Coroner's Pidgin (24 page)

His audience was listening to him with sympathy, and a smile curled Oates's thin lips. “This is fine,” he said. “This is what we want to know.”

“Well,” said Don again. “Mark reported the house was just what he'd read about too, until he was taken into the drawing-room, and there he said he'd never seen such fine pictures in his life. He recognized one of them from reproductions, and he thought this must be a copy until he looked at it carefully and realized he was seeing the real thing. He said the old lady had no taste at all, herself, and he mentioned it to me as one of the minor mysteries of this Island. I was short of a story to tell Dad in my letter, and I just wrote down what he told me. The picture was a Venus of some sort, I forget what, but I've made a note of it, and I
put it in the letter. There, that's all, sir, that's the best I can do, I'm afraid.”

Oates remained looking at him, and his smile was genuine.

“We're very grateful to you,” he said. “It's a coincidence, an extraordinary coincidence, unless—Lieutenant Evers, do you know who gave Major Elder the introduction to Miss Pork?”

Don shut his mouth, and to his chagrin blushed violently. The colour rushed up over his face and his eyes grew very fierce. “I'm afraid that's all I can tell you.”

Holly would have spoken, but Oates was before him.

“All right,” he said easily, “we can't force you, and we don't want to. We'll have to contact the Major, though. Perhaps he won't want to oblige us, and then we'll have to try the lady.”

Mr. Campion ventured to interfere. “I take it there's no blame attached to the introduction?” he said to Oates. “I mean, no one who had any special reason for wishing Miss Pork's drawing-room to remain unseen would give anyone on earth an introduction to her, would they? I may be wrong, but the whole thing sounds a little careless to me. Did Mrs. Susan Shering tell your friend to call on Miss Pork, Lieutenant?”

Don's expression betrayed him, and Campion was genuinely regretful. “I'm sorry,” he said, “but I couldn't think of anyone else over here whom you would feel in duty bound to protect. She can't be involved in this, you know. This isn't her kind of party at all.”

“I think my nephew is right, you know, Lieutenant. Innocence is a remarkably apparent thing.” The Bishop, who had been temporarily forgotten, made the remark rather like a judge from the Olympic seclusion of the Bench, and Don threw in his chivalrous hand.

“Very well,” he said. “I'm relying on you though, Mr. Campion. I know Mrs. Shering can't have anything serious to hide and I didn't want her to be bothered. It was she who told Mark to look up the lady.” He paused and looked round him. “It was the most casual thing you can imagine,” he said. “She and I were having dinner together at the
Berkeley, and Mark came in. He stood chatting with us for a bit and she asked him where he was stationed, and he said it was a very picturesque but remarkably uncomfortable little hole called Chessing. She said, ‘Oh dear, I know it is, but if you need a bath or a glass of gooseberry wine at any time, you ought to call on Dorothy Pork'.” He paused, and a faint smile passed over his worried young face. “She didn't see anything amusing in the name until we laughed, and we said we didn't think there was anybody called ‘Dorothy Pork' anyway, and we started fooling, and—well, that's what happened.”

It was so obviously exactly what
had
happened that even Holly was silent. It was the Bishop who asked the question which had come into all their minds.

“Do I understand Miss Pork was a relative of Mrs. Shering?” he enquired.

“Oh, no.” Don seemed horrified at this suggestion. “No. She said she was a friend of the aunt who brought Susan, I mean Mrs. Shering, up. She just said she was a character.”

“The English rose of yester-year, no doubt,” said Mr. Campion absently. “Dear me, yes, that's very clear, isn't it, Mr. Oates?”

The Chief said it was indeed, and with many apologies and expressions of goodwill on the one side, and reserved friendliness on the other, the visitors were escorted downstairs by Tovey and Mr. Campion. As they shook hands Don smiled shyly at Campion.

“What a wine you missed!” he said.

Campion laughed. “Did you drink it?”

“We did,” said the Bishop primly. “A very pleasant evening.”

As they came back into the Chief's office, Oates looked across the room at Campion. “It's getting very close to Carados,” he said.

“It certainly is,” said Holly, “there's no getting away from it. It's always just one step away from him every time.”

