More Work for the Undertaker (24 page)

He made his explanation with spirit but not frankness. Luke remained dubious.

‘Where are they now?'

‘I have them safe.'

‘Would you sell them again for a fiver?'

‘Certainly not.' He was uneasy and was taking refuge in a display of irritation. ‘They were part of the family inheritance.'

Mr Campion, who had been sitting quietly for some moments, looked up.

‘Perhaps you have already sold them?'

‘I have not sold them.' There was an unexpected quality of obstinacy in his denial. ‘They are still in my possession. I shall always refuse to sell them. Have you finished your interrogation, Inspector?'

Luke touched Campion's shoulder. ‘Okay,' he said briskly. ‘You'll remain in the house, won't you, Mr Palinode? Meanwhile we'll go up, shall we, sir?'

Lawrence pitched himself untidily into his chair before the desk and upset yet another inkpot.

‘Close the door behind you if you please,' he said over his shoulder, as he mopped up for the second time. ‘You're going up to plague Seton now, I suppose. May one ask what for?'

Charlie Luke winked at Campion.

‘We're going to take a butcher's hook at him,' he said happily.

CHARLIE LUKE POURED
the last of the water over the Captain's grey and nodding head.

‘Hopeless,' he said succinctly and sat back on his heels. ‘The old nitwhisker's had it. Must have drunk the bottle without counting. He'll have to sleep that lot off before we get a peep out of him.'

He nodded to the young detective who had been assisting him and together they lifted the old man on to his narrow bed. Mr Campion surveyed an unregenerate scene. Ever since he and Luke had come in, to find the Captain lying in his armchair, a corkscrew and an almost empty whisky bottle at his feet, a glass clutched to his military bosom, and the noise of trumpets issuing from his open mouth, the process of disarrangement had continued.

The young detective, arriving providentially with a message for Luke, had responded to the emergency with experience and enthusiasm. Luke, too, had his private methods of reviving the alcoholic, but the old Captain had defeated them.

Faced with the embarrassing, he had taken refuge in his secret bottle, hoarded carefully in the old leather hatbox, and it had not let him down. At the moment he was away somewhere, temporarily safe from the sordid present.

Charlie Luke stood at the end of the bed, his chin thrust out and his dark face gloomy.

‘Silly old basket,' he said without animosity. ‘He gave me the cold horribles when I saw him. I thought he'd done a Pa Wilde on me. I don't entirely care for everybody's grandpa taking knock-out drops the moment I put my nose in.'

It occurred to Campion that he needed reassurance.

‘I feel it may be Renee that he's frightened of, don't you?'

‘Renee?' Luke glanced round the dismantled room. ‘Lumme! I shall be the enemy there. Clean up a bit while you keep an eye on him, Pollit, will you? We'll be just across the landing.'

He led the way to Campion's room.

‘There's a letter for you from the Super,' Luke said, throwing it across, ‘and a couple of memos for me from Porky at the station. Now what? Di-dah, di-dah, di-dah – huh!'

He read, as he did everything else, with a great deal of action. The type-written sheets of blue paper vibrated like live things in his hands, and when they flapped over were as wild as washing on a line.

Campion opened his own envelope and he was still engrossed when the D.D.I. rose and moved the blind an inch or so.

‘There's still a crowd,' he said. He came back at last to sit by Campion again. ‘I don't like this situation,' he said. ‘No one's making any money out of it. Not real money. I'm talking about Jas's lark. That's not right.'

He spread out his memorandum sheets again.

‘Pa Wilde was in debt all round; owed the wholesalers, the gas company, and the bank. We've been over everything, and if he was paid for whatever he was doing he certainly didn't hoard it, pay his bills with it, or, as far as we can see, even eat with it. The doctor's report here says “undernourished”. Poor old blighter! I liked him because he was so bloody, if you see what I mean.'

‘Blackmail?' Campion suggested.

‘Seems so.' Charlie Luke shook his head. ‘May have done anything in his time. He was a chemist, wasn't he?' He tipped the contents of an imaginary bottle into the ghost of a glass. ‘May once have slipped somebody the wrong dope or tried to get a girl out of trouble. Either of those would have given someone a hold over him. I've been to his shop for a chat dozens of times in the past year, but that was the first occasion when he wrote himself off because of it.'

