Dancers in Mourning (32 page)

The ominous scratching at the door-lock ceased as with a triumphant click the bolt shot back and the door slid quietly open, to reveal a flushed and excited Sarah with a bent hairpin in her hand.

‘Done it!' she screamed, dancing round the old man like a demented puppy. ‘Done it! Done it! Done it!'

‘Shut up.' Lugg let out a friendly blow at the side of her head which would have felled an ox and mercifully missed its half-hearted objective. ‘Don't bawl the place down. You'll get us ticked orf again. No need to go orf like a gin palace on a Saturday even if you can pick a lock with anyone twice yer size. Now, there's something useful I've learnt yer, only don't advertise it. That's the kind of trick you want to keep under yer 'at – see? 'Ullo …'

The final utterance was in the nature of a warning. They both stiffened and Mr Lugg's beady bright eyes rested coldly upon the thin form at the far end of the corridor.

Campion came forward.

‘Lugg, what are you doing?'

‘Amusin' the child.' Legg was truculent and casual. ‘I'm a nursemaid now. Didn't they tell you?' He looked down at his pupil and winked. ‘Run along now, Miss Sarah,' he said with travestied formality. ‘Nuss will no doubt be a-searchin' of for you. You do not want to cause her any anxiety? I thought not. We will continue our 'obby later on. Go on, get out. Beat it, there's a good kid.'

Sarah squeezed his hand and slipped the hairpin into his coat pocket.

‘Thank you, Mr Lugg,' she said with rehearsed dignity. ‘That was most int'resting.'

She walked off sedately, only breaking into uncontrollable giggles when the new-comer had been safely passed. Campion waited until she was out of earshot and spent the time surveying his only real responsibility with a chilly interest guaranteed to inspire shame.

‘You think you're a damn fine sort of a fellow, I suppose?' he said at last. ‘A sort of ministering boy-scout, bringing a little dusty sunshine to a misunderstood child?'

Lugg sniffed to convey that he was not impressed.

‘I'm very fond of my fellow-creatures,' he said. ‘Besides, you never know when a simple little wrinkle like that might come in useful. Every kid ought to learn 'ow to pick a lock. She's a helpless, noisy little bit. She's bound to come up against it some time in 'er life. I'm preparin' of 'er for it. I'm doin' 'er a bit of good. You lay orf. I like 'er. She's all right.'

‘She reminds you of yourself when you were a child, no doubt?' inquired Mr Campion affably.

Lugg looked down over a highly-coloured career to some distant hotbed in the slums of Canning Town.

‘No,' he said seriously. ‘Not reelly. She's simple to what I was. It's the bringin' up what does it. Well, you've turned up at last, 'ave you? About time, too. I've 'ad a room ready for you for a week. Come on. I'll show it to you now you are 'ere.'

He waddled down the corridor with Campion behind him.

‘There you are,' he said, flinging open the door of the chamber immediately above the small music-room. ‘Mr Benjamin Konrad's late apartment. The last gentleman 'oo slept in 'ere was blown to Buenos Aires. 'Ope you'll be comfortable.'

Campion walked through the chintz-hung room and stood looking out over the wide garden, misty in the twilight.

‘Well?' he inquired over his shoulder. ‘Noticed anything of value about this business?'

‘No. I'm keepin' right out of it.' Lugg heaved a leather suitcase on to the bedspread and began to pitch out its contents. ‘You didn't think to bring me a shirt or two, I don't suppose?' he said. ‘I'm right away from civilisation down 'ere, you know.'

‘No, I didn't. Leave those things alone. Pull yourself together. You can't have been going about in a trance. You must have noticed something. What have you been doing?'

‘What I was asked — bein' a butler.' Lugg sounded smugly satisfied. ‘You lent me to the lady as a butler and a butler I've bin. It's not my line, but I've made a job of it and in a way I've quite enjoyed it. The servants are well under my thumb and in my spare time I do my best to amuse the kid, 'oo I like. Give me a year or two with that kid and I'll make somethink of 'er. She's got the makin's of a first-class little tough. I'm very strict, you know. No swearin'. Nothin' unladylike. She's give me a few tips, too. If there's somethink I don't know and don't like to lower meself by askin' the servants, I mention it to 'er, and if she don't know either she gits it out the nurse. It's mutual.

