Читать книгу Pearls Before Swine - Margery Allingham - Страница 3

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The man and the woman carried the body cautiously up the stairs. Although it was still early evening, the narrow way was grey and shadowy, and it was very cold, colder even than it had been outside amid the thin traffic of a wartime London.

The two who were alive in that grim little group which writhed and breathed so hard in the gloom were both elderly people. They were an unexpected couple in any situation; the man was a large, blank-faced Cockney without any pretensions and the woman was out of place beside him, her delicate aristocratic grace accentuating both his clumsiness and the horror of her present task.

All they had in common was the job in hand and a sense of nightmare, and as they plodded upward with the dead weight between them their feet trod the carpeted stairs without feeling them and they strained their muscles without noticing the strain.

Mr. Lugg, who was in his disreputable Civil Defence uniform, reflected that he had to hand it to the old girl even if she was a marchioness, she was showing very game.

“One more flight,” he muttered.

“Hush,” said Lady Carados, adding breathlessly: “oh, can’t we keep her feet off the ground?”

Meanwhile in the apartment above, Mr. Albert Campion, who was in that particular state of ignorance wherein it is downright idiocy to be wise, was taking a warm bath.

He lay in the soothing water utterly at ease for the first time since his long journey home had begun some eight weeks before. For the first time he was entirely happy, and his only worry in the world concerned the possibility of his dropping off to sleep and so missing his train. For a long time he kept perfectly still, his lean body relaxed and content. He had changed a little in the last three years; the sun had bleached his fair hair to whiteness, lending him a physical distinction he had never before possessed. There were new lines in his over-thin face and with their appearance some of his own misleading vacancy of expression had vanished. But nothing had altered the upward drift of his thin mouth or the engaging astonishment which so often and so falsely appeared in his pale eyes.

Just now he was barely thinking. His mind was ticking over very slowly—pop pop, pop pop, pop pop. He had just worked out with enormous mental effort that he had fifteen and a half minutes to lie thus, twenty minutes to dress, twenty minutes to potter about remembering the things he might have forgotten, and twenty minutes to catch his train. From his present viewpoint this simple programme possessed beauty, luxury, civilization.

He had been back in London exactly one hour and ten minutes, and as yet had had no time to form any real impression of the changes in the great city. But already it had spread its ancient charm about him and he knew from the very smell of it that it was still safe, still firmly respectable, still obdurately matter of fact. He was immeasurably relieved; from the tales he had heard abroad he had expected worse.

For three years he had been at large on two warring continents employed on a mission for the Government so secret that he had never found out quite what it was, or at least that was the version of his activities which it seemed most prudent to give at the moment. Meanwhile he was certainly damnably tired.

At this point he thought he heard a curious shuffling noise on the other side of the bathroom wall, but he quietened his over-alert senses by reflecting that he was home again in London where shuffling noises had prosaic explanations. Lying in the water he stirred slightly, moving his hands like fins, and remembering how as a child he had enjoyed playing “sleeping fish” in the bath. Life was very good and very quiet. Six weeks’ leave was due, and he was prepared to enjoy it in a leafy peace which yet promised a gentle excitement of its own. However, just now, just at this very moment there was at last time to waste.

He heard the latch of the front door and the subsequent scuffling without undue surprise. He took it that Lugg had got the wire he had sent from the port. Well, that was nice, it would be good to see the old villain who had served him so faithfully if so truculently for so long. He had clearly done his best by the flat, too. The blitzed windows in the bedroom were neatly pasted up with cardboard, and the whole place was cleaner than one might have expected.

Campion was just about to shout a greeting when he became aware of a new, and more unlikely series of noises; swift footsteps raced up the main staircase, the front door shuddered open just as someone on the inside was closing it, there was a muttered expletive, and finally an entirely unfamiliar feminine scream.

Mr. Campion sat up slowly.

Another unfamiliar female voice, but older this time and very close at hand, said pleadingly:

“Be quiet, dear, oh, be quiet.”

Then more scuffling, followed by whispering, and afterwards a second door opening and closing.

Mr. Campion’s impulse was to lie down again and to pull the soapsud blanket over his head, but he dismissed the idea as unworthy and clambered out gingerly. Draped in a towel he stood listening. Evidently the Reception Committee, or whatever it was, had moved into the sitting-room across the passage; he could only just distinguish the murmur of voices.

