Coroner's Pidgin (11 page)

“We lived very contentedly,” he persisted, his round brown eyes fixed on Yeo's beseechingly. “Sometimes she came to see me, sometimes I visited her, but we did not live in the same house nor did we share the same friends. We were neither of us young, we were not unfaithful.”

Holly's head was inclining more and more to one side but Yeo had made up his mind to be sympathetic, and now did his best.

“Yes, I can see that,” he said mendaciously, “but surely she'd tell you where she was going?”

“Why?” The other man seemed astonished, and Yeo was put out of his stride.

“I should have thought you'd have had a right to know,” said Holly primly.

“But I did not want to know. I did not know where she came from that afternoon; where we each went, what we each did, was not the other's affair.”

The constable wrote something in his notebook in a scholarly long-hand, and Campion glanced over his shoulder.

‘Loveless marriage', he had written, and had drawn a curling line under the words.

Mr. Campion felt a trifle helpless. Yeo shook his head sadly. “You can't help us then,” he said. “It's a great pity, Mr. Stavros. After all, a woman has been foully done to death, and she was your wife.”

“Do you think I do not know that?”

The whole room was unprepared for the outburst. The man stood before them cracking visibly; his dignity and sophistication were gone, there were tears in his eyes and on his cheeks, and his mouth was ragged and hideous like the mouth of a tragedy mask.

“Do you think I don't know?” The words came in an ugly broken whisper, and he turned his back on them.

Yeo, who was by nature the kindest of men, was appalled; his red face became a little blue as he stepped away from his victim, and buttonholed Holly.

“Have you got the full description of the clothes she was wearing when he last saw her?” he muttered, dropping his voice so low that it sounded like a growl.

“Yes. That's been done. I've got a note.”

“Good. Well, I think I can leave this to you, Inspector.” Yeo was retreating in bad order, and was not concealing the fact. “He'll have to identify her, you know, but give him time; don't hustle him, it's only a formality. Come on, Campion.”

He hurried out of the room without a backward glance and paused in the passage to wipe his face.

“There you are,” he said, “I told you, I don't understand these damned people. There was no fake about that, he's genuinely upset.”

“Of course he is, poor chap. He was in love with her.”

“Yet he only saw her now and again. Married her, and didn't live with her.”

“That's probably why.”

“Why what?”

“Why he was in love with her. I mean, perhaps that is how it was done. We haven't got much of a line on the sort of woman she actually was, you know.”

Yeo regarded him with kindly regret. “Cynical,” he said. “You may be right, but it's not nice.”

“Not nice be blowed,” said Campion stung to inelegance. “This man found he'd married a woman whom he loved sometimes, therefore he saw her sometimes. Eminently sensible. What you don't seem to have asked him is why she called.”

The Superintendent appeared out of his depth. “Didn't she ever look up her husband?” he enquired innocently.

“I don't know, but I should think they usually met by appointment. I mean, that sort of relationship would require a certain amount of mutual tact, wouldn't it? Envisage it.”

“I can't,” said Yeo. “And if my missus heard you talking, she'd put you across her knee. Still, go on; I'm not too old to learn.”

“Well, I don't know,” said Campion again, “but it sounds to me as though either he 'phoned her or she him, and they had a week-end together occasionally. I don't swear it worked like this, but if she dropped in for ten minutes suddenly I should say it was to tell him something she'd rather not mention on the 'phone. That's the impression I get.”

“Very French,” commented the Superintendent.

“Not really,” said Mr. Campion.

“Very well, I'll look into it.” Yeo was grudging. “All the same it seems a funny thing for me to ask a man—why his wife went to see him?” He shook his head darkly. “You don't know what we've got to contend with,” he said. “Not all the evil in the world is on the Continent, and what have I got to do now? Trot along to see that terrifying woman.”

“Lady Carados?”

