The China Governess (10 page)

Julia's youthful eyes were faintly amused by his exasperation.

‘Poor girl, anyway,' she said gently. ‘Not an awfully suitable wife for a policeman.'

‘We all thought not.' Mr. Campion was trying to be non-commital and sounding like every disapproving family friend who had ever existed. ‘Charles was in love with her, though. Her death hit him like a bullet.'

There was silence for a moment and the girl shivered suddenly.

Mr. Campion was contrite and he began to chatter.

‘You'll like him,' he said. ‘He talks like a dynamo and does a
sort of hand-jive all the time by way of added emphasis, but he's tremendously sound. He's a great natural judge of quality in anything, too. That seems to be a gift all on its own.'

‘Oh I know,' she said quickly, grateful for the change of subject. ‘Timothy's Uncle Eustace is like that. He's a connoisseur of eighteenth-century pictures, books and silver, but he also seems to know by instinct, or so Timothy says, about modern stuff which isn't really in his province at all and which one might expect he'd rather hate. Do you know him?'

‘Not very well. We've met.'

‘Have you been to the Well House where they all live?' There was colour in her voice when she spoke about Timothy Kinnit, even remotely. ‘It's in Scribbenfields, just not quite in the City. I suppose it was one of the first of the London suburbs and it's frightfully ancient. You'd never expect to find a lovely old dwelling like that in the midst of all those warehouses. I believe there was a medicinal well there once and the head is bricked over in one of the cellars.'

Mr. Campion appeared suitably impressed and she warmed to him. He was very easy to talk to with those long clown lines in his pale face, a natural goon, born rather too early she suspected.

‘It was very good of you to agree to help me,' she said abruptly.

‘My dear girl, let's only hope I can!' he interpolated hastily. ‘Scribbenfields? Yes indeed. The whole place was a noted spa at one time. Jacobean citizens used to ride out the two or three miles from Whitehall to drink the waters and I fancy people still have a vague idea that it's a healthy district. I had a demented client once, I remember, who actually paid a deposit on a small Epsom Salts mine situated, as he believed, under a disused tram terminus in Sheepen Road. An error, it emerged, which was how I came into it! Tell me. When you say “they all live there” whom do you mean? Alison Kinnit, her brother Eustace, young Timothy and sometimes Basil Toberman? Is there a resident staff?'

‘No. Not as a rule. Several people come in daily but just at the moment Nanny Broome has had to be sent for from the country to cope. There's a niece of the Kinnits and a help, all staying. They're from South Africa and tremendously wealthy. A child is ill in
hospital and they've come to London to see doctors. You remember Mrs. Broome, do you?'

‘The woman who wept? Shall I ever forget her?' Mr. Campion fervently. ‘It was the first time I ever saw the Picasso painting actually appearing in the very flesh before my bulging eyes. My goodness she was furious with Toberman!'

‘Nearly as angry as I was! A beastly, beastly man!'

The loathing in the young voice was savage and Charles Luke, coming up behind her at that moment, caught the full flavour of it.

‘Not me, I hope?' he said laughing, as Campion performed the introductions. ‘Some other poor fellow.'

Julia regarded him with quick interest. She had expected the size and the heartiness and a certain masculine splendour, but Luke's own peculiar personality, which was catlike, was a surprise to her. He was a proud, lonely animal for all his force and liveliness.

A waiter brought his aperitif, which was a small scotch and soda, and as he sipped it gratefully he sighed.

‘Civilized,' he said to Mr. Campion. ‘Humanizing.' He described a floating motion with his long hands. ‘Cigars and summer days and women in big hats with swansdown face-powder, that's what it reminds me of.' He was entirely unselfconscious and his dark face glowed with energy and pleasure at the picture. It was suddenly understandable how a man with such an unlikely job should take it into his head to marry into the Scroop-Dorys, or indeed any other family on earth if the fever took him.

‘I like this pub of yours. I'd like to live here for a couple of weeks every other year.' Although he was grinning he was not entirely joking and his narrow black eyes, which had brows like circumflex accents, were serious as he glanced across at Julia. Something about her had made him gloomy, she was surprised to see.

