Traitor's Purse (17 page)

‘I don’t think so.’ Campion spoke frankly. If there is one human peculiarity which cannot be disguised it is fat. A fat man is distinctive at any distance. Lugg could scarcely hope to pass anywhere unobserved.

‘There’s a busy up the street, don’t forget,’ said the shop-keeper.

‘How do you know it’s a busy?’ Lugg was tolerantly contemptuous.

‘Because I see ’is face and I know ’im. ’E’s been round ’ere once or twice. The other lot went away. ’E didn’t.’

This was important information. The police were the one body who, so far as Campion knew for a fact, had definite cause to want to lay hands on him, but if they had actually located him it seemed highly peculiar that they should not come in and get him. The probable explanation was, of course, that they had not located him but were keeping an eye on one of the others in case they should try to contact him.

‘I’ll take you past the busy,’ said the shopkeeper unexpectedly. ‘I’ve got my own way out. I’ll go first, you come behind. I’ll lead you right to the White Hart. It’s not easy to find if you don’t know the town.’

‘I’m to stay ’ere?’ Lugg enquired dubiously.

‘Yes,’ said the shopkeeper.

Lugg looked at Campion silently. He was pathetic and Campion could have murdered him. What right had he to
lean
like this, to sit childlike and helpless, relying on a superior intelligence? – which, God help them all, was no longer there. It was the original Campion’s own fault. The new Campion felt he had the grace to recognize that. He had a vision of a damned superior young man who must always have been laughingly tolerant, gloriously sure of himself. The new Campion turned from him with loathing. A fine chuckleheaded ass he must have been to surround himself with dear, faithful, pathetic followers incapable of independent thought; fawners, seekers after orders.

‘I’ll give you a couple of hours,’ said Lugg, shattering the illusion. ‘If you’re not back then I’ll come and save your ruddy life again. It won’t be the first time. Don’t forget you’re not right in the ’ead now, either.’

Campion set out with the shopkeeper. Both he and Lugg appeared to have brought the art of avoiding police supervision to a high state of perfection. Campion was provided with a shabby raincoat and a peaked cap. It was no disguise but rather a badge of some unspecified but respectable office. As he put them on he became just another taxi-driver, bus conductor, chauffeur, St John ambulance man, or gas inspector hurrying home to get out of his working clothes.

The shopkeeper led him out of the back door into a minute yard and out of that into another and another, all symmetrical and uniform as a section of a dusty egg-box.

They came out finally into an entirely different quarter of the town, a solid residential district of ornate Victorian houses with transoms over the doors and high surprised windows with little apartment cards in them.

The shopkeeper scurried along in front. In his dirty overcoat and dented bowler hat he looked as frail and negligible as a piece of sodden brown paper blown along by the bullying wind.

The storm itself had passed but there was still a lot of rain about. There was just enough light to see one’s way, but the going was not too easy and the pavements looked washed and sticky, like pieces of half-sucked toffee.

Campion did not notice the town. It took every ounce of concentration which he still possessed to follow the little wisp of a figure in front. His legs were heavy and his head swam.

He was so intent on the mere physical task that he did not notice the carved portico of the White Hart until he was almost directly under the famous sign and was so close to the doorway that he was forced to turn straight in through the light-trap arranged over the double doors. He was walking quickly and stepped slap into a bright lounge full of people, most of whom turned and looked at him enquiringly.

Every town in England has one hostelry like the White Hart. It is always a grand old inn where either Charles Dickens or Queen Elizabeth spent a night and which modern motor traffic has made once more fashionable. In these ancient houses rooms are knocked together, beams are uncovered, mighty fireplaces are filled with false logs with red electric bulbs tucked under them, and in the roughcast walls mock casements show painted musical comedy settings through their diamond panes. The food is usually good, the service appalling, and the atmosphere about as cosy and cliquey as the school hall on prize-giving day. Practically every man in the room was in khaki on this occasion. Campion, who had no recollection of ever having seen anything like it before, was completely bewildered. Fortunately his astonishment fitted his somewhat unsuitable costume and no one among the little parties clustered round the small tables gave him a second look. A growing youth in a tail suit far too small for him hurried forward enquiringly, anxious to direct him to the saloon bar round the corner. Campion looked at him helplessly and said the first thing to come into his head.

