The China Governess (11 page)

The small room contained one magnificent period bookcase, glazed above and panelled below. It took up all one wall and against its mellow and elegant background Stalkey the Talker had posed and impressed clients for nearly fifty years.

Joe Stalkey had not the old man's florid presence. The slightly harassed expression and deprecating smile so typical of the child of an over-forceful parent had robbed him of authority. He remained a gangling, middle-aged man whose broad features were a little out of alignment, as if they had been drawn by someone with an astigmatism. When Campion came in he looked at him in open astonishment.

‘This is a bit of an honour, isn't it?' he demanded, his smile leering. ‘I don't think you've been in here in twenty years, have you, Mr. Campion? What can we do for you? Any little chore however small will be welcome, I assure you. Don't hesitate to mention it. As long as it's legal and the money is safe we're not choosey. We can't afford it. We haven't had quite the advantages of some people. Do sit down, won't you? I have at least ten minutes before a client —'

‘— Who must be nameless, steps out of a brougham with a coronet on the door,' murmured Mr. Campion with such complete seriousness that he might just have meant it as a compliment.
‘You're very obliging. I don't think your father would have been so kind. He never appreciated my style, I felt.'

The man behind the desk was regarding him cautiously. He did not understand him and never had. He suspected bitterly that his incomprehensible success was due to something basically unfair, such as class or education, but was begrudgingly gratified to see him in the office all the same.

‘Help yourself,' he said. ‘It's all yours.'

Mr. Campion seated himself in the client's chair and crossed his long legs. His hat, his gloves and his folded
Times
newspaper he held upon his knee. ‘I wanted to see Reginald,' he said. ‘But I hear he's in Canada. I wondered if he could tell me anything about Turk Street twenty years ago.'

The man behind the desk had large cold eyes and their glance became fixed upon his visitor. It rested upon the narrow folded newspaper which Campion held, with an intensity which was noticeable. It was as if he were reading the small type of the advertisements on the outside page.

‘Well?' There was nothing even impatient in Mr. Campion's inquiry and he was astonished to see Stalkey's tongue moisten his lips. He had changed colour too, and his fist, which was unusually large-boned, was not completely steady where it lay on the desktop.

‘I'll hand it to you, you've got on to it very quickly.' He spoke without meeting Campion's eyes, letting the words slide out regretfully. ‘Ron lost his temper,' he said.

Mr. Campion had no idea what he was talking about but it appeared to be promising.

‘Did he?' he murmured. ‘That's always dangerous.'

‘There's no real harm done.' Joe Stalkey spoke irritably, ‘but of course Ron is a big man. He's heavier than I am and ten years younger. The kid put up an astonishing fight but he hadn't an earthly chance and he is in a bit of a mess, I admit it.' His eyes narrowed suddenly. ‘Am I making a monkey of myself, by any chance?'

His visitor grinned.

‘We appear to have travelled somewhat quicker than sound, if
that's what you mean,' he admitted. ‘Let me explain myself. I am interested in anything I can discover about a woman and a very young baby who were evacuated from Turk Street to an address in Suffolk on the day war broke out in 1939. I heard today that your elder brother Reg was making the same sort of inquiry just before he went to Canada, and I wondered if we were all working on the same problem and, if so, whether we could pool our resources. For an adequate consideration of course.'

‘Damn!' Joe Stalkey was very angry with himself. He had coloured and his hands were nervous.

‘You chaps build such a legend about yourselves that one believes it!' he said with unreasonable reproach. ‘I didn't see how you could have got on to this morning's shindig, but because it was fresh in my mind I assumed you must have done as soon as you mentioned Turk Street. You're the reason the Central Branch have suddenly got interested again, I suppose? You've stirred them up and they've stirred up the police down there and some wretched detective constable went and leaked to the kid. That's about it. Otherwise it wouldn't have all happened together, would it? A coincidence like that couldn't have occurred otherwise. You coming in here in the afternoon just when Ron had been tackled by the kid in the morning. I was justified in making that mistake.'

The thin man in the hornrims leaned back.

