Flowers For the Judge (25 page)

‘Landlady’s husband,’ corrected Ritchie, in the interests of strict accuracy.

‘– And went to the circus at Olympia,’ continued Mr Campion imperturbably, ‘where you stayed until ten-thirty. John left his office at five and went to his club, where he was recognized and where he had a business interview. He returned to his flat and dressed for the evening with his usual deliberation and attention to detail. His housekeeper waited upon him the whole time. At seven-forty he went off in a taxi to the Dorchester for the Quill Club dinner, at which he spent the evening. The janitor left the office at six sharp and went off with some pals to the Holborn Empire. In fact, everyone behaved normally except Mike, who went walking, an exercise he hardly ever takes.’

His voice died away and he regarded Ritchie steadily.

‘Do you realize,’ he demanded suddenly, ‘that whoever killed Paul must have stood by and let that car pump exhaust into the strong-room for at least an hour, probably an hour and a half? It wouldn’t take long to put Paul under, of course, but the murderer must have gone on with the treatment for some considerable time to make sure of death. That’s why these alibis are so very convincing.’

Ritchie was silent. He sat upon his feet, rocking gently before the fire, his eyes hidden.

‘No motives,’ he murmured, almost, it seemed to Mr Campion, regretfully. ‘No motives either.’

‘All the same,’ Campion put in hastily, ‘it’s not a strong case against Mike, and all that row the Coroner came in for will prejudice both Judge and Jury in his favour. He’s almost certain to get off.’

Ritchie shook his head gloomily.

‘Not good enough. Stigma all his life. In love – can’t marry. Poor fellow!’

He was quiet for a full minute, his huge bony hands twitching in little indeterminate gestures. Suddenly he sat up and Campion was surprised by the purpose and vigour in his tone.

‘Got to prove who did it. Only way. Where now?’

Mr Campion glanced at his watch. It was a quarter-past four.

‘I came to get your key to Twenty-three again,’ he said. ‘I’m going to burgle your safe. Like to come?’

‘Yes,’ he said simply, and Campion grinned at him, despite his weariness.

They accomplished their short eerie walk without mishap and let themselves in through the big Queen Anne door at Twenty-three during that darkest moment of the night when the street lamps suddenly go out half an hour before the dawn.

‘Can see in the dark,’ Ritchie remarked unexpectedly as he piloted Campion across the pitch black hall to the top of the basement stairs. ‘Not like day, of course, but fairly well. Ten steps down to landing and then twelve.’

They reached the strong-room door and Campion unlocked it with Mr Rigget’s cherished key. There was something ghostly about the chaotic little apartment, and Mr Campion found his mind, which was not used to such fancies, dwelling upon the crumpled body which had lain for so many hours among the dusty boxes by the safe and on the murderer who must have returned and dragged the helpless thing out to the clear space by the door at a time when the ravages of death were beginning to show.

There was no sign of Mr Rigget’s activities. His little inquisitions had been performed with the greatest discretion. Campion turned his attention to the safe and was glad that Lugg was not with him to express an opinion on a firm which entrusted anything of value to such an antiquated contraption. Ritchie divined his thoughts.

‘Cupboard really,’ he observed apologetically. ‘Safe cupboard. Valuables at the bank.’

Mr Campion inserted the squat key which Mr Samson had made for luck and mastered within a minute or two the simple arrangement of turns and half turns which shot back extremely heavy bolts. The door, which must have weighed a quarter of a ton at the lowest estimation, swung
back
, and Mr Campion and Ritchie peered into the steel recess within.

At first sight the contents were not enlightening. Two or three half-calf ledgers, two small notebooks containing addresses and a file of letters were neatly arranged upon the lower shelf. And that was all, save for a package neatly wrapped in green baize and tied with pink tape.

Mr Campion took it out carefully and unpacked it on the table which Mike had cleared to receive Paul’s body. Inside the baize wrapping was a well-made blue leather case designed to look like a book and very beautifully gilded. Examination proved that it had no lock, but pulled out in two pieces like a card-case and contained a slender manuscript.

‘
Gallivant
,’ Ritchie remarked, looking over Campion’s shoulder. ‘Never examined it. Uncle Jacoby Barnabas very strict. Thought it indecent. Would have destroyed it but for the value. John carries on tradition. Probably dull.’

