More Work for the Undertaker (19 page)

Charlie Luke scratched his head. ‘Sounds as if it
must
have been the Captain and he
was
waiting for her. Pity you didn't see her. Are you sure she went into the mews?'

‘Absolutely. I watched. There's a way through into Barrow Road.'

‘You're sure the Bowels didn't come back into the mews?'

‘No. How could they? There's no back way to the chemist's shop and I wasn't ten yards from the front window.'

‘Then what happened?'

Mike leant back farther in his pillows and the nurse seemed to be about to declare the interview at an end. He rallied, however, and went on eagerly.

‘I went into the mews and found the bike,' he said. ‘That's right. There was a light under Bowels's back door and I remembered the son had told me they'd got a relation staying with them. I sidled down to the shed, afraid that the chap might hear me. The bike was there all right. I shut the door before I lit a match to see. I hadn't a torch.'

‘Did you notice anybody?'

‘No, there was no one downstairs. I thought I heard someone in the loft and I spoke, I think. I can't remember. Anyway there was no more noise and I thought I must have heard one of the horses next door. There was nothing to sit on and the bricks were pretty well running with damp, and so I thought I'd be better off upstairs. I was tired as hell and I'd got to think. I'd only got a pound in the world until payday.' His forehead wrinkled under his bandage. ‘That's another problem,' he said, and grinned disarmingly. ‘We'll give that our attention later. Well, I lit a match and held it down to keep it alight, and
tottered up the ladder. That's absolutely all I remember. Somebody socked me, I suppose. Who was it?'

‘Hardly the Captain's girl-friend,' said Campion foolishly.

As they got up Dunning put out a hand to him.

‘Send her in, there's a good scout,' he muttered. ‘I've got to talk to her. You don't know what sort of mess she'll get into without me.'

‘Of course, that's when it's serious,' remarked Campion to the D.D.I. as they walked down the concrete steps of the hospital together after the errand had been completed.

‘Poor ruddy little kids!' exploded Charlie Luke unexpectedly. ‘No one's looking after either of 'em so they're taking care of each other.' He paused. ‘Like a couple of drunks,' he said. ‘Well, it wasn't Lugg's relations after all.'

‘No, it would appear not.' Campion was puzzled. ‘I think I should like a chat with Jas.'

‘He's all yours. I've got to go down and see Sir Doberman now. There was a message from him just before this call came through from the hospital about Dunning. I don't know what the old boy's dogged up now.'

They had reached the gates and he stood for a moment, restless and unhappy. His eyes were worried and deep in his head.

‘Do you know where this blasted case is getting to, sir?' he said. ‘I know I'm short-handed, what with H.Q. pinching half the chaps, and I know it's a difficult assignment, the Palinodes being such unusual people, but do you see any light in it at all? Perhaps I'm just losing my grip.'

Campion, who despite his height looked slighter and smaller than the other man, took off his spectacles to regard him mildly.

‘Oh, it's coming, Charles,' he said. ‘It's teasing out, don't you know. As I see it, the point to keep in mind now is that there are clearly two different coloured threads in the – er – coil. The question is, are they tied at the end? I feel they ought to be, but I don't know. What do you think?'

‘I sometimes wonder if I can,' said Charlie Luke.

THE GLASS DOOR
of the Bowels's establishment was fastened but there was still light within when Mr Campion pressed the bell and stood waiting. Considered dispassionately, the window was not without interest. It contained one black marble urn, which could only have been an embarrassment anywhere else and two wax wreaths under glass.

The only other item was a miniature easel bearing a black-edged card which announced ‘Reliable Interments. Taste, Efficiency, Economy, Respect,' in small but florid type.

He was reflecting that an unreliable interment hardly bore imagining when he caught sight of Mr Bowels, snr, rising up from the stair-well which was just visible through the door. He appeared to be eating and was struggling with his jacket, but he moved with gratifying speed and presently pressed his face against the glass.

‘Mr Campion!' he said with delight. ‘Well, this is a treat, this is.' He allowed his smile to give place to cautious concern. ‘Excuse me for being so personal, but nothing professional, I hope, sir?'

