The Tiger In the Smoke (6 page)

‘It's so like the boy as I remember him. All that hairy martial rubbish on his face, dear silly fellow.' The Canon was holding the page very close to his eyes, trying to find on its shiny surface lines which had never been there. ‘There's the name too, you see, the name underneath.'

‘Yes, well, that's all part of the act.' She was genuinely worried and her sewing lay quiet in her lap. ‘I was going to tell you just when Meg came in. I telephoned the paper and Sean was in conference but I got hold of Pip, who was fascinated, of course. When he had finished explaining that one can't libel a dead man he put me on to the photographer and I talked to him.'

‘Oh, he was standing there, was he?' The Canon was enormously interested.

‘No, he was in his own office. You see, the paper buys these news snapshots from a photograph agency. The photographer simply saw Bertie and May Oldsworth on the course and went over to snap them. There were one or two other people standing near who were also in the picture, and as he did not recognize them he asked them their names, as he always does. He remembered Elginbrodde because he asked to have it spelt.'

‘The man gave his name as Martin Elginbrodde?' The old man continued to peer at the small figure on the extreme edge of a group of racegoers, tucked down in one corner of a very full page. ‘“The Hon. Bertie Oldsworth”,' he read aloud, ‘“who hunts with the Westmeath, in the paddock with his wife, who is a daughter of Lady Larradine. Also in the picture are Mr and Mrs Peter Hill and Major Martin Elginbrodde.” Upon my soul, Amanda, I can't believe this man would have given Martin's name to the Press.'

‘But of course he would if he was impersonating him, Uncle. He must have been following the photographer around, waiting for a chance to slip into a picture.'

‘Why should he be so cruel? What did he hope to gain?'

Amanda had no solution to offer and did not attempt to invent one. In her experience, no one could beat Uncle Hubert on his own ground when it came to conjecture. Instead, she stuck to practical matters. The ability of the soberest folk to believe all they read in print was well known to her, and her worry was a real one.

‘People we know have been ringing up ever since, asking if Meg has seen it,' she said slowly. ‘There'll be a lot more this evening. People always read the
Tatler
at tea on Wednesdays. And of course they're going to go on telephoning from now till next year as the late ones spot it in the dentist's waiting-room or the hairdresser's. Meg's going to hate that. Just now she's expecting a call from Geoff. I hope I did the right thing. I put Sam on to it.'

‘Sam ?' The Canon's face brightened. ‘Just the man. He knows all about newspapers.' A smile of affection had passed over his face as it always did when he spoke of Samuel Drummock, who was his tenant on the top floor. That elderly and distinguished sporting journalist and his wife had lived there many years, and the relationship between the two men was something of a miracle in itself. It was a cordiality based, apparently, on complete non-comprehension cemented by a deep mutual respect for the utterly unknown. No two men saw less eye to eye and the result was unexpected harmony, as if a dog and a fish had mysteriously become friends and were proud each of the other's remarkable dissimilarity to himself.

Amanda sighed. ‘So that's all right. He's sitting on the top stairs with the phone and a mug of beer. Meg has left her door open and the moment it really is Geoff he's going to call her. He's furious about all this. I've never seen Sam “right angry”, as he calls it, before.'

‘Well, you know, it's an evil thing, this attempt to reverse the process of mourning.' The Canon stepped back on to his own territory and became a different being. ‘Mourning is not forgetting,' he said gently, his helplessness vanishing and his voice becoming wise. ‘It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the knot. The end is gain, of course. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be made strong, in fact. But the process is like all other human births, painful and long and dangerous. This attempt to reverse it when the thing is practically achieved, that is wicked, an attempt to kill the spirit. The poor fellow, whoever he is, has no idea what he's doing, that's obvious. Sam forgets that. Hallo, that's the front door. Is that Albert?'

Amanda listened a moment and then bundled the shirt she was holding behind her under the cushion like any other mother six weeks before Christmas.

‘No, Uncle, that's the children.'

‘Oh dear !' He was alarmed. ‘I'd forgotten them. They must be kept right away from this, Amanda. They're not ready for anything of this sort. This is most shocking to the young. Frightening.'

‘I know, dear. Lugg's with them. We'll see to that. Hallo, how did you get on?'

The door shuddering open had admitted three excited people. Two of them, both male, were almost beside themselves with the joyous adventure of getting home through London in a real pea-souper. One of these was six and the other was sixty. The third of the party, who was pale and a little breathless from the responsibility of controlling the others, was a girl. She was eight.

