The return of mr campion.., p.1
The Return of Mr. Campion (Uncollected Stories), page 1
Proofer's Note: This book needs to be rescanned. I have bracketed passages which I inserted text to keep the thought going or passages which I couldn't even guess what what was meant.
THE RETURN OF MR CAMPION
Uncollected stories
Margery Allingham
Margery Allingham's many devoted readers have an opportunity here to enjoy a book by the author whom many consider to be the most gifted writer from the golden age of the detective story. Albert Campion, Allingham's aristocratic but utterly unpretentious detective, appears in many stories, diffidently acute as ever in 'The Case is Altered' and 'The Dog Day'. There is also revealed an unexpected side to Allingham in the supernatural twist to 'The Wisdom of Esdras', and a devastating look at well-meant charity in 'Happy Christmas'. With most of its stories set in the author's two most loved places, London and the Essex countryside, this collection is a treat for all her fans.
THE RETURN OF MR CAMPION
UNCOLLECTED STORIES
MARGERY ALLINGHAM
edited and with an introduction by J. E. Morpurgo
First published in this collected edition in Great Britain 1989
Introduction and notes copyright © J. E. Morpurgo 1989
'The Case is Altered' copyright Margery Allingham 1938
'My Friend Mr Campion' copyright Margery Allingham 1935
'The Dog Day' copyright Margery Allingham 1939
'The Wind Glass' copyright Margery Allingham 1924
'The Beauty King' copyright © P & M Youngman Carter 1969
'The Black Tent' copyright © P & M Youngman Carter 1987
'Sweet and Low' copyright Margery Allingham 1938
'Once in a Lifetime' copyright © P & M Youngman Caner 1989
'The Kernel of Truth' copyright Margery Allingham 1953
'Happy Christmas' copyright Margery Allingham 1962
'The Wisdom of Esdras' copyright © P & M Youngman Carter 1989
'The Curious Affair in Nut Row' copyright Margery Allingham 1955
'What to do with an Ageing Detective' copyright © Margery Allingham 1958
THE CASE IS ALTERED
Mr Albert Campion sat in a first-class smoking-compartment reflecting sadly that an atmosphere of stultifying decency could make even of Christmas a stuffed-owl occasion. Suddenly a new hogskin suitcase of distinctive design hit him on the knees, the golf-bag brushed the shins of the shy young man opposite him and an armful of assorted magazines burst over the pretty girl in the far corner of the compartment. A blast of icy air swept round the carriage. The familiar jerky movements which indicated the train had started, a squawk from a receding porter, and then Lance Feering burst in propelled, as it seemed, by rocket.
'Caught it,' said the newcomer with the air of one confidently expecting congratulations, and as the train took the points he teetered back on his heels and collapsed between the two young people on the seat opposite Mr Campion.
'My dear chap, so we notice,', murmured Campion, and he smiled apologetically at the girl now disentangling herself from the shellburst of newsprint. It was his own particular disarming my-poor-friend-is-afflicted variety of smile, the one that privately he considered infallible, but on this occasion it let him down.
The girl, who was in her late teens, slim and fair, with eyes, as Lance Feering put it later, 'like brandy-balls', looked at Campion with grave nterest. She packed the magazines into a neat bundle and placed them on the opposite seat before returning to her book, and even Mr Feering, who was in one of his more exuberant moods, could not fail to notice that chilly protest. He began to apologise.
Mr Campion had known Feering in his student days, long before he became a well-known stage-designer, and was used to him, but now even Campion was impressed for Feering's apologies were easy but also abject. He collected his bag, stowed it in a clear space on the rack above the shy young man's head, thrust his golf-clubs on the opposite rack and, positively blushing and regarding the girl with pathetic humility, he reclaimed his magazines.
When he spoke the girl glanced at him, nodded coolly and with just enough graciousness not to be gauche, and then calmly turned over a page.
