Death of a Ghost (28 page)

‘Look here, you leave it to the lawyers and meanwhile get some sleep. If not, you know, you'll die.'

‘Rubbish,' said Mrs Lafcadio. ‘If Johnnie were here we'd get the pictures, sell them for what we could and go away to Capri until the money was spent. I should lie in the sun and listen to him telling the story and improving it.'

She was silent for a moment or two and then she laughed.

‘Second childhood, my dear. I
do
know how different it is now I'm old, but I forget when I get cross. Now, Albert, advise me. What shall I do?'

She leant back among the pillows and the colour gradually faded from her cheeks, leaving her pale and exhausted.

‘I can't leave everything to the lawyers,' she said plaintively, ‘because they say leave it alone. You see, the whole thing is in such a muddle. Johnnie thought I should be dealing with old Salmon, who was a pet, so he didn't bother much about the legal aspect of the business, and now they've come to examine it they find that Max and I are both responsible for the things. He can't do anything without me and I can't do anything without him. It's all so annoying.'

‘You're still very angry with Max?'

Mrs Lafcadio was silent for a moment while her lips moved ruminatively and her eyes grew dark again.

‘Yes, I am,' she said. ‘Yes, definitely. Very, very cross.'

‘What are you thinking of doing?'

‘Well, I don't know. I don't know at all. If he takes the pictures out of the country I shall have to proceed against him, I suppose, and that's such a lengthy business and such a nuisance.'

‘You just want things to go on as they are, then?' said Campion. ‘I mean you're really only anxious that the pictures should stay in England and be shown every year as Lafcadio wished.'

‘Yes.' She nodded emphatically. ‘Albert, my dear, you see to it. You speak to Max. You make him do what I want. I never want to see the man's hideous little face again, but I give you full powers to act for me. You see to it. Linda is worse than useless. She advises me to let him have his own way.'

In view of everything this was a somewhat awkward mission and Mr Campion could hardly fail to recognize it.

There is an optimistic belief widespread among the generous-hearted that the average human being has only to become sufficiently acquainted with another's trouble or danger to transfer it to his own shoulders not merely unhesitatingly but gladly. The fact remains, of course, that the people who say to themselves, ‘There is real danger here and I think it had better confront me rather than this helpless soul before me,' are roughly divided into three groups. There are the relatives, and it is extraordinary how the oft-derided blood-tie decides the issue, who, moved by that cross between affection and duty, perform incredible feats of self-sacrifice.

Then there are those misguided folk, half hero half busybody, who leap into danger as if it were the elixir of life.

And finally there is a small group of mortals who are moved partly by pity and partly by a passionate horror of seeing tragedy slowly unfolded before their eyes and who act principally through a desire to bring things to a head and get the play over, at whatever cost.

Mr Campion belonged to the last category.

‘All right,' he said slowly. ‘All right, I'll see to everything.'

‘Oh, my dear. Thank you so much. I can just go to sleep then and know that everything will be all right and the pictures will stay here in England?'

He nodded. Having reached a decision he felt much easier in his mind about the whole business. He rose.

‘You go to sleep now and I'll see to things. It may take a day or two, so don't worry.'

‘Of course, I won't.'

Belle was very weary, but there was still a gleam of amusement in her eyes.

‘He is an odious little beast, isn't he though?' she said coaxingly.

‘I think you under-estimate him at that.'

‘Do you? Oh, I'm so glad. I didn't like to feel I'd made a fuss about nothing, especially after so much dreadful trouble in the house.'

As he reached the door she called after him.

‘Did you read his evidence in the Stoddart case yesterday? He was an expert witness for the defence, you know.'

He had read the case – everyone in London seemed to have done so – but he let her repeat the story.

‘The Prosecution said: “Mr Fustian, you were called in, I understand, by the defendants to give as it were a Counsel's opinion”,' came the faint voice from the pillows. ‘And the little manikin smiled and said: “I'm afraid you under-rate me, Sir James. I was called in as a Judge.” I think he's mad, don't you?'

