Hide My Eyes
Authors: Margery Allingham
CONTENTS
5. The Man Who Wanted to Know the Time
10. The Object of the Exercise
18. It Occurred to Mr. Campion
19. Preparation for an Accident
About the Book
A quiet, ruthless killer strikes in London’s theatreland. Superintendent Luke thinks he has seen the pattern before. Mr Campion wonders what became of the old couple in the country bus who must have witnessed the crime …
The trail leads to an eccentric museum in west London, and to a scrapyard in the East End. As an exercise in suspense
Hide My Eyes
is the equal of
The Tiger in the Smoke
.
About the Author
Margery Allingham was born in London in 1904. She attended the Perse School in Cambridge before returning to London to the Regent Street Polytechnic. Her father – author H. J. Allingham – encouraged her to write, and was delighted when she contributed to her aunt’s cinematic magazine,
The Picture Show
, at the age of eight.
Her first novel was published when she was seventeen. In 1928 she published her first detective story,
The White Cottage Mystery
, which had been serialised in the
Daily Express
. The following year, in
The Crime at Black Dudley
, she introduced the character who was to become the hallmark of her writing – Albert Campion. Her novels heralded the more sophisticated suspense genre: characterised by her intuitive intelligence, extraordinary energy and accurate observation, they vary from the grave to the openly satirical, whilst never losing sight of the basic rules of the classic detective tale. Famous for her London thrillers, she has been compared to Dickens in her evocation of the city’s shady underworld.
In 1927 she married the artist, journalist and editor Philip Youngman Carter. They divided their time between their Bloomsbury flat and an old house in the village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy in Essex. Margery Allingham died in 1966.
ALSO BY MARGERY ALLINGHAM IN
THE ALBERT CAMPION SERIES
The Crime at Black Dudley
Mystery Mile
Look to the Lady
Police at the Funeral
Sweet Danger
Death of a Ghost
Dancers in Mourning
Flowers for the Judge
The Case of the Late Pig
Mr Campion and Others
The Fashion in Shrouds
Black Plumes
Coroner’s Pidgin
Traitor’s Purse
The Casebook of Mr Campion
More Work for the Undertaker
The Tiger in the Smoke
The Beckoning Lady
Crime and Mr Campion
The China Governess
The Mind Readers
A Cargo of Eagles
The Return of Mr Campion
Mr Campion’s Quarry
Mr Campion’s Lucky Day
THIS BOOK IS FOR MAUD HUGHES WITH LOVE
Chapter 1
BUSINESS AFTER HOURS
THE ARRIVAL OF
the ’bus was timed to perfection. Nobody of the slightest importance saw it at all. Traffic was slack, the theatres were only halfway through the evening performances, and no police were due on point duty until the after-the-show crush seventy minutes away.
Almost more significant still, if one were seeking a reliable eye-witness, Commissionaire George Wardle had just stepped down into the staff room of the ‘Porch’ for his mid-evening pint and sausage and so was not on duty outside the famous old restaurant which faces the Duke of Grafton’s Theatre and the dark entrance to Goff’s Place which runs down beside it.
The spring rain was fortuitous but it was an enormous help. It turned out to be one of those settled downpours which, in London, seem to involve more actual water than anywhere else, and there become a penetrating and absorbing irritant guaranteed to keep the mind of the passer-by upon himself and his discomforts.
The ’bus came trundling along from the eastern end of the Avenue, looking archaic but not nearly so noticeable as it might well have done if there had been no fashion for vintage petrol-driven vehicles in the West End. It was a small closed single-decker of the type still used in remote country districts. Shabby, but comfortable looking, its snugness was enhanced by absurd little woollen curtains trimmed with bobbles and draped at small discreet windows like those on elderly French airliners. It was lit from within by a single low-powered bulb and only the passengers on the front seat were visible from the street. These were in tune with the vehicle, two cosy figures, plump and elderly, in decent-out-of-town finery. The man wore a hard hat above his rounded beard, and his wife—for one could not
imagine
that he was out with any other woman—wore beads on her out-of-date bonnet and a rug wrapped round her stiff shoulders. They were not talking but dozing, as the old do, and looked warm and protected and out of the wet.
