The China Governess
Read The China Governess Online
Authors: Margery Allingham
CONTENTS
Foreword: The Turk Street Mile
Appearance and reality are not always the same.
Timothy Kinnit is rich, handsome and well-bred. He seems to have everything. Then, on the eve of his elopement, he learns that he was adopted, and he is desperate to know who he really is. Someone seems no less keen to stop him finding out. Violence, deception and death bedevil the post-war housing estate that has grown from the ashes of the notorious Turk Street Mile, and the shadow of a long-forgotten murder hangs over it all â until Luke and Campion are finally able to dispel the darkness.
Margery Allingham was born in London in 1904. She attended the Perse School in Cambridge before returning to London to the Regent Street Polytechnic. Her father â author H. J. Allingham â encouraged her to write, and was delighted when she contributed to her aunt's cinematic magazine,
The Picture Show,
at the age of eight.
Her first novel was published when she was seventeen. In 1928 she published her first detective story,
The White Cottage Mystery,
which had been serialised in the
Daily Express.
The following year, in
The Crime at Black Dudley,
she introduced the character who was to become the hallmark of her writing â Albert Campion. Her novels heralded the more sophisticated suspense genre: characterised by her intuitive intelligence, extraordinary energy and accurate observation, they vary from the grave to the openly satirical, whilst never losing sight of the basic rules of the classic detective tale. Famous for her London thrillers, she has been compared to Dickens in her evocation of the city's shady underworld.
In 1927 she married the artist, journalist and editor Philip Youngman Carter. They divided their time between their Bloomsbury flat and an old house in the village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy in Essex. Margery Allingham died in 1966.
The Crime at Black Dudley
Mystery Mile
Look to the Lady
Police at the Funeral
Sweet Danger
Death of a Ghost
Dancers in Mourning
Flowers for the Judge
The Case of the Late Pig
Mr Campion and Others
The Fashion in Shrouds
Black Plumes
Coroner's Pidgin
Traitor's Purse
The Casebook of Mr Campion
More Work for the Undertaker
The Tiger in the Smoke
The Beckoning Lady
Hide My Eyes
Crime and Mr Campion
The Mind Readers
A Cargo of Eagles
The Return of Mr Campion
Mr Campion's Quarry
Mr Campion's Lucky Day
None of the characters in this book is a portrait of a living person
Margery Allingham
Why each atom knows its own,
How in spite of woe and death
Gay is life and sweet is breath
Robert Bridges
The Turk Street Mile
â
IT WAS CALLED
the wickedest street in London and the entrance was just here. I imagine the mouth of the road lay between this lamp standard and the second from the next down there.'
In the cold darkness of the early spring night the Chief Detective-Inspector of the area was talking like a guide-book with sly, proprietorial satisfaction. He was a neat, pink man whose name was Munday and he was more like a civil servant than a police officer. His companion, who had just followed him out of the black chauffeur-driven police car drawn up against the kerb, straightened himself and stood looking at the shadowy scene before him without speaking.
They were standing in the midst of the East End on a new pavement flanking a low wall beyond which, apart from a single vast building, there appeared to be a great deal of nothing at all in a half circle perhaps a quarter of a mile across. The great fleece which is London, clotted and matted and black with time and smoke, possesses here and there many similar bald spots. They are cleared war-damage scars in various stages of reclamation. Around the edges of this particular site the network of small streets was bright and the arterial road by which they stood was a gleaming way bathed in orange light, but inside the half circle, despite the lighted windows of the building, it was sufficiently dark for the red glow which always hangs over the city at night to appear very deep in colour.
âThe Turk Street Mile has gone now, anyway,' Munday went on. âA serious trouble spot for three hundred years, wiped out utterly and for ever in a single night by four landmines and a sprinkling of incendiaries in the first raid on London, twenty years ago.'
The other man was still silent, which was something of a phenomenon. Superintendent Charles Luke was not as a rule at a loss
for words. He was very tall but his back and shoulder muscles were so heavy that he appeared shorter and there was a hint of the traditional gangster in his appearance, especially now as he stood with his hands in his trousers pockets, the skirts of his light tweed overcoat bunched behind him and his soft hat pulled down over his dark face. The legacy of the last few years which included promotion, marriage, fatherhood, widowerhood and the Police Medal, had had remarkably little outward effect upon him. His shorn curls were as black as ever and he could still pump out energy like a power station, but there was a new awareness in his sharp eyes which indicated that he had lived and grown.
âI understand that the district was considered a sort of sanctuary,' the Chief was saying. âAn Alsatia like the ancient one behind the Strand, or Saffron Hill before the First World War. They tell me there was a recognized swag-market down here.'
