Campion 17 The China Governess by Margery Allingham

Author:Margery Allingham [Allingham, Margery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

Old Mrs. Luke beamed happily at the visitor.

“My daughter-in-law wasn’t chased enough,” she remarked. “A sweeter woman never drew breath but she didn’t think enough of herself, being too well trained.

That won’t happen to you, Love, will it?”

The baby, appealed to, laughed revealingly as infants often do and the startled Campion found himself confronted by Prunella’s aristocratic face with Luke’s Cockney intelligence blazing out of it like the sun in the morning. He went off feeling chastened and secretly apprehensive. It had occurred to him that in fourteen or fifteen years there might well be a personality of considerable striking force in Linden Lea. He put the thought from him; at the moment he had more immediate trouble to contend with. As soon as he was well out of the district he stopped the car at a kiosk and called Julia.

She answered at once, which told him that she had been waiting at the telephone, and her reaction to his cautious précis of the news to date was swift and practical.

“I think we ought to see the family at once,” she said. “I’ll meet you at Scribbenfields in twenty minutes.”

“Very well. But are you going to find that embarrassing? I mean—I thought there was a certain amount of pressure to keep you apart.”

“Oh, I’m past all that.” The tired young voice pulled him up and reminded him of the bright, sharp world of his teens in which all colours were vivid and pain was always acute.

“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’ll be there.”

With a little manoeuvring they contrived to meet on the doorstep which now, in mid-morning, was in a boiling stream of passers-by, hurrying business people speeding past in a flurry of fumes and dust in the bright haze. Any apprehension which Campion might have felt about their welcome was dispelled by Eustace, who opened the door to them himself. After his first blank stare of non-recognition, his face lit up like a delighted child’s.

“Splendid!” he exclaimed unexpectedly. “Hooray! Just the two minds we want on the problem. This is wonderful. We’re all up in the sitting room putting our heads together you know. Putting our heads together!” It would have been untrue and unkind, to have suggested that he was enjoying the emergency, but the unaccustomed crisis was certainly exercising emotions he did not usually experience and there was new colour in his cheeks. He led them to the big room with the pink upholstery and the garden of cacti on the hearth. Alison and Mrs.

Telpher, the family likeness less acute now that they were together, were talking to a round middle-aged man who wore careful clothes and possessed the solicitor’s occupational expression of slight incredulity.

He turned as they appeared and regarded them doubtfully as Eustace made the introductions.

“And this is Mr. Woodfall,” Eustace said. “He has looked after our affairs for years but not, I’m afraid, in this sort of caper. We’re having a little difficulty, Campion. Tim won’t ask for a legal representative to be present and Woodfall can’t very well force himself on the police, he tells me.

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