Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories (16 page)

She stamped on the accelerator to emphasise her point, and Mr. Campion, not a nervous man, clutched the side of the car.

“Sorry,” said Sheila and went on with her story. “I tried to wiggle away after a bit, but when he wouldn’t let me go Mike suddenly lost his temper and told him to behave himself or he’d damn well knock his head off. It was awfully melodramatic and stupid, but it might have passed off and been forgotten if Kenneth hadn’t made a scene. First he said he wouldn’t be talked to like that, and then he made a reference to Mike’s father, which was unforgivable. I thought they were going to have a fight. Then, right in the middle of it, Mother fluttered in with a Santa Claus costume. She looked at Mike and said, “You’d better try it on, dear, I want you to be most realistic this afternoon.” Before he could reply, Kenneth butted in. He looked like a spoilt kid, all pink and furious. ‘I didn’t know you were going to be Father Christmas,” he said.”

Sheila Turrett paused for breath, her eyes wide.

“Well, can you imagine anything so idiotic?” she went on. “Mike had offered to do the job when he first came down because he wanted to make himself useful. Like everyone else, he regarded it as a chore. It never dawned on him that anyone would want to do it. Mother was surprised, too, I think. However, she just laughed and said, ‘You must fight it out between you” and fluttered away again, leaving us all three standing there. Kenneth picked up the costume. ‘It’s from Harridge’s,” he said. ‘My mother was with Lady Mae when she ordered it. I thought it was fixed up then that I was to wear it.””

Mr. Campion laughed. He felt very old.

“I suppose Master Michael stepped aside and Master Kenneth appears as St. Nicholas?” he murmured.

“Well no, not exactly.” Sheila sounded a little embarrassed. “Mike was still angry, you see, so he suddenly decided to be obstinate. Mother had asked him to do the job, he said, and he was going to do it. I thought they were going to have an open row about it, which would have been quite too absurd, but at that moment the most idiotic thing of all happened. Old Mr. Welkin, who had been prowling about listening as usual, came in and told Kenneth he was to ‘give way” to Mike—literally, in so many words! It all sounds perfectly mad now I’ve told it to you, yet Mike is rather a darling.”

Mr. Campion detected a certain wistfulness in her final phrase and frowned.

Pharaoh’s Court looked mellow and inviting as they came up the drive some minutes later. The old house had captured the spirit of the season and Mr. Campion stepped out of a cold grey world into an entrance hall where the blaze from the hearth flickered on the glossy leaves of the holly festooned along the carved beams of the ceiling.

George Turrett, grey-haired and cherubic, was waiting for them. He grasped the visitor’s hand with fervour. “So glad you’ve come,” he murmured. “Devilish glad to see you, Campion.”

His extreme earnestness was apparent and Sheila put an arm round his neck.

“It’s a human face in the wilderness, isn’t it, darling?” she said.

Sir George’s guilty protest was cut short as Mr. Campion was shown upstairs to his room.

He saw the clock as he came down again a moment or so later. It burst upon him as he turned a corner in the corridor and came upon it standing on a console table. Even in his haste it arrested him. Mae Turrett had something of a reputation for interior decoration, but large country houses have a way of collecting furnishing oddities, however rigorous their owner’s taste may be.

Although he was not as a rule over-sensitive to artistic monstrosities, Mr. Campion paused in respectful astonishment before this example of the mid-Victorian baroque. A bewildered looking bronze lady, clad in a pink marble nightgown, was seated upon a gilt ormolu log, one end of which had been replaced by a blue and white enamel clock face. As he stared the contraption chimed loudly and aggressively.

He passed on and forgot all about the clock as soon as he entered the dining-room. Mae Turrett sprang at him with little affected cries which he took to indicate a hostess’s delight.

“Albert
dear?’
she said breathlessly. “How marvellous to see you! Aren’t we wonderfully festive? The gardener assures me it’s going to snow tonight, in fact he’s virtually promised it. I do love a real old family party at Christmas, don’t you? Just our very own selves… too lovely! Let me introduce you to a very dear friend of mine: Mrs. Welkin—Mr. Campion.”

Campion was aware of a large middle-aged woman with drooping cheeks and stupid eyes who sniggered at him and looked away again.

