The Beckoning Lady (5 page)

Luke hesitated. He was staring across the border at a clump of Russell lupins, tall, narrow blossoms, cream fading to yellow fading to brown; odd, formal flowers, but beautiful and very unusual. Beyond them the river wound through the water-meadows to a grey distance which was streaked with gold where the woods began. He spoke reluctantly, but although there was apology in his voice there was no indecision there, rather a sort of resigned finality.

“I'm booked to go that way this afternoon,” he said, nodding upstream. “There's otter there, they say. I've never seen one.”

Mr. Campion opened his mouth to object that an otter is a creature of the dusk, but he changed his mind and said nothing. He recollected an axiom of his grandfather's: “A treed cat, a man in love, and the French. God help the fool who tries to rescue any one of them.”

They walked back to the house in silence, but before they went in the D.D.C.I. spoke again. The withered posy lying on the stones caught his eye and he stooped to pick it up and tidy it away under the bushes by the door.

“I don't pretend to know much about it, but I'd say
that if you're right there was only one thing in the world as shy as this lot suggests,” he remarked seriously, “and that's Money.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Campion casually, “that's what I thought.”

“Speakin' as a sentimental ole fool,” announced Mr. Lugg, breathing heavily from his climb up the embankment, “there's nothink so loverly as a loverly drop o' Nachure.”

“That's only nachure, I suppose,” said Campion, who was just ahead of him with Amanda.

Lugg dropped on to the grass with a grunt. “Sarc won't get you nowhere,” he said ominously. “Tittle and tattle, rattle and natter, fritter away your life with it. Whatever you say, you won't better this—always supposin' the lady we're a-visitin' ain't teetotal or otherwise vicious. Sit down, carn't yer? Them two is all right.” He shook his festoon of chins towards the remainder of the party, Choc and Rupert, who were scrambling down the bank towards the path below where an oak tree shed deep shadows over a stile and a rustic bridge. The boy went first and the fat dog followed more cautiously, his great plume waving over the remarkable white petticoat breeches which he appeared to be wearing.

Amanda sat down and Campion dropped beside her. “It's the best view of all of the house, I think,” she said. “It always pulled me up, even as a child. You can see how the place got its name.”

They were looking down into a hidden valley, part natural and part created by the bank on which they sat. In a hollow, lying beside the stream, which at that point was wide and shallow, was a little estate. It was all alone. There was no other building in sight, and all around it the deep meadows and the fenlands, where the cricket-bat willows look like egret feathers, were tucked about it like a pile of green cushions. At that distance it appeared
toy-sized and unreal in the very bright light which simplified all the shapes and colours until one could believe that one saw a miniature in a paperweight. There was the house, which was fifteenth-century and gabled like the Mill, the barn which was thatched and enormous, one of the famous tithe barns of the East country, a small cottage, a boat house, even a white dog kennel, very vivid and neat by a yard pump with a hat over it, all scintillating in the dazzling glare. There were white fences and little white gates about, and everywhere a mass of flowers which outrivalled Aunt Hatt's own.

“The Beckoning Lady,” said Mr. Campion. “How came a pub there, down at the end of such a lane? It isn't even on a through road.”

“It was never a pub.” Amanda spoke without taking her eyes from the scene. “It's just the local name for the house, which got into the deeds at some point. No one knows why it's called that, except that as far back as anyone can trace it has been owned by a woman, and there's always been trouble over it because it is said that as soon as a man sees it he tries to get hold of it to do it in. It has an extraordinary history. There have been dozens of lawsuits over it. This bank we're sitting on is the beginnings of a railway. There was an awful row about that last century, but it got stopped in the end at enormous cost. Then Minnie's mother had it, and her father the painter fell for it, and when she wouldn't sell it he stayed on and married her.”

“Determined chap,” suggested her husband.

“Oh, I think he fell for the lady too, but the house started it. He was a widower and she wasn't a girl. It's a queer place, though. People do go silly about it.”

