The Beckoning Lady (24 page)

“What about this?” Fred South had risen from his chair with his now familiar little box in his hand. He appeared to have a story-book detective's fixation about idiotic exhibits, Luke reflected gloomily.

Tonker screwed up his eyes. “What is it?” he enquired ungraciously of South. “A beetle?” Finally he recognised it. “That's off some dreary fancywork hanging in the cloakroom at Minnie's. A Victorian waistcoat, old-hat as the do-do. I think they hope to make me wear that tomorrow.”

“Aren't you going to?” South sounded almost disappointed.

“Not if I can help it. I've got something better.”

The Superintendent put his bead away. “I think you smoke Blue Zephyrs, Mr. Cassands?”

“So I do, and I've run out and had to get some of these. But they sell 'em in the village. Why? Am I the only person who smokes 'em down here?”

“Er—no.” It was evident that South had enquired. “No, they are sometimes sold to other people.”

“Too bad,” said Tonker, misunderstanding the entire situation. “You'll have to light one of these and be thankful.”

South refused the cigarette and went out of the room, to return almost at once with a ploughshare, which he placed on the table. It was not the murder weapon but one very like it, and it lay on the black oak, rusty and ancient and decorative. Tonker regarded it with great interest.

“What a nice thing,” he remarked, taking it up by the cray so that it was like an axe in his hand, the point of the triangular wing downward. “It's a ploughshare, isn't it? Make a good tomahawk.” His eyes widened as the significance occurred to him. “Good Lord, is this what it was done with? What a horrible pecker!” He put it down at once, dusting his hands. “You ought to test that for finger-prints,” he said seriously. “They've got a wonderful new process.”

“We've seen to all that, sir.” Luke spoke quietly. He was looking at South steadily and gradually the twinkling eyes gave way under the stare.

When the gathering was once more under control, he returned to the hieroglyphics on the crumpled pad of envelopes in his hand. He looked very tall and tired, and his fine head drooped a little.

“Very well,” he began. “I think I've got all I want from you at the moment, sir. I'll just confirm this one point. You assure me that you have never, within the last twenty years, had a conversation with this ex-employee of the Inland Revenue, and that during the whole of the time he was employed by your wife you . . .?”

“What!” Tonker's snarl of rage was a triumph even for him. To those unprepared for his lightning temper it had all the electrifying effect of a sudden manifestation of mania. “Say those unutterably idiotic words again.” He had bounded to his feet. His hand had closed over the cray of the ploughshare and his eyes seemed to be bursting from his head. Both policemen stared at him in amazement. “Do you mean to tell me,” demanded Tonker, shaking the ploughshare as if it were indeed a tomahawk,
“that Mrs. Cassands
paid
that man to make her life a little hell? Answer me, did she do that?”

“I understood she paid him something to write the letters, sir.” Luke had no desire to become involved in a domestic squabble, and indeed had done his best to avoid it all along. “I think she . . .”

“Then I give up.” Tonker slammed down the ploughshare and every hair on his head, face and tweeds appeared to bristle. “I'm surrounded by lunatics. There's only one thing for it. If the law of this land is going to persist in its delusion that my wife and I are the same person, and that person is me, it must be logical about it. My wife must lose her vote, or pass it to me. They must rescind the Married Woman's Property Act. And every time the lady signs her name to anything or employs anybody, the contract must be endorsed by me. Otherwise the position is untenable, as anyone can see, I should have thought.” He paused and stood steaming. “And I didn't murder the man,” he continued with a sudden return of fury. “I may have felt like it, but I didn't see him. What I did do when my wife told me of this latest and most monstrous demand was to lose my temper, black her eye and break a window. That I was ashamed of. But this final piece of insanity of which you have just told me makes me want to do it again. Good-afternoon.”

On the last word he strode out of the room and nobody attempted to stop him. Tonker's confession had been made.

The silence was broken by Superintendent Fred South.

“He held the share the wrong way,” he said, “and he wasn't acting. I don't see that we've got anything on him, Chief. Nothing that will stick, at all.” He paused and went on dreamily, almost, his dangerous twinkle returning. “He's got a temper though, hasn't he? Just right. Sudden, and clean off the handle for a couple of minutes. It wouldn't take any more.”

