Coroner's Pidgin (4 page)

Meanwhile Carados was making the introductions in the hasty, casual fashion of one whose mind is elsewhere. Susan Shering looked no more than surprised at the name of the celebrity when she was presented to Evangeline, but Campion received the impression that the two women had met before. It occurred to him that young Mrs. Shering was remarkably ignorant of her fiancé's history.

The most acutely miserable person present, Lugg always excepted, was Don Evers. He was a straightforward, decent youngster, and he was very unhappy. He stood resolutely by Susan's side, nodded when it was required of him, and did not smile at all.

The cheerful girl who had come with John and Eve was introduced at last, and Campion remembered her name at once—Dolly Chivers. She was a fair-haired, thundering English rose, a jolly young woman who clumped about putting everything right with a big, frank smile. For once he was delighted to see her; in his opinion this was one of the few occasions which merited her sort of treatment, the sooner the better, too; after all he had his train to catch.

The moment everyone present had at least a vague notion who exactly everybody else might be, Lady Carados took matters into her own hands. Sitting down gracefully, she
took out a small handkerchief and began to cry into it quietly. Johnny and Miss Chivers hurried over to her, and Campion found Eve at his side.

“Darling, for God's sake,” she said in her familiar squeaky whisper, “what's up? Can't we go in the kitchen?”

It is a human instinct in times of other people's stress to find the most disinterested person present and get in a huddle; and Campion, having seated his guest on the draining board in the kitchenette, perched himself on the dresser and kicked the door shut with a certain amount of relief.

“It's all highly peculiar,” he added, after retailing the story as far as he knew it. “Lady Carados would appear to be one of those women who have an original view of law and order, all probably based on the fact that she used to tip the Home Secretary half a crown when he was at Eton. My own bet is that she's been frightened for the first time in her life, and that she's lost her head. By sheer bad luck the man she picked to help her is one of the few people on earth who are used to doing the unconventional when so directed. Lugg's got a bee in his bonnet about the aristocracy—they go to his head.”

“Like wine,” she said absently. She was not listening to him any more. She had pulled off the ridiculous lavender fez she had been wearing, and the narrow yellow curl in the front of her dark hair shone in the grey light.

“Where is the—the thing, Albert? In the next room?”

He nodded. “On my bed. Lugg swears it's suicide, so I take it that angle is healthy, but the whole thing is madness—horrible madness.”

“Very,” she agreed, her head still bent. “But it's dangerous, too, isn't it? I mean, one ought to get right away at once, oughtn't one, before one gets in the papers? And one would, of course, if it wasn't for old Johnny.”

He glanced at her curiously, but she was not going to enlarge on that angle, or at least not much.

“She looks a nice child, doesn't she?” she remarked. “She was married at nineteen, you know, and widowed in a week.”

“Susan?”

“Uh-huh. But all that is rather overshadowed at the
moment, isn't it? My dear, what an unspeakably awful thing to happen. You say nobody knows who the poor beast was, and yet she was found in Johnny's bed the morning before he was due to come home to be married?”

Mr. Campion slid off the dresser. He had caught a sound outside in the passage.

“That's the tale at the moment of going to press,” he said, “but I rather think there are developments.” He opened the door cautiously and looked out. Johnny, very broad and solid in his blue-grey uniform, was backing away from the bedroom door. Dolly Chivers was behind him, and for once the ready smile had been wiped from her wide, fair-skinned face. Lugg in the role of guide was still in the bedroom. Carados turned to the woman and said something. She nodded, and he caught his breath; then, seeing Campion, he came forward into the kitchen. He looked amazed; shocked and worried also, but mainly amazed.

“Who is it?” said Eve.

“Do you know her?” Campion demanded.

“Yes. Yes, I do.” He looked round at Miss Chivers, who had followed him. “It is the woman, isn't it?”

Dolly Chivers nodded again, her mouth stiff with alarm.

“Who is it?” Eve asked again, her head held on one side and her light brown eyes narrowed.

“Her name was Moppet,” said Carados, unaware of any incongruity. “Moppet . . . Moppet . . . Harris, was it? No, Lewis. That's right. Mrs. Moppet Lewis. Remember her, Eve?”