Mr. Campion thrust his hands in his pockets and walked up and down the room.

“Nobleman gives the friend of the aunt of his affianced
bride a hundred thousand quids' worth of stolen art treasures, all so well known that the first intelligent visitor spots them,” he said. “What a chap, eh?”

Oates frowned. “It sounds absurd when you put it like that,” he admitted, but Holly was annoyed.

“It's highly suspicious, Mr. Campion,” he said. “I know it sounds an amazing story, but the whole thing is out of the ordinary. We're getting on, though. Do you think we ought to see Mrs. Shering now, Mr. Oates, or . . . ?”

“No.” The Chief got up. “No,” he said again, “I think the next person we see is Miss Pork. I tell you what, Holly, we'll
all
go.”

“I'm rising forty-four,” said Mr. Campion suddenly, “and unless you count the bang on the head I had last night, I've not slept for forty-eight hours.”

“Then you can do it in the car. Come on, Holly.”

“Now, sir?” The Chief Inspector was startled by this sudden display of youthful zeal. Oates was shaking himself gently like an elderly dog; he felt for his pipe, his money and his matches, settled his coat, and reached for his hat on the desk.

“We'll go now,” he said. “We'll go before we've got the report from Pelly, we'll go before Yeo comes back. We'll go before either that man Sloane of yours or this pleasant soldier-boy and his clerical friend have time to breathe a word to a soul. Tovey,” he added, “get me a car and a revolver.”

Campion began to laugh. “You've forgotten the cigar,” he said, “otherwise it's an excellent impersonation. Come on, Holly, now we're going to see how they used to do it in the old days.”

The Inspector looked scandalized, but whether at the
lèsemajesté
or the unprecedented interference of his Chief was not apparent. Oates was smiling faintly.

“We'll take a sergeant,” he said, “just for the look of the thing.”

IT WAS AN
angry-coloured house, puce rather than red, and it skulked at the end of a narrow drive flanked with too many shrubs; an essay in Victorian Gothic at its worst. They were early, but not indecently so. Mr. Campion had insisted on eating, and Holly had pressed to be allowed to make certain checks on Angus Sloane's story before they acted upon it. But all the same, it was only just after nine when Tovey, in his capacity as the necessary sergeant, brought the car up to the porch with the stained-glass windows.

Miss Pork kept them waiting in a hall which to searchers after beauty was discouraging. Despite the Chief's card, she sent word that she was at breakfast and would see Mr. Oates when she had finished, and Holly, who took a suspicious view of the excuse, was startled by the discovery that this was indeed a fact. Through panels of iron-work and glass in the door immediately on their right, a dim figure could be seen at a meal.

Oates grunted amiably at the elderly maid who brought the message, and seated himself on a hard, wooden chair which had a heart cut out in its waisted back. He looked both patient and immovable. Holly was more fidgety. He stood very near the dreadful door, and peered through it at times, his face set in disapproval. Tovey, imitating his Chief, took another wooden chair, but Mr. Campion wandered.

It had occurred to him that he had seen houses like this before; he looked for the door of a room which would have a southern view, and having located it, he drifted towards it casually.

Presently, when he was forgotten, he opened it gently, popped his head inside, and came out looking amazed. After that, his impatience to see Miss Pork was almost unbearable.

She came at last, bustling through the baroquerie, a surprise to everybody. Miss Pork had never been an English rose, nor any other flower; she was made of different stuff. She was very small, a fact which she countered by holding herself bolt upright, and she was scarlet. Mr. Campion
thought he never had seen a redder human being; red face, red hands, she even had limp reddish hair, which escaped its moorings and hung fiercely round a protuberant red forehead. Her clothes were utilitarian and drooped backwards, and on her feet were large upturned, patriotically wooden shoes. She had a wide mouth and a voice with a quack in it, and as she said herself, she was usually talking. Bright round eyes peered at them each in turn, and flickered as Oates rose to meet her.

“Well,” she said, “what have you come for, eh?”

It was a direct attack of flame-thrower effect, and Campion thought how fitting it was that just such a castle should contain such a dragon.

