Flowers For the Judge (7 page)

At the top of the stairs he hesitated. His next step presented difficulties. He was not at all sure of his own place in the proceedings. Miss Curley had invited him to the house presumably on her own initiative; therefore he was not working with the police but in the interests of his friends. In view of everything Mr Campion was inclined to wonder what their interests would prove to be.

However, his curiosity overrode his caution and he considered the best means of getting the information he needed.

He was still hesitating in the fog-laden hall, wondering if he should take the bull by the horns and go up to Gina’s flat, when he caught sight of a shadowy figure drifting down the stairs from the floor above. Ritchie, of course; Mr Campion had forgotten him. He stepped forward, his hand outstretched.

‘Mr Barnabas,’ he began, ‘I don’t know if you remember me –’

The tall, loosely-built man paused abruptly and a pair of astonishingly mild blue eyes peered into Campion’s own.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do. You’re a friend of Mike’s, aren’t you? Albert Campion. You’re the man we want. You’ve heard, of course?’

Campion nodded. The sense of shock and regret which he had missed in the office was here very apparent. Ritchie looked haggard and the bony hand he thrust into Campion’s own shook.

‘They’ve only just told me,’ he said. ‘One of the secretaries came up to my room. I was reading. I didn’t dream… Mike went down there last night, you know.’

He paused and passed his hand through his tufty grey hair.

‘Twenty years ago …’ he added unexpectedly. ‘But it was May then … none of this awful fog about.’

Mr Campion blinked. He remembered now the other’s habit of flitting from subject to subject, linked only by some erratic thought process at which one could only guess. However, he had no time to study Ritchie Barnabas’s eccentricities at the moment. There was something very important that he had to find out at once.

‘Look here,’ he said impulsively, ‘I’m at a great disadvantage. I really haven’t any business here at all, but I do want a few words with someone who has seen the body. Do you think – I mean, could you possibly …?’

Ritchie hesitated. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said at last, adding abruptly, his eyes fixed anxiously upon Campion’s like a dog who is attempting to talk: ‘The body … that was the terrible part of it then … Nothing … not a sign. Poor young Paul!’ And afterwards, in an entirely different tone: ‘A mild day it was, inclined to be misty. But no fog like this.’

He turned away and had gone half-way up the stairs again when he paused and finally returned.

‘Go upstairs to my room,’ he said. ‘It’s right at the top of the house. Forgive me for not thinking of it before.’

He went off again, only to turn at the landing to look back.

‘I’ll meet you there,’ he said. ‘Come up now.’

Mr Campion found his way to Ritchie’s office with some difficulty. It lay at the very top of the house and was approached by a small staircase set behind the panelling of a larger room. Campion discovered it only by accident, having caught a glimpse of the swinging door as he put his head into the last room on what had at first appeared to be the top floor.

The office itself was a fitting place for its owner. It was very small and was built round an old-fashioned brick chimney, to which it seemed to cling for support. Apart from two dilapidated chairs huddled close to the minute fireplace, the whole place was a mass of manuscripts. They jostled and sat upon each other in tall unsteady piles rising up to meet the sloping ceiling.

A little window through which the fog now looked like a
saffron
blanket held up to the light filled one alcove, and, save for this and the glow from the fire, the place was in darkness.

Campion found the switch and a dusty reading lamp on the mantelpiece shot into prominence.

He sat down to wait. After the chill downstairs the room felt warm and musty, the air spiced with the smell of paper. It was a very personal place, he decided; like an old coat slipped off for a moment regretfully.

He had barely time to let its unexpected charm take hold of him when Ritchie returned. He came scrambling up the staircase like some overgrown spider, his long thin arms and legs barking themselves recklessly on the wooden walls.

‘She’s coming,’ he said. ‘Won’t be a moment. Had to powder her face. Too bad … a child, Campion … only eighteen. Very pretty … typist or something. Good family … been crying … making statement.’

He sat down.

Mr Campion, who had deduced that he was not talking about Miss Curley, had an inspiration.

‘You’ve got hold of the girl who found him?’

Ritchie nodded. ‘Terrible experience. Glad to get away from them all. Nice girl.’

He brought a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one thoughtfully. He had replaced the package when, with a word of apology, he produced it again and forced a rather battered cigarette upon Campion.

