The China Governess (18 page)

They were so engrossed that the clatter of the staircase door and the flying footsteps took a second or so to break through to them, and Basil Toberman was already on the threshold when they first became aware of anything but each other.

For some moments he stood just inside the room, staring like a scandalized frog. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was very red and wet as usual, while they sat blinking at him.

‘Do you know the police are downstairs,' he demanded, fixing his pop-eyed stare on Timothy alone. ‘They want you to go to Holborn headquarters with them. Apparently the office of the Stalkey Bros. has gone up in flames. It's been a hell of a fire. Four brigades. They don't know if they're going to revive the night watchman. You'd better come down pretty pronto if you don't want them trooping up here. In my opinion, for what it's worth, they've got “arson” written all over them.'

He turned to Julia, truculent and offensive. ‘This ruddy young fool is in plenty of trouble as it is,' he said. ‘I should sneak out the
back way and slide quietly home if I were you. I've got to dash off and catch a plane or I'd offer to take you. Meanwhile I shall hold my tongue until I get back. So make the most of it, my dear. Come down and placate these chaps, Tim. Never say I didn't mean well.'

SUPERINTENDENT CHARLES LUKE
at breakfast in his own home was something to see, Mr. Campion reflected as he sat opposite him in the kitchen of his mother's house in Linden Lea, one of the newest north-west suburbs. It was a very bright room, so clean that it might have been made of highly glazed china, and the wide window looked out on a neat bright garden with white stone paths, smooth green grass, and geraniums all in a row.

In this setting Luke appeared larger and more lithe, darker and more vital even than usual. With his chin freshly shaved, his linen freshly laundered, his crisp, upstanding hair newly oiled and his teeth gleaming, he appeared part and parcel of the whole. Old Mrs. Luke's lifework, a credit to London, the police and a good woman's one pair of hands.

Despite it he was bearing up pretty well, Mr. Campion noticed, wearing the cherishing with good-natured ease, and even now at a quarter past seven in the morning his native cockney exuberance was unimpaired.

‘I'm glad you came along,' he said, his eyebrows rising even higher than usual. ‘The office is like any other Government Department – not an ideal place to be seen taking an unofficial interest in an old friend's private griefs. It's not a question of the odd snake or so, you understand; just human nature and the requisite spot of common. Here we can say what we like and no harm done. Even Mum is out of earshot.'

Mr. Campion glanced behind him. ‘I wondered about that,' he said anxiously. ‘I hope I'm not keeping her out of here.'

‘Don't you worry!' Luke was amused in his own ferocious way. ‘You couldn't do that, chum. Not if you were the Pope. Fortunately she's attending to the baby. That young woman is saving my life mopping up some of her energy.' He reached for a piece of toast and attacked it, including his guest in the campaign with a
gesture. ‘Well now, as soon as you phoned I got on to Inspector Hodge who is my assistant on nights this week – I don't think you know him.' He blew out his cheeks, sketched in a waterfall moustache with three fleeting fingers, and favoured Campion with a slightly rakish leer, producing by the performance a lightning portrait of someone alarmingly real. ‘He's a good chap,' he said. ‘Old school cop. All beer, brain and bullockheart. Very comforting to have behind you. Thank you for leaving it till 6 a.m. by the way. The young woman was not so considerate, I have no doubt?'

‘No. She telephoned at one in the morning.'

‘Frightened stiff I suppose?'

‘Upset.'

Luke put his shorn head on one side. ‘Does she believe her Timothy could have done it?'

Mr. Campion sighed and his eyes were carefully expressionless behind his spectacles. ‘I don't quite know what has happened yet. All I've been told is that the young man was taken to the Thurstable Inn station where he is said to be “helping the police” in their investigation.'

‘Ah.' Luke was satisfied. ‘I've got a bit more and the rest will come in in a minute. When I rang, Hodge had only got the preliminary. So far it's the simplest case of arson I've ever heard of. Evil without frills. You were at the place yesterday, I believe?' He was more than usually inquisitive, his narrow eyes watchful. ‘I hear there's an ordinary, old-fashioned street-door with a letterbox hole in the middle. The typical square job with an iron surround and a flap but no actual box. The mail falls straight on to the mat as it did in grandpa's day. Is that right?'