‘Very likely,' said Campion absently. ‘Very likely. Goodbye, Belle. Sleep well.'

Mr Campion sat before the telephone in his own room in Bottle Street for some time, considering, before he drew the instrument towards him and called Max Fustian.

It was now a full week since he had visited Spendpenny and he had not yet replied to the note he had received on reaching home after that excursion.

As he had hoped, Max was in the gallery and, after giving his name to a minion and waiting for some considerable time, he heard the famous voice, rendered, it would seem, even more soft and liquid by the phone.

‘My dear Campion, how nice to hear from you. What can I do?'

Campion gave Belle's message simply and without excuse.

There was silence from the other end of the wire until he had finished. Then a soft, affected laugh reached him.

‘My dear fellow,' said Max Fustian, ‘must you mix yourself up in that musty business? It's really a matter for experts, don't you think?'

‘I don't know that I have any opinion,' said Campion cautiously. ‘I only know that I have been commissioned by Mrs Lafcadio to prevent the pictures leaving the country.'

‘Such a charming, stupid woman,' sighed the voice over the wire. ‘I suppose that in your new capacity you take up the same uncompromising attitude that she affects?'

‘Yes,' said Campion, adding with unnecessary deliberation, ‘over my dead body.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘I say you take them out of England over my dead body.'

There was an infinitesimal pause. Then the gentle laugh reached him again.

‘How conscientious, Campion. We must meet.'

‘I should like it.'

‘Of course. Well, we shall see each other at the Cellini Society's party tomorrow. We can fix something then.'

‘The Cellini Society?' enquired Campion.

‘But of course – The cocktail party to celebrate the new life by Lady du Vallon. Urquhart has done the illustrations and the White Hart Press have turned out an exquisite book. Haven't you had your card? I'll send you one at once. I shall get there about six-thirty.'

‘Fine,' said Campion, and added with intentional deliberation, ‘By the way, Fustian, you needn't trouble about the Dacre drawing. The “Head of a Boy”, you know. I have one.'

‘Really?' The voice was plainly cautious now and Campion persisted:

‘Yes. A most interesting little thing. A study for a big oil. There's a sketch of the whole picture in the corner – a crowd round the Cross. I recognized it at once.'

‘I should like to see it.'

‘You shall,' promised Campion airily. ‘You shall. See you tomorrow.'

–

C
AMPION
left the Inspector and went down to Brook Street for the cocktail party.

It had been in full swing for some time when he arrived, and it was a weary servant who led him up the marble stairs with the wrought-iron balustrade and jettisoned him into the green-panelled double drawing-room with the exquisite ceiling and the Georgian sconces.

The noise was terrific.

The theory that the art of conversation has died out in modern times is either a gross misrepresentation of the facts or an Olympian criticism of quality alone. Three-quarters of the gathering seemed to be talking loudly, not so much with the strain of one trying to capture an audience, but with the superb flow of the man who knows all creation is trying to hear him.

Lady du Vallon, a crisp little woman with sharp eyes and red elf locks, rustled across in her burnt sienna tea-gown to shake hands perfunctorily and pass him on with a murmur which might have been his name or a good-natured ‘Look after this' to a lonely-looking man who happened to be standing near.

This individual did not speak at all, but contented himself by looking gratified and leading the way through the gesticulating throng to the cocktail bar.

Mr Campion accepted a dry martini from a scowling barman and looked about for Max. His guide, having accomplished his duty, had disappeared, and the next time Campion saw him he was at the entrance again, and it occurred to him that he was probably his host.

Fustian did not seem to have arrived, and he was looking about for a convenient corner in which to stand, for the eddying mass about him was a trifle tempestuous for a lone rock, when he saw Sir Gervaise Pelley, the Cellini authority, standing a few feet away behind a bank of famous stage folk.

The great man looked a little pensive, but his eye flickered as he sighted his acquaintance and they waded towards each other.