‘You knew Paul well?’ he said. ‘Poor fellow! Poor fellow! You didn’t? Oh, I see … Well, it’s a shock for everybody. It must be … Dead three days, they say. Can’t have been. Mike was there last night. Doctors don’t know, do they?’

Mr Campion was slowly getting used to this somewhat extraordinary method of conversation. He had experienced this jerky chatter before, but in Ritchie’s case the man had a disconcerting way of fixing one with his gentle blue eyes with an earnestness which was somehow pathetic. It was evident that he wanted to be understood, but found speech very difficult.

In spite of his preoccupation with the pressing matter on hand, Campion noticed that the elder man used long sweeping gestures, completely meaningless in themselves, and he began to understand why the intolerant Jacoby Barnabas of the portrait in the waiting-room had found this particular nephew so unsatisfactory.

Although he was still obviously very shaken, Ritchie seemed more at ease now that he was back in his own little room. He glanced about it, caught Mr Campion’s eye and smiled shyly.

‘Been here twenty years, reading,’ he said.

Campion was taken off his guard.

‘No remission for good conduct?’ he said involuntarily.

Ritchie looked away, and for the first time the younger man was aware of something not quite frank about him.

‘Get away sometimes,’ he said. ‘Week or two now and again. Why not…? Must live.’

His tone was so nearly angry that Campion almost apologized. He had the uncomfortable impression that the man was hiding something.

He put the idea from him as absurd, but the impression remained.

Ritchie was puffing furiously at his cigarette, his long thin fingers with their enormous knuckles gripping the little flattened tube clumsily.

‘Strong personality,’ he said, his blue eyes once again fixed on Campion’s face. ‘Moved very quickly … did foolish things. But to be found dead … terrible! Have you ever been in love?’

‘Eh?’ said Mr Campion, completely taken aback.

‘Don’t understand it,’ said Ritchie with a wave of a long bony arm. ‘Never did. Paul didn’t love Gina. Extraordinary. Mike’s a good boy.’

Campion was sorting out the possible relations between these disjointed ramblings when there was a movement on the stairs below and Ritchie got up.

‘Miss Marchant,’ he said.

He disappeared for a moment, to return almost at once with a very pretty girl. She had been crying, and was still
near
tears. As he caught sight of her Mr Campion was inclined to agree with Ritchie’s sympathetic outburst. It certainly did seem a shame that this little yellow-haired girl with the big frightened eyes and demure, intelligent face should have been subjected to what must have been a very unpleasant experience.

Ritchie was already performing the introductions. He was less jerky and more at his ease when speaking to the girl, and there was a gentleness about him which was very attractive.

‘Sit down,’ he said, taking her by the hand and leading her into the room. ‘This is Mr Campion, a very clever man, not a policeman.’

He peered down into her face and evidently thought he saw tears there, for he pressed a large white pocket-handkerchief into her hand without any explanation.

‘Now,’ he said, squatting down between them on the dusty boards, ‘tell him.’

Campion leant forward. ‘I’m awfully sorry to trouble you, Miss Marchant,’ he said. ‘It must be most unpleasant for you to go all through this again. But you would be doing me and Mr Barnabas a very great service if you’d answer one or two questions. I won’t keep you long.’

The girl made a rather pathetic attempt at a smile.

‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to get away from them all. What do you want to know?’

Mr Campion approached his point gingerly. It was not going to be easy.

‘When you went down to the strong-room this morning,’ he began, ‘did Miss Curley give you the key or did you take it out of her desk?’

‘I – I took it. It was hanging on a little hook screwed into the underside of the flap at the back. It always hangs there.’

‘I see. And you just took it and went straight downstairs?’

‘Yes. But I’ve told all this to the Coroner’s Officer.’ Her voice was rising, and Mr Campion stretched out a soothing hand.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And it’s really very kind of you to tell
it
to me again. When you unlocked the door and went in, what did you do?’

The girl took a deep breath.

‘I switched on the light,’ she said. ‘Then I’m afraid I screamed.’

‘Oh, I see …’ Mr Campion was very grave. ‘You saw him at once?’

‘Oh, yes. He was just inside the door. My foot nearly touched his foot. When I turned on the light I was looking straight down at him.’