‘I'll come clean,' he said. ‘I'm not with you at all. Ron is your younger brother, isn't he? He is carrying on Reg's inquiries I suppose?'

‘Like hell he is!' Joe Stalkey showed evidence of having a temper himself. ‘That isn't our sort of business at all, Mr. Campion. You've no idea what the state of that flat was after the wrecking. I saw Reg before he left for Canada and he was shocked, I tell you. There the message was, you know, written right across a mirror:
Dick, go home!
Like an American film. I don't know what the younger generation is coming to. Stalkey & Sons isn't that kind of concern. Nice neat evidence, clear reports, and if necessary a discreet and creditable appearance in court, that's all we contract for. As soon as we saw what we were on to we walked
out and stayed out. Our sort of clients aren't the class to get involved in
violence
!' The final word was invested with unspeakable disgust and Mr. Campion noted the return of an old snobbery new in his time. He was still very much at sea, however, and was debating how to remedy it without being too outspoken when Joe Stalkey went on.

‘He says he didn't do it, of course, and he pretends he doesn't know who did. It's gang stuff pure and simple. I think the world is damned; modern youth is quite openly against civilization. Higher education just makes them worse.'

Mr. Campion raised his eyebrows but ventured no comment. Instead he put a cautious question.

‘If Stalkey & Sons washed its hands of Turk Street when the flat was wrecked and Reg went to Canada, how did Ron get into the business?'

The flush on Joe Stalkey's unsymmetrical face deepened and his deprecating smile appeared briefly. ‘The ass went to get Reg's shoes, can you beat it? As you probably would not know, East End repairers charge a quarter of what one has to pay elsewhere and the work is often much better. When Reg was down there he left a couple of favourite pairs of shoes with some little one-man outfit and told Ron to pick them up for him when he had a moment. Ron is a careful chap and it's just what he would remember, being hard on shoe leather himself. This morning he was going that way so he telephoned to ask if the shoes were ready, found they were, went down there. Of course the kid had been tipped off and was waiting for him.'

Mr. Campion took a long breath.

‘When you say “the kid”,' he began, ‘who?'

‘You know quite well who I mean. I mean young Kinnit,' Joe said. ‘There's no point in beating about that bush in my opinion. We were acting for his legal guardians. The aunt and father by adoption. Alison and Eustace Kinnit. Actually we dealt with the woman. We were employed by the family before, you see, when they were first trying to trace the kid's identity about fifteen or sixteen years ago. Father handled it on that occasion but it was hopeless from the start. It was just after the war ended and the
whole area was still a shambles, records lost and everything. Pa satisfied the court that every avenue had been explored without result and the adoption or guardianship or whatever it was went through and that was that.'

Mr. Campion continued to be dubious.

‘You are telling me seriously that young Kinnit was responsible for wrecking the council flat? Have you any proof of this at all?'

‘I don't want any. I don't want anything to do with it, and don't forget anything I'm telling you now is off the record.'

Joe Stalkey's face, unattractive to start with, was not improved by an expression of obstinate prejudice. ‘Of course he is. Ron reports that he is babbling about having been locked in his college at Oxford at the hour in question, but that only proves he has some useful friends or enough money to employ a few hooligans. What one might be able to prove is one thing but what we know must be the truth is another. Be your age, Campion. Who are you working for? The little lad himself?'

‘No. I belong to the other side of the family. I am protecting the interests of the girl friend.'

‘Are you indeed? Quite a client!' He was openly envious. ‘There's gold in them thar quarters. Oh well, good luck to you. You're welcome to everything we've got – at the right price, of course. Happy to oblige you. But in this particular case we don't want to work with you. We've come out and we're staying out, especially after this morning's performance. That kind is decadent and dangerous. It never pays to take a youngster out of his normal environment and bring him up in something plushy.'

‘Do we know what his normal environment was? I thought that was the object of the exercise.'

‘We know he came from a vicious slum.'

‘Do you? Is that established?'

Joe began to look sulky and his father's mantle showed as far too large for him. The old man had built his business on fact and proof and not on this type of sophistry.

