Police at the Funeral (18 page)

‘Let's go and have a look,' said Mr Campion, to whom the word ‘nursery' had brought back the recollection of Joyce's story of half an hour before.

‘What now?' Uncle William seemed loth to stir. ‘I told the Inspector there wasn't a gun in the house,' he said, ‘and never had been. I resent this police catechizing.'

But Mr Campion was not to be denied. ‘They're bound to find it sooner or later,' he said. ‘I think we'd better go and look. I'm afraid they'll be searching the house tomorrow.'

‘Searching the house?' said Uncle William, aghast. ‘They can't do a thing like that. Or has this Labour Goverment made that possible? I remember saying to Andrew: “If these blackguards come into power a gentleman's home won't be his own.”'

‘Once you call the police into the house – and you have to call them in in a serious case like this – I think you'll find their powers are very great. In the nursery, did you say?'

Still grumbling, Uncle William got up. ‘All right,' he said. ‘But we shall have to be quiet. The women are asleep, or ought to be. I don't see why we shouldn't wait till the morning. It's darned cold at the top of the house. No fires in the bedrooms here unless it's a case of illness. That's the Spartan régime of the old school.' He paused hopefully, but finding Mr Campion adamant, he helped himself to the last of the whisky and soda from the sideboard, and, tossing it off, led the way upstairs.

Campion followed his globular panting figure up the staircase into the darkness of the upper hall. All was silent and a trifle stuffy Uncle William turned the corner and climbed the next flight.

The second floor of the house was smaller than the others, a place of narrow corridors and slanting ceilings.

‘Servants sleep that side,' whispered Uncle William, pointing towards that part of the house that was above Mrs Faraday's room and the front hall. ‘The old nursery is down here. It's really only an attic.' He switched on a light, which revealed a passage like the one below, three windows on one side and three doors on the other. Here the carpets were worn, the paint
was scratched and unpolished, and it occurred to Campion that it probably looked much the same as it had done in the days when the young William and Julia had chased one another down it towards a little wicket gate which barred the exit at the top of the back stairs.

Uncle William opened the first of the three doors. ‘Here we are,' he said. ‘These two rooms have been knocked into one. There was a night nursery, now used as a lumber-room, at the end.'

As he turned on the light a big dusty room leapt into sight. It was still furnished with the grim relics of a Victorian nursery. A worn red carpet covered the floor and brown painted cupboards and a chest of drawers stood stiffly against the atrocious blue and green wallpaper. There was a big wire guard over the fireplace and large steel engravings of a sternly religious character were interspersed by coloured texts on the walls. It was a depressing room. The iron bars of the windows, while useful, were hardly ornamental. Instinctively Campion glanced at the skylight. All was as Joyce described. A piece of cord hung down forlornly from the dusty window, and it was quite clear that a staple to which the other end had been attached had been jerked out of its position. The section of rope which remained was not unlike clothes-line, being thicker and coarser than the usual window cord.

William did not appear to notice this defect. He stood looking about him.

‘There's the trunk,' he said, pointing to an ancient leather contraption which stood crazily in one corner beneath a standard globe and a pile of books. He led the way across the room, treading silently with elaborate care. Campion followed him, and between them they removed the obstacles and Uncle William raised the lid of the case.

Campion peered in with interest. A faintly musty aroma greeted them, and a moth flew out. Upon investigation there appeared a pair of knee boots, a khaki uniform, a pair of riding breeches, two pairs of slacks, a Sam Browne belt and a ‘brass hat'. Uncle William took the garments out one by one and laid them on the floor.

‘Ah,' he said, as the bottom of the trunk appeared, ‘here it is.'

Campion was before him. He picked up the holster and unfastened the stud. There were a couple of oily rags within, and that was all.

‘God bless my soul!' said Uncle William.

BACK IN THE
morning-room Uncle William began to show signs of coherent thought again. The motley of veins on his face had multiplied and he appeared to be on the point of exhaustion.

‘Not a sign of it, Campion,' he said huskily. ‘There's some very dirty work going on here.'

