Читать книгу The Fashion in Shrouds - Margery Allingham - Страница 7

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There is a distinct difference between the state of believing something to be true and knowing it to be so with the paid stamp of an official opinion affixed to the knowledge.

When the embarrassed foreman of the coroner’s jury stood up in the cool dark village hall at Wellferry and stated that he and his confreres were convinced that the skeleton found in the bushes at Eves Hall on the Shelley road was the skeleton of Richard Portland-Smith, who had died by his own hand—a hand which had first thrust the barrel of a revolver into his mouth and then pulled the trigger—and that in their considered opinion he must have been of unsound mind at the time to have done such a thing, Mr Campion felt aware of a distinct wave of relief, a comforting confirmation and a full stop, as it were.

He was sitting beside the man who was his friend and client at the end of a row of church chairs arranged against a wall of the converted army hut, and the scene before him was melancholy and very human. It was a coroner’s court in essence, the bare practical bones of that judicial proceeding which has remained sound and useful from far-off simple times. A man had died mysteriously and nine of his countrymen had met together on the common ground of their patrial birth to decide how such a calamity had befallen him. There had been no decoration, no merciful arabesques of judicial pomp to smother the stark proceedings. The witnesses had come to the T-shaped table and muttered their depositions with nervous humility, while the jury had listened stolidly and afterwards shuffled out to the little cloakroom behind the stage on which the Conservative Concerts were held in the spring, and had returned, self-conscious and unhappy, to give their verdict.

Now the coroner with the patchy pink face and the unfortunate air of being unaccustomed to his job wriggled in his chair. He glanced shyly at the four pressmen at the far end of the table, almost, it would seem, in the hope of getting a little appreciation from them, or at least some indication that he had been “all right,” and returned to his formalities with the jury.

The witnesses, who had been sitting with their friends around the walls, began to file out into the sunlight and the inspector came across to ask Mr Campion’s companion about the funeral. He was not tactful but he was kindly, and his pleasant Kentish voice rumbled on, explaining with simple practicalness that the shed where the remains now lay was not public property and the owner needed it for his handcart, whose paint was even now blistering in the sun. He added that the local builder, who had been on the jury, was also the undertaker and he had no doubt but that he would be over in a minute, so that no time would be lost.

While the sad little details were being arranged Mr Campion had leisure to reflect on the evidence which had brought the Sunday-suited jury, with their perpetual jingle of darts medals and their solid, sensible faces, to their conclusions.

The identification had provided the most interesting fifteen minutes of the morning. The brown paper parcels of grey-green rags, the mildewed wallet complete with discoloured notes and visiting cards, and the rusty gun had been first displayed and sworn to by tailor and manservant. Afterwards, even more gruesome, had come the evidence of the self-important little dentist, who had rushed in to rattle off his formidable list of degrees and testify that the dental work in the remains of the dead man’s jaw was his own and that it corresponded to his records of Portland-Smith’s mouth. He had given place to the county pathologist, who had described the wound in detail and given his opinions on the length of time during which the body must have lain undiscovered.

Finally Mr Campion’s companion had walked to the table, his enormous shoulders held erect and the light from a window high in the wall falling on his white hair, which was silky and theatrically handsome. He had given his word that as far as he knew his son had no worries of sufficient magnitude to drive him to take his life. That had been all. The coroner had summed up and the jury had shambled out. Richard Portland-Smith had retired from the round dance of life while his measure in it was yet incomplete and nobody knew why.

Mr Campion and his companion walked down the road to the inn where lunch was awaiting them. It was bright and clean in the sunlight, with summer in the air and all that promise of breathless festivity just round the corner which is the spirit of that time of year.

Campion did not speak, since his companion showed no desire to do so, but he glanced at the man out of the corner of his eye and thought that he was taking it very well.

In his own sphere Sir Henry Portland-Smith was a great man. In his hospital in South London he was a hard-working god whose every half-hour was earmarked for some separate and important purpose. This was probably the first morning he had set aside for purely personal considerations during the past twenty years.

