Читать книгу The Beckoning Lady - Margery Allingham - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Whilst taking on the whole a poorish view of Miss Pinkerton and her efficiency, Mr Campion was forced to admit that she had placed her finger on quite a problem. As he stepped off the harebells and white violets which covered the pocket-sized heath and made for the Mill he was considering it himself.

Divisional Detective Chief Inspector Charles Luke, with whom he had collaborated in several adventures, was at a turning-point in a career which had promised to be remarkable. He had attained his present rank at an astonishingly early age, and now, after the great shuffle in the C.I.D., seemed almost certain to achieve one of the great prizes and become head of the Flying Squad. The Caroline Street raid in February, which had been as messy a business as Campion could remember, had threatened at first to be a major disaster for Luke but had turned out gloriously. Surgery had saved his left arm, the four flesh wounds had healed more quickly than anybody had expected, and he had emerged from hospital with generous sick leave and a recommendation for the coveted Police Medal, a decoration which is never given by accident. Less than a month ago everything had seemed set-fair for his future.

Mr Campion shook his head as he turned in to the path which led to the wooden water-mill and the house beside it. He thought he had never been more dismayed in all his life than on the night before, when he had seen Luke return. Yet the situation had arisen innocently. Charlie Luke’s release from Guy’s Hospital had coincided with Aunt Hatt’s departure for Connecticut, and since Amanda and the family could not get down to Pontisbright immediately it had seemed only reasonable for Luke and Mr Lugg, Campion’s friend and knave, to come on ahead for a week or so. Luke was to convalesce and Lugg to nurse himself over the first revolting paroxysms of the sentimental nostalgia to be expected on his rediscovery of his favourite place. Campion had thought it impossible that anything irremediable could happen to the two of them in the interval, but the moment he had stepped out of his own car and was experiencing once again the first shock of surprised delight which the sight of the old house always gave him, he had been aware of trouble. Luke had lost his unnatural fragility and was obviously mending fast, but there was something not at all right with him.

In the normal way the D.D.C.I. was a considerable personality. He looked like a gangster and was a tough. He was six-foot-two and appeared shorter because of the width of his chest and shoulders, and his dark face with the narrow eyes under brows which were like circumflex accents was alive and exciting. He possessed the Londoner’s good temper, which is also ferocious, and a quality of suppressed force was apparent in everything he did. Mr Campion liked him enormously.

On that first evening of their joint holiday ten days ago Luke had done his best to appear much as usual when he had welcomed his host on the banks of the mill-race, but Campion was not deceived. He knew panic when he saw it. For some hours afterwards there had seemed to be no conceivable explanation. The village of Pontisbright, straggling round the little green, had appeared as blandly vegetable as ever and a good deal more innocent than Mr Campion had known it in his time. But on the following morning the mystery had solved itself bluntly. At eleven o’clock the Hon. Victoria Prunella Editha Scroop-Dory had wandered down from the new rectory, where she lived with her mother, widow of the final Baron Glebe, and her mother’s cousin, the Reverend Sam Jones-Jones, who was called ‘The Revver’ by everybody, and had sat down by the porch. A few minutes later, after a struggle which was very nearly visible, the wretched Luke had taken the chair opposite her. There had been no conversation.

Campion had been so startled by this unforeseen misfortune that he had not even brought himself to mention the matter to Amanda, who affected to be ignorant of it, and so a whole uncomfortable week had passed with Luke in misery, Campion feeling for him but thoroughly alarmed, and the young woman strolling in each day.

The sudden death of Uncle William over at The Beckoning Lady, which had saddened them all, had seemed to give Luke sudden resolution. On the day before the funeral he had announced his intention of intruding on their kindness no more, had fetched out his tidy little sports car, and without making any more bones about it bolted for his life. Campion had seen him go with heartfelt relief.