He began to dry himself reluctantly. He was disappointed, of course—not, as he reflected between rubs, that he was averse to some small token of welcome on his return, on the contrary he had been looking forward to a reunion with his old friend and knave; but why the man should have thrown a party, and of what it could possibly consist, he could not imagine.

He had no dressing-gown in the bathroom, and so, uncomfortably girt about with towels, he tiptoed into the hall, intending to fetch one from the bedroom. The sitting-room door was closed, but he could hear the steady whisper of voices within. He opened the bedroom door very quietly and made straight for the hanging cupboard. Since most of the window space was boarded up, the room was in semi-darkness, and he found what he sought before he noticed anything unusual. It was when he turned again and was tying the girdle tightly about his lean ribs that he first saw the shape on the bed.

His first impression was that it was a roll of carpet which lay there so stiffly, and he was annoyed with himself for being so startled by it; but as he came forward to lean over the foot of the bed he saw the thing for what it was, and a wave of mingled incredulity and apprehension passed over him, leaving him suddenly cold.

It was a woman, and she was dead. There was no possible question about it. In life she had been a birdy little creature, bright-eyed no doubt, and even pretty in a faded, possibly over-excitable fashion, but now her eyes were hidden, her mouth was set in a dreadful narrow O, and the high, thin bone of her nose rose like a knife-blade about to cut through the livid skin.

She was clad in a black silk nightdress under a long grey squirrel coat, while on her bare feet hung little wedge shoes of grey-and-black leather, very square and serviceable. One of her legs was twisted unnaturally, the knee turned outwards and raised an inch or so from the coverlet on which she lay. She was dead, rigor was well advanced, and her hands folded on her breast looked formal and absurd.

Campion stood staring at her blankly; she was a complete stranger to him. Moreover, ten minutes before when he had turned on his bath she had not been there. Whoever had brought her was presumably in the next room now, whispering. The first definite thought which reached him amid the firework display of question marks in his mind was that whatever had happened, whoever this pathetic little bundle might turn out to have been, he must not permit her to prevent him catching his train. That train was important. The reward it promised him had been most hardly earned.

All the same the present situation could hardly be ignored. Twitching his bright dressing-gown more tightly round him he stepped lightly down the passage, and opened the sitting-room door. He did not enter it, but stood back taking the elementary precaution by force of habit.

“Oh, my God!”

The cry which greeted the silent swinging door was purely superstitious. He recognized the panic note instantly, and walked in, to find himself confronted by three frightened people: Lugg, in Heavy Rescue uniform, and two of the most striking women he had ever seen in his life.

It was the girl who had cried out, he could tell that by the grey pallor of her skin and the fear in her wide-open eyes. All the same, she was lovely, very fair with unusually vivid blue eyes, and long slender bones. It was her youth which impressed him most at that first glance; she was downy with it, twenty at the very outside, he judged, and at the moment she was shocked and too horrified even to cry.

He glanced past her at the older woman and was surprised by a sudden conviction that he ought to be able to recognize her. It was clear that she expected to be recognized. She was frightened now, set with resolution and hardened out of the normal, but there was no mistaking her for what she was, an Edwardian beauty still young in everything but years. She was still alive, still adventurous, still emotional, and she wore her age ruefully, as if it were an unbecoming garment of which she was determined to make the best. She was a personality too. Struggling to place her, Campion found to his disgust that he was thinking of the portrait of Mrs. Siddons by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

She made no attempt to speak, but stood looking at him woodenly, nothing in her eyes.

Campion turned to the only member of the group whom he had met before and made a discovery which alarmed him more than any of the others. Mr. Lugg was frightened also; he was shaking, and downright uncompromising disbelief was written plainly across his great white egg of a face. Campion met his eyes, and the three years’ separation between them vanished, so that in spite of himself a flicker of his old smile passed over Campion’s face.

“Is the lady in my bedroom staying long?” he enquired.

Lugg opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking; he glanced round with a helplessness which was not typical of him and finally confronted his old employer with an expression which was no longer truculent.

“I didn’t know you was back,” he said devastatingly.

“Oh well, then, that’s all right.” Campion appeared relieved. “I’m just going, anyway. I only dropped in for a bath between trains. You just go on as though I weren’t here.”

“No, wait a minute, guv’nor.” Lugg put up a fat hand appealingly. “I’d like to have a bit of a word with you. It’s lucky you come along, reely. ’Ere, come into the kitchen a minute, will you?”

