Death of a Ghost (26 page)

‘There is nothing remarkable about this, of course,' he continued, ‘and so I didn't hear about it, but last weekend there appears to have been some soft of shindy, for the party returned to London in the small hours of Sunday morning looking as though it had taken part in a pitched battle. That's all the information we have at present. It may be nothing at all, of course, but it sounded odd, so I mentioned it. Did Dacre have any property?'

‘None I ever heard of,' said Campion.

He picked up his hat.

‘I think I shall see Rosa-Rosa,' he said. ‘You've no objection, I suppose, Stanislaus?'

‘Oh, Lord, no. Be discreet, of course – but I needn't tell you that. And don't worry, my boy. That man's being watched at every step. I hope for everybody's sake that he doesn't make an attack on the old lady, but if he does, we'll get him.'

In the doorway Campion paused.

‘Stanislaus,' he said, ‘do you think that if you'd known as much as you know now you would have had a chance in ten thousand of saving Mrs Potter?'

Inspector Oates was an honest man. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Perhaps not. But that was very ingenious,' he said.

‘Ingenuity seems to be a peculiarity of Mr Max Fustian's,' said Campion, and went away uncomforted.

At six o'clock that evening he set out upon his search for Rosa-Rosa. For obvious reasons he did not want to visit her in her uncle's delicatessen store on Saffron Hill, but he had a very shrewd idea where to look for her.

He started off down Charlotte Street with every hope of finding her at the ‘Robespierre', and as soon as he turned into the side entrance of that most odd of all London pubs and pressed through the red plush curtains which divided the outer bar from the holy of holies within he caught sight of her, seated on one of the shabby leather sofas in the corner by the fire.

The place was not crowded. Barely half a dozen men sat on the high stools round the bar, and the sketch-covered walls and coloured-paper flecked ceiling were not yet obscured by a haze of tobacco smoke.

The largest party in the room was Rosa-Rosa's own. It consisted of four young men, among whom Campion recognized the sharp-featured Derek Fayre, the cartoonist, whose bitter, slightly obscene drawings appeared occasionally in the more highbrow weeklies. The others were unknown to him, although he was vaguely aware that he had seen the effeminate young man with the side-whiskers on the stage at one of the Sunday shows.

The round man with the pointed beard and the real horn spectacles was a stranger, as was also the young Italian with the black eye who sat on Mrs Dacre's left and held her hand.

Rosa-Rosa had not altered. Even the fact that her head was framed by an enlarged photograph of the 1920 Robespierre children's outing did not lessen the bizarre modernity of her extraordinary appearance.

She wore no hat, her strange immobile features were expressionless, and her yellow hair stuck out flat from the top of her head like the curls in conventional bas-relief.

Campion's immediate problem, which was one of introduction, was settled for him instantly.

As he stood hovering, glass in hand, the girl caught sight of him.

‘Hello,' she said. ‘I met you when my husband was murdered. Come and sit here.'

This greeting, which was uttered at the top of her harsh, high-pitched voice, made a little stir in the room. The people round the bar paused to glance at her curiously, but the plump, capable woman who was serving did not bat an eyelid. Evidently the tragedy in Rosa-Rosa's home life was no news to her.

The plump young man made room for Campion at the table. Rosa-Rosa evidently regarded him as an old friend and he settled down with his beer, the legs of the chair almost in the fireplace as he squeezed in on her right.

After her welcome, introductions seemed superfluous, and the conversation went on where it had left off.

‘My uncle is taking me to his lawyer,' said Rosa-Rosa, who appeared to be in the middle of a story. ‘When we go to the police-court we shall raise hell. I will show that stinker!'

‘What will you do, Rosa-Rosa?' said Fayre, smiling. There was something bantering in his tone, as if he were persuading her to perform.

‘I will do this.'

With one of her lightning changes into electric vivacity Rosa-Rosa did her trick, which consisted of a graphic, and indescribably vulgar pantomimic display, rendered all the more vivid by the contrast with her natural immobility.

Mr Campion was a little startled. It was evident that Rosa-Rosa's lack of English was no deterrent to her powers of expression.