‘Oh, we've '
ad
the police 'ere – I can see by yer face that's all you're interested in. There's a Sergeant stayin' at the pub down the road as far as I know, but I've not let a pack of flatties bother me.'

He seemed to regard the final statement as a sign of virtue.

‘That was what you told me, wasn't it?'

Campion sighed. ‘Quite,' he said. ‘Oh, by the way, perhaps I ought to have mentioned it; if there is a fire while you are here you will act – temporarily, of course – as a fireman. And if the river at the bottom of the garden overflows and floods the lower storey you should become for a brief hour or so a boatman, conveying members of the household to safety as best you can.'

Lugg was silent for a moment.

‘You're not quite yourself, are you?' he said at last. ‘Anythin' up? Fun's fun, but no need to be spiteful. This is a mad-'ouse, you know. If I was the Inspector I'd arrest the lot, give 'em good food and attention fer a month and 'ang the one 'oo was still crackers at the end of the time.'

Having delivered himself of this dictum, he returned to the suitcase.

‘Serve the boss right for allowin' the bike in the 'ouse,' he remarked over his shoulder. ‘I see by the papers they suspect the lamp now. I thought there must be somethink like that by the way they was carryin' on about the machine. I ban newspapers in the kitchen. I tell 'em I've got the inside stuff and everythin' they want to know they must take from me. I 'ad to do somethin' like that or they'd all be leavin', and I don't want the blarsted 'ousework of a place this size on me 'ands.'

He paused and glanced sharply towards the door just before someone knocked.

‘Come in, Mr Faraday,' he called out, and added as he opened the door with all the dignity of a better trained man, ‘I knoo it was you, sir. 'Eard you breathin'. 'Ere is Mr Campion – at last.'

A subdued and almost pallid Uncle William came padding softly into the room.

‘My dear boy,' he said with genuine emotion. ‘My dear boy.'

Lugg bristled and his small and bright black eyes contained a gleam of jealousy.

‘Wot O! the fatted calf,' he murmured derisively.

Uncle William, who was slow of perception, did not see the allusion instantly and appeared to think some personal insult was intended. He swung round with parade-ground severity.

‘I'll trouble you to control your tongue, my man. Get out. I want to speak to your master.'

The fat man by the bedside dropped the sponge-bag he had taken from the case and stood staring, his huge face dark with indignation.

‘Be off with you,' insisted Uncle William with more vigour than impressiveness.

Lugg looked at Campion and, receiving no hint of encouragement, moved ponderously towards the door.

When it was actually closing behind him and he had not been recalled he paused and put his head in again.

‘If you 'ave not dined, sir, there are a few cold bits on the sideboard in the dining-room,' he said with tremendous dignity, and, having recovered his self-esteem and achieved the last word, he surged off to his own domain below stairs.

In the bedroom Uncle William frowned and cast a worried glance behind him.

‘I don't want to hurt the fellow's feelings,' he said, ‘but this is no time to stand on ceremony. What a business, Campion! What a terrible business! You probably know more about it than I do, if the truth were told, but I've watched some of the effects down here. We're livin' in a nightmare, my boy. I've woken up from a nap more than once with my heart in my mouth. One can't forget it even for a moment. It hangs over one's head day and night. Day and night!'

He gobbled a little and wiped his face with one of his stiff white handkerchiefs.

‘Just when we thought the worst was over bar the shoutin', and were quietly gettin' back to normal again, that silly little whipper-snapper calls in for his bicycle and rides off on it to meet his death. When I first heard of it on the Sunday night I own I wasn't broken-hearted – except for the other poor souls, of course. Konrad always struck me as a weed, and it didn't upset me to hear that he'd gone to the Great Incinerator. But yesterday, when the London police arrived with the local man and started puttin' us through it about the bicycle, it came to me in an overwhelmin' flash that we were back in the mire again, and well over the ankles this time.'

He sat down in a chintz-covered arm-chair, which was too small to contain his plump sides with comfort, and remained hunched up, looking down at his red leather house-slippers.

