Murder Most Merry (19 page)

Young Victor Preen, son of old Preen of the Preen Aero Company, was certainly notable, not to say notorious. He had obtained much publicity in his short life for his sensational flights, but a great deal more for adventures less creditable; and when angry old gentlemen in the armchairs of exclusive clubs let themselves go about the blackguardliness of the younger generation, it was very often of Victor Preen that they were thinking.

He stood now a little to the left of the compartment window, leaning idly against the wall, his chin up and his heavy lids drooping. At first sight he did not appear to be taking any interest in the occupants of the compartment, but when the shy young man looked up. Campion happened to see the swift glance of recognition, and of something else, which passed between them. Presently, still with the same elaborate casualness, the man in the corridor wandered away, leaving the other staring in front of him, the same sullen expression still in his eyes.

The incident passed so quickly that it was impossible to define the exact nature of that second glance, but Campion was never a man to go imagining things, which was why he was surprised when they arrived at Minstree station to hear Henry Boule, Florence’s private secretary, introducing the two and to notice that they met as strangers.

It was pouring with rain as they came out of the station, and Boule, who, like all Florence’s secretaries, appeared to be suffering from an advanced case of nerves, bundled them all into two big Daimlers, a smaller car, and a shooting-brake. Campion looked round him at Florence’s Christmas bag with some dismay. She had surpassed herself. Besides Lance there were at least half a dozen celebrities: a brace of political highlights, an angry looking lady novelist, Madja from the ballet, a startled R. A., and Victor Preen, as well as some twelve or thirteen unfamiliar faces who looked as if they might belong to Art, Money, or even mere Relations.

Campion became separated from Lance and was looking for him anxiously when he saw him at last in one of the cars, with the novelist on one side and the girl with brandy-ball eyes on the other, Victor Preen making up the ill-assorted four.

Since Campion was an unassuming sort of person he was relegated to the brake with Boule himself, the shy young man, and the whole of the luggage. Boule introduced them awkwardly and collapsed into a seat, wiping the beads from off his forehead with a relief which was a little too blatant to be tactful.

Campion, who had learned that the shy young man’s name was Peter Groome, made a tentative inquiry of him as they sat jolting shoulder to shoulder in the back of the car. He nodded.

“Yes, it’s the same family,” he said. “Cookham’s sister married a brother of my father’s. I’m some sort of relation, I suppose.”

The prospect did not seem to fill him with any great enthusiasm and once again Campion’s curiosity was piqued. Young Mr. Groome was certainly not in seasonable mood.

In the ordinary way Campion would have dismissed the matter from his mind, but there was something about the youngster which attracted him. something indefinable and of a despairing quality, and moreover, there had been that curious intercepted glance in the train.

They talked in a desultory fashion throughout the uncomfortable journey. Campion learned that young Groome was in his father’s firm of solicitors, that he was engaged to be married to the girl with the brandy-ball eyes, who was a Miss Patricia Bullard of an old north country family, and that he thought Christmas was a waste of time.

“I hate it.” he said with a sudden passionate intensity which startled even his mild inquisitor. “All this sentimental good-will-to-all-men business is false and sickening. There’s no such thing as good will. The world’s rotten.”

He blushed as soon as he had spoken and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, “but all this bogus Dickensian stuff makes me writhe.”

Campion made no direct comment. Instead he asked with affable inconsequence, “Was that young Victor Preen I saw in the other car?”

Peter Groome turned his head and regarded him with the steady stare of the willfully obtuse.

“I was introduced to someone with a name like that, I think, ‘ he said carefully. “He was a little baldish man, wasn’t he?”

“No, that’s Sir George.” The secretary leaned over the luggage to give the information. “Preen is the tall young man, rather handsome, with the very curling hair. He’s
the
Preen, you know.” He sighed. “It seems very young to be a millionaire, doesn’t it?”

“Obscenely so,” said Mr. Peter Groome abruptly, and returned to his despairing contemplation of the landscape.