Campion coughed discreetly.

‘One can't help feeling he was involved in something reasonably serious, don't you think?' he suggested.

‘Maybe.' The subject appeared to rankle with Luke.

‘Then there's that couple of worm-shovellers over the road,' he went on more hopefully. ‘We're taking them to pieces now. I beg your pardon, perhaps you've got something there?'

He looked so wistfully at Campion's letter that its owner was sorry to disappoint him.

‘Nothing constructive at all, I'm afraid,' he said truthfully. ‘I asked a few questions and in almost every case the answer is, vaguely, no. Looky Jeffreys died in the prison infirmary before disclosing anything more about Apron Street save that he did not want to go up it. He was arrested while committing a singularly inefficient burglary, which he is thought to have undertaken alone.'

‘That's ruddy helpful.'

‘I inquired about Bella Musgrave. She and her two old sisters keep a little dyeing and cleaning agency in Stepney. At the moment she is away from home. Her sisters do not know where she is and they expect her back at any moment. Then there's this.' Campion took three closely-typed sheets from the rest. ‘I asked if the chemistry boys could tell us if hyoscine could be obtained from henbane by an amateur. This is their report. Yeo seems to have translated it for us on the bottom here.'

Luke screwed up his eyes to see the pencilled note.

‘“
This would appear to mean no
,”' he read aloud and sniffed. ‘Everybody's helping and nothing's moving, as the donkey said to the barn door.'

Luke closed his eyes. ‘That chap Lawrence is behaving peculiarly and he certainly can't talk straight. But do you know what I think about him?' He opened them again and stared seriously at Campion. ‘I don't believe he could kill pussy,' he said. ‘Come in – oh, it's you, George. Mr Campion, this is Sergeant Picot. He's been over at Bowels's. Any luck, George?'

The newcomer exuded reliability and respect for the law and the rights of the citizen as some men exude just the opposite.

‘Evening, sir; evening, sir.' He got the greetings over with bird-swiftness. ‘Well, we've seen them both. We've been over
the premises again and we've taken a thorough look at the books. I can't find anything wrong.' He looked the Chief Inspector severely in the eye. ‘It seems a very nicely run business.'

Luke nodded. In dejection he was as picturesque as at the height of exuberance. His shoulders were hunched and some of the life seemed to have vanished even from his hair.

‘Mr Campion wondered if he had imported a body lately, collected it for relatives for burial here.'

‘They've done nothing of the kind since nineteen-thirty. Undertaking isn't the ideal business for hanky-panky. There are so many checks, registrars' certificates and so on. Frankly, I don't see why he should be employed to smuggle anything. Whatever the stuff was, once it was here I should have thought a lorry would have served the purpose better. No one notices goods delivered by a lorry, but everyone takes a bit of a look at a coffin.' He shook his head. ‘I don't see the point of it.'

‘Don't you, George?' Luke was grinning savagely to himself. ‘You didn't see the casket with the gold whatnots?'

‘No, sir.' Picot folded back his notebook as he spoke. ‘I inspected four ornamented caskets all in light wood. Mr Bowels, snr., admitted to removing a coffin from a cellar he rented in this house, but says he used it for a job in Lansbury Terrace. We can get a description from witnesses, but for proof we'll have to apply for an exhumation order. I didn't think you'd feel like doing that, sir, especially as nothing seems to turn on it.'

Luke grimaced at Campion.

‘What about this hotel work of Bowels's?'

‘The grand piano top, sir?' Picot frowned. ‘He was very frank about it. It happened over a year ago. The piano top belonged to the Balsamic Hotel, not to him, and he boxed the corpse very decently as soon as he got it to his place. He has one shed done out as a sort of private mortuary. It's all above board, known to the authorities and so on.'

‘What did he carry it in? Has he got a truck?' Campion put the question curiously.

‘No, sir. These are his vehicles.' Picot's notebook was in use again. ‘There's two hearses, one better than the other, both horse-drawn. It's not a wealthy district, you see, and the locals take their dying seriously. They're conservative about horses at funerals. For weddings they like a car. Then there's two mourning coaches; if they need more they have to hire limousines. And there's the coffin brake. That's the lot. They have four horses, all black. Three are well past their best, but the fourth is a young one.'

