Look to the Lady
Authors: Margery Allingham
CONTENTS
  5. Penny: For Your Thoughts
  9. The Indelicate Creature
23. âMadame, Will You Talk?'
27. There were Giants in those Days
  Also available in Vintage Murder Mysteries
Finding himself the victim of a botched kidnapping attempt, Val Gyrth suspects that he might be in a spot of trouble. Unexpected news to him â but not to the mysterious Mr Campion, who reveals that the ancient Chalice entrusted to Val's family is being targeted by a ruthless ring of thieves.
Fleeing London for the supposed safety of Suffolk, Val and Campion come face to face with events of a perilous and puzzling nature â Campion might be accustomed to outwitting criminal minds, but can he foil supernatural forces?
Margery Allingham was born in London in 1904. She attended the Perse School in Cambridge before returning to London to the Regent Street Polytechnic. Her father â author H.J. Allingham â encouraged her to write, and was delighted when her first story was published when she was thirteen in her aunt's magazine,
Mother and Home
.
Her first novel was published when she was seventeen. In 1928 she published her first detective story,
The White Cottage Mystery
, which had been serialised in the
Daily Express
. The following year, in
The Crime at Black Dudley
, she introduced the character who was to become the hallmark of her writing â Albert Campion. Her novels heralded the more sophisticated suspense genre: characterised by her intuitive intelligence, extraordinary energy and accurate observation, they vary from the grave to the openly satirical, whilst never losing sight of the basic rules of the classic detective tale. Famous for her London thrillers, such as
Hide My Eyes
and
The Tiger in the Smoke
, she has been compared to Dickens in her evocation of the city's shady underworld.
In 1927 she married the artist, journalist and editor Philip Youngman Carter. They divided their time between their Bloomsbury flat and an old house in the village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy in Essex. Margery Allingham died in 1966.
The Crime at Black Dudley
Mystery Mile
Police at the Funeral
Sweet Danger
Death of a Ghost
Dancers in Mourning
The Case of the Late Pig
The Fashion in Shrouds
Mr Campion and Others
Black Plumes
Traitor's Purse
Coroner's Pidgin
The Casebook of Mr Campion
More Work for the Undertaker
The Tiger in the Smoke
The Beckoning Lady
Hide my Eyes
The China Governess
The Mind Readers
A Cargo of Eagles
To
Orlando
â
Reward for Finder?
'
â
âI
F
you'll accept this, sir,' said the policeman, pressing a shilling into the down-and-out's hand, âyou'll have visible means of support and I shan't have to take you along. But,' he added with a delightful hint of embarrassment, âI'll have to ask you to move on; the Inspector is due round any minute.'
Percival St John Wykes Gyrth, only son of Colonel Sir Percival Christian St John Gyrth, Bt, of the Tower, Sanctuary, Suffolk, reddened painfully, thrust the coin into his trouser pocket, and smiled at his benefactor.
âThank you, Baker,' he said. âThis is extraordinarily kind of you. I shan't forget it.'
âThat's all right, sir.' The man's embarrassment increased. âYou gave me five pounds the night you was married.' He opened his mouth as though to continue, but thought the better of it, and the young man's next remark indicated clearly that he was in no mood for reminiscences.
âI say, where the devil can I sit where I shan't be moved on?'
The policeman glanced nervously up South Molton Street, whence even now the dapper form of the Inspector was slowly approaching.
âEbury Square â just off Southampton Row,' he murmured hastily. âYou'll be as safe as houses there. Good night, sir.'
The final words were a dismissal; the Inspector was almost upon them. Val Gyrth pulled his battered hat over his eyes, and hunching his shoulders, shuffled off towards Oxford Street. His âvisible means of support' flopped solitarily in the one safe âI pocket of his suit, a suit which had once come reverently from the hands of the tailor whose shop he was passing. He crossed into Oxford Street and turned up towards the Circus.
It was a little after midnight and the wide road was almost deserted. There were a few returning revellers, a sprinkling of taxicabs, and an occasional late bus.
