Читать книгу The Fashion in Shrouds - Margery Allingham - Страница 8

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It was a little over six weeks later, one evening when the summer was at its height and London was sprawling, dirty and happily voluptuous, in the yellow evening sun, that Mr Campion, letting himself into the flat, was accosted by a hoarse voice from the bathroom.

“Your sis rang up. She’s coming round with a Frog of some sort.”

Not wishing to snub, but at the same time hoping to convey some disapproval at the lack of ceremony, Mr Campion passed on to the sitting room without comment.

He had seated himself at the desk, found some cigarettes and pulled a sheet of notepaper towards him before there was a lumbering in the passage outside and a vast, melancholy figure in a black velvet coat surged breathily into the room.

Mr Lugg, Mr Campion’s “male person’s gentleman,” regarded his employer with reproachful little black eyes.

“You ’eard,” he said, and added with charming confiding, “I was cleanin’ meself up. You’d do well to put on a dressing gown and a belt.”

“A belt?” enquired Campion, taken off his guard.

“Braces is low, except when worn with a white waistcoat for billiards.” Lugg made the pronouncement with justifiable pride. “I picked that up down at the club today. You’ll ’ave to get a new robe, too. Mr Tuke’s young feller has a different-coloured one for every day of the week. What d’you say to that idea?”

“Slightly disgusting.”

Lugg considered, his eyes flickering.

“I tell ’im it was pansy,” he admitted, “but I couldn’t be sure. It was a shot in the dark. ‘Robe,’ though; make a note of that. ‘Robe’s’ the new name for dressing gown. I’m learnin’ a lot from Mr Tuke. He lent me ’is book, for one thing.”

Campion threw down his pen.

“You’re learning to read, are you?” he said pleasantly. “That’s good. That’ll keep us both quiet.”

Mr Lugg let down the flap of the cocktail cabinet with elaborate care before he deigned to reply.

“Silence is like sleep,” he observed with unnatural solemnity. “It refreshes wisdom.”

“Eh?” said Mr Campion.

A slow, smug smile passed over the great white face and Mr Lugg coughed.

“That give you something to think about,” he said with satisfaction. “D’you know ’oo thought of it? Walter Plato.”

“Really?” Mr Campion was gratified. “And who was he?”

“A bloke.” The scholar did not seem anxious to pursue the matter further, but afterwards, unwilling to lessen any impression he might have made, he spurred himself to a further flight. “ ’Im what give ’is name to the term ‘platitude.’ ” He threw the piece of information over his shoulder with all the nonchalance of the finest academic tradition and peered round to see the effect.

He was rewarded. Mr Campion appeared to have been stricken dumb.

“Is that in the book?” he enquired humbly after a pause.

“I expec’ so,” said Lugg, adding magnificently, “I read it somewhere. Mr Tuke’s getting me interested in education. Education is the final stamp of good class, that’s what ’e says.”

“And a belt,” murmured Campion. “Don’t forget that.”

The fat man heaved himself towards the desk.

“Look ’ere,” he said belligerently, “I expected somethin’ like this. Every step I’ve took in an upward direction you’ve done your best to nark. Now I’m on to somethin’ useful. I’m goin’ to educate myself, and then I’ll never feel inferior, not with anybody, see?”

“My dear chap——” Mr Campion was touched. “You don’t feel inferior with anybody now, surely, do you? Lay off, Lugg. This is a horrible line.”

The other man regarded him shrewdly. His little black eyes were winking, and there was a certain sheepishness in his expression which was out of character.

“Not with you, of course, cock,” he conceded affectionately. “But I do with Mr Tuke. ’E thinks about it. Still, let ’im wait.”

“Is it all in the book?” enquired Mr Campion, whom the idea seemed to fascinate.

“A ruddy great lot of it is.” Mr Lugg wrestled with his pocket. “I’ll be as hot as most when I get this on board.” He produced a small dictionary of quotations and laid it metaphorically at Mr Campion’s feet. “I’m leavin’ out the Yiddish,” he remarked as they turned over the pages together. “See that bit there? And there’s another over ’ere.”

Campion sighed.

“It may be Yiddish to you, guv’nor,” he murmured, “but it’s Greek to me. These two lads Milt and Shakes get an unfair look-in, don’t they?”

“They’re all all right.” Lugg was magnanimous. “But when I get good I’ll do me own quotations. A quotation’s only a short neat way of sayin’ somethin’ everybody knows, like ‘It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.’ That’s the sort of thing. Only you want it to be about somethin’ less ’omely ... women and such.”

