The Tiger In the Smoke (28 page)

‘But even if Geoff could have warned you, you couldn't have caught the man, could you?'

Meg had asked Mr Campion the question before and had forgotten the answer. She looked very lovely, crouching on the rug, her long legs doubled gracefully under her.

‘Surely Inspector Luke can see that?'

Mr Campion smiled at her from behind his spectacles.

‘The gallant Chief Inspector is not unnaturally hopping mad,' he said lightly. ‘Geoff managed to call attention to himself, and that was a stout effort in the circumstances, make no mistake about it. He was all in when we got to him, and getting the gag off must have been agonizing, with a night's growth of beard embedded in it. But his only thought was to tell us about Havoc. He didn't quite realize who he was, of course, and by that time they'd faded out into the fog irretrievably.' He grinned at her. ‘I was most relieved. The days when little Albert charged into battle single-handed have gone for good. Havoc is police work, good hefty police work, with medals and promotions at the end of it. Geoff was game, if I wasn't. He was most annoyed to lose them. He
has
something, your young man. I mind you going out of the family much less than I did.'

She gave him her quick sweet smile, but drew back at once into the terrors surrounding her.

‘Bless you, my dear. I was only wondering. I suppose nothing really serious in the way of injury could have happened to him without our realizing it? They're a very long time working on him.'

‘Lugg is always thorough,' put in Amanda promptly. ‘His corpse-reviving treatment takes time, and with Sam helping it may well take more. I think they're pretending to be prizefighters' seconds. Sam had got the bathroom ready. You never saw anything so professional. They'll do him no end of good if only he doesn't lose his temper and knock them both out. But they can't be very long now, because Luke's coming.'

Her thin brown hand touched the younger girl's shoulder.

‘He's all right, pretty. He's all right now.'

Meg shot a furtive sidelong glance at her. Her eyes were swimming helplessly.

‘I'm an idiot,' she said apologetically. ‘It's the relief, of course, reaction and all that, but I thought I'd lost him and until then I didn't realize quite how much I need him.' She shook her long yellow silk hair away from her face and appealed to them openly. ‘The whole thing seems so utterly insane to me. A man in prison scheming to get another to impersonate poor Martin, to prevent me marrying Geoff. And then because it didn't work, breaking out and doing all these frightful things. He's a maniac, I realize that, but that doesn't make it any better. Madness when you see it is the most terrible thing in the world.'

‘I don't think he's mad,' said Amanda, and her husband, catching sight of her serious heart-shaped face, thought that she looked as he had first seen her long ago in the shabby drawing-room of The Mill at Pontisbright. She had the same air of frank, childlike wisdom. ‘He just wants the treasure. That may be wrong, but it's not insane.'

‘But, my dear, there can't
be
any treasure.' Meg sounded helpless. ‘Poor little Martin never had any treasure. The family had been wealthy, but they lost it all in the First World War. He told me that before he asked me to marry him. We'd be church mice, he said, until we'd got the war over and he got busy.'

‘A giant-killer,' murmured Mr Campion. ‘Sounds like Geoff.'

‘It does, doesn't it?' She was briefly amused. ‘But don't you see, this murderer is making a fearful mistake? Martin must have said something to him which he completely misunderstood. He's been brooding on it all these years and now he's raging about the place like a man-eating tiger, killing recklessly, and all for nothing. I can't get it out of my mind. I can see Geoff lying there utterly helpless, while if that man had only guessed who he was – ' Her pretty voice quavered out of control and Amanda glanced behind her. Rupert was not listening. He was engrossed by private worries, one of which was his inability to put his head firmly on the seat of the big chair whilst retaining control of his weight. Either his legs were too short or the chair was too high. His other problem was more serious. That afternoon Mrs Talisman had let slip a most alarming piece of adult information. She had said that it was stated in black and white in the Bible that all the hairs of one's head were numbered, and ever since Rupert had been consumed with anxiety, wondering if the bald-headed Mr Lugg
knew
. If he did not, the discrepancy on his handing-in papers was going to come as a fearful embarrassment to him, if not worse. Poor old Magers! He'd just have to write ‘None' and explain as best he could. Yet perhaps something could be done. Even now, although time must be so short. If they could only have a long time together alone. Rupert could break the news gently and they could plan.