Mr Campion was amused. When at the top of his form Lance was reputed to be irresistible. His dark face with its long mournful nose and bright eyes were sufficiently unhandsome to be interesting and the quick gestures of his short, painter's hands made his conversation picturesque, but his singular lack of success on this occasion clearly astonished him and he sat back in his corner eyeing the young woman with covert mistrust.
Mr Campion resettled himself for the two hours' silence which custom demanded from first-class travellers who, even though in all probability are soon going to be asked to dance together if not to share a bathroom, have not yet been introduced.
There was no way of telling if the shy young man and the girl with the brandy-ball eyes knew each other, or if they too were en route for Underhill, Philip Cookham's Norfolk place. And for himself, Campion was inclined to regard the coming festivities with a degree of lugubrious curiosity.
Cookham was a magnificent old boy, of course, 'one of the more valuable pieces in the Cabinet', as someone had once said of him, but Florence was altogether a different kettle of fish. From wealth and position she had grown blasé to both and now took her delight in notabilities, in Campion's experience a dangerous affectation. She was, he had to admit it, some sort of remote aunt of his.
He looked again at the young people, caught the boy unaware, and was immediately interested. The illustrated magazine which the lad had been reading had fallen to the floor and he was staring out of the window, his mouth drawn down at the corners, and a narrow frown between his thick eyebrows. His was not an unattractive face, too young for strong character, but open enough in the ordinary way, yet at that moment it wore a revealing expression. There was recklessness in the twist of the mouth and sullenness in the eyes. And his hand upon the inside arm-rest was clenched.
Mr Campion was curious. Young people do not usually go away for Christmas in this top-step-at-the-dentist frame of mind.
The girl looked up from her book. 'How far is it to Underhill from the station?' she enquired of the young man.
'Five miles,' he replied. 'They'll meet us.' He had turned to her so easily and with such obvious affection that any theories that Campion was forming about him were immediately knocked on the head. The man's troubles were palpably nothing to do with unrequited love.
Lance had raised his head with bright-eyed interest at the gratuitous information and now a faintly sardonic expression appeared on his lips. Campion sighed for him. Lance Feering fell in and out of love with the abandonment of a seal round a pool. He was an incurable optimist and already he was regarding the girl with that shy despair that so many women had found too piteous to be allowed to persist. Metaphorically Mr Campion washed his hands of Lance. He turned away just in time to notice a stranger glancing in at them from the corridor. It was a dark and arrogant young face and Campion recognised it immediately, feeling at the same time a deep wave of sympathy for old Cookham. Florence had done it again.
Victor Preen, son of old Preen of the Preen Aero Company, was certainly notable, not to say notorious. In his short life he had gathered to himself much publicity by his sensational flights, and a great deal more for adventures far less creditable, which drew from angry men in the armchairs of exclusive clubs many diatribes against the blackguardliness of the younger generation.
Victor Preen stood now a little to the left of the compartment window leaning idly against the wall, his chin up and his eyelids drooping. At first sight he did not appear to be interested in the occupants of the compartment, but when the shy young man looked up Campion caught a swift glance of recognition, and something else, passing between them.
Then, still with that same elaborate casualness, the man in the corridor wandered away, leaving the other staring in front of him, his eyes again sullen.
The incident passed so quickly that it was impossible to define the exact nature of that exchanged glance, and Mr Campion was never a man to go imagining things, which was why, when they arrived at Minstree Station, he was surprised to hear Henry Boule, Florence's private secretary, introducing the two men to each other, and even more surprised to notice that they met as strangers.
The rain cascaded as they came out of the station and Boule, who, like all Florence's secretaries, appeared to be suffering from an advanced case of nerves, bundled, as it seemed, all the passengers from the train into a shooting-brake, a small car and two Daimlers. Before they drove off Campion looked around with some dismay at Florence's Christmas bag. She had surpassed herself. There were more than half a dozen celebrities, a brace of political high-lights, an angry-looking lady novelist, Nadja from the ballet, a startled academician and Victor Preen, and others who looked as if they might belong to art, sport, money, or might even be mere relations.