Underhill was
en fête
to receive them. As soon as Campion observed the preparations, his sympathy for young Mr. Groome increased, for to a jaundiced eye Lady Florence’s display might well have proved as dispiriting as Preen’s bank balance. Florence had “gone all Dickens,” as she said herself at the top of her voice, linking her arm through Campion’s, clutching the R. A. with her free hand, and capturing Lance with a bright birdlike eye.

The great Jacobean house was festooned with holly. An eighteen-foot tree stood in the great hall. Yule logs blazed on iron dogs in the wide hearths and already the atmosphere was thick with that curious Christmas smell which is part cigar smoke and part roasting food.

Sir Philip Cookham stood receiving his guests with pathetic bewilderment. Every now and again his features broke into a smile of genuine welcome as he saw a face he knew. He was a distinguished-looking old man with a fine head and eyes permanently worried by his country’s troubles.

“My dear boy, delighted to see you. Delighted,” he said, grasping Campion’s hand. “I’m afraid you’ve been put over in the Dower House. Did Florence tell you? She said you wouldn’t mind, but I insisted that Feering went over there with you and also young Peter.” He sighed and brushed away the visitor’s hasty reassurances. “I don’t know why the dear girl never feels she has a party unless the house is so overcrowded that our best friends have to sleep in the annex,” he said sadly.

The “dear girl,” looking not more than fifty-five of her sixty years, was clinging to the arm of the lady novelist at that particular moment and the two women were emitting mirthless parrot cries at each other. Cookham smiled.

“She’s happy, you know,” he said indulgently. “She enjoys this sort of thing. Unfortunately I have a certain amount of urgent work to do this weekend, but we’ll get in a chat, Campion, some time over the holiday. I want to hear your news. You’re a lucky fellow. You can tell your adventures.”

The lean man grimaced. “More secret sessions, sir?” he inquired.

The cabinet minister threw up his hands in a comic but expressive little gesture before he turned to greet the next guest.

As he dressed for dinner in his comfortable room in the small Georgian dower house across the park, Campion was inclined to congratulate himself on his quarters. Underhill itself was a little too much of the ancient monument for strict comfort.

He had reached the tie stage when Lance appeared. He came in very elegant indeed and highly pleased with himself. Campion diagnosed the symptoms immediately and remained irritatingly incurious.

Lance sat down before the open fire and stretched his sleek legs.

“It’s not even as if I were a goodlooking blighter, you know,” he observed invitingly when the silence had become irksome to him. “In fact, Campion, when I consider myself I simply can’t understand it. Did I so much as speak to the girl?”

“I don’t know,” said Campion, concentrating on his dressing. “Did you?”

“No.” Lance was passionate in his denial. “Not a word. The hard-faced female with the inky fingers and the walrus mustache was telling me her life story all the way home in the car. This dear little poppet with the eyes was nothing more than a warm bundle at my side. I give you my dying oath on that. And yet—well, it’s extraordinary, isn’t it?”

Campion did not turn round. He could see the artist quite well through the mirror in front of him. Lance had a sheet of notepaper in his hand and was regarding it with that mixture of feigned amusement and secret delight which was typical of his eternally youthful spirit.

“Extraordinary.” he repeated, glancing at Campion’s unresponsive back. “She had nice eyes. Like licked brandy-balls.”

“Exactly,” agreed the lean man by the dressing table. “I thought she seemed very taken up with her fiancé, young Master Groome, though,” he added tactlessly.

“Well, I noticed that, you know,” Lance admitted, forgetting his professions of disinterest. “She hardly recognized my existence in the train. Still, there’s absolutely no accounting for women. I’ve studied ‘em all my life and never understood ‘em yet. I mean to say, take this case in point. That kid ignored me. avoided me, looked through me. And yet look at this. I found it in my room when I came up to change just now.”