Campion turned back the thin octavo sheets which were unbound save for the faded ribbon tied about the centre of the bundle. The brown ink made a spidery but decipherable pattern on the soft rag paper. He read a line or two:

‘Clean bit,’ said Ritchie, with that complete simplicity which was the mainspring of his personality. ‘Nothing to help us there. Valuable, of course. Wrote it himself, in his own hand. Insured. Stands at twenty thousand pounds in the balance sheet.’

Mr Campion raised his eyebrow.

‘Along with the office freehold and the printing plant at Gravesend?’ he suggested.

‘That’s right,’ the older man agreed. ‘Best place for it. Never liked the classics. Put it away.’

Campion was some little time repacking the treasure, and Ritchie wandered over to the safe.

‘Nothing else,’ he observed, without turning round. ‘What are we looking for?’

‘Whatever it was that made Paul go to the trouble of getting a key of the safe made for him,’ Campion explained as he tied the pink tape round the green baize once more and stowed it away in the safe. ‘There’s only one official key to this elegant invention, I suppose. Who keeps it?’

‘Head of the firm,’ said Ritchie. ‘Another tradition. Explains why there’s nothing much kept in it.’

‘I see. That means that John had the original key?’

Ritchie considered.

‘Probably Curley,’ he said at last. ‘One or the other. Only a fetish.’

Mr Campion took off his spectacles and perched himself on the edge of the table.

‘It seems very careless to keep the
Gallivant
there,’ he began. ‘I should have thought the insurance johnnies might have objected to a thing like that.’

Ritchie’s eyes clouded.

‘Ought to go back to the bank,’ he agreed. ‘Fact is, this dreadful business – death, murder, trial, and so on – has probably put the whole thing out of their minds. Very likely haven’t been down here since. Can’t blame them.’

‘Oh, it’s usually kept at the bank, is it?’ said Campion, pricking up his ears. ‘When was it put in here? Do you know?’

Ritchie’s discomfort increased.

‘Before Christmas. Silly business. Curley annoyed. Couldn’t really blame her.’

Mr Campion was patient. Ritchie’s cryptogrammic replies were tantalizing and he was thankful for everybody’s sake that the well-meaning, inarticulate soul had not been subpoenaed for the morrow’s trial.

After a certain amount of persuasion Ritchie amplified his story.

‘Nothing in it,’ he said wretchedly. ‘Paul made an ass of himself over the
Gallivant
. Wanted to lend it to rare manuscript exhibition. Up against tradition at once. Grand old firm’s vulgar classic. Wouldn’t do. Old-fashioned. Stupid.
But
John and Curley had last word. Paul not content – silly fellow. Tried to get it from Bank manager. Being partner, succeeded. Curley saw messenger who brought it. Went to John. John furious, backed her up.
Gallivant
put in safe.’

Mr Campion was bewildered. It seemed incredible that such a little domestic quarrel in the firm could have any connection with the grave issues at stake. He was silent for some moments, considering. John, he knew, had a fanatical pride in the honour of the firm; Miss Curley might easily have hidden depths of prudery; and Paul certainly seemed to have made a nuisance of himself all round. But compared with the scandal which had burst about their ears the public burning of the
Gallivant
by the police – an eventuality, after all, unlikely, since authors dead over a hundred years are permitted great licence, on the principle, no doubt, that their work has had time to air – would have been negligible unless –? An idea occurred to him and he looked up, a startled expression in his pale eyes.

‘Look here, I’ll have to wander off now, Ritchie,’ he said. ‘I’ve been rather late for the bus all along, but I believe I’m catching up with it now. I shan’t be down at the Old Bailey at the beginning this morning, but I’ll come along later. Keep an eye on Gina, but don’t tell her anything.’

‘No,’ said Ritchie, with the obedience of a child, and Campion, looking at him affectionately, wondered how much of the mystery about him he saw and what, if anything, he thought of it.

