More Work for the Undertaker (7 page)

Mr Campion was informed. The obscurity had been deliberate. It occurred to him that the Palinode family did little that was not deliberate. Meanwhile a certain amount of muttering had reached them from the passage, not all of it amicable. Now a door closed sharply and Lawrence reappeared. He looked crestfallen.

‘You were quite right,' he said. ‘I ought to have Cawnthroped. By the way, I've got this thing for you. I've worked it out. As I've always said, the foreign wheat was completely witless.'

He put the book in her lap as he spoke, but avoided her eyes. She let her big soft hands close round it, but she was annoyed.

‘Does it matter now?' she reproved him gently, and added, smiling a little as if she were making a bitter little joke, ‘After all, the sheaves are gathered.'

‘Foreign wheat – alien corn – Ruth?' reflected Mr Campion. Well, Miss Ruth Palinode, or part of her, poor lady, was at this moment in Sir Doberman's laboratory. He arrived at that point in time to hear Lawrence catch his breath.

‘All the same I had to test it. You will allow that?' he was saying fiercely to his sister.

As he turned away his thick lenses focused on Campion standing a few feet from him, and suddenly, as if in apology for ignoring him so long, he gave him the sweetest and shyest of smiles. Then he went quietly out, closing the door gently behind him.

Campion collected the tray and, as he bent to take it up, he caught sight of the title of the book on Miss Palinode's Paisley-covered knees. The markers bristled from it like so many tapers.

It was
Ruff's Guide to the Turf
.

MR CAMPION SAT
straight up out of sleep, turned on his elbow and waited.

‘There's a light-switch by your side, ducky,' said Miss Roper's voice softly. ‘Turn it on. I've got a letter for you.'

He found the button, noted his watch on the bedside table said forty-five minutes past two, and glanced up to find her already half-way across the room, looking like a travesty of something out of the lesser chapters of his youth. She wore a gay little happi-coat, over pink fairy-wool pyjamas, and a lace-and-ribbon boudoir cap. Moreover, in her arms, were a syphon, a bottle of Scotch, half full, and two large tumblers. The blue envelope was lightly caught between her knuckles. The note was on official police paper, but was written in longhand apparently by a hasty-tempered schoolboy.

Campion read the document through twice and folded it. He decided once again that he liked Charlie Luke. Proposed to have Edward up pronto, did he? What a dear chap he was. Well, he could have his exhumation, and good digging.

At this point Miss Roper handed him a glass half full of dancing amber.

‘What's this for? To steady my nerves?'

To his dismay her hand wobbled. ‘Oh, dear,' she said, ‘it's not bad news, is it? A policeman brought it and I thought it was probably your licence, and you might be lying here worrying about it.'

‘My what?'

Her kind foolish eyes wavered in embarrassment.

‘Well, I don't know,' she said defensively. ‘I thought you might have to have a paper or something, to protect yourself if – if –'

‘If I got poisoned?' he inquired, smiling at her.

‘Oh, the whisky's all right,' she said, mistaking him promptly. ‘Take my dying oath it is. I've had it under lock and key. Well, you have to these days anyway, don't you? But I have and, see, I'm going to have mine.'

She settled herself daintily on the extreme edge of the end of his bed and took a sizeable swig. Campion sipped his own but with less enthusiasm. He was not a whisky drinker and indeed by custom drank little of anything in bed in the middle of the night.

‘Did the policeman wake you?' he said. ‘I'm sorry. There was no great urgency.'

‘No, I was about, you know.' She spoke vaguely. ‘I want to talk to you, Mr Campion. First of all, you're sure there's not bad news in that letter?'

‘Nothing that wasn't expected,' he said truthfully. ‘I'm afraid we shall find that Miss Ruth was poisoned, that's all.'

‘Well, of course she was. They didn't wake us up to tell us that, I hope.' She spoke comfortably. ‘That's the one thing we are sure of, unless we're all going to look bloody fools. Now look here, Mr Campion, I want just to tell you this. I'm absolutely on the level with you. I'm more than grateful to you and you really can trust me. I shan't keep anything back. I mean that, see?'

It was a protestation which could have appeared suspicious from anyone else but was here curiously impressive. Her small red bird's face was serious under her sportive cap.