Like many great physicians, he had a fine presence allied to enormous physical strength, and although he was nearly seventy his movements were vigorous and decisive. He did not talk until they sat down together in an alcove of the big dining room, which smelt faintly of creosote and plaster from recent restoring. The place was very quiet. They were early and a fleet of little tables, which looked homely and countrified in spite of an effort at sophistication, spread out before them.

“Satisfied?” The old man looked at Campion directly. He had taken off his spectacles and his cold but rather fine grey eyes had that pathetic, naked look which eyes which are normally hidden behind lenses achieve when the barrier is down.

“I think it was a true verdict.”

“Unsound mind?”

Campion shrugged his shoulders.

“What is unsound mind?” he said helplessly. “It means nothing.”

“Merely a form to get round the Christian burial difficulty?” There was bitterness in the query, which was unusual and slightly shocking to find in the old, and Campion, looking up, found himself thinking irrelevantly that if over-busy people keep young they also keep raw, retaining the prejudices and sophistries of their first period. He prepared to listen to an outburst against the hypocrisy of the law and the Church, but it did not come. Sir Henry planted his great elbows on the table and pushed his hands over his face as if he were cleansing it. He had the long, fine hands of the man who does not use them and the younger man remembered that he was not a surgeon.

“I’m trying to make up my mind,” he said presently. “I appreciate what you’ve done, Albert. I like your reticence and your quiet persistence. I’m grateful to you for finding the boy. It’s all over now with the least possible scandal. In a few months now he might never have been born.”

This time the bitterness was savage and Campion, meeting those old, chilly, naked eyes, was suddenly ashamed of himself for his smugness. He caught one of those sudden panoramic glimpses of a whole thirty-eight-year life and was aware for an instant of the paralysingly infuriating tragedy of waste.

“I want to know,” said the old man. “For my own satisfaction I want to know. Now look here, my boy, this is a private matter between you and me. The public aspect of this affair is fixed and finished. Richard is dead. Everybody knows he shot himself. And that is the end. But I want to know why he did it and I want you to find out.”

Mr Campion’s pale eyes were intelligent behind his spectacles but he looked uncomfortable.

“You’re thinking he may have had a brainstorm?” Sir Henry made the query an accusation. “You’re ready to believe in the form, are you? Well, you may be right. But I want to know.”

Mr Campion was an adroit young man and the present situation was not one he had not encountered before.

“I’ll do anything I can,” he said slowly. “But, after all, we’ve covered a lot of ground already. You say yourself he must have been very extravagant. He was earning money and could have carried on, but he had no money when he died. You think he spent all his mother’s legacy on Miss Wells? That is very probable but it is a thing we shall never find out. No one can find out how a man spent the money he drew out in cash three years before. I will do all I can but I can’t promise results.”

Sir Henry leant back in his chair and surveyed his companion consideringly. He was smiling a little and his magnificent head had never looked more imposing.

“My boy,” he said, “I’m going to tell you something. This is a secret. Never let it out of your mouth, whatever happens, but when I tell you, you’ll see why I am so anxious that you should carry on.”

He hesitated and Campion was puzzled. It was impossible not to be impressed by the other man’s manner, nor had he any reason to suspect him of anything faintly theatrical or unsound. In his experience Sir Henry was a sophisticated and in many ways a hard man.

“Yes?” he invited.

“You’ve seen this girl Georgia Wells, as I asked you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you taken with her?”

The question was so unexpected that Campion blinked.

“No,” he said truthfully. “I see her attraction but I should never be bowled over by her myself.”

“Did she strike you as being a clever woman? Not a bluestocking, of course, but a really clever woman? Clever in the extraordinary way women sometimes are? Clever enough to get a man to do anything she wanted him to by reasoning with him?”

Campion gave the matter serious consideration.

