The Beckoning Lady (16 page)

The thin man stared at him in amazement. “That's absurd,” he said. “Not true. Minnie's made a mistake.”

“She hasn't, y'know.” Tonker shot him a bleak glance. “That's the devil of it. Minnie's mistake seems to have been in trying to remedy my glüb error by stepping up production. That appears to be fatal. Once you do that the problem behaves like wages chasing prices, round and round and up and up until the bell rings and we all fall down. That's the trouble. Minnie having had the wind-up and made a superhuman effort has now reached the stage where she can't humanly hope to earn any more in a single year than she does now, and as time goes on she's pretty certain to earn less. They see this, I suppose, and since they only want to keep their books straight—I mean, they're not bluing the cash happily in private somewhere in a way one could almost forgive—they've pointed out to her that if she was single she could call a halt to the dash up the spout. That's the frightful thing, old boy; she's not got it wrong. She trotted up to London and took Counsel's opinion.”

“Minnie did?” Mr. Campion was amazed.

“Fact.” Tonker's eyes opened to their widest. “Without telling me. It shook me. She's never done such a thing in her life before. She's half American, of course. Those gals take action. They don't sit down and wait for it. I didn't hear a thing about it until she'd got it all thrashed out. One night she put it to me. I was taken by surprise. That's why I reacted as I did, I suppose. Must excuse myself somehow.”

“No Counsel advised divorce,” declared Mr. Campion with conviction.

“The lad didn't
advise
it.” Tonker was unnaturally gentle. “He simply explained the position. If Minnie sacked me she could get out of the spiral which I and my
glüb got us in to. And,” he added with growing wrath, “it's got to be a real split. No cheating by divorcing and living in sin afterwards. These Inland Revenue chaps have discretion, someone told me, to assess a man and woman living in sin as if they
are
married, so I don't suppose I'd be allowed to see the old gal at all. Might take her out to tea, perhaps, if we had a bloke with O.H.M.S. on his hat sitting with us.” His anger boiled up and he bounced in his chair. “I've never liked officials,” he announced, “and now by God I know why.”

“Oh Tonker, how could you!” Dame Sybil Thorndike could hardly have delivered the line with greater intensity. Minnie had appeared on the balcony like Minerva in a prologue. “You promised never to mention it again. You gave your word, you brute. No American husband . . .”

“I am not a brute,” hissed Tonker with smothered savagery, “and don't talk to me about America. There a wife is an income-tax asset. A fellow can count half his income as hers, not all hers as his. That's something else they're more sane about than we are. I don't want to hear any more about America. I hate America and all Americans.”

“Tonker!” Minnie was sidetracked and reproachful. “What about Paul? What about Ken, and Milton, and Isabelle? And Laura, and Mackie, and Ruth and Ned, and Lavinia? And Robbie and Howard and Mollie? And . . .”

“They're all right.” Tonker sounded ashamed of himself.

“Well then.” Minnie seemed in danger of falling over the balcony. “What about Tillie, and Mary, and John? And . . .?”

“And Wendell,” put in Tonker, who had become interested in the recital. “And Ollie, and Irving.”

“Irving?” Minnie had become dubious. “
Irving?
”

“I like Irving,” said Tonker with dignity. “Irving is a phenomenon. Irving hasn't merely got hollow legs. The
ground beneath Irving . . .” He broke off abruptly and glanced round at Rupert. “Oh, got the bladders out, have you? That's good. Put 'em in a row. Don't stick your fingers through them, you little chump. That's it. It's not such a bad toy, is it?”

Rupert looked up at him in worship. “It's a zinger,” he murmured, trying out the new word cautiously. “I love it.”

Tonker was surprised into a flush of pleasure. “There you are, Minnie,” he said, “he likes it.”

Her smile came out like sunshine. “So do I, Tonker,” she said. “Honestly, so do I.”

For the rest of the visit they talked of nothing but the party, and when Tonker helped his guests into the station-wagon he had got back to the body-snatchers. “Burt was one of Sheikh Ben-Sabah's influential young friends, Campion,” he remarked. “Did you know that?”