‘And how is the teenage world?' he inquired abruptly, revealing his train of thought. ‘All dreams and dance dresses I hope. That's how it ought to be. Something with a future if it's only disillusion. Mine is more homely country and that's in the American sense.' He glanced at Campion. ‘Some of the young thugs we're getting in
nowadays are dreaming up weapons which would have been thought offside by the Saints and Martyrs!' he remarked and returned to Julia. ‘This beastly man you were talking about when I came in? Is this the stern father who won't let you marry the boy friend?'

‘Of course not.' She seemed shocked and he smiled at her, amused. ‘How much did Mr. Campion tell you on the telephone?' she inquired.

‘Almost all, a brilliant
précis
,' murmured Campion modestly. ‘What I omitted was the part played by Basil Toberman in resurrecting the tale at this particular time.'

‘Do you know he did it deliberately to harm Timothy? He
said
he had.' Julia spoke as though she expected Luke to find the statement incredible and he sat listening to her, his head a little on one side. ‘I actually heard him say it to Mr. Campion.'

‘How extraordinary!' His lips curled despite himself. ‘I'm glad he's the “beastly” bloke, though. I'm sensitive about daughters who don't revere their Dads. My own young woman isn't exactly respectful but she's only eighteen months old.' He was losing his suspicion of Julia, Mr. Campion noted with relief, and his eyes were friendly as they rested on her serious face. ‘Well, now,' he said. ‘What do you want to know about young Mr. Kinnit's birth? Where his family came from or what has happened to it now?'

‘Oh, we know he came from Turk Street, Ebbfield, but the place just isn't there any more. It was bombed to the ground.'

‘Turk Street?' Luke glanced at Campion. ‘You didn't tell me that.'

‘No.' The man in the spectacles was apologetic. ‘The information came from what one might perhaps call “other than concrete sources”. You haven't met Mrs. Broome the nurse, Charles. She's a delightful woman but as a witness she's a treat of a very special kind. The buses which brought the evacuees from London were thought to have come from the Turk Street area but there's no proof that the boy came from there. Turk Street had a colourful reputation at one time and I thought we'd break all this to you when we saw you.'

Julia glanced from one man to the other.

‘I didn't know there was anything awful about Turk Street,' she said quickly. ‘Mrs. Broom didn't either. She just remembered the curious name. How awful was it? Vice or crime or what?'

Luke continued to watch her; he was not unreservedly on her side yet.

‘It was low class,' he said using the old-fashioned phrase to see if it irritated her. ‘Why do you want to know about the young man's family?'

‘I don't. Personally, I don't care if they were T.B. infested orang-outangs. Timothy is Timothy to me and nothing and nobody else. It's Tim who seems to have become completely insane on the subject. Father wants to know about the family but Timothy is
mad
to know.'

Luke grunted. ‘Why aren't you leaving it to them? You can't hope to suppress anything and if it's there they'll find it as soon as you do.'

She met his thrusting stare steadily. ‘I know that, but I want to be prepared and I want to be in it.'

The superintendent seemed satisfied for he nodded.

‘Fair enough. He's cooled a little, has he? It happens,' he added apologetically, for the colour had come into her face and a new shininess to her eyes. ‘He was all set to elope, poor lad, and got shunted on to a new track suddenly.'

‘I know.' Her voice broke, yet she had not looked away. ‘But so was I, and
I
wasn't.'

Mr. Campion, who was sitting opposite Luke and following the conversation with some misgiving, was unprepared for his reaction. A spasm of pure pain flickered over his face before he smiled faintly.

‘Touché,' he said. ‘Well, in that case we'll have to do something about it.' He gave her a wide, disarming grin. ‘And it wouldn't hurt us to get a move on instead of asking damn silly questions, would it?'

It was an unusually definite promise from anyone as punctilious as the superintendent, so Mr. Campion led the talk into other channels and the meal ended happily. He was not astonished to receive a telephone call from Luke three or four days later.

‘That twenty-year-old inquiry in the Turk Street area,' the superintendent began, the microphone blurring and vibrating under the strain of his voice. ‘I haven't discovered very much, but, as I thought, I recollected something fairly recent which might tie up and at last I've had a moment to study the file. You don't read the
Ebbfield Observer,
I suppose?'