But on the evening of the day after the funeral, while he was still congratulating himself on a serious danger past, without warning Luke returned. In the soft yellow light, while the sound of the mill-race and the songs of the birds were making the ancient conception of paradise appear both likely and sensible, the familiar car had swung on to the flags before the house and a grim yet hangdog figure had stepped out of it to face him. Luke had, he said woodenly, a few more days’ leave.

So today, taking it all in all, it was quite understandable that as Mr Campion strode homewards he was almost afraid to turn the corner. For a blessed moment he thought she was not there. He could see the back of Luke’s close-cropped head above a deck-chair in the covey of them set out on the ancient paving-stones. It was a civilized scene. There were morning papers on the ground and the gleam of hospitable pewter in the dark doorway, and behind, the low half-timbered façade windowed like a galleon and graceful as if it were at sea. Mr Campion took a step forward and paused. Prune was present after all. She was sitting quietly in the shadows on one of the settles in the porch, and as the wind stirred the limes beside the house a shaft of sunlight flickered over her.

To modern eyes she was, he thought, as odd a looking girl as one could wish to see. She was very tall, with narrow bones, a white skin, yellow-brown hair, and her family’s distinctive features. Throughout the centuries the Glebe face has had its ups and downs. The young Queen Victoria is said to have observed somewhat brutally that it was ‘particularly becoming in effigy’, but since that time it has not been in fashion. Mr Campion found it sad.

Prune’s beauty, he thought, had been bred to express an ideal which was literally medieval. Piety, docility, quiet, might have suited it well enough, but any attempt to invest it with the modern gamin touch was ruinous. The girl was not a brilliant brain but she had grasped that much and at twenty-six had given up trying, only to fall back on precepts which had come down to her with, as it were, the outfit. She kept the nails on her narrow hands short, avoided ornament, and dabbed herself half-heartedly with the kind of lipstick which does not really show.

This morning Mr Campion regarded her with helpless irritation. It seemed to him that anyone who had ever had time to think about her must have despaired. The wars had wiped out the Glebe line and the attendant revolutions the last of their fortune. Somewhere in the middle, all the great purposes for which they had bred themselves so carefully appeared to have gone too. Poor wretched girl, she had been born too late, and had arrived, meticulously turned out, for a party which had been over for some time. He understood from The Revver that as a somewhat desperate measure she had been given five years in the W.R.N.S. but had emerged from the experience just exactly the same as when she had enlisted. Looking at her, Mr Campion was no more surprised than if he had heard that two seasons with the Pytchley foxhounds had left an Afghan practically unchanged. He did not like the present situation at all. Its futility exasperated and alarmed him. In his view, Luke was a fine and useful man, far too valuable to have his progress hindered and his emotional balance endangered by any hopelessly unhappy experience of this sort. He joined them and sat down a little more firmly than was his custom.

Luke glanced at him but did not speak. He looked quiet and watchful and a good deal less than his age, and Mr Campion reflected with wry satisfaction that at least he was retaining his capacity to do everything in the most thorough-going way possible. Campion hated it. He had seen Luke with young women before, teasing them, patronizing them, showing off like a whole pigeon-loft. This was an entirely new departure. This might do a man harm for life. He regarded Prune with cold anger.

She met his gaze with a clear blue stare and returned to Luke. She was sitting on a little stool, her long arms round her knees, waiting. She had no coquetry, no subterfuge, no skill; she just thought he was wonderful. Mr Campion was left to thank his stars that she could be relied on not to say so outright.

He had no doubt at all that it would pass and that in a week or a month or a year that clear-eyed stare would be directed elsewhere, equally hopelessly. The fact had got to be faced. Prune as a present-day product was uneconomic. In present circumstances she was a menace. At last he cleared his throat.

‘Did you—er—bring any message ... or anything?’ he demanded.

She blinked thoughtfully, considering him apparently for the first time.

