The Mind Readers (10 page)

‘No. But he did get very excited about his old Gladstone bag which he's been asking for and which seems to have got lost out of our hut. I had to tell him I could only think it might have been stolen and that did terrify him, but it was
Edward
he didn't want to find out about it, no one else.'

‘Was there anything valuable in the bag?'

‘Nothing at all. Only small-boy junk. No stolen grown-up notebooks or anything like that. We do know about Security down there.'

‘What sort of island is it? Is there a road-bridge?' Luke appeared fascinated by the set-up.

‘One. It was built by the Romans originally and is still called the Strada. It goes right across the mud and there's a military guard half way across it.'

‘Military?' Luke enquired, surprised.

‘There's a lot of experimental Government work going on down there,' Mr Campion murmured. ‘E.S.P. occupies only one very small section.'

‘Oh, I see. In that case . . .'

The telephone interrupted him. There was an extension to the study and the receiver stood on the cluttered desk. Amanda picked it up and her expression changed as she handed it to Helena.

‘Yours,' she said. ‘Paggen Mayo.'

Helena listened to the insistent voice, which was not quite loud enough for them to hear, with her eyes wide and the colour draining out of her face.

‘I see,' she said at last, stiffness in her voice. ‘How long will you be?'

Again there was a rush of urgent words and she nodded.

‘Very well. No, I'm not frightened. Yes, I think we can get one. In ten minutes then.' She hung up and turned to them, her expression wooden with incredulity rather than alarm.

‘It's Martin. He's all right now, but Paggen says they've dragged him out of a gas-filled room and are bringing him here
so that I can see he doesn't do it again
! He had the nerve to ask me if we can find a doctor we can trust! That really is ridiculous. Whatever has happened to Martin, he'd never commit suicide!'

Old Avril looked up. ‘Oh no,' he said with complete conviction. ‘That is a mistake.'

‘
PERHAPS PAGGEN MAYO
is hysterical.' Amanda's practical solution of what had appeared to be an insoluble mystery descended on the family group like a balm. ‘How long are they going to be?'

‘They're in London now.' Helena was bewildered. ‘Paggen said he didn't want to ring from the Island and waited to stop at a call box when they got up here. He's leading the way and Fred Arnold is bringing Martin in the little van they use to fetch supplies. Paggen said they had to smuggle him past the guard on the Strada because he's hoping to keep the whole thing absolutely quiet.'

‘That's not hysteria, it's lunacy,' said Luke abruptly. ‘Unless he's trying to publicise it! Who is Fred Arnold?'

‘The barman, the manager of the canteen, and when the big house is being used for VIPs he's the butler. He buys all the stores and he's almost the only ordinary normal person in the place.'

Luke ducked his chin into his neck. ‘In that case he's almost certain to be part of the security squad so bang goes any hope of keeping the incident a secret from the authorities. On the other hand it's good news because it means Martin is more or less all right. If Arnold is that type he'd be far too wide to touch him if he wasn't.' He had moved to the window while he was talking and had parted the heavy curtains.

‘I thought so. That call came from somewhere very close. Here they are now. A white Jag; and a little green van.'

Helena was in the hall before he had finished speaking and they all followed her and were on the doorstep when the white car, which had been creeping round the square as the driver read the house numbers, pulled up at the kerb.

Paggen Mayo climbed out in a great hurry. He was so full of himself that he did not see the group in the doorway until he had reached the bottom of the flight of stone steps which ran up to it.

‘Mrs Ferris?' He began speaking to Avril as if he thought he was some unlikely butler. ‘Oh, there you are, Helena. Good girl! He's in the back of the van. Just conscious I think. Be very tactful dear, won't you?'

It occurred to Mr Campion, as they all trooped down into the street, that the man who instructs a woman how to talk to her husband even in times of stress is either out of touch with reality or up to something, and he wondered which it was in this case.

The van had already arrived and as it pulled up, to everybody's surprise not one but two people got out of the front seats. The driver, a sturdy figure in a Navy-surplus raincoat, climbed out and stood stamping on the pavement looking sheepish, while from the other side, a woman emerged and came swaggering towards them, clearly visible in the light of the street lamps.

