More Work for the Undertaker (4 page)

‘There he is.' Charlie Luke's murmur was like the roll of distant artillery. ‘In the saloon. Tall old boy in the corner. Green hat.'

‘Talking to Price-Williams of
The Signal
?' Campion had caught sight of the finely moulded head of the most astute of all crime reporters.

‘Pricey hasn't got anything. He's bored. Look at him scratching,' said the D.D.I. softly. It was the voice of the fisherman, experienced, patient, passionately interested.

The Captain proved to be a soldierly figure. He was approaching sixty, a slender Edwardian drying into old age very gently. Hair and tiny moustache were cut so short that their colour was indeterminate, neither fair nor grey. Campion could not hear his voice but he guessed it was pleasant in accent and depreciatory in tone. He also guessed that his hands were mottled on the back like the skin of a frog, and
that the chances were he wore a discreet signet ring and carried visiting cards.

It struck him as amazing that such a man should have a sister who affected a piece of cardboard and a motoring veil as a head-covering, and he said so. Luke was apologetic.

‘Sorry. Ought to have told you. He's not a Palinode. He just lives in the house. Renee brought him with her from her other place. He was her pet boarder there and has one of the better rooms now. The name is Alastair Seton, the rank is Regular Army, out of which he was invalided. Heart, I fancy. His resources amount to something like four pounds fourteen per week. But he's a gentleman and does his best to live like one, poor old devil. This is his secret pub.'

‘Oh, dear,' said Mr Campion. ‘This is where he comes when he mentions casually that he has an important business interview, I suppose.'

‘That's it.' Luke nodded appreciatively. ‘The interview is with Nellie and half a pint. He's enjoying this flare-up in spite of himself. One side of his mind is bloody outraged that he should be brought into contact with anything so sordid, but the other half is tickled to death by the excitement.'

There was silence between them for a moment. Campion's gaze wandered over the crowd.

Mr Campion took off his spectacles and spoke without turning round.

‘Why don't you want to talk about the Palinodes, Inspector?'

Charlie Luke refilled his glass and presently looked over it, his eyes unexpectedly frank.

‘I can't, as a matter of fact,' he said.

‘Why?'

‘Don't understand 'em.' He made the admission like the prize pupil confessing ignorance.

‘How do you mean?'

‘Just that. I don't understand what they say.' He sat back on the table and spread out his muscular hands. ‘If it was only a foreign language I'd get an interpreter,' he said, ‘but it's not. It isn't even that they won't talk. They talk for hours, they
like talking. But when I come away from them my head is buzzing, and when I read the verbatim report I keep sending for the stenographer to see if he's got the words right. He doesn't know, either.'

There was a pause.

‘Er – long words?' suggested Mr Campion diffidently.

‘No, not particularly.' Luke was not offended. He seemed mainly sad. ‘There's three of them,' he said at last. ‘I can tell you that. Two dead, three alive. Mr Lawrence Palinode, Miss Evadne Palinode, and the baby, Miss Jessica Palinode. She's the gal who gets presents in the park. None of them have any money to speak of and God knows why anyone should kill 'em. They're not barmy, though. I've made that mistake already. It's no good, sir, you'll have to see 'em yourself. When are you moving in?'

‘At once, I thought. I brought a bag with me.'

The D.D.I. grunted. ‘It's good news to me,' he said seriously. ‘There's a man on the door but he knows you by sight. Name of Corkerdale. Sorry I can't give you a line on these people, Mr Campion, but they're old-fashioned and out of the ordinary. It's not a phrase I like but it sums 'em up.'

He bent over his glass and patted his stomach.

‘I've got to the stage when as soon as I think of 'em I feel a bit faint. I'll send you word of the analyst's report as soon as I get it.'

Mr Campion finished his own drink and picked up his suitcase. A thought occurred to him.

‘By the way, who is the girl?' he inquired. ‘Young, dark-haired. I hardly saw her face.'

‘That's Clytie White,' said Luke calmly. ‘She's a niece. There were six Palinodes once. One got away and married a doctor who took her to Hong-Kong. On the voyage out the boat went down and they were both nearly drowned, and the baby was born while her Ma was still wet with sea-water. Hence the name. Don't ask me more than that. It's what I've been told. “Hence the name”.'

