Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories (8 page)

“Any more on Figg?”

“A little. Last week the two quarrelled and were heard all over the building. Tonight, while the doctor was at the Eclipse Sporting Club, he received a mysterious message on the phone in a cockney accent telling him to go to Fane quickly. He hurried back to find this door on the latch and Fane lying as you see him, still warm, the radio going full blast.”

Campion eyed the set. “Powerful?” he inquired.

“Terrific. The couple below say it was roaring from ten minutes to six until the doctor turned it off after he found Fane. No one could have noticed the shot above the row.”

“Depressing neighbour. Anyone see anything?”

“No. The porter says he saw no visitors but he’s been in and out of the hall and might have missed anyone. It seemed certain that Figg had slipped by him, but, as you heard, his alibi is perfect. He didn’t arrive until after we did.”

“Lucky chap. Can I see the doctor?”

“Of course. He’s still in his flat upstairs. I doubt if he can add to what he’s said already.”

Campion said nothing and was still silent when the doctor came bustling in a few minutes later.

“I admit I did not know him well,” he said waving at the dead man, “but it was a shock, you know, a considerable shock. Poor fellow, he was still warm when I found him, but there wasn’t a hope.”

“No,” said Campion, “not with a bullet through his heart. Tell me, doctor, have you a large practice here?”

“None at all. I’ve retired.” The man seemed put out. “I thought I made that clear. No, a G.P.’s life is too arduous for me, I’m afraid. I gave up medicine six years ago. Did you get hold of Figg, Inspector?”

“Yes, but the man has an alibi.”

“An alibi? But I could have sworn I…” The doctor bit back the words but Oates seized on them.

“You were going to say you recognised his voice on the phone.”

“No, no, I can’t be as explicit as that but I must admit that at the time it went through my mind that the voice resembled—Good Heavens, sir!”

The final exclamation was addressed to Campion, who had suddenly moved forward and, exerting all his strength, pulled the body up off the desk.

The sight was terrible. The entire corpse moved in one solid mass, the knees remaining bent, the head thrust out stiffly.

“Rigor very well advanced,” muttered Mr. Campion, a little breathless from the exertion.

“Good lord, yes. Much more so than I had expected.” The doctor’s eyes had widened. “It does happen, of course I’ve known it to be instantaneous. Cadaveric spasm, we call it. In this case…”

He got no further. Campion had released his hold on the body, allowing it to return to its original position. In his other hand was a sheet of paper torn from the scribbling pad which was covered with figures. It had lain hidden under the dead man’s head. When he looked up his eyes were hard. “How much did you owe him, doctor?” he inquired softly. “He was putting on the pressure, I suppose? What did you do with the revolver? Leave it at the club?”

“This is a monstrous accusation, sir. My solicitor…”

“Really, Campion…” Oates began nervously.

Campion’s voice silenced him. “Fane has got you, doctor. You may have shot him but he’ll convict you—with this.”

He held the paper out to Oates who snatched it. The doctor stared at it over his arm.

“It’s only a list of his day’s winnings,” he said angrily. “There’s no proof of anything here.”

Campion’s thin forefinger pointed to a single item: 4.30 Iron Ore won 6-4 £133.6.8.

Oates raised worried eyes. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What are you driving at?”

“Iron Ore didn’t win,” said Mr. Campion. “It passed the post first, and was credited with a win in the stop press of the afternoon editions but there was a spot of bumping and an objection was sustained. This was announced on the sports news. If Fane was sitting here with the radio going at six o’clock he could hardly have missed it unless…”

“Unless?”

“Unless he was dead by then. The doctor says himself he saw him at ten minutes to six—quick, Oates!”

He sprang after the flying figure of the doctor who eluded him only to crash into a couple of constables in the vestibule.

In the excitement Mr. Figg, ever an opportunist, quietly took his leave.

Later, the Detective Inspector looked round for Mr. Campion. He found him sleeping peacefully in the bedroom with such a beatific smile on his face that Oates took pleasure in waking him. “How did you do that?” he demanded.

