Police at the Funeral (3 page)

IT WAS IN
the taxicab as they were speeding over the slippery road towards 17A Bottle Street, Mr Campion's Piccadilly address, that Miss Joyce Blount eyed the young man who sat beside her and the Inspector, who sat opposite, with the engaging smile of youth, and lied.

‘That man who was with you in the yard?' she said in reply to a tentative question from the Inspector. ‘Oh, no, I have never seen him before in my life.' She looked at them straightly, the colour deepening a little in her cheeks.

Mr Campion was puzzled, and his pleasant vacuous face wrinkled into a travesty of deep thought.

‘But when you saw him,' he ventured, ‘I thought you were going to faint. And when you – er – recovered you said, “Where is he?”'

The red in the girl's cheeks deepened, but she still smiled at them innocently, engagingly.

‘Oh, no,' she repeated in her clear, slightly childlike voice, ‘you must have made a mistake. Why, I hardly saw him. He
conveyed nothing to me. How could he?' There was a distinct air of finality in her tone, and there was silence for some moments after she had spoken. The Inspector glanced at Campion, but the young man's eyes were expressionless behind his enormous spectacles.

The girl seemed to be considering the situation, for after a while she turned again to Campion.

‘Look here,' she said, ‘I'm afraid I've made a terrible fool of myself. I've been dreadfully worried, and I haven't had any food today. I dashed out without any breakfast this morning, and there wasn't time for lunch, and – well, what with one thing and another I got a bit giddy, I suppose.' She paused, conscious that her explanations did not sound very convincing.

Mr Campion, however, appeared to be quite satisfied. ‘It's very dangerous not to eat,' he said gravely. ‘Lugg will minister to you the moment we get in. I knew a man once,' he continued with great solemnity, ‘who omitted to eat for a considerable time through worry and mental strain and all that sort of thing. So that he quite got out of the way of it, and when he found himself at a stiff dinner party he was absolutely flummoxed. Imagine it – soup here, entrée there, and oyster shells in every pocket of his dinner jacket. It was a fiasco.'

The Inspector gazed absently at his friend with an introspective eye, but the girl, who had no experience of Mr Campion's vagaries, shot him a quick dubious glance from under her lashes.

‘You are the Mr Campion, Marcus's friend, aren't you?' she said involuntarily.

Campion nodded. ‘Marcus and I met in our wild youth,' he said.

The girl laughed, a nervous explosive giggle. ‘Not Marcus,' she said. ‘Or else he's changed.' She seemed to regret the remark immediately, for at once she plunged into the one important subject on her mind. ‘I came to ask you to help us,' she said slowly. ‘Of course Marcus wrote to you, didn't he? I'm afraid he may have given you an awfully wrong impression. He doesn't take it seriously. But it is serious.' Her voice developed a note of frank sincerity which startled her hearers a little. ‘Mr Campion, you are a sort of private, detective, aren't you? I mean – I'd
heard of you before Marcus told me. I know some people in Suffolk – Giles and Isobel Paget. They're friends of yours, aren't they?'

Mr Campion's habitual expression of contented idiocy vanished. ‘They are,' he said. ‘Two of the most delightful people in the world. Look here, I'd better make a clean breast of it. In the first place, I'm not a detective. If you want a detective here's Inspector Oates, one of the Big Five. I'm a professional adventurer – in the best sense of the word. I'll do anything I can for you. What's the trouble?'

The Inspector, who had been alarmed by Campion's frank introduction of his official status, had his fears allayed by the girl's next announcement. She smiled at him disarmingly.

‘It – it isn't a matter for the police,' she said. ‘You don't mind, do you?'

He laughed. ‘I'm glad to hear it,' he said. ‘I'm just an old friend of Campion's. It sounds to me as if he's the kind of man you want. Here we are. I'll leave you with your client, Albert.'

Mr Campion waved his hand airily. ‘All right,' he said. ‘If I get into serious trouble I'll let you know and you can lock me up until I'm out of danger.'

The Inspector departed, and as Campion paid the cabby the girl looked about her. They were in a little cul-de-sac off Piccadilly, standing outside a police station, but it was the doorway at the side through which wooden stairs were visible, which bore the number 17
A
.

