Look to the Lady (6 page)

Mr Campion considered. ‘Oh, I don't know,' he said, and then was silent.

They had been so engrossed in their conversation that they had not noticed a certain commotion at the far end of the room as a woman entered and saluted one or two acquaintances as she passed to her table. It was only when her high strident voice had drowned the subdued conversation in the room that the young men in the secluded corner observed her.

She was of a type not uncommon among the “landed gentry,” but mercifully rare elsewhere. Superbly self-possessed, she was slightly masculine in appearance, with square flat shoulders and narrow hips. Her hair was cut short under her mannish felt, her suit was perfectly tailored and the collar of her blouse fitted tightly at her throat.

She managed to enter the room noisily and sat down so that her face was towards them. It was a handsome face, but one to which the epithet of “beautiful” would have seemed absurd. She was pale, with a strong prominent nose and hard closely-set blue-grey eyes. She hurled a miscellaneous collection of gloves, scarves, and papers into the chair in front of her and called loudly to the waiter.

It was evident that she was a personage, and that vague sense of uneasiness which invariably steals upon a room full of people when a celebrity is present was apparent in the stolid dining-room. Val averted his face hastily.

‘Oh, Lord!' he said.

Mr Campion raised his eyebrows. ‘Who is the rude lady?' he inquired casually.

Val lowered his voice. ‘Mrs Dick Shannon,' he muttered. ‘Surely you've heard of her? She's got a racing stable on Heronhoe Heath. One of these damn women with-a-personality. She knows me, too. Could you wriggle in front of me, old man? She's got an eye like a hawk.'

Mr Campion did his best, but as they rose to go, their path to the door led them directly past her table. His protégé was quick, but he was not quick enough.

‘Val Gyrth!' The name was bellowed through the room until Mrs Dick Shannon's victim felt as though the entire township must have heard it. The woman caught the boy's coat-sleeve and jerked him backward with a wrist like flexed steel.

‘So you're back, eh? I didn't know you'd made friends with your father again.' This piece of intimate information was also shouted. ‘When did this happen?' She ignored Mr Campion with the studied rudeness which is the hall-mark of her type. He hovered for some moments ineffectually, and then drifted out into the corridor to settle the score.

Left unprotected, Val faced his captor and strove to make his excuses. He was quite aware that every ear in the room was strained to catch his reply. Gyrth was a name to conjure with in that part of the country.

Mrs Dick seemed both aware and contemptuous of her audience. ‘I've just come down from the Tower,' she said. ‘I'm trying to make your father sell me two yearlings. What does he want with race-horses? I told him he hadn't got the sense to train properly; and that man he's got is a fool. I saw your aunt, too,' she went on, not waiting for any comment from him. ‘She gets sillier every day.'

Val gulped and murmured a few incoherent words of farewell. Mrs Dick gripped his hand and shook it vigorously.

‘Well, good-bye. I shall see you again. You can tell your father I'm going to have those yearlings if I have to steal them. He's not capable of training 'em.'

The boy smiled politely and a little nervously, and turned away.

‘I heard your wife was dead – so sorry,' bawled Mrs Dick for the world to hear. Val fled.

His forehead was glistening with sweat when he came up with Campion on the broad doorstep of the inn.

‘Let's get away from here,' he said. ‘I loathe that woman.'

‘ “I did but see her passing by.” The rest of the song does not apply,' said Mr Campion. ‘That's her car, I suppose.' He indicated a superb red and white Frazer Nash. ‘Hallo, here comes Lugg, looking like a man with a mission.'

At that moment Mr Lugg appeared from the doorway of the four-ale bar. His lugubrious face was almost animated.

‘'Op in,' he said huskily as he came up with them. ‘I got something to tell yer. While you've bin playing the gent, I've bin noticin'.'

It was not until they were once more packed into the Bentley that he unburdened himself. As they shot out of the town he leant forward from the back seat and breathed heavily into Mr Campion's ear.

‘'Oo d'yer think I saw in the bar?' he mumbled.

‘Some low friend of yours, no doubt,' said his master, skilfully avoiding a trade van which cut in front of an approaching lorry.

