Mr Campion's Fault (19 page)

On any other day, Perdita felt sure that would have been an irresistible topic of conversation but Miss Haigh, clearly anxious for the latest gossip, seemed most disappointed.

Yes, she had been approached by young Roderick, though what he thought he was doing even thinking about such things she would never know. It was not a matter for her, of course, but she did put it to the circuit preacher, Reverend Archibald, who quite rightly judged that the boy should look to a minister who perhaps knew the family and its circumstances better. The Zionists, perhaps.

As they carried no news of value to her, Miss Haigh was not distressed when, after two or three gulps of scalding sweet tea, the Campions took their leave, though not before she had helpfully pointed out that Deacon Horwood of the Zion United Reform Church, now more or less retired, lived only just around the corner at 6, Primrose Close.

As the Zion chapel had been their next port of call anyway, the Campions set off with a will, only to be called back when no more than thirty feet from the doorstep by Miss Haigh.

‘Yoo-hoo, Mr Campion! You’ve forgotten your Dandelion and Burdock!’

In Huddersfield, the elder Mr Campion was leaving police headquarters with something of a spring in his step. Although his fingerprints had been on official record for many years as a matter of national security which need not concern the West Riding Constabulary, he had found the inky ritual rather exhilarating.

Chief Inspector Ramsden had witnessed hundreds of examples of the process in his career and seen every sort of reaction on the part of those being printed, from blustering outrage to resigned acceptance. Yet he could never remember anyone quite so cheerfully relaxed and cooperative as Mr Campion and as, from his office window, he watched Campion saunter back towards the George having refused a lift in squad car (he had no desire to waste any more police time), Ramsden was sure he could detect a spring in the old man’s step.

Exactly how old was Campion? He was certainly well into his sixties and had made numerous off-the-cuff remarks about being ‘a disreputable pensioner’ and that his fingerprints, as they were being taken, might be found to match those on several exhibits in the Natural History Museum. Yet Ramsden could see the man was physically fit – fitter than some of his plainclothesmen at least twenty years younger – and in that slim frame was a spine of steel. The over-polite, self-effacing, sometimes rather fey manner he had perfected would certainly wow the ladies and easily fool the pompous or the criminally inclined who had him down as an easy mark. He had, Ramsden knew, a reputation for helping with police enquiries, though not in Yorkshire. Here he was out of his natural habitat. Could he possibly be useful? There was no doubt he had intelligence – he had been frighteningly well-informed about the spate of payroll robberies – resources and contacts, and a man like that would surely not be interested in a place like Denby Ash unless there was a good reason.

Perhaps it would be worth telephoning that Commander Luke down in London.

Deacon David Horwood was delighted to receive visitors – any visitors, at any time. Being retired he had only his books for company and in one sense he could be said to have three thousand friends permanently visiting, though admittedly quite a few were still strangers.

Perdita and Rupert smiled and chuckled in all the appropriate places, tried and failed to refuse another cup of tea and settled down on a sofa where a third of the space was already taken by a pile of hardback books which gave off a pungent odour of must and damp tobacco.

Deacon Horwood, a wizened old man, almost completely bald, whose skin on his face, neck and hands resembled the patina on a walnut, was more than happy to answer questions about Roderick Braithwaite’s request for an exorcism. Prayer was, of course, powerful enough to defeat even the most pugnacious poltergeist, but the concentrated effort to perform an exorcism was often overwhelming for young and immature minds. If Ada Braithwaite, whom the deacon knew to be a good and charitable soul, had come to him for help it might have been different, but then Ada had been brought up attending St James’ and surely that was where the Braithwaites should turn first.

In any case, he was now a
retired
deacon and certainly should not be considering anything as dramatic as an exorcism, even if he could remember exactly how one should be conducted. After all, he was a pensioner these days and all pensioners had to do was keep the fire in the grate and their allotment tended – wasn’t that the case?

Rupert and Perdita exchanged knowing looks, then thanked Mr Horwood and took their leave. Once again, they were almost clear of the house and its small untidy front garden when a voice in pulpit mode called after them.

‘Thank you for the gift, by the way. Naughty of you to hide it behind the hymnals. How did you know Dandelion and Burdock was my favourite?’

‘So he really is just a retired old gent with time on his hands who likes reading about crimes in the newspapers as a pastime?’

‘I wouldn’t put it
quite
like that,’ said Commander Charles Luke down the line, ‘but he is supposed to be retired. There again, does a cat ever retire from hunting mice? Even if he’s too old and slow to catch them, he’ll still take an interest.’

‘Does he have a personal stake or professional interest in our current epidemic of robberies?’ asked Chief Inspector Ramsden.