‘Supposition sustained, chum.'

‘All right. Don't let it worry you. There was a paragraph in it a few issues ago which might have interested you and, since it appeared in print, I don't feel I'm divulging any departmental secrets by calling it to your notice. The headline reads “Model Dwelling Outrage. Lodger Identified. Man Understood to Have Left Country”. Got that?'

‘Yes.' Mr. Campion sounded mystified. ‘Model Dwelling refers to that Utility Pile down there, does it?'

‘Yes. The idea is to build five more in the same enclosure – they put them on legs like that in the hope they'll make room for each other. About five weeks ago there was trouble there on the top floor. An old couple had their home broken into one night while they were down at the local with their lodger. The place was wrecked in a very big way. When they came in the lodger took one look at the mess and fled after notifying the police by telephone, and the poor old lady had a stroke and died, thereby complicating the issue considerably from our point of view.'

‘Oh!' Mr. Campion was interested. ‘The “indirect responsibility” question?'

‘Is that what it's called?' Luke was not enthusiastic. ‘All I know is that the legal bosses have suddenly got excited about any case where the original wicked action produces some extraneous consequence besides the one intended. In this business there was talk of a charge of murder or manslaughter. To me it just means more homework. However, there was considerable pressure put on our D.D.I. He is a Scot called Munday – and he had a local demon on his shoulder as well, in the shape of a Councillor who has to raise the cash to complete the building scheme. This lad wanted everything made sweet just a little quicker than soon. Munday worked
like a fiend and finally discovered that the missing lodger was one of the Stalkeys.'

‘Really!' Mr. Campion was gratifyingly astonished. ‘The detective agency? Is that terrible old gentleman J. B. Stalkey still alive?'

‘Talky the Stalker or Stalky the Talker!' Luke's grunt was amused. ‘No. He's gone. The angels got him at last – still pontificating no doubt. Joe, the middle son, reigns in his stead and the other two, Ron and Reg, do the footslogging. Reg was the mysterious lodger. He seems to have taken one look at the damage and scarpered. It must have shaken him, because he went right out of the country. He's looking up family connections in Ontario now, according to Joe.'

‘What was he doing in Ebbfield?'

‘Munday would like to know. He'll be waiting for him at the airport to ask him when he comes home. All we know is that he went round from pub to pub raising the subject of Turk Street in the old days and appeared particularly interested in any family who was evacuated from there to the country in the war. When I saw that in the report I wondered if he was on the same track as yourself.'

‘It has a likely smell. What does brother Joe say?'

‘Nothing. Joe isn't talking. He's the same old sea-lawyer his father was and he knows his rights. We've got no power over him. He's an ordinary citizen. English tecs aren't licensed, as you know. He says he doesn't know what Reg was doing. He's protecting his client, of course.' He paused. ‘There's only one other point which might be of interest and that is, that as soon as the Councillor gathered that the crime might have been committed in protest against an inquiry made by a private investigator he shut down on the whole thing like a piano lid and didn't want to hear any more about it. That was after he'd been badgering Munday on the telephone every half hour.'

‘Odd.' Mr. Campion said slowly. ‘Has the D.D.I. any theory to explain it?'

‘No. But the Councillor has a home and a wife. He may just not want a visit from the same gang of thugs. But if that's it, I'm
surprised. He didn't strike me as that sort of bloke. He was more the fanatical sort. The I'll-do-you-good-if-it-kills-us-both type of social worker.' He laughed. ‘Well there it is,' he said. ‘All I can do at the moment, I'm afraid. I liked the girl. They've got great charm when they're honest, haven't they?'

If he was talking of womankind in general or a type in particular did not appear. He rang off and after a while Mr. Campion took his hat and went down to the East Central District, where in a dusty cul-de-sac there was an unobtrusive door whose small plate announced modestly: ‘J. B. Stalkey and Sons, Inquiry Agents. Established 1902.'

He found Joe Stalkey sitting in his father's old chair in an office which had remained carefully unchanged since the founder of the firm had first conceived the idea of a private detective agency having the standing of a firm of family solicitors.