‘I should say!' said Lugg heavily. ‘It was little Natty Johnson, one of the filthiest, dirtiest, lousiest little racegang toughs I've ever taken off me 'at to.'

Mr Campion pricked up his ears. ‘The Cleaver Gang?' he said. ‘Was he with anyone?'

‘That's what I'm coming to,' said Lugg reproachfully. ‘You're always 'urrying on, you are. 'E was talking to a funny chap with a beard. An arty bloke. I tell yer wot – 'e reminded me of that Bloomsbury lot 'oo came to the flat and sat on the floor and sent me out for kippers and Chianti. They were talkin' nineteen to the dozen, sittin' up by theirselves in the window. I 'ad a bit o' wool in one ear or I'd 'ave 'eard all they was saying.

‘'Owever, that's not the reely interestin' part. Where we come in is this. The artist chap, and some more like 'im, is staying at the Tower, Sanctuary. I know, because the barman told me when I was laughin' at 'em. Friends of Lady Pethwick's, they are, 'e said, as if that explained 'em.'

Mr Campion's pale eyes flickered behind his spectacles. ‘That's interesting,' he said. ‘And this man –'

‘Yes,' cut in Mr Lugg, ‘'e was talkin' confidential with Natty Johnson. I know first-class dicks 'oo'd arrest 'im fer that.'

—

T
HE
village of Sanctuary lay in that part of Suffolk which the railway has ignored and the motorists have not yet discovered. Moreover, the steep-sided valley of which it consisted, with the squat Norman church on one eminence and the Tower on the other, did not lie on the direct route to anywhere, so that no one turned down the narrow cherry-lined lane which was its southern approach unless they had actual business in the village. The place itself was one of those staggering pieces of beauty that made Morland paint in spite of all the noggins of rum in the world.

A little stream ran across the road dividing the two hills; while the cottages, the majority pure Elizabethan, sprawled up each side of the road like sheep asleep in a meadow. It is true that the smithy kept a petrol store housed in a decrepit engine boiler obtained from Heaven knows what dumping ground, but even that had a rustic quality. It was a fairy-tale village peopled by yokels who, if they did not wear the traditional white smocks so beloved of film producers, at least climbed the rough steps to the church on a Sunday morning in top hats of unquestionable antiquity.

The Three Drummers stood crazily with its left side a good two feet lower down the northern hill than its right side. It was of brown unrestored oak and yellow plaster, with latticed windows and a red tiled roof. It had three entrances, the main one to the corridor on the level of the road, the bar parlour up four steps upon the left, and the four-ale down two steps on the right.

It was at about five o'clock, when the whole village was basking in a quiet yellow light, that the Bentley drew up outside the Three Drummers and deposited Val Gyrth and Campion at the centre door. Lugg took the car across the road to the smithy ‘garage', and the two young men stepped into the cool, sweet-smelling passage. Val had turned up his coat collar.

‘I don't want to be spotted just yet,' he murmured, ‘and I'd like a chat with Penny before I see the Governor. If I can get hold of Mrs Bullock, she'll fix everything.'

He tiptoed down the passage and put his head round the door of the kitchen at the far end.

‘Bully!' he called softly.

There was a smothered scream and a clatter of pans on a stone floor. The next moment the good lady of the house appeared, a big florid woman in a gaily patterned cotton dress and a large blue apron. Her sleeves were rolled above her plump elbows and her brown hair was flying. She was radiant. She caught the boy by the arm and quite obviously only just prevented herself from embracing him vigorously.

‘You've made it up,' she said. ‘I knew you would – your birthday coming and all.'

She had a deep resonant voice with very little trace of accent in spite of her excitement.

‘Won't you come into the bar and show yourself? – sir,' she added as an afterthought.

Val shook his head. ‘I say, Bully,' he said, ‘things aren't quite settled yet. Could you give my friend Mr Campion here a room and find us somewhere we can talk? I'd like a note taken up to Penny if possible. How is everyone at the Tower? Do you know?'

Mrs Bullock, who had sensed the urgency of his request, was wise enough to ask no questions. She had been the faithful friend and confidante of the children at the Tower ever since her early days as cook at that establishment, and their affairs were as always one of her chief concerns.

She led her visitors upstairs to a magnificent old bedroom with a small sitting-room leading out of it.