‘Oh yes, I did as a matter of fact.’ Her languid voice, which was a caricature of all such voices and belonged to a much slower world, came softly through the summer air. ‘Minnie and Tonker are dropping in to see you on their way to Kepesake station this morning. Tonker is having a second-class white burgundy week and will bring some with him. He may be late so will you please have some glasses at the ready?’

‘Oh yes.’ Mr Campion brightened despite his apprehension. ‘Tonker is still here, is he? I thought he’d gone up. Where did you hear all this?’

‘Minnie phoned The Revver this morning.’ Prune seemed disposed to answer questions if she could still look at Charlie Luke. ‘Just to thank him for getting the funeral safely over, you know.’ The remark trailed into silence and Campion grunted.

‘No loose ends?’ he suggested helpfully.

‘Well, some parsons are frightfully inefficient. The Revver does get things reasonably tied up. He’s not mental, even if he is my uncle.’ The Glebe mouth, which Vandyke captured so well and Gainsborough muffed so badly, drooped with faint self-disparagement. ‘He was tremendously relieved. He thought they were still quarrelling when she didn’t turn up at the service. The postman told him that it was because she’d got a black eye, but he didn’t believe that, naturally. But he is pleased she phoned because they haven’t spoken for weeks.’

‘Why?’ Mr Campion found himself determined to divert her attention, if he had to shout at her.

Prune raised brows which were high enough already. ‘Oh, just one of their things. The Revver is terrified that she might go religious. It’s all those pictures her father painted, I think, lions and lambs and saints and rather nice interiors. But that’s only in his subconscious. He says she’s all alone down there except for the menagerie and that women often go a bit peculiar about that sort of thing at her age.’

‘Does he say this to her?’ inquired Mr Campion with interest.

‘Of course he does.’ The drawl went on lazily but her eyes scarcely stirred from the dark brooding face opposite. ‘He’s always begging people not to be religious. The Bip had to warn him to use caution lest by sheer inadvertence he emptied the church. The Revver says you can be as pi as you like privately, but you mustn’t think too much about it or you may forget yourself and mention it. He was explaining this to Minnie one day in the winter, when she was rather miserable and he’d ploughed down there through the snow to take her the parish magazine, and she said that what he meant, she supposed, was that a Christian gentleman must never run the risk of degenerating into a vulgar Christian. He said that was exactly what he did mean. And she said he was a damned old British humbug.’

‘British?’

‘Yes, that’s what hurt him. He’s Welsh. But she was having one of her American days. Sometimes she’s one and sometimes the other; you never know. And so she went on to mention that in her opinion, speaking as at least half a good American, one had only got to consider the tenets laid down for the English gent to realize exactly what sort of raging brute the animal must be by nature to make such a fuss about conforming to them. Not trampling on old women, and not being cruel to children, and so on. That was the quarrel.’

She paused and turned slowly to look at him at last.

‘It’s a good thing it’s over,’ she droned on seriously, ‘because Minnie’s really getting more and more peculiar. The village says it’s not religion, it’s blackmail. They know most things but they get it a bit wrong usually.’

Mr Campion grinned at her. ‘You just hear it on the drums, I suppose?’

‘No.’ Prune was undisturbed. ‘I listen. I can’t make friends with the village and I’m no good at bossing them, but I stick around and after a while they just forget I’m there and talk. Are you going to get the glasses for Tonker, or do you want me to do it?’

Before he could reply there was a crisp rustle behind them and a utility brake, driven with distinction, came to a silent halt on the exact edge of the gravel. Instantly the landscape became full of excitement.

A somewhat dishevelled Amanda, who looked so like herself at seventeen that Mr Campion discovered that he was thinking absent-mindedly what a silly young fool he was himself, slid out, waved to them briefly to stay where they were, and released a fine mixed bag from the body of the van. A small boy shot out first, followed by a fat, Victorian-looking collie, and finally, amid a shower of lemons, Mr Magersfontein Lugg himself, garbed tastefully pour le sport.