Mr Campion had been separated from Lance and was looking for him when he saw him in one of the cars, with the novelist on one side and the girl with the brandy-ball eyes on the other. Victor Preen made up the ill-assorted four.
As Campion was an unassuming sort of person he had been relegated to the brake with Boule himself, the shy young man and all the luggage.
Boule introduced them awkwardly and collapsed into a seat, wiping the beads from his forehead with relief that was a little too blatant to be tactful.
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'I hate it,' Peter said with a sudden passionate intensity which startled even his mild companion. 'All this sentimental good-will-to-all-men business, it's false and sickening. There's no such thing as good will. The world's rotten.'
No sooner had he spoken than he bit his lip and turned away to the streaming landscape. 'I'm sorry,' he murmured, 'but all this bogus Dickensian stuff makes me writhe.'
Mr Campion made no direct comment. Instead, with affable inconsequence, he murmured, 'Was that young Victor Preen I saw in the other car?'
Peter Groome turned his head and regarded Campion with the steady stare of the wilfully obtuse. 'I was introduced to someone with a name like that, I think,' he said carefully. 'He was a little baldish man, wasn't he?'
'No, that's Sir George.' The secretary leaned across the luggage to support him. 'Preen is the tall young man, rather good-looking. He's the Preen, you know.' He sighed. 'Millionaires get younger every day, don't they?'
'Obscenely so,' said Peter Groome abruptly, and returned to his despairing contemplation of the rain-washed landscape.
Underhill was en fete to receive them, and as soon as Campion observed the preparations his sympathy for young Groome increased, for to a jaundiced eye Florence's display might well have proved as dispiriting as Preen's bank balance. As she herself said in a loud voice, even while she linked her arm through Campion's, clutched the academician with a free hand and captured Lance with a bright bird-like eye, 'we've gone all Dickens'. The great Jacobean house was festooned with holly. An eighteen-foot tree stood in the hall. Yule logs blazed on iron dogs in the hearths and already the atmosphere was thick with that curious Christmas smell which is part cigar-smoke and part roasting food.
Philip Cookham stood receiving his guests with pathetic bewilderment. Every now and again his features broke into a smile as he greeted some face he knew. He was a distinguished-looking man with a fine head and eyes permanently worried by his country's troubles.
'My dear boy, delighted to see you. Delighted,' he said, grasping Campion's hand. 'I'm afraid you've been put over in the dower house. Did Florence tell you? She said you wouldn't mind, but I insisted that Feering went over with you, and also young Peter Groome.' He sighed, and brushed away Mr Campion's hasty reassurance. 'I don't know why the dear girl never feels she has a party unless the house is so overcrowded that our best friends have to sleep in the annexe,' he said sadly.
The 'dear girl', looking not more than fifty-five of her sixty years, was clinging to the arm of the lady novelist and the two women were emitting mirthless parrot-cries at each other. Cookham smiled.
'She's happy, you know,' he said indulgently. 'She enjoys this sort of thing. Unfortunately I have a certain amount of urgent work to do this Weekend, but we'll get in a chat, Campion, some time over the holiday. I want to hear your news. You're a lucky fellow. You can tell adventures.'
Mr Campion made a face. 'More secret sessions, sir?' he enquired.
The Cabinet Minister threw up his hands in a comic but expressive little gesture before he turned to greet the next guest.
As he dressed for dinner in his comfortable room in the small Georgian dower house across the park, Campion was inclined to congratulate himself on his quarters. Underhill itself was just a little too much of the ancient monument for strict comfort.
He had reached the tie stage when Lance appeared. He came in, very elegant indeed and highly pleased with himself. Campion diagnosed the symptoms immediately and remained deliberately and irritatingly incurious.
Lance sat down before the fire and stretched his sleek legs.
