Mr Campion's Seance, page 29
‘In a way, that’s what has brought us to this,’ she said as she wrestled with a wooden coat-hanger.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘My refusal to let Edmund go, my need to contact him, and then, of course, poor, sweet, Peter. I enjoyed the company of both my Belgian boys during the war and I was actually grateful to Albert, back then, for bringing them to me.’
She hung up her coat and closed the wardrobe door then walked back to the dressing table and collected her handbag, which she clutched to the front of her cardigan. ‘I knew Simon was a bit of a Jack-the-Lad, and he knew I consulted mediums to contact Edmund. That’s why, when Peter went missing in action, he suggested I should try to reach him, but my usual medium, Miss Kitto, could not manage it. Simon suggested Madame Rawnie, who had gypsy blood and the gift of psychic attraction, as he called it. As soon as the war was over, I began to visit her in Brussels.’
‘And did she?’ asked Amanda. ‘Have the gift?’
‘I certainly thought so. She channelled Peter’s spirit convincingly enough, and that of Edmund, but now I know that she was Simon’s mother, I can guess where she got much of her background information. She’s been taking my money and making a fool of me for more than fifteen years.’
‘But did it bring you comfort at the time?’
‘Yes, I admit, it did. You have no idea how much I missed Edmund – and Peter, too. He was such an angelic boy.’
‘The son you never had?’
‘Oh no, Edmund and I never considered having children. I married rather too late, but if I had felt a twinge of motherhood, it would have been for a daughter; a bright girl like Veronica.’
Evadne fell silent and held her bag even closer to her heart if that were possible. Amanda, embarrassed at raising the topic of motherhood, was relieved to hear the front doorbell chiming from below.
‘Don’t panic,’ she said, ‘that will be Albert.’
‘I’m not worried, my dear. Burglars rarely ring the front doorbell. Not even in my stories.’
They ate in the small alcove extension to the first-floor dining room, isolated by an archway and sliding pinewood doors, well away from the French windows and the tiny balcony overlooking the square, over which the fog was gently pressing down a dank, grey pillow. Lugg puffed up the stairs with his signature fish pie and served it before he peeled off a slightly charred apron the size of a bell tent and sat down to eat. Mr Campion had skipped lightly down the stairs to the refrigerator and returned with a bottle of Chablis and a corkscrew.
Evadne declared it to be a superb fish pie and Lugg glowed like a wakening volcano as he cleared the plates, muttering that a bit of appreciation was always a nice surprise.
When he had begun his clumping descent down to the kitchen, Campion produced from his top pocket a Metropolitan Police whistle.
‘Our secret weapon,’ he said with an idiotic grin. ‘I’ve always wanted one of these.’
‘Never mind secret, that’s our only weapon,’ said Amanda.
‘I am assured by young Charlie Luke that there will be half-a-dozen policemen within earshot when the time comes.’
‘Which will be sometime after eight and before ten thirty,’ said Evadne, casually ignoring the stares of the two Campions.
‘Why do you say that, Evadne?’
‘Because, Albert, around eight o’clock your man Lugg will exit the house as noisily as possible after making a show of turning off all the lights. He will then proceed to a local public house until closing time, or ten thirty to be on the safe side.’
‘Very good,’ said Campion. ‘That is more or less the plan. Did Amanda let you in on it?’
Campion was aware that his wife was shaking her head, but he was concentrating on the older woman.
‘That’s the way I did it in my book,’ said Evadne. ‘I do hope you’ve remembered to leave the sash window in the basement unlocked.’
That was Lugg’s allocated task; one of many thankless ones, as he repeatedly pointed out. Having cleared and pushed back the dinner table, he brought in three more comfortable chairs and placed a rubber-encased torch on each one.
‘In case you’ve got reading material while you’re waiting,’ he said in explanation, ‘unless you fancy playing footsie in the dark, that is.’