Both Amanda and her son wore well-washed boiler-suits whose original rust colour had faded to a pinkish tan. The Pontisbright hair, which can be mistaken for fire when seen under Suffolk skies, flamed on them both, Amanda’s a thought darker now but the boy’s a true ruby shouting in the sun. At that distance they looked absurdly alike, two skinny figures superintending the descent of the others. Apart from the fact that the dog dismounted head foremost and Mr Lugg did not, the two performances were curiously alike, each operation involving much hesitation and manoeuvre.

The animal belonged to Aunt Hatt and was a black and white long-haired shepherd dog. He was marked like a Panda and now in middle age was of enormous size and almost indistinguishable from one. The crofter from Inverness-shire who had sold him as a puppy to the New England lady had told her distinctly that his name was ‘Choc’, and, disliking diminutives, she had had it engraved in full upon his collar—‘Choc-ice’. He was frighteningly intelligent and assumed he was the party’s sole host. On the other hand, from the way he was dressed Mr Lugg appeared to infer that he considered himself the sole guest. Taking each garment in order of its first appearance, he wore tennis shoes, a pair of black dress trousers which he was using up, a white linen coat as a badge of office, an open-neck shirt to show his independence, and a hard black hat to make it clear to the natives that he came from a civilized city.

As soon as he reached the ground, he stretched himself gingerly, hitched his trousers, and began to shout at the boy Rupert. His rich voice, thick as the lubricant of his latter years, mingled with the chatter of the mill-race.

‘Leave them lemons and come ’ere. Bottle o’ beer’s gone over in the back. Save the fags or they’ll be as wet as a Brewer’s Calamity. Buck up. Waste not want not. Where d’you think you are? In the Army? We’ve got to do more than sign for this lot.’

Amanda left them to it and came over to take the chair Campion pulled out for her beside his own. She was brown and dusty and her honey-coloured eyes were dancing. She spread out her oil-stained hands and her heart-shaped face was alive with laughter.

‘Twenty years doesn’t count, apparently,’ she said, her high clear voice sounding suitably gratified. ‘I’m having the resident mechanic’s return. I took down Honesty Bull’s electric pump this morning. He’s still landlord of The Gauntlett and sent you his best respects. I also saw Scatty Williams who used to work for us. He said I could take his television to bits seeing as how I’d designed an aeroplane! Oh I am having a lovely time.’

‘So am I,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Been to see a grave. There was a ghoul there.’ He felt a brute as her smile faded and he patted her apologetically. ‘Tonker’s coming,’ he said to cheer her.

‘Oh but he’s not.’ It was her turn to be sorry for him. ‘We met them in the village. They’re late for the train. They can’t make it this morning but Minnie wants us to go over after lunch, if you don’t mind awfully working very hard. They’re getting ready for the party on Saturday. Hallo Prune.’

‘Hallo.’ Prune’s eyes were like a Siamese cat’s in colour and she turned them reluctantly from the unnervingly silent figure of the Chief Inspector and settled herself to behave.

‘It’s still on, is it, the party?’ she inquired dreamily. ‘The Revver thought that Minnie was sounding him about it, to see if it was decent to have it so soon after the funeral, I mean, but he couldn’t be sure. She’s not too happy about it, is she?’

Amanda appeared to consider the question with great seriousness.

‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘She’s a little bit odd, and she’s hurt her eye or something. But Tonker has no doubts at all. He says it’s been laid on for six months and that his old friend Uncle William would burst like a subterranean magnum at the thought of being the cause, however innocent, of delaying the just consumption of alcohol. He also says that he’s no idea who he’s asked anyway, and so there’s no question of putting anyone off. He’s going to have the party.’ She glanced at Campion. ‘It’s a Perception and Company Limited do. Tonker and Wally have laid it on and the Augusts are coming.’

Prune stirred. ‘Last time the Augusts came to one of Tonker’s parties it was clowns v. kids all over the estate, and there was an awful row because somebody’s child got kidnapped and turned up inside the big drum at the grand finale of “Socks and Shoes” at the Hippodrome.’