‘You write your note, sir, and I'll bring you up something,' she said, throwing open the window to let in the scented evening air. ‘You were asking about the folk, Mr Val. Your father's well, but worried looking. And Penny – she's lovely. Oh, I can see your mother in her – same eyes, same walk, same everything.'

‘And Aunt?' said Val curiously.

Mrs Bullock snorted. ‘You'll hear about your aunt soon enough,' she said. ‘Having herself photographed with the Thing.' She dropped her eyes on the last word as though she experienced some embarrassment in referring to the Chalice.

‘I've heard about that,' said Val quietly. ‘Otherwise – she's all right?'

‘Right enough, save that she fills the whole place with a pack of crazy no-goods – strutting about in funny clothes like actors and actresses. Your Ma'll turn in her grave, if she hasn't done that already.'

‘The artists?' Val suggested.

‘Artists? They ain't artists,' said Mrs Bullock explosively. ‘I know artists. I've 'ad 'em staying here. Quiet tidy little fellows – fussy about their victuals. I don't know what your aunt's got hold of – Bolsheviks, I shouldn't wonder. You'll find paper and pen over there, Mr Val.' And with a rustle of skirts she bustled out of the room.

Val sat down at the square table in the centre of the smaller room and scribbled a few words.

‘
Dear Penny
,' he wrote, ‘
I am up here at “The Drummers.” Can you come down for a minute? Love, Val.
'

He folded the paper, thrust it in an envelope and went to the top of the oak cupboard staircase. Mrs Bullock's tousled head appeared round the door at the foot.

‘Throw it down,' she whispered, ‘and I'll send young George around with it.'

Val went back to Campion. ‘I say,' he said, ‘what about Lugg? He won't talk, will he?'

Mr Campion seemed amused. ‘Not on your life,' he said. ‘Lugg's down in the four-ale with his ears flapping, drinking in local wit and beer.'

Val crossed to the window and looked out over the inn garden, a mass of tangled rambler roses and vivid delphiniums stretching down amid high old red walls to the tiny stream which trickled through the village.

‘It seems impossible,' he said slowly. ‘Up in your flat the story sounded incredible enough, but down here with everything exactly as it always was; so quiet and peaceful and miles away from anywhere, it's just absurd. By jove, I'm glad to get back.'

Mr Campion did not speak, and at that moment the door opened and Mrs Bullock returned with a tray on which were two tankards, bread and butter, and a great plate of water-cress.

‘It's home-brew,' she said confidentially. ‘I only keep it for ourselves. The stuff the company sends down isn't what it used to be. You can taste the Government's hand in it, I say. I'll send Miss Penny up the moment she comes,'

She laid a fat red hand on Val's shoulder as she passed him, an ineffably caressing gesture, and went out, closing the door behind her.

‘Here's to the fatted calf,' said Mr Campion, lifting his tankard. ‘There's something so Olde English about you, Val, that I expect a chorus of rustic maidens with garlands and a neat portable maypole to arrive any moment. Stap me, Sir Percy! Another noggin!'

Val suddenly turned upon his companion, a shadow of suspicion in his eyes. ‘Look here, Campion,' he said, ‘this isn't some silly theatrical stunt to get me back into the bosom of the family, is it? You're not employed by Hepplewhite, are you?'

Mr Campion looked hurt. ‘Oh, no,' he said. ‘I'm my own master now. No more selling my soul to commerce – not while Uncle's money lasts, anyhow. I'm one of these capitalistic toots. Only one in five has it.'

Val grinned. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘But thinking it over in cold blood, I suppose you know that the Chalice is in the Cup House chapel, and that is burglar-proof. No ordinary thief could possibly touch it.'

‘No ordinary thief would want to,' said Mr Campion pointedly. ‘You seem to have forgotten your fun in the taxicab. I suppose you know you bashed that chap up pretty permanently, and he didn't even mention to the hospital authorities that he had a fare on board? If someone doesn't try to murder one of us every two days you seem to think there's nothing up. Drink up your beer like a good boy, and old Uncle Al will find a nice crook for you to beat up. All I'm worrying about is if they've already got busy while we're hanging about. I say, I wish your sister would come. The Tower isn't far away, is it?'