More Work for the Undertaker (31 page)

‘Well I'm damned.' Yeo seemed more shaken by this survival of past elegance than by the crime. ‘So he merely slipped a dose in the old girl's glass one morning? I didn't realize he inherited the shares.'

‘He didn't. Miss Ruth had changed her will since she last told him about it and had made her most irritating bequest to her latest
bête noire
, Captain Seton, with whom she was quarrelling over a room. The news did not break at once and soon after the anonymous letters started, the police came down on the street like a herd of buffaloes, and the fat was in the fire.'

Yeo permitted himself an old man's chuckle.

‘You two lads couldn't have been good for his ferry service.'

‘Quite. That's what Jas felt so strongly. We mucked up everything. The Bowels had to assemble the coffin in Portminster Lodge cellar, to avoid Lugg. Greener had to be smuggled away at the last moment in a packing-case, coffin and all, and Bella had to go with him in the truck, widow's weeds notwithstanding.'

‘How did Jas do that exactly?' Luke inquired. ‘Did he forge the death certificates to get the coroner's order-to-export?'

‘Better than that. He merely duplicated his client. I spent most of today going round to the addresses I got from the coroner. In seven of the ten cases in which Bowels had applied for an order in the last three years, the family had not arranged for anything of the sort and the relative had been interred over here. The gunmen went out with a genuine dead man's name on the lid. The Edward Palinode nameplate was made, I think, in honest error when Jas made certain he was going to get the job. Some wretched crook didn't get his passage that time. There was a long gap between Jackson and Greener. Probably no other genuine client came along at that moment. People don't die to order.'

‘Very pretty,' Yeo declared. ‘Very neat. Funny James was so careful over one business and so slapdash in the other. I
always say a murderer isn't a crook except when he's both. He still went for the shares, though, that's the significant thing.'

‘Oh yes, he got Lawrence to buy them and accepted them as part security for a small personal loan – at least that's my bet. Lawrence's attitude over them smelt that way to me. There again it looks as if Ruth's murder was somehow incidental. Otherwise I don't see why he didn't do the same thing with her in the first place. But all through there is this double motive. The hooey we made got him down and he staged today's well-nigh crazy performance, which was designed to put Lawrence out and clear up the mystery, and the street, by incriminating Miss Jessica. It was a silly, theoretical scheme, utterly unpractical.'

‘Don't you be so sure, my lad.' Yeo spoke grimly. ‘You'd have been hard put to it yourselves to know what line to take if he hadn't suddenly got frightened and bunked. Why did he do that, anyway?'

‘Because in the middle of the party, after he had done his stuff with Lawrence, Miss Evadne suddenly informed him that Glossop had been to the house. He put two and two together and they added up to Brownie Mines. Since he had also gathered that the hue and cry was on for somebody, he assumed the worst and had to go up Apron Street.'

‘Whereas, of course,' said Luke, ‘the hung was on for Bloblip. He was hiding in the bank, silly sausage. We never thought to go over it; you don't with a bank.'

‘Bloblip? His intention was blackmail,' Campion continued. ‘But he doesn't seem to have tried it until today, probably not until after the party, when he got just about what he was asking for, the old and respected bang on head. The rest of the time he appears to have been footling about trying to get evidence. I can't imagine what put him on the idea in the first place.'

A discreet cough from the other end of the table brought everyone's attention to Dice. He was unusually animated. ‘You said, sir, that James had got to get the hyoscine from somewhere. He hadn't. It was there. That's what Congreve knew. I got it out of him in hospital. It's in my report.'

Yeo turned round to regard the sergeant as if he were a domestic pet who had suddenly decided to hold forth.

‘What do you mean, the hyoscine was there? Where?'

‘In the corner-cupboard in the manager's room, sir, along with the sherry decanter and the glasses and a lot of other objects.'

‘
Hyoscine
?'

‘Yes, sir. Congreve says so. It was when he noticed that it had gone that he and his sister looked it up in the family medical compendium and remembered Miss Ruth's symptoms, which the sister had heard about from the Captain.'

The silence from his audience was so uncompromisingly blank that he made haste to amplify the statement.