Amanda nodded gravely. ‘I heard about that. I heard a lot of peculiar things in the village. Is Minnie all right. Prune?’

‘I think so.’ The observation did not sound convincing. ‘I haven’t seen her for ages, and anyway I expect she’s rather upset about Uncle William. She was very fond of him and he did die very suddenly, and it was only last Friday midnight.’

‘How were they today?’ Mr Campion sounded wistful and a grin split Amanda’s triangular mouth.

‘To be honest, they looked like a seaside picture-postcard,’ she said, laughing. ‘They were wedged in the tub cart together, with the donkey in front looking very knock-kneed. Minnie had her John hat on her grey bob and Tonker was all dressed up for London, and they were roaring with laughter over a game they’d invented. Some woman had written to this morning’s paper to say that her cat was so clever that she always had to spell things in front of it. Tonker was chanting “the m-o-k-e-s-t-i-n—...” and Minnie was trying to shut him up because they were passing the Miss Farrows, and giggling so that the tears were streaming down her nose, you know how they do.’

Mr Campion sighed. ‘They sound all right. Why does Minnie maintain that ass? Exercise?’

Prune gazed into the middle distance. ‘She says a car is out of the question.’ She paused and added inconsequentially, ‘There are fourteen gold frames still in packing-cases in the granary behind the barn.’

In the silence which greeted this news, vaguely ominous in a countryside which can boast the highest percentage of rare lunatics in the world, Rupert, who had come up unobserved on springing feet, laid a bunch of wilted greenery on his father’s knees.

‘For you,’ he said politely.

‘Kind,’ conceded Mr Campion, ‘and thoughtful. A curious collection. Who sent it?’

The boy was at the ballet age. He raised his thin arms and danced a little, whilst thinking no doubt of duller means of expression.

‘A man,’ he said at last and waved vaguely towards the heath.

‘Rupert went off on his own whilst Lugg was in the Post Office talking to Scatty, and when he turned up again he had these with him. He says someone gave them to him to give to you,’ Amanda explained as she leant forward to take one spray from the bunch. ‘We thought it could be a message, but this is the only one I know—cypress. That means—’ she hesitated, ‘—oh, something silly and unlikely. Death, I think.’

‘Mourning,’ a voice at her elbow corrected her, and Charlie Luke sat up suddenly, surprising everybody. For a moment he looked magnificent, poetic even, like the hero in the painting casting aside the restraining garlands of the nymphs. And then the cheerful roar of his personality emerged, starting up like the sudden sound of traffic in a radio programme. ‘Just a moment, chum, this is right in my manor.’

His long hand closed over the bunch of leaves and his bright black eyes glanced round the group as he included Prune gently into the party.

‘When I was a kid in south-east London I had a botany mistress,’ he announced, sketching her in in silhouette with his free hand. ‘She was the first woman I ever noticed wasn’t straight all the way up. We all had a crush on her and I used to carry her books.’ He favoured them with a smug adenoidal smile, crossed his eyes slightly, and sucked in his breath. ‘We used to bring her flowers, pinch them out of the park when the keepers weren’t looking. She never knew, poor girl. She was most respectable, and a little bit soft, I think, looking back. Well, she had a book about the language of flowers, and I, being smart as paint, got the name of it and borrowed another copy from the public library.’ His teeth shone for a second in his dark face. ‘That ended in tears,’ he said. ‘Well now, what have we here? Rhododendrons. I don’t know what that is. Monk’s-hood. God knows what that means either. Wait a minute. Escoltzia. That’s more like it. That means “do not refuse me”. I always had a bit of that in. And pink. Pink.’ He looked up. ‘A pink means “make haste”. Mourning? Do not refuse me? Make haste? Sounds like the same old story, guv’nor. Someone is broke again and unusually restrained about it. That’s my translation.’