‘When I was here this afternoon,' she said, ‘I was afraid I was coming to the police station. I was greatly relieved to find that your address was the flat above it.' She hesitated. ‘I – I had a conversation with someone who told me where to find you. A rather odd person.'

Mr Campion looked contrite. ‘He was wearing his old uniform, wasn't he?' he said. ‘He only puts that on when we're trying to impress people.'

The girl looked at him squarely. ‘Marcus told you I was a kid with a bee in my bonnet, didn't he?' she said. ‘And you were trying to entertain me for the day?'

‘Don't mock at a great man when he makes a mistake,' said Mr Campion, escorting her upstairs. ‘Even the Prophet Jonah
made one awkward slip, remember. I'm perfectly serious now.'

After two flights the stairs became carpeted and the walls panelled. They paused at last before a heavy oak door on the third floor. Mr Campion produced a key, and the girl found herself ushered across a little hall into a small, comfortably furnished room vaguely reminiscent of one of the more attractive specimens of college chambers, although the trophies on the walls were of a variety more sensational than even the most hopeful undergraduate could aspire to collect.

The girl seated herself in a deep arm-chair before the fire. Mr Campion pressed a bell.

‘We'll have some food,' he said. ‘Lugg has a theory that high tea is the one meal which makes life worth living.'

The girl was about to protest, but at that moment Mr Campion's factotum appeared. He was a large lugubrious individual, whose pale waste of a face was relieved by an immense pair of black moustaches. He was in shirt-sleeves, a fact which seemed to dismay him when he perceived the girl.

‘Lumme, I thought you was alone,' he remarked. He turned to the visitor with a ghost of a smile. ‘You'll excuse me, miss, being in negligee, as it were.'

‘Nonsense,' said Mr Campion, ‘you've got your moustache.' That's quite a recent acquisition,' he added, turning to Joyce. ‘It does us credit, don't you think?'

Mr Lugg's expression became even more melancholy than before in his attempt to hide a childlike gratification.

‘It's lovely,' the girl murmured, not knowing quite what was expected of her.

Mr Lugg almost blushed. ‘It's not so dusty,' he admitted modestly.

‘High tea?' said Campion inquiringly. ‘This lady's had no food all day. See what you can do, Lugg.'

The lugubrious man's pale face became almost animated. ‘Leave it to me,' he said. ‘I'll serve you up a treat.'

An expression of alarm flickered for an instant behind Mr Campion's enormous spectacles.

‘No herrings,' he said.

‘All right. Don't spoil it.' Mr Lugg retreated as he grumbled. In the doorway he paused and regarded the visitor wistfully.
‘I suppose
you
wouldn't care for a tinned ‘erring and tomato sauce?' he ventured, but seeing her involuntary expression he did not wait for an answer, but shuffled out, closing the door behind him.

Joyce caught Mr Campion's eyes and they both laughed.

‘What a delightful person,' she said.

‘Absolutely charming when you get to know him,' he agreed. ‘He used to be a burglar, you know. It's the old story – lost his figure. As he says himself, it cramps your style when your only means of exit are the double doors in the front hall. He's been with me for years now.'

Once again the girl subjected him to a long penetrating glance. ‘Look here,' she said, ‘do you really mean what you said about helping? I'm afraid something serious has happened – or is going to happen. Can you help me? Are you – well, I mean—'

Mr Campion nodded. ‘Am I a serious practitioner or someone playing the fool? I know that feeling. But I assure you I'm a first-class professional person.'

For an instant the pale eyes behind the enormous spectacles were as grave and steady as her own.

‘I'm deadly serious,' he continued. ‘My amiable idiocy is mainly natural, but it's also my stock-in-trade. I'm honest, tidy, dark as next year's Derby winner, and I'll do all I can. Hadn't you better let me hear all about it?'

He pulled out the letter from Marcus and glanced at it.

‘An uncle of yours has disappeared, hasn't he? And you're worried? That's the main trouble, isn't it?'