‘In an awful hole,' he muttered as he came up. ‘Look.'

He half opened his hand, held surreptitiously low at his side, and Campion caught sight of a handkerchief loosely enwrapping a mass of sticky broken glass.

‘Ice-cream plate,' he muttered. ‘Don't know what to do with it.'

‘Put it in someone's pocket,' Campion suggested helpfully. Sir Gervaise looked round gloomily.

‘There seem to be only women near enough,' he said.

In the end it was Campion who took the handkerchief and handed it to the barman in exchange for a couple of cocktails.

Disembarrassed, Sir Gervaise became his old truculent self again.

‘Don't know who everybody is,' he said, staring with unconscious offence at the nearest celebrity. ‘This isn't much like the usual Cellini show. Very difficult. I want to see a copy of the book, by the way, and I hear there are some very fine exhibits downstairs. Shall we go along?'

Campion excused himself on the plea that he was waiting for Fustian, and the announcement seemed to dismiss for ever any claims he might have had to Sir Gervaise's interest.

Once more he was left alone. He observed several acquaintances in the crowd, but did not go out of his way to speak to them, since he was concentrating on the interview ahead.

The talk continued at fever pitch all round him. Old Brigadier-General Fyvie was bellowing his latest
mot
, which seemed to be something about a daring escape from the British Legion; and a little rhyme, ‘God in His loving arms enfold us – Contrary to the belief of the Huxleys, Julian and Aldous,' was going the rounds.

A dirty little thought concerning Hitler and the great Duke of Marlborough wafted across the smoke-laden air to him, and above all came the monotonous and slightly alcoholic pleadings of a very young dramatist to be allowed to depict someone's life for Auntie Kay to do in the spring.

No one seemed to be mentioning the book and he never discovered its title, but he saw at least two famous publishers and one rather sad-looking critic.

Unexpectedly he came upon Rosa-Rosa clinging to the arm of a very famous painter whose tongue was quite as much paragraphed as his brush. He was exhibiting the girl as though she had been an unusual type of pet and obtaining the same sort of notice for her. She did not see Campion, but swept on, large-eyed and strange-looking in her bright clothes.

The amount of energy, vivacity, and sheer personal force discharged in a single room impressed Campion again, as it always did at these functions, and he wondered idly how long the walls and ceiling and battered carpets would tingle after everyone had gone.

He found himself waiting for Max in very much the same mood as one waits for a train to an unknown destination; with doubts, and impatience. There was too much gin in the cocktails, he decided, and reflected that the fault was a common one among unprofessional mixers, the outcome, no doubt, of a horror of appearing economical.

It was very late, and although one or two people seemed to be leaving they did not keep pace with the late arrivals, and the crowd was growing thicker than ever.

Max came at last, pausing to speak to the servant in the passage so that he should make his entrance alone and not in the midstream of a file of guests.

He stood for a moment framed by the great doorway with its beautiful moulding and sculptured cornice.

A number of people turned to look at him, and for an instant something like a hush swept that portion of the room. If it was not quite the silence of delighted or respectful recognition, at least it showed a momentary interest and curiosity, for he was a picturesque figure.

Campion, who had taken up a position by the far window where he could command the door, had a clear view of him.

He was wearing a grey lounge suit, rather light for the season, and a new and dazzling waistcoat. The Macdonald tartan in silk, a little faded, mercifully, but still brave and gay enough in all conscience, was fastened across Mr Fustian's slender middle with onyx buttons. His dark face, long hair, and mercurial bearing saved him, perhaps, from looking an ordinary bounder, but they increased his oddity considerably.

His hostess recognized him and fluttered over, and Max, enjoying his little sensation, made the most of it.

Their conversation seemed to be common property, and Campion listened, as did most other people within earshot.

Lady du Vallon had not struck him as being a fool when he first saw her, and now as she went up to Max, hand outstretched, he had no reason to change his opinion. Only the informed seemed to take Max seriously.