Mr Campion was affable. ‘That depends on which of us you have in mind. Perhaps we could go down to your kitchen for a moment, could we?'

The broad face became expressionless for less than a second and Campion had hardly time to recognize the fact before the man was beaming again, light on his feet and deferential.

‘Now I should regard that as an honour, Mr Campion. This way. You'll forgive me going first, I'm sure.' He bowed his way round the visitor and his voice filled the building like a gong.

Campion followed him down the stairs to a narrow passage which smelled stuffy and warm after the refined emptiness of
the shop. He bobbed along, taking very short steps, and talking all the time.

‘It's humble but comfortable,' he was saying. ‘We see enough of magnificence, me and the boy, and it hasn't got happy associations, so in private life we like to be homely. But I'm forgetting; you did us the honour the other day when Magers had indulged, poor fellow.'

He stopped, his hand on the latch of a narrow door. He was smiling, his large front teeth all but hiding his small lower lip.

‘After me, if you'll permit,' he said, and went in.

He became happier at once. ‘We're alone, I see,' he said as he backed into the dimly lit and cluttered apartment and set a chair for his visitor at the supper table. ‘I thought the boy was here but he's gone back to his work. A beautiful craftsman – just sit here, sir; then you'll be on my right side and I can hear you, if you please.'

As Campion sat down Jas walked round to his own seat at the head of the table. His white curls shone in the comfortable gloom and there was dignity in the set of his wide shoulders. Here he achieved a new authority, for all his mock subservience. He sat there, an impressive anachronism, unlikely and nearly as decorative as a coach-and-four.

‘Magers is away,' he remarked, his small blue eyes shrewd and curious. ‘As soon as there was that tragedy over the road he came hurrying in, said good-bye, and we haven't heard of him since. I expect you knew that, sir?'

Campion nodded but offered no explanation. Jas bowed. No other description could fit that graceful, acquiescing inclination.

He took another line. ‘A very shockin' thing, poor Wilde. He wasn't a friend of ours, exactly, but we were very close nodding acquaintances, as one might put it. We'd both been tradesmen in this road for quite a time. I didn't go to the inquest, but I sent Rowley out of respect. “Suicide when the balance of mind was disturbed,” they brought in; that's always the kindest way.'

He folded his hands on the checkered tablecloth and dropped his inquisitive eyes.

‘We're putting him down tomorrow morning. I don't suppose there'll be a penny to come, but we shall do him with as much luxury as if we were waiting on you yourself. That's partly out of kindness, Mr Campion, and partly out of business. Sad as it may seem to you, who'd hardly suspect it, a tragedy is our best advertisement. Sightseers come in hundreds and it's the procession they remember, so we always do our best for the sake of trade.'

The new note of formality which his host was displaying puzzled Campion. He thought he observed a tea-party atmosphere about the interview, as if they were somehow in company. At the risk of shattering it completely he produced his first squib.

‘What were you carrying over your arm when you went down to see your close nodding acquaintance at two in the morning the day before yesterday?'

The old man made no sign of surprise but favoured his visitor with an expression of disapproval and reproach.

‘That's the kind of question I should have expected to hear from the police, Mr Campion,' he said sternly, ‘and if you pardon my saying so, it would have come much more delicate from them. Let every tradesman do his own dirty work, that's what I feel.'

‘Very proper,' said Campion sententiously, ‘and that brings us to two o'clock in the morning of the day before yesterday.'

Jas laughed. His amused, half roguish, half deprecatory grin was disarming.

‘How 'uman 'uman nature is, ain't it?' He gathered up his own peccadillos and dropped them into the mighty pool of the world's sin. ‘That Mr Corkerdale, on duty in the garden of the lodge, happened to notice us, I suppose?'

The lean man allowed the question to pass and the undertaker's rueful smile broadened.

‘I shouldn't have said it was quite as late as that,' he went on, ‘but it may have been. Magers was with us, the first time for thirty years. We'd been talking of the dear departed and Magers had dropped off into a sleep which was practically a stupor, poor fellow.' He paused, and his small eyes searched
the other man's face for signs of progress. Finding nothing, he went on again gallantly.