‘I couldn't tell you. The door stands open during office hours and I imagine the postman comes right in.'

‘Very likely.' Luke dismissed the point as unimportant. ‘Anyway it's a mean entrance. Bare boards and peeling paint and a short flight of wooden stairs leading to the main staircase, just inside. It's an old building which has undergone several conversions in its time. Am I right so far?'

‘Yes I think so. My impression has always been that it was a bit pokey, you know. Dark and over-full of the eternal grained panelling.
Horribly inflammable, I should think. Where did the fire start?'

‘That's it. Just inside the front door. Someone merely posted three or four packets of household firelighters of the ordinary paraffinwax type, the final one of which was alight.' Luke laughed without amusement. ‘Brilliantly simple and purely venal. The stairwell acted as a flue with a draught under the door, and the caretaker brewing up in the basement found he'd got five floors of blazing building over his head before he noticed the smell. The door burned in the end but not immediately and there was enough evidence to point to the firelighters. Actually one empty carton was found in the yard.'

‘When was this?' Mr. Campion was listening in horror.

‘Last night. The alarm went out at eight-thirty-four and the street door would have been closed around six. That's as near as they'd got when Hodge rang. The caretaker is in no condition to talk, but if he followed his normal routine he would have toured the building and wouldn't have gone down to the basement where he was found half suffocated until just before seven. It's too early to say how long a fire like that would take to get the hold it did, but I should say that your lady client's young man must have spent the night telling the boys at the Thurstable Inn station just exactly where he was between seven and eight-thirty.'

The thin man hesitated. ‘He was with us in Bottle Street until about a quarter to seven, I suppose,' he said slowly.

‘Fair enough.' Luke glanced at a note which he had propped up against a packet of cornflakes beyond his plate.

‘Some bright young constable who knows him seems to have leapt forward with the information that he saw him coming home in “a dazed condition” to that house of the Kinnits in Scribbenfields at approximately eight-twenty. He must have been somewhere.'

Mr. Campion did not speak. He sat looking into his coffee cup until the Superintendent laughed.

‘What does the crystal ball say?'

‘Not enough!' Campion set down the cup and smiled at his old friend.

‘I suppose we have to thank the Stalkey brothers for the promptness of police action?' he murmured.

‘That doesn't surprise me, does it you?' Luke leant back in his chair, gupped discreetly, and produced a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket. ‘Look here,' he said without looking up. ‘I've got complete faith in your judgement and I liked the girl, but while we're in lodge, so to speak, are you quite sure we're on the right horse in this business?'

Mr. Campion's pale eyes flickered wide open. ‘It's not a doubt which had occurred to me,' he said frankly. ‘Why?'

Luke hunched his wide shoulders and shook his cropped head from side to side with exaggerated uncertainty.

‘There's a sort of awful similarity between this arson story and the original bit of bother out at Ebbfield. Both crimes have a frightening streak of modern efficiency in mischief about them. I shouldn't like to explain what I mean in court.' He raised his long hands absently and sketched in the sweeping lines of a full-bottomed wig. ‘It's not evidence at all, but if you'd seen the damage done to that flat you'd know what I mean. There's something young and elemental and damn bad in both crimes.'

‘I understood Timothy Kinnit had a very good alibi for the Ebbfield affair,' Mr. Campion objected gently.

‘So he had” Luke agreed. ‘“Police-proof” is how it was described to me. They're very clever, these modern kids. They know how to gang up, too, better even than we did.'

Mr. Campion frowned, his kindly face was genuinely puzzled. ‘Frankly I don't see your argument,' he said. ‘According to Julia he's mad keen to know who he is.'