‘I can’t think of any. You’re a long way off Campion’s patch up there.’

‘In more ways than one. A toff like him sticks out like a sore thumb in a mining village like Denby Ash.’

‘Don’t judge a book by its cover, Chief Inspector. It’s hardly Campion’s fault that he is always underestimated by his enemies – you might say it’s his greatest asset – and surprisingly for a chap of his education and breeding, not to mention his sense of humour, he can fit in just about anywhere and everywhere. I always thought there was a bit of the chameleon about Mr Campion. If you lose sight of him for an hour, don’t be surprised if he pops up in a Mothers’ Union meeting or playing the sousaphone in one of your brass bands, and everyone around him will swear he’s been there for years.’

Ramsden could not tell, over the long-distance wire, whether Commander Luke was smiling as he spoke. In his experience, the real ‘top cops’, as the newspapers called them, rarely did.

‘Has Campion ever been involved with our particular type of crime: robberies involving safe-cracking, that is?’ Ramsden asked patiently.

‘But that’s not what you’ve got on your hands, as I understand,’ Luke replied with an air of omniscience. ‘You’ve got some bright spark who’s stealing the whole safe and having it away on his toes. I’ve not come across that before and neither, probably, has Campion. That would intrigue him, though – get his juices flowing. I remember him following the case of one of our local villains, a safe-cracker of the old school who preferred gelignite to all that messing about with stethoscopes and tumblers. Famous for making a lot of noise and even more mess was Banger Maud, before I put him down for a ten-stretch, that is.’

There was silence and for a moment, in London, Luke thought the line had gone dead, but in Huddersfield Ramsden gripped the receiver tightly and took a deep breath before he spoke.

‘Would that be Joseph Malcolm “Banger” Maud, by any chance?’

T
o make Rupert and Perdita’s quest easier, the vicar of Denby Ash not only lived in a conventional Victorian vicarage, conventionally located next to the church of St James the Great, but was at home when they called.

‘You’re the chap who wanted to see around the church yesterday,’ announced the Rev. Peter Cuthbertson-Twigg as he opened the door to Rupert.

‘I think that might have been my father,’ said Rupert apologetically.

‘Ah, yes, I see now. You did look older yesterday. But would you like to see the church anyway? It has a famous window painted by Burn Jones, you know. Sadly, he seems to have painted Saint James the Less rather than James the Great, but nobody really minds.’

Rupert declined the offer whilst trying to ignore the silent giggles which wracked his wife’s body as she struggled to keep a straight face. He explained that they had already seen the St James’ window, had attended Communion there with the Armitages from Ash Grange School and the purpose of their visit was to see him rather than his splendid church.

‘So you’ve come to tell me what happened to poor Ivy Neal, have you? I saw the police cars and the ambulance from our bedroom window.’

The abrupt change of subject took Rupert by surprise. Perdita, however, recovered quickest.

‘I’m afraid we know nothing about Ivy Neal,’ she said in a tone which suggested that follow-up questions would not be allowed. ‘We are here on behalf of one of the pupils of Ash Grange.’

After a full minute of open-mouthed hesitation whilst Cuthbertson-Twigg absorbed this information, and after issuing the rather curious warning that his wife was out shopping, they followed the vicar into his study, a room knee-deep in piles of parish magazines which the visitor had to negotiate like a maze. There was only one chair in the room, a striped deck-chair bearing, in faded stencil, the legend that it had once been the property of an Urban District Council.

‘This is where I write my sermons,’ said the vicar, making himself comfortable. ‘Now remind me, what was it I promised to do for you?’

For fifteen minutes Rupert stoically kept the conversation on the subject of Roderick Braithwaite and his request for an exorcism. The cleric admitted that he had never performed such a ritual and was far too old a dog to be taught new tricks, especially a trick which required the permission of his bishop. For a start that would have required contacting the bishop, something he had managed not to do for several years.

Eventually after many diversions, mostly down cul-de-sacs of logic, the Campions deduced that Cuthbertson-Twigg had dismissed Roderick’s request primarily on the basis that a teenage boy brought up without a father was bound to be highly sensitive if he perceived his mother was being threatened. His demand for an exorcism was surely no more than attention-seeking and a hysterical overreaction to whatever had upset his mother. As to what that might possibly be, the reverend gentleman had absolutely no idea.

‘So you were not willing to help Roderick?’ Perdita asked through gritted teeth.

‘Oh, yes, I helped him,’ said Cuthbertson-Twigg without hesitation. ‘I advised him to go and see Mr Chubb at the Mission, which is just up the road by the Zion Chapel. He’s only been in the village a few months and I suspect his congregation is very small. I thought Mr Chubb might be grateful for some business coming his way.’

