Death of a Ghost (27 page)

‘Me mother,' said Mr Pudney at last, ‘will find you somethin' to eat in the pentry. You may sit in the Commercial Lounge.'

He led the way to a chamber of horrors on the right of the bar. This room smelt faintly of beer and strongly of oilcloth. The decorative scheme was, properly enough, in keeping with the atmosphere and achieved its devastating effect by lace curtains and vast enlarged photographs of past phases of the Pudney
ménage
, helped out here and there with cheap mahogany and coloured glass ornaments.

Mr Campion felt that the ‘White Lion', commercialism, and Mr Pudney were not good mixers. He attacked the problem on hand, therefore, without loss of time.

‘Many visitors this way?' he enquired artlessly, attacking the limp bacon and anaemic egg which Mr Pudney's mother had found in the pantry.

‘Not motorists,' said the landlord with disdain. ‘We're not very keen on motorists litterin' up our beautiful countryside. Trippers lower any place.'

In self-defence Mr Campion ventured the information that he was going to Ipswich to see his father.

‘He's in the church,' he added as a grace note to the fable.

‘Reely?' Mr Pudney showed surprising respect. ‘I thought you was a commercial. You'll pardon me, sir, but we get so many persons round here takin' orders for this and that and demoralizing the cottage people.'

Mr Campion graciously accepted the apology and Mr Pudney became chatty.

‘We have the cycle club 'ere in the summer,' he said modestly. ‘Me mother does quite a lot of caterin' then. Toppin' chaps they are; nothin' tripperish about them. Very tidy fellows. Never leave so much as a bottle about.'

‘Good,' said Mr Campion absently.

‘We had a party of hikers once,' continued Mr Pudney. ‘Very intellectual persons all of them – and there's the hunt, of course, in winter. That's very nice, but we don't tolerate common trippers from London. The village boys set the dogs on them.'

It was borne in on Mr Campion that Heronhoe was eminently unsuitable as a site for a week-end cottage for Rosa-Rosa.

‘Really? Have they ever actually set the dogs on anyone?' he enquired.

Mr Pudney eyed him sharply.

‘There was very unregular behaviour in Spendpenny last Saturday night, I 'ear,' he said at last. ‘Quite a fracas.'

‘Oh? Is Spendpenny a house?'

‘Oh, dear me, no.' Mr Pudney's contempt was magnificent. ‘It's a dirty little old place, a labourer's dwelling. Some people came down and behaved shockin'ly – very common persons. The caretakers in the next cottage couldn't do anything with them, so they got some villagers down there on Saturday and when the persons came there was quite a fight.'

‘Where is this dreadful place?' enquired Mr Campion with ghoulish interest.

‘Down Pope's Lane. That little path on the left just through the village. It's never had a nice name. An artist had it once.'

Campion raised his eyebrows.

‘Very lowerin' to the locality,' said Mr Pudney, adding darkly, ‘Artists mean models.'

‘Quite,' said Mr Campion sagely, and paying his exorbitant bill he went away in his car to turn down Pope's Lane.

The cottage Spendpenny, named after some improvident past owner, lay a good half mile down a deep lane whose banks were heightened by great walls of elder and ash. It was a postcard cottage with a roof like the back of a camel, and boarded walls which had once been tarred but were now mellowed by thirty years' weather to the comfortable greenness of the country verger's frock-coat.

As far as Mr Campion could see as he drew up in the lane there were no other houses round about. Spendpenny lay under a fold in a green meadow. The wild patch of garden before the door was still brown with the dead spears of last year's weeds, but the perennial polyanthi and an occasional tulip showed among the ruin.

He had no doubt that this was the cottage he sought. The small wooden gate to the lane was smashed, the newly splintered wood showing yellow against the grey-green of its surface. Moreover, the place itself had an air of desertion, while there were yet ragged curtains at the small square windows and the grass-grown path was trampled flat.

The loneliness of the countryside descended upon him as he stepped over the ruin of the gate, for, like many travellers used to much wilder country, he could recognize the peculiar emptiness of the green meadows and the tiny hidden lanes; an emptiness different from the cold freshness of virgin soil since it is the emptiness of desertion, of the unfurnished room or the forsaken camp.