‘Dirty little beast!' said Fayre, laughing. ‘I'd like to see you do that all day.'

‘Get on with the story,' commanded the young man with the beard with weary resignation. ‘I suppose we must hear it.'

Rosa-Rosa stuck out a long, thin tongue at him, and beckoned to the barman.

When the question of further refreshment had been settled the Italian boy cuffed her gently.

‘It's your cottage, isn't it?' he prompted.

Rosa-Rosa choked into her glass.

‘My husband who was murdered gave it to me,' she declared as soon as she recovered. ‘Before we came from Italy he told me it was mine. “We will live there and be happy,” he said.'

‘You loved your husband, didn't you?' said Fayre, still with the smile and as though he spoke to some clever animal.

Again Rosa-Rosa underwent one of her startling changes. She drooped, she crumpled, her body sagged, even her hair seemed to wilt. Her dejection was not so much exaggerated as epitomized.

She threw her arms out wide and remained very still, her chin resting on her breast.

‘I loved him,' she said.

It was an extraordinary exhibition; rather horrible, Mr Campion thought.

Fayre glanced at him.

‘Extraordinary, isn't it?' he said. ‘She does it every time. Carry on, Rosa-Rosa. Nothing's very clear in my mind except that your husband, whom you loved' – he mimicked her grotesquely – ‘left you a cottage in his will. You went down once or twice and had a few disgusting parties. The second – or was it the third? – visit was interrupted very naturally by outraged neighbours, who were caretaking for the real landlord. Your uncle – disgraceful old basket – is getting in a shark lawyer and when you get hold of the landlord, poor beggar, you're going to go like this –' He imitated her first gesture and rose to his feet. ‘I've got to go,' he said. ‘I met my wife today and she said she might be coming home. If she's there when I get back I'll bring her along.'

‘Some hopes,' said the man with the side-whiskers as soon as the cartoonist was out of earshot. ‘Does he always talk like that to create an impression or is it genuine?'

‘Eve did marry him and did leave him,' said the fat man with the beard languidly. ‘I don't feel his attitude towards it matters very much. Come, Rosa-Rosa, have you finished or is there more of this house-property idyll?'

Mrs Dacre sat eyeing him sulkily. Then she smiled, and began to swear appallingly in Saffron Hill English.

The fat man frowned with distaste.

‘Horrible,' he said. ‘Nasty, bad girl. Dirty. The management will throw you out on the street if you talk like that. Your difficulty seems very simple. Prove the will and claim your property.'

‘Fat beast!' said Rosa-Rosa venomously. She had noticed the cold eye of the lady behind the bar upon her, however, and lowered her voice.

‘My husband made no will,' she said. ‘He was murdered.'

‘Oh God, how we know that!' said the actor without bitterness. ‘Still, if he didn't make a will it's probably not your cottage. Why worry? Come and live in King's Cross. It's much more central and nearly as insanitary.'

Rosa-Rosa looked shocked. ‘When a husband dies, everything that was his becomes the fortune of his wife,' she said. ‘It is my cottage. My husband and I were going to live there, but he was murdered.'

‘That's nothing to be proud of,' said the fat man.

‘Huh?'

‘I say it's not clever to be married to a man who was murdered,' persisted the young man. ‘Unless you did it, of course. Did you do it, by the way?'

Rosa-Rosa gave her alibi, and this too, Mr Campion felt, was part of a performance which these feckless folk put her through whenever they saw her. His own curiosity about the cottage was thoroughly aroused, however, and he took a hand in the questioning.

‘Where is this house?' he enquired.

‘At 'Eronhoe. When I have seen my uncle's lawyer you shall come down to a party.'

‘Don't you go,' said the slender young man from the stage. ‘It's miles away from anywhere, and the neighbours throw bricks at one. Look at that man's eye.'

‘Is it the Heronhoe in Sussex?' said Campion, making a guess.

The Italian boy answered him.

‘No. It's in Essex. Near Halstead. I drove my cousin down there with some of our friends. We went several times. But on Saturday when we arrived the place was all shut up. People from the village were there. They wouldn't let us in.'

‘Very extraordinary,' said Mr Campion encouragingly.