His companion tactfully refrained from observing that so much must have been obvious for some time, and the older man continued.

‘There were some cartridges up here, too,' he said. ‘I remember now. They were lying loose at the bottom of the trunk. I shall get into hot water, I suppose, when the police hear about this.' He lowered his voice and peered at Campion, his little blue eyes watery with apprehension. ‘Do they know what sort of a bullet killed Andrew?' he said. ‘Haven't you heard? This is terrible – terrible.'

He sat down in his green leather chair and shot a hopeless glance at the whisky decanter. His worst fears were realized and he turned away again.

‘I wish I knew where that blackguard was skulking,' he bellowed suddenly. ‘I thought Scotland Yard could find anyone in a day?' He pulled himself up. ‘Still, I mustn't talk about George, I suppose. Just because I mentioned his name to that policeman I had half an hour's pi-jaw from the old lady. Makes me furious,' he went on, his face suffusing with angry colour. ‘Why should I be put to all this worry and anxiety just to cover up the tracks of a blackmailing scoundrel who's never done an honest day's work in his life? He must have walked into the house, got the gun and laid in wait for Andrew. That is, of
course, if Andrew was shot with my gun. That isn't proved yet, is it?'

‘It doesn't follow,' said Mr Campion mildly. ‘Even if he was shot with an army bullet, there must be several hundred thousand army service revolvers kicking about the country.'

Uncle William brightened. ‘Yes, that's true,' he said. ‘Still, I bet it was George. Extraordinary way he came in to dinner that Saturday night. No one let him into the building, you know. He may have been skulking about the house for hours. That's the sort of ruffian the fellow is. Treats the place like his own when he's here, though I must say Mother always gets rid of him. There's a touch of the Amazon about the old lady still, in spite of her age.'

He paused for a moment, rumbling speculatively. Suddenly he went on again.

‘It turned my stomach over when he came in just after the clock weight fell. A silly transpontine appearance. Reminded me of the sort of melodrama I used to see as a boy. And now the old lady's trying to shield him, that's what annoys me.'

Mr Campion, who possessed the gift of self-effacement to an extraordinary degree, stood placidly leaning against the mantelpiece while the old man continued.

‘She lives too much in the past,' Uncle William insisted. ‘The scandals of the past matter more to her than any catastrophe that might happen now. I don't suppose this fellow George holds anything very important over her, but there's no way of telling. Look at the reason why she cut Andrew out of her will.'

Mr Campion appeared interested. ‘A storm in a teacup?' he inquired.

‘I thought so,' Uncle William confided. ‘After all, the governor, God bless him, can't be irritated now. Yet it was that book of Andrew's that did it.
Hypocrites, or the Mask of Learning.
A rotten title. I told him so.'

‘I've never heard of it,' said Mr Campion.

‘You wouldn't,' said Uncle William brutally. ‘I don't suppose it sold half a dozen copies. I told Mother it wasn't worth worrying about, but she never takes any notice of me. It showed
old Andrew's impudence, though,' he added savagely, ‘and it served him right. Fancy a fellow living on his aunt's charity while he wrote a blackguardly attack on his dead uncle!'

‘An attack on Doctor Faraday?' inquired his companion.

William nodded. ‘That's right. Old Andrew noticed that there was a great boom in memoirs – old wallahs retelling their club stories and getting their own back generally – and it occurred to him that he might make a fiver or two by having a smack at the governor. Anyway, he wrote the thing. Silliest piece of work I ever read, and I'm not a literary man.'

‘It was published?' asked Mr Campion.