‘I didn't think you would,' he assured her.

‘Oh, I don't know, there are little things one keeps to one's
self. But I won't. Now I've got you here I'll play fair with you.'

He laughed at her gently. ‘What's on your conscience, Auntie? Your young woman who changes on the roof?'

‘On the roof. So that's how she does it. Little monkey.' She was surprised and it would seem relieved. ‘I knew she took them off somewhere because last week Clarrie caught sight of her in the Bayswater Road all dolled up, and I met her coming in the same night in her old clothes. I did so hope she didn't do it – well, in front of anyone. She's not that kind of a girl at all, poor kiddie.'

It was not quite clear if her pity bubbled up at this particular deficiency of Miss White's, or at some more general weakness.

‘You like her?' he suggested.

‘She's a pet.' The old woman's smile was tickled as well as kind. ‘She's had such a dreadful upbringing. These poor old folks don't understand girls. How can they? Now she's head over heels in love and she's like a bud unfolding. I've read that somewhere, haven't I? I was going to say it doesn't sound like me. But she is. Thorny, you know, but with a little bit of pink just showing. Clarrie says the boy is very nice with her. Frightened to touch her, if you ask me.'

‘Is he very young too?'

‘Oh, quite old enough. Nineteen. A great bony fellow in one of those fair-isle pullovers shrunk till he looks like a skinned rabbit. I think he must have chosen those new clothes of hers. She's paid for them of course. But she wouldn't know how to buy herself a bathing dress. From what Clarrie said, the whole outfit sounded to me like a boy's idea.'

She took another sip and giggled.

‘He said she looked like a cross between the chorus and washing day. Plenty of frills, I expect, and everything a bit too tight. That's a boy all over. On the back of the bike, too. So dangerous!'

‘Where did she find him?'

‘God knows. She never mentions him. Blushes whenever she hears a petrol engine, and thinks nobody knows.' She paused. ‘I can just remember being like that,' she said with a ruefulness
which was delightful. ‘Can't you? Ah, you're not old enough. It'll come back to you one day.'

Sitting up in bed with his drink, hearing the small hours tick away, Mr Campion rather hoped it wouldn't. But she was off again, bending forward now with delicate earnestness.

‘Well, dear, as I was saying, there is just one little thing that's been going on for a long time and I feel I ought to mention it just so you don't go rooting it out and being surprised . . . Hullo?'

The final word was directed towards the door, which had opened quietly. A slender soldierly figure clad in a solid blue-cloth dressing-gown of wonderful cut and braiding had appeared on the threshold. Captain Alastair Seton stood hesitating. He was covered with embarrassment and extremely apologetic.

‘I do beg your pardons,' he said, betraying just the accent but a slightly deeper voice than Campion had envisaged. ‘I was passing the door and thought the room was unoccupied. My – er – attention was caught by the shaft of light.'

‘Go along with you, you smelt it,' said Renee, laughing. ‘Come along. There's a tooth-glass over there. Bring it here.'

The newcomer smiled with an innocent mischief which was wholly disarming. ‘Something to mother,' reflected Mr Campion, and he looked sharply at Miss Roper. She was pouring the whisky, a neat two fingers, obviously a ration.

‘There,' she said. ‘Now, it's quite a good thing you've come because you can tell Mr Campion exactly how it was that Miss Ruth was taken ill. You were the only one who saw her except the doctor. Keep your voice down. We're in committee and anyway this bottle won't last if anyone else comes in.'

She was turning it into a party, showing off and covering up at the same time. So this was her secret. It seemed highly respectable.

The Captain settled himself comfortably in a fumed-oak armchair shaped like a nordic throne.

‘I didn't kill the lady,' he said, smiling shyly at Campion as if he hoped he was going to be liked.

‘You didn't know her, Albert,' said Renee hastily, as if she were afraid to let go of the situation. ‘She was a great big
woman, larger than the others, and she wasn't quite so clever. I know what Clarrie thinks but he's wrong.'

‘Strange as that may appear,' murmured Captain Seton into his glass and laughing a little spitefully, as a cat might.