Val Gyrth chose the inside of the pavement, keeping as much in the shadow as possible. The summer smell of the city, warm and slightly scented like a chemist's shop, came familiarly to his nostrils and in spite of his weariness there was an impatience in his step. He was bitterly angry with himself. The situation was impossible, quixotic and ridiculous. Old Baker had given him a shilling to save him from arrest as a vagrant on his own doorstep. It was unthinkable.
He had not eaten since the night before, but he passed the coffee-stall outside the French hat shop in the Circus without a thought. He had ceased to feel hungry at about four o'clock that afternoon and had been surprised and thankful at the respite. The swimming sensation which had taken the place of it seemed eminently preferable.
The pavement was hot to that part of his foot which touched it through the hole in an expensive shoe, and he was beginning to limp when he turned down by Mudie's old building and found himself after another five minutes' plodding in a dishevelled little square whose paved centre was intersected by two rows of dirty plane trees, beneath which, amid the litter of a summer's day, were several dilapidated wooden benches. There were one or two unsavoury-looking bundles dotted here and there, but there were two seats unoccupied. Val Gyrth chose the one under a street lamp and most aloof from its fellows; he sank down, realizing for the first time the full sum of his weariness.
A shiver ran through the dusty leaves above his head, and as he glanced about him he became obsessed with a curious feeling of apprehension which could not be explained by the sudden chill of the night. A car passed through the square, and from far off beyond the Strand came the mournful bellow of a tug on the river. None of the bundles huddled on the other seats stirred, but it seemed to the boy, one of the least imaginative of an unimaginative race, that something enormous and of great importance was about to happen, or was, indeed, in the very act of happening all round him; a sensation perhaps explainable by partial starvation and a potential thunderstorm.
He took off his hat and passed his fingers through his very fair hair, the increasing length of which was a continual source of annoyance to him. He was a thick-set, powerful youngster in his early twenties, with a heavy but by no means unhandsome face and an habitual expression of dogged obstinacy; a pure Anglo-Saxon type, chiefly remarkable at the moment for a certain unnatural gauntness which accentuated the thickness of his bones.
He sighed, turned up his coat collar, and was about to lift his feet out of the miscellaneous collection of paper bags, orange skins and cigarette cartons on to the bench, when he paused and sat up stiffly, staring down at the ground in front of him. He was conscious of a sudden wave of heat passing over him, of an odd shock that made his heart jump unpleasantly.
He was looking at his own name, written on a battered envelope lying face upwards among the other litter.
He picked it up and was astonished to see that his hand was shaking. The name was unmistakable. âP. St J.W. Gyrth, Esq.' written clearly in a hand he did not know.
He turned the envelope over. It was an expensive one, and empty, having been torn open across the top apparently by an impatient hand. He sat staring at it for some moments, and a feeling of unreality took possession of him. The address, âKemp's, 32a Wembley Road, Clerkenwell, EC1', was completely unfamiliar.
He stared at it as though he expected the words to change before his eyes, but they remained clear and unmistakable: âP. St J.W. Gyrth, Esq.'
At first it did not occur to him to doubt that the name was his own, or that the envelope had been originally intended for him. Gyrth is an unusual name, and the odd collection of initials combined with it made it impossible for him to think that in this case it could belong to anyone else.
He studied the handwriting thoughtfully, trying to place it. His mind had accepted the astounding coincidence which had brought him to this particular seat in this particular square and led him to pick up the one envelope which bore his name. He hunted among the rubbish at his feet in a futile attempt to find the contents of the envelope, but an exhaustive search convinced him that the paper in his hand was all that was of interest to him there.
The hand puzzled him. It was distinctive, square, with heavy downstrokes and sharp Greek E's; individual handwriting, not easily to be forgotten. He turned his attention to the postmark, and the bewildered expression upon his young face became one of blank astonishment. It was dated the fifteenth of June. Today was the nineteenth. The letter was therefore only four days old.
It was over a week since he had possessed any address. Yet he was convinced, and the fact was somehow slightly uncanny and unnerving, that someone had written to him, and someone else had received the letter, the envelope of which had been thrown away to be found by himself.