Читать книгу Crime and Mr. Campion - Margery Allingham - Страница 21

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“Sebastiano Quirini? Why, my dear, his engravings were quite lovely.”

Belle looked up as she spoke, and for a moment her eyes lost the dull, weary expression which Campion had grown to dread in them.

They were in the drawing room again, sitting by the fire, whose comfort had become a necessity since the second tragedy although the spring was not a cold one.

Campion and the inspector, having decided that Mr. Potter was better not disturbed unless it became absolutely necessary, had come to Belle for information.

“I believe it was a sort of secret,” she said, “so you mustn’t let anyone know. Max discovered nearly fifty of Quirini’s old wood blocks in Paris when the Société des Arts Anciens was sold up. It was a very old business, you know. They dealt in antiques as well as pictures, and their warehouse in the Centre had not been cleared for years. When they started to turn it out before the building was pulled down, they found all sorts of things, I believe. Anyway, there was quite a sensation at the time. It’s very long ago.

“However, that’s all beside the point. Max picked up these Quirinis, all quite black and clotted with ink, some of them nearly ruined. He had one or two cleaned and found out what they were.”

Oates was still looking puzzled, and Campion explained.

“They’re the solid chunks of boxwood on which the artist engraved the picture,” he said. “They’d vary in size and thickness considerably. The picture was made by pressing a piece of fine paper, or silk sometimes, on the inky surface of the graved wood. Mrs. Potter melted the old ink out and reprinted them, I suppose, Belle?”

The old lady nodded. “Claire was very clever at that sort of thing,” she said, her eyes softening. “Very patient and painstaking. Wood engraving is not difficult to print, you know, but it takes time and a lot of care. Max will miss poor Claire.”

The inspector’s eyelids flickered.

“Did she do much for him, ma’am?”

“Oh, so many things.” Belle shook her head at the recollection of Claire Potter’s many activities. “She worked much too hard. There are quite a number of little confidential jobs in the picture world,” she went on, smiling faintly at the inspector. “Little things like this that require absolute integrity as well as skill. You see, Max wanted to get the Quirinis all ready at once, so that he could have a show of them all together and perhaps start a little fashion for them. So much depends on fashion: it seems very silly, but there it is.

“Claire had nearly finished them. She had been at work for two years.”

“Two years?” The inspector was startled.

“Oh, yes. It was a long job, you know, and some of the blocks were in very bad condition. She did so many other things, too.”

Oates glanced at Campion.

“She didn’t keep these things in the studio, then?”

“All of them?” said Belle. “Oh, dear, no. They were much too bulky and too precious. Max used to send them down to her—one or two at a time—his boy would fetch one lot and bring another. I remember seeing him often—such a funny little grown-up boy. I wish children never had to work. The blocks were always wrapped up in a green cloth. Claire always had the second lot waiting for him, all packed and ready. She was most particular about them. No one was allowed to touch them except herself. I remember once being in the studio when they arrived, and I offered to unpack them for her, but she quite snapped at me. Poor Claire! It was so unlike her that I was quite surprised. She was most conscientious. The blocks were always kept packed up. They used to stand on the bookshelf in their cloth. Max paid her very badly, I’m afraid, but she never complained.”

She sighed and looked down at her plump little hands. “She was very kind to me always,” she said, and added unexpectedly, “that poor, helpless, silly man, too. No one to look after him now. She took care of him. The pity of it! The dreadful, wasteful pity of it!”

They were silent, and the moment was relieved by the arrival of Lisa with a message from Donna Beatrice.

That good lady, finding herself temporarily eclipsed by other, more important matters, had promptly taken to her bed on the ancient principle that if one cannot command attention by one’s admirable qualities at least one can be a nuisance.

Somewhat grudgingly Lisa announced that Donna Beatrice was asking for Belle.

“She has not eaten,” she said. “She refuses to take anything unless you are there. Shall I leave her until tonight?”

“Oh, no,” said Belle, getting up. “I’ll come. Poor soul,” she remarked apologetically to Campion, “she’s hysterical. It’s very naughty of her. She makes herself so unpopular.”