“Yes. We've got to go over her place with a tooth-comb for the rest of Mrs. Stavros's clothes. She can't have come in out of the street in a nightdress. In the ordinary way I should leave that to someone else, but this is very special, and in police work the higher the rank of the bobby the thicker the kid gloves, or that's the theory. I doubt if it's true.”

“Suppose you don't find the missing clothes at Lady Carados's house?” enquired Campion.

Yeo cocked an eye at him. “Then we shall make a bee-line for her son's place,” he said. “Somebody smothered that woman knowing what he was doing. We shall get him, you know, Campion, and when we've got him we shall hang him.”

Mr. Campion glanced at the powerful figure with sudden gravity.

“I back you,” he said soberly.

Yeo grunted. “I'm glad to hear it,” he observed. “We've got more on hand than you realize, my lad. Now you get back to your young lady, and don't forget I expect cooperation.”

“You'll get it,” said Campion. “See you at Phillippi.”

“It's called the ‘Coach and Horses',” murmured the Superintendent. “Up the wrong end of Early Street. Any time just before ten. So long.”

Mr. Campion went back to the now practically deserted restaurant, and glancing across the room to his table saw as he had feared that all traces of the meal had been cleared away. Susan was still there, though, but she was not alone. A young man in green khaki was sitting beside her. Mr. Campion had only seen Don Evers once before, and then not in the happiest circumstances, but he had no difficulty in recognizing him; the youngster had a distinctive appearance and now, when he was paler than he had been on the doorstep of the flat in Bottle Street, his natural good looks had asserted themselves. He looked older than his years, and the strong lines which would one day lend character to his face, showed faintly under his fair skin.

Susan was watching him with tragedy in her eyes. They
were both unaware of their surroundings and were alone together.

Mr. Campion forbore to interrupt. He chose a table some distance away and sat down, and the old waiter, who could still talk too impulsively, came shambling up to him. Mr. Campion accepted his ultimatum that coffee alone or with a liqueur was the best that could be done for him, and was sniffing something which he trusted devoutly was not medicated paraffin before he ventured a casual question.

“Seen Mrs. Stavros lately?”

The watery eyes regarded him furtively. “Not since the quarrel, sir,” said the old man. “That was some days ago. Sunday, I think.”

MR. CAMPION REMAINED
looking into those sunken and watery eyes for some little time. Then he set down his glass.

“Quarrels do occur,” he said vaguely, “a plate or two smashed here and there, what does it matter?”

“Oh, it wasn't that sort of quarrel, sir.” The old man hesitated. He seemed a little at sea, and Campion lit a cigarette with great care and concentration. The waiter drifted away, played with some crockery on a side table, came half-way back, changed his mind, and shambled to the entrance where, after a brief survey of the weather, he appeared to reach a decision. He came stumbling back to Campion.

“Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned it, sir,” he said, fluttering before the table. “It was just a few high words. Not really high, either. Not high at all now I come to think of it.”

“About a foot?” enquired Campion with apparent seriousness.

The other man stared at him, dawning suspicion on his crumpled face. “I'm old,” he said, “things kind of slip out. They didn't ought to, but I'm not used to London, and well, you might say my old tongue, that runs away with me.”

“Where do you come from?” said Campion. “Sudbury?”

The decrepit figure gaped at him. “I wasn't born far from there,” he said. “Perhaps I've served you somewhere? Do you recognize me?”

“Only in a general way,” murmured his guest. “You're never bored for long, are you?”

“Bored, sir?”

“Gravelled for lack of excitement. Things happen when you're around, and if they don't you help them on.”

The old man looked at him steadily, and there was a glint of wicked amusement deep in the faded eyes. He picked up an empty glass and began to polish it.

“That weren't much of a quarrel,” he said. “It was what she said to him when she left that made me wonder, especially when I heard she'd been found gorn.”

“Gorn?”

“Dead, sir.”

“Oh, I see. Well, what did she say when she left?”

The waiter hesitated, apparently not to waste any satisfaction there might be in the situation.

“I wouldn't like to go to the police because of my job, you see,” he said.

“What do you think I am?”

