Mystery Mile (8 page)

The old man turned on him.

‘No, sir. 'Tis best in time like this to keep the mouth shut till after police be gone.'

With which unexpected remark he clumped off. Campion went back to the study and Judge Lobbett.

The old man stood by the fireplace, one hand upon the heavy oak mantel. Campion lit the candles in the iron sticks on the shelf, and then sat down quietly on the other side of the fireplace and took out a cigarette.

‘This is a bad business,' said the old man suddenly; ‘a terrible bad business. Death seems to follow me as gulls follow a ship.'

Campion said nothing. He had thrown a log of wood upon the fire and the gentle crackling as the bark caught was the only sound of the big dimly-lit room. On the brown oilcloth behind him the thin stream of blood congealed slowly.

Judge Lobbett cleared his throat.

‘Of course, you know,' he began, ‘I'm not a fool. I know Marlowe's got you to bring me down here. I didn't say anything because I like this sort of life. But if I'd dreamed that I should bring a tragedy like this into the lives of such kindly homely folk, nothing would have induced me to come here. I feel it can't be a coincidence,' he added abruptly, ‘and yet there seems no doubt that it was suicide.'

Campion spoke quietly.

‘It was suicide. No doubt at all, I think. He left a letter to the coroner.'

‘Is that so?' The old man looked up sharply. ‘It was premeditated, then. Have you any idea why he did it?'

‘None at all.' Campion spoke gravely. ‘This is the most astounding thing I've ever experienced. If I hadn't seen that letter I should have said it was a brainstorm.'

Crowdy Lobbett sat down in the chair opposite the younger man and rested his elbows on his knees, his big hands locked tightly together.

‘I reckon you and I ought to understand one another before we go any farther,' he said. ‘Of course I remember you on board ship. That was a very smart piece of work of yours, and I'm more than grateful. But I feel I've been following your instructions without knowing where I'm going long enough. I meant to have a talk with you this evening anyhow, even if this terrible thing hadn't made it imperative. Marlowe engaged you to look after me. I'll say I know that much. You're not a policeman, are you?'

‘Hardly,' said Mr Campion. ‘I believe I was recommended to your son by Scotland Yard, though,' he added with a faint smile. ‘I'm not quite a private detective, you know. I suggested that you come here because I believe that you'll be safer here than anywhere, and that your family will run less risk.'

Judge Lobbett looked at him sharply.

‘You can't understand me letting Isopel into it, can you?' he said. ‘Where else would she be safer than where I can watch over her myself?'

Mr Campion offered no opinion.

‘Just how much do you know?' said Judge Lobbett.

The young man looked more thoughtful. ‘I know enough to realize that it's not revenge pure and simple that they're after you for,' he said at last. ‘That's patent from common or garden Holmic deduction. In New York they were trying to frighten you. That points to the fact that you had a line on them.' He paused and eyed the other man questioningly. Lobbett signed to him to go on and he continued: ‘Then I think they must have decided that, had you a definite line, you'd have used it before,' he said. ‘They decided to kill you. You escaped. One of the first things you did when you got to London was to consult MacNab, the cipher expert. That put the
wind up them again. They want to know what you hold first, then they want your blood. I should say myself,' he added, ‘that you've got a clue from one of Simister's gang which you can't decipher yourself as yet. Isn't that so?'

Lobbett stared back at him in astonishment.

‘I don't mind telling you,' he said, ‘that when I first saw you, Mr Campion, I thought you were the biggest goddam fool ever made; but I'm now beginning to wonder if you're not some sort of telepathy expert.' He leaned forward. ‘I'll say you're right, and I may as well tell you MacNab didn't help me any, but he was the first man I felt I could trust to see what I had. I've got one end of the string, you see, but if any of that crowd should get wind of what it is they'd cut it higher up and then the one chance I've got of stopping this thing at the head would be lost for ever. As it is, the thing's no more use to me than so much junk. And I daren't and won't confide in any of you youngsters.'

The determined expression on the judge's face and the obstinate lines about his mouth made the younger decide in an instant that, upon this point at any rate, he would be as stubborn as a mule.