“No.” The star hesitated. “No, I don't unless . . . Oh, not that little crow of a woman who . . . not . . . oh, Johnny!”

The man looked at her helplessly, and as he met her eyes a faint mischievous smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

It occurred to Campion, who was looking at him, that much of the charm of the man lay here.

“Yes, that's the girl,” he said. “If it wasn't so damned awful, it would be terribly funny. She's got in at last.”

Eve shook her head at him and at herself also, for a gleam
of shocked amusement had crept into her own eyes. “That's fantastic,” she said, and turned to Campion.

“She was a little gate-crasher, oh, years ago,” she went on. “Johnny always did collect fans and she was one who took the whole gang of us too seriously altogether. I forget who brought her round, but she got into the house once and I remember Gwenda trying to stop her trying on all our clothes. She thought we were all too ‘sweet and brittle' for words, and actually said so, I believe, to someone like Peter. Where are Gwenda and Peter, by the way? Due to arrive tonight, I suppose. Oh, tomorrow—well, it doesn't matter, I only thought by the look of things they ought to be here. Well, let me see, where was I? Oh, yes; well, we got rid of Mrs. Moppet in the end, or rather Gwenda did. You never had an affair with her, did you, Johnny?”

The final question came out directly and without affectation, and for a moment they were all transported into that other world before the war when little affairs were fashionable, and no one seemed to have very much to do. The query appeared to startle Carados.

“Why, no,” he said. “No. Of course not. I may have taken her out to lunch once or twice, you know.”

“To lunch? Once or twice? Darling, I thought she was only in the place once or twice, and that we were all rather beastly to her. Wasn't she the one who was always offering to get things for us wholesale? That was the one, wasn't it, Dolly?”

“Yes, that's the woman. I remember her perfectly.” Miss Chivers was forthright as usual. “A bit of a trial, nosy, and possessive. You hated her, I remember.”

Johnny shrugged his shoulders.

“All the same, I took her out to lunch three or four times about seven years ago.” He spoke firmly and flatly, and the rest of the gathering did not look at him. Eve drew up her long dancer's legs, and sat with her arms round her knees.

“Before we decide what to do, let us know exactly what happened,” she said. “How did she get into the house last night, or whenever it was?”

“That's what I don't understand,” said Dolly Chivers
quickly. “I was in the house until about six yesterday. I took a brief look round to see that everything was all right before I left, and I imagine I locked up after me. I think so, anyway, and I went home in the ordinary way. Rogers has got leave, and insists on coming back, bless him, just for the seven days, so that Johnny will have someone to look after him, but he won't be here until tomorrow morning, and meanwhile there were no servants in the place or anything.”

She stood thinking, and her heavy but by no means unhandsome face was clouded.

“This morning when I arrived, Lady Carados was there doing the flowers. I didn't go in the bedroom and she sent me off to do one or two things she wanted done, and I only got back just now when you and Johnny arrived, Eve. As far as I can gather Lady Carados went in the bedroom and found this woman with a glass and a medicine bottle by her side. Then she seems to have gone out of her mind, thought it would be convenient if the body were found somewhere else, and simply decided to move it. Upon my word I never heard of such a thing—whatever next! It's all these air raids, you know, people aren't afraid of the unconventional any more.”

“The row frightened her,” said Carados. “The Edwardians got the fear of scandal under their skins. It was the same sort of thing as the funk the Victorians had of cholera, and we have of poison gas. It was the worst that could happen in those days, I suppose.”

Eve Snow caught his eye. “Not jolly now,” she said. “The stink will be considerable, Johnny. Not nice for anybody. We're not quite the gay don't-cares we used to be, are we, any of us?”

“No,” he said seriously. “No, my dear, that's what I've been thinking for the last half-hour. It all looks so damn bad that it looks like a frame-up, doesn't it? Everybody knows how I feel about my job, and everybody knows about my prospective father-in-law. The old boy's been a sticky conventionalist all his life, and was having it knocked out of him. Then he goes and fights an old-fashioned sea battle in
precisely the way he said sea battles ought to be fought, and its success has confirmed him in all his other opinions. He's a hundred per cent Victorian heavy father, at the moment. That's why this thing is so hopelessly damaging. Why on earth should the woman do it? After all, she had nothing very much against me.”

