The Beckoning Lady
Read The Beckoning Lady Online
Authors: Margery Allingham
Contents
Also by Margery Allingham in the Albert Campion series
Campion's glorious summer in Pontisbright is blighted by death. Amidst the preparations for Minnie and Tonker Cassand's fabulous summer party a murder is discovered and it falls to Campion to unravel the intricate web of motive, suspicion and deduction with all his imagination and skill.
Margery Allingham was born in London in 1904. She attended the Perse School in Cambridge before returning to London to the Regent Street Polytechnic. Her father â author H. J. Allingham â encouraged her to write, and was delighted when she contributed to her aunt's cinematic magazine,
The Picture Show,
at the age of eight.
Her first novel was published when she was seventeen. In 1928 she published her first detective story,
The White Cottage Mystery,
which had been serialised in the
Daily Express.
The following year, in
The Crime at Black Dudley,
she introduced the character who was to become the hallmark of her writing â Albert Campion. Her novels heralded the more sophisticated suspense genre: characterised by her intuitive intelligence, extraordinary energy and accurate observation, they vary from the grave to the openly satirical, whilst never losing sight of the basic rules of the classic detective tale. Famous for her London thrillers, such as
Hide My Eyes
and
The Tiger in the Smoke,
she has been compared to Dickens in her evocation of the city's shady underworld.
In 1927 she married the artist, journalist and editor Philip Youngman Carter. They divided their time between their Bloomsbury flat and an old house in the village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy in Essex. Margery Allingham died in 1966.
The Crime at Black Dudley
Mystery Mile
Look to the Lady
Police at the Funeral
Sweet Danger
Death of a Ghost
Dancers in Mourning
Flowers for the Judge
The Case of the Late Pig
Mr Campion and Others
The Fashion in Shrouds
Black Plumes
Coroner's Pidgin
Traitor's Purse
The Casebook of Mr Campion
More Work for the Undertaker
The Tiger in the Smoke
Hide My Eyes
The China Governess
The Mind Readers
A Cargo of Eagles
(appearing)
ALBERT CAMPION, thought to be on holiday in Pontisbright.
RUPERT, his son.
DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR CHARLES LUKE, recuperating in Pontisbright.
TONKER CASSANDS, friend to Campion, inventor of the Glübalübalum, married to Minnie.
MAGERSFONTEIN LUGG, a London fellow, attracted by Miss Diane.
OLD HARRY, a country person, protector of Miss Diane.
SIDNEY SIMON SMITH, alias âthe S.S.S. man', a palindromic V.I.P.
WESTY STRAW, step-great-grandnephew to Minnie, an American subject.
GEORGE MEREDITH, friend to Westy.
âFANNY' GENAPPE, a millionaire.
SUPERINTENDENT FRED SOUTH of the rural C.I.D.
SOLLY L., a bookmaker.
WALLY, friend to Tonker.
THE POLICE CONSTABLE at Pontisbright.
CHOC, a dog.
THE IMPERIAL AUGUSTS, a celebrated troupe.
THE LADY AMANDA, married to Albert Campion, mother of Rupert.
MINNIE CASSANDS, née Miranda Straw, celebrated woman painter, A.R.A., owner of âThe Beckoning Lady', married to Tonker.
PRUNELLA SCROOP-DORY, in love with Luke.
EMMA BERNADINE, friend to Minnie, wife to Jake, mother of Blue Drawers and Yellow Drawers, living at the cottage at âThe Beckoning Lady'.
MISS PINKERTON, secretary to Genappe, on loan to Smith.
ANNABELLE, sister to Westy.
MISS DIANE, alias Dinah, employed by the hour at at the cottage at âThe Beckoning Lady'.
MARY, niece to Amanda.
TOMMASINA, wife to Wally.
LADY GLEBE, mother to Prune.
BLUE DRAWERS and YELLOW DRAWERS, twins, daughters to Emma.
THE HOSTESS AT THE INN.
Guests, Clowns, Augusts, Rustics, Police, etc.
(who do not appear)
WILLIAM FARADAY, alias Uncle William, deceased.
LEONARD TERENCE DENNIS OHMAN, an official, deceased.
SIR LEO PURSUIVANT, Chief Constable at Kepesake.
POPPY, his wife.
JAKE BERNADINE, a painter, married to Emma.
Mr. BURT and Mr. HARE, alias The Bodysnatchers, dealers in scrap.
THE SHEIKH HASSAN-BEN-SABAH, owner of a notorious race track at Merdek, N. Africa.
Friends, Relations, Enemies, etc.
This Book is Affectionately Inscribed to my Old Friends and their Merry Wives
Margery Allingham
None of the characters in this book is a portrait of a living person nor did the incidents here recorded ever take place.
“It is very unlucky to interfere with a marriage of long standing. If the man doesn't kill you, you'll certainly get an earful from the woman.”
Chief Superintendent Stanislaus Oates in a Lecture to Young Constables
Â
“But who,” said Florizel at last, “who is this lady who is for ever beckoning?”
“That,” replied he, “is beyond my knowledge. Some aver that she is Love, or Dame Fortune. Some, honour in the field. Some, the Muse herself. And the old have an unpleasant idea that she is Death. But all I can tell you about her for certain is that her eyes are laughing, and that she is without mercy.”