Mr Campion seemed rather taken with the idea of running a line in personal quotations on the system of “every man his own poet,” and Lugg was gratified.

“I don’t often get you goin’,” he observed with satisfaction. “Lucky I ’it on this; it might have been religion. There’s a bloke at the club——”

“No,” said Mr Campion, pulling himself together. “No, old boy. No, really. Not now.”

“That’s what I tell ’im.” Lugg was cheerful. “I’ll come to it, I says, but not now. I’m sorry, mate, but I don’t see yer as a brother yet. Which reminds me—what about your sis? She’ll be ’ere any minute. What’s she up to? She’s in with a funny crowd, isn’t she?”

“Val? I don’t think so.”

Lugg sniffed. “I do. Mr Tuke tell me in confidence that ’e ’eard someone pass a remark about seein’ ’er at a luncheon party at the Tulip with a very funny lot ... that bloke Ramillies, for one.”

Once more Mr Campion pushed his letter aside, faint distaste on his face.

“Of course we don’t want to go listenin’ to servants’ gossip,” continued Lugg happily, “but I like that girl and I wouldn’t like to see ’er mixed up with a chap like Ramillies.”

He pronounced the name with such a wealth of disgust that his employer’s interest was stirred in spite of himself.

“I’ve met Sir Raymond Ramillies,” he said.

“ ’Ave yer?” The black eyes expressed disapproval. “I ain’t and I don’t want to. A ruddy awful chap. ’Ide your wife in a ditch rather than let ’im set eyes on her. ’E’s a proper blot. I tell you what, if you ’ad to set in public court and ’ear a beak talkin’ to ’im after the sentence you’d ’ave to turn your ’ead away. You’d blush; that’s a fact.”

“That’s slander,” said Campion mildly. “The man’s never been in the dock in his life.”

“And wot’s that?” Lugg was virtuous. “As you very well know, there’s a lot of people walkin’ about today ’oo ought to be in the jug by rights. ’E ’appens to be one of them, that’s all.”

Long experience had taught Mr Campion not to argue with his aide in this mood, but he felt bound to protest.

“You mustn’t drivel libel about people. You’re like a woman.”

“Ho!” The insult penetrated the skin and Mr Lugg’s mountainous form quivered. “You’ve got no right to say a thing like that, cock,” he said earnestly. “I know what I’m sayin’. Sir Ramillies is mud, not so good as mud. He’s done one man in, to my certain knowledge, and the army tales about ’im make my ’air curl, wherever it may be now. ’Ere’s an instance. Take the time of the Irish trouble. There was a couple of fellers come over to England after ’im. They were lookin’ for ’im, I admit that, but neither of ’em ’ad a gun. They lay for ’im up in Hampstead where ’e used to live. ’E spotted ’em and went for ’em quick as a flash. ’E caught one chap and killed ’im with ’is bare ’ands—broke ’is neck. The bloke was on the run, mind you, but Ramillies got ’im by the ’air and forced ’is chin up until ’e ’eard ’is neck go. ’E was only a little feller. It was ’ushed up when they found out the lads were reely after ’im and it was self-defence, and Ramillies was ruddy pleased with ’imself. Saw ’imself a Tarzan. I don’t know what you think about it but it don’t sound quite nice to me; not at all the article. It’s downright brutish, look at it how you like. Put me off the chap for life. It’s not respectable to lose your temper like that. Makes you no better than an animal. It’s dangerous, for one thing.”

The story was certainly not attractive, and it occurred to Mr Campion that it was unfortunate that, having met Ramillies, it did not strike him as being obviously untrue.

“Do you know this for a fact?”

“Of course I do.” Lugg was contemptuous. “I ’ad a drink with the other bloke. ’E was in a state—not frightened, you know, but shook. There’s other tales about Ramillies not as pretty as that. I wouldn’t soil yer ears with ’em. ’E’s not the bloke for your sis to sit down to table with, not if she was in Salvation Army uniform, take it from me.”

Mr Campion said no more. He remained sitting at his desk with his head slightly on one side and an introspective expression in his eyes.

He was still there, drumming idly on the blotter with his long thin fingers, when the doorbell buzzed and a subtle change came over Mr Lugg.

He straightened his back from his ministrations at the cocktail cabinet and padded over to the wall mirror, where he settled his collar, arranging his chins upon its white pedestal with great care. Having thus set the stage, he pulled a silk handkerchief out of his side pocket and gave his glistening head a good rub with it, using it immediately afterwards to give a flick to the toe of each patent-leather pump. Then he pulled himself up to attention and, turning all in one piece with his plump hands flat against his sides, he tottered from the room.

