Swing Low, Swing Death

by R. T. Campbell

  The Professor was laughing heartily. He shook like a gargantuan jelly and the noise of his bellowing was most unseemly. I walked back to see what the joke was. Mr. Carr had just been telling him about a friend of his who had undertaken to dress a flea as a clown. He had got the pants and cap on beautifully and had generally painted up the flea, but when he put on the coat, which had taken him a week to make, the flea died—the coat was too tight—and he couldn’t find another flea the right size, let alone one that was trained.

  “Who d’ye think murdered Julian Ambleside?” the old man said suddenly. Mr. Carr looked preternaturally solemn.

  “Oh, Dr. Cornelius Bellamy,” he said, “perhaps, or any one of the rest of us. It might have been me, but I don’t think so. It might have been Douglas here, but I don’t think so. It might have been dear Emily, but I don’t think so. No. I pick Dr. Bellamy.”

  “Why do you pick Dr. Bellamy,” the old man was interested. Mr. Carr did not hesitate.

  “Hell,” he said, “he’s an outsider. There’d be no money in backing a favourite would there? Always go for a strong outsider, that’s what I say, and you can’t go wrong. All you can do is lose your money, but you’ll do that anyhow, so what’s it matter?”

  This struck me as good a way of finding murderers as most which I had seen Professor Stubbs try. I said as much. He glared at me as if I had insulted him horribly.

  “All right, Max, all right,” he growled, “you just wait till ye’re murdered an’ yer dry blood is cryin’ out for vengeance on the dusty earth. (Nice that, ain’t it? I got it out o’ Kiplin.’) Then we’ll see if I bother meself to try an’ find out who killed ye. Bah!”

  This was not an impressive come-back, but I let it ride. There seemed to be no point in starting arguing with the old man when he was so very obviously enjoying himself in the company of the eccentric Ben Carr.

  Miss Emily Wallenstein, escorted by Francis Varley, came into the gallery. Miss Wallenstein looked tired and worried. She came towards us. Douglas seemed to try to pull himself together. It was clear that he was more than a little drunk.

  “Good afternoon,” Miss Wallenstein looked at us vaguely, not recognising us. Douglas hastened to perform introductions. There is nothing, I think, that he likes so much as introducing people to one another.

  “Oh yes,” she said, and her voice still sounded far away, “you are Douglas’s friends who are going to try and help clear up this dreadful affair, aren’t you?”

  Professor Stubbs bowed in a courtly manner. “Ye’re quite correct, ma’am,” he said heavily, “I hope ye don’t mind us samplin’ yer hospitality at a time like this. The trouble wi’ me is I got a kinda kiln inside me which drys me up thunderin’ fast.”

  “Not at all,” she said listlessly, “not at all. Do have another drink if you want one. Just help yourself.”

  Francis Varley helped himself to a drink. He was a very smartly, or perhaps that is the wrong word, well dressed man of about forty-five. His clothes somehow managed to look expensive without seeming to fit him too well. His carefully dressed hair was greying and he gestured rather nervously with long white hands, which fluttered to and from his tie like pigeons on Nelson’s Column.

  “Douglas, my dear fellow,” he said and his voice was cultured and soft, “The learned Doctor has decided that the gallery will open as arranged to-morrow morning.”

  “My God,” said Douglas blankly, putting his hand to his head, “the blessed Assyrians will come down like wolves on this fold. God help us all, said Tiny Tim.”

  “Etcetera,” said Mr. Carr, “Etcetera, and in case you missed my meaning, etcetera again.”

  “How the devil,” Douglas ignored the interruption, “are we going to control the crowds.”

  “My dear fellow,” Varley was smooth, “you can trust the Doctor to see to that. We are to have a couple of stalwart commissionaires.”

  “Yes,” replied Douglas, “I suppose they’ll help, but God knows how I’ll manage up in the library by myself if they start swarming in on me.”

  “To shew you that I also was at school,” it was Mr. Carr, “I suggest that I and my mother come as supporters to your Horatius act.”

