Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

“My dear girl.” He was laughing unsteadily and not very convincingly with his arms around her. “What on earth are you talking about?”

She drew back from him and peered earnestly into his face.

“You wouldn’t, would you? Not even if it meant an awful lot. Not even if for some reason or other you felt you had to. Would you?”

He turned from her helplessly, a great weariness in the lines of his sturdy back, but she drew him round, forcing him to face her.

“Would he what, my dear?”

Florence’s arch inquiry from the doorway separated them so hurriedly that she laughed delightedly and came briskly into the room, her gray curls a trifle disheveled and her draperies flowing.

“Too divinely young, I love it!” she said devastatingly. “I must kiss you both. Christmas is the time for love and youth and all the other dear charming things, isn’t it? That’s why I adore it. But my dears, not here. Not in this silly poky little room. Come along and help me, both of you, and then you can slip away and dance together later on. But don’t come in this room. This is Philip’s dull part of the house. Come along this minute. Have you seen my precious tree? Too incredibly distinguished, my darlings, with two great artists at work on it. You shall both tie on a candle. Come along.”

She swept them away like an avalanche. No protest was possible. Peter shot a single horrified glance towards the fireplace, but Florence was gripping his arm; he was thrust out into the hall and the door closed firmly behind him.

Campion was left in his corner with the parcel less than a dozen feet away from him on the opposite bench. He moved over and picked it up. It was a long flat package wrapped in holly-printed tissue. Moreover, it was unexpectedly heavy and the ends were unbound.

He turned it over once or twice, wrestling with a strong disinclination to interfere, but a vivid recollection of the girl with the brandy-ball eyes, in her silver dress, her small pale face alive with anxiety, made up his mind for him and, sighing, he pulled the ribbon.

The typewritten folder which fell on to his knees surprised him at first, for it was not at all what he had expected, nor was its title, “Report on Messrs. Anderson and Coleridge, Messrs. Saunders, Duval and Berry, and Messrs. Birmingham and Rose,” immediately enlightening, and when he opened it at random a column of incomprehensible figures confronted him. It was a scribbled pencil note in a precise hand at the foot of one of the pages which gave him his first clue.

“These figures are estimated by us to be a reliable forescast of this firm’s full working capacity,” he read, and after that he became very serious indeed.

Two hours later it was bitterly cold in the garden and a thin white mist hung over the dark shrubbery which lined the drive when Mr. Campion, picking his way cautiously along the clipped grass verge, came quietly down to the sundial walk. Behind him the gabled roofs of Underhill were shadowy against a frosty sky. There were still a few lights in the upper windows, but below stairs the entire place was in darkness.

Campion hunched his greatcoat about him and plodded on, unwonted severity in the lines of his thin face.

He came upon the sundial walk at last and paused, straining his eyes to see through the mist. He made out the figure standing by the stone column, and heaved a sigh of relief as he recognized the jaunty shoulders of the Christmas tree decorator. Lance’s incurable romanticism was going to be useful at last, he reflected with wry amusement.

He did not join his friend but withdrew into the shadows of a great clump of rhododendrons and composed himself to wait. He intensely disliked the situation in which he found himself. Apart from the extreme physical discomfort involved, he had a natural aversion towards the project on hand, but little fairhaired girls with shiny eyes can be very appealing.

It was a freezing vigil. He could hear Lance stamping about in the mist, swearing softly to himself, and even that supremely comic phenomenon had its unsatisfactory side.

They were both shivering and the mist’s damp fingers seemed to have stroked their very bones when at last Campion stiffened. He had heard a rustle behind him and presently there was a movement in the wet leaves, followed by the sharp ring of feet on the stones. Lance swung round immediately, only to drop back in astonishment as a tall figure bore down.

“Where is it?”

Neither the words nor the voice came as a complete surprise to Campion, but the unfortunate Lance was taken entirely off his guard.

“Why, hello, Preen,” he said involuntarily. “What the devil are you doing here?”

The newcomer had stopped in his tracks, his face a white blur in the uncertain light. For a moment he stood perfectly still and then, turning on his heel, he made off without a word.

“Ah, but I’m afraid it’s not quite so simple as that, my dear chap.”

Campion stepped out of his friendly shadows and as the younger man passed, slipped an arm through his and swung him round to face the startled Lance, who was coming up at the double.

“You can’t clear off like this,” he went on, still in the same affable, conversational tone. “You have something to give Peter Groome, haven’t you? Something he rather wants?”

“Who the hell are you?” Preen jerked up his arm as he spoke and might have wrenched himself free had it not been for Lance, who had recognized Campion’s voice and, although completely in the dark, was yet quick enough to grasp certain essentials.

“That’s right, Preen,” he said, seizing the man’s other arm in a bear’s hug. “Hand it over. Don’t be a fool. Hand it over.”

This line of attack appeared to be inspirational, since they felt the powerful youngster stiffen between them.

“Look here, how many people know about this?”

“The world—” Lance was beginning cheerfully when Campion forestalled

him.

“We three and Peter Groome,” he said quietly. “At the moment Sir Philip has no idea that Messr. Preen s curiosity concerning the probable placing of government orders for aircraft parts has overstepped the bounds of common sense. You’re acting alone, I suppose?”

“Oh, lord, yes, of course.” Preen was cracking dangerously. “If my old man gets to hear of this I—oh, well, I might as well go and crash.”

“I thought so.” Campion sounded content. “Your father has a reputation to consider. So has our young friend Groome. You’d better hand it over.”

“What?”

“Since you force me to be vulgar whatever it was you were attempting to use as blackmail, my precious young friend,” he said. “Whatever it may be, in fact, that you hold over young Groome and were trying to use in your attempt to force him to let you have a look at a confidential government report concerning the orders which certain aircraft firms were likely to receive in the next six months. In your position you could have made pretty good use of them, couldn’t you? Frankly, I haven’t the faintest idea what this incriminating document may be. When I was young, objectionably wealthy youths accepted I. O. U. ‘s from their poorer companions, but now that’s gone out of fashion. What’s the modern equivalent? An R. D. check, I suppose?”

Preen said nothing. He put his hand in an inner pocket and drew out an envelope which he handed over without a word. Campion examined the slip of pink paper within by the light of a pencil torch.

“You kept it for quite a time before trying to cash it, didn’t you?” he said. “Dear me. that’s rather an old trick and it was never admired. Young men who are careless with their accounts have been caught out like that before. It simply wouldn’t have looked good to his legal-minded old man, I take it? You two seem to be hampered by your respective papas’ integrity. Yes, well, you can go now.”