A moment or so later he returned with an expressionless face and the words “This way, please. ’E’ll see you and be ’appy to,” uttered in a voice so affected in tone and quality that the announcement was barely comprehensible.

Val came in hurriedly. She looked very charming in her black suit with the faintly military air about it, and with her came all that fragrance and flutter which has been the hallmark of the “lovely lady” since Mme de Maintenon discovered it. She was so vivacious and determinedly gay that Campion did not notice any change in her for some time.

Behind her came a stranger whose personality was instantly and engagingly apparent.

Georgy Laminoff, or Gaiogi, as his friends called him, with the g’s hard, was a delightful person. The art of being delightful was with him a life study, and, since he was no fool and at heart a prince, he achieved an excellence in it. To look at, he was round and gracious, with a small white beard and bright circular eyes in sockets as arched and sombre as Norman gateways.

He took Mr Campion’s hand with a murmur of apology which came from his soul. It was an intrusion, he insisted, an abominable and disgusting thing, but Val had assured him that it would be forgiven and he was happy to note from the very amiability of his host’s expression that it was indeed miraculously so. He seated himself when bidden, conveying without saying so that the chair was incomparably comfortable and that he knew and appreciated the superb quality of the sherry which had been offered him.

Within five minutes of his arrival they were sitting round in pleasant intimacy. The ice had melted rather than broken, and yet his behaviour had never deviated for a moment from that exact formality which is the rightful protection of every man against the stranger within his doors.

Val leant back in the winged chair, unaware that she was irritating her brother, who, for some reason of his own, did not like to see a woman sitting in it.

“We’ve got a nice new job for you, my lamb,” she said. “Something easy and vulgar. How would you like to bring your boots and have a slap-up week end with all the comforts of the rich, and the rare intellectual treat of mingling with the best people—all for nothing? What about it?”

Laminoff made a deprecating gesture with a spade-shaped hand.

“I am embarrassed,” he said. “We are unpleasant, ignorant people. I shall commit suicide.” He chuckled with sudden happiness. “I talk like all the best plays.”

“Anything except divorce,” said Campion cheerfully. “Divorce and the joke’s over. I’d rather go back to my people.”

“Oh no.” Gaiogi was shocked. “No, no, we are not indecent. Good God, no. This is at least honest vulgarity. Mr Campion, will you come and stay in my house over the week end? I ask you so that, should I have need to call upon my guest for assistance, assistance he cannot by all the laws of hospitality refuse me, I shall have in him someone who will be an asset and not an encumbrance.”

He leant back and laughed until his eyes were shining with tears.

“I rehearsed that coming along. It sounds a little false.”

They both looked at him, Val with tolerant amusement and Mr Campion with simple interest.

“Having trouble?”

“No.” Gaiogi was still laughing, and he glanced at Val with that shyness which comes from the intellect rather than from any social embarrassment. “We are here on false pretences.”

“Not at all.” Val spoke briskly, her voice a little harder than usual. “It’s Ramillies,” she said.

“Really?” Mr Campion hoped he did not sound cautious. “What’s he done now?”

“Nothing yet, thank God.” Val was obstinately bright. “He’s going to Boohoo Land, or wherever it is, on Sunday, in a gold aeroplane, and we just thought we’d like you about to see he does go.”

“In a gold aeroplane?”

“Gold. The propeller hub may be studded with diamonds.” Gaiogi made the announcement gravely and Campion raised his eyebrows.

“Quite the gent,” he commented politely. “How serious is all this?”

Val rose, and as the light fell upon her face her brother looked at her sharply. He had not seen her quite so fine drawn before.

“I’m not very clear about all this,” he said. “Explain it all to me without effects. Ramillies is going back to Ulangi, is he? Alone?”

“Yes. Georgia is going out to join him in six weeks time, with a wild party. The Taretons and that lot.”

“That should be jolly.” Campion spoke without enthusiasm.

“Riotous,” she agreed. “Paul Tareton is taking ‘three girls from totally different environments,’ and Mrs has selected one rather beastly little boy called Waffle. Still, that’s their après-midi, not ours. Our concern is that nothing goes wrong with the flight. Gaiogi was telling Tante Marthe his troubles and she sent us both along to you.”

“Ah yes, the flight,” said Campion. “Start at the flight.”

“The flight is not exactly an attempt upon the record”—Val’s brightness was growing more and more artificial—“except that no one has ever taken the trouble to fly from England to Ulangi before. I wonder you haven’t heard about all this, Albert. There’s been enough publicity.”

