More Work for the Undertaker (5 page)

‘I come with 'er from the other 'ouse,' roared Mrs Love. ‘Otherwise I wouldn't be 'ere. Not me, no fear! Too dangerous.'

Having achieved one effect, she shot out for another.

‘Still got me evenin' doodah on.' She waggled her ribbon at Clarrie, who touched an imaginary hat to it, making her laugh like an evil child. ‘'E's my second string,' she said to Campion. ‘I say 'e's my second string. These 'ere the sheets? Got any piller-cases? I done me floor. I say I done me floor.'

She shuffled out with the warm linen, her heels dragging sadly. Renee followed her with a second armful.

Clarrie Grace sat down again and pushed a glass and bottle at the visitor.

‘They'd censor a comic who did her on the halls,' he remarked. ‘All of eighty and still brimful of what it takes. Works like a navvy, too. Can't stop in case she falls down dead. Renee and her do all the chores between them. How she's loving this business, God, how she's loving it!'

‘A case of one woman's poison being another woman's meat?' suggested Mr Campion foolishly.

Clarrie paused, his glass half-way to his mouth.

‘You could use that,' he said seriously. ‘I often hear people say things they could use. Of course, though, you're a solicitor, aren't you?'

‘That makes it more difficult,' murmured Mr Campion.

Clarrie Grace laughed. He had a delightful smile when he was genuinely amused and a hideous one for more polite or professional purposes.

‘You know,' he began conversationally, ‘Renee's been a pal of mine ever since I was a nipper, and somehow I can't see you being her nephew. I should have heard of you before. I must
have. She's one of the very best, Renee is.' He hesitated. ‘Don't tell me if you don't want to. Live and let live. I've had that on my hatband all my life. I mean I'd never be surprised by anything. You can't afford it in my profession and I daresay it's the same in yours. Surprise costs money, that's what I say. Your old man wasn't really her brother, was he?'

‘Only in a manner of speaking,' said Mr Campion, thinking, no doubt, of the brotherhood of man.

‘Now that is rich.' Clarrie was delighted. ‘That's wizzo.
I
shall use that. That can't be wasted. “In a manner of speaking” – you're a laugh! You're going to cheer us up.'

His nerviness appeared to have evaporated.

‘Keep up your strength,' he said, indicating the glass. ‘They can't get at the bottled stuff.'

‘Who?'

‘The family. The Pally-allys upstairs. Roll me over, you don't think Renee or I . . . or even the captain, excuse my glove – that's what I call him, “excuse my glove” – have been going in for chemistry, do you? My dear, if we had the brains we haven't the initiative, as the queens say. We're the regulars. We're all right. We've known each other for donkeys' years. It's the Ally-pallys, that's certain. But they can't get at the beer. Have one with the seal unbroken.'

Since his honour appeared to demand it, Mr Campion took some stout, which he disliked.

‘I should hardly think there was much danger of indiscriminate poisoning,' he ventured diffidently. ‘I mean, what are the facts? An old lady died a couple of months ago and for reasons best known to themselves the police have dug her up again. No one knows yet what the findings of the public analyst will be. The inquest hasn't been resumed. No, I don't think there's anything to show that everyone in the household is now in danger, I really don't. Until the police made this move you can't even have thought of poison.'

Clarrie set down his beer. ‘My dear old boy, you're a lawyer,' he said. ‘No offence, mind you. You don't see the situation in a human light, that's all. Of course we're all in danger! There's a killer about, isn't there? No one's been hanged.
Besides, what about the old boy? – the brother, the first one.'

He was waving his manicured hand with the big masculine knuckles like a baton.

‘He died, didn't he, last March? The police are going to have him up next. It stands to reason. I for one shan't be satisfied if they don't.'

Campion was not at all sure that he followed the other's exact process of thought, but he was extraordinarily convincing, at least in tone. Clarrie appeared gratified by this tacit acceptance of his argument.

‘You'll find him bunged to the brim with muck,' he said flatly, ‘just like his sister. I say the old Ally-pallys are all in it together, that's my theory.' He was very serious. ‘It'll hit you in the eye. You wait till you see them.'