Then he turned off the lights in the annexe, marched into the main dining room and, fully illuminated, pulled back the curtains on the French windows. With his arms outstretched, and with the light behind him, he must have looked like Samson straining at the pillars of Dagon’s temple in Gaza, even though his hair had not grown back.
‘It’s thickening up like good gravy out there,’ he said as he turned away and walked towards the doorway and the light switch for the room, ‘couldn’t see yer ’and in front of yer face unless you was holding a cigar to lead the way. I’ll be leaving you now.’
With that, he snapped the Bakelite wall switch and the first floor of the house was plunged into darkness.
The three seated figures held their collective breath as Lugg’s footsteps faded down the stairs. They heard the kitchen door open and faint clatterings and thuds as crockery was piled into a sink and cupboards opened and closed. Campion knew that Lugg would be making a show, for the benefit of any outside observer, of his skill in the scullery and would even make a trip to the basement, to deposit the empty Chablis bottle (and several bottles of stout which had mysteriously emptied themselves during the cooking of dinner), turning lights on and off as he went. Finally, he would hang a damp tea towel over the eye-level grill, pull on his jacket and then an overcoat and his favourite bowler hat, and leave by the front door.
‘Now we wait,’ said Campion. ‘By all means read by torchlight but keep the beams pointed downwards. Perhaps I should have taken up knitting.’
‘Or we could just talk,’ said Amanda, hoping desperately that her husband would not suggest holding a séance.
‘I have something to say,’ said Evadne, from the gloom. ‘Whatever happens tonight – or doesn’t happen – I wish to go to Gilpin’s tomorrow and, if possible, to Cricklewood to visit Veronica’s mother.’
‘I am sure that can be arranged. Superintendent Luke might insist you go with a police escort, but otherwise I will drive you myself.’
‘Do you really think I am in danger?’
‘It’s a risk I would rather not run. You are the one person who can positively identify Moorgat and connect him with the Grafton Club robbery and the murders of Rags and Veronica.’
‘I have been thinking about that.’ In the dark, Evadne’s voice was both ethereal and commanding. ‘You saw Simon during the war; you introduced him to me. Surely you are just as likely to be able to identify him as I am, so why am I here?’
There was a silence before Campion answered. ‘Because he may be in the business of tying up loose ends and it is easier to protect you here in London.’
‘Yet you have brought me to this house, the one place we are leading him directly to with our trail of breadcrumbs, tempting him to come for those black pearls, which I notice have conveniently been left in that cigar box on the dining-room table. If Simon comes, I will be in the front line here, surely?’
‘You are perfectly safe, Evadne,’ said Amanda. ‘Albert would not endanger you, or me, if he thought either of us faced a real threat.’
‘My point is that I do not think I was in any real danger at my home in Essex. I think Albert suggested I come here not for my benefit, but for his.’
‘You are very perceptive, Mrs Walker-Pyne.’ Campion’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘There have been three deaths for which I believe I bear some responsibility and I will not allow any more. It may be inconvenient and uncomfortable for you to be here with us tonight, but it puts my mind at ease to be able to keep a watchful eye over you.’
‘So I am here to salve your conscience? I thought perhaps I might be here as bait.’
‘No, no,’ Amanda protested, ‘the black pearls are the bait. You were never part of the plan until …’
‘Until Veronica.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Campion, ‘I admit I never saw that coming. It rather frightened me and I felt I had to do something and do it immediately. You see, I was distracted by other events at the time of the Grafton case, or the case of the Bottle Party Murder, if I may appropriate that phrase. And then everyone was distracted from Rags Donovan’s murder by the Euston mail-van robbery. I do not want to take my eye off the ball this time.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Evadne and, in the dark, felt for her handbag which she had placed under her chair. Once her fingers had located it, she pulled it up on to her lap and leaned forward, so that her arms could surround and hold it tight.
At one minute to nine o’clock, by the luminous hands on Amanda’s wristwatch, they heard the first sound of forced entry.