“I know why,“ Lugg said thickly. “It's got the ole come-'ither. Look at 'er. ‘Come 'ere and be 'appy, dear,' that's what she's sayin'. I should say so! ‘Come 'ere and rest, duck. Wot's an ole death-watch beetle among frens? And if we lie a bit low, damp won't 'urt a great strong bloke like you.' You can see it in every line of 'er.
Lumme,” he added, sitting up as abruptly as his bulk would allow, “wot's that? Indians?”

He pointed across the glistening landscape to one of the wilder enclosures where, amid stones and huge clumps of bramble, there were two or three unmistakable wigwams.

“Kids,” said Amanda. “Minnie's father instituted that camp. In those days we had to have some excuse for going about half naked. Whenever there are enough children down there it gets revived. Minnie collects kids, especially when Tonker has a party. They like it and it makes it fun for her. Her niece and nephew are there, of course, the American ones. The Bernadines, and I think some of their school friends. They
give
the party.”

Mr. Lugg was interested. “Do they 'ave charge of the booze?”

“I think so. Who better? They don't like it.”

A smile of ineffable sentimentality crept into Lugg's rheumy eyes.

“Bless their little 'earts,” he said piously, “'Ullo, now wot?”

The sheep dog's bark, than which there is nothing more misleadingly offensive, was shattering the sunlit peace. They could see him distinctly standing in the ditch at the side of the bridge which was not overgrown. His fluffy bulk almost filled the dark opening under the platform as his tail flashed from side to side like a flag. He was barking as collies do, with apparent rage, making a beastly raucous sound and producing more of it than would seem possible from one animal. Rupert was trying to pull him out without success. The petticoat breeches nudged the child back whenever he advanced, and the noise continued.

“Orl right orl right, I'll go.” Lugg lumbered to his feet and stumbled on down the slope, grumbling. “Can't sit down now without you yappin'. Shut up, I'm coming! Shut up for Gord's sake! Leave the pore cat alone.”

The others left him to it. Amanda glanced back at the house once more and spoke without looking at Albert.

“In the village they say that everything's going to be
cleared away down here to make room for a dog track, and the railway's to be built after all these years. Fanny Genappe's new house is to be a hotel, and the Forty Angels are moving in. It's not open talk yet, but I've had it whispered to me three or four times.”

“The Forty Angels?” said Mr. Campion. “That's something out of our childhood.”

She smiled, her triangular mouth curling as he liked to see it best.

“Oh well, they always say that. It just means no name, no pack drill, and always speak well of them as has money to sue. But it's crazy, isn't it? I mean, a dog track here, miles from anywhere.”

Mr. Campion's face was as blank as a plate. “Sounds wrong somehow.”

“Somehow?”

He nodded at her. “Somehow. Got any other choice bits of misinformation?”

She considered. Lugg had reached the bottom of the slope and was preparing to descend into the ditch.

“They say that Minnie doesn't want to part with the place but that she's being driven round the bend by a blackmailer.”

“Oh yes?” Campion was inclined to be entertained. “This always was a lively spot. What is her guilty secret? Tonker? That's a lie. Not only did I dance at their wedding; I swung from a chandelier.”

“No, seriously. They don't know what she's hiding, but they insist it's blackmail and it's gone on for at least six years.”

“Six—? Oh nonsense.”

“They say so. They'd know too. It's no time at all by their standards.”

Mr. Campion shook his head. “Great man fails to connect,” he said seriously. “No. No answering buzz whatever. It's happened again, something I don't know. Tell me Amanda, without prejudice, would you leave me for an otter?”

She laughed and her hair glowed like fire in the sun.

“You can't stop
that
,” she said. “I don't see how you can expect to. That's got to take its natural course. People in Pontisbright are born knowing that. Oh dear, here comes Rupert. Lugg's got stuck, I suppose. I do wish he wouldn't wedge himself into such impossible places.”

“Cat-burglar blood,” said Campion absently as the small boy, bright-eyed and important, came scrambling towards him. “What's the damage, Captain?”

“Lugg says please will you go down without me and Mother, because he has something to show you private.”

