Silent Nights (15 page)

“Does anybody here happen to collect moths or beetles or anything?” asked Wimsey, squatting on his haunches and examining the pin.

“I'm pretty sure they don't,” replied Sir Septimus. “I'll ask them.”

“Don't do that.” Wimsey bent his head and stared at the floor, from which his own face stared meditatively back at him.

“I see,” said Wimsey presently. “That's how it was done. All right, Sir Septimus. I know where the pearls are, but I don't know who took them. Perhaps it would be as well—for everybody's satisfaction—just to find out. In the meantime they are perfectly safe. Don't tell anyone that we've found this pin or that we've discovered anything. Send all these people to bed. Lock the drawing-room door and keep the key, and we'll get our man—or woman—by breakfast-time.”

“God bless my soul,” said Sir Septimus, very much puzzled.

***

Lord Peter Wimsey kept careful watch that night upon the drawing-room door. Nobody, however, came near it. Either the thief suspected a trap or he felt confident that any time would do to recover the pearls. Wimsey, however, did not feel that he was wasting his time. He was making a list of people who had been left alone in the back drawing-room during the playing of “Animal, Vegetable or Mineral”. The list ran as follows.

Sir Septimus Shale

Lavinia Prescott

William Norgate

Joyce Trivett and Henry Shale (together, because they had claimed to be incapable of guessing anything unaided)

Mrs Dennison

Betty Shale

George Comphrey

Richard Dennison

Miss Tomkins

Oswald Truegood.

He also made out a list of the persons to whom pearls might be useful or desirable. Unfortunately, this list agreed in almost all respects with the first (always excepting Sir Septimus) and so was not very helpful. The two secretaries had both come well recommended, but that was exactly what they would have done had they come with ulterior designs; the Dennisons were notorious livers from hand to mouth; Betty Shale carried mysterious white powders in her handbag, and was known to be in with a rather rapid set in town; Henry was a harmless dilettante, but Joyce Trivett could twist him round her little finger and was what Jane Austen liked to call “expensive and dissipated”; Comphrey speculated; Oswald Truegood was rather frequently present at Epsom and Newmarket—the search for motives was only too fatally easy.

When the second housemaid and the under-footman appeared in the passage with household implements, Wimsey abandoned his vigil, but he was down early to breakfast. Sir Septimus with his wife and daughter were down before him, and a certain air of tension made itself felt. Wimsey, standing on the hearth before the fire, made conversation about the weather and politics.

The party assembled gradually, but, as though by common consent, nothing was said about pearls until after breakfast, when Oswald Truegood took the bull by the horns.

“Well now!” said he. “How's the detective getting along? Got your man, Wimsey?”

“Not yet,” said Wimsey easily.

Sir Septimus, looking at Wimsey as though for his cue, cleared his throat and dashed into speech.

“All very tiresome,” he said, “all very unpleasant. Hr'rm. Nothing for it but the police, I'm afraid. Just at Christmas, too. Hr'rm. Spoilt the party. Can't stand seeing all this stuff about the place.” He waved his hand towards the festoons of evergreens and coloured paper that adorned the walls. “Take it all down, eh, what? No heart in it. Hr'rm. Burn the lot.”

“What a pity, when we worked so hard over it,” said Joyce.

“Oh, leave it, Uncle,” said Henry Shale. “You're bothering too much about the pearls. They're sure to turn up.”

“Shall I ring for James?” suggested William Norgate.

“No,” interrupted Comphrey, “let's do it ourselves. It'll give us something to do and take our minds off our troubles.”

“That's right,” said Sir Septimus. “Start right away. Hate the sight of it.”

He savagely hauled a great branch of holly down from the mantelpiece and flung it, crackling, into the fire.

“That's the stuff,” said Richard Dennison. “Make a good old blaze!” He leapt up from the table and snatched the mistletoe from the chandelier. “Here goes! One more kiss for somebody before it's too late.”

“Isn't it unlucky to take it down before the New Year?” suggested Miss Tomkins.

“Unlucky be hanged. We'll have it all down. Off the stairs and out of the drawing-room too. Somebody go and collect it.”

“Isn't the drawing-room locked?” asked Oswald.

“No. Lord Peter says the pearls aren't there, wherever else they are, so it's unlocked. That's right, isn't it, Wimsey?”