‘That will be the basement window being forced,’ whispered Evadne. ‘It’s the way they do it in my book.’
Amanda shivered involuntarily, more because of Evadne’s confident assessment of the situation than the situation itself. Mr Campion got silently to his feet and moved to his left, taking a position behind the sliding door leading to the main dining room and the door to the staircase. Lugg had deliberately left the sliding panels about a foot apart so that, without the over light on, the entrance to the alcove could have been mistaken for an open armoire.
There were more sounds from below, the tall, empty house acting almost as an echo chamber and the fog outside insulating it from any traffic noise. A door definitely creaked open and then there came a soft thud as if a shoe or a shoulder had suddenly connected with an unseen obstacle.
Campion held his breath and strained his ears, waiting for the inevitable footfall on the stairs. It came in tandem with a loud click as a torch was turned on and a narrow, irregular rectangle of light played off the far wall of the staircase and inched its way upwards. His own torch was a hefty, rubber-cased one, and though his thumb was over the rubber ‘On’ button, he held it at shoulder height so it could be used as a club.
There were clearly audible footsteps now, confident ones, the intruder seemingly convinced that the house was uninhabited, and undeterred by the creaking of stair treads long past their prime. And then the first finger of torchlight entered the room and Campion instinctively recoiled behind the alcove door, pressing his shoulder blades against the wall.
He had told the two women to remain seated and absolutely quiet until he reached the main light switch, no matter what they heard or thought they saw, and through the gap in the alcove doors they could see the alien torch illuminating the dining room in a sweeping motion which reminded Amanda of a camp searchlight in one of the prisoner-of-war films so popular in the Fifties, at least among British audiences.
The beam swept on and pointed downwards as the carrier of the torch reached the door from the stairs and stepped into the room. Campion realized that the lens of the torch must be partially ‘blacked out’ with tape or paint, as had been the practice during the war, so that its beam was restricted and would be less likely to be noticed from outside. It was still powerful enough to light up the key features of the room and Campion felt an odd sense of satisfaction when it came to rest on the small round table prominently supporting a cigar box.
Amanda, however, felt far from satisfied. As there was now some ambient light, she could see Evadne’s face; it shocked her, for it showed not fear or apprehension but pure, undiluted anger as the intruder entered the dining room fully and walked directly over to the cigar box.
As he flipped the lid and shone his torch down into the box, he exhaled loudly in surprise and, at that precise moment, Mr Campion clicked on his torch and aimed it fully at the interloper’s face.
‘Hello, Simon; it’s been a long time.’
The face Campion’s torch picked out had an open mouth and the eyes were wide and wild, framed by a dark stubble of closely cropped hair, the complexion deathly white; prison white. Yet the most fascinating thing about the figure, or the portion of him that could be clearly seen, as his black clothing melted his outline, was that despite being disturbed, startled and possibly frightened, his face transfixed by Campion’s torch, his own torch remained firmly aimed at the cigar box and, with his free hand, almost as if on autopilot, he was reaching in and removing the chinking, clinking mass of the necklace, which he held as a child might hold a frond of seaweed found on a beach.
Mr Campion reached out an arm and flipped the light switch and the spell was broken.
‘You. I know you.’ The intruder spoke as if the words hurt his mouth; he blinked and screwed up his eyes, behind which a brain was racing furiously.
‘My name is Campion and we met twenty-two years ago. It is to my eternal regret that our paths did not cross earlier, even twenty-four hours earlier, when I might have stopped you murdering Veronica Hatherall.’
‘That was her name?’
The callousness in Moorgat’s voice chilled Campion and, for the first time that evening, he experienced a tingle of fear. He was several inches taller than the man he faced, but more than twenty years older and therefore slower. Moorgat was as trim as Campion, as far as he could tell through the black pullover and corduroy trousers, but a prison regime had probably encouraged more muscle than fat. If it came to a rough house, Campion had no doubt that Lugg would bet against him, and yet there he was, facing a triple murderer armed only with a rubber torch and a police whistle.