At the mention of the magic word Campion began to see a little daylight.

“The plane is being sent out as a present to the native ruler,” she said. “It’s an Alandel machine, and it’s taking off from the Caesar’s Court flying ground at six o’clock on Sunday night. In it go the pilot and a navigator and Ramillies. He insisted that they paint it gold. He said the man would like it better, and pointed out that if you paint a thing silver there’s no reason why you shouldn’t paint it gold. I think Gaiogi made up the diamonds. Anyway, the airmen will stay and instruct the coloured gentleman how not to break his neck, and Ramillies will tidy the house up ready for Georgia. On Sunday there is to be a semiofficial send-off, with Towser from the Colonial Office and one or two other bigwigs, and the whole thing is to be stage-managed gracefully. Gaiogi is anxious that nothing shall go wrong.”

“I can understand that.” Campion sounded sympathetic. “Is there any reason why anything should?”

Val glanced at the Russian before she spoke.

“No,” she said at last but without conviction. “No, I don’t think so. No, none at all. You just come down for the week end. We shall all be there. You can even bring Lugg, if he’ll behave.”

“I’m sorry, my dear. It sounds fishy.” Campion filled her glass as he spoke. “Don’t think me inquisitive, but I must have a bit more to go on. It’s my luggage I’m worrying about. Do I bring a knuckle-duster and a chloroform spray, or merely my etiquette book?”

“The chloroform spray, I should say, wouldn’t you, Gaiogi?” Val was not entirely flippant, and the old man laughed at her before he turned his round eyes towards Campion.

“I hope not,” he said, “but who can tell? That is the difference between the world of my youth and the world of today. Then I was bored because nothing could happen; now I am apprehensive because nothing couldn’t. I am living my life backwards, my exciting youth last.”

“Gaiogi doesn’t feel Ramillies is quite safe,” Val remarked. “I know what he means.”

So did Campion, but he made no comment and she continued.

“There’s been some little trouble about a gun already. He wants to take one out with him and the flying people are jibbing about the weight. Anyhow, it’s not the sort of thing he ought to want out there, is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s not a cannon, I suppose?”

“Sir Raymond wishes to take out a Filmer 5A,” said Laminoff calmly. “He does not see why he should not take it to pieces and stow it under the seat, together with enough ammunition to kill every elephant in Africa. Do you know the new 5A, Mr Campion?”

“Good Lord, that’s not the big one, is it? The mounted one with the magazine? Really? What does he want that for?”

“No one likes to ask,” said Val dryly. “Anyway, he can’t take it. Alan Dell had to make that clear to him himself. Ramillies flew into one of his idiotic rages, came out of it, and is now sulking with a watch-what-I’m-going-to-do air about him, which is disturbing. We don’t want him making a scene just when everything is set for the take-off, or getting tight and trying to take the machine up himself ten minutes before the official time. I’d like you down there anyway. Don’t be a cad.”

“My dear girl, I’m coming. Nothing would keep me away.” Campion sounded sincere. “The suggestion is that Ramillies is slightly barmy, I take it?”

“No, no, spoilt,” murmured Gaiogi tolerantly. “Too much money all his life, mental age thirteen. A superb soldier, no doubt.”

Val wriggled her shoulders under her severe little coat.

“He’s abnormal,” she said. “I dislike having him in the house in case something awful happens to him while he’s there. A thunderbolt, perhaps. You know what I mean.”

Gaiogi was delighted.

“Val is right. He has an impious challenge,” he agreed, grinning at the phrase. “That is the analysis of my own alarm. He should be exorcised.”

“He should be watched,” said Val, who seemed to have set her heart on being practical at all costs. “That’s fixed then, is it, Albert? We can rely on you to come on Saturday? You’re a pet. We’re terribly grateful. Gaiogi has to rush off now to catch Ferdie Paul, but I’ll stay half an hour with you if I may.”

Her announcement was so brusque that it constituted a dismissal and Campion regarded her with respectful astonishment. Laminoff rose.

“We shall be delighted to see you,” he said earnestly. “My wife and I have a little cottage in the grounds and we will entertain you there.” He glanced at Val and smiled shyly. “It is more comfortable than in the hotel.”

“It’s the loveliest house in the world,” she assured him and he seemed pleased.

He left them gracefully, making the awkward business of departure a charming experience for everyone concerned, and went away, leaving them liking him and, for some inexplicable reason, gratified by the interview, although it had simply served to arrange something he desired.

“Nice old boy,” Mr Campion observed when they were alone.

