Mr Campion's Seance by Mike Ripley

Author:Mike Ripley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448304318
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2020-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

No Good News from Ghent or Aix

‘Your wife is considerably younger than you, Mr Campion. Does it ever bother you?’

It was not a question Mr Campion had been expecting, and he could not have anticipated that it would be Mrs Walker-Pyne’s opening gambit.

‘Not at all,’ he said after a significant silence during which he suppressed an initial surge of umbrage. ‘And if it bothers other people, I simply couldn’t give a fig.’

‘That’s because you’re a man.’

The new Bentley had made good time up the old Roman road into Essex, and Campion had stopped for a sandwich and a pint of Ridley’s bitter in a pub called The Olde Crown in the village of Messing. He had been neither particularly hungry nor thirsty, but simply could not resist when he saw the signpost for that quaintly named place and had taken the opportunity to sit with what the advertising men would have called ‘a contemplative pint’ in a well-aged country pub and gather his thoughts for his forthcoming … well, he wasn’t quite sure … interview?… interrogation?… cross-examination?… with Evadne Walker-Pyne.

He had felt guilty about telephoning Mill House when he estimated that Evadne could not have been more than an hour off the boat, perhaps had not even taken off her travelling coat yet, and was not surprised when she answered the telephone brusquely. Only the famous Campion charm at its most bewitching and Evadne’s innate good manners prevented the call from being an extremely short one. The connection between Piccadilly and Eight Ash had almost been severed when Campion announced his intention of visiting Evadne that very afternoon and though, yes, he knew it was probably inconvenient and downright inconsiderate, it really was rather important. It was only when he added that he wished to speak to her about her forthcoming novel and that he had been asked by her publisher to consult on a technical matter that her tone changed from polite irritation to angry, demanding curiosity.

Having first telephoned Veronica Hatherall at Gilpin’s to establish his cover story, Campion was in a position to reassure Evadne that his business was a professional matter and he was not, in any way, a deranged fan attempting to circumvent the strict embargo on Camera Obscuring. It was, however, business which could not be discussed over the telephone, but he could be with her by mid-afternoon.

Evadne had, with good grace considering the imposition, agreed to see Campion and added, stingingly, that she might just have time to unpack from her holiday before he arrived.

Campion’s diversion off the main London-to-Colchester road into the tiny village of Messing, would – he decided magnanimously – give Evadne more time to settle herself after her travels, which was only doing the decent thing. In fact, it provided a welcome respite for his brain, which had been feverishly struggling with the problem of how he should approach Evadne face to face. Was there a diplomatic way of saying: Hello, you haven’t seen me for twelve years and our

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