Mr Campion's heir, Rupert, came in blinking in the bright light. He was a slender six-year-old, red-haired like his mother, and wiry. He had the innate gentleness of his father's family, but unlike either of his parents he was shy. He went over to his mother now and, leaning across her chair, burst out with his private worry in a husky whisper.

‘The shoe-trees for Aunt Val cost two-and-six.'

‘Oh well, that's all right,' said Amanda reassuringly. ‘That only makes you ninepence down to date. That's not bad, you know, considering the rise in the cost of living.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Certain. We'll go into the whole situation at the end of the week. Was it fun?'

‘Tremenjous.' Mr Magersfontein Lugg, breathing heavily in the doorway, was glowing with a good temper foreign to his somewhat lugubrious personality. He was a large globular person, with a vast white face, small beady black eyes, and a drooping moustache. For so many years he had been Mr Campion's friend and knave, as well as his personal servant, that certain eccentricities which he possessed had long been accepted and forgiven by all who knew them. He wore the formal black clothes and hard hat of an upper servant of the last century, but there the likeness ceased abruptly.

‘I don't mind minding kids,' he announced. ‘The little gel saved me from being run over twice.'

The third member of the trio smiled faintly. She was not very tall and not very plump, and her thick straight hair hung down behind her almost to her knees. She was very plainly dressed and as formal as only a child can be, but the blue eyes in her short-nosed solemn face were secretly merry under their heavy lids.

This was Emily, daughter of Mrs Talisman's second son who had got on in the world and achieved an engineering degree, only to be killed with his wife and a second daughter in Portsmouth in the blitz. Then Emily, who had been a baby at the time, had come to live with her grandmother in the half-basement.

Old Canon Avril often forgot she was not his own granddaughter, and Mrs Talisman brought her up to be worthy of such a distinction, with the result that she might have been a little repressed had it not been for Sam and Mrs Drummock, who prevented all that.

She looked round cautiously. ‘There were fires in the street,' she said.

‘That's right. They've got the old beacons out at Marble Arch.' Lugg spoke with tremendous relish. ‘I ain't seen 'em since I was a nipper meself. Flames shootin' up into the sky like Guy Fawkes night.'

Rupert regarded him seriously. ‘We got you away, though,' he observed, ‘and you still have your parcel. Are you going to show it to Mother, or is it a surprise?'

‘Now then, now then, come orf it.' Mr Lugg's sallow skin had achieved a dusky redness and his eyes glowered. ‘Be a sport. Remember all I've learned you. Don't nark it.'

Rupert said nothing but his eyes laughed, and he and Emily exchanged a silent joke.

‘It is a surprise,' deduced Amanda, ‘and I'm glad to know because Mr Lugg's surprises are better if they're not sudden.'

‘All right, all right, I'll tell yer if yer must know. It's only a bloomin' Father Christmas mask. I was trying it on to amuse these 'ere kids and the blessed girl be'ind the counter made me buy it.' Lugg was fighting with a string on his limp package and would have produced his purchase there and then had not a key sounded in the lock behind him in the hall.

‘Oh.' Amanda got up. ‘Look, Lugg, that's the boss with Inspector Luke.'

The fat man met her eyes. ‘Inspector Luke, eh?' he said in quick comprehension. ‘Yes, well, you young 'uns better get along, get your wet shoes orf or something. We don't want you dyin' on us, causin' trouble. Come on, come on, get a move on, can't yer? Where shall we go? Up top?'

‘No, I don't think so. Mr Drummock's busy for us on the phone.'

‘Ho.' The black eyebrows rose. ‘General mobilization, is it? Very well, we'll go down to yer Grannie's, Emily. See what she's got in her pantry. Perhaps she'll 'ave another go at teachin' me to speak proper, pore soul.'

Rupert slid his hand into the vast one. ‘You can if you like,' he said with the conscious wickedness of one betraying a confidence. ‘You said you could.'

‘Yus, but I don't like, see? And that was between us. You're goin' to get a thick ear. You're above yourself, that's what you are. You get more like your pa every day. Come on, Emily, where are yer?'

‘I'm here.' Her voice sounded from the basement stairs. ‘I've put the light on for you. You fell last time.'

They vanished below, leaving the room blank like a stage after a harlequinade, and the old man laughed.