She was in her early forties, still good-looking but tight-lipped. She wore a red tweed suit, carried her gloves as if they were a riding crop and came striding into the picture bringing with her an entirely new note of tension.

‘Melisande!' Paggen Mayo's exclamation was appalled. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I thought you might need help.'

It was not intended to be a serious explanation and he ignored it and turned on the driver, who kept his chin down.

‘Mrs Mayo told me you expected her, sir,' he said, his voice smooth, his accent cosily off-white and his manner familiar. ‘She rode in the back until she was sure Mr Ferris was all right and then she changed over and came in front.'

‘When was this?'

‘On the by-pass. She tapped on the side and I stopped and took her in with me.'

‘I didn't see her when I looked back.'

‘It was dark and you were moving. You wouldn't.'

‘But I didn't see her when I stopped to telephone. You were less than a dozen yards behind me in a lighted street. . . .'

‘I think she bobbed down, sir.'

It was one of those ridiculous conversations which only take place when both parties are thoroughly rattled. The rest of the gathering got the back of the van open and left them to it.

Martin lay on a heap of cushions; he was snoring and the air in the van was thick with a curious pungent smell.

Luke glanced sharply at Campion and they were lifting the young man out when Mayo came pushing through the group.

‘Just a minute, sir,' The Superintendent appeared to flick him aside without using his arms. ‘We'll just get him into the air. You get the van closed. I'll take him in.' He lifted Martin bodily over his shoulder and carried him off, Helena at his heels. Mr Campion passed Mayo and his wife over to the Canon and Amanda, and concentrated on the driver whom he led into the house.

Luke had made for the spare bedroom which, with the Canon's own room, was situated at the back of the house a few steps down from the hall, and the Canon and Amanda were shepherding the angry Mayo and his disconcertingly triumphant wife into the parlour.

Mr Campion took Fred Arnold into the study. Luke's sharp enquiring glance when they had first got the van open had not been lost upon him. The symptoms of coal gas poisoning, which are dramatic, were well known to them both and there had been no sign of them on Martin's somewhat pallid face. On the other hand the smell of chloral hydrate, that oldest and most reliable of all the hypnotics, is unmistakable and its pungent reek had rushed towards them as the doors had swung open. Martin had not been in any very great trouble Campion could see and so, knowing the Superintendent, he thought it best to leave the patient to the expert and concentrate on finding a witness.

At first sight the man before him seemed to be an almost perfect example of that most distinctive product of the age, the communal manservant. It is a peculiar type, not particularly happy, as if the hero's friend and knave of classic story had been translated by a multiplicity of masters into the loneliest of dogs, unattached and in business on his own.

He sat on the edge of the visitor's chair looking wary but self possessed and he was wax faced with a shiny skin, a very wide mouth and small bald-looking eyes. His coat collar still stood up round his cropped head and he sat with his fresh pink hands folded and talked with the ease of the expert who is always being asked for advice or information.

‘Oh yes, sir. Tonight Mr Ferris behaved just as he always did,' he said firmly. ‘For a young man he's got almost unnaturally regular habits. He came in the bar at six and had a drink with Mr Mayo—as he seems to be expected to do—and then he went back to his place to have a wash and a change and a read as usual until seven-thirty, when he always comes up to the canteen for a meal.'

‘Does he always eat at the canteen?'

‘Always when the boy's at school, unless they're entertaining. There's a little of that among the ladies on the island. They try to pretend they're having a life. Mrs Helena had come to London today, though. I knew that.'

‘But tonight Mr Ferris didn't come back?'

‘That's right. Mr Mayo came in first and told me he was expecting him but that he was late. I keep an eye on the dining room and I issue the drinks for it. After about fifteen minutes Mr Mayo gave up waiting and ordered. You're not giving him much grace I thought to myself, but then Mrs Mayo turned up. . . .'

‘Don't they eat together?'

