Flowers For the Judge (9 page)

‘You try,’ said Mr Lugg, with a return of his old fire. ‘I’d like to know where you’d be – as helpless as a babe unborn. I’ve trained you not to be able to do without me. You drop the case and we won’t say anything more about it. Nothin’ could be fairer than that.

‘After all,’ he went on persuasively as he noticed no sign of capitulation in Mr Campion’s expression, ‘once sex rears
its
ugly ’ead it’s time to steer clear. You know that as well as I do.’

Mr Campion’s mystified expression deepened.

‘You’re not trying to be funny?’ he suggested.

‘Do I ever try to be funny?’ said Mr Lugg, with justifiable reproach. ‘It’s not a funny subjec’.’

Campion stirred. ‘Where did you get this – this sex idea?’ he said. ‘I thought the papers were very reticent. They must be, of course, the law of libel being what it is.’

‘Readin’ between the lines,’ said Mr Lugg darkly. ‘Libel or no libel, if you reads the newspapers properly it’s always clear what’s ’appened. It’s not what they say: it’s the way they say it.’

Campion frowned. ‘There’s a lot of truth in that, unfortunately,’ he observed. ‘After your little mug between the lines, what do you deduce?’

‘The wife did it, of course. They published ’er photograph. Did you see it? Nice-lookin’ little bit – just the type.’

Mr Campion shuddered. ‘Lugg, you’ve done it this time,’ he said. ‘Get out.’

Before the vigour of the command Mr Lugg was abashed.

‘No offence, Cock,’ he said hastily. ‘I don’t know anything about the inside story. I’m only tellin’ you how it appears to the man in the street. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?’

Campion was silent for a moment, a slightly less vacuous expression than usual upon his pale, inoffensive face.

‘I know these people, Lugg,’ he said at last. ‘They’re all right, I tell you. Charming, straightforward, decent people. Mrs Brande is one of the most delightful women I’ve ever met, and yet you see, apart from the tragedy of losing her husband, her portrait appears in the newspapers and the opinion is in the Mayfair pubs that she did him in.’

Mr Lugg was rebuked, but it was not his temperament to admit the fact.

‘The tragedy of losin’ ’er ’usband?’ he said contemptuously. ‘That’s good, that is! Hadn’t the fellow been missin’ since the Thursday and was found dead in the
office
next door on the Monday? That’s not my idea of a nice lovin’ wife. Lets ’er old man be missin’ three or four days and doesn’t say a word.’

‘She sent for me,’ said Mr Campion.

‘Ho, she did, did she?’ Lugg was interested. ‘That makes all the difference. Still, it didn’t come out in the Press, did it? So how was I to know, or anybody else? Who do you think done it?’

Mr Campion passed his hand over his fair hair and his eyes clouded.

‘I don’t know, Lugg,’ he said. ‘I don’t know at all. I’m on the inside, you see, and yet you and your pals at the club have fixed the guilt already.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Lugg, ‘and I shouldn’t be at all surprised if we wasn’t right. Outsiders see most of the game, you know. You mark my words,’ he went on, gathering confidence, ‘before we know where we are up’ll crop some nice young fellow she’s ’ad her eye on. There’ll be the motive and – there you are!’

Mr Campion’s reply was silenced by the trilling of the front-door bell. Lugg pressed his tongue against the back of his front teeth and emitted a clucking sound expressing both annoyance and resignation.

‘What a time for anyone to come visitin’,’ he said.

Moving across the room, he opened the bottom drawer of a bureau and took therefrom, to Mr Campion’s horror, a remarkable contraption consisting of a stiff collar with a black bow tie attached. With perfect solemnity and a certain amount of pride, Mr Lugg fastened this monstrosity round his neck by means of a button at the back, and moved ponderously out of the room, leaving his employer momentarily speechless.

Mike came into the room unannounced. The last two or three days had made a great difference in his appearance. His shorn black curls seemed to have receded a little and the skin over his forehead looked taut and lined. The old sleepy expression was still lurking in his eyes, but there was anxiety there also.

‘I had to come round,’ he said abruptly. ‘I want to see
you
.’ He paused and glanced hesitantly at the sepulchral figure behind him, and Campion took the hint.

‘That’s all right, Lugg, please,’ he said.

