Flowers For the Judge (34 page)

There was one big tent, five or six side-shows mainly of the freak variety, and a cluster of painted living-wagons. Electric light bulbs strung on yards of dangerous cable sprawled everywhere and the Provençal
en tout famille
laughed and joked about the frankly comic sides of ordinary life which seem to be so very offensive if one is not amused.

The show in the big tent would not begin for half an hour, and Campion, having seen the spider lady and the tallest Ethiopian in the world, found himself outside the largest of the living-wagons. This was a slightly baroque affair, decorated with the Queen of Sheba on one side and a view of Naples on the other, and glittered with brass rails and several varieties of scroll-work. A man sat upon the steps reading a newspaper by the light of a festoon of coloured bulbs draped over the wagon.

He was a large man, still tough at sixty and very fine to look at, in spite of a pink shirt, stiff collar, tight black trousers and Texan sombrero. There were two diamond rings on his fingers and his shoes were English hand-sewn.

He looked up at Campion, who saw his face and rejoiced.

‘M’sieu?’ he inquired.

Campion presented him with his card. The stranger took it between an enormous finger and thumb and sat looking at it thoughtfully for some time. Campion bent forward.

‘I came to tell you,’ he said quietly in French, ‘that John Widdowson killed his cousin Paul Brande, and afterwards, when he was discovered, was found dead in his bath. The general opinion in England now is that he committed suicide.’

‘And the police? What do they think?’

‘The police,’ explained Mr Campion, ‘preserve an open mind. There is one whom they would interview if they found him, but I do not think they are looking for him. As long as he does not reappear …’ he shrugged his shoulders expressively.

The man rose to his feet and held out his hand.

‘How d’you do?’ he said in English. ‘Let me introduce you to Madame.’

He went slowly up the steps and bent his head to enter the caravan. He was extremely tall, a giant of a man, with the long supple muscles of an acrobat. Campion caught a few of the murmured words within.

‘
un véritable ami
…
absolument. C’est lui
…
le jeune homme luimême. Ne vous inquiétez pas
.’

There was a rustle and Madame appeared. She was large, dark and gracious, wearing a trifle too much jewellery for camping, perhaps, but she gave Mr Campion her hand and flashed her black eyes at him and he liked her, snakes, diamonds and all.

They entertained him on the steps. It was a warm night, and it occurred to Campion that she might just possibly keep her more favourite pets in the caravan.

‘How did you find us, my friend?’

It was Madame who inquired, and Mr Campion, feeling he could do no less, explained.

‘I went through the old mailing lists, and when I found that M. Robert, proprietor of Robert’s
cirque
, one time c/o the World’s Fair, received copies of Spring and Autumn catalogues in company with several thousand householders, I thought he might be worth looking up. It has taken me three months.’

The man who called himself Pierre Robert smiled and reminded Campion of his brother.

‘Rubbish!’ he said. ‘It has taken you twenty years. Remember,’ he continued, speaking English carefully as though he were not used to the tongue, ‘you are a friend of his. We feel you are his friend.’

‘But of course,’ agreed Madame, ‘the young man is a friend. I knew it as soon as I saw him. You see,’ she added, beaming upon Campion, ‘for so many years now he has spent his holidays with us. Now it is all holiday.’

‘He is free – that’s the main thing,’ her husband remarked. ‘Been imprisoned, as I was, all his life. Now the fellow’s free – free as air.’

Mr Campion hesitated. There was something he very much wanted to ask, and was wondering how to put it.

‘It seems – er – unexpected,’ he ventured at last. ‘I mean, after
publishing
…’

His host turned to his wife.

‘The portrait,’ he commanded, and while she scrambled into the wagon he launched into a brief and formal history.

‘My father was an impulsive man, but very much under his brother Jacoby’s influence. He fell in love with a beautiful woman, carrying her off, and married her. She gave up everything for him, but Jacoby still considered it a mésalliance, and after her two sons were born she died of a broken heart. They kept her mewed up in the country, where she was looked down upon and misunderstood.’

His visitor had just time to nod his comprehension when Madame returned with a faded cabinet photograph, which she placed reverently in his hands.

Mr Campion’s startled eyes rested upon one of the most supremely comic figures of his life. A corsetted lady in tights and a bustle had been caught in the act of gripping a broken column as though for support. He had a fleeting impression of gentle eyes, a coronet of flowers and a fine piece of gilt script announcing ‘
La Palone, the Queen of the Wires
.’

His host took the photograph away.

‘My mother,’ he said, with a dignity which was as unassailable as Lord Lumley’s own. ‘That’s the explanation. My grandfather was a tumbler.’

It was altogether a most delightful gathering. Madame brought glasses and a bottle of Royal Provence, that wine of Paradise which the tourist ices and derides because it does not taste like champagne. They drank it in the dusk and Mr Campion no longer felt anxious.

As he rose to leave he turned to his new friends.