Mr Campion stirred. He had begun to tire of this formula.

‘I realize they're eccentric,' he murmured.

‘Eccentric?' Clarrie stared at him and got up. For some unexplained reason he appeared insulted. ‘Good lord, no,' he said, ‘not eccentric. They're all number eight hats and very quite-quite. Eccentric? Not unless brains are eccentric. They're a very good family. Their old man was a sort of genius, a professor. Letters after his name.' He let this intelligence sink in and then went on earnestly, ‘Old Miss Ruth – that's the one who's been done in – wasn't up to the family standard. She was going a bit. Used to forget her own name and take her plate out in public and that sort of thing generally! Thought she was invisible probably. I think the others just got together and talked it over and –' he made a gesture. ‘She couldn't make the grade,' he said.

Campion sat looking at him for a considerable time. Gradually the unnerving conviction seized him that the man was perfectly sincere.

‘When could I meet one of them?' he said.

‘Well, you could go up now, ducky, if you cared to,' said Renee as she appeared from an inner kitchen, a tray in her hands. ‘Take this up to Miss Evadne for me. Someone's got to do it. Clarrie, you can do Mr Lawrence tonight. Take him a kettle and he can mix it himself.'

IT OCCURRED TO
Mr Campion as he stumbled up the unfamiliar staircase that Miss Evadne Palinode, even when considered as a possible poisoner, went in for a strange assortment of evening beverages. He was bearing her a small tray on which were clustered a cup of chocolate-coloured patent milk food, one glass of hot water, a second of cold, a ramekin case filled with castor sugar or alternatively salt, a tot glass filled with something horrible resembling reconstituted egg, a tin marked ‘Epsom Salts' with the ‘Epsom' crossed out, and a small greasy bottle labelled unexpectedly, ‘Paraffin, Household'.

The interior of the house, what little he could see of it, was a surprise.

The staircase had been designed in pitch-pine by someone who was getting back to simplicity but not all at once, for at intervals a discreet bunch of hearts, or possibly spades, appeared fretted in the solid woodwork. The steps were uncarpeted. They wound up two floors, following the four sides of a square well, and were lit from above by one inadequate bulb hanging from a ceiling rose intended to sprout a candelabrum. Solid eight-foot doors arranged in pairs lined the walls of each landing.

Campion knew where he was going, since he had had his way explained to him in endless detail by all three of the excited souls downstairs.

Treading carefully, he approached the single window the first landing contained. He paused to glance out of it. The contours of the sprawling house stood out against the washed-in backcloth of the lamplit street, and as his glance rested on one promontory, nearer to him and more curiously shaped than the rest, part of it moved.

He stood quite still, his eyes growing slowly more accustomed to the light. A moment later a figure appeared almost on a level with him and very much nearer than he had expected, so that he guessed that there was some sort of platform – the roof of a bay window perhaps – directly below the window.

It was a woman on the roof. He caught a brief but clear glimpse of her as she passed through the shaft of light. His startled impression was of finery of some sort, a white hat with a mighty bow on it, and a bright scarf wrapped high round a small throat, Regency fashion. He did not see her face.

By holding his breath he could just hear her moving and he wondered what on earth she was doing. If she was burgling she was certainly taking her time about it. Campion was venturing a half-step closer when a piece of drapery passed once over the window. There was no repetition of this, but the rustling noises continued. Presently, after a long pause, the sash began to rise.

He took the only cover which presented itself and crouched down on the second step from the top, where, hugging his tray, he leaned close to the solid screen of the balustrade. The window moved silently and from where he knelt some feet below it he had a direct upward view of the widening aperture.

The first thing to appear was a pair of new shoes, very high-heeled. A small thin hand, not too clean, placed them gently on the window-ledge. The white hat followed and after that a flowered dress, folded carefully and tied up in a parcel with the scarf. Finally a rolled-up pair of stockings was set atop the pile.

Campion awaited the next development with interest. In his experience the reasons for which people entered houses by an upstairs window were as many and diverse as those for which they fall in love, but this was the first time he had known anybody to disrobe before doing so.