Once they had escaped from the vicarage – Perdita breathing deeply while clenching and unclenching her fists – they turned back up Oaker Hill to retrace their steps to the Denby Gospel Mission which they had blithely passed on the way down.

‘What a perfectly awful man,’ Perdita fumed. ‘Stark raving bonkers, if you ask me.’

‘No wonder there are so many chapels in Denby if that’s the best the C of E can manage. Do we know anything about this Chubb chap?’

‘Roderick said something about him, didn’t he? Something like Preacher Chubb being the only one to take him seriously about the poltergeist?’

‘You’re right, and didn’t he also say that Chubb had told him the hauntings would end soon?’

‘Probably just to reassure the poor boy. It was more sympathy than he got from that crusty old vicar who really is a disgrace to the dog coll— Oh! Hello!’

Perdita’s train of thought was broken by three short blasts on a car horn directly behind them. A grey Jaguar whipped passed and continued up the hill without slowing, only a blurred arm seen waving through the windows indicating that the driver had toot-tooted in greeting rather than warning or anger.

‘That was Pop,’ said Rupert. ‘I wonder where he’s off to?’

His fingertips still damp from the soap and nailbrush provided at police headquarters for the removal of ink, Mr Campion had collected his car from the George Hotel and once again taken the Wakefield road out of Huddersfield. He had no intention of calling in at Denby Ash just yet, though he did note the presence of police vehicles on the Common around Ivy Neal’s caravan and when he spotted familiar figures of Rupert and Perdita, muffled against the weather, he thought them worth a friendly honk on the Jaguar’s horn.

He drove on through the village following the route he had taken the day before, but then he had been performing a rescue mission of sorts: rescuing Perdita by driving Hilda Browne away. Now it was perfectly possible that he would be the one in need of rescue.

Hilda Browne, no slouch when it came to twitching a curtain, opened her front door before Campion had a chance to knock. ‘Why Mr Campion, I thought I recognized that lovely car,’ she cooed.

‘Is it all right to park it there?’ Campion asked, knowing the answer.

‘Of course it is; it will be perfectly safe there.’

And all the neighbours will get a good look at it, thought Campion, just as they were probably scrutinizing him at this very moment.

‘I wasn’t expecting you, Mr Campion, was I? I must look a mess. What on earth must you think of me? Where are my manners? What can I do for you? Please do come in.’

Campion concluded that the woman had allowed her neighbours sufficient time to complete their observations, clearly anticipating with relish the erroneous conclusions they might draw.

‘Please forgive my dropping in without warning, but there was something you said yesterday when I drove you home …’

‘There was?’ Hilda Browne made a valiant attempt at an expression of girlish innocence, complete with fluttering eyelashes. A look, thought Campion, which had failed her at least twenty-five years earlier but for some reason she persisted in keeping it in her locker.

‘You mentioned that your brother had a collection of papers and maps relating to the local collieries. I wondered if I could see them – if it is not an imposition, that is.’

‘Bertram’s books? Well, his things are in a bit of a mess, just as he left them really.’

‘That may actually be a help,’ said Campion hopefully. ‘If you are sure I’m not interrupting anything or preventing you from the daily round or the common task?’

‘No, not at all, I was merely doing some sewing on my costume for the school play.’

‘Ah, yes,’ breathed Campion, displaying no enthusiasm to pursue that subject. ‘Well, if you’re sure …’

‘Upstairs,’ said the woman, ‘in the back bedroom. We have three bedrooms, you see, so Bertie used one as his study. Promise me you’ll excuse the mess in there. I simply haven’t had the time since the funeral …’

‘Please don’t worry about such things, and I would not ask if I did not think it important.’

‘Important?’

‘I think Bertram may have had a theory about the Denby Ash poltergeist.’

‘Pah!’ snorted Bertram’s sister. ‘I won’t have all that superstitious rubbish discussed in this house! Ghosts and poltergeists? Ridiculous. I refused to be interested and I told him not to get involved. It was messing about at Ada Braithwaite’s that got him killed that night.’

‘I am sure your brother was only trying to help – help young Roderick, who seems a sensible lad. I understand he hasn’t had an easy life.’

‘Who has?’ snapped Hilda.

Campion remained blank-faced and outwardly calm. ‘May I see Bertram’s study, please? I am only interested in things concerned with Denby Ash and I assure you I will not be snooping among any private or personal documents.’

‘You won’t find anything like that!’ she said haughtily. ‘Bertram did not have a private life.’

That you knew about, Campion said to himself as he followed the woman upstairs, noting that Hilda Browne had ankles almost as thick as her skin.