It was half-past six on a cold spring morning, with drizzle in the air, when they parted, and Mr Campion went home to bathe and shave, since it was too early to begin his day’s business. He also took the opportunity to submit himself to a patching process, of which Mr Lugg was a past master. The spectacle of that mournful figure, clad solely in a pair of trousers, standing upon a bath-mat at seven-thirty in the morning, a minute pair of surgical scissors in one enormous hand and an even smaller strip of sticking-plaster
in
the other, was one of those experiences that Mr Campion frankly enjoyed.

He was sorry that they were not on conversational terms. Mr Lugg was the victim of a two-way complex. His newer self revolted at the unpleasant publicity with which he saw his employer’s name surrounded as the trial progressed, while his elder spirit was deeply hurt that Campion should have enjoyed a scrap in which he had not been permitted to take part.

‘There you are,’ he said at last, stepping back from his handiwork. ‘Now I’ve wasted my time on you making you look like a gent again, go and smear yourself with society filth. Roll in it like a dawg – but don’t ask me to clean yer. Mud sticks closer than them patches I’ve put on your dial.’

‘Mud of the soul?’ inquired Mr Campion affably.

‘You know what I mean,’ said Lugg warningly. ‘And if we ’ad that charwoman I’ve bin thinking of I’d drive ’ome me contemp’ in the way I was brought up to, even if I ’ave learnt spittin’s not quite the thing.’

Mr Campion dressed in silence. At nine o’clock he was waiting outside the door of a little office on the third floor of a building in St Martin’s Lane.

Ex-Detective-Inspector Beth found him there when he came heavily up the stairs to open the little private inquiry office he had established on his retirement.

‘Can’t get my assistant to turn up before half-past, Mr Campion,’ he explained as he unlocked the door. ‘My word, if I had him in the Force for half an hour!’

He paused, inquiry on his round good-natured face.

‘Surely
we
can’t do anything for you, can we? Well, well. I thought they even took in your laundry work down at the Yard these days.’

‘Working a little light humour into the act, I see,’ said his visitor approvingly. ‘“Divorce with a laugh” and “Blackmail made fun”? It’s not a bad idea. However, unfortunately, there’s nothing very amusing about the small commission I am about to entrust to you at the moment. It is merely odd.’

He took a limp brown bank-book from his pocket and,
opening
it, entered into some careful instructions. The ex-inspector was puzzled.

‘If it was a case of impersonation – someone taking it out – I could understand it,’ he said. ‘But who cares who pays money in?’

‘I do,’ said Mr Campion, who was very tired. ‘I’m a very proud young fellow, and I like to know where my money’s coming from.’

Beth turned the book over.

‘Since when have you been called Dora Phyllis Netley?’ he inquired suspiciously.

Campion leant forward confidentially.

‘You must let a man have his secrets,’ he murmured. ‘Get on to it and let me have a report to-night.’

‘To-night? What do you think we are?’ protested his host.

‘Private and enterprising. I read it on the door,’ said Mr Campion, and hurried away.

It was just after ten when he reached the British Museum, and he paused for a moment at the foot of the great soot-stained granite flight of steps to feel in his breast pocket. His weariness was making him absent-minded, and just for a moment he could not remember if on changing his clothes he had slipped into his pocket a wallet containing a page of the
Gallivant
, which he had stolen so shamelessly from beneath Ritchie’s very nose. It was there, however, and he went on thankfully.

Time at the Museum is given the treatment it deserves from the custodians of the treasure of historic man, and Mr Campion’s godfather, Professor Bunney, did not arrive until late, so that the morning was considerably advanced when the tall pale young man in the horn-rimmed spectacles at last came out between the granite columns.

Mr Campion walked slowly, accustoming himself to an idea. His godfather had been most helpful and he now knew without a possibility of doubt that the manuscript of the
Gallivant
in the blue leather box, which was insured for twenty thousand pounds and appeared in the balance-sheet of the famous firm of Barnabas Limited as representing
that
sum, was certainly not, however genuine its content might be, penned by the hand of Wm. Congreve, dec. 1729, nor was the paper on which it was written manufactured one year earlier than 1863.

ONE OF THE
unexpected things about the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey is that it is perfectly new. The carving above the Judge’s chair, where the great sword hangs, is not an old carving, and the light oak of the contraption so like a Punch and Judy show, which is the witness box, is not worn by the nervous hands of a thousand testators but retains some of the varnished brightness of the cabinet-maker’s shop.