The Beckoning Lady (29 page)

Mr. Campion seized his elbow with much the same force as Minnie's young man had taken hers, and led him a little apart.

“How's the Botany class?” he enquired. “Thank you for your communication. I trust you got mine.”

Whippet blinked. “Nice of you,” he said vaguely. “I just needed to set our mind at rest, you know. Minnie happy?”

“I don't know. Should she be?”

A faintly puzzled expression, if the term is not too specific, passed a leisurely way over Mr. Whippet's indeterminate features.

“Oh yes,” he murmured. “I really think she should be. Do I see Solly L. over there?”

Campion looked round. Far away, among the confetti-coloured crowd, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a grey bowler hat. When he turned back again Whippet had gone. Mr. Campion set off through the chattering company, but before he could catch up with the grey bowler he was waylaid by no less an obstacle than old Lady Glebe, Prune's mother, who had ditched The Revver somewhere and was wandering about loose. She was one of those large pleasant old women whose very soft flesh has black patches on its surface, and is attached to the main structure by a series of tight ribbons, one round the neck, one lower down. She stepped nimbly in front of Campion and looked deeply into his eyes with very nice if misguided grey ones.

“Hallo, young man,” she said flatteringly. “How's your father?”

“As well as can be expected,” said Mr. Campion, who had been orphaned for twenty years.

“I'm so glad, I thought he was dead. I want to see you.” She tucked her arm through his possessively. “This young man of Prune's . . .?”

“Yes?” Mr. Campion was defensive.

“I don't know him.”

He hesitated. “He's a very distinguished man in his own line.”

“Oh, I know he is.” She spoke with a warmth which surprised him. “And entertaining. He spent an evening with us, when was it?—the night before last.” She paused to make a deep grunting sound which he assumed to be laughter. “Kept us in stitches,” she said, using the term as if she had just invented it.

Mr. Campion swallowed. “You liked him?”

“Oh, very much.” She lowered her voice with elderly wisdom. “So kind. She's wearing his jewels, you know.”

“Really?” said Mr. Campion.

“Quite the finest jade I've ever seen.”

Mr. Campion took a firm hold of himself. She was a Gallantry, he remembered. One must hold on to that.

“So knowledgeable, that's what I liked,” the gentle voice continued. “He listened to me as no other young man has ever listened, and I told him all about the societies I belong to, the ones I have my long correspondences with. I told him all about Professor Tarot, and the High Priestess, and Madame Delaware, and that man who runs the Guild of Light—what's his name, you know him.”

“I don't,” said Mr. Campion with some dignity.

“Ah, perhaps not. But Charles
does
,” said Lady Glebe with sudden distinctness. “That's the amazing thing. He knows each one of them personally. Some of them live in his manor—that's his district, you know, a technical term. He knows them well, and he was able to tell me about them first hand. A most useful man. Prune seems delighted and he's doing her good. She looks quite pretty today. The Revver pointed it out.”

When Mr. Campion left her at last he felt giddy, but he was a determined man and he pressed on to where he had last seen the grey bowler. He located it at last just outside the house. The man under it was seated on a low parapet which enclosed a small terrace outside the glass doors of
the drawing-room. He was drinking champagne and talking to Amanda. Solly L. was a Jew and a bookmaker of great reputation, and since he was also a sensitive person he had settled his private problems in his own way and always made a point of dressing the part. In figure he was not unlike Mr. Lugg, and it was said of him that he always took a copy of the latest joke drawing from the sporting papers when he visited his tailor. At the moment he made a colourful and splendid figure.

“No, I don't like rings,” he was saying to Amanda as Campion came up. “Never wear 'em. Get in the way if they're big enough to see. Hullo Mr. C. Enjoying yourself? What a day, eh, what a day.”

Mr. Campion sat down beside him and Amanda gave him her glass.

“It keeps getting filled,” she said. “I don't quite know how.”

Solly laughed, the essential sadness of his boldly moulded face brightening with amusement.