‘You'll remember me telling you, Mr Campion, when we met over at the house, that I was in a bit of a muddle about a casket at the time?'

‘Did you? I thought you tried to sell it to me.'

‘No, Mr Campion, that was my fun. We had to get hold of a casket in a hurry for the funeral at Lansbury Terrace. Rowley had recollected the one in my lock-up over the way. “But before we do that,” I said to 'im, “before we do that, son, there's just time to go down to Mr Wilde to take 'im what I promised 'im.”'

There was another fruitless pause, during which Mr Campion remained blank and attentive. Jas became more confidential.

‘You're a man of the world like myself, Mr Campion. You'll understand, I know. Poor Wilde was a very neat person. Untidiness upset him. He had a front room over the shop right on the street. The curtains were a disgrace and I chipped 'im about them. Well . . .' he lowered his voice, ‘we use a little cotton stuff in the trade – it's very nice to look at – and the long and the short of it is that I promised him a yard or two just for the look of the shop. After all, it helps us if the street don't go down. I took it over by night for fear of jealousy among the neighbours, and as he hadn't used it when I fetched his body to the mortuary I took it back, and I can show it to you in the workshop this minute. That's all we were doing.' He finished the lie with a flourish and sat back well pleased with himself.

‘Yes,' said Campion, and the word was neither acceptance nor rejection. ‘And the other thing I wanted to ask you was why you bothered to send for me in the first place?'

Mr Bowels froze. Alarm spread over him like a tide. The wide face lost its pink and became pallid, and the small mouth became circular in protest. It was the first time he had shown any sign of open discomposure since Campion had met him.

‘
I
sir?
I
send for you?' He was shrill in protest. ‘You're making a big mistake there. I did no such thing. Not but what
me and the boy's not very glad to know you. Very proud, I might say. But
send
for you, sir? Oh, dear me no! Why, it wouldn't be my place, would it, sir? – even supposing I had any reason.' He was silent, and the solid hand on the red and white tablecloth trembled. ‘I may 'ave wrote a friendly letter to my relation after finding myself in the papers,' he went on, ‘but if 'e read anything special into that, well, 'e was more of a fool than I took 'im for. I'm
glad
to see you here, Mr Campion, because I want to see the whole thing cleared up, and that's a fact, but no, sir, I didn't send for you, sir.'

Mr Campion was more puzzled than ever. He could understand Mr Bowels being anxious to repudiate any responsibility, but not why he should be so frightened about it.

‘I can see that a police inquiry would not be very good for your trade,' he began cautiously. ‘The publicity can't be helpful and I realize that you knew that Miss Ruth Palinode was in the habit of putting an occasional shilling or two on a horse, but I don't think that point was strong enough to make you send for me.'

Mr Bowels blew his nose on a large white handkerchief, apparently to gain time.

‘I didn't send for you,' he said, ‘but trade is trade and the police are the first to forget it. In my business it's discretion, discretion, discretion all the time. Who wants an undertaker with a long nose and a gabby tongue, even if he's doing no more than his duty? However, you and me being friendly, and me trusting you to see I never get anywhere really detrimental like a witness-box, there is a little something that perhaps I ought to mention. I only saw one thing which was really curious when Miss Ruth Palinode died. It was a very small thing and may not have had any significance, but it made me think. I saw Mr Lawrence Palinode washing up.'

A mental picture of that gangling, near-sighted man with the sweet smile and incomprehensible conversation presented itself to Campion.

‘Where was this?' he inquired.

Mr Bowels was still pale but some of his old knowingness had returned.

‘Not in the kitchen,' he said darkly. ‘She died early in the afternoon, a very unusual time. You may not know it, but early in the afternoon is a most uncommon time for what you might call mortality.'

‘How soon did you get there?'

‘Tea-time. Nearly five. Miss Roper sent Mr Grace over. The family didn't stir hand nor foot, and that wasn't unnaturalness, mind you. They're human but helpless, the Palinodes, made worse because they don't think it's quite the right thing to be practical.'