Flowers For the Judge (3 page)

‘If you three want to talk business, my dear, I’ll get my things.’

Gina hesitated, and a faintly deeper colour spread over her face. It was the first trace of embarrassment to destroy her poise, and was all the more expressive because of its restraint.

‘It’s not exactly that, Curley,’ she said. ‘I don’t know – you might be able to help us in a way – and yet –’

She broke off deliberately. Miss Curley leant back in her chair.

‘I’ll stay,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s about Paul, isn’t it? He’ll turn up, my dear. He always does. All the cousins like to disappear now and again. It’s quite a tradition in the family.’

She had broken the ice completely, and there was a hint of relief in Mike’s laugh.

‘A sort of affectation,’ he murmured. ‘Good old Curley! You see through us all, don’t you?’

Miss Curley eyed him. ‘I
see
,’ she said dryly.

‘Wait a minute for Mastermind to catch up,’ said Mr Campion protestingly. ‘What’s happened to Paul?’

Gina turned slowly towards him, two bright spots of colour in her face.

‘I suppose it’s just foolishness,’ she said, ‘but I asked Mike to get you to come over for a sort of unofficial talk. Paul hasn’t been around since last Thursday, and after all, he does live here – and – and–’

‘Quite,’ said Campion, hurrying to the rescue. ‘I see your point perfectly. Whereas it’s one thing to call in the police, it’s quite another to pretend you haven’t noticed your husband’s absence for three days.’

‘Exactly.’ She looked at him gratefully and went on talking, the hint of pride in her soft lazy voice making it extraordinarily appealing. ‘I suppose some wives would have gone haywire by this time, but with me – I mean with us – it’s different. We – well, we’re post-war people, Albert. Paul leads his own life, and so do I, in a way.’

She paused wretchedly, only to hurry on again, forcing herself at her fences.

‘What I’m trying to say is, there’s nothing really unusual in Paul going off for a day or two like this without thinking to tell me, but I’ve never known him stay away quite so long without my hearing even indirectly of him, and this morning I felt I ought to – well – just mention it to somebody. You do understand it, don’t you?’

‘Ye-es,’ said Mr Campion a little dubiously.

The heavy white lids closed over the girl’s eyes for a moment.

‘It’s not unheard of,’ she said, half defiantly. ‘Lots of people do the same sort of thing in our crowd. He may be anywhere. He may turn up to-night or to-morrow or next week, and I shall feel a fool for making such a fuss.’

‘Let me get this straight.’ Mr Campion’s precise voice was as friendly as any in the world. ‘I take it the dear fellow may easily have gone to a cocktail do, drifted on to an all-night binge with some of the gang, and finished up with a hang-over at a week-end house-party.’

‘Yes,’ said the girl eagerly, anxious, it seemed, to convince herself. ‘Or he may have rushed over to Paris about this exhibition scheme he’s so keen on. But even so, I don’t see why he should have taken so long about it.’

Mr Campion pricked up his ears. ‘Is that the rare manuscript exhibition at Bumpus’s in February?’ he inquired.

Mike rose to give Gina a light. ‘Yes. Paul’s putting his weight into it. It’s going to be a stupendous affair. Practically the whole of the Leigh Collection will be on view.’

‘But not
The Gallivant
, I suppose?’ murmured the visitor, venturing Miss Curley’s disapproving stare.

‘No, I’m afraid not.’ Mike seemed genuinely regretful. ‘Paul put up the suggestion, I believe, but John vetoed it
promptly
. The firm of Barnabas is hanging on to its past.’

The Gallivant
, that precious manuscript of Congreve’s unpublished play, set down by his own hand and never printed even in his unsqueamish age, had come into the possession of the firm of Barnabas very early in its dignified career. There had been something vaguely unsavoury in the story of its acquisition, some unpleasant business of the gift of a few pounds to a starving antiquary, but that was ancient history and half forgotten.

The present grievance, shared by scholars and collectors alike, was the fact that, through a certain Puritan streak in Jacoby Barnabas, the late Old Man himself, the manuscript was never permitted to be copied or even read. John respected his uncle’s wishes, and it remained therefore one of the firm’s assets only.

‘Too bad,’ said Mr Campion aloud, and forgot
The Gallivant
as he returned to the main subject. ‘No line on Paul anywhere at all, then?’ he said slowly. ‘You don’t know where he went on Thursday night, for instance?’

