Death of a Ghost (7 page)

‘My dears,' said Belle piteously, ‘something very terrible has happened. There has been – well – there has been an accident.'

Her voice was trembling unashamedly, and her unconscious use of the endearment made her announcement very real, and her appeal very personal. She went on, still leaning heavily on the doctor's arm, while they listened to her breathlessly with that sinking of the heart and faint sense of nausea which always come just before the worst is told.

‘A young man who was with us here a few minutes ago is now dead. He died in here when the lights were out. Sir Gordon feels that – that no one should leave until the police have come.'

She looked round her appealingly, as though imploring them to understand. It was odd what an impressive figure she was, this plump old lady in the high white bonnet and the long black dress.

‘Of course I can't order you to stay if you want to go,' she went on. ‘That would be absurd. In the circumstances I can only appeal to you. I can't tell you any more. This is all I know myself.'

She finished, and Sir Gordon, very conscious of his responsibility, and the position in which he stood as Belle's champion, escorted her to a chair on the far side of the room.

Another old woman, Lady Brain, a friend of Belle's, of long standing, hurried over to her, and Sir Gordon, forgetting to excuse himself, turned with a sigh of relief to the door under the balcony, skilfully avoiding the eye of acquaintances who would have waylaid him.

There were many peculiarities about the murder at Little Venice. Not the least of these lay in the quality and variety of intelligences who shared its first shock.

There are in England an average of about one hundred and fifty murders a year. The majority of these are of a simple and sordid nature, and the aggregate brain-power of those present at their discovery is as a rule something less than normal.

But here in Little Venice at the time of the crime was gathered together a collection of people all notable in varying degrees, the majority recruited from the successful professional classes. Once the existence of the tragedy had percolated and the shock had been assimilated, the reaction was ordinary enough, inasmuch as the male half of the gathering formed itself into a group of grave-faced important-voiced personages anxious to cling together and protect their womenfolk, while the said womenfolk hung back and, with the natural secrecy of their kind, chattered in little groups with lowered eyes and voices.

As soon as it was established that the victim of the tragedy was a young man scarcely known, even by sight, to anyone, the peculiarities of this particular gathering began to assert themselves.

In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred Belle's hearers had taken the sense of her words rather than their literal meaning; that is to say, they realized that a murder had taken place, moreover, a mysterious murder and in their own immediate proximity, and with the exception of two or three rare and somewhat unnatural souls each man and woman began to consider the affair as it most nearly touched himself.

Some were appalled by the thought of the notoriety entailed, others were shamefacedly excited by it, and immediately wires were jerked, wheels began to turn, and fifty little comedies were enacted.

The sturdy, brown-skinned, and rather stupid young equerry to the Ambassador, whose eyes had snapped while Belle was speaking and whose brain was quick to seize the possibilities of any situation, permitted himself the thought that if only some foolish policeman could be persuaded to forget himself for a moment and offer an ill-advised question to His Excellency, quite a little insult could be worked up, and an unpleasant incident only averted by the brilliance and tact of His Excellency's equerry.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room a soldierly man whose unobtrusive polish and sharp intelligence had made him invaluable to the Foreign Office stood watching the Ambassador's equerry and reflecting that a timely telephone call to headquarters must certainly be arranged somehow, and that, meanwhile, every conceivable means must be employed to get the Ambassador and his equerry out of the house before any fool policeman had a chance to put his foot in it. He began therefore to move unobtrusively towards the house.

Max Fustian, standing in the shadow just inside the door under the balcony, glanced swiftly round the room, and made the gratifying discovery that the only reporter left of the horde which had descended upon the studio earlier in the afternoon was the large Mr Cleethorpe of the insignificant
Daily Paper.

This usually diffident soul was in the very act of swooping down upon Belle when Max shot out and intercepted him.

‘Perhaps I can give you all you want to know, Mr Cleethorpe.'

Max's unctuous murmur had a steely ring in it born of desperation.

‘You must be very, very careful of your facts, you know.'

The English law of libel being what it is, Mr Cleethorpe's timorous disposition permitted him to be side-tracked, and the two men entered into an earnest conversation.

At the far end of the narrow concrete passage, standing beneath the very meter into which he had so light-heartedly dropped a shilling only fifteen minutes before, Mr Campion hesitated. On his right was the door of the model's room from which he had just come, and the recollection of the scene within was still clear in his mind. It had been very stuffy and dusty. The dressing-table was dismantled and the green-covered couch had looked dingy, like the furniture in a second-hand shop. It was upon this couch that the body still lay.

Mr Campion, in spite of his long association with crime, was not callous enough to be entirely unmoved by the spectacle of a young man suddenly dead.

He was human enough also to consider his own position. Very few people knew much about Mr Campion. In the first place, that was not his name. The majority of his friends and acquaintances knew vaguely that he was the younger son of some personage, who had taken up the adventurous calling of unofficial investigator and universal uncle at first as a hobby and finally as a career. His successes were numerous, but for the best reasons in the world he remained in the background and avoided publicity like the plague.

There were some who insisted that he was in reality a member of Scotland Yard's vast army of unobtrusive agents whose work is done entirely behind the scenes, but Mr Campion himself would have denied this vigorously. The fact remained, however, that he had many friends at Scotland Yard.

At the moment he was in a quandary. He was in the house of friends. Obviously, it was his duty to do what he could. He knew enough of English law and English justice to realize that in a case of murder the pursuit is relentless and the punishment unavoidable.

He had no doubt in his mind concerning the author of the crime. He could see Linda now in his mind's eye as she had turned from the window and come towards him. Temporary insanity, of course.

Rapidly, he considered the chances of there being insufficient proof. The handles of the long narrow-bladed scissors still protruded from the grey pullover. Sir Gordon Woodthorpe had been intelligent enough not to attempt to remove the weapon before the arrival of the official doctor.