‘You intend, I suppose,' he said, ‘to stay here until you've found the solution to your crossword?'

Judge Lobbett nodded. ‘I certainly had that idea,' he said. ‘But after the terrible affair this evening I don't know what to say.' He glanced at Campion. ‘Look here,' he said. ‘In your opinion what sort of chance have I got of getting my man if I stay here?'

The younger man rose to his feet. ‘One,' he said, an unusually convincing tone in his voice. ‘You're in England, and I don't think it would be any too easy for our friend Simister to do anything on a very big scale. He couldn't get half his best people out of your country, for instance, so there's just one chance in a hundred that he'll do the job himself. The mountain may come to Mahomet for once; and in that case I doubt whether anyone is in any real danger except yourself.'

Judge Lobbett nodded to the closed door behind the younger man. ‘Maybe so,' he said, ‘but what about that?'

Campion remained silent for some moments, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

‘I fancy,' he said at last, hesitating as if he were weighing every word, ‘that there's something more than ordinarily mysterious about that. Poor old boy!'

THE CHANGE IN
the drawing-room in the Dower House was extraordinary. The cosiness, the peace had vanished. The fire had burned down to a few red and grey coals, the candles had shrunk in their sticks, and the room was cold and desolate.

The two girls sat huddled together in the window-seat. Biddy was not crying; she sat up stiffly, her back against the folded wooden shutter. Her face was very pale, and the same twisted, suffering expression was still engraved upon it.

The other girl sat close to her, her small hand resting upon her knee.

‘I can't tell you how unbelievable it is,' Biddy burst out suddenly, keeping her voice down instinctively as if she feared to be overheard. ‘It's so unlike him. I didn't think he had a care in the world, and no greater worry than the attendance at the Sunday school. Why should he have done this horrible, horrible thing?'

Isopel could not answer her.

‘To think of it! He must have known when he said good night to me. He must have gone over there deliberately, written the letter to Mr Topliss, sent Alice over here with that note, and then gone into that little cupboard all by himself and – oh –'

She leaned back against the shutter and closed her eyes.

Isopel nodded. ‘I know,' she said. The lashes drooped over her dark eyes and a sombre expression passed over her young face. ‘For the last six weeks I've lived in an atmosphere like this. I'm growing callous, I think. At first, Schuyler, father's secretary. I'd known him since I was a kid. They found him in dad's chair, shot through the head.' She shuddered. ‘They must have shot him through the window from a block opposite.
Ever since then it's been one after the other. Wills – the butler; then our new chauffeur, and then Doc Wetherby, who was walking down the street with father. I was scared then. But afterwards, on board ship and at our hotel in London, I was so frightened I thought I should go out of my mind. And then when we came down here it seemed like an escape.' She sighed. ‘That house of yours across the park, and this one – they were so quiet, undisturbed for centuries, it seemed that nothing terrible could happen in them. But now we've brought you this horror. Sometimes I feel' – her voice sank to a whisper – ‘that we've roused the devil. There's some ghastly evil power dogging us, something from which we can't escape.'

She spoke quite seriously, and the gravity of her voice, coupled with the tragedy which had overwhelmed her, infected the other girl with some of her terror.

‘But,' said Biddy, struggling to regain her common sense, ‘St Swithin killed himself. There's no doubt of that, they say. If it were a murder it wouldn't be so horrible. Oh,' she said irrelevantly, ‘I wish Giles would come back.'

A gentle tap on the door startled them both. Old Cuddy appeared with a tray. The old woman's hands trembled. She had been told of the tragedy and had reacted to it in her own practical way.

‘I've brought you both a cup of cocoa, Miss Biddy,' she said.

She set the tray down beside them and without further words began to make the fire and refill the emptying candlesticks. They drank the cocoa gratefully. The heavy stimulant soothed their nerves and they sat quiet until far away over the silhouetted hedge tops they saw the faint glow of headlights against the sky. The light came nearer until they heard the car whisper past the house. Then all was black again.

‘Who will they have got? The doctor and the sheriff?' said Isopel nervously.