A white light of comprehension, as vivid as a star-shell, hit the thin man squarely between the eyes and arrested him halfway into the driving seat as he saw the probable answer to the question which had brought him down to Pontisbright on the pretence of holiday-making, and had made him so chary of becoming unnecessarily involved in any other enquiry. He could hardly trust himself to speak.

“Was
he
in that racket?”

“Of course he was. It was the foundation of his fortune.” Tonker's voice was contemptuous in the darkness. “I was one of the few who spotted him. However, he's coming to our party. That should be good. See you tomorrow. Dog in? Good. God bless.”

“Good-night, my dears.” Minnie slid her arm through her husband's and they stood together, waving after the departing car.

Amanda laughed softly as the wagon crept up the lane where moonlight dripped from the hanging grasses and the air was breathless with the scent of blossom. “They adore one another, don't they?” she said. “Life is one long friendly fight. A permanent exhibition bout. They look a bit like the lion and the unicorn. I say, Minnie must
either have a most peculiar tax-gatherer, or she's got the whole thing upside down. She's just wrong, I suppose?”

“I sincerely hope so, or the country's going to the dogs.” Mr. Campion spoke fervently.

“Tonker's rather odd, don't you think?”

“You noticed that, did you? I wondered. He's unnaturally subdued. Shaken, I fancy. No wonder. It's an alarming story. Poor old Tonker and his frightful present.”

Amanda was not satisfied. “I think it's something else,” she said. “Something he's ashamed of. Something recent.”

“It could be.” Campion spoke lightly. “Tonker does do things. He's an uncertain animal. I don't quite see why he came dashing home, do you? Why did he go to the boat house and not walk in on the family?”

“Uncle Tonker came home to telephone some clowns,” said Rupert unexpectedly. “He told me so when he asked me if he could have the room, when he came out from under the bed.”

“Goodness,” Amanda's arms tightened about him. “I thought you were asleep.”

“So I am.” Rupert was ecstatically happy. “Wouldn't it be wonderful if Uncle Tonker
was
a clown? He is a zinger. I like him.”

“I do too,” said Mr. Campion. “A prince among fat-heads. And if he did commit the glübalübalum his punishment seems to be on the heavy side.”

He set them down at the door of the dark house, helped Choc to follow them, and drove on to the garage. As he walked back a vast black shape disengaged itself from the shadows of an arbour and the unmistakable odour of malt was mingled with the dizzy scent of stocks and tobacco flowers.

“Wot yer.” Mr. Lugg's voice was little more than a growl. “I've worn meself out for yer. Pore Charles 'as just come in. I didn't speak to 'im. 'E's preoccupied. We can count 'im out. I picked up something, though. My friends aren't spilling everythink they know, but they let somethink drop. They know 'oo the corp is.”

“Really?”

“Yus. It ain't discovered yet though it won't 'arf be in the mornin'. The corp, cock, is an official of the ole Inland Rev. In other words, chum, 'e's the Income Tax man.”

Mr. Campion stood transfixed, the hairs tingling in his scalp. He knew now what it was that had worried him about the portrait in Minnie's studio and why he had recognised it. The face had been the dead face in the ditch, and the crumpled paper behind its head had been forms, hundreds and hundreds of screwed-up buff forms.

“Hell!” said the mildest of men.

THE COUNTRY ROUND
the Mill at Pontisbright at five o'clock on a June morning was of itself a spell. The near distance was dizzy with haze, the dew beads were thick on the grass, the waters were limpid and ringing, the birds sang with idiotic abandon, the air was scented with animals and a thousand flowers.

For Charlie Luke, the Londoner, who was wrestling with a whole assault of force of unfamiliar furies most cruelly released within him, it was a merciless fairyland.

By five he had swum in the pool, been for a walk, examined his car, looked at the telephone, set his watch wrong by the grandfather clock, and made himself a daisy-chain. By six he had repeated the entire performance, save for the chain, which he had had to bury in case anyone found it, and by seven he was hungry, exhausted and resolute.

He was just going in to start getting breakfast himself, if Lugg did not appear, when he found a small bird's nest made of green moss and grey lichen. Its fragile valiance astounded him and immediately a wave of terrifying softness passed over him and frightened him out of his wits. Within five seconds he was standing looking at the telephone again. As he looked it began to ring.