The useless ornate handles presented no flat surface, so that the chances of them retaining fingerprints were remote. Nevertheless, it would all be very difficult.

He was shocked when he thought of Linda. She was just the wild emotional type who might easily succumb to a sudden impulse. It was amazing that she had waited until the darkness.

Of course, even if the best happened and the matter were dropped for lack of evidence, she would have to be put under restraint.

He passed his hand over his forehead. It was damp and he felt cold. God, what a terrible thing to have happened! Poor Linda. Poor, tragic, insufferable young blackguard lying dead in the next room.

There was the model, too, who had probably been in love with him. Lisa was quietening her now, speaking harshly in her own language, bright startled tears on her withered cheeks.

Mr Campion checked himself. Something must be done immediately, before some bobby off the beat made matters even more difficult. He remembered that the telephone was on the landing and that the door on his left led into the garden. Inspector Stanislaus Oates was the man to get hold of; the shrewdest and at the same time most kindly member of the Yard.

It was Sunday afternoon; therefore he would probably be at home. Campion remembered the number as he ran: Norwood 4380.

Within the studio the atmosphere was becoming unbearable. There were sporadic silences, which hung heavily over the great room. One or two people were becoming hysterical. No one complained openly, largely out of deference to Belle, who with remarkable fortitude and typical good sense remained where she was, knowing that her presence alone prevented an open demonstration.

The little comedies continued, and some of them were tragicomedies.

Herbert Wolfgang, that bouncing, rosy dumpling of a man who always permitted his name at the head of his gossip articles and whose somewhat chequered career was drawing to an ignoble close in the paragraphing of his erstwhile friends, fingered his stock and considered the situation. Here was a heaven-sent piece of luck. Everybody present too.

He looked round at the white anxious faces, and almost smiled. It was too good to be true. One of his most profitable sidelines lay in publicity agenting for society women. The room contained at least four of his clients. And now, probably for the first time during his acquaintance with them, they were all genuinely in the news. It was really damnably fortunate. His fingers itched for his typewriter.

He made mental notes. Bernard, Bishop of Mold, too! And was that the woman who was playing at Daly's? And there by a stroke of luck was Sir Jocelyn!

Mr Wolfgang became thoughtful. Sir Jocelyn was on the verge of an appointment to the Household. Unless Mr Wolfgang was mistaken, Sir Jocelyn had worked for some years to attain this honour. It was a tricky business, this appointment. Sir Jocelyn might, very naturally, be anxious to avoid any sort of publicity, much less any which linked his name, however remotely, to something unpleasant. Perhaps the wealthy and ambitious knight would be interested in the suppression of his name from Mr Wolfgang's snappy little paragraphs?

The cherubic little blackguard sidled towards his victim.

Standing alone, his hands behind his back, his feet slightly apart for the more comfortable balancing of his paunch, the man who had bought the picture regarded his purchase gloomily. Would this confounded business have any effect upon the value of the thing? Why didn't the police come, anyway? It was disgusting: a wealthy man, an important man kept hanging about like this because of a confounded trouble with which he had obviously nothing to do.

Mr Campion came in so unobtrusively that his reappearance was not noticed, and he spoke to Belle for some moments unobserved.

‘I've been on to Inspector Oates of Scotland Yard,' he murmured. ‘It's quite all right. He says he's coming round right away, but that meanwhile there's no point in keeping this crowd here. After all, everybody came by invitation, and anyone who was particularly anxious to escape after – well – after the lights were turned on again could easily have done so. I saw twenty or thirty people go myself.'

He did not look at her as he spoke. He could not bring himself to face her warm brown eyes swimming in tears.

She took his arm and drew herself up.

‘I'll tell them,' she said.

She moved over towards the door, a solitary figure, very brave and very lonely, standing beneath the portrait of her smiling husband.

Gradually the whispered talk died away, and all eyes were turned to her enquiringly. She opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her, and, stepping to the door, she pulled it open and stood clinging to the handle, waiting.

The steady stream began again, moving a little more quickly than before.

The old woman stood erect, shaking hands mechanically, smiling wanly at the murmured words of commiseration and regret, looking exactly what she was, a very gallant old lady.

Mr Campion conquered his impulse to remain by her side. There were other things to be done. He disappeared through the door under the balcony, slipped out into the garden by the back way, and by entering the kitchen door in the basement escaped collision with the departing guests.

He guessed there must be a back staircase, and he found it, and reached the landing outside Linda's studio without encountering a soul. He stood listening outside the door. Everything within was silent.

Campion was no fool. Linda had been in an unbalanced nervous condition that afternoon, and he had no illusions concerning her probable state of mind at the present moment. He went in prepared to meet a lunatic.

He knocked, and, receiving no response, opened the door quietly and stepped into the darkness.

‘Linda,' he said softly.

There was no reply and he felt round the door for the switch. As the room leapt into sight he realized that, save for himself, it was empty.

He was just going out again when a door on the other side of the room opened and the girl came out. She was still pale, but seemed remarkably composed. She laid a finger on her lips when she saw him.

‘Hush,' she whispered. ‘Rosa-Rosa's here in my room, asleep. I've given her an enormous bromide. She won't wake for a long time.'

Mr Campion was prepared for the worst and her words sent a thrill of horror down his spine.

‘Good God, Linda! What have you done?'

The words were forced from him, and he shot past the girl into the little bedroom beyond.

Rosa-Rosa, her face red and swollen with tears, lay on the bed sleeping naturally enough. Campion went over to her, scrutinized her face, and touched her wrist as it lay upon the coverlet. When finally he straightened himself and turned, Linda was standing in the doorway regarding him, a puzzled expression gradually deepening to horror in her eyes.