The sinful old face cracked into a purely yokel smile.

“Not a policeman, sir,” he said. “Quite likely you're as curious as what I am, but like me, you ain't a policeman. I'll tell you what she said. Up here people don't take the notice that we used to in the country; up here it's all mind your own business, and I dessay no one but me realized that when the lady and her husband was talking together on Sunday, they was riled, but I did. They went into his little office and had quite a noise together.”

“Noise?”

“Well, a row, sir. At least I think so, because when they came out she was red in the face and nearly crying, and when she left she said: ‘Good-bye, then, I can't promise nothing. You don't understand, I can't promise nothing.' Those were her actual words.”

Mr. Campion doubted it, but he suspected the sense was correct.

“It made me think,” said the waiter, “especially now she's gorn.
What
couldn't she promise? That's getting on my mind. I'd
like
to know that.” He spoke with such genuine wistfulness that Mr. Campion smiled.

“What's your name?” he enquired.

“I couldn't go to no Court to give evidence.”

“I doubt if you'd be asked to.”

“I'd say I couldn't remember.”

“I'm sure you would.”

“Very well, then. Me name's Fred Parker.”

“Really.” Mr. Campion seemed delighted. “Any—er—nickname?”

Mr. Parker's old eyes narrowed. “No,” he said. “No nickname; only Fred. Well, perhaps you'd like your bill, sir? You're paying for the young lady you came in with, are you?”

“It's the custom of the country,” agreed Mr. Campion, glancing across the room to where Susan's fair head was drooping a little.

“Yes, so it is, sir,” said the aged Fred idiotically. “Let's see; that's the young lady talking to the American officer over there, isn't it? Table Twelve, sir.”

He spoke so innocently and with such a show of doddering inefficiency that despite his recent discovery Mr. Campion was almost taken in by the technique.

“That would be the young lady advertised to marry Lord Carados, wouldn't it? A very pretty young lady, if I may say so. I recognized her as soon as she came in; that's why I was so upset when I made the slip I did, sir.” He raised his eyes and again the dreadful thirst for entertainment flickered in them.

“Yes. Well, you're a prize specimen,” said Campion. “Tell me, do you ever get into serious trouble?”

Old Fred permitted himself an evil chuckle. It was soundless, and involved the display of a dreadful assortment of tooth stumps.

“You will have your joke, sir,” he said. “I'm only an old man interested in what I see. I'm very careful who I talk to, very careful.”

“I'm glad to hear it.” Mr. Campion sounded sincere. “Otherwise even in times like these I should think Mr. Stavros might regret transporting you from the ‘Eastern Lion', or whatever it was.”

“The ‘Totham Sun', sir; I was there for years. A very dull place it was compared to this one. No. it's not Mr. Stavros I have to watch out for.” Fred was reflective. “No, it's that Mr. Pirri, the other partner. He ain't the person to come up against in a hurry.”

Mr. Campion grinned. “Thank you for the tip,” he said.

“No, thank you, sir,” the old man said, and hurled himself off down the room laughing. When he returned and his client had done what was expected of him, Campion ventured a single question.

“Just to satisfy an academic curiosity, do you know who I am?” he enquired.

Old Fred paused, and the desire to score wrestled visibly with his native caution.

“I did ask about you, sir,” he said at last. “As soon as the police gentleman came in I did ask who you was. They told me in the kitchen. The head waiter recognized you; he used to serve you before the war.”

“I see. And so you thought I was the person to honour with a few confidences. Dear me, you don't miss much, do you?”

“No, I don't, sir.” He took the observation as a tribute. “Very little. Very little indeed. By the way, sir, there's one thing I ought to have told you before; that American gentleman over there, sitting with your young lady guest, sir, he came in asking for you and I took him over to the young lady.” The watery glance was fixed hopefully on Campion's face. “I thought it would be all right, sir, because he's been in here with her before, several times.” He waited a moment to see the effect of this latest depth charge, and then sidled off with surprising speed.