Amanda rose and went into the house and a minute later leant out of the casement beneath which they sat. She had a white book lettered in gold and very tattered, in her outstretched hand.

‘I knew we had one long ago,’ she said. ‘Aunt Hatt is amazing. Everything is just where it always was. Look it up, Albert.’

Mr Campion took the volume obediently and pushed up his spectacles.

‘The Language and Sentiment of Flowers,’ he read. ‘Published by Messrs Ballantyne and Hanson, London and Edinburgh, 1863, price sixpence. Rhododendron: danger, beware.’ He looked up. ‘Eh? Where’s the other one?’ He took the final wilted stalk on which a few purple buds were just observable. ‘That’s Monk’s-hood, is it, Charles?’

‘Was when I went to school. What does it say? “The bums are in”?’

Mr Campion turned the pages among which the pressed flowers of earlier heart-throbs lay brown and sad.

‘Monk’s-hood,’ he said at last. ‘Well well. “A deadly foe is here”.’

Behind him Amanda laughed. ‘Again?’ she said.

Charlie Luke was frowning. He seemed mildly affronted.

‘Mourning—danger—do not refuse me,’ he repeated. That’s a smashing welcome home. Who gave it to you, son?’

Rupert, who had been standing before them throughout the incident, had lost interest in the proceedings. He was making a line on the stones with the rubber heel of his sandal. He liked the Chief Inspector, but the particular way his brows went up to points in the middle reminded him of one certain clown in the circus at Christmas who had seemed to him to have a face so exquisitely humorous that he could not think of it without laughing until his midriff hurt. As he had put the question Luke’s brows had shot up, and the mischief was done. Rupert could think of nothing else. He laughed and laughed until he slid under the chair on which Luke sat and was extricated and shaken and sat up still laughing, crimson in the face and hysterical.

‘A man,’ was all he could gasp, ‘just an ordinary man.’

Meanwhile Luke’s face had grown dark and he became very quiet. So far he had diagnosed a family joke but was not at all sure at whose expense it had been made. Mr Campion remained thoughtful. Presently he took out a pencil and made a note of the flowers and their meaning on the back of an envelope. As he glanced up he caught sight of the D.D.C.I.’s expression, and became instantly apologetic.

‘My dear chap,’ he said, ‘you must think we’re round the bend.’

Luke turned his head. Amanda had withdrawn and Prune, exhibiting unexpected resource in the matter, had dealt firmly with young Rupert, swinging him up under her arm and carrying him into the house. The two men were alone in the garden.

‘You and who else?’ Luke inquired suspiciously.

‘Me and my chum.’ Mr Campion appeared embarrassed. ‘My correspondent. The lad with the affected handwriting.’

Luke thrust his hands in his pockets, jangling the coins there. He was standing with his feet wide apart, rising slightly on his toes; the great weight of his shoulders was apparent and his chin was thrust forward aggressively.

‘There’s something terrifying about this place,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s so beautiful that you don’t notice for a bit that it’s sent you barmy. I feel drunk. All that green-grocery’s quite clear to you, is it? It’s just laid on with the sunshine and the nice voices and the barrel in the cellar, I suppose? Just one of the things you happen to have.’

Mr Campion looked more and more unhappy. He was looking at the stones at his feet and retracing with his own toe the line that Rupert had drawn. After a while he looked up.

‘Have you ever thought I was a bit redundant?’ he inquired unexpectedly. ‘My job, I mean. Don’t get this wrong. I don’t mean anything sociological. I’m merely talking of work. Has it ever occurred to you that I don’t do anything that the police couldn’t handle rather better?’

Luke coloured. He was laughing, and his eyes and the gleam of his teeth were very bright.

‘No,’ he protested, ‘no, of course not. You’re not a Private Eye and you’re not an amateur. I expect we look on you as an Expert, a chap we call in like a pathologist.’