‘I see. Does she live with Renee, too?'

‘Yes. Her parents sent her back, which was lucky because
they were both killed later. She was a little kid then. She's only eighteen and a half now. She works as an office girl at the
Literary Weekly,
licks the stamps and sells the review copies. As soon as she can type she's going to write.'

‘And who is the boy?'

‘With a motor-cycle?' The words were uttered so violently that Mr Campion jumped.

‘I didn't see one. They were in the park.'

The end of the sentence faded. Charlie Luke's still youthful face had grown several shades darker and his triangular lids were drawn down over his bright eyes.

‘A builpup and a stray kitty, that's what they are,' he said sulkily, and then, looking up and laughing suddenly with a self-depreciatory grace which was wholly disarming, he added, ‘such a dear little kitty. Hasn't got its eyes open yet.'

CAMPION PASSED QUIETLY
to the stairhead, whence he could see down through a bright-barred window to the heart and soul of Portminster Lodge.

There was Renee, looking much as he had seen her for the first time nearly ten years before. She was in profile, leaning across a supper table talking to someone he could not see. Miss Roper's age might still have been ‘about sixty', although in all likelihood she was some eight or nine years older. Her small figure was as compact, if not quite as curved, as in the days when she was kicking up her heels on the provincial stage, and her hair was still a wonderful if unlikely brown.

She was in her receiving costume, a fussy multi-coloured silk blouse tucked tightly into a neat black skirt, not too short. She heard Campion when he was half-way down the area, edging his way through a booby-trap of milk bottles. He caught a glimpse of her face with the tip-tilted nose and far too prominent eyes turned sharply towards the window before she hurried to open the door a foot or so.

‘Who is it?' The words ran up the scale like a cue for song. ‘Oh, it's you, ducky.' She was human again but still more or less before footlights. ‘Come in, do. This is good of you, I appreciate it and I shan't forget it. How's your mother? Nicely?'

‘As well as can be expected.' Mr Campion, who had been orphaned some ten years, fielded the catch as neatly as he was able.

‘I know. Well, we mustn't grumble.' She patted him on the shoulder, possibly in approbation, and turned back into the room.

It was a typical basement-kitchen of the ancient sort, a place of pipes and unexplained alcoves, with a stone floor. A
certain gaiety had been achieved by the display of some hundreds of theatrical photographs of all periods covering half the walls, and there were bright rag rugs on the matting.

‘Clarrie,' she rattled on, still with the same false brightness, ‘I don't think you've met my nephew Albert. He's the one from Bury. The
nobby
side of the family, dear. He's a lawyer and one does so need one at a time like this. His mother wrote and said he'd help me if I wanted him to, so I sent her a wire – didn't tell you in case he didn't come!'

She lied like the staunch old trouper she was and her laugh was pretty. It welled up fresh and young from a heart nothing had aged.

Mr Campion kissed her. ‘Glad to get here, Auntie,' he said, and she blushed like a girl.

The man in the plum-coloured pullover, who had been eating bread and cheese and pickled onions with his stockinged feet tucked over the chair-rail, got up and leaned across the board.

‘Pleased to meet you,' he said, thrusting out a carefully manicured hand. His nails were misleading. So was the flash of gold in his smile, and the shock of dry fair hair, now receding somewhat drastically in a cascade of ordered crimps. His deeply-lined face was kindly and a pattern of common sense had been battered into its second-rate good looks. The pink and brown striped shirt which showed in the V of the pullover had small darns at the sides where the points of the collar had worn holes.

‘My name's Grace,' he went on, ‘Clarence Grace. I don't suppose you've heard of it.' The tone was not even wistful. ‘I did a season in Bury.'

‘Ah, that was Bury, Lanes, dear,' Renee put in quickly. ‘This is Bury St Edmunds, isn't it, Albert?'

‘That is so.' Mr Campion managed to sound both regretful and apologetic. ‘It's very quiet down there.'