He stood for a moment looking at the cottage and then stepped forward, his lank figure casting a very small shadow in the bright cold sunlight.

When he was half-way down the path he stopped abruptly. The cottage door had opened with a clatter. For an instant the figure within was indistinct in the shadow. Then it moved out on to the cobbled step.

‘My dear fellow,' said Max Fustian, ‘but how delightful!'

The immediate thought which came into Mr Campion's mind was typical of him. It occurred to him that the emotion of pure surprise was rare, and that when it did come it cleared the consciousness of everything else. But this was obviously no time for introspection. Max was coming to meet him.

Max in tweeds, with his hands dirty and shreds of cobweb in his hair, was in many ways a more fantastic figure than Max in his black hat and fancy waistcoat. The crofters' cottages produce many opulent, not to say exotic, weaves, and Max in heather pink and green plus-fours looked as though he were in fancy dress.

‘How nice of you to drop in,' he said. ‘Come inside. The house is obscenely dirty and I'm afraid there's nothing to drink, but at least there's a chair.'

It occurred to Mr Campion that he ought to say something.

‘Are you the landlord?' he enquired, somewhat baldly, since they were the first words he had spoken.

‘Of such as it is, yes, said Max lightly as he led the way into the main room of the dwelling, a low, brick-floored apartment sparsely furnished and incredibly dusty. Much of the furniture was broken and there were quantities of beer bottles about.

‘I'm looking for a cottage,' said Campion without hope or even particular intention of sounding convincing. ‘They told me in the village that this was empty, so I came along.'

‘Naturally,' said Max happily. ‘Do sit down.'

He was evidently tremendously pleased with himself, and his visitor had the impression that his own unexpected arrival was not of the least consequence to him. Campion experienced a sense of futility. He looked at the man and wondered what on earth he could possibly be thinking.

Anyone less like the popular conception of the murderer some weeks after the crime it was difficult to imagine, yet he experienced the uncomfortable conviction that if he should suddenly say:

‘Look here, Fustian, you killed Dacre and Mrs Potter, didn't you?' Max would smile and reply airily: ‘Yes, I know I did. My dear fellow, what can you do about it? Think about something else.'

It was an impossible situation.

Max had produced a case of yellow Cyprian cigarettes, and when Campion begged leave to stick to Virginian he shrugged his regret and lit one himself.

‘I don't know if this place would suit you, my dear boy,' he said. ‘It's very remote and quite devastatingly insanitary. But come and look over it. Look in every hole and cranny.'

Campion raised his eyes without turning his head and for a dizzy moment he thought Max had given himself away, but the flickering smile had vanished from the wide mouth and Max was his elated self again.

‘I keep this place to lend to artists,' he said. ‘It's so fantastically lonely the beggars simply have to work. There's a wash-house out at the back that I converted into a studio. Come along. There's just this one room down here and a scullery. What a hovel, Campion, what a hovel!'

He led the way to a cupboard staircase and clambered up the awkward way to the two small rooms above, Campion following.

Here the disorder was incredible and Max shuddered.

‘I've had uninvited visitors,' he explained. ‘I lent this place to Dacre years ago and that monstrous little slut of his, Rosa-Rosa Rosini, seemed to imagine it belonged to him. Anyway, I heard from the Ravens, the good peasants who keep an eye on the house for me, that someone had been here, and I came down to find out that “Mrs Dacre had come to take possession.” She seems to have brought half the rabble of Clerkenwell with her. However, you can see the rooms.'

He turned and they went down again. Crossing through the minute scullery they went out into the weed-grown yard and entered the studio.

The fine old wash-house had been very simply converted. The warm rose-brick floor, coppers, and big open fireplace had been left, and the big north light let into the tiles and a wooden platform at one end of the place were the only alterations as far as Campion could see.

There were two great presses, part of Victorian giant wardrobes, on either side of the fireplace and the doors of these hung open, revealing them to be empty.

‘Charming, isn't it?'

The elaborate drawl at his side drew Campion's attention from the tragic cupboards.