“Quite right. The pearls were taken out of these rooms. I can't yet tell you how, but I'm positive of it. In fact, I'll pledge my reputation that wherever they are, they're not up there.”

“Oh, well,” said Comphrey, “in that case, have at it! Come along, Lavinia—you and Dennison do the drawing-room and I'll do the back room. We'll have a race.”

“But if the police are coming in,” said Dennison, “oughtn't everything to be left just as it is?”

“Damn the police!” shouted Sir Septimus. “They don't want evergreens.”

Oswald and Margharita were already pulling the holly and ivy from the staircase, amid peals of laughter. The party dispersed. Wimsey went quietly upstairs and into the drawing-room, where the work of demolition was taking place at a great rate, George having bet the other two ten shillings to a tanner that they would not finish their part of the job before he finished his.

“You mustn't help,” said Lavinia, laughing to Wimsey. “It wouldn't be fair.”

Wimsey said nothing, but waited till the room was clear. Then he followed them down again to the hall, where the fire was sending up a great roaring and spluttering, suggestive of Guy Fawkes night. He whispered to Sir Septimus, who went forward and touched George Comphrey on the shoulder.

“Lord Peter wants to say something to you, my boy,” he said.

Comphrey started and went with him a little reluctantly, as it seemed. He was not looking very well.

“Mr Comphrey,” said Wimsey, “I fancy these are some of your property.” He held out the palm of his hand, in which rested twenty-two fine, small-headed pins.

“Ingenious,” said Wimsey, “but something less ingenious would have served his turn better. It was very unlucky, Sir Septimus, that you should have mentioned the pearls when you did. Of course, he hoped that the loss wouldn't be discovered till we'd chucked guessing games and taken to ‘Hide-and-Seek'. Then the pearls might have been anywhere in the house, we shouldn't have locked the drawing-room door, and he could have recovered them at his leisure. He had had this possibility in his mind when he came here, obviously, and that was why he brought the pins, and Miss Shale's taking off the necklace to play ‘Dumb Crambo' gave him his opportunity.

“He had spent Christmas here before, and knew perfectly well that ‘Animal, Vegetable and Mineral' would form part of the entertainment. He had only to gather up the necklace from the table when it came to his turn to retire, and he knew he could count on at least five minutes by himself while we were all arguing about the choice of a word. He had only to snip the pearls from the string with his pocket-scissors, burn the string in the grate and fasten the pearls to the mistletoe with the fine pins. The mistletoe was hung on the chandelier, pretty high—it's a lofty room—but he could easily reach it by standing on the glass table, which wouldn't show footmarks, and it was almost certain that nobody would think of examining the mistletoe for extra berries. I shouldn't have thought of it myself if I hadn't found that pin which he had dropped. That gave me the idea that the pearls had been separated and the rest was easy. I took the pearls off the mistletoe last night—the clasp was there, too, pinned among the holly-leaves. Here they are. Comphrey must have got a nasty shock this morning. I knew he was our man when he suggested that the guests should tackle the decorations themselves and that he should do the back drawing-room—but I wish I had seen his face when he came to the mistletoe and found the pearls gone.”

“And you worked it all out when you found the pin?” said Sir Septimus.

“Yes; I knew then where the pearls had gone to.”

“But you never even looked at the mistletoe.”

“I saw it reflected in the black glass floor, and it struck me then how much the mistletoe berries looked like pearls.”

The Case Is Altered

Margery Allingham

Margery Allingham (1904–1966) was the daughter of two writers, and she wrote steadily throughout her schooldays, publishing an adventure story,
Blackerchief Dick
, when she was only seventeen. Albert Campion, the enigmatic detective who became her main series character, first appeared in a subordinate role in
The Crime at Black Dudley
(1928).

Allingham regarded the mystery novel as a box with four sides—“a Killing, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an element of satisfaction in it”, and liked to distinguish between her “right hand writing” which she did for pleasure and creative satisfaction, and her “left hand writing” which was commercially orientated. Three of her (now very hard to find) mysteries which were written under the name Maxwell March, were examples of the latter approach. “The Case is Altered” is a case of “right hand writing”.