The old ex-burglar raised his eyebrows. ‘I shall be in the kitchenette, sir, if you should require me,’ he said in so affected a voice that Campion gaped.

Mike was in no condition to notice extraneous details, however. As soon as he was alone he threw himself down in one of the deep chairs by the fire and sighed.

‘This is damned awful, Campion,’ he said. ‘Losing old Paul’s bad enough, but you can’t imagine what it’s been like this week. We haven’t been able to call ourselves our own. Gina seems to be going to pieces altogether. Is there any way of finding out what the police have in their minds? I know you’ll do your best for us. Have you found out anything?’

Mr Campion, who was employed with a cocktail-shaker at the cabinet on the other side of the room, spoke over his shoulder.

‘I went down to Scotland Yard,’ he said, ‘but Stanislaus Oates is on leave, and Tanner and Pillow, the men in charge of your business, were quite polite, but they weren’t giving anything away. However, I shouldn’t worry. Old Salley, the Coroner, is a good scout; a fierce old boy, rather abrupt, but hasn’t held the office all this time without learning a thing or two. Have the police been round much since the postponement?’

‘Round much …!’ Mike groaned. ‘They’re living in the office. We’ve all made statements till we’re black in the face. Gina had a beastly experience, too. I persuaded her to go out a bit – sitting indoors brooding was doing her no good. She had a luncheon date with the Adelaide Chappel woman – the soprano. They went down to Boulestin’s, and afterwards Madame Chappel had to go to Cook’s, of all places. She always books through them, apparently, and she was off to Belgrade to sing in a concert there. Gina had nothing better to do, and went with her. She got the impression she was being followed, and actually saw a detective inquiring about her from a clerk. Since then
there
’s been a man outside the flat. It’s damnable, Campion, absolutely damnable! Why shouldn’t she turn up at the inquest? Why shouldn’t any of us? What have the police got up their sleeves?’

Mr Campion handed his guest a cocktail before he spoke.

‘What about all these statements you’ve been making?’ he said. ‘I suppose they’ve been questioning you on your original essay dictated to the Coroner’s Officer?’

‘Have they not!’ Mike spoke explosively. ‘I’ve gone over all that a dozen times, and so has Gina, to say nothing of poor old Curley and the poor little beast who found the body. They come to see us every day. This morning they were on a new track.’

He drank the cocktail without tasting it and his eyes were fixed anxiously on Campion.

‘They ask questions the whole time,’ he said, ‘but they never tell you anything. To-day it was all the Thursday night stuff. Can you remember what you did last Thursday night – not yesterday, but the week before?’

Campion pricked up his ears. ‘Thursday night?’ he said. ‘Did they ask everybody?’

‘Oh, rather! I asked Pillow – a funny little chap, Campion, a sort of good class head-gardener, the last person on earth to be a detective – if they’d fixed the time of death, but he wouldn’t say anything. Simply smiled surreptitiously.’

Mr Campion sat down on the edge of the opposite chair.

‘Did he ask you about any special time on Thursday?’

‘Yes. Between eight and nine o’clock. You’ve never heard such a tedious business. The whole office went through it. Poor Curley was nearly off her head. John couldn’t remember where he was and she had to hunt up engagement-books and phone through to inquisitive friends and business acquaintances. Finally it transpired that he was at the dinner given by the Quill Club to Lutzow, the psychologist. The secretary remembered him arriving at ten to eight and he didn’t get back till eleven or twelve. Curley herself appears to have been in a tube train on the
Morden
line. I was out until ten to nine. Gina was alone in the flat waiting for Paul. All simple ordinary activities, but difficult to remember when you’re asked suddenly. Frankly, what’s worrying me is that as far as I can see there’s an ordinary explanation for the poor chap’s death. The carbon monoxide must have soaked into the room and gassed him. The explanation of the locked door I suggested to Pillow was something like this: I think he went down there, let himself in, and left the key in the lock. The door swung to, and someone else, one of the employees, saw the key in the lock, turned it and took it upstairs and put it back in its place. Now they’re probably too frightened to admit it.’

Mr Campion considered. ‘What did Sergeant Pillow say to that?’

Mike shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, you know what these policemen are! They’re so darned clever. He said he’d look into it, and went on questioning me.’

‘How’s your cousin taking it?’ Mr Campion put the question mildly.

