Dancers in Mourning (33 page)

He drew a deep breath and blinked uneasily.

‘I asked Jimmy straight out where she was and he said he thought she was stayin' with a woman friend in Bayswater. Linda knew the name and after Jimmy had gone to town she rang the woman up. But Eve wasn't with her and hadn't been.'

His voice trailed away.

Campion digested the somewhat disturbing story.

‘Was she in the habit of going off up to town at a moment's notice and staying the night with friends?'

‘Not without a word to anyone, my dear fellow.' Uncle William sounded shocked. ‘There's a funny thing for anyone to do. Monstrous in a girl of seventeen or so. I'm worried about her, Campion. She wrote that note I found in the bird's-nest all right.'

‘Oh, she did? Whom to?'

‘I never found out.' He reported the failure regretfully. ‘Couldn't keep my eyes on the tree all day. It was still there on Saturday. On the Sunday mornin', too. But on Monday I was prowlin' round early, tryin' to get my mind accustomed to the new catastrophe, when I caught a glimpse of someone in the woods ahead of me. I knew it was Eve by her pink dress. Presently she came past with her face screwed up and tears in her eyes, and when I said “Good mornin”' or somethin' equally footlin' she didn't look at me. When I got to the nest it was empty, but there were small fragments of the note scattered over the grass. Shouldn't have noticed them if I hadn't been lookin' for them. They were quite dry and it had showered heavily in the night, so I took it that she'd only just torn the paper up.'

For an instant a shy twinkle appeared in his eyes.

‘Rather neat work,' he murmured. ‘Don't you think?'

‘Very.' Campion was properly impressed. ‘Has Sock been down here?'

‘Several times. Run off his feet, poor lad. Don't know when he sleeps. Extraordinary thing! Have you noticed it, Campion? If a feller's under twenty-seven no one ever thinks he needs rest of any kind. Jimmy's not a hard man, but he looks on Sock as a sort of messenger-boy on wings. You don't think the girl would run off to Sock, do you? I mean, two young people on their own. No restraint. No curbin'. Monstrous.'

Campion passed his hand over his hair.

‘Who's in the house now, besides ourselves and Lugg?'

‘Only Linda and Miss Finbrough. Jimmy will be down in an hour or two and heaven knows whom he'll bring with him. Mercer's at his own cottage, in bed. Poisoned, silly feller.'

‘Poisoned?'

Uncle William chuckled.

‘Caught a cold comin' home on Friday night,' he said with malicious amusement. ‘Serve him right. Ought to have gone to the funeral. Terrible feller to have anythin' the matter with him. There were we, worried, nervous, distraught, and there was he fidgetin' about a cold comin' on. On Sunday I lost my temper with him. I told him to go to bed early and take somethin' hot and keep himself to himself instead of whinin' about the place doin' nothin' except scatterin' infection. What did the silly feller do then but wait until the last moment, when we were all thunderin' upset, havin' heard of the news of the rumpus on the wireless at nine o'clock, and then go down to the kitchen here to borrow a bottle of ammoniated quinine from the cook. He took it home, wearin' my ulster without a by-your-leave, and sent his man for a spoon. Naturally the feller, not knowin' what was wanted, brought the first one he saw, and Mercer took a tablespoonful in half a tumbler of water. The sensible dose is half to a whole teaspoonful.

‘Well, he went to bed, woke up half deaf and blind, and let out a howl for a doctor. I saw the medical man.' He smiled at the recollection of the meeting. ‘He called it cinchonism, and Mercer's still laid up. Better now, though. Saw him today. Told me the cracklin' in his ears was dying off a bit. Still, he's very sorry for himself, stupid feller.'

Linda did not appear when they went downstairs and Campion was grateful to her for her forbearance. A still reproachful Lugg brought Uncle William his half-decanter and set it down before him without a word. The old man sat looking at the golden-brown liquid in the cut glass for a long time. Campion thought his mind had wandered from it, when he suddenly bounced to his feet.

‘Don't think I will,' he announced. ‘Got to keep the mind clear. Don't drink as I used to – nothin' like. Still, can't sit lookin' at it. Put it away in the music-room in my cupboard. Come for a turn in the air.'

