Flowers for the Judge by Margery Allingham

Author:Margery Allingham [Allingham, Margery]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Private investigators, Private investigators - England, Mystery & Detective, Family-owned business enterprises, General, Mystery fiction, Missing persons, Traditional British, Fiction, Campion; Albert (Fictitious character)
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem
Published: 2008-05-24T23:00:00+00:00

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11: Fuse Cap

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After a tedious magisterial hearing Michael Wedgwood was committed for trial and on the afternoon before the day on which he was to appear at the Old Bailey Mr. Campion, with Ritchie at his side, steered the Lagonda through the traffic in New Oxford Street. It was one of those warm blowy days when every street corner is a flower garden presided over by a stalwart London nymph still clad in the wools and tippets of winter and the air is redolent with an exciting mixture of tar, exhaust and face powder.

However, neither of the men in the big car was in the mood to appreciate the eternal hopefulness of spring. Ritchie was talking, curbing his gestures with considerable difficulty because of the confined space.

“Want you to see her,” he said. “Don’t like her like this. It’s getting her down, Campion. She’s fond of him, you know. Loves him and probably feels responsible. Women always take responsibility. It’s a form of vanity. Can’t help it. Natural with them.”

His anxiety seemed to have loosened his tongue and the fact that he now considered Campion an old friend made him more coherent.

“Bound to get him off, don’t you think?” he added, cocking a wistful eye at the young man beside him. “Terrible experience anyway. All terrible,” he went on, waving a tremendous arm between Mr. Campion’s eyes and the windscreen. “All this. All these people. They’re all in prison. All miserable. All slaves. All got to work when they don’t want to, eat when they don’t want to, sleep when they don’t want to. Can’t drink until someone says they may. Can’t hide their faces, got to hide their bodies. No freedom anywhere. I hate it. Frightens me. Knew a man once who chucked it. I couldn’t.”

“It’s a feeling one does get sometimes,” Mr. Campion conceded.

“I always feel like it,” said Ritchie and hesitated on the brink of some further confidence but thought better of it and was silent.

They found Gina sitting by the open window in the big studio and Campion, who had not seen her for some weeks, was shocked by the change in her. She was harder, more sophisticated, older. Nervous exhaustion had been replaced by general deterioration. She looked less chic, less graceful, less charming.

Her greeting was artificial and it was not until he had been sitting on the big white sofa for some minutes that she suddenly turned to him with something of her old genuineness.

“It was good of you to come,” she said. “I’m not going to cry or do anything silly and I shall be perfectly composed in the witness-box. It’s not hearing from him,” she added, her defences suddenly collapsing. “No mental contact at all. He’s just gone. He might be dead.”

The natural embarrassment which the confidence might have engendered was swept away by the relief which Campion felt at seeing that her artificiality went no deeper. This was only a warning then of the damage which might be done to her and had not the awful finality of the accomplished fact.

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