CONTES DES FEES
(from the translation by Anthony Greene, 1929)
Extract from
The Times
, Monday, June 19th
MR WILLIAM FARADAY
Mr. William Makepeace Faraday, author of many amusing librettos, died last Saturday in Pontisbright, Suffolk, at the age of eighty-two.
He was born in Cambridge in the late 'sixties, the son of Dr. James Faraday, one-time Master of Ignatius, and Mrs. Caroline Faraday, whom all who knew the University in the days preceding the first World War will remember for her dominant charm and, without ingratitude, for the over-aweing hospitality which she dispensed to the undergraduates of that remote and golden age.
William Faraday was educated at Charterhouse and St. John's College, Cambridge, and when he left the University he settled down to a curiously retired existence in the home of his parents, and it was only after the death of his mother in 1932, when he was fifty-nine, that his remarkable talent became evident.
His first publication,
The Memoirs of an Old Buffer
, which appeared in 1934, was one of the most successful humorous books of the decade, and in a matter of months he discovered himself a literary figure, but it was not until the late James Sutane perceived in the volume of pretended reminiscences the ideal libretto for his forthcoming musical show,
The Buffer
, that William Faraday's true gift was fully appreciated.
The Buffer
, which ran at the Argosy Theatre for five hundred and twenty-four nights, was followed by many other extravaganzas from his fertile imagination, amongst them
Uncle Goat, Sweet Adeline
, and the outstandingly successful
Harrogate Ho
! a revival of which enlivened the late 'forties.
Mr. Faraday's influence on contemporary wit has been considerable. His was the charm of artless prevarication, never crude nor overdone, but endearing to those who could appreciate the gentle absurdity of Dignity skating on the thinnest of ice with the placid
sangfroid
of the truly courageous.
As a man he was generally beloved, and a host of friends will miss his shy smile and air of bewildered pleasure at their delighted reception of his sly tall stories. His latter years were spent in happy retirement in the country. He was unmarried and died at the house of a friend.
TWO DEAD MEN
I
IT WAS NO
time for dying. The summer had arrived in glory, trailing fathomless skies and green and gold and particolour as fresh as sunrise, yet death was about, twice.
All through what was left of the first day, one body lay hidden between the steep sides of the dry ditch, secret on a bed of leaves. From the moment when it had toppled so suddenly from the plank bridge leading to the stile it had vanished from sight. The green waves of ribbon grass and periwinkle which fringed the verges had parted as it passed, to swing up again immediately, so that there was now only one way of catching a glimpse of it. That was to step down on the other side, where the chasm was wider and less overgrown, stoop under the bridge where lichen and black fungus made an evil ceiling, and peer into the translucent tunnel beyond.
On the second day only one person did that and no one else passed that way at all.
On the third day in the very early morning, when the sky was a dazzling white and the grass was grey and beaded with dew, there was much unusual foot traffic on the path which led over the stile from the house to the village. Among the first to pass were two rather alarming old women. Each carried a sinister bag, wore very tidy clothes, and spoke with hushed excitement. They rested at the stile, discussing death and the grisly office they had come to perform for it, but neither glanced behind her at the hanging grasses or dreamed for one moment that beneath them lay a second waiting form whose stiffened limbs would have, by that time, taxed all their experience.
Later on that day, when the sun was up, there was much coming and going. Several people from the house made short cuts to the village, and one shook out a shopping bag over the ditch so that with the dust three small items fell idly through the leaves. These were a pin and a paper-clip and a small bronze bead.
The undertaker himself walked that way, since the journey was so much shorter from his wheel-wright's shop than if he had got out his car and gone round by the road. He tripped through the meadows, looking incongruous in his black suit with his rule sticking out of his breast pocket and his face carefully composed for his first glimpse of the bereaved.
After him, in the afternoon, came the ladies, walking in twos and threes, wearing hats and gloves and carrying kind little notes and nosegays to leave at the door. Nearly all paused on the stile for a first glimpse of the water-meadows, flower-spangled and lace-edged in the yellow light, but not one noticed if there was any new and unusual wear on the planks, or observed that there was something dark and different on the edge of a rusty ploughshare which lay on a bald patch under the oak overshadowing the bridge.
It was dark before the one person who now knew the way dared to clamber down under the planks and, with head bent to avoid the lichen, lit a single match and held it high. The body was still there.
It was still there on the next night and the next, but by now it was limp and shrunken into the earth which would not open to receive it.
On the evening of the sixth day there was a quarrel at the stile. Two country lovers met there and the boy was restless and importunate. But the girl, who was at that strange age when every sense is sharpened, took a sudden inexplicable loathing to the place and would not listen. He argued with her and his smooth face was hot and his hair-grease reeked of roses as he nuzzled into her neck. He whispered that the place was so deserted, so hidden with the
spreading tree above them making for darkness, and the steep artificial slope of an embankment providing a screen on one side. But her disgust, which was not for him as she supposed, was overpowering and she thrust him off. He caught at her dress as she climbed away but she struck out at him, caught him more sharply than she had intended, and rushed off down the path sobbing, principally in apprehension. He remained where he was, frustrated and hurt, and he was almost in tears when he dragged the packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. He had only two left of the posh kind which, together with the hair-grease, he kept for courting nights, and when he lit the second one he threw the empty carton over his shoulder into the periwinkle fronds. It slid down out of sight and came to rest on a crumpled lapel.