‘How happy they are,' he said, ‘all of an age. Ah, Albert my boy, come in, come in. Good evening, Chief Inspector. I'm afraid we're giving you a lot of trouble.'

The greeting stopped Charlie Luke, who had come swinging in behind Campion, filling the room to bursting point by the mere size of his personality, short in his tracks. Suspicion leaped in his bright eyes. He always suspected people wanting to save him trouble. One good stare at the old man appeared to reassure him, and without being in any way discourteous he soon managed to convey that he had seen faces like Uncle Hubert's ‘befuddled old kisser' before. He smiled, with a secret quirk of sheer street-boy naughtiness in his twisted lips, only to receive a considerable shock as he found it not only remarked and recognized but also forgiven by the old priest. It was the most complete introduction taking place in a few seconds which Mr Campion had ever witnessed.

The two men shook hands, and after he had greeted Amanda as an old colleague, Luke glanced about him.

‘Where's Mrs Elginbrodde? Did she get home in good shape?'

‘Yes. She's upstairs in her own room. I'm afraid I upset her.' The Canon wagged his head regretfully. ‘This has appeared too.' He took up the social journal as he spoke and the D.D.C.I. nodded.

‘We saw it at the station. The old charge sergeant sits there reading it, thinking he's a lord. That's going to cause a bit of trouble, I'm afraid. Well, it's an upsetting time, sir. I think I ought to see the young lady, though.'

Amanda rose. ‘We'll go up. Did you get anything?'

‘A little. Nothing conclusive,' murmured her husband, who seemed unhappy. ‘Come on, Charles. This way.'

Meg Elginbrodde's sitting-room, immediately above the one they had just left, was as different from it as could well be imagined. Van Rinn had done the decor for her in the latest lush or Beaton manner, and between the damasked grey walls and the deep gold carpet there ranged every permissible tint and texture from bronze velvet to scarlet linen pinpointed and enlivened with daring touches of Bristol Blue. After a dubious sidelong glance Luke suddenly decided to like it very much indeed, and he favoured it with a good stare round which made him look like a black curly retriever arriving unexpectedly in fairyland.

On an elegant side-table between the windows there were evidences of Meg's own art, sketches of dresses, swathes of material, samples of braids and beads, and the blue spidery designs from which jewellers work. Since Campion's famous sister Val had acquired the controlling interest in the fashion house of Papendeik, she had sponsored several young couturiers and Meg Elginbrodde was one of her most successful discoveries.

The girl herself had been sitting in a small gilt armchair by the fire when they arrived and she rose to greet them. She had changed into a long grey dress which suited her slenderness and flattered the white-gold sleekness of her hair, but she looked an older woman than she had appeared on the station. The emotional experience which she was undergoing had marked her and her muscles were taut and her eyes sombre with new information about herself.

‘Who was he? Did you find out?' She spoke directly to Luke as if to a friend, and was met by something new in his attitude. He had become wary and inquisitive, and Campion, who seemed nervous of him, hastened to answer.

‘His name is Walter Morrison:

‘Commonly called “Duds”.' Luke indicated the exaggerated outline of his own clothes by way of defining the nickname. ‘Does that convey anything to you?'

‘No,' she said slowly, her eyes growing puzzled as they watched him. ‘No. Ought it to?'

‘Not particularly. He's been out of jail, Chelmsford,' he sketched in the blank face of a squat building with the flat of his hand, presumably to save himself time, ‘just six weeks. He was concerned in a hold-up.' He hunched his shoulders and embarked on one of those pieces of description which were peculiarly his own. It was an astonishing performance in many ways. The man talked like a pump, in gusts, using little or no syntax and forcing home his meaning by what would appear to be physical strength alone. ‘It was thug stuff, but they planned it, Duds and another man. One knife between them and half a broken bottle. It was on the corner of Greek Street and Soho Square. Night. V2 time.' His diamondshaped eyes demanding her cooperation. ‘Remember V2's? The whole city waiting. Silent. People on edge. More waiting. Waiting for hours. Nothing. Nothing to show. Then, strike a light! Suddenly, no warning, no whistle, wallop! End of the ruddy world! Just a damned great hole and afterwards half the street coming down very slowly, like a woman fainting. Well. It was in that time. These two lay in wait. Dark streets. Quiet. Foreign troops passing. These lads were waiting for a drunk. Two came by at last alone.'