They might have retired, but at this point the woman who reminded Mr. Campion of Mrs. Siddons collected herself and intervened.

“Oh, this is Mr. Campion, is it?” she said graciously. “I’m afraid we’re imposing on you terribly. I don’t think we’ve met, have we? But I’ve heard my son John speak of you many times—Carados, you know.”

It was a very fair effort. The great drawing-rooms of the early part of the century had been a severe training ground and some of their stoic gallantry reappeared for a moment in her quiet voice and unshakable ease of manner. Mr. Campion was astounded. If John, Marquess of Carados, was her son, then she must be Edna, Dowager Marchioness, one time the lovely Edna Dawlish, daughter of old Henry G. Dawlish, cotton king in the golden age before the wars. No wonder he had fancied he recognized her, he ought to have done. Her photographs had taken the place of Mrs. Langtry’s when the Jersey Lily had first begun to fade. They had appeared in every magazine and shop window in the country. As a young bride she had swept London society off its feet, and her wealth, her vivacity, and the romantic tales about her had become fabulous in a year.

As soon as he had digested this piece of information the utter unbelievableness of the present situation struck him afresh, and he pulled himself together with difficulty.

“Why, of course,” he said stupidly. “Please use the place as much as you like. Tell me, is Johnny about?”

At this moment the nods and grimaces in which Lugg had been indulging for some time gave place to audible noise, and Lady Carados turned to look at him. The fat man was more pallid than ever and his small eyes were imploring.

“I would like to ’ave a bit of a word with ’im,” he said. “I brung you ’ere, you see.”

She sat down. “Do,” she said. “Do. You explain everything, Mr. Lugg, will you? I don’t want to hear it again. I’m afraid we need help.”

Lugg made no comment on this last observation until he and Campion were in the dressing-room beyond the bathroom where the traveller had left his clothes. Then he expressed himself forcibly.

“The fact is, cock,” he added more calmly, when he had relieved his feelings, “we’re up the old-fashioned creek. You’ve come just in time, that’s about the size of it.”

Mr. Campion emerged from the shirt he was pulling on, his hair dishevelled, but his expression firm.

“Don’t you kid yourself, my lad,” he said mildly. “I’m catching a train in fifty minutes and a thousand corpses all in coronets won’t stop me. You—er—you only have the one at the moment, I take it?”

“Yus, only the one,” Lugg agreed absently, adding reproachfully, as he recovered himself, “now’s not the time to be funny, neither. You’ve ’ad your fun abroad, I dare say. This is serious. A stiff is still a stiff in this country. There’ll be a lot of questions asked.”

“So I should imagine,” murmured Mr. Campion dryly. “However, compared with mere warfare, you all seem to have toughened up considerably. What the hell are you doing, Lugg? Who is that woman?”

“We don’t know,” said Mr. Lugg surprisingly, “that’s ’arf the trouble.”

Campion glanced up from the shoe he was tying, his face unusually serious.

“Suppose you come across,” he suggested.

Lugg still hesitated.

“Well,” he said at last in a burst of confiding, “it’s like this. I’ve been sitting in the square for about a year now ...”

“Carados Square?”

“Yus. I’m on duty there, see? We’ve ’ad our ups and downs, but for a lot of the time I ’aven’t ’ad a lot to do, and me and my old girl ’ave been bored some of the time.”

“Your old girl?”

“That’s my pig—we keep pigs, us ’Eavy Rescue chaps.”

“In Carados Square?”

“Yus. ’Elping the war effort.”

“I see.” Mr. Campion concentrated on his other shoe.

“You’re out of touch,” Lugg explained magnanimously, “but you’ll pick it up.”

“Yes, I hope so. Carry on.”

“I am carrying on. You keep your mind on what I’m telling you, ’cos it’s difficult, some of it. Now, this ’ere Lady Carados, wot’s in the next room, she lives in the square, on the side wot’s still standing.”

“The other three sides are not so hot, I suppose?” Campion could not forgo the question, for he had a sudden picture of the graceful houses with their slender windows and arched porticos, which used to stand like guardsmen round the delicate green of one of the city’s finest gardens.

“Most of the other three sides is cooler now than wot they was,” said Lugg succinctly. “But a part of the ’ouse where ’is nibs, ’er Ladyship’s son, used to live, that’s all right, and that’s wot we’re coming to.”