***

Mr Albert Campion, sitting in a first-class smoking compartment, was just reflecting sadly that an atmosphere of stultifying decency could make even Christmas something of a stuffed-owl occasion, when a new hogskin suitcase of distinctive design hit him on the knees. At that same moment a golf bag bruised the shins of the shy young man opposite, an armful of assorted magazines burst over the pretty girl in the far corner, and a blast of icy air swept round the carriage. There was the familiar rattle and lurch which indicates that the train has started at last, a squawk from a receding porter, and Lance Feering arrived before him apparently by rocket.

“Caught it,” said the newcomer with the air of one confidently expecting congratulations, but as the train bumped jerkily he teetered back on his heels and collapsed between the two young people on the opposite seat.

“My dear chap, so we noticed,” murmured Campion, and he smiled apologetically at the girl, now disentangling herself from the shellburst of newsprint. It was his own disarming my-poor-friend-is-afflicted variety of smile that he privately considered infallible, but on this occasion it let him down.

The girl, who was in the early twenties and was slim and fair, with eyes like licked brandy-balls, as Lance Feering inelegantly put it afterwards, regarded him with grave interest. She stacked the magazines into a neat bundle and placed them on the seat opposite before returning to her own book. Even Mr Feering, who was in one of his more exuberant moods, was aware of that chilly protest. He began to apologize.

Campion had known Feering in his student days, long before he had become one of the foremost designers of stage décors in Europe, and was used to him, but now even he was impressed. Lance's apologies were easy but also abject. He collected his bag, stowed it on a clear space on the rack above the shy young man's head, thrust his golf things under the seat, positively blushed when he claimed his magazines, and regarded the girl with pathetic humility. She glanced at him when he spoke, nodded coolly with just enough graciousness not to be gauche, and turned over a page.

Campion was secretly amused. At the top of his form Lance was reputed to be irresistible. His dark face with the long mournful nose and bright eyes were unhandsome enough to be interesting and the quick gestures of his short painter's hands made his conversation picturesque. His singular lack of success on this occasion clearly astonished him and he sat back in his corner eyeing the young woman with covert mistrust.

Campion resettled himself to the two hours' rigid silence which etiquette demands from first-class travellers who, although they are more than probably going to be asked to dance a reel together if not to share a bathroom only a few hours hence, have not yet been introduced.

There was no way of telling if the shy young man and the girl with the brandy-ball eyes knew each other, and whether they too were en route for Underhill, Sir Philip Cookham's Norfolk place. Campion was inclined to regard the coming festivities with a certain amount of lugubrious curiosity. Cookham himself was a magnificent old boy, of course, “one of the more valuable pieces in the Cabinet”, as someone had once said of him, but Florence was a different kettle of fish. Born to wealth and breeding, she had grown blasé towards both of them and now took her delight in notabilities, a dangerous affectation in Campion's experience. She was some sort of remote aunt of his.

He glanced again at the young people, caught the boy unaware, and was immediately interested.

The illustrated magazine had dropped from the young man's hand and he was looking out of the window, his mouth drawn down at the corners and a narrow frown between his thick eyebrows. It was not an unattractive face, too young for strong character but decent and open enough in the ordinary way. At that particular moment, however, it wore a revealing expression. There was recklessness in the twist of the mouth and sullenness in the eyes, while the hand which lay upon the inside arm-rest was clenched.

Campion was curious. Young people do not usually go away for Christmas in this top-step-at-the-dentist's frame of mind. The girl looked up from her book.

“How far is Underhill from the station?” she inquired.

“Five miles. They'll meet us.” The shy young man turned to her so easily and with such obvious affection that any romantic theory Campion might have formed was knocked on the head instantly. The youngster's troubles evidently had nothing to do with love.

Lance had raised his head with bright-eyed interest at the gratuitous information and now a faintly sardonic expression appeared upon his lips. Campion sighed for him. For a man who fell in and out of love with the abandonment of a seal round a pool, Lance Feering was an impossible optimist. Already he was regarding the girl with that shy despair which so many ladies had found too piteous to be allowed to persist. Campion washed his hands of him and turned away just in time to notice a stranger glancing in at them from the corridor. It was a dark and arrogant young face and he recognized it instantly, feeling at the same time a deep wave of sympathy for old Cookham. Florence, he gathered, had done it again.

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 high-lights, an angry-looking lady novelist, Nadja 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 wilfully 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 or 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 good-looking 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?”