Ritchie nodded at her, and with a wave of a flail-like arm encouraged her to use the handkerchief he had just lent her. There was something so extremely comic in the gesture that just for an instant laughter crept out behind the tears in the round eyes.

Mr Campion proceeded cautiously.

‘Look here,’ he said very gently, ‘this is going to help a lot. Try not to think of the man you found as someone you’ve seen in the office, someone you’ve worked for; think of him just as a thing, a rather ugly sight you’ve been called upon to look at. What struck you most about him when you first saw him?’

Miss Marchant pulled herself together. Mr Campion had been speaking to her as though she were a child, and she was a modern young woman of eighteen.

‘His colour,’ she said.

Mr Campion permitted himself a long intake of breath.

‘He was pink,’ said the girl. ‘I didn’t think he was dead, you see. I thought he’d fallen down in a fit – apoplexy or something. I went up to him and bent down, and then I saw he was dead. He was bright, bright pink, and his lips were swollen.’

‘And was he lying quite naturally?’ said Mr Campion, anxious to lead her away once the vital fact had been ascertained.

Miss Marchant hesitated. ‘I think so. He was on his back and stretched out, his hands at his sides. It wasn’t – nice.’

‘Terrible!’ said Ritchie earnestly. ‘Terrible! Poor girl! Poor Paul! All frightful …’

He hurled his cigarette stub into the fire and searched frantically for another, hoisting his gaunt body from side to side as he fought with his pockets.

Miss Marchant glanced at Mr Campion.

‘That’s all,’ she said. ‘I ran out and told Miss Curley and the others after that.’

‘Naturally.’ Campion’s tone was soothing and friendly. ‘Where was the hat?’

‘The hat? She looked at him dubiously for a moment, her brows wrinkled. ‘Oh, his bowler hat … of course. Why, it was there on the ground, just near him.’

‘Near his head or near his hand?’ Mr Campion persisted.

‘Near his shoulder, I think … his left shoulder.’ She was screwing up her eyes in an effort of recollection.

‘How was it lying?’

Miss Marchant considered. ‘Flat on its brim,’ she said at last. ‘I remember now. It was. I caught sight of the round black mound out of the corner of my eye and I wondered what it was at first. His umbrella was there, too, lying beyond it, where it must have fallen when he fell.’

She shuddered involuntarily as the picture returned to her, and looked younger than ever.

‘On the left?’ laboured Mr Campion. ‘On
your
left?’

‘No,
his
left. I told you. The side furthest from the table.’

‘I see,’ said Mr Campion, and his face became blank. ‘I see.’

Ritchie shepherded Miss Marchant to the floor below. When he came back his mild blue eyes rested upon Campion eagerly.

‘Clearer?’ he inquired, and added abruptly. ‘Sounds like gas, doesn’t it?’

Mr Campion regarded the other man thoughtfully. It had been slowly dawning upon him for some time now that Ritchie’s disjointed phrases and meaningless gestures were disabilities behind which a mind resided. However, this last shrewdness was unexpected.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘It does. Carbon monoxide, in fact. Of course one can’t possibly tell for certain without taking a blood test, but Miss Marchant’s description does indicate
it
. Besides, it fits in damnably with one or two things I noticed downstairs.’

Ritchie heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Garage next door to the strong-room,’ he remarked. ‘Fumes must have percolated somehow. Accident. Poor Paul …’

Mr Campion said nothing.

Ritchie clambered into the chair Miss Marchant had vacated and sat poring over the fire, his immense bony hands held out to the tiny blaze.

‘Carbon monoxide,’ he said. ‘How much of it will kill?’

Mr Campion, who had been reflecting upon the problem for some time, gave a considered opinion.

‘I’m not sure of the exact proportion,’ he said, ‘but it’s something very small … just over four per cent. in the atmosphere in some cases, I believe. The trouble with the stuff is that it’s so insidious. You don’t realize you’re going under until you’ve gone, if you see what I mean. The exhaust of a car is pretty nearly the pure stuff.’

Ritchie nodded sagaciously. ‘Dangerous,’ he said. ‘No ventilation down there with the door shut.’

‘… And locked.’ The words were on the tip of Mr Campion’s tongue, but he did not utter them.