Police at the Funeral (36 page)

‘I shall stay,' he said. ‘You can leave it all to me.' She leant back among her pillows and sighed faintly. Campion, assuming that the interview was at an end, rose and made for the door. Great-aunt Caroline's fine clear voice came to him from the depths of the great pink and gold bed.

‘Heredity is a very extraordinary thing,' it said. ‘I have always thought that I was a much more intelligent person than your grandmother, dear Emily.'

IT WAS SIX
o'clock in the evening, over a fortnight later, when the family had been reinstated in a thoroughly overhauled
Socrates Close, when Mr Campion approached his Bentley to set out once again for London. He was giving the Inspector a lift, and had arranged to go down to the town to fetch him. Stanislaus Oates had revisited Cambridge for a couple of days at the finish of the affair.

Campion was alone. His adieux had been made. Great-aunt Caroline had given him his last audience. Ann had been visited, and he had received a benison from Joyce and Marcus. Young Christmas had brought the Bentley round to the front door, treating the old car with awe, as well he might, since it was a good six years younger than the Faraday Daimler.

Campion was just about to enter his chariot when a bright pink face, surmounted by a short fringe of stubbly white hair, peered out of the darkness of the porch and Uncle William trotted down the steps towards him.

‘My boy, my boy!' he said. ‘I thought I'd missed you. Just wanted to have a word with you, you know. I'd like to tell you how grateful I am, for one thing. We Faradays aren't very grateful as a rule, but I am. You got us out of a devil of a mess and I don't mind admitting it. I can't say more than that.'

‘Not at all,' said Mr Campion, rather embarrassed by this entirely unexpected tribute.

Uncle William shook his head. ‘You can't fool me,' he said. ‘Things looked bad at one time. Why, I might have been murdered! A fellow can't overlook a thing like that.' A faint smile spread over his face. ‘I was right all along, as a matter of fact. I thought I'd like to remind you. D'you remember what I said to you the first time I saw you, when we were sitting in Marcus's study? What a damned uncomfortable house that is, by the way. I said, “There's Andrew lying in the mortuary making all this fuss” – and he was. I was plumb right. Well, good-bye, my boy. I'm grateful. Any time you want a quiet week-end, don't forget us.'

Mr Campion checked a wild impulse to laugh with commendable fortitude.

‘Thank you,' he said gravely. ‘Good-bye, sir.'

Uncle William shook hands vigorously. ‘No need to “sir” me, my boy. You called me “Uncle William” once and I liked it. Glad to have you in the family.' He hesitated. There was
plainly something on his mind. At last it came. ‘I'd like to make you a little present,' he said awkwardly. ‘It isn't much – haven't got much. But I've heard Marcus say that you've got a wonderful collection of curios. I've got a little thing here that I brought back from my travels many years ago. If you'll accept it I shall be very proud.'

Campion, who had some experience of grateful clients and their gifts, was conscious of a strong feeling of apprehension, but he had formed an affection for Uncle William and adopted therefore a suitable expression of modest eagerness. Uncle William was watching him anxiously.

‘Got it just in here,' he said. ‘Come and have a look.'

His excitement was pathetic, and Campion climbed out of the car, devoutly hoping that the Inspector would grant him a few minutes' grace. He followed Uncle William up the steps to the porch.

There, on the wooden seat, was a large glass case, and in it, reposing on an uncomfortable bed of conches and dried seaweed, was one of the familiar ‘mermaid skeletons' which unscrupulous fishermen compose from monkeys' skulls and torsos and the bones of tropical fish. This ancient fraud was now indicated by Uncle William with pride.

‘Bought it off a fellow in Port Said,' he said. ‘Struck me as being remarkable then. Does still. Will you take it? I've had it for thirty years. Haven't got anything else of interest.'

Mr Campion seemed overcome. ‘It's awfully good of you,' he began nervously.

‘Then you take it, my boy.' Uncle William's delight was childlike. ‘I put all my things out on my bed,' he went on confidentially. ‘Looked at 'em. Chose that. Couldn't give you anything I'd like better myself.'

Mr Campion accepted the gift in the spirit in which it was made, and together he and Uncle William hoisted the unwieldy trophy into the back of the Bentley. They then shook hands again.