“A dear. The only genuine Russian prince I’ve ever met.” Val wandered down the room to look out of the window as she spoke. “He lived in Mentone before the Revolution, toddling home now and again for the wolfing or the ballet or whatever they had at home. His wife said that they were miserable, really miserable; you know what wet blankets Russians were.”

“Cried each other to sleep every night,” suggested Mr Campion helpfully.

“That sort of thing.” Val was not listening to him. “Then they lost all and life began anew. Gaiogi has princely ideas, real ones. He understands organisation as well as magnificence. Just the man for a luxury hotel. He’s a prince with a point to him and he’s hysterically happy. I’d hate anything really unpleasant to happen in that little kingdom.”

Mr Campion took up the decanter.

“Sit down,” he said. “I’m not being critical but do you think you’re being a bit nervy? I mean, old Ramillies may have a spot of the devil in him, but the horns haven’t actually appeared yet. He evidently understands his job. That gilded aeroplane idea shows a certain amount of practical insight. You can’t convince a Gold Coast nigger that silver isn’t an inferior metal. He’s probably quite all right in a limited way, once you get to know him. Don’t think I’m not going down to Caesar’s Court; I am. I want to. I only felt it was a bit hysterical, this roaring round here yourself to bring Laminoff and making a great to-do about it. You could have phoned me.”

Val sat down on the couch and closed her eyes.

“It’s amazing about relations,” she observed after a pause. “You’re a pleasant, reasonable person. You’d never be so cruelly hyper-critical of any other woman. Why shouldn’t I be hysterical? I’m not, as it happens, but if I was why shouldn’t I?”

Mr Campion was temporarily taken aback.

“One naturally expects one’s relatives to behave with the decorum one demands of oneself,” he said primly. “Hysteria doesn’t run in our family.”

“Oh, doesn’t it?” said Val. “Like to hear me scream the place down? Give me something to drink.”

“Have some gin in it and have a lovely sick?” he suggested.

She laughed and sat up. She had pulled off her ridiculous hat and her yellow hair was very slightly dishevelled. She looked young and clever and tolerantly disgusted with herself. She glanced up at him and spoke wearily.

“ ’Ardy, ’Ardy, I am wownded.”

“Not seriously, I ’ope?” enquired Campion solicitously, dropping into the nursery joke of their youth without noticing it.

“Mort-u-ally, I fear.”

“Really? What’s up?”

“Unrequited love.” She was still speaking lightly but with a certain breathlessness which made the words uncertain.

“Oh?” He did not sound very sympathetic. “If I may say so without being indelicate, it looked very healthy last time I saw you both.”

“Did it? You’re a detective of some sort, aren’t you?” A change in her voice, a certain hardness, almost a cheapness, that was a stranger there, caught Mr Campion’s attention and silenced the flippant remark on his lips. He had known that sickening deterioration himself in his time and, while he still found it infuriating in himself or anyone else who might be part of his own personal secret dignity, he was not entirely without pity for it.

“These things happen,” he said awkwardly, trying to sound sympathetic without inviting confidence. “It’s all part of the dance.”

Val laughed at him. She was genuinely amused and he was relieved to notice a slackening of the emotional tension in her voice.

“You’re just the person not to come and cry to, aren’t you?” she said. “You look as though you’re going to be ill already. I’m all right, ducky. I’m only telling you I’m feeling like suicide because Georgia Wells has pinched my young man. You might at least say you’re sorry. If I told you I was broke or had a twisted ankle you’d be flapping about like a mother chicken.”

“Hen,” said Campion absently. “Hen is the word you want. What do you mean when you say pinched? Has Georgia merely abducted Dell? Or has she dazzled him? I mean, has the situation come about because the fellow wants to hang round or because he’s too polite to slash his way out of the palisade?”

Val lay back again. She was having great difficulty with the cigarette between her lips and her eyes were startled at her own weakness.

“No,” she said at last. “No, I think it’s quite genuine. It does happen, you know. She’s simply knocked him off his feet. He’s rather added what he knows of me to what he’s seen of her, if you see what I mean.”

Mr Campion did see and he looked at her with one of those sharp glances which betrayed his surprise. Her insight was always astonishing him. It was misleading, he reminded himself hastily; a sort of inspired guesswork or, rather, an intermittent contact with truth.

“He certainly didn’t know much about women,” he remarked. “He’ll learn a bit from Georgia.”

Val did not speak and he went on without thinking of her in any objective way. He was aware of her, of course, but only as of someone whom he considered another facet of himself.