Oates was not disconcerted. He remained sadly contemplative. “Are you Miss Dorothy Pork, ma'am?”

“I am. And you're Mr. Oates, Chief of the C.I.D. Well, state your business. If you've got something to say, say it; we can't waste time, there's a lot to be done. My goodness, if I stood about all the morning I don't know where we'd be. These are busy times; I've got work to do, you know.”

“I dare say you have, ma'am.” Oates was mild as ever. “We're none of us idle. I've come down from London to have a word or two with you about some goods which you took over from the Peters and Jack storage company. You have got them, haven't you?”

Miss Pork grew darker in colour, a surprising and even alarming sight. “This is the limit,” she said, dating herself. “Really the outside edge. I suppose you sent that commercial traveller who gave himself such airs. You're doing this under one of those disgraceful new laws, are you? Or haven't you any authority at all? I shouldn't be surprised; I shall ring up my solicitor.”

“Now that would be a good idea,” said Oates, with sudden enthusiasm. “Very sensible. Does he live near here? Could you get him over?”

Taken out of her stride, a little grunting laugh escaped Miss Pork. “No, don't be silly,” she said unexpectedly. “He's a dreadful old fool. What is it you want? Only don't keep me standing about.”

It was not that she melted so much as that she cooled a little. She smiled, too, widely, transforming herself into a slightly merry old dragon, in a way which was disarming. Oates smiled back at her.

“Have you got the stuff here, ma'am?” he enquired.

“Well, I've got a few pictures,” she said, her good humour persisting, “and a few little ornaments. But I know whom they belong to, and I'm only doing it as a favour to him. I made that very clear at the time. Some of them are in here. Wipe your feet, won't you? I've just had the carpet cleaned; my mother made it many years ago and it's ra-ther precious. This way.”

They trooped after her into the room that Mr. Campion had found and stood transfixed. Even Holly, who did not set up to have rigid views on the art of interior decoration, was silenced. It was a large room with huge, narrow windows and vast, thick curtains, but even so the effect was cramping. Mr. Campion had seen furniture like it before, but not in use. Two large corner-seats with trellised backs which turned into shelves for pottery dominated the far end of the apartment, and strange, many-seated stuffed contraptions sprawled in the foreground. Chandeliers in coloured beads, and one very lovely old candelabra hung from the ceiling, and the wool carpet on which they trod bore evidence that Miss Pork's taste was hereditary.

The Croker Venus smiled wantonly from the wall just above a sensible office desk, and a truly magnificent bronze horse rose like a flame from a rosewood bracket hung with alternate ebony and ivory beads.

The Constable was nearly hidden by a pair of Benares candlesticks, a couple of very charming Chelsea figures, and a marble clock in the shape, roughly, of the Parthenon.

“Of course,” said Miss Pork cheerfully, “many of these treasures are my own. “Now that,” she went on, pointing to a small print framed in loops of brass wire which flanked the Venus, “that little Scottie with his baby mistress. I know it's only a Christmas card, but I've kept it for years because I like it. It may be sentimental, but it's very well done. That girl in the chemise next to it is a picture I'm minding. One
or two people have admired it, but I was in two minds about having it up; it was only because the cellar was damp and I didn't want to get it injured. It's not everybody's meat and some years ago I should have hesitated to hang it in any downstairs room. But times have changed, haven't they? And a good thing too. I like to see these Land Girls in their knickers; so sensible and healthy.”

She paused for breath and re-grouping, but no one seized the opportunity. Oates was looking round him very carefully, Holly was nervous, aware of ignorance, and Mr. Campion appeared lost in wonder and delight.

“Now you don't just want to see pretty things,” said Miss Pork taking in hand a situation to which she was doubtless used. “You want to talk and you want to know what is mine and what is not. Isn't that so?”

“Is this all?” enquired Campion, suddenly emerging from his enchantment. “I mean, is it all here?”

Miss Pork's gooseberry eyes were turned upon him in astonishment. “All that came up from the hall? Oh, dear me, no, of course not. I didn't move the cases which were in the
dry
end of the cellar, I only peeped into those. I really haven't had time. There's a lot to do in a house like this. You'd be surprised, being a man.”