‘The police are confused, shouldn't wonder,' he remarked presently. ‘Last Friday was the funeral of that silly woman who began this run of bad luck and on the Saturday Jimmy gave up his matinée to put in the best part of a long day on the new show. All the principals came down here on Sunday mornin' and most of 'em stayed the night to go on with the work over Sunday. It's goin' to be a terrible performance, I'm afraid. Didn't like what I saw of it. Still, that's neither here nor there. When Inspector Yeo started askin' me who was in the house at the end of last week I was hard put to it to give him a full answer. I told him he'd never arrive at the truth by the elimination of possible suspects.

‘There was a prince here for a night – Friday or Saturday. A Russian feller. Very civil. Seemed to be an old friend of Jimmy's. Knew him in Paris years ago. Kept me awake half the night with tales of wolf-shootin'.

‘The place has been full of people. I said to the police sergeant it's like lookin' for a tiger in South America. If he's there he's in disguise. And if you accept that he may be any one of the peculiar-lookin' fellers about.'

He paused, blew, and raised a worried plump old face to his friend's.

‘We're in the devil of a hole, Campion,' he said. ‘Which of us is it? D'you know?'

He received no answer and bowed his head, so that his misty tonsure, frilled with yellow-white curls, made a sudden and pathetic appearance.

‘I can't believe it,' he said. ‘And I'll tell you something, Campion. I'm not an obstinate feller by any means, but there is one possibility – only a faint one, mind; but I'm not a fool, I see it – there's one possibility that I'm shuttin' my eyes to. Come what may, I'm not goin' to believe it. Understand?'

Mr Campion glanced over the garden again.

‘I rather thought you might feel like that,' he said.

Uncle William looked up sharply. His bright blue eyes were hunted and shifty.

‘Why should –' he began, but thought better of it. ‘No point in fruitless discussion,' he said. ‘Feel like a rat in a treadmill once you start thinkin'. Tell you what I've done. I've consulted my heart and made up my mind and I'm stickin' to my decision. It may not be the right way, but battles have been won on it, my boy. If you don't mind we won't mention it again.

‘I don't like the girl goin' off like this, do you? What's she up to?'

Campion swung round from the window.

‘What girl?'

‘Eve. Didn't Linda tell you?' Uncle William seemed put out. ‘What's Linda holdin' that back for? Thought she'd get you down here safely first, I suppose. Can't tell with a woman. Yes, well, Eve's gone, you know. Went off yesterday afternoon. Got the chauffeur to take her to the station with a small suitcase. The feller said she'd been cryin'. I've been sittin' by the telephone all day, waitin' for her to ring up. Nothin' yet.'

Campion stared at him in fascinated silence. Uncle William dropped his eyes.

‘Queer, isn't it?' he murmured.

‘Very.' Campion's tone was sharp. ‘Do the police know about it?'

‘No. No, I don't think they do, as a matter of fact. That is, they don't realise we don't know where she is.'

Campion leant back against the window-ledge.

‘You'll have to explain, you know.'

Uncle William shrugged his shoulders and stirred uncomfortably.

‘Feel I may be makin' a mountain out of a molehill, don't you know,' he observed in a particularly unsuccessful attempt to hide his concern. ‘I'm gettin' on myself and, realisin' the girl's so young, I'm apt to be a bit of an old woman. Very likely Linda feels much the same and doesn't think it was worth mentionin'.'

Mr Campion thought of that long, silent drive through the country lanes and wrenched his mind away from the contemplation of it.

‘What happened exactly?' he demanded. ‘When the chauffeur came home he was questioned, I suppose?'

‘Yes, well, we saw him comin' in, don't you know, and asked him where he'd been.'

Uncle William managed to sound reluctant without being actually evasive.

‘The long and the short of it was that there was a certain amount of general surprise when we heard the girl had gone off without a word. Someone ran up to her room to see if she'd left a note and when we found she hadn't we were all standin' about, worried, and then Jimmy, who was down here after waitin' to see the police, suddenly seemed to remember that he knew about it. He said she'd be back today. The Sergeant didn't ask for her this mornin' when he came round and no one mentioned her bein' away. There's so many people comin' and goin' the police can't keep track of it all unless they come out into the open and keep the house under general arrest.'