room latch, my heart thumping. My instinct was to turn and run for assistance, but there is an obstinate something in my nature which I can only call pride, and eventually I pulled myself together, opened the door and switched on the light.

  A guilty silence greeted my arrival. The room was cold and empty. On the table stood the cage, covered by its multicoloured hood. I closed the door, and as I walked towards the table I distinctly heard the odd rasping noise that a parrot makes as it rubs its beak on the wood of its perch.

  I had stretched up my hand to pull the shawl away when the voice within began to speak again. Never shall I forget that strange reported conversation. First of all the woman’s voice, soft, educated, endearing, and then the man’s, jovially wheezy and shaken now and again with foolish laughter.

  “George, don’t—don’t. My dear, be serious for once. Be a little sensible. You’re not dignified, darling. You’re not even amusing. You’re silly.”

  “Perhaps I come from the Scilly Isles.” This followed by the insufferable chuckle.

  Then the woman’s voice again, near breaking-point this time.

  “George, really, I can’t stand it! You’re such a fool. So puerile. I tell you I can’t stand it. These incessant lunatic jokes aren’t faintly funny. Dearest, pull yourself together.”

  There was a pause, followed by an explosion of partly controlled laughter.

  “Yo-ho, heave ho,” sang the male voice, and the parrot, or whatever it was, added a hoarse guffaw or two of its own.

  “Really!…” There were tears in the woman’s voice and a dangerous edge of hysteria. “I can’t stand it any longer. I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do for months now. I knew you’d drive me to it in the end. My nerves have snapped, I tell you. Look, George, look, I’ve got a gun in my hand. Look at it! If I were to pull the trigger…”

  “There’d be a loud report,” sang the male voice, quoting evidently, from some comic song.

  “George, I’m going to—I’m going to—”

  In its effort to reproduce the whispered exasperation in the feminine voice the bird whistled with ghastly effect.

  The answering male giggle was positively insane in its stupidity.

  “I’d rather have a nice cup of tea,” the voice sang.

  The gunshot startled me half out of my senses. I have heard a parrot imitate the popping of a cork and been amazed by it, but this was quite different. It sounded as a shot must sound when heard through a telephone. There was the first sharp crack and then the faint repercussions all uncannily reproduced and emphasised by that dreadful, devilish bird.

  The scream which followed was equally convincing, and I felt my throat contract, but the peak of horror came afterwards in that soft, broken-hearted little moan and the single murmured word, so appalling in its economy.

  “Dead.”

  I think I must have fainted. When I came to myself I w
as lying upon the rug, the shawl clutched in my hand, and above me, on the table, the enormous ornamental cage, empty and innocent as when I had purchased it.

  I did not sleep at all that night. In the morning I rose, determined to take the cage back to Robb’s immediately. I was haunted by the tragedy I had overheard so strangely, a tragedy made even more horrible by the awful element of low comedy which had dominated it.

  I am naturally an inquisitive woman, but in this instance I was determined to make no inquiries. I did not want to know to whom the cage had belonged before. I did not care. I did not want to think of my dreadful experience again.

  I actually had my hat on when I remembered Mrs. Beckwithston’s appointment. She was the sister of the Bishop of Mold, and although we had corresponded frequently we had never met. I knew her to be a kind woman, completely taken up with her good works, and when she had written me that she was passing through London on her way to France, and had asked if I could possibly see her at an unusually early hour, I had written back to invite her to breakfast. It was only my daily woman’s hasty preparations in the kitchenette which reminded me that I expected a visitor.

  I went into the sitting-room and looked at the cage.Uncovered, it was certainly ugly but, I knew, not dangerous. I steeled myself to keep it in the house an hour longer.

  Mrs. Beckwithston was punctual. The moment the bell rang I hurried out into the hall to meet her. However, my daily was before me and from the open front door I heard my visitor inquiring whether I was at home.

  I did not scream, but my blood froze and I felt my face congealing. It was the voice. I should have recognised it anywhere by its timbre and the soft rolling of the R’s. I stood trembling, convinced that I was going mad. Mrs. Beckwithston, whom I knew well, at least by repute, was, I was certain, the woman whose part in a terrible tragedy I had overheard in my own room only the night before.

  I stared at her. She had a very ordinary pale face with no distinctive features, little make-up and was dressed entirely in black.

  Breakfast was a terrible meal. I’m afraid I barely spoke and when I did my words sounded distrait even to myself.

  My guest, however, was completely at her ease. She chatted pleasantly about our common interests, congratulated me on my flat, and betrayed a personality that was altogether charming. Yet every time she spoke, at every syllable which left her sympathetic lips, I was reminded horribly of my experiences of the past two days.

  When at last the meal was nearly over there was a second ring at my doorbell and she looked up.

  “That will be my husband,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you? I told him to call in here for me. He’s been to the agency for our tickets.”

  I felt a fine, perspiration break out all over my face and with what seemed an enormous effort I turned my head towards the door. It opened. My daily woman murmured something and then there came floating in to me from the hall that personal, individual giggle I knew so well.

  “My dear,” said Mrs. Beckwithston to me, “this is George.”

  They must have thought me demented. I was. I goggled at the man. He was round and short and devastatingly jolly.

  “Some—some tea?” I stammered when even I noticed that the atmosphere was becoming strained.

  “Splendid,” he ejaculated, and, turning to his wife, he threw out his hands. His voice was jocular. I knew exactly what it was going to be like even before I heard it, smug, bantering, ineffably foolish, “Give me to drink, Ambrosia. And, sweet Barm… a nice cup of tea would do as well as anything. I thought of that coming along in the cab. Rather nicer punctuation than the usual, don’t you think, or don’t you?”