Campion yawned. “Doctor’s evidence,” he said. “What man with a headache sits by a blaring radio? Besides, a cadaveric spasm, as you know, is instantaneous. The doctor did not notice it when he found the body; therefore it was ordinary rigor, which takes some hours to develop.”

Oates laughed. “Fair enough, but I still call it luck,” he said. “You just happened to know the details of that race. It’s your lucky day.”

Mr. Campion’s smile broadened. “I couldn’t agree with you more,” he murmured. “I had a tenner on the second horse. That was how I knew.”

Oates grunted. “Long odds?”

“Fifty to one.”

“Good lord, what’s its name?”

“Amateur,” whispered Mr. Campion. “That was why I came to back it. I’m not a betting man.”

When I was sent out to the small house on the marsh to look for the ghost there, I went stolidly and uncomplainingly, as is my nature.

I was an ugly, over-energetic little beast in my late teens, and had just begun to realize that my chosen profession of journalism was not the elegant mixture of the diplomatic service and theatrical criticism which my careers mistress had led me to suppose.

The general direction in which the house lay was pointed out by the postmaster of the most forlorn village ever to have graced the Essex coast. He stood leaning over a narrow counter with a surface like cracked toffee and shook his head at me warningly.

‘That’s no place for a young lady,” he said. “That’s a terrible funny place down there. You don’t want to go there.”

It was encouraging to hear that the house on the marsh not only existed but that there was something definitely odd about it.

Our editor was a difficult man whose pet maxim was “If you hear something, go and tear its guts out’.

His present story sounded unhappily vague. Someone, he said, had come to him at the Thatcher’s Arms in the High-street and told him of a terrorised village which was in a state of near panic because of a ghastly white face, a woman’s face, which had appeared at the window of a lonely house on the marsh. It was my duty to go and bring back the ghost or its story.

“It’s great,” he said. “Most important thing that’s happened down here since the municipal election. Go and thrash it out. They’ll all be on it.”

By “all” he meant our rival, the
Weekly Gazette,
with offices a little lower down the town. I rather hoped they would. Bill Ferguson, their junior, was a friend of mine and I had looked out for him on the road. However, he had not appeared, and I had been depressed at the prospect of unearthing yet another mare’s nest when the postmaster had raised my hopes.

“I want to see the ghost,” I said cheerfully. “Who’s seen it so far?”

“There’s a lot on “em seen it,” he confessed unexpectedly. “That’s a proper vision.”

I got out my notebook.

“Who’s seen it? Who can I talk to?”

“They’ll be out at work now,” he said. “Best wait till tea-time. They’ll be home just after five.”

I looked out through the cluttered window at the sky. It was getting on for four o’clock and as grey and bitter as only a February day on the marsh can be.

“I’d better see the house now and get the stories when I come back,” I said. “What’s the tale about the house? Why should it be haunted?”

He eyed me thoughtfully.

“There was a shootin’ down there years ago,” he said. “Likely that’s it.”

“Very likely,” I agreed blithely. “Who was it?”

He was vague, however. At first it looked as though he was hiding something, but at last it became obvious that he actually knew very little.

“There was a young couple took it from London,” he said. “The lady she got herself drownded and the man ’e shot hisself. Now she’s come back and sets peerin’ out the window. You don’t want to go down there, I keep tellin’ you.”

“I do,” I said. “Who were these people? When did it happen?”

The postmaster sighed.

“That I couldn’t say. Afore my time. I ain’t been here above twenty years. Ah, that’s a dreadful tumble-down sort of a place!”

In the end he directed me. He was not actively against my going; merely passively disapproving.

I drove down that chill, windswept little street to the point where the road suddenly ceased to be a road and became a waterlogged cart-track, and where a decrepit gate barred my path. I left my car since it was impractical to take it farther, and set out over the saltings on foot.

The house came into view after about half a mile of cold and uncomfortable walking. It sat huddled up on a piece of high ground, a miserable wooden shack of a place with a brick chimney leaning crazily on one side. At the big spring tides it must have been surrounded and, having a simple, gregarious nature, I felt I understood the young woman who had drowned herself rather than live in it.

