2: The Third Crow

ON the brow of the rise the thin man paused in his stride and looked back. Below him the scene was spread out in bright miniature, as if it were under the dome of a glass paper-weight. There was the dark beech, with the solid square of the Superintendent’s tweeds merging into the shade beneath it. There was the shining grass and the rod of the path, and beyond, no larger now than a puppet, the untidy figure with the mushroom head, a blurred mystery on the dark seat.

Behind her, between the bushes, the flowers glowed like coloured lanterns, brighter than the sun.

Campion hesitated and then drew from his pocket one of those midget telescopes which were once issued to Commandos. The entire instrument was less than a finger’s length, but when he put it to his eye the woman rushed towards him through the sunny air and he saw her for the first time in vivid detail. She was still bent over the paper on her lap when he first looked, but in an instant, as if she were aware he watched her, she raised her head and stared full at him, apparently into his eyes. He was much too far away for her to have seen the telescope or even that he faced in her direction, and for the first time since childhood he felt a sneaking tremor of superstitious apprehension. Her face startled him.

Under the ragged edge of cardboard which showed clearly through the centre parting of the veil it blazed with intelligence. The skin was dark, possibly dirty, the features fine and the eyes deep-set, but the outstanding impression he received was of a mind.

He moved his glass away hastily, aware of his intrusion, and quite by chance became the witness of a minor incident. Behind the woman a boy and girl had appeared between the bushes. They had evidently come upon her unexpectedly and at the precise moment in which they swung into the bright circle of Mr. Campion’s seven-leagued-eye the boy started and caught the girl round the shoulders. They retreated stealthily, walking backwards. The boy was the elder, nineteen or so, and possessed all that clumsy boniness which promises size and weight. His untidy fair head was bare and his pink worried face ugly and pleasant. Campion could see his expression clearly and was struck by the concern in it.

The girl was a little younger and his fleeting impression of her was that she was oddly dressed. She too was very thin and her hair silhouetted against the burning flowers shone with the blue-black sheen of poppy centres. Her face was indistinct because it was pale and unlined, but he was aware of round dark eyes alive with alarm, and, once again to surprise and capture him, he received the same indefinable assertion of intelligence.

He kept his glass upon them until they gained the sanctuary of the tamarisk clump and vanished, leaving him curious.

He turned once more and walked over the tussocks to the carriage-way and the gates, beneath whose squat arches he could see the confetti of the traffic strewing by. He was uneasy. The enchantment which had been striving to overcome him for the past few months had never been more strong. Yeo’s remark that his intervention in the Palinode affair was ‘intended’ nagged like a prophecy.

All that week coincidences had occurred to keep the case before his mind. A fresh fish-hook of interest had fastened into his imagination each time he had released himself. Opportunities to interfere had opened wicket-gates in his path at every turn. The chance glimpse of these two youngsters was the latest of the baits. He found he wanted to know very much who they were and why they were so afraid of being seen by that unlikely witch on the public bench.

He hurried away. This time the ancient spell must not be permitted to work. It was half past the eleventh hour and after five months of uncomfortable hesitation the most important decision of his middle life was practically made. Weariness and good advice had prevailed. The coin was on the table and the wheel about to turn. In an hour he must telephone the Great Man and accept with gratitude and modesty the great good fortune his friends and relations had engineered for him.

He was crossing the street when he caught sight of an elderly limousine with a crested door. He turned his head away quickly but the very old lady inside had seen him, and in a minute or so, to his astonishment, the aged chauffeur had brought the car to the kerb a few steps ahead of him.

The great lady, a dowager with a name to conjure with, was waiting for him with the small side window down as he came up and stood bareheaded in the sun before her. She remained in the shadow, leaning back against the cushions and holding up one strong gloved hand to shelter her face from the glare.

She was still lovely, he thought, despite the wrinkles and the white powder, and he almost told her so, save that even from him she might not have accepted so personal a compliment.