‘I want someone in a private room. I’ve been told to come here.’

The boy regarded him dubiously and scuttled into a small office half hidden in a mass of oaken tracery far more suitable to the rood-screen for which it had originally been carved. He came out again with the landlord, a dapper elderly man with a military cut to his clothes and bored eyes.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘My name is Albert Campion.’

‘Really?’ His surprise was genuine and terror seized the man who had just come in. What a fool thing to do? What a lunatic he was! What a benighted idiot! Both sections of society thirsting for his blood, no time to lose, disaster imminent, and he had to go and give his name to the first stranger who raised an eyebrow at him. He was so appalled that he hardly noticed the landlord until he realized that the man had gone over to the foot of the main staircase and now stood waiting for him to follow.

They went upstairs in silence and paused before a crooked door with the fine thin panels of the Tudors. The landlord knocked and bent his head to listen. Campion heard nothing, but presently the other man seemed satisfied, for he threw open the door and announced ‘Mr Albert Campion’ as if he had been a flunkey.

Campion went in. It was a wide, low-ceilinged room, badly lit, possessing an uneven floor, antique furniture, and a genuine coal fire. At first he thought he was alone and his misgivings rose up reproachfully. He turned to try the door but it was not even properly closed, much less locked. As he moved somebody coughed on the other side of the room.

It was a ladylike sound and he swung back just in time to see a small figure rising up out of the shadows of a winged chair which he had presumed to be empty. A little old woman stood before him.

He was astounded. She came nervously towards him, simpering a little, and with two bright spots of embarrassment in her faded cheeks. She held out her hand, but shyly, and as if she felt that she was being forward.

‘This is so awkward,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t think we’ve met?’ Her voice trailed away and he became uncomfortably aware that she was put out by his mackintosh and the peaked cap in his hand. Socially the situation was absurd. Even factually it was peculiar.

They shook hands and stood looking at one another. The woman was over seventy and frail. Her thin grey hair was
parted
demurely and she wore a dark silk dress with bits of lace on it.

‘You’re not quite as I expected you,’ she said nervously. ‘Forgive me, I don’t quite mean that. I’m sure I’m very glad to meet you like this. Sit down, will you? It’s very cold, is it not?’

She was completely out of her element and very annoyed with herself for showing it. Suddenly she dabbed her eyes.

‘It’s all been such a shock,’ she said unsteadily, ‘but this is quite unpardonable. So silly of me. I really ought never to have come.’

‘Oh Lord!’ said Campion. He was under the impression that he had spoken under his breath, but to his horror his voice, clear, brusque, and unnaturally loud, echoed back at him from the shadowy walls. An inner door which he had not noticed before opened at once and, as though in direct answer to prayer, Amanda stood on the threshold.

Hallucination! The dreadful possibility shot into his mind and frightened every other consideration out of it. She looked so fine and fit and young and alive. Her brown suit matched her eyes and her head sat sanely on her shoulders. She was lovely, she was kind, she was friendly, a right thing in a ghastly unrealistic world. That was it; she was an oasis. No, of course, a mirage! One of those things you see before you die of thirst in a desert and the vultures come and pick your bones into decency before you decay.

‘Oh beautiful,’ he said and had not spoken the words so guilelessly since he had first said them, leaning out of his go-cart to look at the sea.

Her fine eyebrows rose into arcs on her forehead.

‘I heard your voice,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you came. Have you and Miss Anscombe met?’

A great portion of the world slid into the horizontal again at the command of that cool voice and all the lovely machinery for living, like manners and introductions and calling-cards and giving up one’s seat in the bus, began to whirr comfortingly in the background of the scene.

The old lady appeared to appreciate it as much as he did. She raised her head and smiled.

‘I’m being very stupid, my dear,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t realized how shaken I am. You must ask Mr Campion to forgive me.’