  The idea that he was to have the company of Mr. Carr and his mother did not seem very attractive to Douglas. He poured himself a very large drink. Miss Wallenstein noticed the glasses we were drinking out of.

  “Oh, Douglas,” she said, “you are naughty. I believe you’ve been raiding the industrial section?”

  “My fault entirely,” Mr. Carr spoke up, “I got the glasses. I don’t think Douglas knew where I got them. I certainly did not tell him.”

  After this there was nothing Douglas could do but accept Mr. Carr’s offer of support upon the following day. I had to admit that he did not look overjoyed at the prospect, but then I have rarely seen Douglas looking overjoyed at the prospect of anything at all.

  “I trust, Professor,” Miss Wallenstein turned to the old man, “that you will again visit us in happier times, when you will have a better chance to appreciate the works on the walls. Oh, I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world. The newspapers have been so horrible about the Museum already. They said that this beautiful building was a shameful desecration of the eighteenth century dignity of Iron Street. Just,” she sounded indignant, “as if the writers had never walked down the street and seen the horrible vulgarity of some of the shops and the Victorian public house at the corner.” I noticed that the Professor’s face cheered up as he thought of the public house; though he will drink anything that is offered to him he is a beer-drinker by nature and by inclination.

  “I cannot bear to think,” her voice was a trifle shrill, “what they will say to-morrow. They will seize upon this unfortunate man’s death as a sort of proof that there is something wrong with modern art. Oh, I do wish that this hadn’t happened.”

  “Tell, me, ma’am,” the Professor was polite, “can ye think why anyone would ha’ wanted to kill Ambleside. He seems to ha’ bin a harmless enough fellow an’ an honest enough dealer. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Certainly,” Miss Wallenstein was positive, “Julian Ambleside had his peculiarities and difficulties, but as a dealer he was absolutely honest. Why, if he had the slightest doubt about a picture he was quite unwilling to sell it. He used to take a great pride in the fact that his reputation was absolutely untarnished, and that any picture which he sold was certain to be absolutely correct. I do not know why anyone should have wanted to kill him. In fact I cannot believe that anyone did kill him. Do you think that he could have had a heart-attack and that some spiteful person could have hanged him up like that just to damage the Museum?”

  “I’m afraid not, ma’am,” the Professor was firm, “there seems to be no doubt that he was manually strangled by some person, and I’m afraid that we’ll have to find out who that person was.”

  I noticed that Francis Varley seemed about to say something, but that he also seemed to change his mind. I made a mental note of this for future reference if needed. Douglas also looked as if he wanted to speak. The Professor saw that Douglas was pregnant with some thought. He made no sign of this.

  “Do you think,” he addressed Miss Wallenstein, “that any unauthorised person could have got into the gallery?”

  “No,” Miss Wallenstein was positive, “we had a most unfortunate occurrence here which resulted in the destruction of one of the pictures and, after that, I made certain that no one would be allowed in who was not fully connected with the Museum. For the last two days no person could have got in unnoticed and unchallenged.”

  “Um,” the Professor looked thoughtful. Rather to my surprise he did not ask what was the occurrence to which Miss Wallenstein had referred. “Um. Can ye think o’ any person who had any grudge against Mr. Ambleside who also had any opportunity to enter the Museum, eh?”

  Miss Wallenstein looked puzzled. “No. That is what I can’t understand. I cannot think of any one who would wish to kill Julian.
Of course there were people who had disagreements with him about pictures, but they weren’t serious, were they, Francis?”

  Directly appealed to like this Francis Varley seemed startled. He fingered his white, blue-spotted, bow tie before he answered.

  “No,” he said absently, “they weren’t serious. I have disagreed with him myself but I didn’t murder him. No, they weren’t serious. I liked the old frog.”

  Emily Wallenstein looked slightly shocked by Varley’s description of the dead man, and then she smiled for the first time.

  “You are terrible, Francis,” she said with something approaching a giggle, “You never mind what you say.”