He stowed the whisky away, his plump hands infinitely gentle, and they went out into the warm scented garden. They were still strolling on the lawn when the Bentley's headlights drew great fingers across the dark grass.

Sutane was alone. They saw his slender, rackety figure silhouetted against the beam as he sprang out and came towards them.

‘Campion!' he said. ‘Good man. Knew you wouldn't desert me. Eve back, Uncle William?'

‘No.' The old man's tone was unwontedly brusque. ‘Understood you were goin' to find her and tell her to come home at once.'

Sutane did not answer immediately, and they had difficulty in keeping up with him. As they ascended the steps to the brightly-lit hall Campion glanced at his face and was startled by what he saw there. Every superfluous gramme of flesh had gone, leaving it an oddly vivacious death's head with the powerful, vigorous nerves almost apparent.

‘Oh, yes.' Sutane spoke lightly. ‘That's right. So I was. But the theatre's in such a hysterical state. Two deaths in the cast, you see, and they're a superstitious lot. I forgot all about it.'

He glanced at Campion obliquely and his dull, intelligent eyes were smiling and confiding.

‘She'll turn up tomorrow, won't she?' he said.

T
HE
sleeping house was bright and a little stuffy in the early morning when Mr Campion came quietly downstairs at half past six. The brilliant sunshine which even in the country seems so much cleaner at that hour than at any other in the day burst in through the curtains, making little patches of vivid colour on stone floor and carpet, while outside the gilded tops of the trees were dancing in the morning wind.

Campion had surveyed the cloakroom and the hot, sunbathed lounge with some care before he became conscious of a quiet scuffling in the drawing-room and put his head in to find Mr Lugg and his assistant already at their housework.

Clad in a singlet and a pair of ancient grey-black trousers, a luggage strap about his middle and disreputable carpet-slippers upon his bare feet, the temporary butler was dusting the china in the Georgian wall-cupboard, while a galvanic little bundle in pyjamas and a red dressing-gown scrubbed away with a rubber at the polished parquet floor. They were both engrossed in their work. Sarah's tight pigtails were screwed up on her small round head and her grunts and squeaks betrayed both concentration and considerable effort.

‘Go on, git right in the corners. I don't want to 'ave to go over it after you.' Lugg spoke over his shoulder as he rubbed a great thumb over the delicate face of a Dresden milkmaid. ‘Pretty stuff, this,' he observed. ‘Not of great value, you know, and it makes a lot of work. But I like it. Little dolls, that's what these are. Toys reelly.'

Campion waited with commendable caution until the fragile group was back in its place again before he spoke.

‘Good morning,' he ventured.

Lugg swung round. ‘Gawd! you give me a turn,' he said reproachfully. ‘What on earth are you up to now? I 'ave to git up in the dawn to git the work done in comfort and peace, but you needn't. The drawin'-room I always see to meself. I don't let a maid touch it. That means gitting up early so that I'm not seen about in me slacks. It lowers yer dignity if you're seen comfortable.

‘Go on, git on with it!' he added to his aide, who was listening to the conversation with apprehensive eyes. ‘'E ain't yer nurse. She 'elps me do the floors because I ain't so nippy on me knees,' he explained, returning to Campion. ‘What's the good of 'er sittin' up in bed waitin' for the 'ouse to wake? Much better make 'erself useful. You ain't tired, are you, chum?'

Sarah shook her head contemptuously, and Campion, realising that his presence was constraining a conversation between two persons whose minds were singularly of an age, left them and went back to his quiet investigations.

He did not find what he was looking for in any of the downstair rooms, although his search was thorough, but the failure did not seem to depress or even to surprise him, and, as signs of life began to appear in the house, he drifted out into the bright garden.

There his progress was equally slow. He pottered round the terrace and the shrubbery between the kitchen and music-room window, paying special attention to the water butts and the ornamental pool in the rosery. To his left the kitchen garden lay prim and tidy. Its rectangular beds were divided by moss-grown gravel paths and were bordered by fine box hedges nearly two feet high. The mid-season clipping was in progress, and the plump round tops of half the bushes were already replaced by neat square angles.

The gardener whom he met nodded at the half-finished work, and regretted that he had not been able to get back to it.