She went out, and Lisa followed. Campion and the inspector were left alone.

“She never let anyone unpack those wood blocks except herself,” said Oates, taking out his notebook. “Max paid her very badly but she never complained. She did a great deal for him, confidential work. What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking,” said Campion slowly, “that it is more than possible that Max had been in the habit of aiding and abetting Mrs. Potter in her unfortunate weakness for some time—months, perhaps even years. Underpaying her and keeping her happy that way. When the occasion arose, it was simplicity itself to poison her. It was probably so easy that he couldn’t resist the temptation.”

Oates sighed. “It looks like it,” he agreed, “and if so we’ll never get him. If the corpse conspires to shield the murderer, where are you! A couple of these wood blocks wrapped in tissue and baize would make a parcel large enough to hold, say, a flat half pint, I take it?”

“Oh, quite, I should say. It’s ingenious, Oates.”

“Darn ingenious,” agreed the inspector. “But all conjecture, Campion. Based on strong suspicion, but all conjecture. Not a ha’porth of evidence in the lot. I’ll see the boy, of course. That reminds me: Rennie says that when Mrs. Potter was out on the afternoon of the crime he took in a green-baize parcel secured by a strap from Salmon’s and left it in her porch. Why did the boy call again in the evening? There’s a chance I may get something out of the kid without disturbing Fustian, which is the last thing to be done at this juncture. Come on, Campion, we’ll get on with it. Nothing more here at the moment.”

Campion next saw the inspector at noon on the following day in his own chilly room at Scotland Yard.

Oates looked up as the young man came in, and he hailed Campion with even more enthusiasm than usual.

“I’ve seen the boy,” he said, plunging into the business without preamble. “Caught him at the gallery first thing before anyone else arrived. He’s an odd little object—name of Green.”

“I think I’ve seen him at the shop.”

“Have you? Oh, well, then, you know him. That’s him—funny kid. Not too happy in his job, I fancy. Still, he didn’t say so. Campion ...”

“Yes?”

“I think you’re right.”

“Really? What did you get?”

Oates flipped over the pages of the ragged little book in which he kept his notes.

“The boy bears out all the other evidence, of course. He used to take those green-baize parcels backwards and forwards at irregular intervals. He usually got out to Bayswater in the evening because it was the last thing he had to do and it was a long way. There were two of them, by the way—two bits of baize and two straps, I mean—so that one parcel was always waiting for him when he brought the other.”

“Did he ever see them packed at the gallery end?” said Campion.

“No. I particularly enquired about that. He was not even sure what they contained. Apparently Fustian has a habit of cooking up minor mysteries in the firm. He seems to have impressed the kid with the idea that he’s a sort of art-world genius, a great financier pulling strings and starting hares and all the rest of it. These parcels were simply given to Green by Fustian, who packed them himself and who told him that they were very valuable and to be treated with great care. The boy seems to have felt that he was a privileged person to be allowed to touch the things at all. He’s a simple-minded little beggar.”

“Is that all?” Campion sounded disappointed.

“No, not quite. I explained to him, of course, that I was just checking up on all the people who had been to the studio during the day—you must tell ’em something, you know—and he volunteered the information that it was most unusual for him to call at the studio twice on one day and that it had happened because of a mistake of Fustian’s. Apparently Green came down with one parcel on the lunch hour, and collected the other, which had been left with Rennie. This alteration in the usual time was because that evening he had to meet the five fifty-eight train at Victoria to collect some prints from Paris. The prints were on silk, and they had to be seen through the customs.

“When he arrived back at the gallery after the lunch hour, Max sent for him and explained that he had put the wrong contents in the parcel, and therefore when the kid had completed his mission at Victoria he was to go straight on to the studio and ask for the parcel back. Are you following?”

Campion nodded. His eyes were half closed behind his spectacles.

“When the kid got to Victoria the prints had not come. It took him some little time to discover this—about twenty minutes in all, he thinks. Then he went to the studio, arriving there about seven. Lisa gave him the parcel and he took it back to the gallery.”