Campion took the note with a certain amount of distaste. Lovely women were invariably stooping to folly, it seemed, but even so he could not accustom himself to the spectacle. The message was very brief. He read it at a glance and for the first time that day he was conscious of that old familiar flicker down the spine as his experienced nose smelted trouble. He re-read the three lines.

“There is a sundial on a stone pavement just off the drive. We saw it from the car. I’ll wait ten minutes there for you half an hour after the party breaks up tonight.”

There was neither signature nor initial, and the summons broke off as baldly as it had begun.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Lance had the grace to look shamefaced.

“Astounding.” Campion’s tone was flat. “Staggering, old boy. Er—fishy.”

“Fishy?”

“Yes, don’t you think so?” Campion was turning over the single sheet thoughtfully and there was no amusement in the pale eyes behind his hornrimmed spectacles. “How did it arrive?”

“In an unaddressed envelope. I don’t suppose she caught my name. After all, there must be some people who don’t know it yet.” Lance was grinning impudently. “She’s batty, of course. Not safe out and all the rest of it. But I liked her eyes and she’s very young.”

Campion perched himself on the edge of the table. He was still very serious.

“It’s disturbing, isn’t it?” he said. “Not nice. Makes one wonder.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Lance retrieved his property and tucked it into his pocket. “She’s young and foolish, and it’s Christmas.”

Campion did not appear to have heard him. “I wonder,” he said. “I should keep the appointment, I think. It may be unwise to interfere, but yes, I rather think I should.”

“You’re telling me.” Lance was laughing. “I may be wrong, of course,” he added defensively, “but I think that’s a cry for help. The poor girl evidently saw that I looked a dependable sort of chap and—er—having her back against the wall for some reason or other she turned instinctively to the stranger with the kind face. Isn’t that how you read it?”

“Since you press me, no. Not exactly,” said Campion, and as they walked over to the house together he remained thoughtful and irritatingly uncommunicative.

Florence Cookham excelled herself that evening. Her guests were exhorted “to be young again,” with the inevitable result that Underhill contained a company of irritated and exhausted people long before midnight.

One of her ladyship’s more erroneous beliefs was that she was a born organizer, and that the real secret of entertaining people lay in giving everyone something to do. Thus Lance and the R. A. —now even more startled-looking than ever—found themselves superintending the decoration of the great tree, while the girl with the brandy-ball eyes conducted a small informal dance in the drawing room, the lady novelist scowled over the bridge table, and the ballet star refused flatly to arrange amateur theatricals.

Only two people remained exempt from this tyranny. One was Sir Philip himself, who looked in every now and again, ready to plead urgent work awaiting him in his study whenever his wife pounced upon him, and the other was Mr. Campion, who had work to do on his own account and had long mastered the difficult art of self-effacement. Experience had taught him that half the secret of this maneuver was to keep discreetly on the move and he strolled from one part to another, always ready to look as if he belonged to any one of them should his hostess’s eye ever come to rest upon him inquiringly.

For once his task was comparatively simple. Florence was in her element as she rushed about surrounded by breathless assistants, and at one period the very air in her vicinity seemed to have become thick with colored paper wrappings, yards of red ribbons, and a colored snowstorm of little address tickets as she directed the packing of the presents for the Tenants’ Tree, a second monster which stood in the ornamental barn beyond the kitchens.

Campion left Lance to his fate, which promised to be six or seven hours’ hard labor at the most moderate estimate, and continued his purposeful meandering. His lean figure drifted among the company with an apparent aimlessness which was deceptive. There was hidden urgency in his lazy movements and his pale eyes behind his spectacles were inquiring and unhappy.

He found Patricia Bullard dancing with Preen, and paused to watch them as they swung gracefully by him. The man was in a somewhat flamboyant mood, flashing his smile and his noisy witticisms about him after the fashion of his kind, but the girl was not so content. As Campion caught sight of her pale face over her partner’s sleek shoulder his eyebrows rose. For an instant he almost believed in Lance’s unlikely suggestion. The girl actually did look as though she had her back to the wall. She was watching the doorway nervously and her shiny eyes were afraid.