“A man like that ought to fall in love a few times. It matures the mind. He can’t marry her, of course, because of Ramillies. In a way that’s almost a pity because, in a case like that, that type of decent, rather sentimental chap is apt to go off and nurse a lovely pie-eyed dream of tragical frustration for a hell of a time.”

He caught sight of her white face with the two tears on her cheekbones and jerked himself up with sudden contrition.

“My dear girl, forgive me. I was thinking aloud. I forgot you were in this. I’m mental. Oi! Val! Val, I’m sorry. I’m a tick. What shall we do? Go and chuck the woman in the Regent’s Canal? What’s she doing, by the way? Accepting it all with fashionable languor?”

“Oh no.” Val’s lips twisted. “You underestimate her. Georgia doesn’t do things like that. Georgia loves. She always does. She’s riotously, deliriously, ecstatically in love at the moment. She’s a fire, a whirlwind. She comes and tells me about it by the hour. I rushed off with Gaiogi this afternoon to get away from her. She’s so heart-rendingly genuine, Albert, like all the worst in one’s self.”

Mr Campion looked scandalised and his sympathy for his sister increased.

“That’s not quite decent,” he remarked. “How startlingly vulgar you women are.”

“It’s not vulgarity. It’s cheating,” said Val calmly. “You do so hope you’re not really hurting, but you do want to do it so much. I know the instinct. It’s a feeling, not a ‘think’ at all.”

Mr Campion made no direct comment.

“Is Ramillies in on all this?” he enquired at last.

“Oh yes. Georgia’s like a house on fire. It can’t be kept a secret for the rest of the street, much less from the master in the library. Ramillies knows more about it than anyone.”

“What’s he doing? Anything?”

“I don’t know.” Val sounded uneasy. “He’s a very curious person. When I can bring myself to listen to her Georgia seems to be taking him very seriously. She says he’s frightfully jealous and frighteningly quiet, but that may mean anything or nothing. He seems to have set his heart on having this party out there with the Taretons. Georgia’s not so keen. She says that once she gets out there he’ll make her stay. That’ll be awkward because The Lover looks like settling down, and whereas they could risk dropping her out for a month, if it was running away, I doubt whether it would carry on for a full season without her. It might, of course. It’s a success.”

“In six weeks time,” said Mr Campion thoughtfully. “I’m not at all sure that my estimation of Sieur Ramillies doesn’t go up. The grand passion should just about reach the wobbling point by then. These thundering fires die down pretty fast, don’t they?”

He paused. Val was looking at him with a speculative expression that was not altogether sympathetic.

“You’ve forgotten Alan,” she said. “Alan’s in it too. He’s a different kettle of fish altogether. It’s not so simple, my dear. Frankly I wish it were. They’re not children. It might so easily be very serious.”

“You mean Ramillies might divorce her?”

“Not because of Alan. He’d never get grounds. You don’t know Alan at all. He’s an idealist.”

“Well, then, it’ll come to a quiet, uncomfortable end and you’ll have to stand by and pick up the pieces,” said Campion, a little irritated by what he felt was an unjust estimation of his powers of comprehension.

“Yes,” said Val slowly. She shivered and stretched herself with a graceful, furtive movement like a little cat. “I envy those women who just love normally and nobly with their bodies,” she observed unexpectedly. “Then they’re only engulfed by a sort of lovely high tragedy. The hero persists. That’s at least decent. Once you cultivate your mind you lay yourself open to low tragedy, the mingy, dirty little tragedy of making an ass of yourself over an ordinary poor little bloke. Female women love so abjectly that a reasonable hard-working mind becomes a responsibility. It’s a cruelty that shouldn’t have to be endured. I tell you I’d rather die than have to face it that he was neither better nor even more intelligent than I am!”

Her passionate sincerity demanded his consideration and he looked at her helplessly.

“You’re asking rather a lot of him, old girl, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I know.” Val rose to her feet. “That’s what I’m kicking at. I’m asking much too much of most men. I’ve so constructed myself that I’ve either got to ask too much or go maternal. Anyway, that’s how it looks to me when I pull myself together and remember that I’m one of the most important business women in Europe, with a reputation to keep up and a staff to look after.”

She looked very slim and small standing on his hearthrug and it came to him with something of a shock that she was not overestimating herself.

“Do you always see your—er—passion in this slightly inhuman light?”

“No.” She glanced down at her exquisitely cut shoes, which a Viennese manufacturer had materialised from her design. “No, my other viewpoint is ordinary and howlingly undignified. I wish she were dead.”