‘Ye-es.’ The pale eyes behind Mr Campion’s spectacles were hard and surprisingly shrewd. ‘That’s all very nice of you, but it’s not the whole truth, you know. I have an extensive private practice.’

‘And that green stuff is part of it?’

‘It could be.’ Campion was still hesitant. He put his arm through Luke’s and they strolled down the path together, with the Mill on one side and Aunt Hatt’s flower garden on the other. ‘All policemen aim to be discreet,’ he continued at last, ‘but discretion isn’t a virtue, it’s a gift. I think you have it. Even so I’m not going to make any startling revelations. But because I don’t want you to think that we’re (a) laughing at you or (b) assing about in fairyland, I’ll explain how my mind is working. First of all I know no more than you do what that message means or where it comes from.’

‘But you think it is one?’

‘It strikes me as a bit much as a coincidence.’

‘Oh, so it does me. It’s a joke.’

‘Ah,’ Mr Campion paused to survey the multi-coloured garden dancing in the restless sunlight. ‘That’s the likeliest possibility except that the only man I can think of who would play it couldn’t possibly have done it.’

‘Oh. Who’s that?’

‘You.’

‘Me?’ Luke was scandalized. ‘Don’t be silly. Besides I’ve been here all the morning.’

‘I know.’ Campion’s grip on his arm tightened. ‘If it were you, there would have to be a confederate. I don’t think you have one. That leaves me with a straight message from one who knows me well enough to suppose that its inference would reach me.’

Luke scratched his shorn curls hopelessly. ‘It’s cock-eyed,’ he said, ‘out of this world. Who on earth ... ?’

Campion sighed. ‘Exactly.’ He sounded satisfied. ‘That is just what I thought. The one person who might conceivably have sent me a little dig in the ribs like that is not quite on earth. The reverse, in fact.’

Luke regarded him blankly. He had gathered a straw from his wanderings and had been fiddling with it for some time. Now he stuck it idly in his hair by way of comment.

Campion frowned at him. ‘Come come,’ he said. ‘Use the outfit, Chief. Start her up. It’s not as bad as that. Haven’t you ever had a business letter from a man who was almost too coy to send it? Something which begins with “Private and Confidential, Secret and Without Prejudice”, and continues “Burn before Reading” or words to that effect in the margin of every paragraph? Of course you have. In my experience, those letters always say the same thing. Someone who wishes to be kept right out of the affair has observed something which he feels it may be to his interest for you to know. This message strikes me as being the same sort of thing, but more so. It’s a business letter which in fact is so discreet that it doesn’t exist.’

Luke began to grumble. ‘Damned subtle stuff.’

‘Of course it is. That’s my line,’ said Albert Campion. After a pause he turned back to the house. ‘Mourning,’ he remarked. ‘This afternoon I’m going over to the only house in the place which is technically in mourning. Coming with me?’

Luke hesitated. He was staring across the border at a clump of Russell lupins, tall, narrow blossoms, cream fading to yellow fading to brown; odd, formal flowers, but beautiful and very unusual. Beyond them the river wound through the water-meadows to a grey distance which was streaked with gold where the woods began. He spoke reluctantly, but although there was apology in his voice there was no indecision there, rather a sort of resigned finality.

‘I’m booked to go that way this afternoon,’ he said, nodding upstream. ‘There’s otter there, they say. I’ve never seen one.’

Mr Campion opened his mouth to object that an otter is a creature of the dusk, but he changed his mind and said nothing. He recollected an axiom of his grandfather’s: ‘A treed cat, a man in love, and the French. God help the fool who tries to rescue any one of them.’

They walked back to the house in silence, but before they went in the D.D.C.I. spoke again. The withered posy lying on the stones caught his eye and he stopped to pick it up and tidy it away under the bushes by the door.

‘I don’t pretend to know much about it, but I’d say that if you’re right there was only one thing in the world as shy as this lot suggests,’ he remarked seriously, ‘and that’s Money.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Campion casually, ‘that’s what I thought.’