‘He went to Angevin by bus with a lot of other people from Turk Street and he was abandoned, which is a Turk Street trick if ever there was one. He's a violent young brute, anyhow.'

Mr. Campion rose. ‘I still don't see why you connect him with the wrecking?' he observed mildly.

‘You don't think.' Joe was didactic. ‘You don't use your headpiece. I'm sorry, but look at it. Who else stands to gain? Who else
cares
if Reg uncovered something about the foundling? As soon as I heard about that message on the looking-glass telling Reg to get out I saw it must be the kid himself. It was obvious.'

‘Is that really all you've got to go on?' Mr. Campion sounded relieved.

‘It's enough for me.' The head of Stalkey & Sons was adamant. ‘I don't go in for fancy stuff as you do, Campion. I just see the obvious when it sticks out a mile and I get by all right. Today when the lout set on Ron I was proved pretty right, I think.'

‘I see.' Mr. Campion appeared to have no other comment. ‘I shall receive a modest account from you, I suppose? Trade rates, I take it?'

Joe began to laugh. ‘You've got something,' he conceded. ‘The grand manner, isn't it? I'll tell you what. I've been thinking. We might come to something sort of reciprocal in this. You wouldn't like to take the boy off our hands now?'

Mr. Campion stared at him.

‘Where is he?'

Joe looked uncomfortable. ‘Downstairs in the washroom as a matter of fact. Don't get excited. He's all right but he needed cleaning up of course, and we couldn't very well send him home. There's a funeral there this afternoon, isn't there?'

‘A
funeral
?'

Joe Stalkey shrugged his loose shoulders.

‘It's in your
Times
, in the deaths there. I thought you were holding it like that to remind me. It's not one of the family, but he felt he couldn't turn up with two black eyes and a cut lip. It's someone employed there. There it is: “SAXON . . . whilst visiting this country with her bereft friend and employer, Geraldine Telpher. Interment today in Harold Dene Cemetery, etc.' A governess, I think the boy said she was.'

THE WASHROOM UNDER
the old building where Stalkey & Sons had their offices had been converted somewhat casually from what might well have been an air-raid shelter and was in fact a wine vault, relic of more spacious days. The ceiling was low and arched, the floor stone-flagged, and the ventilation unsuccessful. The row of wash-basins, installed about 1913, managed to look strikingly modern in the grim surroundings.

There was a rug-covered camp-bed at one end of the cavern and when Mr. Campion entered, Timothy Kinnit was seated upon it, clad only in singlet and shorts. His bloodsoaked shirt was lying on the stones before him and when the visitor appeared he raised his battered face in which only the fierce grey eyes were still splendid.

‘Hello,' he said. ‘I know you. You're Albert Campion. Surely you're not a part of this outfit of lunatics? Where's that damn fool with my clothes?' He was speaking painfully because of the swelling of his lips but he was not sparing himself. His mood came across to Campion in a wave. He was so angry he was out of himself altogether.

Mr. Campion glanced behind him. ‘I appear to be alone,' he said pleasantly. ‘Joseph Stalkey has paused to speak to his brother, who is undergoing repairs in the annex. If it's any comfort to you he too has a few souvenirs of the encounter. He was armed, I take it? May I look?'

The young man got up unsteadily. ‘My face'll clear up,' he said, reeling slightly as he bent towards a looking-glass. ‘But I don't know if there's an actual hole in my skull. It's at the back here, rather low down. Can you see?'

‘Yes. Dear me. Wait a minute. Turn to the light, can you?'

The examination was nearing completion when Joe Stalkey came in. Nervousness had increased his restless clumsiness. His
big feet splayed awkwardly and his hands and huge wrists were prominent as he walked.

‘He's all right,' he said, making it sound as convincing as he could to himself. ‘He's all right. That's all superficial stuff. There's nothing to worry about there. These things do happen.'

The man in the horn-rimmed spectacles raised his eyebrows. ‘I'm not surprised to hear it if your brother does the family's errands wearing a knuckleduster and armed with a tyre-lever,' he observed mildly.