“It looks,” said Dolly Chivers, who appeared to be one of those people who have the misfortune to cross all their t's and dot all their i's, “as though she were as much against your marriage as—well, as most people are.”

She flushed violently after she had spoken, and looked wildly after the careless words, and it was at this point, while the air was still tingling, that Mr. Campion, noticing his watch again, decided that the time had come.

“But, Albert, you can't.” Eve was vehement, and every ounce of her lively personality went into the protest. “You can't go off and leave us all like this. What on earth shall we do?”

The tall, thin man peered through his spectacles at the group in the tiny kitchen. “My dear people,” he said, “there is only one thing you can do. Take the advice of an old practitioner; go to the police; go in a body; go in a great conscious-stricken huddle of innocent, foolish persons, each bearing a powerful well-known name. Pour in on the suspicious but at heart all too human police, make no more mystery. Hide nothing. Confess to the borrowed ambulance, the body-snatching, and the takings out to lunch. Put yourselves wholeheartedly in the hands of old uncle Oates, who as far as I know is the new chief of the C.I.D., and then pray. The Press is mercifully short of space and there's bigger news about than you. As for me, I'm sorry but I'm going. For nearly four years I've been thinking of catching a train at Euston, and this is the great afternoon. I'm catching it.” He paused and grinned at them. “That's about the lot, I think,” he said.

There was silence for a while after he had spoken, and it was Eve who made the first comment.

“Yes, well,” she said at last. “That's the voice of reason, isn't it? All the same I wish you would stay and shepherd
us through it, Albert. I mean, you are used to this sort of thing.”

Mr. Campion was affronted. “Not at all,” he said. “You've been reading escapist literature. This is not at all the side of the fence to which I'm accustomed. Besides,” he glanced at his wrist again, “I can't,” he added. “Sorry, my dears, but I can't. In fact I daren't stay another moment. Good luck, and good confessing.”

“I'll take you down the stairs, guv'nor,” said Lugg from the passage, but Johnny forestalled him.

“No,” he said. “No, you stay here. I'll get you into your cab, Campion. Nobody move till I get back.”

Mr. Campion made no objection, and as they went down together Carados laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Look here,” he said, “this is an imposition on you, I know that, and I'm sorry. But meanwhile I can trust you, can't I?”

The hastening traveller cocked an eye at him.

“My dear chap,” he said mildly, “at this moment my only interest on earth is to catch my train. Do what you must, of course. I've given you my advice and apart from that I have no further finger in the pie. I shouldn't do anything really silly, though, if I were you.”

“Who's to tell what is silly?” said Carados slowly, and Campion glancing at him saw a curiously bewildered expression on his strong face. “I'm living in two worlds, Campion,” he said suddenly. “Two utterly different worlds. I shall tell the police, of course, but I'm not sure if this is the time.”

They had reached the narrow hall and Campion did not comment. He was fishing in his pocket for the key of the porter's small office which since the war was uninhabited.

“I've got some kit in here,” he said. “It's heavy stuff which has been waiting for me for about eighteen months; I'd like to take it with me.”

There was little time to waste and Carados went off to get a taxi. He came back almost at once, very pleased with himself. “Found one,” he said. “Providential—you're in luck. Let me give you a hand. Very well, then, old boy, I can rely on you. I'll use my wits and you keep quiet.”

Campion did not answer him immediately, since he was negotiating the luggage, but as the driver was settling the two crates beside his seat, he leaned out of the cab and took Johnny's proffered hand.

“You can rely on me to all reasonable lengths,” he said, “but in my opinion you're up against the impossible. Too many people.”

Carados nodded gloomily, but there was grimness in his bright blue eyes. “Yes,” he said, “but I'm getting married the day after tomorrow, and I don't want anything to muck it up. I don't want any trouble for forty-eight hours. I say,” he added suddenly in a lower tone, “who's the American, do you know?”