“Private to show me, has he? All right, you two sit here.”

He went off down the steep slope, his long legs swinging loosely and easily as ever. Amanda watched him with affection and made room for her son beside her. Rupert lay back in the grass and looked up at the sky. Presently he said:

“There's a man asleep down there.” Watching her slyly out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she was suitably startled.

“Really?” she said at last. “How do you know?”

“Because I saw him when I looked under the bridge. I couldn't get near because Choc kept pushing me out. He is an enormous dog, soft but enormous.”

“Yes,” she agreed absently. Her light-brown eyes were worried, and she stared down at the two men who were now both in the ditch by the bridge, peering at something.

Rupert continued to contemplate the infinity of the sky. The blue had turned into a million colours, he noticed, like hundreds and thousands.

“Uncle William went to sleep,” he said distinctly.

He was the first child she had known well, and Amanda was taken aback. She turned right round to him, which was the reaction he had in mind.

“Who told you that?”

“Lugg. He said ‘He's gone to sleep, pore old perisher'.” Rupert sighed. “And so they buried him,” he said with great matter-of-factness.

Amanda felt the need to assert herself. “Look here,” she said, “you think you know a lot, but you needn't hold out on me. Who gave you those old flowers this morning?”

Rupert screwed up his face and made a great effort at concentration.

“He did,” he said at last.

“Who?”

“The man who is asleep down there.”

A cloud so small and white that it seemed to have no substance passed over the sun and its shadow raced towards them over the grass, gave them a chill kiss, and was gone.

“Are you sure?”

Rupert decided to come clean. “No dear,” he said, “not truly sure. But you know, I do really think so. He was much the same.”

MR CAMPION, TELEPHONING
from a seat on the bed in the room over the kitchen at The Beckoning Lady, thought he had never had such difficulty in persuading authority to notice a corpse before.

His old friend Sir Leo Pursuivant, the Chief Constable at Kepesake wanted to talk about everything else; his well-remembered voice came crackling over the wire.

“Campion. My dear fellow. Couldn't be more pleased. Heard you were down. For Tonker's party, I suppose? I said to Poppy, hope to goodness we see something of them. We shall all be there on Saturday. Poppy's going to run the bar. Minnie kindly asked her. She's been prinking herself up all this week. Not enough of that sort of jollification these days down here. Money tight and life dull. I pulled a tendon in my foot so I'm stuck at the desk, but I shall be there on the day, please God. Amanda all right? And the boy? Poor William, eh? I didn't come over. He wouldn't have wanted it. Would have wanted to slip off quietly without casting a blight. What was it? Anno Domini? Ah, gets us all in the end. Seems a pity. What's your news, my boy? Still turning up interesting things?”

“I don't know.” The caller got a word in at last and proceeded to explain.

“A body? Dead man?”

Mr. Campion could envisage the mottled hand feeling first for the pen and then for the pince-nez on the thick black cord. “Found it yourself, did you? God bless my soul, Campion, what an extraordinary feller you are! You're at Harriet's mill, are you?”

“No sir. The Beckoning Lady. We found the corpse just
now, coming along. Lugg went back to report it to the bobby and I came on here to the phone.”

“Ah. Unfortunate just at this time. It's not actually on The Beckoning Lady land, I hope, is it?”

“I don't know. I haven't seen a soul to ask. I came straight up to the telephone. It's in a ditch by the side of the footpath. Do you know the country?”

“Shot over it all my life. There's an old embankment, full of birds in winter. Start from there.”

“That's it. Just there. There's a stile. . . .”

“With a bridge by it. I know. Just in there, is it? Thank goodness for that. That's not Minnie's. Very well, my boy, we'll see to that for you. Keep the young people out of the way and give us a couple of hours. No need to alarm the women.”

An involuntary smile twisted Mr. Campion's wide mouth. “It may not be quite as simple as that,” he said cautiously. “I didn't like to disturb anything so I can't tell you much, but he's very dead, he doesn't look like a local product, and he's got a tremendous hole in his head. Death must have been instantaneous.”