‘Congreve had worked at the bank all his life. He was there in the prisoner's father's time. That gentleman used to keep some hyoscine in a sealed glass box to show to visitors. It was labelled and marked “Poison”, of course. Peculiar, really.'

‘Staggering,' said Campion drily. ‘What for?'

The sergeant cleared his throat. His dull eyes developed a gleam.

‘As a curio, sir. It was the poison Dr Crippen used.'

‘God bless my soul, he's got it!' Yeo bounded in his excitement. ‘I well remember the most respectable people behaving like that over the Crippen case. Hyoscine was comparatively new then. It's a good point too. Any judge will believe it. Excellent Dice.'

Luke broke up the party. He was still incredulous.

‘Wasn't this cupboard ever cleared out? We've had two wars since Crippen was hanged.'

‘Cleaned but not cleared, sir.' Dice was almost smug. ‘It's like a drawing-room piece when you get the door open. Full of what you might call relics. We found all the relevant papers in an antique wine cooler in his bedroom. We shall trace all his associates.'

‘Oh, very good, very good indeed, sergeant. Nicely told and very good work.' Yeo rose and pulled down his waist-coat. ‘Well,' he said, turning to the others. ‘Now for the nice
not-too-modest statement to the Press. Trot along and wake 'em up, sergeant, will you?'

The rain had ceased and a clear sweet dawn was breaking as Luke let himself and his friend out, and they walked round the houses to Apron Street. He was supremely happy. He walked, Campion reflected, like a proud cat. He was full of affection rather than gratitude, which was endearing, and when they paused on the corner outside the shabby old mansion, he was laughing.

‘I was thinking,' he said. ‘If
my
bank manager offered me a glass of sherry in his office I'd
expect
hyoscine in it. Well, goodbye. God bless. And next time I'm in trouble you'll get a wire, if not an escort.'

He hesitated and eyed the house, and his expression was speculative.

‘Think they'll marry?'

‘Clytie and Mike?' Campion was taken by surprise. ‘I don't know. It does happen.'

Charlie Luke pulled his hat an inch farther over one eye and arched his lean stomach.

‘I'll betcha,' he said. ‘It's my manor.
He
doesn't know it, poor kid. But in my opinion he's just teaching her the words.'

Campion looked after his jaunty figure until, with a wave, it disappeared round the bend. He wondered.

But as he went quietly up the path he was grinning. Miss White was certainly going to have fun.

He was making across the hall when he saw he had underestimated Renee. There she was, bright as a bird, sitting on the bottom step of the staircase.

‘And about time, too,' she said, flinging her arms round his neck with an abandon she kept for very special occasions. ‘Oh, you are a wonderful man!'

Considered as a purely spontaneous tribute, Campion felt it was the best he had had. She tucked her arm through his and urged him towards the back staircase.

‘Come and have some coffee. Oh, we have had a night! A
proper Press Reception! Just like the old days at the Manchester Hipp. I don't know
what's
going to be in the papers in the morning. Jessica's been making you one of her little nasties, but I've put it down the sink, and I shall say you drank it and liked it. Come on. Clarrie has been taking special care of Mr Lugg . . . what a charming man . . . with a little something I saved. You're not to be angry with them. Just don't take any notice. They were both so
thirsty
after all this trouble.'

He burst out laughing. So far she had not let him speak and even now forestalled him.

‘Oh, I was forgetting again. There's a letter for you. It came yesterday morning and nobody thought to give it to you. There it is, dear, it's on the tray. It's a woman's writing so it may be personal. You'd better read it. I'll go and pop the kettle on. Hurry up. We'll all be waiting.'

She fluttered off like a crumpled but valiant butterfly, and he took up his letter and moved under the hall lantern to read it. His wife's distinctive hand smiled at him from the single page.

Campion read the note through twice, and the postscript five times. He was folding the page carefully into an inside pocket when a curious smothered wailing reached him. Someone was trying to sing. It sounded ominously like Lugg.

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Copyright © Rights Limited (a Chorion company) 1949.

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First published in Great Britain in 1949 by

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