He caught his mother looking at him anxiously and smiled at her reassuringly. She would be more worried than he was, even, so he had decided not to tell her. She could come into it if things got desperate.

Meg noticed the exchange and rose impulsively. ‘Darling, I'm being untidy. I am so sorry. Forgive me. I think I'll go and bang on the door. If Geoff is still retching he'll have to put up with me. After all, that's marriage, isn't it?'

‘But not romance,' said Mr Campion as the door closed behind her. ‘It's an extraordinary thing how the sins of omission catch up on one, Amanda. In youth my generation feared romance like the devil, and now it sneaks up on me, dangerous with all the charm of the untried. I should like to wrap you two in cotton-wool and send you down to the country tonight. Do you mind?'

Her calm brown eyes flickered up at him.

‘Frightened?'

‘A little. Luke isn't happy. Geoff says Havoc has an outside contact on whom he relies, but he doesn't admit that he overheard anything which could connect him with this house.'

Amanda frowned. ‘Who?' Her lips formed the question.

Campion shook his head. ‘God knows. I can't see it myself. There's no odour of anything but sanctity about this family, and that sort of thing has an unmistakable stink. All the same, “by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes”. Let me send you both home, old lady.'

‘Are you staying?'

‘Yes, I think I'll stick around. I like Geoff and his pretty gal. What a staggering beauty she is.'

‘I think so.' Amanda spoke with a purr of true appreciation. ‘She's so exquisitely graceful, and in love too, all shiny. She ought to be marked “with care”, though. Will he give it her?'

‘Yes, I think so, don't you? He's the type, strong and reliable. Ruthless too, I should say, if it ever came to her or the rest. He may be keeping something dark. I wouldn't swear he wasn't. He's out to protect his own and good luck to him! Oh, I don't like it! Will you go? Once you get out of London you'll be clear of the fog.'

Amanda turned to her son.

‘How about driving down to the country tonight with Magers?'

‘Can we go alone?' His eagerness surprised and hurt them a little. ‘When can we start?'

His mother returned to her husband. ‘That settles that. I'll stay with you.'

Rupert put an arm round her neck and his hair mingled with hers until there was but one flaming plume. ‘You can come if you like, dear,' he said, ‘but we've got to talk, that's all.'

She whispered in his ear. ‘I'd rather stay with the boss.'

‘Good.' He was tremendously relieved. ‘You take her,' he said to his father. ‘Could Magers and I go now?'

Mr Campion looked down at him. He was shocked at the intensity of his own emotion, and more afraid of it than of anything he had ever known. One half his life, more than half, four foot tall and as gaily confident as if the world were made of apple pie.

‘I don't see why not,' he said, ‘as soon as he comes down from Mr Levett. Go and get your things. The good-dog-Tray is asleep in the car, I suppose? Say good-bye to Uncle Hubert if he's come in yet. If not, don't bother; he's gone visiting. Be as intelligent as you can on the way home. No trying to frighten Lugg while he's driving.'

‘No, I won't.' The boy was unexpectedly serious. ‘I must certainly remember that. Good-bye, Daddy.' He shook hands gravely and returned to Amanda. ‘Mrs Talisman has hung my coat on a peg twenty-two yards high,' he ventured apologetically, and tried to help lift her as she moved.

‘We'll go and get it; she said. ‘You'd better have something to eat, too. Come on.'

He went off, dancing beside her without a backward glance. His mind was fully occupied. Perhaps there was some stuff Lugg could rub in. Or if the worst came to the worst, there were always wigs. Not undetectable to an archangel, perhaps, but surely fair evidence of honest endeavour.

Left alone, Mr Campion felt that the room had grown darker. He sat down by the fire and felt for a cigarette. As he had said, he did not like the situation. Havoc, and Doll, and the three men who had been on the original raid had vanished too completely. The rest were being brought in one after the other. They were pathetic figures, most of them, unable to help and frightened to try. The police were merely hindered by their numbers. But the ringleaders were gone, as though the earth had swallowed them, and they were tricky quarry, five experienced men driven by a dream and led by something mercifully unusual in the humdrum history of crime.