The owner of the garments appeared at last. A slender leg, now muffled in a thick drab stocking, came cautiously over the sill and with the silence of long practice a girl slid gently
on to the landing. She was a queer dowdy figure, clad in an old-fashioned costume which the unenlightened might have miscalled ‘sensible'. A hastily donned skirt, grey and shapeless, hung limply from a narrow waist, and a dreadful cardigan in khaki wool half hid a tuckered saffron blouse which might just have been worn without actual offence by a woman four times her age and bulk. The black silk hair by which he recognized her was once more hanging in a straight bob. It was untidy and all but obscured her face.

Miss Clytie White again, changing on the roof this time. Rescuing his tray, Mr Campion rose to his feet.

‘Been on the tiles?' he inquired affably.

He had expected to startle her a little but was entirely unprepared for the effect of his sudden appearance. She froze where she was and a tremor ran through her as if she had been shot. There was something horrible about her arrested movement and he thought she was going to faint.

‘Look out,' he said abruptly. ‘Put your head down. It's all right, don't worry.'

She caught her breath audibly and shot a nervous glance all round her at the closed doors. Her anxiety reached him and held him for an instant. She put her finger to her lips and then, snatching up the clothes, rolled them frantically into a large unwieldy bundle.

‘I'm very sorry,' he said quietly. ‘It's terribly important, is it?'

She thrust the parcel behind the curtain and put her back against it before she faced him, her huge dark eyes looking steadily into his own.

‘It's vital,' she said briefly. ‘What are you going to do about it?'

Campion became aware of her charm. Charlie Luke had indicated it. Clarrie too, now he came to think of it, had betrayed interest. It was certainly there, a shaft of animal magnetism like a searchlight held inexpertly by a child. It was strange, because she was not beautiful, at any rate in these appalling garments, but she was desperately alive and wholly feminine and her intelligence was obvious.

‘It's hardly my affair, you know,' he said, treating her as if she were older. ‘Won't you consider it didn't occur? I've met you on the stairs, that's all.'

Her relief was so evident that he was reminded how young she was.

‘I'm taking this to Miss Evadne,' he said. ‘She is on this floor, isn't she?'

‘Yes. Uncle Lawrence is down there in the study, near the front door. That's why –' she broke off – ‘I didn't care to disturb him,' she said mendaciously. ‘You're Miss Roper's nephew, aren't you? She told me you might be coming.'

She had a pretty voice, very clear, with a hint of pedantry in her enunciation which was not unpleasant, but at the moment it was unsteady and the nervousness was flattering and engaging.

At this point the white hat, which had been set on top of the incriminating bundle, lost its balance and rolled out from behind the curtain to lie at her feet. She snatched it up, caught him smiling, and blushed violently.

‘A charming hat,' he said.

‘Oh, do you think so?' She gave it one of the most pathetic glances he had ever seen. There was wistfulness there and a sort of awe shot through with honest doubt. ‘I wondered once or twice,' she said. ‘On me, you know. People stared. One couldn't help noticing it.'

‘It's an adult hat,' said Mr Campion, avoiding patronage by stressing his respect.

‘Yes,' she said briskly. ‘Yes, it is. Perhaps that was it.' She hesitated and he was aware of her impulse to tell him a great deal more about it, but at that moment somewhere in the house a door closed. It was a long way away, but the sound seemed to touch her like an enchantment. She faded and grew prim while he watched, and the white hat slid stealthily behind her back. They both listened.

It was Campion who spoke first.

‘I shan't say anything,' he insisted, wondering why he felt so certain that she needed such reassurance. ‘You can rely on me. I mean it.'

‘If you don't I shall die,' she said, and spoke so simply that she startled him. There was an enchanted princess fatality in the remark and no trace of histrionics. But there was force there too, a disquieting element.

While he was still looking at her she turned swiftly and, with grace unexpected in such an inexperienced young person, swept up the secret bundle and ran off on light feet down the landing, to vanish through one of the tall doorways.