Instantly, now that the living companionship which he had both craved and dreaded was, to put it mildly, superfluous, Lugg and Rupert appeared on the stairs and Choc, apparently assuming that the sound constituted breaking and entering, rushed at the instrument barking like a house dog. By the time Luke could hear anything at all over the wire, he was in such a pitiable state of nervous irritation
that it took him some seconds to grasp that the call was from London to himself, and that the C.I.D. Commander was speaking, presumably from his home. He sounded bright, fatherly and explicit.

“. . . so since you are on the spot you can take over immediately,” he was saying. “Here is the outline.”

Luke's training did not let him down, but although the essential notes appeared under his hand on the telephone-pad, someone new within himself stared at them with dismayed surprise.

“. . . photographs. P.M. this a.m. Identification established. Friend of deceased subsequently interviewed.”

“Charles . . .?”

“Yes sir.”

“You see what has happened. The victim was a minor official of the Inland Revenue local collector's office. That fact must narrow the field considerably. It's unlikely that you'll run into much mystery, but, since all these little rural places are much alike, I imagine the Chief Constable is appealing to us so as not to embarrass either himself or his own men rather than from any other reason. Do you see what I mean?”

“Not exactly, sir.” Luke's voice was wooden but he had gone white round the eyesockets.

“You will, Chief, you will.” There was amusement in the voice of authority. “You're staying with Campion, aren't you?”

“Yes sir.”

“That accounts for it. He seems to have told Pursuivant that you were there and the old gentleman has jumped at the hint. That must mean that they want somebody who has absolutely no personal interest in the place, someone with no local friends, a whipping-boy, in fact, who can shoulder any odium which may be accruing. Now do you see?”

“Yes sir.”

“You sound very quiet. Are you all right? Good, I think you may find that the whole thing is an open-and-shut
case, but if I don't hear from you by four this afternoon I'll send you an assistant.”

Luke's brain began to work with a jolt like a truck starting up.

“Meantime, might I have Mr. Campion as an immediate associate, sir?”

“Campion? I don't see how I could justify that.”

“He speaks the language, sir.”

There was a laugh far away in London. “Oh, it's like that, is it? I've heard it's very primitive and near the soil.”

“There's something disconcerting about the place, sir.” Luke spoke with a dry mouth. “Will you have a word with Mr. Campion now, sir? I should appreciate it very much.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and swung round on Rupert. “Cut up and tell your father that the house is on fire,” he commanded through his teeth.

“Is it?” enquired Rupert with delighted interest.

“It will be,” muttered Luke with suppressed ferocity, “if he's not down here in ten seconds from now.”

Twenty minutes later, while Charlie Luke was listening to Superintendent Fred South, to whom a previous call to Sir Leo had directed him, the rest of the family was at breakfast.

“If you're going to stay with Charles, Rupert and I will take Lugg, if you can spare him, and go down to The Beckoning Lady at once, don't you think?” said Amanda. Her brown face was troubled and her eyes watchful. “There's still a great deal to do, and people are inclined to stay away from that sort of trouble. They can't possibly put the party off, you see, and at the best of times it's a rather fantastic operation. Minnie seems to do it with one old woman and a pack of kids.”

Mr. Campion hesitated. “You think that now is the time to rally, do you?” he murmured. “Perhaps so. What about those chums of yours, Lugg? Do they really know anything?”

Mr. Lugg, who was standing by the window drinking a cup of coffee, thus epitomising his chosen position as servitor and friend, scratched his bald head thoughtfully.

“Old Harry knoo more than 'e let on,” he said. “'E's a funny sort of bloke. Likes a secret, that's about the size of it. I reckon 'e knoo the stiff was there for some days, and quite likely 'e's 'ad a look at it, mucking up all the clues. 'E don't know 'ow it got there, that I'll take me affydavey.”

“Why wouldn't he report it?” enquired Mr. Campion.

“'Oo can say?” Lugg shrugged his vast shoulders with urbane sophistication. “Didn't want to be mixed up in nothing so unrefined, per'aps.”