  Varley smiled in a friendly way. “All the same,” he said, “I can think of reasons why someone might have murdered Ambleside.”

  Mrs. Carr, weaving like a top, came into the room. She spied her son and sailed towards him, her black cloak billowing out on either side of him.

  “You’re a fine one,” she said, “leaving your mother to die of thirst while you drink your bellyful. There was I having a little snooze and you push off and leave. I’m sometimes sorry I ever had you.”

  Mr. Carr was unabashed. I noticed that his mother still clutched the mechanical rat to her bosom. It would obviously take a lot to separate her from it.

  Chapter 4

  Uncertainty of the Poet

  I DO not know how it happened but when we left the Museum of Modern Art I found that we were escorted by Douglas. I gathered that the old man had invited him to come home to dinner. It was none of my business, but I had not seen the Professor issue the invitation.

  As I had expected, as soon as we got out of the door the Professor made a bee-line for the pub on the corner, called the Ely Arms. Douglas made towards the lounge, but the Professor was already ensconced at the saloon bar before he got started.

  It is doubtful whether any doctor would have given an opinion upon the probable effects of large quantities of beer on top of the mixture we had already taken. No doctor was asked for his opinion. We just had the beer. I must confess that I did not want beer, but I might as well have addressed my murmured refusals to the porcelain beer-pump as to the Professor. The beer appeared and I had to drink it.

  Douglas opened his mouth to say something but the old man fixed him with a basilisk glare which turned him solid. “If ye’re goin’ to speak about murder,” he roared, “don’t.” Everyone in the pub looked round. “It’ll keep. Tell me this though. Are ye happy in yer work?”

  This sounded rather like the beginning of one of these “let me be your father” advertisements. Douglas grinned uncomfortably.

  “Oh,” he said mournfully, “it’s all right, you know. Better than most jobs. The trouble,” he was confidential, “is I don’t really like jobs at all. I’d much rather just wander around and think, and write when I want to, but, unfortunately, I’ve got no money at all of my own and I do need to earn whatever I need. I expect this Museum will be pretty average hell for the next day or two—perhaps,” he did not sound hopeful, “even for a couple of weeks, but—if the learned Doctor doesn’t get me sacked—it should settle down eventually and then I’ll be able to do some of my own work in the library, particularly if Emily gets me an assistant as she has promised to do. I will say that for her, she spares no expense. I asked if I could have a typewriter and she got me a silent one so I could use it without interfering with people who are trying to read. I want to retype all my poems—if I can find them—as I’ve got a publisher who’d like to do all my poems in one book. I don’t know why.”

  When we had engulfed what the Professor considered to be a suitable amount of beer, we climbed into the Bentley and made our perilous way back to Hampstead. The Professor, as usual, frightened me into fits. I think Douglas must have been some sort of fatalist as he seemed to enjoy the ride without a thought of its dangers.

  In the hall the Professor met Mrs. Farley, his housekeeper. She was obviously waiting for us.

  “Chief Inspector Bishop rang up,” she said rather breathlessly, “he says he’ll come round after dinner to see you, unless he hears to the contrary.”

  “Family gatherin’, eh?” said the old man, looking pleased with himself. There is nothing he likes so much as getting a small collection of people together and letting himself go.

  “Dinner will be ready in about half an hour,” Mrs. Farley said and went through the door that separated her part of the house, which is as clean and tidy as you could wish, from the part where the Professor’s love of chaos runs riot.

  The big room, despite its appalling untidiness, looked comfortable. Mrs. Farley had kept a cheerful log fire burning in the big open fireplace. The Professor, having discarded his outdoor clothes, poured out drinks and placed himself carefully in his large chair. Douglas and I took up our positions in other chairs, after removing piles of learned periodicals and books ranging from thrillers to the works of seventeenth century scientific divines.

  From his pocket the old man took his little pipe. The ritual of preparing this for action always fascinates me.