Gina shook her head. ‘No. As a matter of fact, I expected him home that evening. We – er – we had some things to discuss, and I arranged a quiet meal here for seven-thirty. When he didn’t show up by nine o’clock I got peevish and went out.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Campion was studying her face. ‘When you say you went out – you didn’t go to look for him?’

‘Oh, no, of course not.’ Her cheeks were flaming. ‘I phoned down to Mike and we went off to the Academy to see the revival of “Caligari”.’

Something made Mr Campion glance at his friend. He caught the man with the visor up and a warning light flashed through his brain.

Mr Campion was old-fashioned enough to take the marriage contract seriously, but he was also sufficiently sophisticated to know that the nicest people fall in love indiscriminately, and that while under the influence of that preeminently selfish lunacy they may make the most outrageous
demands
upon their friends with no other excuse than their painful need.

It suddenly occurred to him that what Gina probably needed most was a reliable and discreet inquiry agent capable of handling divorce, and was on the point of telling her so in the friendliest of fashions when he was saved from the blunder by a remark from Miss Curley.

‘Where do you
think
he is, Gina?’ she said baldly. ‘Running round the lovely Mrs Bell?’

Once again Gina flushed, but she laughed as she spoke:

‘No, Curley, I know he’s not. As a matter of fact I phoned this morning and asked her if he was down there. Oh no, if it was only something like that it would be simply my own affair, wouldn’t it? I mean it would be quite unpardonable of me to discuss it like this. No, I can’t think where he is. That’s why I’m telling someone. I mean, I’m all right. I can amuse myself. I can come down on Mike to take me around.’

She smiled shyly at the other man.

‘Of course,’ he said abruptly. ‘You know that. At any time.’

‘Oh, my hat!’ reflected Mr Campion, just as Miss Curley had done. ‘A genuine passion. She hasn’t even been told.’

His interest in the affair promptly revived.

‘I say,’ he began diffidently. ‘I don’t want to be inquisitive, but I must ask this. Any row between you and Paul?’

‘No.’ Her slanting grey eyes met his squarely. ‘None at all, at the moment. That’s another thing that made me wonder. I saw him for a moment in the office on Thursday afternoon. He’d been lunching with Caldecott and he said then that he’d come here for dinner and we’d talk. No one seems to have seen him after four. He wasn’t in his room when Miss Netley took some letters for him to sign just before five. I know that because she phoned me on Friday morning to ask if she should do them herself, as they ought to go off. John phoned to ask where he was, too. He was offended with Paul for being “so damned off-hand”, as he called it.’

She paused, a little breathless, and sat up on the couch, the glowing end of a cigarette between her fingers, as she glanced round for an ash-tray.

Mike rose and came towards her, his cupped hand held out.

‘I’ll take it – and chuck it in the fire,’ he said hastily.

She drew back in surprise. ‘Not like that. It’ll burn you,’ she protested.

He did not speak, but nodded to her, his whole body expressing urgency and unconscious supplication. It was a ridiculous incident, so trivial, yet curiously disquieting.

Bewildered and half amused, the girl dropped the burning fragment into the hand and Campion glanced away involuntarily so that he might not see the man’s satisfaction at the pain as he carried the stub over to the fire.

The return of John Widdowson a moment later restored the trend of general thought. Gina’s faithful charwoman, who had returned to do the tea-things, had met him on the staircase and admitted him with her key. He nodded to Campion and glanced across at Curley.

‘That book of clippings on
The Shadow Line
Fellowes sent us, Miss Curley; do you know where it is? It was a rather ornate little red thing, if I remember. What did we do with it? Send it back?’

Miss Curley considered. Somewhere neatly pigeon-holed in her mind was the information. It was this gift for relatively unimportant detail which had made her so valuable in her youth, and now in her age her skill was a fetish.

‘It’s on a shelf with a lot of other miscellany on the right of the doorway in the strong-room,’ she said at last, not without a certain pride.

Mike, who caught Mr Campion’s expression of polite astonishment, hastened to explain.