‘Still, he has to understand the law down there, just the same as anywhere else.' Renee was valiant. ‘Sit down, ducky. I expect you're hungry. I'll find you something. We're in a bit of a hurry, as usual. It's a funny thing, but I never seem to get done.
Mrs Love!
'

The final summons, uttered in a sort of musical scream, brought forth no response and Campion had time to protest that he had already fed.

Rene patted his shoulder again as if it were the situation she was jollying along. ‘Sit down and have a drop of Clarrie's stout while I get on with your bed.
Mrs Love!
The others will be in soon, or at least the Captain will. He's got a dinner on tonight, with an old flame, I fancy. He'll go straight to his room. He doesn't really like the kitchen. If you hear the front door, that's who it is. After that you boys will have to help me with the trays.
Mrs Love!
'

Clarrie lowered his feet gently to the matting.

‘I'll fetch her,' he said. ‘What about the kiddo? She ought not to be out this time of night.'

‘Clytie? Yes.' Renee glanced at the clock. ‘Quarter past eleven. She
is
late, isn't she? I shouldn't worry if she was my daughter, but I don't like real innocence, do you, Albert? You never feel safe with it. But you shut up, Clarrie. No tale-telling, mind.'

The man paused with a hand on the doorknob.

‘If I tell that old jar of smelling salts anything, it won't be about her niece, ducks,' he said cheerfully, but his face was working and in the second before he turned away they caught an uneasy flicker in his big indeterminate-coloured eyes. Renee waited until he closed the door before she said ‘It's nerves. But he'll get another job.' She spoke defensively, as if Campion had questioned it. ‘I've seen many worse than Clarrie in the provinces, I have really.' And then, almost in the same breath but with a startling change to genuine intensity, ‘Tell me, Mr Campion,
are they going to dig the other one up
?'

He glanced down at her with affection.

‘Cheer up,' he said. ‘It's not your funeral. Honestly, I don't know.'

She looked small and old. Little networks of red veins had appeared through the powder on her cheekbones and over the bridge of her nose.

‘Oh, I don't like it.' She spoke softly. ‘Not poison. I keep all the food locked up, you know. I try not to let it out of my
sight until it's eaten. You can drink the stout, that's safe. My old girl has just brought it in and we opened it together, Clarrie and I.'

Suddenly it was all there before him, as if she had taken the lid off a cauldron, all the horror which she had been concealing under her valiant small-talk. It spread out over the bright room like an evil cloud, blotting out all the other reactions, the excitement, the interest, the avid curiosity of police, public and Press.

‘I'm glad you've come,' she said. ‘I knew you would. You're a sport. I shan't forget it. Now, these sheets must be aired by this time.
Mrs Love!
'

‘Want me, miss?'

An ancient voice from the doorway was followed by a deep satisfactory sniff as a little old woman in a bright pink overall came shambling in. She had a high colour, vivid sky-blue eyes which despite a certain rheumy mistiness possessed a definite twinkle, and a thinly covered little poll bound with a snood of pink ribbon. She paused in the doorway, regarding Campion with interest.

‘Yer nephew?' she shouted. ‘Eh? I see the likeness. I say I see the likeness.'

‘I'm glad,' Miss Roper bellowed back. ‘We'll make his bed now.'

‘Make 'is bed?' Mrs Love sounded as if the idea had occurred to her. Her eyes were inquisitive. ‘I've done yer porridge. I say I've done yer porridge. Put it in the 'ay-box and turned the padlock on it. Key's 'ere till you want it.' She patted her lean bosom.

Clarrie, who had followed her in, began to laugh rather helplessly, and she turned on him, looking, thought the fascinated Campion, exactly like a kitten which has been dressed up as a doll.

‘You laugh.' The hoarse London voice might have come from the top of the building. ‘But you can't be too careful. I say you can't be too careful.'

She turned to Campion and caught his eye with a gleam which was wholly feminine.

‘'E don't understand,' she said, shrugging a shoulder at the actor. ‘Some men don't. But you 'ave to mind if you want to keep above ground. I'm only 'ere because my friends think I'm at the pub. 'E says I'm not to come getting meself talked about and mixing with the police and that, but I couldn't let 'er down so I come at night. I say I come at night.'

‘That's right, the old sport comes at night.' Renee giggled but there was a catch in her voice.