Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham

Author:Margery Allingham [Allingham, Margery]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781933397641
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem
Published: 2007-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

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chapter 12

committee stage

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Mr Campion lit a cigarette and sank down in a protesting basket-chair before the fire in the small sitting-room at ‘The Three Keys’, which Inspector Oates had engaged for himself to ensure a little privacy: a personal extravagance which he felt was justified in view of the sensation which the case was making in the town.

Like all guest-rooms furnished by unimaginative hosts, it presented an atmosphere of aloof, if not downright grudging, hospitality. Even the fire kept itself a trifle too much to itself behind the narrow bars of the little grate.

Campion glanced at the small clock with the loud voice on the mantelpiece. At any moment now Mr Oates should return from the inquest on Andrew Seeley. It would be the most formal of formal affairs, probably little more than a mere notice of adjournment. It was the first time Campion had felt really alone since his arrival, and he permitted himself the leisure to reflect that active adventure, however strenuous, was apt to be less harrowing than taking part in this slow nemesis which was so obviously engulfing Socrates Close and its occupants.

He was glad to sit back and consider the matter coldly in these neutral surroundings, for he had felt the atmosphere of the house settling down upon him, robbing him of his impartiality, drawing him into itself, forcing him to see life confined within its own tiny boundaries.

Murder had been committed on two occasions. That seemed to be the only fact that emerged concrete and clear from the hotchpotch of unrelated incidents, tendencies and motives into which he had plunged. Uncle William, the obvious culprit, became less and less obvious the longer he knew him.

The incident of the night before returned to him vividly. Quite plainly Uncle William had been the victim of an attack. He had also been ill. The fact that he had refused so obstinately to give any reasonable account of his assailant was out of character. William was not the sort of man to shield anyone, nor was he likely to manufacture any incident so dramatic or so subtle as a faked attack upon himself. Mr Campion shuddered to think of the kind of ambuscade Uncle William might have arranged had he ever conceived the idea of such a method of shelving the suspicion against him. Certainly he would have emerged scatheless, without the wound in which Doctor Lavrock had put three stitches that morning.

With the elimination of Uncle William’s guilt there remained his fear, his locked door and that furtive element in the old house which had made Campion advise Joyce to lock herself in her room and had caused him to leave his own door half open and to lie awake listening for soft footsteps in the corridor.

If Uncle William was out of it, whose was the mind behind these lunatic crimes? The same mind which had conceived the idea of binding a man hand and foot before shooting the top of his head

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