  “Darling, must you?” said Mrs. Beckwithston plaintively and actually laughed.

  So did I, immoderately and rather wildly, I fear.

  They left at last. The man went out first, but his wife turned back.

  “I wonder,” she said. “I do hope you will forgive me for asking such a thing, but where did you get that cage?”

  I felt the blood singing in my ears as I told her.

  “A second-hand shop?” she exclaimed. “Well, then of course it really must be the same. How extraordinary!”

  She went over and touched the infernal thing lovingly.

  “It is!” she said joyfully. “I recognise it by that little nick on the brass there. Oh, my dear, I’m so glad you’ve got it. It belonged to our poor Johnny. We were so sad when he died, we couldn’t bear to keep it. He was the sweetest bird. So clever! He used to imitate George and me until you’d really think it was ourselves speaking. I must tell George.”

  The husband was recalled and he too recognised the cage and was facetious on the subject of coincidences. They stood together, two respectable middle-aged persons, and eulogised their dead pet. He was amazing. So excruciatingly funny. So lifelike. So droll. So unexpected.

  Mrs. Beckwithston sighed over his memory.

  “He really loved us,” she said. “He was a true friend.”

  They were on the doorstep by this time and George Beckwithston, whose eyes were sad, looked up.

  “Ah, poor Johnny, he had only one fault. You remember, Marion?”

  Mrs. Beckwithston smiled again.

  “I do,” she said tolerantly. “It seems absurd to say it of a parrot, but Johnny really was half-human. And there was just this one little thing. He was—forgive such a forceful word, but there really is no other for it—such a dreadful liar, poor darling, I’m sure he hasn’t gone to heaven.”

  The Same To Us

  It was particularly unfortunate for Mrs. Christopher Molesworth that she should have had burglars on the Sunday night of what was, perhaps, the crowningly triumphant week-end of her career as a hostess.

  As a hostess Mrs. Molesworth was a connoisseur. She chose her guests with a nice discrimination, disdaining everything but the most rare. Mere notoriety was no passport to Molesworth Court.

  Nor did mere friendship obtain many crumbs from the Molesworth table, though the ability to please and do one’s piece might possibly earn one a bed when the lion of the hour promised to be dull, uncomfortable and liable to be bored.

  That was how young Petterboy came to be there at the great week-end. He was diplomatic, presentable, near enough a teetotaller to be absolutely trustworthy, even at the end of the evening, and he spoke a little Chinese.

  This last accomplishment had done him but little good before, save with very young girls at parties, who relieved their discomfort at having no conversation by persuading him to tell them how to ask for their baggage to be taken ashore at Hong Kong, or to ascertain the way to the bathroom at a Peking hotel.

  However, now the accomplishment was really useful, for it obtained for him an invitation to Mrs. Molesworth’s greatest week-end party.

  This party was so select that it numbered but six all told. There were the Molesworths themselves—Christopher Molesworth was an M.P., rode to hounds, and backed up his wife in much the same way as a decent black frame backs up a coloured print.

  Then there was Petterboy himself, the Feison brothers, who looked so restful and talked only if necessary, and finally the guest of all time, the gem of a magnificent collection, the catch of a lifetime, Dr. Koo Fin, the Chinese scientist himself—Dr. Koo Fin, the Einstein of the East, the man with the Theory. After quitting his native Peking, he had only left his house in New England on one memorable occasion when he delivered a lecture in Washington to an audience which was unable to comprehend a word. His works were translated but since they were largely concerned with higher mathematics the task was comparatively simple.

  Mrs. Molesworth had every reason to congratulate herself on her capture. “The Chinese Einstein”, as the newspapers had nicknamed him, was hardly a social bird. His shyness was proverbial, as was also his dislike and mistrust of women. It was this last foible which accounted for the absence of femininity at Mrs. Moleswojth’s party. Her own presence was unavoidable, of course, but she wore her severest gowns, and took a
mental vow to speak as little as necessary. It is quite conceivable that had Mrs. Molesworth been able to change her sex she would have done so nobly for that week-end alone.

  She had met the sage at a very select supper party after his only lecture in London. It was the same lecture which had thrown Washington into a state of bewilderment. Since Dr. Koo Fin arrived he had been photographed more often than any film star. His name and his round Chinese face were better known than those of the principals in the latest cause celebre, and already television comedians referred to his great objectivity theory in their patter.

  Apart from that one lecture, however, and the supper party after it, he had been seen nowhere else save in his own closely guarded suite in his hotel.

  How Mrs. Molesworth got herself invited to the supper party, and how, once there, she persuaded the sage to consent to visit Molesworth Court, is one of those minor miracles which do sometimes occur. Her enemies made many unworthy conjectures, but, since the university professors in charge of the proceedings on that occasion were not likely to have been corrupted by money or love, it is probable that Mrs. Molesworth moved the mountain by faith in herself alone.

  The guest chamber prepared for Dr. Koo Fin was the third room in the west wing. This architectural monstrosity contained four bedrooms, each furnished with french windows leading on to the same balcony.

  Young Petterboy occupied the room at the end of the row. It was one of the best in the house, as a matter of fact, but had no bathroom attached, since this had been converted by Mrs. Molesworth, who had the second chamber, into a gigantic clothes press. After all, as she said, it was her own house.

  Dr. Koo Fin arrived on the Saturday by train, like a lesser person. He shook hands with Mrs. Molesworth and Christopher and young Petterboy and the Feisons as if he actually shared their own intelligence, and smiled at them all in his bland, utterly-too-Chinese way.