Luke drew a long hand out of his pocket and pointed to a thin spire far away in the rusty sky. âThat's St. Botolph's,' he said. âTake a line from there to the old gasometer on the canal at the back of the cinema over there and you won't be far wrong. The Mile was a narrow winding street and in places the top floors of the buildings almost touched. Right in the middle there was a valley with very steep sides. The road dipped like a wall and went up again. That's why there was no through traffic to clear it. The surface hadn't been altered for generations; round cobbles. It was like walking over cannon balls.' Now that he had recovered from his first astonishment at the sight of the new building which was not what he had expected, he was talking with his usual fierce enthusiasm and as usual painting in details with his hands.
âWhen you turned into The Mile from this end the first thing you saw was the biggest pawnshop you ever clapped eyes on and opposite, all convenient, was the Scimitar. That was a huge gin palace, built on what you might call oriental lines. The street stalls ran down both sides of the way to the hill and every other one of them sported a strictly illegal crown-and-anchor board. The locals played all day. Early in the morning and late at night by naptha flares. Farther on, round the dip, was the residential quarter. I don't know if that's the term. People lived in caves. There's no
other word for them. Have you ever seen a beam eaten to a sponge by beetles? Magnify it and dress the beetles in a rag or two and that's about the picture. I went right through it once for a dare when I was about ten. My mother didn't get me completely clean for a month.' He laughed. âOh, The Mile was wicked enough in a way, depending on what you mean.' He turned back to the scene before him and the enormous new block of council dwellings. The design was some way after Corbusier but the block was built up on plinths and resembled an Atlantic liner swimming diagonally across the site.
âWhat the devil have you got there?' he inquired. âA prehistoric “wot-o-saurus”?'
âIt's a remarkable building.' Munday was earnest. âIn daylight it takes your breath away. It's as sleek as a spaceship, there's not a hair out of place on it. It's the reason why I've had to disturb you tonight. Mr. Cornish felt Headquarters must be notified at once.'
âAh, he's the Councillor, is he? The one who's going to get the knighthood for this lot?'
âI don't know about that, sir.' The Chief was wooden. âI know he's got to raise the money to build five more of these.'
Luke sniffed and surveyed the monster, scored with sun balconies and pitted with neat rows of windows, each one shrouded with pastel colours, blue, pink, lilac, biscuit and lime. A sudden grin spread over his dark cockney face.
âGot the original families in there, Chief Inspector?' he inquired.
Munday gave him a steady glance.
âNot exactly, sir. That's some of tonight's story. I'm given to understand that although it's the primary object of all these big improvement schemes to rehouse the portion of the populace which has been rendered homeless by enemy action, twenty years is a very long time. The new buildings have had to be financed in the ordinary way and the outlay has got to be recovered, so the tendency has been to allot these very exceptional new apartments â they really are quite impressive, Superintendent â to those people who have proved themselves first-class tenants in the temporary accommodation which was rustled up for them just after the war, prefabs and suchlike.'
He came to an uneasy pause and Luke burst out laughing.
âI shan't be asking any questions in Parliament, Chief. You don't have to explain anything away to me. You've got a handpicked lot here, have you? And that's why this present spot of bother which is only âwilful damage' has so upset the dovecotes? I see. Come on.'
They set off together down the partially constructed concrete ramp. âSome of these local government big boys are remarkably like the old-time squires, feudal old baskets!' he remarked. â“Don't hang your bedding out of the window”, “Teach the kids to say please, damn them” and “No Singing except in the Bath”. I don't like it in a landlord myself. Someone has got irritated by it perhaps? Eh?'
âI don't know.' Munday shrugged his shoulders. âMy information is that the couple whose home has been wrecked are a sort of show pair. The old boy is finishing his time at the Alandel Branch factory down the road and he's reputed not to have an enemy in the world. The same thing goes for the old lady who is his second wife. I believe there's a temporary lodger, a skilled worker from Alandel's. They got permission to take him in for six weeks' trial and the rent was properly adjusted, so it can't be jealousy on the part of the neighbours. The damage appears to be remarkable and the feeling is that it may be directed against the building itself, the Council that is, and not the tenants at all.'
âCould be. Who have you got out here?'
âA good man, Sergeant Stockwell. I was speaking to him on the phone just before we came out. He thinks it must be the work of a small gang. Possibly juveniles. He doesn't like the look of it but he doesn't see what can be done before morning. However, Mr. Cornish â' He let the rest of the sentence remain unspoken.