“I do,” he remarked. “Look at 'im. Good old Tonker. He's conducting this party as if it was a piece of music for massed bands. I've been sitting here looking at him while I've been chatting to Her Ladyship. It's beautiful to watch. He does it all by ear.” He nodded to where Tonker was standing in his beautiful blazer, stomach in, rump out, pads springy, and invisible whiskers quivering. He was talking to a group who were laughing at him, and was sipping his wine, but his eyes wandered from time to time and every now and again someone, usually a child—and there seemed to be millions of them—came up to him and received some casual instruction.

“Do you know what he's saying?” Solly flicked the ash off a property-sized cigar. “I do. I listened to him once. He says ‘It's too quiet over in that corner. Go and see why and come and tell me.' Then it's ‘Go and get a bottle from Auntie Poppy. She's only a famous actress and the Chief Constable's wife. And three or four glasses. And take them up very carefully to the back landing where you'll
find three old gentlemen, one of them's only Genappe, sitting about smoking. Just hand it to the one who's awake and come back.' Then, to a legal eagle who looks as if he's still on the bench, ‘My dear feller, how charming to see you. And you, and you. You need a drink. I wonder if you'd mind? You see this french window here? Go through it and on the left you'll see a bureau. Open it and you'll find all the necessary. Start a little bar. Do you know the Lord-knows-who, and General Whatnot? I'll bring them over.'” He ducked his head and laughed. “It's a poem,” he said. “It's a gift. What a
maître
he'd make if ever he capitalised it. But he wouldn't, you know. It's an art with him, the same as her painting is with his good lady. He'd do anything for his parties, Tonker would. Commit murder. Anything.”

The husband and wife both looked at him sharply, but he had spoken innocently and was holding up his glass to a willowy nymph who, with George Meredith in earnest attention, was pouring nectar from a golden vase.

“I like to see the youngsters waiting on the old'uns,” said Solly. “Gives 'em something to do. The old'uns have got their uses too,” he added, permitting his liquid eyes to rest on Campion for a moment. “Poor old William, eh? What a punter! What a friend!” He raised his glass and they followed him, Mr. Campion having acquired one from a strange small boy who had placed it carefully beside him as he passed by, intent on some other errand.

“Uncle William.” Amanda's honey-coloured eyes were soft. “He was a pet. I know he was old and tired but I'm sorry he's gone.”

“So am I. Ought to be.” Solly's sidelong glance was full of hints. “No. But I mean it,” he said. “I do indeed. I liked the old boy. He was straight and he was sporting and I wish there were more like him.”

Mr. Campion who had pricked up his ears, was forming a delicate question, when Amanda sprang to her feet.

“It is!” she cried. “Look, Albert, right over there. Mary and Guffy and the children.”

Mr. Campion followed her gaze to where, in the far distance, he saw a friend of his youth and Amanda's elder sister so surrounded by golden striplings that the whole bunch looked like a sheaf of daffodils with buds. Amanda sped away but Campion lingered. He was curious and for the first time he thought the Mole's flowery way was beginning to show a gleam of reason. He made a guess.

“One thing about Uncle William was very characteristic,” he began cautiously. “He always wore both belt and braces.”

Solly began to chuckle. He laughed until he coughed, and slapped his checkered thigh.

“That's one way of putting it,” he agreed. “Covered himself every time.”

Mr. Campion was pretty sure of his ground now, but there is a rigid etiquette in such matters and he did not wish to transgress. He guessed again.

“Does Minnie know?”

Solly ceased to smoke and leant forward, heavily confidential.

“D'you know, I was beginning to wonder that,” he said. “I made certain she'd get my letter this morning. He opened the account for her and made the bet in her name, you see, without telling her. I never pay out until the end of the week, of course, and I was a bit late because I didn't hear of his death until Monday, and then I had to take it up with the people I'd laid the bet off with, didn't I?”

“The Mole?”

“You know a lot, my lad.” Solly was suspicious. “William told you, I suppose?”

“He said something last time I saw him,” said Mr. Campion not entirely untruthfully. “It must have been a most unusual bet. Why did you accept it?”