Johnny Carados’s house and only part of it all right. In his mind’s eye Campion saw again the Carados mansion, which George Quellett had redecorated in his Bakst period. It seemed impossible that it should not still exist. It was the Music Room he remembered best; it had been at the top of the building, so probably it had gone, and its Indian red hangings, its gilt and its green, all reduced to a mass of blackened spars.

All the same, it had been worth doing, even for so short a life. It had been from that room that Johnny had conducted his remarkable activities. Of course, as a man with such a background and with such a fortune, Carados had had every opportunity to give his genius full rein, but he had never wasted those opportunities; he had been a great patron. It was Johnny who had financed the Czesca Ballet, Johnny who established the Museum of Wine, Johnny who had put the Pastel Society on its feet, who had given Zolly his first half-dozen concerts in London, and who had rebuilt the Sicilian Hall.

Moreover, he had always fostered his own art, and was, incongruously, one of the leading amateur fliers of the age. Campion remembered him as an inspiring figure with the power to draw brains round him, and who had had, despite his youth and his money, very little trace of the dilettante in his make-up. He had held his friends, too. Peter Onyer and his wife Gwenda had lived with him, Campion remembered, Peter managing his financial affairs and Gwenda acting as her husband’s secretary. There had been other members of the household also—that queer little fish, Ricky Silva, who had existed solely to do the flowers, as far as anyone knew, and the plump cheerful girl who was the social secretary, whose name Campion had forgotten; not to mention the silent Captain Gold, who ruled the servants and did the housekeeping. It had been an odd, interesting outfit, the members all of an age and all highly intelligent. Together they had formed one of the most closely knit of all the little gangs which had characterized the social life of pre-war London.

Carados had lived his own life in his own magnificent fashion. Evangeline Snow, the revue star, had never married him, but she was always there amongst them, and Johnny was faithful to her as far as anyone knew.

The brilliant picture of the past faded into the dust and rubble of the present, and Mr. Campion blinked. The war must have split them up, of course, he reflected. He thought he remembered hearing something about Johnny getting himself into the R.A.F. at an age which at the time had appeared fantastic; his record as an amateur had stood him in good stead, and it had been arranged. The move must have taken him clean away from his old surroundings, and now, most of the house itself had gone.

Campion turned to Lugg. “Where is Carados now?”

“ ’Is Lordship? At ’is ’ome, I ’ope. They’ve got the two lower floors and the basement going. He was just due there when we got the stiff away.”

His large white face was growing more and more lugubrious. “We’ve got ourselves in a mess and no mistake,” he said. “The girl coming in so unlikely, not to mention you—that’s torn it. I was going to manage it all quiet, you see.”

“I don’t, quite,” said Mr. Campion frankly, “not yet. Go on from where you were sitting in your pigsty.”

Lugg was hurt. “It’s not only a pigsty,” he said, “it’s a whole depot. A.R.P., you know, ’eroes of the Blitzes. It’s right in the middle of the square where the grass used to be. That’s where I picked up ’er Ladyship. All through the Blitz she ran a voluntary canteen there, a real old sport, she is. Not a nerve in ’er body. Me an’ ’er always ’ave got on very polite. So when she got ’erself in this spot of trouble it was natural she should turn to me. Also, she knew I was still working for you in me spare time, and p’raps that ’ad something to do with it. You’ve got a reputation, you know, and I’ve come in for a bit of it.”

He paused and regarded his employer defiantly. Campion’s expression was not helpful. Lugg sighed.

“When she come to me I ’elped her,” he said. “I felt it was my duty, and I ’elped ’er.”

“Yes, well, let’s hope you haven’t helped the nerveless Marchioness to jug,” observed Mr. Campion pleasantly. “You say you don’t know who the dead woman is; has your distinguished confederate any idea?”

“No. She don’t know neither. That’s wot’s made ’er so wild, if you ask me.”

Mr. Campion put on his coat. “Do you know how the woman died?”

“Oh, that’s all right, don’t worry about that. It’s nothing fishy.” Lugg was unexpectedly confident. “That’s O.K. I’ve taken care of that. You know me by this time. I wouldn’t mix myself up with nothing dangerous.”

Campion regarded his old friend with respectful astonishment.

“I don’t know how carefree the old country has gone in my absence,” he said, “but you seem to be considerably more casual with your corpses than is the fashion elsewhere. Are you telling me you’ve got a doctor’s certificate for that body? What are you doing? Just throwing a small funeral from my flat?”