‘My dear boy,’ the thin voice had the graciousness of a world two wars away, ‘I caught sight of you and made up my mind to stop and tell you how glad I am. I know it’s a secret but Dorroway came to see me last night and he told me in confidence. So it’s all settled. Your mother would have been very happy.’

Mr. Campion made the necessary gratified noises but there was a bleakness in his eyes which she was too experienced to ignore.

‘You’ll enjoy it when you get there,’ she said, reminding him of something someone had once lied about his prep school. ‘After all, it is the last remaining civilized place in the world and the weather is so good for children. You’ll have great authority without ever having to show it, which is so tedious, real wealth, experienced service and the finest quail-shooting in existence. My child, what have you here? What have any of us? That house of yours is still a factory, is it?’

The lean man admitted that his brother-in-law was still using the ancestral mansion for the manufacture of experimental aircraft, and she sighed.

‘I danced in that pretty ballroom,’ she remarked unexpectedly. ‘That odious young Kaiser took me out on the terrace, where there were white roses, I remember. Your father was a very charming person at that time. You’re growing like him, you know. And how is Amanda? She’ll fly out there with you, of course. She designs her own aeroplanes, doesn’t she? How clever girls are these days.’

Campion hesitated. ‘I’m hoping she’ll follow me,’ he said at last. ‘Her work is not unimportant and I’m afraid there may be a great many loose ends to be tied up before she can get away.’

‘Indeed?’ The old eyes were shrewd and disapproving. ‘Don’t let her delay too long. It’s vital from a social angle that a Governor’s wife should be with him from the first.’

He thought she was going to leave him with that, but another idea had occurred to her.

‘By the way, I was thinking of that extraordinary servant of yours,’ she said. ‘Tugg, or Lugg. The one with the impossible voice. You must leave him behind. You do understand that, don’t you? Dorroway had quite forgotten him but promised to mention it. A dear faithful creature can be very much misunderstood and do a great deal of harm. You’re going back, and you must realize it. A long happy way back, quite sixty years they tell me.’ She shook her head regretfully. ‘Such a more expected world, as I remember it. I may come and visit you if my bronchitis doesn’t kill me this winter.’

‘That would be the greatest honour of my life,’ murmured Campion gallantly but the lead was still in his eyes and she lowered her hand and moved her face a fraction closer to his own.

‘Don’t be foolish,’ she said, her blue lips moulding the words with deliberation. ‘All your life you’ve squandered your ability helping undeserving people who have got themselves into trouble with the police. That was all very well when you were a younger son, but now you have the opportunity to take a place which even your grandfather would have considered suitable. I’m glad to see it happen. I always approved of you for your manners. Good-bye, and my warmest congratulations. By the way, have the child’s clothes cut in London. They tell me the local style is fanciful and a boy does suffer so.’

The great car slid away and he stood looking after it until it turned down towards the Memorial and disappeared. He walked on slowly, feeling as if he were dragging a ceremonial sword, and was still in the same state of depression when he climbed out of a taxi at the entrance to his flat in Bottle Street, the cul-de-sac which runs off Piccadilly on the northern side.

The narrow staircase, abominably shabby despite the peace, was as familiar and friendly as an old coat, and when his key turned in the lock all the warmth of the sanctuary which had been his ever since he left Cambridge rushed to meet him like a mistress. He saw his sitting-room in detail for the first time for close on twenty years, and its jungle growth of trophies and their associations shocked him. He would not look at them.

On the desk the telephone squatted patiently and behind it the clock signalled five minutes to the hour. He took himself firmly in hand. The time had come. He crossed the room quickly, his hand outstretched.

The note lying on the blotter caught his eye because a blue-bladed dagger, a memento of his first adventure which he was in the habit of using as a paper-knife, was stuck into it, pinning it to the board. The sensational trick annoyed him, but the frankly experimental type used in the letter-heading and a certain spontaneity in the advertisement matter caught his attention and he bent down to read.

---

COURTESY ★ SYMPATHY ★ COMFORT in transit
Jas Bowels & Son
(The Practical Undertakers)
Family Interments
12 Apron Street, W.3

‘If you’re Rich, or count the Cost,
We Understand there’s Someone lost.’