‘Mr Barnabas,’ he inquired unexpectedly, ‘what did you do with the
Gallivant
?’

‘Sold it to a collector,’ said Tom Barnabas promptly. ‘Fellow was a crook. Believe he cheated me. Anyway, I got enough to buy the show, which was all that mattered.’

A grin passed over his face and Campion saw him as he
must
have been in the days when Miss Curley had admired him.

‘I didn’t steal it, you know,’ he continued. ‘I wanted to sell out my share in the business when Uncle Jacoby died, but old John wouldn’t hear of it. So to save trouble I took the firm’s most mobile asset and went off, leaving John with my share in exchange. It was quite fair.’

‘Taking his fortune, he leapt into space?’ murmured Mr Campion under his breath.

Tom Barnabas sighed.

‘What a leap that was !’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do it now.’

Madame laid a plump hand on his shoulder.

‘Do you want to?’ she demanded. ‘Of course not.’

Tom Barnabas looked at Campion and laughed.

‘’
Voir, M’sieu. Au ’voir
.’

Mr Campion wandered off into the fair. The big tent was crowded. An appreciative audience was applauding a lady who was hanging by her teeth from a trapeze, while her son and daughter swung light-heartedly from her ankles.

The turn finished with much bowing and kissing of hands, and, while a resplendent attendant wound up the trapeze, a wild exuberant cry sounded from the artists’ entrance and a flying figure came whooping into the ring.

He was attired as only French clowns are dressed, in a monstrous caricature of everyday clothes. An enormous black sleeping-suit, on which a white shirt and waistcoat front had been crudely painted, enveloped his gaunt form. Grease-paint half an inch thick obliterated his features and gave him a wide, pathetic smile.

A little white head covering, which Campion saw with a shock was a regulation barrister’s wig, decorated his skull and round his neck was a tulle frill spangled with gold.

From the moment he appeared he was a success. His flail-like gestures were here understood. Here his mute appeal was answered, his wide smile echoed. The children shouted his name: ‘Moulin-Mou! Moulin-Mou! Moulin-Mou!’

He bowed to them gravely and lolloped to the side of
the
ring purposefully. There he took a basin from an unexpected cupboard in the skirting. He broke eggs in it and added sawdust from the track. His face, now miraculously anxious in spite of his painted smile, appealed to them to sympathize with him in his insuperable difficulties.

To his foredoomed concoction he added all sorts of unlikely ingredients, his dubiety growing and his eyes wild and apprehensive. He stirred, he looked, he smelled. He offered the basin to a little white dog, who lay down and covered its nose with its fore-feet. He wept. He went on stirring.

Then just at the moment when defeat and disgrace seemed inevitable he started. He smiled. He beamed at the breathless company and finally, amid howls of delight, produced triumphantly half a dozen very stale buns and threw five of them to the delirious audience. The sixth he held in his hand for an instant, looking about him with bright child-like eagerness.

Campion was aware of two very gentle blue eyes, infinitely appealing, infinitely friendly, and so far away that they peered at him from another world.

The sixth bun dropped into his lap.

He rose to his feet and waved and some of his neighbours rose with him. Moulin-Mou threw up his arms and bellowed. Campion saw him, rigid for an instant, his great flail-like arms outstretched, his face hidden for ever behind the most impenetrable disguise in the world.

The next moment he had gone and a young lady on a horse had taken his place.

Mr Campion went back over the Pont Neuf, the bun in his hand. He was still carrying it when Mike and Gina met him on the steps of the hotel.

‘Horrible,’ said Mike, staring at the unattractive object with suspicion. ‘Who gave you that?’

Mr Campion looked at them solemnly.

‘The King’s Executioner,’ he said so gravely that they did not question him.

‘To Albert Campion has fallen the honour of being the first detective to feature in a story which is also by any standard a distinguished novel’

Observer

Judge Crowdy Lobbett has found evidence pointing to the identity of the criminal mastermind behind the deadly Simister gang. After four attempts on his life, he ends up seeking the help of the enigmatic and unorthodox amateur sleuth, Albert Campion.

After Campion bundles Lobbett off to a country house in Mystery Mile deep in the Suffolk countryside, all manner of adventures ensue. It’s a race against time for Campion to get the judge to safety and decipher the clue to their mysterious enemy’s name. Luckily for judge Lobbett, underneath his constant stream of nonsensical banter, Campion displays a diamond-sharp intelligence and a natural detective’s instinct…

‘Miss Allingham’s strength lies in her power of characterisation, in her striking talent for painting the social background against which she shows her characters, in her skill in the use of words whereby she paints so vividly the scene she describes’

Guardian

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Epub ISBN 9781446496251

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Published by Vintage 2006

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Copyright © 1936 Margery Allingham Ltd.,
a Chorion company. All Rights Reserved.

Margery Allingham has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in Great Britain in 1936 by William Heinemann

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