‘I think he’s been a bit shaken himself.’ There was warning as well as apology in Amanda’s tone and she considered the forlorn figure in the tight mackintosh with interest. ‘I’ve got Miss Anscombe to come along herself to tell you one or two things, Albert,’ she went on. ‘Very kindly she came along to see me and …’

‘I went to her because she looked so sensible and so sympathetic,’ interrupted the old lady. ‘I felt I ought to approach someone and naturally one has a horror of the police at such a time. I prefer to talk to a woman of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Campion so earnestly that again Amanda stared at him as if he were demented. He fought to get hold of the situation, but it was all hopeless. His memory had deserted him. He sighed. ‘Why?’ he added disastrously.

‘Well naturally, Albert.’ Amanda caught the dropping brick with both hands and struggled with it manfully. ‘I mean, since her brother’s death she’s been frightfully hurt and shaken, and she hasn’t felt like talking to just anyone.’

Her brother. Miss Anscombe. Of course! The name had not registered on him before. He understood at last. This must be the sister of the murdered man whom Lee Aubrey had kept talking about. It came into his head that Aubrey might have sent Amanda here now and the possibility irked him unreasonably.

The old lady tucked her handkerchief into her belt and leant forward purposefully.

‘Mr Campion,’ she said, ‘I’m a very strong-minded woman and all my life I’ve gone out of my way to do what I thought was right,’

It was a formidable opening at the best of times and to Campion, who was not experiencing one of them, it sounded like a confession of early suicide. He nodded.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘Well, that’s why I’ve come here now, to talk about poor Robert. We shall never know how he died. He was a very weak person in some ways and if he had taken his own life I should have been very sorry and very hurt, but I should not have been surprised.’

Campion remained unimpressed. He knew how Anscombe had died and that information was enough to startle this old duck into screaming hysterics. It was only when he caught sight of Amanda watching him earnestly that he realized what the old woman was trying to tell him. Of course Anscombe had known! Anscombe had been the best bet. Oates had said so. He turned to the old lady so eagerly that he bewildered her.

‘Was your brother frightened of something?’ he demanded.

She bridled and he was aware of her rather hard blue eyes with their bald rims and wrinkled sockets.

‘He had something on his conscience,’ she said. ‘I always felt he was just going to confide in me but he never did. I have a very rigid code,’ she added naïvely.

‘Tell Albert about the money,’ put in Amanda.

Money? More money? This cash motif cropped up all the time. It frightened Campion. The Tory Englishman never under-estimates the power of money as a weapon. It is his own, and when he sees it against him he feels betrayed as well as anxious.

Miss Anscombe cleared her throat. Having embarked on a distasteful duty she was determined to get every ounce of virtue out of it.

‘He never told me that he was in financial difficulties, but it was very obvious some little time ago,’ she began. ‘I realized that he was hard put to it and I helped him to a certain extent. He was quite sick with worry, naturally, for we had a certain position in the town to keep up and he was a man who understood the importance of doing his duty to the community in that respect. Also he had the Secretaryship to think of. That is a very sacred responsibility, Mr Campion.’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘Our family have thought so for seven generations,’ she
said
stiffly. ‘If you don’t realize what it must have meant to him to resign that office, you can hardly appreciate anything I’m trying to tell you.’

‘He does understand,’ cut in Amanda hastily. ‘He’s terribly tired and worried himself. Albert, for the love of Mike take off that awful mackintosh.’

He obeyed her and realized as Miss Anscombe looked at him that his suit was crumpled and his linen grubby. What in God’s name did it matter? The old lady exasperated him with her ridiculous niceties in the midst of this maelstrom. Why didn’t she cut the cackle and come to the horses? What had Anscombe known? Didn’t she realize that there was no time to waste? He could have shaken the facts out of her and was within an ace of telling her so when she spoke again.

‘When my brother suddenly became comparatively wealthy again I was astounded,’ she said. ‘I knew then that things were not at all as they should be. We come of a class, Mr Campion, which never acquires money suddenly, except by legacy. For a little while my brother was almost happy, but gradually a great change came over him. His conscience was haunting him.’