She nodded. ‘It sounds quite ordinary, I know, and uncle's old enough to take care of himself, but it's all very queer really and I've got a sort of hunch that there's something terribly wrong. It was because I was so afraid that I insisted on Marcus giving me your address. You see, I feel we ought to have someone about who is at least friendly towards the family, and yet who isn't biased by Cambridge ideas and overawed by greataunt.'

Campion settled himself opposite her. ‘You'll have to explain to me about the family,' he said. ‘They are fairly distant relations of yours, aren't they?'

She bent forward, her brown eyes strained with the intensity of her desire to make herself clear.

‘You won't be able to remember everyone now, but I'll try to give you some idea of us as we are at the moment. First of all there's Great-aunt Caroline Faraday. I can't possibly describe her, but fifty years ago she was a great lady, wife of Great-uncle Doctor Faraday, Master of Ignatius. She's been a great lady ever since. She was eighty-four last year, but is still quite the most live person in the household and she still runs the show rather grandly, like Queen Elizabeth and the Pope rolled into one. What Great-aunt Faraday says goes.

‘Then there's Uncle William, her son. He's sixty odd, and he lost all his money in a big company swindle years ago, and had to come back and live under aunt's wing. She treats him as though he were about seventeen and it doesn't agree with him.

‘Then there's Aunt Julia, his sister, great-aunt's daughter. She never married and never really left home. You know how they didn't in those days.'

Mr Campion began to make hieroglyphics on the back of an envelope he had taken from his pocket.

‘She's in the fifties, I suppose?' he inquired.

The girl looked vague. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Sometimes I think her older than Great-aunt Faraday. She's – well, she's “spinster of this parish”.'

Mr Campion's eyes were kindly behind his spectacles. ‘On the difficult side?'

Joyce nodded. ‘Just a bit. Then there's Aunt Kitty, Aunt Julia's younger sister. She got married, but when her husband died there wasn't any money left. So she had to come back home, too. That's how I come in. My mother was her husband's sister. My people died young and Aunt Kitty looked after me. When the crash came I got a job, but Great-aunt Faraday sent for me and I've been a sort of companion to them all for the last eighteen months. I pay the bills and do the flowers and see about the linen and read to the family and all that sort of thing. I play Uncle William at chess, too, sometimes.'

‘All the jolly fun, in fact,' murmured Mr Campion.

She laughed. ‘I don't mind,' she said.

He consulted the letter again. ‘Hold on, where does Uncle Andrew come in? I see his name is Seeley.'

‘I was coming to him. You see, he's hardly a proper uncle at all. He's a son of Mrs Faraday's younger brother. He lost his money in the same swindle as Uncle William, and he came to live at home at about the same time. That must be about twenty years ago.'

‘Twenty years?' Mr Campion looked startled. ‘Haven't they done anything at all since then? I say, I beg your pardon, you took me off my balance.'

Joyce hesitated. ‘They were never much good at working,' she said. ‘I don't think so, anyway. I think great-uncle realized it: that's why he left most of his money to his wife, although she had a large fortune of her own. There's just one thing I ought to explain before I come to the important part. When I say great-aunt manages the show, I mean it literally. The mode of living of the house hasn't altered since she first set it down about eighteen-seventy. The house is run like clockwork. Everything is just on time. Everyone has to go to church on Sunday mornings. Most of us go by car – it's a nineteen hundred and thirteen Daimler – but we take it in turns to go with great-aunt, who drives in a victoria in the summer and a brougham in the winter. Old Christmas, the coachman, is nearly as old as she is. But of course everyone knows them and the traffic is held up, so they're all right.'

Enlightenment spread over Mr Campion's ignoble face. ‘Oho! I've seen them,' he said, ‘I was up at Cambridge with Marcus, you know. I saw the turn-out then. Heavens, that's years ago!'

‘If it was a grey horse,' said Joyce, ‘it's the same one. Pecker. Pecker, the unsurpassable. Well, wait a minute. Where have I got to? Oh, yes. Well, we all live in Great-uncle Faraday's house in Trumpington Road, a little way out of the town. It's that big L-shaped house that stands back on the corner of Orpheus Lane. There's a high wall all round it. Great-aunt is thinking of having it heightened, because when people come past it nowadays on buses they can see over.'

‘Socrates Close,' said Mr Campion.

She nodded. ‘How did you know?'