Mr Campion had just started the engine when Uncle William recollected his other mission.

‘Here, wait a minute,' he said. ‘I nearly forgot. Mother told me to give you this. You're not to open it until you get home.
I think she thinks you're a child. Still, we must humour the old lady. Here you are.'

He slipped a packet into the young man's hand and stepped back from the car.

‘I shall see you when you come down for the young people's wedding,' he shouted. ‘That'll be coming along in the summer. Hope to be able to read you the first chapter of my memoirs by then. I'm writing 'em, you know. That newspaper fellow put the idea into my head, only he wanted me to write 'em for his newspaper – right in the middle of all this business. I didn't thank the fellow for his impertinence at the time, but afterwards it occurred to me that a recently-bound book would bring credit to us all. It'll give me something to do. Shan't have many people to talk to while Kitty's in that nursing home. Still, perhaps it's as well. I've got to look after myself. I'm still under the doctor, you know.' His little blue eyes flickered. ‘I shall stick to my nightcap whatever he says. Good-bye, my boy. If there's ever anything I can do for you let me know.'

‘Good-bye,' said Mr Campion. He let in the clutch and drove slowly out of the gates of the quiet old house, lying peaceful and innocent in the evening light. Uncle William stood on the steps and waved his handkerchief.

Stanislaus Oates was inclined to be truculent at the delay, but the sight of the ‘mermaid' restored his good humour to such an extent that Mr Campion felt it had justified itself already.

‘What's the penalty for speeding with a Chief-Detective Inspector in the front seat?' he inquired as they struck the open road to Bishop's Stortford and the City.

‘Death,' said the Inspector solemnly. ‘Same as with any other passenger. Take it easy. I want to lean back and feel at peace with the world once more.'

‘I don't know what you've got to grumble about,' said Campion. ‘You've come out of this very well. My godson will be able to read all about his father in the enthusiastic Press. The Press had a good innings, by the way. I say, did it ever occur to you, Stanislaus, that your coincidence hunch was quite justified? If you and I hadn't both chosen Tomb Yard for a rendezvous on that particular Thursday you would have had a
conversation with Cousin George. He would have tried to sell you the first rights in his little mystery story. You would have got it all out of him without paying, and the riddle of Andrew's death would have been solved on the day that his body was found.'

Stanislaus considered this remark gravely. ‘Very likely,' he admitted at last. ‘Of course, you can't put too much faith in that old blackguard Beveridge's story, although it went down so well at the inquest. That fellow George had a nerve, if a half of what Beveridge says is true. Fancy hiding the gun and then singling me out – probably because I'd just got promotion – to come and tell his rotten story to. He thought we might strike a deal, I suppose. I got the kudos, he got the cash.'

‘Ingenuity seems to run in the family,' remarked Mr Campion. ‘Beveridge is an interesting character, too. I think, perhaps his intense admiration for George was the most extraordinary thing about him.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' said the Inspector. ‘That flashy type does appeal to a simple imagination. What does strike me as extraordinary is that the old devil should have had the nerve to pinch the dead man's hat. I know he tore out the lining – I know he battered it. But fancy seeing a man commit suicide, watching your friend destroy the evidence to make it look as much like murder as possible, and then rolling jauntily off in the corpse's bowler, only pausing to bury your old hat under a heap of leaves a few hundred yards down the path!'

‘I can understand Beveridge doing it,' said Campion, ‘but not George standing for it. I suppose he was pretty well oiled.'

‘Must have been,' grumbled the Inspector, ‘to chuck that gun where he did. I thought old Bowditch would have a fit when he heard where it was all the time. That stopped him laughing,' he added viciously. ‘By the way, you were quite right about that footprint. I owe you five shillings. And that makes me about four and ninepence out of pocket, I don't mind telling you. Even you've come off better. You've got a mermaid.'

‘Modest though I am, I should like to point out that I was right about the “B” too,' said Mr Campion. ‘Extraordinary what a long time it took the jury to see that,' he continued. ‘Even when Beveridge explained it himself. Oh, and by the
way, Stanislaus, to reopen an old and a sore subject, why didn't you follow up Uncle William's alibi at the very beginning? When I hinted it so plainly?'