Lunch was not a jolly meal by any means. Even Lady Turrett’s cultivated chatter died down every now and again. However, Mr. Campion had ample opportunity to observe the strangers of whom he had heard so much.

Mike Peters was a sturdy silent youngster with a brief smile and a determined chin. It was obvious that he knew what he wanted and was going for it steadily. Mr. Campion found himself wishing him luck.

Since much criticism before a meeting may easily defeat its own ends, Mr. Campion had been prepared to find the Welkin family pleasant but misunderstood people, round pegs in a very square hole. He was mistaken. Kenneth Welkin, a fresh faced, angry eyed young man, sat next to Sheila and sulked throughout the meal. The only remark he addressed to Mr. Campion was to ask what make of car he drove and to disapprove loudly of the answer to his question.

A closer inspection of Mrs. Welkin did not dispel Mr. Campion’s first impression, but her husband interested him. Edward Welkin was a large man with a face that would have been distinguished had it not been for the eyes, which were too shrewd, and the mouth, which was too coarse. His attitude towards his hostess was conspicuously different from his wife’s, which was ingratiating, and his son’s, which was uneasy and defensive. The most obvious thing about him was that he completely alien. George he regarded quite clearly as a nincompoop and Lady Turrett as a woman who so far had given his wife value for money. To everyone else he was sublimely indifferent.

His tweeds, of the best old-gentleman variety, had their effect ruined by the astonishing quantity of jewellery he chose to display at the same time. He wore two signet rings, one with an agate and one with a sapphire, and an immense jewelled tiepin, while out of his waistcoat pocket peeped a gold and onyx pen with a pencil to match, strapped together in a bright green leather case. They were both of them as thick round as his forefinger and looked at first glance like the insignia of some obscure order.

Just before they rose from the table Mrs. Welkin cleared her throat.

“As you are going to have a crowd of tenants this evening, Mae, I don’t think I’ll wear it, do you?” she said with a giggle and a glance at Mr. Campion.

“Wear what, dear?” Lady Turrett spoke absently and Mrs. Welkin looked hurt.

“The necklace,” she said reverently.

“Your diamonds? Good heavens, no! Most unsuitable.” The words escaped involuntarily, but in a moment her ladyship was mistress of herself and the situation. “Wear something very simple,” she said with a mechanical smile. “I’m afraid it’s going to be very hard work for us all. Mike, you do know exactly what to do, don’t you? At the end of the evening, just before they go home, you put on the costume and come into the little ante-room which leads off the platform. You go straight up to the tree and cut the presents off, while all the rest of us stand round to receive them and pass them on to the children.”

Mrs. Welkin bridled. “I should have liked to have worn them,” she said petulantly. “Still, if you say it’s not safe…”

“Mother didn’t say it wasn’t safe, Mrs. Welkin,” said Sheila sharply. “She said it wasn’t suitable.”

Mrs. Welkin blushed angrily.

“You’re not very polite, young lady,” she said, “and if it’s a question of suitability, where’s the suitability in Mr. Peters playing Santa Claus when it was promised to Kenny?”

The mixture of muddled logic and resentment startled everyone. Sir George looked helplessly at his wife, Kenneth Welkin turned savagely on his mother, and Edward Welkin settled rather than saved the situation.

“That’ll do,” he said in a voice of thunder. “That’s all been fixed, Ada. I don’t want to hear any more from either of you on the subject.”

The table broke up with relief. Sir George tugged Campion’s arm.

“Cigar—library,” he murmured and faded quietly away.

Campion followed him.

There were Christmas decorations in the book-filled study and, as he settled himself in a wing chair before a fire of logs and attended to the tip of a Romeo y Julieta, Mr. Campion felt once more the return of the Christmas spirit.

Sir George was anxious about his daughter’s happiness.

“I like young Peters,” he said earnestly. “Fellow can’t help his father’s troubles.”

Mr. Campion agreed with him and the older man went on.

‘The boy Mike’s an engineer,” he said, “and makin’ good at his job slowly, and Sheila seems fond of him, but Mae talks about hereditary dishonesty. Taint may be there. What do you think?”

Mr. Campion had no time to reply to this somewhat unlikely theory. There was a flutter and a rustic outside the door and a moment later Mr. Welkin senior came in with a flustered lady. George got up and held out his hand.

“Ah, Miss Hare,” he said. “Glad to see you. Come on your annual visit of mercy?”