It was still some considerable distance away, and I plodded on, hoping with cheerful idiocy to see something pretty grisly in the way of spectres for my trouble.

It is hard to say at what particular moment I suddenly became afraid. Alarm settled down on me like a mist, and I was aware of feeling cold and a little sick long before I realised what it was. I think I must have recognised fear at the instant that I came near enough to the house to see the details of those two upper windows which peered out at me like dreadful dead eyes under the rakish billycock hat of a roof.

I remember pulling myself together irritably and then staring round aghast at that wide, desolate world of cold grey sea and marsh and sky.

The sight of the man struggling along behind me restored my balance. The sober earth returned to me, and with it a rush of relief. I was not alone. The human race had not miraculously died out in half an hour. I stood hesitating.

It was not Bill. The newcomer was not a labourer nor a fisherman. I saw his short raincoat with satisfaction. Here, no doubt, was the rest of the Press.

I shouted at him, my voice sounding very small and shrill in the cold emptiness.

“Hullo!” I bellowed. “You from the
Gazette
? Come to see the ghost?”

He shouted back but I did not catch the words. His voice, too, was caught up and dispersed in the void. I heard scraps of it, unrelated notes, before it was sucked upward and devoured in that hungry air.

As he came closer I saw that he was a pale, ineffectual young man, hatless and with fair hair. His coat was buttoned up to his chin and he was blue with cold.

“Well, there’s the house,” I said as he came up.

He nodded and surveyed the decrepit cottage, which looked more shabby and less horrific now that I was not facing it alone.

I glanced at the sky.

“If we’re going to burgle the place by daylight we’d better hurry,” I said. “At first this whole thing sounded like a cock-and-bull story but down in the village they seem to have seen something.”

“Yes,” he said and regarded me with unhappy pale grey eyes. “I’ve heard them talking. They’ve seen a woman in a sun-bonnet.”

“A sun-bonnet?” That was something new to me and I felt a momentary resentment against my friend the postmaster, “I’m glad she needs it,” I said facetiously.

He did not smile.

“It’s hot down here in the summer; just as hot as it’s cold now. There’s no shade anywhere.”

The thought seemed to depress him and we ploughed on towards the house. The nearer I came to the place the more scared I grew. It was not a blind, exciting terror; rather a cold suffocating sense of disaster and frustration and despair.

I glanced at my companion and thought he must have experienced much the same reaction, for he looked wretched, and his teeth chattered slightly. The sight of his alarm gave me courage and amused me. It was a natural feminine desire to show off. I struggled against my terror and became almost hearty.

“I’m glad it’s a woman,” I said foolishly. “She’s more likely to be at home. There was a tragedy down here some years ago. You’ve heard all that, I suppose?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “I know what happened. But I don’t see why the woman should come back. It was the man who had hell down here.”

“Ah,’
I said complacently, “that’s what you think because you’re a man. It’s the woman who always feels things most. She’s come back to look for the boy friend, of course.”

“Do you think so?” he said and looked so soft and sentimental that I began to lose interest in him. The discovery that he was dopy made him seem less useful as an ally and the cold began to creep up and down my spine again.

We had reached the high ground by this time and we made our ascent to that horrible cottage in silence. There was no need to climb in through the windows. The door hung crazily on one hinge and when I pushed it it clattered back with a noise that sounded like an explosion in that damp, silent greyness.

My colleague hung back.

“I don’t want to go in,” he said.

There was more than repugnance in his voice. It rose on to a note of pure terror and combined with my own unreasoning alarm to make me thoroughly irritable. I regarded him coldly.

“Do what you like,” I said, and added, with unpardonable priggishness, “if you want to do your job properly, you’ll search the house with me.”

I stood, half in, half out, of the little brick-floored hall.

There were two rooms downstairs, a kitchen and a parlour. A flight of stairs led up between them. From where I stood I could see the ground floor was deserted.

I looked at the rickety stairs, and then at the man.

“Coming?” I demanded.

He went to pieces rather horribly. His face began to work.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I can’t. I can’t. I don’t want to see… anything.”