Luke turned helplessly to Campion.

“That woman Dinah,” he remarked. “She's the next to go through the hoop. I wonder if she left Mrs. Cassands for long that afternoon?”

WITH A HIGH
top wind sending the clouds as ragged as the countries on a map, coasting across the moon, the bright studio light streaming across the meadows and the soft house ones glowing in the dusk, Midsummer's Eve flickered over The Beckoning Lady with traditional excitement. There was a streak of red in the west, so the weather was safe. Preparations had nearly reached the blessed stage of ‘leave it alone or you'll spoil it'. The big back larder, which was a white elephant on any other day of the year, was full to overflowing. The cream was on the ice and the hams were setting nicely.

There was considerable noise in the front of the house, where Tonker had set up a Press Bar in the drawing-room, and the river was rising well. But the barn was busiest of all.

Mr. Campion was helping Emma, or rather he was standing about ready to help her as she did something mysterious with hundreds of knives, forks and spoons at a temporary sideboard some twelve feet long just inside the big doors, which were open to the sky. She was as fresh as if her youth had returned, as no doubt it had, and her cheeks were glowing like a Dutch doll's.

“I don't mind telling you,” she was saying, “for half an hour I thought the party was off. I
like
Tonker. I'm not one of the people who can't see that it's not old buck with him. It's just singleness of purpose. But there are moments when he's the edge, and if that dates me I couldn't care less. Fancy coming home like the wrath of God and starting a fight now of all times in the year. And what about, I ask, and what about? Whether a man who's been dead a week was paid or not. Really, Tonker wants his head
decarbonising. And Minnie's as bad. One day she'll have a stroke, and she'll see if she's as strong as she thinks she is. Red Indian blood! Red Indian motor-bicycle blood.”

“But everything is all right now, I trust?” Mr. Campion looked as foolish as he had ever done.

She threw up her head like a horse shaking its mane. “Till next time,” she said. “Let's hope they wait until the people have gone home, that's all. Oh!” It was a cry from the heart. “Do you realise that in forty-eight hours it will be over?
Over!
How dreadful! I can't bear to think of it. Count these forks. There should be fifty.”

Mr. Campion counted twenty-five and decided to judge by weighing the two bundles.

“Emma,” he said, “last Thursday week, before you settled down to listen to the radio and saw Little Doom in the drive, did you come up to the house for any reason? Tonker thought he heard someone.”

“And didn't investigate, I suppose?” she demanded. “How like him. If Tonker's working, a coach and four could drive up to the front door and remove every stick of furniture, and he wouldn't bother to come out to enquire. No, I didn't come up. But if he heard someone, someone was there. Now the spoons. Don't thumb them, they're polished.”

“Who would walk into the house unannounced?”

“Any one of about forty people. This is the country. Everyone walks round until they find somebody.”

“Do you want these knives counted?”

“No. Now I've got to rush off to see to the flowers. Pinkie let us down. Apparently Genappe has returned, so we shan't get any help from her. Anyway, I've picked the flowers and I've got Annabelle at work on them in the washhouse. I'll just go and see what she's made of them. The boys can finish the cups.”

She jerked her head to the far end of the barn where Westy and George Meredith were unpacking piles of blue and white china, dusting the teacups and setting them out in rows.

“Tea is hell.” Emma spoke with feeling. “It's more difficult to serve than anything else. I can't think why people want it at a party. Do go and look at Jake's picture. Minnie came and got it from him and there was a row, but he likes it now.”

She swept off, her white head-dress flapping, while Mr. Campion went on down the room obediently and found himself looking at a charming, gentle design in various tones of grey. The snail was still the main motif but was now not three-dimensional. The picture was lazily attractive, restful and comforting. He felt he could live with it.

He was standing looking at it when he became aware of a young voice on the other side of the table behind him. Westy was talking to his sombre friend, who was doing little with the cups but much in grim moral support.