‘Most,' said the boy, his face with its one discoloured eye ridiculously solemn. ‘They said the owner was in London. We were cold, don't you know, and we'd got plenty to drink on board. We had a bit of a fight. Some of the boys got angry, the girls screamed and the people came for us with sticks and dogs. We drove the car into 'em. Laid one bloke out. I don't think he was hurt. Anyway,' he smiled engagingly, ‘we didn't wait to see. We came away. Perhaps they were right. Maybe it's not hers.' He laughed at the prospect. ‘We tore the place up a bit,' he said, reminiscently. ‘They were good parties.'

Rosa-Rosa had been listening to this recital, her head thrust forward between the two men, and every line of her angular body expressing interest.

‘It is my cottage,' she said vehemently. ‘My husband gave me a little picture of the house when we were in Italy.'

‘A snapshot,' explained the cousin. ‘It had the address on the back. That's how we found the place. It was furnished, but no one was there, so we broke in.'

‘A very stupid thing to do if you didn't know the place was yours,' commented the bearded young man, who appeared to be bored to tears by the whole story.

Rosa-Rosa spat at him calmly.

‘Stinkin' fat,' she said pleasantly. ‘It is mine because my husband's things are there. All his drawings everywhere. My husband was a great painter. If he had not been murdered we should be very rich. On the day he died he told me so. We were to go down to the cottage and he was to paint four pictures like the others.'

‘What others?' enquired the man with the side-whiskers.

Rosa-Rosa shrugged.

‘I don't know. That's what he told me.'

Mr Campion took a deep breath.

‘Are you sure they are your husband's drawings – the ones in the cottage?' he enquired.

‘Oh yes, they are my husband's. There are heaps – so high. Two big cupboards full.'

‘Heronhoe.' Mr Campion did not speak the word aloud, but it was printed indelibly upon his mind. ‘I wish you luck, Mrs Dacre,' he said. ‘You won't go down for some time, I suppose?'

‘Not till she's seen the lawyer,' put in the cousin.

His eyes had strayed to a red-headed girl seated at the side of the room, but he now tore his attention back to the topic which was evidently the principal subject of talk in the Rosini family.

‘Afterwards we shall go back and see those country boys. Heh! it was a good fight. Bottles and everything. Not a flattie for miles. When we find out who the wet is who says he owns it there'll be a better fight still.'

Mr Campion glanced through the shining window at the murky sky. He rose to his feet. Through the conflicting hopes and alarums in his mind the Italian's soft thoughtful drawl reached him.

‘It's a nice little house.'

–

I
T WAS
not so much the prospect of committing a burglary which disturbed Mr Campion as he steered his aged Bentley through the winding lanes of that part of Essex which is almost Suffolk, as the problem of the exact address where his project was to take place.

He had located Heronhoe on a survey map, but as he knew neither the name of the cottage nor its owner, its discovery promised a certain amount of difficulty.

It was for this reason that he had chosen to arrive in the daylight, and had curbed his impulse to set off at once after hearing Rosa-Rosa's story.

He timed his departure from London at six o'clock the following morning, and it was nearly ten when he arrived at the village, having lost his way several times.

The tidy little main street, as compact and picturesque as the set for a musical comedy, lay fresh and bright in the spring sunlight. The air was chilly but sparkling. There was a crisp, invigorating wind. The fat, bursting buds on the chestnuts were wet and cold and radiant. It was altogether as fine a day for a felony as Mr Campion had ever known.

He pulled up at the ‘White Lion', a big straggling hostelry which took up more than its fair share of the southern side of the street, and succeeded in persuading the landlord to admit him at least to the Commercial Room.

Wm. Pudney, according to the minute board over the doorway, was permitted by a gracious government to dispense wines, spirits, and tobacco, and, by immemorial custom, food, to all who should pass, but at ten o'clock in the morning he seemed disinclined to do any of these things for the pale young man with the rakish motor-car.

Mr Campion was not drawn to Mr Pudney. He was a spare, pink, youngish man with a masterpiece of an accent which betrayed at once both his ambitions in this direction and his complete lack of the ear by which to attain them.