‘Friday and half-day Sat'day I done that piece,' he remarked. ‘I couldn't get to it Monday and Tuesday, and on Wednesday and Thursday I was down at the lake with the rest on 'em, helping the police.'

He cocked an inquisitive eye at Campion, who did not rise to the bait, but continued his walk after murmuring a few idle uninformative pleasantries.

He came to Linda as he approached Uncle William's bird's-nest copse. She came down towards him in a yellow linen frock. Her head was bent and her eyes were dark and preoccupied.

He hailed her hastily, and she looked up at him with a faint air of guilt which delighted him unreasonably.

‘I've been for a walk,' she said. ‘I didn't feel like sleeping. It's breakfast-time, you know. Come on.'

He dropped into step beside her and they walked along between the fine, flamboyant flowers, his tall lean figure towering over her.

‘When the police came the other day did they do anything besides ask questions?' he said suddenly.

‘Oh, they looked about a bit, you know. I don't know what for.' Her voice had a brittle quality and was determinedly light. ‘They were very secretive. Rather heavily tiptoe, in fact. They borrowed the gardeners to look for something in the lake. When I offered to let them see over the house they jumped at it.'

‘Why did you do that?' he said curiously. ‘It was very wise, of course.'

She was silent, but as they came across the lawn to the terrace she shivered suddenly.

‘I want it to end,' she said, ‘Whatever is coming, I want it to come and be over. D'you know?'

He nodded, reflecting that her complete comprehensibility constituted half her charm for him.

‘Did they find anything?'

‘No, I don't think so. They'll come back today.'

They mounted the terrace and came in through the open windows, to find Uncle William seated at a small oval table which had been set up for the meal. Miss Finbrough was beside him, eating steadily, obviously without thinking what she was doing.

She was directly in front of Campion as he came in and he was startled by the change in her. Her vivid colour, which was perhaps her most salient feature, was still there, but it was no longer the plump and shining redness of rawness and health. Now she was turgid-looking and dry-skinned, red with the redness of sandstone. Her strength seemed to have been drawn into herself, as if the muscles of her body had become knotted and hard.

She blinked at Campion dully, and gave him a brief mechanical smile.

Uncle William put down
The Times
. He had been looking at the small advertisements, which, in common with a great many of that eminent paper's subscribers, he found the most interesting reading of the day.

‘Friday,' he said. ‘So it comes round again. Good mornin'. Couldn't sleep. No reflection on your excellent beds, Linda, my dear. Can't read the paper. Doesn't seem to have any interest. No sense of humour either, an occasional pun in Greek, nothin' more. It's worry with me; just worry.'

He started violently as the door behind him opened and turned to cast a belligerent glance at the new-comer, who proved to be Mercer in a fine newish suit.

The composer came in noisily, making the door shudder as he threw it to behind him. He still looked pale from his recent misadventure and his eyes were hollow.

‘Hello,' he said. ‘Hello, you down again, Campion? God! I feel ill. I'm going to Town to see a specialist about this damned cinchonism, Linda. I'll be back tonight. My man's calling for me here, taking me to the station and meeting me off the last train. It's the ten-two, isn't it? I think I'll have some tea.'

His complete self-preoccupation came as a relief to them all, if only as a counter-irritant. He threw himself into an arm-chair and held out a still quavering hand for the cup Miss Finbrough passed to him.

‘I've been deaf!' he shouted to Campion. ‘My ears have been popping like machine-gun fire. I've been blind and cross-eyed.'

‘Still, it hasn't killed you,' muttered Uncle William, goaded into gentlemanly sarcasm. ‘Merciful thing.'

‘It is. Damned lucky.' Mercer held the cup to his grey lips. ‘I had a wretched policeman sitting on my bed all Wednesday, asking me idiotic questions about things he could quite easily have found out from somebody else. I was so ill that I told him what I thought of him, his Force and his stupid great notebook. He didn't come again. It's a poison, you know, cinchona bark. I could have died from it.'

Uncle William's forget-me-not eyes looked dangerous, and Linda cut in.

‘You'll be back tonight then, Squire?'

‘Yes, probably. I've got some work I want to finish. This damned business has wasted days.'