“No, cock. No. Not yet.”

Lugg was uncomfortable, and again the unusual gleam of alarm showed for an instant in his small eyes. “We ain’t ’ad a doctor yet, as a matter of fact. But I was goin’ to, of course. It was suicide, if you want to know—straight suicide. Bottle of muck by ’er side, and everything.”

Campion remained unimpressed, and Lugg went on earnestly:

“We ’ad to move ’er, you see, because she was in ’is bed. It didn’t look the article, especially with ’im due any minute for the wedding. That’s going to be the day after tomorrow.”

Mr. Campion sat down slowly on a chair which was fortunately behind him.

“Whose bed?” he enquired.

“ ’Is nibs’.”

“Carados’s?”

“Yus, I’m telling you.”

“Whose wedding?”

“ ’Is, of course. Don’t you see no papers where you come from?” Lugg’s voice was becoming appealing. “There’s been pictures of them both in all of them; ’im in his uniform with ’is ribbons up, and ’er looking about fourteen and all very nice. I’m going to ’and round at the reception,” he added shyly, “if I get out of this.”

Mr. Campion struggled to adjust his mind to the facts so startlingly presented. One complete incongruity in the story stuck out and he commented on it casually. He was very fond of Evangeline, he said, but he could not believe she could look fourteen. The Heavy Rescue stalwart appeared puzzled.

“ ’Er name’s Susan,” he said, adding brightly, “Oh, I get you, cock, it’s not the same girl. No, he ain’t marrying Miss Snow, he’s got one of my ambulance drivers, Admiral’s daughter. The bloke wot got himself in the papers by sinking the Prince Otto. You’ve seen ’er, she’s in the next room. That’s the trouble, or some of it,” he added gloomily.

“How did she get into it?”

“By a ruddy mistake,” said Lugg with feeling. “Nothing’s gorn right with this thing from the first. I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s going to be unlucky. I ’ope it’s goin’ to be a lesson to us all. No, well, you see, it was ’er time orf from duty this afternoon. She ’asn’t got a deputy now as things ’ave been quiet for a bit. When she’s away I mind the ambulance. To tell you the truth, things is so quiet I’m pretty well alone at the depot most afternoons.”

Mr. Campion began to understand.

“You brought the body here in an ambulance,” he said. “In fact, Lady Carados made a confidant of you because you were the one man who could get hold of a vehicle without being questioned. That’s a relief, the woman isn’t quite mad after all.”

Lugg looked hurt. “She confided in me because she knew she could trust me,” he said. “But I’m not saying the ambulance might not ’ave ’elped. You can’t trust a taxi to ’old ’is tongue, and no one’s got a car running these days. It was a very good idea of ’ers, and it would ’ave worked, too, if the girl ’ad not come into the square just as we were slipping out of it.”

“She followed you, did she?”

“Yus, she did.” Lugg was torn between admiration and exasperation. “She’s a conscientious little beggar—some of these kids are; and when she saw ’er ambulance being drove orf by a woman (I was in the back, you see, with the corp), she thought the vehicle was being pinched, and I suppose she ’opped in a taxi and followed it. Anyway, she came barging in the door right on top of us, and when she saw wot we’d got, she was frightened. We was just tryin’ to argue a little reason into ’er, when you come in.”

Mr. Campion made no comment. He glanced at his watch, noting that he had twenty minutes before he need start for the station. The situation was so macabre, the possibilities so unpleasant, the characters so illustrious, and the explanations so humanly silly that it left him speechless.

Lugg was watching him under heavy white lids. No voices sounded from the sitting-room, and there was silence in the flat.

Lugg stirred uncomfortably. “It wasn’t ’alf so barmy when we started out,” he said. “Left to ourselves, me and the old lady might have brought it orf and not a soul been the wiser. Now that the girl’s in it—not to mention you—it’s not going to be so easy.”

Mr. Campion eyed his old companion steadily.

“And there are the others,” he said. “All the hundreds of others who are bound to hear the story in confidence. My dear good chap, you don’t imagine that you can keep a thing like this quiet? Just think ...”

He broke off and sat listening. Someone was coming up the stairs; light, purposeful footsteps advancing upon them steadily; on and on, they came, nearer and nearer, neither hurrying nor hesitating, but coming ever closer to the door.