Dr to
Mr. Magersfontein Lugg,
c/o A. Campion, Esq.
12a Bottle Street,
Piccadilly, W

Dear Magers,
If Beatty was alive which she is not more’s the pity as you will be the first to agree she would be writing this instead of me and the Boy.

We was wondering this dinner time can you get your Governor if you are working for the same one and this reaches you, to give us a bit of a hand in this Palinode kickup which you will have read of in the papers.

Exhumations as we call them in the Trade are not very nice and bad for business which is not what it was before all this.

We both think we could do with the help your chap could give us with the police etc. and might be useful ourselves to someone not in the blue if you see what I mean.

Without disrespect bring him along for a bit of tea and a jaw any day as we do not do much after three-thirty and will do less if this goes on as it may between ourselves.

Remembering you kindly and all forgotten I hope,

Yours truly,
Jas Bowels

---

As he raised his head from this engaging document there was a movement from the inner doorway behind him and the floor shook a little.

‘ ’Mazing cheek, ain’t it?’ Magersfontein Lugg’s lush personality pervaded the room like a smell of cooking. He was in déshabillé, appearing at first sight to be attired as the hinder part of a pantomime elephant, and was holding out in front of him a mighty woollen undervest. The ‘impossible voice’ to which the great lady had referred so recently was after all only a matter of taste. There was expression and flexibility in that rich rumble which many actors might have sought to imitate in vain.

‘Wot a ’orrible man too. Bowels by name and Bowels by nature. I said that when she married ’im.’

‘At the actual wedding?’ inquired his employer with interest.

‘Over me one ’alf-glass of British champagne.’ He appeared to recall the incident with satisfaction.

Campion laid a hand on the telephone.

‘Who was she? Your only love?’

‘Gawd, no! My sis. ’E’s my brother-in-law, the poor worm-shoveller. ’Aven’t spoke to ’im for thirty years nor thought of ’im till this come just now.’

Campion was startled into meeting the eyes of his ancient companion, a thing he had not been able to do for some few weeks.

‘ ’E took it as a compliment.’ The beady eyes peered out from their surrounding folds with a truculence which did not hide the reproach or even the panic lurking there. ‘That’s the kind of bloke Jas is. Come my little trip inside, ’e be’aved as though I’d took ’im with me, sent back me wedding present to Beatt with a few questions not in the taste you and me is accustomed to. I wrote ’im clean off my slate. Now ’e pops up out of the past, says by the way me sis is dead some time, which I knew, and asks a favour when I couldn’t ’elp ’im if I could bring meself to it. It’s a coincidence, that’s all. Would you like me to go outside while you do your bit of telephonin’?’

The thin man in the spectacles turned away from the desk.

‘Is this a put-up job?’ he inquired briefly.

The place where Mr. Lugg’s eyebrows may once have been rose to meet the naked dome of his skull. He folded his vest with great deliberation.

‘Some remarks I do not ’ear,’ he said, achieving dignity. ‘I am just puttin’ my things together. It’s all right. I’ve got my advert wrote out.’

‘Your what?’

‘My advert. “Gentleman’s gentleman seeks interesting employment. Remarkable references. Title preferred.” That’s about it. I can’t come with you, cock. I don’t want to see meself an international incident.’

Mr. Campion sat down to re-read the letter.

‘When exactly did this arrive?’

‘Late post, ten minutes ago. Show you the envelope if you’re suspicious.’

‘Could old Renee Roper have put him up to it?’

‘She didn’t marry our Beatt to ’im thirty-five years ago, if that’s what you mean.’ Lugg was contemptuous. ‘Don’t be so nervy. ’E’s only a coin-cidence, the second you’ve ’ad over this Palinode caper. Don’t you get excited, though. There’s no need for it. What’s Jas to you anyway?’

‘The third crow, if you’re interested,’ said Mr. Campion and, after a while, began to look quietly happy.