The inspector paused and regarded his friend.

“When he got there Max was waiting for him. The boy was surprised to see him and more surprised still when, after enquiring if he saw Mrs. Potter and receiving the reply that he had not but that Lisa had given him what he wanted, Max gave him a couple of bob. Then the kid went home, and that’s all he knows.”

“Extraordinary,” said Campion.

“Interesting,” said the inspector, still consulting his notes. “Oh, by the way, one other little thing: I asked the kid if he knew what was in the parcels. He said no, but after a while, as we got matey, I could see there was something on his mind, and presently he came out with it. About three weeks ago he dropped one of those darn parcels he was taking to Mrs. Potter on the tube stairs. He didn’t like to open it to see if any damage was done, and in fear and trembling he took it on. He said he didn’t get into any trouble, as he expected to, but when he handed the thing in he noticed the green cloth was quite wet. I pressed him, but he hadn’t noticed anything else.”

Campion sat up. “So we were right,” he said.

“Yes,” said Dates. “As far as we’re concerned, the mystery’s solved, but we can’t say so. Exasperating, isn’t it?”

“There’s not enough evidence for an arrest?”

“Enough! There’s none at all.”

The inspector rose to his feet and stood looking out of the window.

“Another unsolved mystery, that’s what the papers say,” he remarked. “In all my experience I remember only one murder case in which the police didn’t know whom they wanted. We haven’t got enough here even to have him up and question him. He’s licked us. While we were deciding if the corpse was poisoned or not, he was downstairs in the cloakroom of his gallery washing out the bottle.”

“If only Potter hadn’t washed out the glass,” said Campion.

Oates considered. “I’m not sure about that,” he said at last. “On the face of it I admit it looks as though that were the intervention of Providence on the wrong side, but was it? Suppose Potter had behaved like any ordinary sane person on finding his wife. Had a look at her, found she was dead, sent for the doctor and told him the whole story about the whisky drugging. It’s ninety-nine to a hundred he’d have diagnosed heart failure and alcohol poisoning and we shouldn’t have come into it. It was only the mystery at the beginning that put us onto it at all.”

Mr. Campion was still digesting these reflections when Oates spoke again.

“Nothing,” he said. “Not a thing on him. He’s got away with it.”

“What are you going to do? Drop it?”

“Good Lord, no!” The inspector looked shocked. “You ought to know more about police procedure than that. We shall go on snuffling about like an old terrier on a stale scent. We shall write each other coldly disapproving letters from department to department. We shall tell each other the facts in confidence and go on worrying round a little less week by week. Then something else will turn up and we shall all be very busy and this will get crowded out.”

The young unhappy face of Dacre as he lay in the little robing room in Lafcadio’s studio; Mr. Potter standing with his back to the shrouded figure of his wife; Belle sitting in the scullery twisting her fingers; these things passed in front of Mr. Campion’s eyes, and he looked up.

“At least you can find the motive,” he said bitterly. “Couldn’t you get him on that?”

“Motive and doubtful circumstantial evidence isn’t enough,” said the inspector gloomily, “much less the mixture of conjecture and suspicion we’ve cooked up. Besides, there may not be a motive.”

“What d’you mean?” The words had crystallized a fear which Campion had been fiercely refusing to recognize.

The inspector met his eyes for an instant. “You know what I mean. Nothing sufficient, not a sane motive.”

Mr. Campion studied the carpet. “You suggest—”

“Look here,” cut in the inspector, “I admit it’s a disturbing thought, but you know as well as I do that when a chap of that age and type suddenly becomes a killer it means something’s gone radically wrong with his sense of proportion. The cleverer he is the later we get him.”

“Then you don’t think we can do anything now?” Campion’s tone was lifeless.

“No,” said the inspector. “No, my boy, he’s been too neat. We must wait.”

“Wait? Good God, what for?”

“Next time,” said Oates. “He won’t stop at this. They never do. The question is, who is going to annoy him next?”