Miss Hare, who was large and inclined to be hearty, laughed.

“I’ve come cadging again, if that’s what you mean, Sir George,” she said cheerfully, and went on, nodding to Mr. Campion as if they had just been introduced. “Every Christmas I come round collecting for my old women. There are four of “em in the almshouse by the church. I only ask for a shilling or two to buy them some little extra for the Christmas treat. I don’t want much. Just a shilling or two.”

She glanced at a small notebook in her hand.

“You gave me ten shillings last year, Sir George.”

He produced the required sum and Campion felt in his pocket.

“Half-a-crown would be ample,” said Miss Hare encouragingly. “Oh, that’s very nice of you. I assure you it won’t be wasted.”

She took the coin and was turning to Welkin when he stepped forward.

“I’d like to do the thing properly,” he said. “Anybody got a pen?”

He took out a cheque book and sat down at George’s desk uninvited.

Miss Hare protested. “Oh no, really,” she said, “you don’t understand. This is just for an extra treat. I collect it nearly all in sixpences.”

“Anybody got a pen?” repeated Mr. Welkin.

Campion glanced at the elaborate display in the man’s waistcoat pocket, but before he could mention it George meekly handed over his own fountain pen.

Mr. Welkin wrote a cheque and handed it to Miss Hare without troubling to blot it.

“Ten pounds?” said the startled lady. “Oh, but really…!”

“Nonsense. Run along.” Mr. Welkin clapped her familiarly on the shoulder. “It’s Christmas time,” he said, glancing at George and Campion. “I believe in doing a bit of good at Christmas time—if you can afford it.”

Miss Hare glanced round her helplessly.

“It’s very—very kind of you,” she said, “but half-a-crown would have been ample.”

She fled. Welkin threw George’s pen on to the desk.

“That’s the way I like to do it,” he said.

George coughed and there was a faraway expression in his eyes.

“Yes, I—er—I see you do,” he said and sat down. Welkin went out.

Neither Mr. Campion nor his host mentioned the incident. Campion frowned. Now he had two minor problems on his conscience. One was the old matter of the piece of information concerning Charlie Spring which he had forgotten, the other was a peculiarity of Mr. Welkin’s which puzzled him mightily.

The Pharaoh’s Court children’s party had been in full swing for what seemed to Mr. Campion to be the best part of a fortnight. It was half-past seven in the evening and the relics of an enormous tea had been cleared away, leaving the music room full of replete but still energetic children and their mothers, dancing and playing games with enthusiasm.

Mr. Campion, who had danced, buttled, and even performed a few conjuring tricks, bethought him of a box of his favourite cigarettes in his suitcase upstairs and, feeling only a little guilty at leaving George still working like a hero, he stole away and hurried to his room.

The main body of the house was deserted. Even the Welkins were at work in the music room, while the staff were concentrated in the kitchen washing up.

Mr. Campion found his cigarettes, lit one, and pottered for a moment or two, reflecting that the Christmases of his youth were much the same as those of today, but not so long from hour to hour. He felt virtuous, happy and positively oozing with goodwill. The promised snow was felling, great soft flakes plopping softly against his window.

At last, when his conscience decreed that he could absent himself no longer, he switched off the light and stepped into the corridor, to come face to face with Father Christmas. The saint looked as weary as he himself had been and was stooping under the great sack on his shoulders. Mr. Campion admired Harridge’s costume. The boots were glossy, the tunic with its wool border satisfyingly red, while the benevolent mask with its cottonwool beard was almost lifelike.

He stepped aside to let the venerable figure pass and, because it seemed the moment for jocularity, said lightly:

“What have you got in the bag, Guv’nor?”

Had he uttered a spell of high enchantment, the simple words could not have had a more astonishing effect. The figure uttered an inarticulate cry, dropped the sack, which fell with a crash at Mr. Campion’s feet, and fled like a shadow.

For a moment Mr. Campion stood paralysed with astonishment. By the time he had pulled himself together the crimson figure had disappeared down the staircase. He bent over the sack and thrust in his hand. Something hard and heavy met his fingers and he brought it out. It was the pink marble, bronze and ormolu clock.

He stood looking at his find and a sigh of satisfaction escaped him. One of the problems that had been worrying him all day had been solved.