'It's not even as if I were a good-looking blighter, you know,' he observed invitingly when the silence had become irksome to him. 'In fact, Campion, when I consider myself I simply can't understand it. Did I so much as speak to the girl?'
'I don't know,' said Campion, concentrating on his tie. 'Did you?'
'No.' Lance's denial was passionate. 'Not a word. That hard-faced female with the inky fingers and the walrus moustache was telling me her life story all the way here in the car. The dear little poppet with the eyes was nothing more than a warm bundle at my side. I give you my dying oath on that. And yet well, it's extraordinary isn't it?'
Mr Campion did not turn round. He could see the artist quite well through the mirror in front of him. Lance had a sheet of notepaper in his hand and was regarding it with that mixture of feigned amusement and secret delight that was typical of his eternally youthful spirit. 'Extraordinary,' he repeated, glancing at Campion's unresponsive back. 'She does have nice eyes. Like licked brandy-balls.'
'Exactly,' agreed the lean man at the dressing-table. 'I thought she seemed much taken up with her fiancé, young Master Groome,' he added tactlessly.
'Well, I noticed that, you know,' Lance admitted, forgetting his professions of disinterest. 'She hardly recognised my exsistence in the train. Still, there's absolutely no accounting for women. I've studied 'em all my life and never understood 'em yet. I mean to say, take this case. The girl ignored me, avoided me, looked through me. And yet, look at this. I found it in my room when I came up to change just now.'
Mr Campion took the note with a certain amount of distaste. Lovely women were invariably stooping to folly, but even so he couldn't accustom himself to the spectacle.
The message was very brief. He read it at a glance and for the first time that day he was conscious of that old familiar flicker down the spine as his experienced nose smelt trouble. He reread the four lines:
There is a sundial on a stone pavement just off the drive. We saw it from the car. I'll wait ten minutes there for you half an hour after the party breaks up tonight.
There the summons broke off as baldly as it had begun.
'Amazing, isn't it?' Lance had the grace to look shamefaced.
'Astonishing,' Campion's tone was flat 'Indeed, staggering old boy. Er fishy.'
'Fishy?'
'Yes, fishy, don't you think so?' Campion was turning over the single sheet thoughtfully and there was no amusement in the pale eyes behind his horn-rimmed spectacles. 'How did it arrive? In a plain van?'
'In an unaddressed envelope. I don't suppose she caught my name. After all, there must be some people who don't know it yet.' Now Lance was grinning impudently. 'She's batty, of course. Not safe out and all the rest of it. But I like her eyes and she's very young.'
Campion perched himself on the edge of the table. He was still very serious. 'It's disturbing, isn't it?' he said. 'Not good. Makes one wonder.'
'Oh, I don't know.' Lance retrieved his property and tucked it into his pocket. 'She's young and foolish and it's Christmas.'
Campion did not appear to have heard him. 'I wonder,' he said again. 'I should keep the appointment, I think. I may be unwise to interfere, but yet I rather think I should.'
'You're telling me.' Lance was laughing. 'I may be wrong, of course,' he said defensively, 'but I think that's a cry for help. The poor lass evidently saw that I looked a dependable sort of chap and her having her back against the wall for some reason or other she turned instinctively to the stranger with the kind face. Isn't that how you read it?'
'Since you press me, no. Not exactly,' said Campion, and as they walked over to the house together he remained thoughtful and irritatingly uncommunicative.
That evening Florence Cookham excelled herself. She exhorted her guests 'to be young again', with the inevitable result that long before midnight Underhill contained a company of ruffled and exhausted people.
It was one of Florence's more erroneous beliefs that she was a born organiser and that the secret for good entertaining was to give everyone something to do. Thus it was that Lance and the academician—now even more startled-looking than ever before—found themselves superintending the decoration of the great tree while the girl with the brandy-ball eyes acted as Mistress of Ceremonies for a small informal dance in the drawing-room, while the lady novelist scowled over the bridge table and the ballerina steadily refused to organise amateur theatricals.