‘Who? John?’ Mike permitted himself a faint smile. ‘He’s quite fantastic. Simply doesn’t realize that anything’s up. Treats the police as though they were Literary Agents he’d never heard of, and spends his spare time thinking out little obscure paragraphs to send to the newspapers explaining why the funeral has been delayed. John’s only thinking about Barnabas, Limited. He’s believed so long that its reputation is sacred that he doesn’t recognize a scandal when it comes along. He’s had all the staff in crêpe bands if you please, and has made arrangements for a very quiet and respectable funeral at Golders Green on the day after the inquest.’

Campion replenished the empty glass.

‘Mrs Brande doesn’t mind all these details taken off her hands, of course!’ he ventured.

‘Gina? Oh, no.’ Mike spoke bitterly. ‘I think Gina always realized that Paul belonged to the firm much more than to her. He – well, he neglected her in an impossible fashion, you know.’

He lowered his eyes as he spoke and busied himself lighting a cigarette.

Mr Campion did not speak, and after a pause the other man went on.

‘Paul wasn’t a subtle soul at all,’ he said, ‘and he had the disconcerting habit of working himself into a fever to get hold of beautiful things and then forgetting all about them. It was the same with everything. He didn’t appreciate the things he had.’

Mr Campion heaved a piece of coal into the centre of the blaze.

‘As much as you might have done?’ he suggested softly.

Rather to his surprise, Mike’s dark eyes met his own squarely.

‘That’s the trouble,’ the younger man said quietly.

‘How far has it gone?’ inquired Mr Campion.

‘Not at all, thank God.’ Mike spoke fervently. ‘She’s not particularly interested in me. I’ve just been about and we’ve naturally gone around together, but that’s all. You don’t understand Gina, Campion. No one does. I hope to heaven we can keep her out of this.’

Mr Campion was silent. For a moment he was aware of forces and counter-forces beneath the surface of the quiet lives surrounding Barnabas, Limited. There were revelations to come, he knew, some of them hideous, some of them piteous and others fantastic in their unexpectedness. He also knew that the man in front of him did not dream that once the searchlight of police and Press was turned upon them there could be nothing hidden, nothing protected, and that beneath the glare little intimate things would stand out in unnatural prominence.

Aloud he said: ‘You ought to have married years ago, Mike.’

The other man stirred. ‘I’m damned glad I didn’t. Things are complicated enough as they are. Forget it and shut up about it. I don’t know why I came to you, blethering about my secret affairs when there’s open trouble to discuss. Hullo, who’s this?’

His last remark was occasioned by the sound of a woman’s
voice
in the hall. They had not heard her ring, and when Lugg showed the black-clad figure into the room a moment later they were taken by surprise.

‘Gina! What are you doing here?’ Mike rose to his feet and went towards her. All trace of his nerviness of a moment before had vanished. He had himself well in hand, Mr Campion noticed approvingly.

Gina stared at him without a word of greeting and turned abruptly to Campion.

‘You didn’t mind me coming, did you?’ she said hastily. ‘I’m going mad sitting up alone in the flat, wondering what the police are thinking. I even sent for the doctor, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. Albert, what are they going to
do
on Tuesday?’

‘Talk and talk and talk for hours, and write it all down by hand in the copy-book,’ said Mike easily. ‘Look here, suppose you come and sit down in this expensive-looking chair and let Campion give you a White Lady.’

She turned to him and her wide grey eyes searched his face anxiously. He met her scrutiny smiling.

‘Things are going to be all right,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. You look fine. Did you design all that white collaretting? What d’you call it – a jabot or a bertha?’

‘Mike, I can’t bear it,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘Albert, tell me, what’s happened?’

She sat down in the chair as she spoke and her pale face was raised to Campion’s appealingly.

‘He doesn’t know any more than we do, Gina, but he says the Coroner is a wise old boy who isn’t likely to make mistakes.’

Mike spoke soothingly and pulled another chair forward and sat down in it between them. The girl seized at the straw of comfort.

‘Still, people do make mistakes, don’t they?’ she said slowly. ‘To the police things look different, worse than they are. I could see that when I was interviewed by Inspector Tanner last night. I told him something, and I could see as he wrote it down that he thought – well, that he thought
about
it in a different way from the one in which it happened.’

‘Tell us about it.’ Campion handed her a glass as he made the suggestion.