‘The strong-room is a bit of an anachronism these days,’ he said. ‘It’s a sort of fortified basement in the cellar at Twenty-three and dates from the days when authors insisted on being paid cash down in gold. We haven’t much use for it now, so it’s used as a junk cupboard for odds and ends we don’t want to lose – addresses and that sort
of
thing. It’s a very fine affair. Tin-lined walls in the best Victorian style.’

‘All very interesting,’ said John dryly. ‘Would you like to run round there and get that folder?’

Mike hesitated. The older man’s tone had been unnecessarily peremptory and he was in the mood to resent it.

‘I’ll get it for you, Mr Widdowson. I know just where it is.’ Curley was already on her feet.

‘Rubbish, Curley. I’ll get it. The key’s in your desk as usual, isn’t it? All right. I shan’t be a moment.’

Mike strode out of the room and John sat down in the chair he had vacated.

‘Fog’s getting very thick,’ he remarked, leaning forward to jab unceremoniously at the fire.

At sixty-three, John, the eldest of the cousins, was as forceful a personality as he ever had been. Campion, leaning back in the shadows, had opportunity to consider him. A spoilt child of his profession, he decided. A little tyrant nurtured in his uncle’s carefully prepared nursery. Still, he had met his battles and had fought and won them. Not a weak face, by any means.

Conversation became desultory. Curley never expanded in John’s presence, and Gina was lost in her own unhappy thoughts. Mr Campion did his best to keep the ball rolling, but without great success, since his peculiar line in small talk was hardly appreciated by the elder man. Long silences were bound to occur, and in the last of these they heard Mike’s quick steps in the passage outside.

Just for a moment a wave of apprehension touched them all. It was swiftly gone, but the sight of the young man with the red and gilt folder in his hand was somehow reassuring.

Campion might have fancied that he was unduly jumpy had it not been for John, who, after peering at his cousin inquisitively, inquired abruptly:

‘What’s the matter? Seen a ghost?’

They all glanced at the newcomer. His dark face was a little paler than usual and he was certainly breathless. However, he seemed genuinely surprised.

‘I’m all right. A bit out of training, that’s all. Fog’s getting very thick outside.’

John grunted, and, taking his folder, trotted out again. Campion took up the main conversation where it had left off and spoke reassuring words.

After a while Miss Curley left, and presently Mr Campion followed, leaving Gina and Mike by the fire.

Campion had reflected upon the peculiarities of other people’s lives and had dismissed Gina and her truant husband from his mind by the time he turned in just after midnight, so that it came with all the more of a shock to him when Miss Curley dragged him from his bed at ten o’clock the following morning with a startling story.

‘Miss Marchant, one of the typists, found him, Mr Campion.’ Her voice was unnaturally business-like over the phone, and he had a vision of her, hard, cool and practical in the midst of chaos. ‘I sent down to get an address file as soon as I got here, about half an hour ago. The door was locked. I gave her the key from my desk. She screamed from the basement and we all rushed down to see Mr Paul lying there. Can you come over?’

Mr Campion put a question and she answered it testily, as though irritated by his obtuseness.

‘Yes, the strong-room. Mike got the folder from it last night. Yes, the same room. Oh, and Mr Campion –’ she lowered her voice – ‘the doctor’s here. He seems to think the poor man’s been dead for some
days
’

Again Campion put a query, and this time Miss Curley’s reply did not sound irritable. Her tone was aweful, rather.

‘Right in the middle of the room, sprawled out. No one could have opened that door without seeing him.’

THERE ARE MOMENTS
which stand out in clear detail in the recollection of an hour of horror. They are seldom dramatic, and those who are haunted by them are sometimes puzzled to discover why just they and none other should have been singled out by the brain for this especial clarity.

Neither Mike Wedgwood nor Miss Curley ever forgot the instant when the doctor looked up from his knees and said half apologetically:

‘I’m afraid we shall have to move him after all. I can’t possibly see here.’

It may have been that the bounds of their capacity for shock had been reached and that his words coincided with the moment immediately before the first degree of merciful callousness descended upon them and they were able to begin again from a new level. But at any rate, the scene was photographed indelibly upon their minds.

The extraordinary untidy room stood out in every detail. They saw with new eyes its lining of dusty junk-packed shelves, broken only at the far end where an old-fashioned green and black safe replaced the cooking range which had once been there. They saw the heavy table which took up nearly the whole of the centre of the room, heaped high with books and files and vast untidy brown paper parcels.