He thought he could comprehend Havoc and he was in no mood to underestimate him. Oates had been right, as he usually was, the old sinner. The fellow was that rarity, a genuinely wicked man. Amanda had spotted it. He was no lunatic, no unfortunate betrayed by disease or circumstance, but a much more scarce and dangerous beast, the rogue which every herd throws up from time to time.

Campion was uneasy. The ancient smell of evil, acrid and potent as the stench of fever, came creeping through the gentle house to him, defiling as it passed.

That last message which Luke had thrust over to him just before they left Crumb Street stuck in his mind, sickening him. A waterman had fished the dwarf out of the shrouded Thames just before dusk. He was too late to save his life, but the little man's jaw had been broken before he was put in the water, so he could have told them nothing had he lived, for there was no evidence that he could write.

Campion shrugged his thin shoulders unhappily. The brute was a bad one. It was not often that he wished for police with rifles, but he could have welcomed them now.

He drew his mind away and reflected on Amanda. She had made up her mind to stay, whatever the boy had said. He had seen that in her face. Now that Rupert had grown out of babyhood her prime allegiance had returned to himself and they were partners again. She would look after him and he must look after the three of them. It was not the only sort of marriage but it was their sort.

He found himself speculating on Meg and Geoffrey, and was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Geoff himself.

The massage had restored him remarkably, although he still bore traces of his experience. But all the same his general appearance verged on the bizarre, for he was naked save for a sporting dressing-gown loaned by Sam. This garment was a trifle short for him, but made up for any deficiency with as fine an array of coloured horses' heads, racing plates and fox masks as Campion had ever seen. However, he seemed completely unaware of his clothes or lack of them. His strong, heavy body was taut under the silk and his jaw stuck out belligerently. A less shrewd observer might have thought him angry, but Campion, cocking a weather eye up at him, diagnosed an unusual emotional experience and his first words proved him right.

‘So there you are,' he said with relief. ‘Look, this is the damnedest thing. What do you know about this? I don't see why anyone should see it but you, so you'll have to back me if the Inspector gets querulous.' His eyes were hard and dark and his hand shook a little as he drew two folded sheets from the pocket of his robe and held them out. ‘Look, a letter from Martin Elginbrodde.'

Campion sat up. ‘Really? That is extraordinary! Where did you get it?'

‘Sam. Can you believe it?' Geoffrey was looking at him with open appeal. ‘He's had it all the time. He says he intended to slip it to me after the ceremony, as he promised Elginbrodde he would, but Meg said something to him on the phone this afternoon which gave him a clue, so he got busy and unearthed it. He's had it hidden behind the overmantel in his sitting-room. It slid down there and he knew it was safe and so he left it.'

He laughed abruptly and sat down on the opposite side of the hearth.

‘I might have guessed,' he said. ‘He was the obvious person, or at least I think so. He's the chap I should have given it to. Read it, Campion. This is the thing Havoc is looking for. He was quite right. There are a couple of notes enclosed for me to take to the local authorities, just as he said there would be.'

As Mr Campion unfolded the sheets the deep pleasant voice went on, by this time a trifle huskily.

‘I've not shown it to him. He didn't ask to see it and I didn't think I would, in case it breaks his heart. You'll see. It must have been written just before the kid went out on the raid, and evidently he was still full of it when he spoke to Havoc on the cliff. It was addressed to Blank Blank Esquire, and marked “Personal”. '

Campion began to read. The writing was small and masculine, the hand of a doer rather than a writer, and the style hit him squarely, its naive and vigorous sincerity leaping out at him like a personality.

Visitors' Club, Pall Mall, S.W.1.

February 4th, '44.

Dear Sir,

I fear I cannot tell you anything else but I hope you will realize that I do not mean to be as formal as this address would indicate. I feel very kindly disposed to you. If you get this at all, I shall be out of the picture, where, if you understand me,
I hope to God I stay
. Meg is such a thoroughly splendid person that she deserves a real life with a man who is batty about her. I know you will be (erased) or, otherwise, she would never have married you. Please understand that I realize that my intrusion into your life at this point is rather ‘much', to put it mildly, but there is something you have got to do.