‘Because I was dead sure it didn't exist,' said Stanislaus after a pause. ‘This is a very exceptional case. You wouldn't have come out of it so well if it wasn't. I didn't follow up William's alibi because I was more than certain he hadn't got one.'

‘You thought he'd done it?' said Mr Campion in astonishment.

‘I
knew
he'd done it,' said the Inspector. ‘If this had been an ordinary case he would have done it. You don't have clever lunatics providing false evidence, or half-false evidence, which is worse, in every case you come across, or where would you be? You might as well go bughouse yourself and leave it at that. I'm sorry I was wild with you at the time, Campion, but when you came out with that pub-keeper I felt I was getting past my job. Of course, you know,' he went on eagerly, ‘even at the finish I didn't quite believe it, although that last cyanide murder was pretty convincing. It had got the right mixture of cleverness and lunacy – an elaborate, ingenious scheme to kill any old person who happened to be about. But, of course, afterwards, when we went into it and followed up Seeley's movements, found he'd been a medical student, discovered the retort and a couple of saucepans in the potting shed, and finally got the chemist who sold him the cyanide, it was different.'

‘He distilled the conium himself, I suppose?' said Campion. ‘Simply boiled a lot of hemlock down? We shall never be able to prove that. Still, I don't suppose it was difficult.'

‘It wasn't,' said the Inspector. ‘You heard old Hastings at the inquest. He said it wasn't. It probably gave Andrew something to do. Must be a terrible life idling about in a house like that.'

Mr Campion nodded. ‘Typical of him to pick on conium,' he observed. ‘State poison of Athens. They killed Socrates with it, didn't they?'

‘I don't know about Socrates,' said the Inspector. ‘It made a mess of Socrates Close. It was so simple; that's what scared me. So was the cyanide. Anyone can get hold of cyanide in England by talking about wasps' nests and signing their name in a book. No, the only thing Seeley seems to have made a hash
of in the poison line was the stuff on the knife. Hastings told me he thought it was some sort of a snake poison, probably scraped off one of those poison arrows people bring back with them from the Gold Coast. He couldn't locate it. It was very slight. But he said there was something there.'

‘What a blessing he didn't put an extra dose of his home-distilled conium in the brandy flask and leave it at that,' said Mr Campion, appalled at the sudden thought.

‘Not ingenious enough,' said the Inspector. ‘These little extra stunts of his were all afterthoughts – little clever ideas he didn't want to waste. I say, look out, Campion. No blinding! It's a beautiful evening. Let's take our time.'

The young man slowed down obligingly. ‘One more point and my mind will be at rest,' he said. ‘Surely Uncle Andrew didn't go to church with a coil of rope, a revolver and a clock weight concealed upon him? Where did he hide them until he was ready for them? I understand how he got rid of his cousin. Uncle William is the kind of man who could be relied upon to jib at walking a couple of miles out of his way, and I should think Andrew was a past master at picking a quarrel with him. But where exactly did he put his paraphernalia?'

‘In the shed by the river,' said the Inspector. ‘I haven't dwelt on this point much, because I felt we ought to have noticed something, even if the scent was ten days' old. But I tell you in confidence we took a brick out of the river, and not one that belonged to the bridge, and I think that brick was the original weight intended for the revolver. But then the clock weight fell down in the middle of dinner and called attention to itself, so to speak. Obviously it occurred to him as being an improvement on the brick. Oh well, it's all cleared up now, but it's been a harassing month. I'm on quite a nice little job in Stepney at the moment. Clean case of coining. Seems like a breath of fresh air.'

Mr Campion did not answer, and presently, as they approached the outskirts of the City, the Inspector spoke again.

‘You never would have thought it, would you?' he remarked. ‘They seemed such nice people.'

But Mr Campion was lost in his own thoughts.

It was not until he was back at his own flat in Bottle Street, with Lugg hovering round him like an excited hen with a lost chick, that he remembered the package which Uncle William had thrust into his hand as he left Socrates Close. He took it out of his pocket now and began to unwrap it slowly. Lugg watched with interest.