She met his eyes with sudden fire.

“My God, I hate her,” she said.

Mr Campion blinked. “I can’t do her in,” he said.

“Of course not. Don’t be an ape.” She was laughing. “Don’t take any notice of me. I am nervy, very nervy. I had no idea I could behave like this. It’s come rather late—I ought to be twenty-two to feel like this and enjoy it—and it’s frightened me for the time being. Look here, all I want you to do is to see that Ramillies goes quietly out of the country without any fuss on Sunday. Then Georgia will follow him in six weeks time and meanwhile——”

She broke off so sharply that he was startled.

“Meanwhile what?”

“Meanwhile Alan will at least be safe physically.”

“Who from? Ramillies? My poor girl, you’re cuckoo. Husbands don’t go around pigsticking their rivals these days. They seize another woman and sit showing off with her at the other end of the drawing room until the wife’s boy friend leaves out of sheer embarrassment.”

Val was not disarmed.

“You’re vieux jeu, my pet,” she said. “Like most men you’re between three and five years out of date. Don’t you notice a change in the fashion? Gaiogi’s right. Today anything can happen. People can wear anything, say anything, do anything. It’s the motif of the moment; look at the waistline. Besides, consider Ramillies. He’s a man who might have taken up a blasé attitude if he thought it would be in any way shocking. Nowadays it’s not. It’s dull, it’s ordinary, it’s provincial. D’you know, last week the most fashionable woman in London rushed in to tell me that her husband had thrashed her within an inch of her life and pitched her boy friend through a first-story window into a holly hedge. She was scandalised but terribly excited.”

“Dear me,” said Mr Campion mildly. “You matched up her black eye in your new peau de pêche noir, I hope? Oh well, you surprise me. The old man must catch up on his homework. Let me get this straight. You seriously think that Sir Raymond Ramillies is capable of making a physical assault on Alan Dell?”

“I know he’s capable of it,” said Val bluntly. “I’m telling you that I’m haunted by the idea that it’s likely. Naturally I’m bothered because I can’t tell if my worry is reasonable or just some silly physical reaction. I do have to explain things in detail to you. I thought you were so hot on understanding people.”

“I’ve been cheating all these years. I’m really Alice in Wonderland,” said Mr Campion humbly. “Still, I’m picking up a crumb or two now in my fiddling little way. What am I expected to do? Stand by to plant my body between them to stop the bullet?”

“Oh, darling, don’t be a lout.” Val was at her sweedling best. “I don’t know what I want. Can’t you see that? Just be about. I’m frightened of Ramillies. I don’t think he’d simply hit out like a Christian, but I think he might do something—something—well, elaborate. That’s the impression he gives me. I’m uneasy with him. After all, there was Portland-Smith, you know.”

Mr Campion’s eyelids drooped.

“What about Portland-Smith?” he said. “He committed suicide.”

“How do you know?”

“I do. There’s no doubt about it.”

Val shrugged her shoulders.

“It was very convenient for Ramillies, wasn’t it?” she said, sweeping away the facts with a carelessness that left him helpless. “There’s been no end of chatter about it in the last few weeks.”

“Then someone will get into trouble,” Campion insisted firmly. “That’s pure slander.”

“You can’t have smoke without fire, my dear,” said Val, and he could have slapped her because she was both unreasonable and quite right. “Now I’m going,” she said. “Don’t come down with me. I’m sorry I’ve behaved like a neurotic. You ought to fall in love yourself sometime and get the angle.”

He did not answer her immediately but when he looked up his eyes were apologetic.

“It wouldn’t take me like that, you know,” he remarked seriously.

“Evidently not.”

“Why?”

“Well, where is she?” Val’s glance round the room was expressive and she went off, leaving him reflecting that the gentle, conservative dog with his taboos, his conscience and his ideals was a rather pathetic, defenceless animal beside his ruthless, hag-ridden sister, the cat.

Lugg’s stomach appeared round the doorway.

“Sex rearin’ its ugly ’ead again, eh?” he remarked, coming into fuller view. “I didn’t ’ear ’er speak because I kep’ in the kitchen like a gent, but you can see it in ’er face, can’t you? Funny, we seem to ’ave struck a patch of it lately. It’s pitch, sex is. Once you touch it, it clings to you. Why don’t you sneak off and come on this cruise we’re always talking about? Crime’s vulgar enough, but sex crime is common. There’s no other word for it. ’Oo’s she in love with? ’Andle to ’is name?”

Mr Campion regarded him with disgust.