Moorgat sensed the doubt in the older man. It was a skill quickly learned in prison. ‘You will forgive me if I do not stay to renew whatever acquaintance we may have had,’ Moorgat said calmly, his eyes flicking to the door to the stairs which Campion was attempting to block with his slender frame.
‘You cannot get away this time,’ said Campion firmly.
‘I think I can,’ said Moorgat confidently, switching his torch off and hefting it slightly in his grip while stuffing the necklace into a trouser pocket.
Campion knew what would happen next: the coiling of his body, a slight crouch, and then the head-down charge to take him in the chest and either bulldoze him out of the way or project him down the stairs. And all before he could remove his spectacles or reach for that ridiculous tin whistle.
Throughout their encounter, Campion had kept his torch on and shining into Moorgat’s face, though it did not appear to disturb him in the slightest. Campion concentrated on making sure his hand did not shake and the beam did not waver for, however small an advantage it might be, it was worth having.
There was a sudden sound from behind his head and it took Campion a second to register that the doors to the alcove were being slid open. His first thought was that now he had two doorways to defend.
‘That’s enough, Simon.’
The authority in the voice alone should have dissuaded Moorgat from any sudden physical movement.
The fact that Evadne Childe was advancing steadily towards him holding a revolver should have made certain.
TWENTY-ONE
Cozenage
It was a gun Campion had seen before, the short-barrelled Webley dating from the First World War and inherited from Evadne’s father, with which she had bested his score in the ad-hoc shooting gallery beneath Bottle Street in 1940. It explained why Evadne had insisted Campion remained downstairs at Mill House while she packed her bags that morning, and why she had been so protective of her handbag throughout the day.
The revolver looked clean, oiled and evidently in full working order, and the hand which held it was steady as a rock, which pleased Campion immensely. So much, in fact, that he lowered his torch and switched it off and finally remembered to breathe normally.
Moorgat, still holding his torch, raised both his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Evie …’
‘Don’t call me that! Don’t call me anything. You have been nothing but deceitful.’
Campion took a half-step towards Evadne and offered a hand, palm upwards, suggesting that she pass him the pistol. Behind Evadne, in the alcove, Amanda shook her head vigorously in a warning to her husband, and Campion was forced to withdraw his hand limply and ignominiously as the revolver was waved briefly but firmly in his direction, leaving him in no doubt that she was unwilling to relinquish it. From his rather pained expression, it appeared that Mr Campion was more concerned about the weapon than Moorgat was. In fact, Moorgat was smiling.
‘Mrs Walker-Pyne,’ he said formally but not quite politely, ‘was I not your handsome gypsy boy who showed you around London during the war days? Did I not look after you, keep you safe in the clubs and the black markets?’
‘Don’t you dare!’
‘Did I not guide you to your precious Edmund through Madame Rawnie?’
‘You mean your mother? Another deception.’
Evadne took a pace forward and Moorgat immediately took one backwards into the centre of the room, as if they were automaton figures locked in a clockwork tango.
‘One you took pleasure in, or you would have stopped coming to Brussels. Rawnie helped you talk to your beloved Edmund, did she not? Was that not a comfort to you?’
‘It was a lie!’ Evadne’s voice began to crack for the first time. ‘It was a way to steal the plots of my books.’
‘I only wish you had given me more that I could use. You should not have been so anxious to boast to Edmund.’
‘Say his name again and I will shoot you!’
The woman took another step forward and the man another one back, until he was positioned directly under the central room light hanging from the ceiling, which reflected the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the first sign of nervousness Campion had been able to spot.
He edged himself closer to Evadne. ‘This isn’t one of your novels, Evadne. At the very minimum, this man is a burglar, caught in the act red-handed. Let the police deal with him.’
‘He’s not just a thief,’ said Evadne, sparing Campion a brief glance, ‘he’s a murderer.’