  He first of all scrapes out the bowl with a small pearl-handled knife he keeps for the purpose and then, satisfied that it is all clean within and without, he fishes in his waistcoat pocket for a piece of brown plug tobacco, which he carefully shreds into the palm of his hand. He rubs this tobacco between his hands and then tilts it into the bowl of the pipe, cleaning out the fragments that have stuck between his fingers. The bowl of the pipe full he then tamps the vile stuff down with his thumb and inserts the stem between his teeth. To light the thing he employs an immense petrol-lighter which looks as though it was the father of all petrol-lighters. Until the war he used to use old-fashioned fusees of the sort which fizzled violently for nearly half a minute, but somewhere or other he picked up this lighter and discarded the hard to obtain fusees.

  Once the pipe is giving forth its volcanic fumes and the eruption is taking place around his head, he seems comfortable.

  “Tell me, Douglas,” he boomed suddenly, his voice appearing even larger than usual in the silence of the large room, “Who d’ye think did the murder? Can ye think o’ anyone who might ha’ done it for any reason at all?”

  Douglas looked thoughtful. He creased his forehead and then shook his head. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, “but there’s been a lot of funny stuff going on in the Museum. Photographs have been disappearing and then there was that Chirico.”

  “What Chirico, and what photographs?” the old man demanded, and Douglas gave him an outline of the story which he had already told me. The Professor ran his fingers through his grey hair, making it look more like a much-used floor-mop than before.

  “Hmm,” he said slowly, “that’s interestin’. Ye say that Varley was kinda positive that the picture which was destroyed was not all that it seemed to be? That there was somethin’ phoney about it, eh?”

  “Yes,” said Douglas, but he wavered and then went on, “but you see the trouble about Francis is that he is always thinking up ideas like that. He gets an idea into his head and he will keep on at that idea till nearly everyone, except himself, is fed to the teeth with it. Francis is one of those people to whom a painting is more important than a human being. He says that you can tell whether a painting is genuine by just looking at it. Roughly his idea is that a picture provides a sort of photograph of the mind of the painter at the time when he painted it, and that, if you know enough about the painter at that time—which means reading his letters and all the rest of it—you can date that picture to within a few weeks. A forgery, no matter how carefully and well it is done, gives a kind of picture of a different man—usually a dishonest one. Well, you take the case of the Chirico, Francis says that everything about it indicated that it was painted nearly ten years later than it claimed to have been painted. He said it was painted by a man who was almost a completely different man from the chap who painted the pictures in 1916 and 1917. I wouldn’t know myself, for you see I’m not an art expert.
In fact I don’t quite know how I got the job of librarian in an Art Museum. I suppose it was just that I was around, doing nothing, at the time when Emily wanted someone, so I got the job.”

  “Well, then, I suppose,” the old man rumbled, “there was a fair chance that Varley was kinda right in his supposition that the Chirico mightn’t ha’ bin as genuine as it was supposed to be?”

  “Yes,” said Douglas, “there’s always that chance, but, you see, a good many of Francis’s mare’s nests have proved to contain nothing but mares, after all. The trouble about that picture, though, was that Emily had bought it from Julian Ambleside and Francis succeeded in getting Julian pretty well muddled up about it. He started to worry very badly about it. I know, because he spent hours in the library poring over all the repros of Chirico which he could find. That was how I discovered the loss of the photos. Dr. Bellamy insisted that the picture was all right, but then he would have to, as he had advised Emily to buy it. You know that he has been her adviser in chief? And you have also probably found out by this time that it doesn’t matter who is wrong, for Dr. Cornelius Bellamy is bound to be right. If he was to be proved wrong he would go flat like a badly baked cake, all soft sticky dough inside. I don’t like the Doctor,” he was frank, “but I must say that he really does know his stuff. He is not very often wrong. When he says a picture is a good one he is usually right. My trouble is that I find his books are quite unreadable. I only look at the pictures in them. But I’d never pretend that I knew enough to contradict the Doctor about anything.”

  “Um,” the old man bent over his beer mug, “but you know, Douglas, there must ha’ bin someone who had reason for killin’ Ambleside. Take yerself, f’r instance, did ye like him?”