‘Have you seen all this?'

‘Yes, sir. Patted the horses.'

‘What's a coffin brake? That rather sinister affair that looks rather like an ebony cigar box on wheels? I haven't seen one of those since I was a child.'

‘Haven't you, sir?' Picot conveyed that it was the eminent visitor's loss. ‘People round here like the coffin delivered in one of those. Seems to make it more respectful not to have the hearse call twice. The Bowels have a very good one, old but in fine repair. Nice high box-seat for the driver. It looks very decent coming along. There is one other point I feel I should mention: all the time we spent with Mr Bowels, snr, the old gentleman was sweating like a pig. He was open in his answers and we could not find a thing out of place. He was helpful, took us everywhere without a murmur, and he was polite to a fault, but he did sweat.'

‘And what do you deduce from that? That he'd got a cold?' Charlie Luke was more tired than a man could be.

‘No, sir.' Picot was reproachful. ‘I gathered that he was frightened stiff. I don't know why. I shall mention it in my report, of course. Good night, sir.'

The D.D.I. reached for his hat.

‘I tink I go home,' he said. ‘Miss Ruth has been poisoned, Clytie's boy friend has been slugged, Pa Wilde has done himself in, the Captain has put himself out, Jas is innocent but sweating, and we're just exactly where we always were. Cawdblimiah! We don't even know who wrote the poison-pen letters.'

‘Oh,' said Mr Campion, ‘that reminds me, I didn't give you
back that last letter the doctor received. I had a little thought about that.' He took the wretched sheet from his coat pocket and spread it out on the coverlet beside him. The second passage which had interested him was near the end. He read it aloud.

‘“. . . Am watching you who are to blame for all trouble and misery god know amen
glass tells all don't forget
 . . .”'

His lazy eyes met Luke's own. ‘I've come across that before, once,' he said. ‘That communicative glass sometimes means a crystal. Got any practising clairvoyants in the district?'

Luke sat down abruptly, his hat hanging from one bony wrist.

‘I was thinking about the Captain and the woman he was waiting for by the pillarbox,' Campion went on slowly. ‘That old boy wears a small emerald in a comparatively new ring. It is a peculiar stone for a consciously masculine lad of his period, but Renee tells me his birthday is in May, and my Girl Guide's diary says that to be lucky those born in May should wear green, preferably emeralds. He's a self-centred man, a poor man, and a man with a lot of time.' He eyed Luke, who was staring at him. ‘No one gets to hear so much from her clients as a clairvoyant. I can imagine a silly, very slightly sexy association between a chap like that and some crazy half-vicious woman between fifty and sixty whom he visits, and to whom he blabs his own and everybody else's business. When the balloon went up and the letters were generally discussed, he must have suspected her. There may have been a quarrel. She may have threatened to post one under his own window. I don't know. When Lawrence tackled him about the letter he certainly lost his head.'

Luke sat perfectly still. He looked as if he were genuinely petrified. When he spoke it was very softly.

‘I ought to resign on this. You might have known her.'

‘Do you?'

‘Slightly.' He rose, still regarding the other man with a sort of shocked respect. ‘I even knew that he visited her once. One of my chaps mentioned that he'd seen him coming out of her house. That was in the very beginning of the case. I didn't think
another thing about it. You've got it from cold and I had all the aids and missed it.'

‘Perhaps I'm wrong.' Mr Campion seemed taken aback by the violence of his success. ‘It has been known.'

‘Not on your life!' Charlie Luke had come alive again. In minutes he had become twice as forceful and ten years younger. ‘That's the gal all right. Calls herself Pharaoh's Daughter. She gives readings for a tanner a time and we never bothered her under the Act because she seemed so harmless.'

He was concentrating, dragging the picture from the depths of his remarkable memory.

‘Oh, yes!' he said with tremendous conviction. ‘Yes! That's her. Her real name is – let me think – Miss – Miss – Godalmighty!' His eyes widened. ‘D'you know who she is, Campion? Yes! She's his sister, dammit! Must be. His sister! She's Miss Congreve, Old Bloblip's sister at the bank. Oh God! don't let me die before I get down there!'