“You turn my stomach,” he said. “I believe if you had a fortune you’d try to buy a title.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” Lugg appeared to be giving the suggestion more serious thought than it warranted. “Not a title. I wouldn’t mind being a councillor of a nice classy little burrow. That’s about my mark. I’m sorry about your sis but we can’t ’elp ’er troubles. You look out. I don’t like sex. Remember the setout we ’ad down in the country. Which reminds me, I ’ad a note from my little mate the other day. Like to see it? She’s at boarding school.”

He waddled over to the bureau and pulled open the bottom drawer.

“ ’Ere you are,” he said with the nonchalance that ill disguises bursting pride. “Not bad for a kid, is it?”

Mr Campion took the inky square of expensive notepaper and glanced at the embossed address.

The Convent of the Holy Sepulchre

Lording

Dorset

Dear Mr Lug [the handwriting was enormous and abominable] I am at scool. Here we speak French. Some of the nuns like the tricks you showed me and some do not. I have written “I must not swindle” 50 times for S. Mary Therese but S. Mary Anna laffed. I am going to read the Gompleat works of William Shakespeare.

Lots and lots of love from

Sarah.

Mr Lugg put the note back among his better shirts, which he insisted on keeping in the bureau in defiance of all objections.

“I could ’ave done a lot with that poor little bit if I’d ’ad the educatin’ of ’er,” he remarked regretfully. “Still, she’d ’ave bin a nuisance, you know. Per’aps she’s better off, reelly, with them nuns.”

“Indeed, perhaps so,” said Mr Campion not without derision.

Lugg straightened his back and regarded his employer under fat white eyelids.

“I found this ’ere in one of yer suits,” he said, feeling in his waistcoat pocket. “I’ve bin waitin’ for an opportunity to give it to you. There you are: a little yeller button. It came off one of Mrs Sutane’s dresses, I think. Correc’ me if I’m wrong.”

Mr Campion took the button, turned it over and pitched it out of the open window into the street below. He said nothing and his face was an amiable blank.

Mr Lugg’s complacent expression vanished and he pulled his collar off.

“I’m more comfortable without it,” he remarked in the tone of one making pleasant conversation under difficulties. “Now the company’s gone I can let out the compression. Blest came in while you was talkin’ to your sis. I tell ’im you was busy. I give ’im the end of one of my old bottles and made ’im leave a message.”

“Oh?” Mr Campion seemed mildly interested. “And how did the ex-inspector take that from the ex-Borstal prefect?”

“Drunk up every drop like a starvin’ kitty.” Mr Lugg’s conversational powers increased with his anxiety. “It did me good to see ’im. ‘ ’Ave another mite of the wages of virtue, mate,’ I said, smellin’ another ’arf empty, but he wouldn’t stop. Said ’e’d phone you, and meanwhile you might like to know that ’e’d found a little church down in Putney with some very interesting records of a wedding three and a ’alf years ago. ’E wouldn’t tell me ’oo the parties were; said you’d know and that it was all okay, he’d got the doings.”

“Anything else?”

“Yus. Wait a minute. ’Ullo, that’s the bell. It would be.” Mr Lugg fumbled with his collar again. “It’s comin’ back to me,” he said breathlessly in the midst of his struggle. “He said did you know there was someone else snouting around for the same information less than a week ago, and if it was news to you, did you think it funny?”

He lumbered out into the passage. Mr Campion’s eyebrows rose.

“Damn funny,” he said.

He was still lost in unquiet thought when the fat man reappeared, his face shining.

“Look ’ere,” he said with even less ceremony than usual, “look ’ere. Look what I’ve found on the doorstep. ’Ere’s a bottle o’ milk for you.”

Mr Campion raised his eyes to the newcomer and for an instant he did not recognise the heart-shaped face with the triangular smile and the expression that was as resourceful, as eager and as infinitely young as when he had last seen it six years before.

“Hullo, Orph,” said Amanda Fitton. “The lieut has come to report. This is a nice thing to get in my face when I look up at your window for the first time in six years.”

She held out a small brown paw and displayed a yellow button with a rose painted on it lying in the palm.

“Thank you, Amanda.” Mr Campion took the button and pocketed it. “It burst off my waistcoat as my heart leapt at your approach. A most extraordinary phenomenon. I wondered what on earth it was. Why did you come? I mean, nothing wrong, I hope?”

Amanda pulled off her hat and the full glory of the Pontisbright hair glowed in the evening light.

“It’s about my chief, Alan Dell,” she said, “and frightfully confidential. I say, Albert, you don’t know a man called Ramillies, do you?”