Biddy shook her head. ‘It'll be Dr Wheeler and Peck, the Heronhoe policeman, I suppose,' she said; and quite suddenly she turned her face towards the shutter and wept.

In the study across the green Dr Wheeler, a short, thick-set,
oldish man with a natural air of importance, set his bag down upon the desk and took off his coat.

Peck, the Heronhoe police-constable, red-faced and perspiring with unaccustomed responsibility, clutched his notebook unhappily.

Giles and Marlowe had followed them into the room and now stood gravely in the doorway. Giles introduced Judge Lobbett and Albert Campion.

The doctor nodded to them curtly.

‘This is bad,' he said. ‘Terrible. Not like the old man. I saw him only the other day. He seemed quite cheerful. Where's the body, please?' He spoke briskly.

Giles indicated the door of the robing-room. ‘We've left him just as he fell, sir. There was nothing to be done. He – he's practically blown his head off.'

The little doctor nodded. ‘Yes, quite,' he said, taking the affair completely into his capable hands. ‘We shall need some light, I suppose. Peck, bring the lantern, will you?'

His deference to their susceptibilities was not lost upon the others, and they were grateful.

The closet door swung open and the doctor, stepping carefully to avoid the stream of blood, went in, the constable walking behind him, the lantern held high.

Some of the horror that they saw was communicated to the four who now stood upon the hearthrug waiting. Dr Wheeler reappeared within a few minutes, Peck following him, stolid and unmoved.

The doctor shook his head. ‘Very nasty,' he said quietly. ‘Death must have been absolutely instantaneous, though. We must get him out of there. We'll need a shed door, and if you could get a sheet, Giles – How's Biddy?' he broke off. ‘Is she all right? Over at the Dower House? I'll go in and see her before I go.'

Giles explained that Isopel was with her, and the old man, who had known the brother and sister since they were children, seemed considerably relieved. Campion and Marlowe went through the dark stone kitchens of the Rectory. They let themselves into the brick yard, and lifting a toolshed door off
its hinges brought it carefully into the house. Giles was upstairs in search of a sheet: they could hear him stumbling about on the uneven floors.

With the constable holding the light, they assisted the doctor to lift the gruesome sightless thing on to the improvised stretcher. The doctor had thrown a surplice that had been hanging on the wall over all that remained of the old man before Giles returned with the sheet.

They laid the stretcher on a hastily arranged trestle of chairs at the far end of the room. Campion swung the great shutters across the windows, and then without speaking they trooped off to the scullery to wash.

Peck was particularly anxious to avoid troubling the Pagets and their friends any more than was absolutely necessary, and when he once more produced his notebook it was with an air of apology.

‘There's just one or two things I'll have to make a note of,' he began, clearing his throat nervously. ‘You'd say the gun was fired by the deceased 'imself?'

‘Oh, yes, no doubt about that.' The doctor was struggling into the coat Giles held for him. ‘You'll go to Mr Topliss, Peck? Tell him I'll 'phone him in the morning.'

‘Mr Cush left a letter for Mr Topliss,' said Campion, pointing to the big yellow envelope on the desk. The policeman moved forward clumsily to take it, and the doctor sighed with relief.

‘I expect that'll make it all very simple,' he said. ‘I was afraid from the look of things there might be a lot of tedious questioning for you all. This'll probably mean only a formal inquest.'

The constable slipped the letter into his pocket. ‘I'll ride out to Mr Topliss first thing,' he said. ‘There's just one thing, 'owever, if you don't mind. Where was you all when the shot was fired?'

‘All together,' said Giles, ‘in the drawing-room at the Dower House just across the green there.'

‘I see,' said Peck, writing laboriously. ‘And the housekeeper, Mrs Broom, where was she?'

‘She was with us,' said Giles. ‘She brought a message from St Swithin – I mean Mr Cush.'

‘Oh?' said the constable with interest. ‘What was that?'

Giles handed him the slip of paper and the countryman held it to the light. ‘“Giles and Albert come over alone,”' he read ‘Albert – that'll be you, sir?' he said, turning to Campion.