The Mind Readers
Authors: Margery Allingham
CONTENTS
16 Things you could Tell an Old Friend
20 Behind the Scenes in an Old Curiosity Shop
Fact catches up with fiction when the secret of telepathic communication is discovered. But the device at the centre of the mystery is in the possession of two schoolboys and whether they stole it or invented it, there are powerful interests who will kill to get hold of it. Albert Campion faces as deadly a challenge as any in his career.
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
The China Governess
Crime and Mr Campion
A Cargo of Eagles
The Return of Mr Campion
Mr Campion's Quarry
Mr Campion's Lucky Day
To my technical advisers in gratitude for their astonishing new world and in the hope that I get this tale out before they do.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and the events recorded here have not yet taken place.
Margery Allingham
The Breaking Ground
THE GREAT CITY
of London was once more her splendid self; mysterious as ever but bursting with new life.
In the tightly packed clusters of villages with the ancient namesâHackney, Holborn, Shoreditch, Putney, Paddington, Bowânew towers were rising into the yellow sky; the open spaces if fewer, were neater, the old houses were painted, the monuments clean.
Best news of all, the people were regrown. The same savagely cheerful race, fresh mixed with more new blood than ever in its history, jostled together in costumes inspired by every romantic fashion known to television. While round its knees in a luxuriant crop the educated children shot up like the towers, full of the future.
Early one Thursday evening, late in the year at one particular moment, just before the rush hour, when the lights were coming up and the shadows deepening, five apparently unrelated incidents in five ordinary, normal lives were taking place at points set far apart within the wide boundaries of the town. Five people, none of whom were particularly aware of the others, were taking the first casual steps in one of those mystic, curling patterns of human adventure which begin with imperceptible movement, like the infinitesimal commotion which surrounds a bud thrusting through the earth but which then sometimes develops and grows up swiftly into a huge and startling plume to alter the whole landscape of history.
The first of the five was no more than an idle thought. The D.D.I. of the Eastern Waterside Division of Metropolitan Police was sitting in his office kicking himself gently because he had forgotten to tell his old friend Detective Superintendent Charles Luke of the Central Office, who had just left after a routine visit, a little piece of nonsense which might have intrigued that great man. They had been so busy moralising over the effects of the latest threat of total world annihilation on the local suicide rate amongst teenagers that he had quite forgotten his own story about that well known city âcharacter', the End of the World Man, which had come into his mind and gone out again whilst Luke was talking.
It was an odd thing he had seen with his own eyes as he had travelled through the West End in a police car at the back end of the summer. As he had passed the corner of Wigmore Street and Orchard Street up by the Park, he had observed the familiar figure of the old fanatic in the dusty robes and hood carrying his banner proclaiming the worst, striding away from him among the shopping crowds on the pavement. Less than four minutes later by his own watch after a clear run, he had seen him again, head on this time, walking up the Haymarket from the direction of the Strand. So, as Luke might possibly have been entertained to hear, the man had either developed a power of miraculous transportation which seemed unlikely on form, or there were two of him dressed exactly alike and one of them at any rate taking great care to resemble the other. This was funny in view of what he and Luke had been saying about the increase of interest in these people's gloomy subject.
The second stirring in the hard ground, taking place at exactly the same time, was a conversation which occurred on the western side of the city where two people were talking in a Regency Rectory in a half forgotten backwater called St Peter's Gate Square.
They were in a book-filled study, the smaller of two downstair reception rooms. Canon Avril had possessed the living so long that the tremendous changes which had dismembered the world outside had come very gently to his own household. Now in his old age, a widower for many years, his daughter married and away, he lived on the ground floor humbly but comfortably while William Talisman, his verger, made his home in the basement and Mrs Talisman kept an eye on them both.
Upstairs there was the Canon's daughter's suite, which was now let as a
pied à terre
to his nephew Mr Albert Campion and his wife when they visited London; and above that there was a cottage-like attic flat, at the moment also let to relatives. These were Helena Ferris and her brilliant young American husband, who fled to it whenever they could escape from the island research station on the East Coast where he was working.
The Canon was a big man with a great frame and untidy white hair. He had a fine face which, despite its intelligence, was almost disconcertingly serene. He had seen the neighbourhood decline from Edwardian affluence to near-slum conditions and now edge back again to moneyed elegance. Throughout all the changes his own income had remained the same and his present poverty could have been agonising, but he had few needs and no material worries whatever. He was certainly shabby and it was true that at the end of each week it was literally impossible to borrow so much as a shilling from him, but he remained not only happy but secure throughout the harrowing crises which so often sprang up around him. Nor was he a visionary. There was a practical element in his outlook, even if it was apt to appear slightly out of alignment to those who were unaware that he did not stand in the dead centre of his own universe.
One of his most sensible innovations was in the room with him at the moment, interrupting him almost unbearably with her well-meaning chatter.
Miss Dorothy Warburton was a maiden lady of certain everythingâincome, virtue and age; and she lived in one of the two cottages just past the Church next door. She managed the Canon's personal finances in exactly the same way as she managed the Church Fête. That is to say, firmly, openly and, of course, down to the last farthing. He had no privacy, nothing of his own. His charities were subject to her scrutiny and had to be justified and this kept him factual and informed about what things did or did not cost. However, apart from these, material considerations were not permitted to weigh upon him and he never forgot how blessed he was or how much he owed his dear Decimal Dot, as he called her.
On her side she respected him deeply, called him âher Church Work' and bossed him as she would certainly have done a father. Mercifully she did not consider herself unduly religious, seeing her role as a Martha rather than a Mary, and it may have been something to do with the classic resentment which made her a little insensitive where he was concerned.
This was the hour which the Canon liked to set aside. It had become for him a period of professional activity for which few gave him credit. He never explained, being well aware of the pitfalls in that direction, but accepted interruptions meekly if he could not avoid them. On the other hand, he never permitted himself to be discouraged from what he felt was his chief duty. With the years he had become one of the more practised contemplative minds in a generation which neglected the art; simple people often thought him lovable but silly, and those who were not so simple, dangerous. Avril could not help that; he did what he had to do and looked after his parish, and every day he sat and thought about what he was doing and why and how he was doing it.
Miss Warburton could not make out what he was up to, wasting time and not even resting, and every so often when she had an excuse, she used to come in and prod him to find out.
Today she was full of news and chatter.
âHouse full tomorrow!' she said brightly. âYou
will
enjoy that! Albert and Amanda and their little nephew Edward, and Helena and Sam, all home for half term. That will be lovely for you and such a change!'
Avril knew it would be. After weeks of having the place empty he could hardly miss it. It was she who was most lonely, he feared, and he let her chatter on. âMrs Talisman is baking a cake in case they ask Superintendent Luke over. She thinks that because she can cook and lives in a basement it's the correct thing to do, since he's a policeman! I wonder she doesn't make it a rabbit pie and have done with it since we're all out to be Victorian. Poor Martin Ferris. He works far too hard on that dreadful electronics island.'
âDoes he?'
âIt sounds like it, if he can't be spared for a week-end up here with his family when the child comes home for half term, but must stay out on that freezing marsh researching. I never saw two young people so much in love when they started, but I warn you, Canon, that marriage could founder if they drive him like that. I suppose we're going to have another war.'