“Not unless he was a fool,” he said at last.

“Ah!” The old man pounced on the admission. “I thought not. That’s what makes this so very interesting. Richard was not a fool. I would admit it if he was. I haven’t been a physician all my life without learning that you can’t make a true diagnosis if you falsify the symptoms. Richard was not a fool in that way. He was a virile type, the type to lose his head over a woman for a night but not for a month or two. Once he got his mind working again it would work, whatever his physical inclinations were. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” said Mr Campion dubiously. “But—forgive me—I don’t think this is getting us very far. You see, there’s no evidence even of a quarrel. She seems to have been happily engaged to him right up to the time he disappeared.”

“Campion”—the old man was leaning across the table—“you’ve seen that girl and you know her history. Do you honestly think she was the type of woman to be engaged to anybody?”

The younger man stared at him. The question had jerked him round to face a problem which had been chipping away at the back of his mind for some time. Now that it was out, unprotected by the automatic acceptance that is given to a fact that is known to everybody, the whole matter did strike him as extraordinary.

“A woman once through the divorce courts, important in a bohemian profession, doesn’t go and get herself involved in a long engagement.” Sir Henry’s voice was contemptuous. “She gets married, my boy. She gets married.”

Campion sat up.

“They were married!” he said blankly. “But that’s incredible. She married again. What about Ramillies?”

“Yes, that was six months after Richard disappeared.” The old man was speaking earnestly. “After he disappeared, mind you, not after he died. No one knows when he died, although the likelihood is that the two events coincided. But the point I want you to realise is that the woman knew Richard was dead more than two years before we did. She must have known it. Why was she so quiet about it?”

He leant back in his chair and surveyed Campion steadily, his fierce cold eyes hard and intelligent.

Mr Campion passed his hand over his fair hair.

“Are you sure of this?”

“Absolutely.”

“You could prove it?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I didn’t know it for certain until three or four weeks ago and by then I felt sure the boy was dead. Now that I know roughly when he died, I am wondering. Whatever we find out, I don’t want it made public. I see no point in that. The publicity would hardly hurt me or his memory, but I have daughters and they have children, so I see no reason why the tale should linger on. Let it die with Richard. But I want to know.”

Mr Campion did not look at ease. His thin, good-humoured face with the twisted mouth was grave and his eyes thoughtful.

“You put me in a very awkward position,” he said at last. “When I undertook this search for your son I simply felt I was making myself useful to an old friend of Belle Lafcadio’s, and I’ve been more than glad to do it, but now I’m afraid I can’t go any farther. This woman Georgia Wells is an important client of my sister’s. To get hold of her I must abuse hospitality there. You see how it is.”

He paused apologetically, and the old man watched him, a faint smile playing round the corners of his mouth.

“I’m hardly contemplating revenge,” he observed.

“No. I did realise that.” Campion was hesitating and unhappy. “But this marriage alters the whole complexion of the business.”

“I think so. It makes it very curious.”

Campion was silent, and after a while Sir Henry went on.

“My boy,” he said, “I’m an old man who’s seen a great deal, and I don’t like mysteries. My son’s death was a shock to my affections, of course, but it was also a shock of surprise. I simply want to know what the circumstances were that induced Richard, who was no neurotic, to take his life, and why that woman should never have told what she must have known. Don’t make a mouthful of it, but if you should ever find out, remember I want to know.”

Campion raised his head.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said, “but don’t rely on me.”

“Very well,” said the old physician, and changed the subject abruptly.

For the rest of the meal they discussed the Abominable Snowmen and other sedate fripperies, but as Campion drove back to London a thought slipped quietly into his mind and sat there nagging at him.

Georgia Wells had not been sure of Portland-Smith’s death until the day on which the discovery of his body had been reported in the newspapers: of that Campion was only fairly certain; but there was one point upon which he was prepared to stake his all, and that was that she had no idea that her ex-husband had committed suicide until Campion himself had told her.