The driver swung the ’bus neatly into the Goff’s Place entry and turned it into the tiny cobbled space behind the theatre. The Place was a minute cul-de-sac, an airshaft shared by the Duke of Grafton’s and the three tall houses whose back doors and fire-escapes gave on to it. These were shops and faced the other way on to Deban Street, Soho, which runs nearly but not quite parallel with the Avenue.
The original Goff had long been lost in obscurity. His Place now contained nothing but a telephone booth, a street drain transformed on this occasion into a whirlpool, and a single rather fancy light bracket sticking out over the Grafton’s stage door. For the past five hundred weekdays at this time in the evening the area had been crammed with just such country coaches, up from the villages with parties to see the latest domestic musical in the series for which the theatre was noted. But tonight the building was dark. The piece had finished its run and spring-cleaning was not due to begin for another twenty-four hours.
The driver parked the country ’bus with remarkable care. It took him some little time to get his clumsy vehicle exactly into the position he desired, and even when he had succeeded, the purpose of the manœuvre was not apparent. True, the bus faced the exit ready to drive out again, but its rear door, by which all passengers must ascend or alight, was almost directly above the step of the back entrance of one of the Deban Street shops, while the near side of the ’bus was hard against the telephone booth, screening it entirely from the sight of the Avenue.
With this lighted kiosk obscured, the whole area had become appreciably darker and the driver was only just discernible in the streaming gloom as he sprang out of his seat, his black oilskins flickering below the white plastic top of his peaked cap. He was carrying a small leather attaché case and turned into the booth with it.
In the coach the old people did not move. If indeed they had arrived late for a performance which was not taking place anyway, the fact did not appear to worry them. They sat close together in the warm, dozing, while the rain poured over the tiny window beside them like a brook over a boulder. The yard itself might have been at the bottom of a fountain, so drenched and dark and remote it was from the unnatural brightness of the Avenue where the illuminated signs and the shop windows blazed at empty pavements and the tarmac glittered like coal.
In the telephone booth the driver settled himself with his back against the wall, wedged his case on a small shelf under the instrument, and felt in his pocket. He appeared to know how much money he had, a crumpled ten-shilling note and eight separate pennies, for he found them at once and put them on top of the case, but it did not prevent him from making a complete search. When he was satisfied at last he thrust the screwed-up note into the other side pocket of his coat and took up the coins. His peaked cap cast a shadow which was as dark as an eye mask over the upper part of his face, but the plane of his thin cheek and strong jaw and neck muscles caught the light. The impression was of a youngish face, probably handsome, but at the moment frankly horrible. Either through a trick of the light or because of some unexplained condition its whole nerve pattern was apparent, dancing and quivering under the stretched skin. He was also smiling as he stretched out a gaunt hand for the instrument. The telephone was one of the ordinary dial and coin-in-the-slot variety, fitted with the A and B button money-back device, but the driver ignored the printed instructions. He inserted four of his coins, dialled a number, and then slid down in the booth so that he could peer up through the rainy dark at the back of the house directly in front of him. For thirty seconds he listened to the number ringing out and then, high up in the building, a pale oblong of yellow light sprang into existence. He pressed the A button immediately so that as soon as he heard his caller he was able to speak without any tell-tale click betraying that he was in a public box.
“Hullo, is that you, Lew? You’re still there, are you? Can I come round?”
The voice, pleasant and schooled as an actor’s, was unexpected, the undertone of excitement transmuted into confidence.
“Come round? Of course you can come round. You’d better. I’m waiting, aren’t I?”
The new voice was harsh and possessed a curious muddy quality, but in its own way it was honest enough.
The man in the peaked cap laughed. “Cheer up,” he said, “your reward is on the way. You can send John down to get the door open if he’s still there. I’ll be with you in five minutes.”
“John’s gone home. I’m here alone and I’m waiting for you here till midnight as I said I would. After that you’ve got to take the consequences. I told you and I meant it.”
In the booth the man’s bunched jaw muscles hardened but the pleasant disingenuous voice remained soothing.
“Relax. You’ve got a pleasant shock coming to you. Take this gently or you’ll have a stroke. I’ve got the money, every farthing of it, and since you don’t trust me its in cash as you requested, all in this little box in front of me, in fives and ones.” He was silent for a moment. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I wondered. Aren’t you pleased?”
“I’m pleased that we should both be saved a lot of trouble.” There was a grudging pause and then, as curiosity got the better of him, “The old gentleman paid up to save you, did he?”