‘Oh, yes. Some little tin-pot firm brought it out. Thought there might be a sale on the governor's name, I suppose. Andrew got six copies and nothing else, and yet I should think the publishers were out of pocket. Even then it wouldn't have mattered,' he continued, with rising indignation, ‘but as soon as he got his six copies old Andrew wrote a flowery inscription on the fly-leaf of each and presented us all with a copy. There was one over for the spare room. Mother got Joyce to read the book to her. A nice little girl that, by the way,' he remarked. ‘Only woman of any tact in the whole household. Yes, well, then the fat was in the fire. I haven't seen Mother so angry since – oh, well, a long time ago. Of course, in the ordinary way we should have sued for defamation of family character, I suppose, but you can't get damages from a relative living on your own charity. Very awkward. Mother took the only weapon left to her. She sent for old Featherstone and altered her will. I was reading a book about an Italian fellow who sells beer in America at the time, I remember. I borrowed a phrase from it. I said to Andrew, I said: “Laugh that off, won't you.” He sat in that chair over there. I can hear him swearing now.'

‘I'd like to see the book,' said Mr Campion.

‘Would you?' Uncle William was eager to placate this young man, who, he realized, was the only person of influence liable to be even remotely friendly towards him. ‘I've got a copy, as a matter of fact. The old lady destroyed all those she could get hold of, but I kept mine.' He lowered his voice. ‘Between you and me, I believe it was half true. We Faradays aren't saints. The governor was human, like the rest of us.' He rose to his
feet. ‘I expect you'll turn in now?' he said. ‘I'll get the book. You might keep it in your bag. It's got my name in it.'

The two men went upstairs together and Campion stood in the doorway of Uncle William's room while the old man rummaged among the books which stood on the shelf beside his bed. Campion got the impression of a vast, untidy room, as littered and rambling as its owner's mind. He had not much time for observation, however, for Uncle William returned to him almost immediately with a slim volume covered with brown paper.

‘I labelled it “Omar Khayyam” in case it was noticed on the shelf,' he murmured. ‘Well, good night, and – er – er – I say.' He laid a heavy hand on the young man's shoulder, peered into his face and spoke with deadly earnestness. ‘I'm telling you as one man to another. I'm going to cut out the glass. Not another drink until this business is over.' He nodded portentously and disappeared into his own room, shutting the door behind him.

In view of the empty decanter downstairs, Mr Campion felt this statement somewhat unnecessary. However, he said nothing, but withdrew to his own room two doors down the passage.

It was now almost midnight, and for a reason which he was loth to admit, he did not feel like leaving the house until the morning. Anyhow, he reflected, Stanislaus could do nothing that night.

The guest-room at Socrates Close was one of those large, comfortable apartments furnished with pieces that no one could possibly have brought for his own use. An ornate rosewood suite, a misshapen arm-chair, a remarkable wallpaper upon which the botanist had been at work again, and an assortment of pictures which took, Mr Campion considered, his religious beliefs too much for granted, made up an apartment at once comfortable to the flesh and disturbing to the spirit.

Campion undressed, got into bed, and, switching on the reading lamp, examined Uncle Andrew's mess of pottage. The inscription on the fly-leaf was in highly questionable taste in view of the subject matter of the book.

There was a frontispiece, an old-fashioned photograph of Doctor John Faraday. It was not a pleasant face; stern, and unrelieved by any sign of humour. Long, spoon-shaped side-whiskers increased the narrowness of the jaw and the mouth was drawn and puckered like the mouth of a string bag.

Mr Campion began to read. Uncle Andrew's style was not distinguished, but it had the quality of vituperance. He wrote with an urge and a spitefulness which made him eminently readable. Campion found himself amazed that any firm should have risked the publication of such an attack, and reflected that Andrew had probably represented his influence with the family as something more than it actually was. Doctor Faraday, stripped of his academic honours, emerged as a narrow-minded, self-important man who hid his shortcomings beneath a hypocritical cloak of sanctity and his wife's charm. Several slightly discreditable stories of his youth had been unearthed or invented by the industrious Andrew, and the learned Doctor appeared as little more than a pompous Victorian humbug with unexpected twists of character for which the modern psychologists have long and unpleasant names. Andrew knew most of the names and used them freely.

By the time Mr Campion had read the first three chapters and glanced at the end, he closed the book feeling a little sorry for the defunct dignitary, whatever his private character might have been.