‘They didn't kill her because of that, anyway,' she went on, ignoring him. ‘They were all very angry with her, I know, but it wasn't because she wasn't clever. She was ill, poor woman. The doctor told me that nearly two months before she died. “If she doesn't take it very easy she'll have a stroke, Renee,” he said, “and that'll mean more work for you. She'll go like her brother did.”'

Campion sat up. ‘Mr Edward died of a stroke, did he?'

‘So the doctor said.' Miss Roper put suspicion and a warning into the words and her head was held on one side like a robin's. ‘Still, we don't know about him, do we? Well, on the day she died Miss Ruth went out early with her shopping bag. There'd been a bit of a barny the night before because I heard them all shouting at her in Mr Lawrence's room. No one seems to have seen her until she came in about half past twelve. I was in the kitchen, the others were out, but the Captain here met her in the front hall. Now you go on, love.'

The Captain cocked an eye at the endearment and his narrow mouth twitched.

‘I saw she wasn't well,' he said slowly. ‘One could hardly miss it. She was shouting, for one thing, don't you know.'

‘Shouting?'

‘Talking very loudly.' He dropped his own pleasant voice on the words. ‘She was crimson in the face, waving her arms about and staggering. Since I happened to be there I did what I could, naturally.' He sipped his drink reflectively. ‘I took her down to the sawbones next door. We made a pretty pair, I can tell you. Heads popped out of every window in the city, or so it seemed to me.' He laughed at himself, but there was still a trace of resentment lurking in his eyes.

‘Very embarrassing, but all the same a noble act,' said Campion.

‘That's what I say,' put in Renee eagerly. ‘It was nice of him, wasn't it? Didn't call me or anything. Just quietly did the right
thing. That's like him. And the doctor was there, you see, but he didn't help.'

‘No, no, my dear, it wasn't quite like that.' With an apologetic glance at the man in the bed, the Captain hastened to counter some earlier complaint. ‘I must be reasonably honest. What actually happened was this. As we came roaring up the street like a copper and a female drunk we found the sawbones on the point of locking up his surgery. With him he had some great lout of a fellow who, to add to the general discomfort, was in floods of tears. They were dashing off to officiate, as far as I could understand, at a birth' – he paused and added, ‘of some sort.'

It was clear that the scene was returning to him with some vividness and he was viewing it with sour amusement.

‘There we all were,' he said, ‘on the doorstep. I was looking ineffectual, clutching my old green hat which I probably resemble. The doctor was tired and worried by the intimate symptoms the lout was relating. My lady friend, who was wearing her spring costume – a sugar-sack sari over a flannel petticoat I fancy, Renee?'

‘It was obviously two dresses, dear, not a petticoat. They all wear funny clothes. They're above clothes.'

‘Miss Ruth was beneath these,' said the Captain grimly. ‘As more and more safety-pins came adrift, so that much became alarmingly obvious. Well, anyway, there she was, shouting all these figures . . .'

‘Figures?' demanded Campion.

‘Yes, figures. She was the mathematical one of the family. Didn't Renee tell you? The police keep asking me “What did she say?” and all I know is that it sounded like figures. She couldn't articulate, you see. That's how I knew she was ill and not merely mad.'

‘The doctor ought to have taken her in,' said Renee. ‘He's a busy man, we know, but –'

‘Oh, I see his point of view.' Captain Seton was being obstinately fair. ‘I do admit I thought his behaviour extraordinary at the time, but I was harassed myself, God-dammit. No, he realized that she was as near her own home as made
no difference and he thought she'd had a stroke as he'd predicted. He took one look at her and said to me: “Oh, dear. Yes, yes, indeed. Yes. Take her to her room and wrap her up. I'll come the moment I can.” Mind you,' he added, directing his queer self-deprecating smile at Campion, ‘by this time the weeping lout, who was a good foot broader than either of us and possibly thirty years younger, was making it exceedingly plain that the doctor was coming with him and not me. He said so with considerable force, as I recall. At any rate I gave way and escorted my titubant doxy, who was now frothing at the mouth, through the crowd which had begun to collect, and up to her room. I placed her in the one chair which did not contain books, tucked a pile of old clothes over her, and slunk down to the kitchen for Renee.'