“I certainly realise that I am in no position to judge.” The soft New England voice was very earnest. “And it may well be, George, that you are at an advantage, being virtually a stranger here. But it does occur to me that they make life unnecessarily complicated. I may be wrong, and of course Minnie is peculiarly close to me because we share the same blood, but as I see it she doesn't need anything but her Art and never has.”

George Meredith contributed a strange inarticulate sound.

“That is very true,” said Westy miraculously, “but I admit it does seem to me to be so elementary. Why clutter yourself with Tonker, who is a good fellow enough in his way—that I will not deny—but he can only be an interruption. In fact, a definitely disruptive influence in a life which should be entirely and solely devoted to the production of very beautiful things. From this angle, you know, my dear chap, I cannot help but think that life is extraordinarily simple if it is approached with deliberation. Why fall in love at all? Is it so necessary in a civilised person?”

There was a minor upheaval behind the table and Mr. Campion, who felt a fool as well as a cad for listening to
something which made him feel so antiquated, nerved himself for an experience. The child was about to speak.

“I say, hold on old fellow,” said George Meredith in a very high-pitched British middle-class voice indeed. “Think of the Race.”

So they were all right, and so was humanity, and Mr. Campion turned down the room again to where, under the platform made by the floor of the inner studio, Amanda and Lugg and Rupert were finishing the resuscitation of the glübalübali.

“How nice you look,” said Amanda for no apparent reason. “Cool and respectable and mildly entertained. Aren't we having a glorious, glorious time?”

“Speak for yer perishin' self.” Mr. Lugg disentangled himself from the embrace of one of the monstrosities and gave it a cursory rub with a duster he was carrying. “I don't like these 'ere. I don't think they're the article. They're common, like elephants' insides.”

“More common to you than to me,” said Mr. Campion impolitely. “How has it gone?”

“Jolly well.” Amanda as usual was very interested in the practical problem. “We've got two to play, one to grunt, and two for show. Tonker must have an amazing mind. The principle of the mechanics of this instrument—”

“Is low.” Mr. Lugg spoke savagely. “Principally low. And you can talk as informed as you like, but it won't alter it. Mr. Tonker may be a remarkable organisator, but 'is mind belongs to the Spirit Dead-Egg.”

“My hat yes.” Amanda rose dexterously from the floor where she had been sitting cross-legged. “Do you know, Albert, Tonker came into the house, got all the champagne moved to four separate highly sensible strategic points, had the wherry brought down the stream and fixed in position as a bridge—we're not to wait for the Augusts to make a triumphal entry, because no one knows how, when, or if they'll arrive—set up a Press Bar of hard liquor which he'd bought at the pub—he came down from the village in The Gauntlett's van—got hold of Minnie
and had the fiercest row I have ever heard in all my life with her, and got himself changed, all in one hour and three-quarters flat. Oh, and he also had an omelette. He really is remarkable.”

“Reorientations. He got my reorientations right, too,” said Rupert, attempting a running tackle at his father. “Uncle Tonker is a conker, silly bonker, I am like Uncle Tonker.”

“God forbid,” said Mr. Campion. “Bed for you.”

“Not yet.” It was Amanda. “Not yet. We're all going to sleep late tomorrow, and then we're going to dress up and come to the party looking very clean and elegant in our best clothes, and be suitably impressed by all our clever handiwork which we shall not brag about except in private, or . . .”

“Casual-ly,” said Rupert, who had evidently heard the plan before. “Where is Charlie?”

“Luke? He's talking to Miss Diane. They're upstairs on the landing. It seemed the quietest place. Superintendent South had to rush back to his office to see the Chief Constable.”

“Good.” Amanda was studiously polite. “I fear he may have his hands full. I've not been exactly eavesdropping or anything indelicate like that, but I did happen to overhear one of the reporters say that the local office of the Inland Revenue is simply livid with the way Little Doom has been described as an Income Tax man. They say he was declared redundant months ago, and that he was incompetent anyway, and they only took him on as a ‘temporary' in the war, and that he wasn't their class and they never did like him. It's jolly hard on them because apparently they're rather good. If they stick to their guns, the whole thing may fizzle quietly away as a story, the reporter said.”