‘Very nice,' agreed Campion.

‘Not cold,' said Max unexpectedly. ‘Not a bit cold. Look at the fireplace.'

Mr Campion's eyes followed the sweep of the graceful hand and rested upon the ruin of his hopes.

The immense fireplace was of the early cavern variety, consisting of a square hole cut at the base of the chimney and furnished with a huge iron basket for the fire itself.

The whole square was a mass of fluttering grey and black paper ashes, still warm, it would seem from the faint heat exuded by the chimney.

‘Destroying something?' enquired Campion.

Max met his eyes. He was frankly happy.

‘Everything,' he said. And then, dropping his voice so that he spoke in a stage whisper, half serious, half bantering, ‘All my sins, my friend. All my sins.

‘When would you like to take possession of the place?' he went on more normally. ‘Five shillings a week. You pay the Ravens. You can't grumble at that, my dear boy. If you take up painting I'll lend it to you. Come along and give me a lift to the Ravens' cottage down the lane. I left my car there and came over by the fields.'

Mr Campion went meekly.

On the London Road Max's new sports car shot away from the old Bentley at something over eighty, for Mr Campion drove soberly, almost cautiously. As he sat he thought.

The last straw of evidence which might possibly have led to Fustian's arrest had been destroyed, possibly less than an hour before he himself had arrived. Moreover, he had undertaken to rent a white elephant. The honours of the day lay with Max.

That evening, however, he received a note from Fustian making what seemed to Campion an astoundingly naïve suggestion. He said he had been thinking it would be nice if they should drink a cocktail together some time.

–

‘I'
VE
told Belle, Mr Campion, I've told Belle over and over again that she must compose her higher consciousness, bring herself in tune with the Cosmic Universe, and then her aura will return to its natural blue and rose and everything will be quite all right.'

Donna Beatrice delivered herself of this somewhat remarkable confession of imbecility and sat back in the high brocade chair before Belle's bedroom window and smiled up into the strong sunlight as if she placed herself on an equal footing with it as a human comforter.

Belle sat up in her small Dutch bed, a shawl round her shoulders and a crisp muslin bonnet on her head. The coverlet was strewn with letters.

Campion, who sat in the doctor's chair, shook his head at her flaming cheeks and over-bright eyes.

‘You get some sleep,' he said. ‘Clear the room of all visitors and refuse to see anyone. Wash your hands of the whole business. Forget it.'

Belle glowered at him like a fat rebellious baby.

‘Not you too, Albert!' she said. ‘I did think I'd get a little intelligence from you. Old Doctor Pye has been here talking just like that – silly prim little man! We always call him “
mince
” Pye, and I nearly told him so this morning, only I thought he probably wouldn't have enough French to see the joke, even if his humour rose to the occasion. I don't want to stay in bed. What's a temperature? We never bothered about them when I was a girl. I want to go down to that gallery ‘I' and fetch those pictures. I won't be treated like a doddering, drooling old half-wit by a posturing little ninny who ought to be spanked.'

‘I can't stay in the room with such an aura,' said Donna Beatrice faintly. ‘It stifles me.'

She made a dignified exit, sighing heavily just before she closed the door behind her.

‘Thank God for that!' said Mrs Lafcadio truculently. ‘The woman's a fool.'

‘Why don't you get rid of her?' enquired Campion not unreasonably.

‘For good?'

‘Yes. Send her right away. It must be very trying to live with a lady of – er – her convictions.'

‘Oh no, I couldn't do that.' For a moment it was the old Belle who peered out from beneath the organdie. ‘She's old, poor darling. This is her life. Johnnie gave her a false conception of herself and she's been living up to it rather misguidedly ever since. When he died he said, “Belle, darling, look after that damn fool Beatrice for me. She was so lovely once.” No, I mustn't send her away, but I'm glad she's gone out of the room. Now, Albert, you tell them that I'm quite all right and bring your car and we'll go down to Bond Street and take those canvases away. Johnnie wouldn't have hesitated.'

‘No, Belle, you can't do that.'

Mr Campion was embarrassed.