‘Ah, that is what he
says
,' Luke objected patiently. ‘That's his story. But it's a new one, isn't it? He's lived over twenty years and he's never tried to find out before, has he? It's the proposed marriage which has set this hare running, don't forget that. As soon as the marriage appears on the horizon – before even the girl's father pops up with his little query – the Kinnits get busy because they know they're going to be asked the awkward question. Detectives are employed, the whole family becomes excited and suddenly the boy makes a move. He does something about it. He
makes a secret, rather silly but dramatic action to discourage the searchers.'

Mr. Campion made a sound of protest.

‘Why?' he demanded. ‘Why do you suppose this? An intelligent educated boy with a good record, good at sport, every future prospect excellent! Why should he suddenly start behaving like a lunatic thug?'

Luke leant further back in his chair and there was a disarming touch of colour in his dark cheeks. He was laughing and a little embarrassed.

‘You're a dear chap, Campion,' he said. ‘I like you and I like your approach. It makes me feel I'm riding in a Rolls; but sometimes I wonder if you're not a bit too nice, if you see what I mean. Look at it from my point of view. Here is a boy – not a specially bred one, conditioned over the generations to withstand a bit of cosseting like a prize dog – but an ordinary tough boy same like I was, packed with his full complement of pride and passion, and he's brought up to believe quite falsely that he's inherited the blessed earth. Money, position, background, servants, prospects. He's got the lot handed to him on a plate all for being his handsome self. He makes an effort and he's successful as well. Finally he gets the girl he's set his heart on. She's an heiress, a beauty and a social cop. For a dizzy fortnight or so he is the topmost, the kingpin, the biggest orange on the whole barrow! And then, at that very moment, what happens? A ruddy great Doubt as big as a house crops up. Security vanishes and there's a hole at his feet. The people he has known all his life as the corner stone of his existence suddenly start employing private detectives –
detectives
– half-baked stuffed owls like Joe Stalkey – to go and find out who he,
he
himself, the sacred one-and-only, who he IS? Blimey! Couldn't that send him bonkers? Couldn't it?'

He finished the little oration with one hand outstretched and his eyebrows disappearing into his hairline. Mr. Campion remained looking at him curiously.

‘I see what you suggest,' he said at last. ‘I do, Charles. I do indeed.'

‘But it hadn't occurred to you before?'

‘No, no it hadn't. “Conditioned over the generations to withstand cosseting” is a new conception to me.'

Luke laughed. ‘I could be wrong,' he said. ‘The kid could be exceptional and tough enough to take the treatment. But also I could be right. It's delicate going. One doesn't know where one is. My advice is play it cautiously and I'm glad we had a chat out here.'

The telephone bell from the shelf behind him cut short his warning and he took the call eagerly. The voice at the other end was a steady rumble and Mr. Campion waited, his fingers drumming absently on the brightly printed cloth. When Luke hung up his face was shadowed.

‘Hodge has had a word with the D.D.I. and has been at the Thurstable Inn station all night,' he announced. ‘The information is that the lad is bloody-minded and won't talk at all, so that's not very promising. He says he was at Ebbfield during the relevant period but won't say why or who he saw there. He merely describes the borough, which is damn silly considering Ron Stalkey had already found him there in the morning. I don't know what he's playing at.'

Mr. Campion hesitated. ‘He may be just growing very angry,' he ventured.

‘Whatever he's growing it's trouble!' said Luke, drily. ‘He's asking for it and the Kinnits are behaving like lunatics. One always finds it with these well-off egg-heads. They must live in space-helmets in the normal way of things! The moment life touches them on the skin they panic and start plaguing absolutely any eminent bird they happen to know personally to “pull strings”!' He pushed his chair back noisily from the table and stood up, six and a half feet of righteous indignation. ‘Hodge says that amongst others Eustace Kinnit has telephoned the President of the London and Home Counties National Bank and the Keeper of the Speight Museum of Classic Antiquities in his attempt to find someone of influence to help him get the lad released. Neither of them as much use as my poor old Auntie Glad, and just about as unlikely! The kindest thing you could do, Campion, is to go down there right away and tell them gently to stop being so silly, antagonizing
the police!' He paused in full flight. ‘Oh and by the way, in the middle of all this a thought occurred to me. How did she know?'