She showed him into a small room with a window which looked out over a small, neat back garden, a creosoted fence, another back garden and the identical window of the identical neighbouring house. It was not an inspiring view but that was exactly what one needed in a study and, judging from the books on the shelves there, Bertram Browne’s reading habits provided plenty of distractions.

It was an eclectic library split evenly between literature and local history. There were Shakespeare, Marlowe and Webster texts in numerous editions and novels by Tolstoy, Hardy, Dickens, Waugh, Amis, Powell, John Braine and Stan Barstow. The remainder were titles which meant little to Campion, although he recognized some of the places they referred to and could not resist flicking through a slim commemorative volume bound in green leather:
Denby Ash Brass Band 1838–1938, The First 100 Years.

The desk in front of the window was likely to be a more fruitful hunting ground. It was covered with papers, contour maps of the local area, schematics of mineshafts and diagrams illustrating how coal seams were undercut or collapsed using explosive charges. There was clearly a pattern to it all but it required an engineer’s mind to see it. Campion’s brain, he felt, would be more engaged by the nine Anthony Powell volumes on the shelf and his soul more nourished by the Tolstoy.

Two documents among the loose papers took his eye. One was an Ordnance Survey map of the Denby Ash area on which a circle and radiating lines, along with several question marks, had been drawn around the defunct Grange Ash colliery. The pencilled doodles could, of course, simply be doodles, but Campion thought it well worth getting a second opinion.

The second document was in careful schoolboy ‘best handwriting’ on four pages of lined paper torn from an exercise book. Campion settled himself on the edge of the desk and read what transpired to be a naïve but very moving short story about a boy who lived in a haunted house. The ghost in residence was that of his dead father and whilst not violent, its presence was disruptive and upsetting to his mother, who had loved his father very much. Saving up his pocket money, the boy buys a spell from a local witch, guaranteed to rid the house of its ghost. The spell is a single magic word, but after much heart-searching, the boy decides not to utter it when the ghost appears. He does not banish the ghost because he knows his mother is not yet ready to say goodbye to it.

Campion removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose with forefinger and thumb. He had no need to read the very last line, which gave the name of the young author.

‘It seems anyone can rent a garden shed and call it a chapel round here,’ Rupert observed.

‘It’s hardly a shed, darling,’ Perdita corrected, ‘probably a coach house. Literally, a house for a coach or rather a small buggy or trap, and it was built just as the motor car arrived. When it turned out it wasn’t suitable as a garage it was used for other purposes.’

‘Such as being a shed,’ her husband persisted.

‘Whatever it was, it’s now the Denby Gospel Mission.’

‘And it’s nothing to do with the Zion Reform Church?’

It was a question which had no doubt been asked many times, with good reason. The Campions had walked up the overgrown driveway to the Zion United Reform Church, taking the long view of a grey brick building built in unconvincing neo-Classical style with a stone portico guarding a brass-studded oak door and leaded windows which, even that far set back from the road, were begrimed with coal dust. Perhaps its stark lines had once impressed the faithful Zion Reformers as they dutifully trudged up the drive, but now everything about it said that few trudged there any longer.

In contrast, the smaller building to the left of the main building at least looked lived in, if not the obvious choice for a building to worship in – if only in groups of less than a dozen at a time.

There was a maroon-coloured Austin A40 parked carelessly outside the Mission, partly obscuring the open doorway.

‘At least somebody’s home,’ said Rupert before calling out, ‘Hello there! Good Morning!’

A figure appeared between the door and the rear of the car; a middle-aged man with thinning mousey hair and a darker Van Dyke beard putting a point on a pale and wan face which clearly did not belong to a sun-worshipper. Rupert was by now familiar with the bone white complexion of the miners of Denby Ash, though this one had clearly changed professions for the day. He wore a set of brown overalls and from the pockets protruded a pencil, a screwdriver, a folding wooden ruler and the triangular end of a set square. In one hand he held an old wooden box plane and, as he moved, sawdust and wood shavings drifted off him.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Rupert genially, ‘are we interrupting a bit of DIY?’

‘Our Lord was a carpenter,’ said the man, ‘and there can be no better example to follow in life, especially when you have to make-do-and-mend. What can I do for you good folk?’

‘It’s Mr Chubb, isn’t it? Our name is Campion – this is my wife Perdita. We’re both temporary teachers at Ash Grange School and we’d like to talk about one of our pupils who may have called on you recently.’

The sallow-faced man shook his head as if weighed down by a great sadness. ‘They that sit in the gate speak against me and I am the song of drunkards.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Mr Chubb is, I think, quoting from Psalms,’ said Perdita, ‘about the dangers of listening to village gossips.’

Robin Chubb gave her a thin smile, showing just enough teeth to suggest that a visit to the dentist was overdue.