Solly shrugged his shoulders. “Why bring that up? He was an old client. He begged and prayed of me. It was the only way he could beat the death duties, and it didn't
seem much of a risk, really, because we had all the posh specialists, you know. Oh yes, we did the thing fair. I had the reports on my desk a week after they'd examined him. They said he was good for a couple of years, as far as they knew. Anyway, I was satisfied and that was that.”

“The Mole didn't kick?”

“Why should it?” Solly was truculent. “I wasn't kicking. They take their time, you know, but I got the okay yesterday. The bet covered the last six months of the five-year gift period. If he hopped it in the last six months I agreed to pay, and I have. Minnie's got the money, or she ought to have it if the letter's not lost, and my money's real money, you know. It's the only stuff of its kind that is. There's no tax on it. She can pay her debts or go to Paris on it. Or both,” he added after a pause. “There's plenty there. Seven-to-two in thousands. Good old William. I don't grudge it him.”

He broke off to raise his hat to a passing vision.

“See who that was?” he enquired. “Lili Ricki. Lovely voice, lovely woman. Everybody's here today, ain't they? Lots of Press too. I didn't know Tonker went in for that. But I've seen Kidd and Green, and I thought they were crime. The Augusts are due, they tell me. They're cards.” He hesitated. “You don't think she knows, then. You don't think Minnie's got the letter.”

“I should be very surprised,” said Mr. Campion. “She's not reticent.”

“Oh well, I feel better for that. A pleasure to come.” The bookmaker drained his glass and, putting it carefully in a flower-bed, rose to his feet. He was laughing at himself again. “I felt a bit flat,” he confessed. “I'd got it in my head I'd be received with open arms, see? And as you know, I love children. And I'd prepared a bit of a surprise. I've got an old-fashioned hokey-pokey box in my car, and I got five and a half gallons of ice cream at Chelmsford as we came through, and I drove up and . . .”

Mr. Campion could hardly bear to hear it. The vision of Solly playing the elephantine uncle at this most
sophisticated of gatherings was bad enough, but the actuality was far more exquisitely painful.

“Oh dear,” he said.

“But of course she didn't know!”

The Fairy Ginsberg, that indefatigable sprite from the East who is always turning up in the most English of Athenian woods, was joyously reborn in the melting eyes of Solly L. “That accounts for everything. She just came up and said ‘Hallo Solly dear. Nice to see you. Here's Tonker', and when I turned round my chauffeur had taken the stuff out and it had been seized on and carted away by a crowd of rotten little kids and a woman dressed in wallpaper.” He laughed and lit a new cigar. “Still, they enjoyed it,” he said, “and if she doesn't
know
I must tell her. What a nice little place, eh? I like a river. I'm a bit of a poet myself, you know. I can see anything floating down that stream on a day like this—swans, roses, anything. There's some smashing girls here. Look at that one. What an eyeful, eh?”

Mr. Campion turned his head and remained staring. The crowd had parted for an instant and Prune and her escort were before him.

Prune only knew of two dressmakers, Miss Spice in Pontisbright and Edmund Norman in London and Paris. Because it was to be the greatest day in her life she had gone, not unnaturally, to Norman. She had told him everything about herself and left it to him. She had the height and figure of a model, and at the only school she had ever attended they had taught her how to walk, if little else. The rest of the miracle had been performed by Charlie Luke, who walked now a little behind her looking as if he knew it. Her dress was made of tailored cream, which flattered her skin and her hair, and her shoes and long gloves and little handbag were all fashioned from the palest milk chocolate, or something very like it in tint and texture. Round her throat she wore the jade necklace, which deepened rather than echoed the colour of her eyes, and in her hand was the flagrant posy for a lover
which Old Harry had wound according to the ancient way.

She was so ecstatically happy that she glowed with it as if she wore a glory, and every man who set eyes on her that day remembered her for the rest of his life.

When she passed Mr. Campion she smiled at him so warmly that in spite of himself his face smiled back.

“A knock-out,” said Solly, sniffing sentimentally. “I like the look of the bloke too. I've seen him about somewhere. Happy as a lord, isn't he? You could warm your hands at him. Well, I must go and find Minnie. I'm enjoying myself, I don't mind telling you. I can't think of anything that could spoil a day like this, can you?”