‘The Mayos? Hardly ever.' His eyes met Mr Campion's own. ‘Well, she's got her daughters and she leads the social set such as it is round the mud huts!' He laughed with his mouth open showing a double row of inturned teeth.

‘When did Mr Mayo become actually alarmed about Mr Ferris?'

‘Very soon.' There was no mistaking his emphasis. ‘He kept fidgeting and then he said he'd telephone, which he did from the bar, and when there was no reply he flew into a panic and nothing would suit him but he must go down at once and see if he was all right. Mrs M. said she'd go with him but he wouldn't have her. It was to be me or nobody, so I went. She came pattering after us. I could hear her.' He threw up his chin. ‘We're a funny lot down there, I can tell you!' he said. ‘More brains than “common”! But I shouldn't have thought it of Mr Ferris, I really shouldn't. If Mr Mayo hadn't pointed out to me that there was newspaper in the ventilators I should have been absolutely certain it was an accident.'

Mr Campion's brows rose. ‘
Stuffed
with newspaper?'

‘Yes sir, and the gas escaping inside. There he was, sitting at the table with the reading light on and a book in front of him, dead to the wide. He'd got his back to the gas fire; it was half turned on and it wasn't lit.'

‘What was the concentration like?'

‘Not too bad. All the inner doors were open and it's a high roof in those places.'

‘Did you have any trouble yourselves with the gas, getting him out?'

Charley Luke put the question from the doorway. He had come in so quietly that Campion had not heard him but the barman answered as smoothly as if he had been present throughout.

‘None at all, sir. You could smell it and it wasn't healthy but we could get in and move him all right. How is he? Not too bad?'

‘He'll be O.K. He isn't talking yet but it won't be long.' Luke glanced at Campion and nodded meaningly. ‘You carry on,' he said. ‘I'll go back to Helena in a minute; she's staying with him.'

‘Where was Mrs Mayo all this time?' The thin man asked the barman with the object of putting Luke in the picture. ‘I thought you said she was following you and Mayo at a discreet distance?'

‘Oh she showed up as soon as we brought him out but when she saw something was up she stopped pretending she wasn't with us. Mr Mayo sent her round the house to unstop the ventilators.'

‘You mentioned ventilators before,' Mr Campion said curiously. ‘Is the cavity on the outside? That's very unusual, isn't it?'

‘No sir. These are sectional buildings with a minimum amount of brickwork but the ventilators, which are compulsory under the bye-laws, come in the solid parts. They're only perforated single bricks themselves, and to keep the wind from blowing through them, strong plastic hoods have been fixed above so the air has to go up and in. Tonight, these hoods were full of crumpled newspaper.'

‘Did you notice it first or did Mr Mayo?'

‘He did. He called my attention to it.'

‘Why was Mrs Mayo told to collect the newspapers?' Luke spoke artlessly and the barman's underlying amusement was intensified although he spoke most respectfully.

‘Because she was there, sir. I was working on Mr Ferris, and Mr Mayo was thinking what to do for the best, no doubt. “This could make a bit of scandal and we don't want that. That's vital.” he said to me. “He's a very brilliant young man”.'

‘Those were his exact words, I suppose?'

‘They were, sir.' Fred Arnold's eyes remained bold and entertained. ‘Mr Mayo has his team to think of. Talk can be very harmful in their kind of world, so he told me. I understood that and it was why I agreed to help by making a run up to the early Covent Garden market. I'd have had to come up some time this week anyway, because the luncheon today ate us out of house and home. So I had an excuse.'

Luke's smile widened as the neatness of the manoeuvre emerged.

‘Mr Mayo signed the work ticket for the van, I suppose?'

‘He did.'

‘Because he wanted Mr Ferris taken past the guards in secret while he was still unconscious?'

‘I wouldn't care to put it like that myself, sir, but yes, he did want him off the Island and safe in his wife's hands. So he couldn't do it again, he said.'

‘Is that the explanation he gave you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And you,' murmured Mr Campion. ‘You took the very sensible precaution of letting him go on ahead and then persuading Mrs Mayo to ride with you?'