The Crime at Black Dudley
by Margery Allingham
First published 1929
Published in Penguin Books 1950
CONTENTS
I Candle-Light
II The Ritual of the Dagger
III In the Garage
IV Murder
V The Mask
VI Mr Campion Brings the House Down
VII Five o’clock in the Morning
VIII Open Warfare
IX Chris Kennedy Scores a Try Only
X The Impetuous Mr Abbershaw
XI One Explanation
XII ‘Furthermore . . .’ said Mr Campion
XIII Abbershaw Sees Red
XIV Abbershaw Gets His Interview
XV Doctor Abbershaw’s Deductions
XVI The Militant Mrs Meade
XVII In the Evening
XVIII Mr Kennedy’s Council
XIX Mr Campion’s Conjuring Trick
XX The Round-Up
XXI The Point of View of Benjamin Dawlish
XXII The Darkest Hour
XXIII An Error in Taste
XXIV The Last of Black Dudley
XXV Mr Watt Explains
XXVI ‘Cherchez la Femme’
XXVII A Journey by Night
XXVIII Should a Doctor Tell?
XXIX The Last Chapter
To ‘THE GANG’
CHAPTER I
Candle-Light
The view from the narrow window was dreary and inexpressibly lonely.
Miles of neglected park-land stretched in an unbroken plain to the
horizon and the sea beyond. On all sides it was the same.
The grey-green stretches were hayed once a year, perhaps, but
otherwise uncropped save by the herd of heavy-shouldered black cattle
who wandered about them, their huge forms immense and grotesque in the
fast-thickening twilight.
In the centre of this desolation, standing in a thousand acres of its
own land, was the mansion, Black Dudley; a great grey building, bare
and ugly as a fortress. No creepers hid its nakedness, and the long
narrow windows were dark-curtained and uninviting.
The man in the old-fashioned bedroom turned away from the window and
went on with his dressing.
‘Gloomy old place,’ he remarked to his reflection in the mirror.
‘Thank God it’s not mine.’
He tweaked his black tie deftly as he spoke, and stood back to survey
the effect.
George Abbershaw, although his appearance did not indicate it, was a
minor celebrity.
He was a smallish man, chubby and solemn, with a choir-boy expression
and a head of ridiculous bright-red curls which gave him a somewhat
fantastic appearance. He was fastidiously tidy in his dress and there
was an air of precision in everything he did or said which betrayed an
amazingly orderly mind. Apart from this, however, there was nothing
about him to suggest that he was particularly distinguished or even
mildly interesting, yet in a small and exclusive circle of learned men
Dr George Abbershaw was an important person.
His book on pathology, treated with special reference to fatal wounds
and the means of ascertaining their probable causes, was a standard
work, and in view of his many services to the police in the past his
name was well known and his opinion respected at the Yard.
At the moment he was on holiday, and the unusual care which he took
over his toilet suggested that he had not come down to Black Dudley
solely for the sake of recuperating in the Suffolk air.
Much to his own secret surprise and perplexity, he had fallen in love.
He recognized the symptoms at once and made no attempt at
self-deception, but with his usual methodical thoroughness set himself
to remove the disturbing emotion by one or other of the only two
methods known to mankind – disillusionment or marriage. For that
reason, therefore, when Wyatt Petrie had begged him to join a week-end
party at his uncle’s house in the country, he had been persuaded to
accept by the promise that Margaret Oliphant should also be of the
party.
Wyatt had managed it, and she was in the house.
George Abbershaw sighed, and let his thoughts run on idly about his
young host. A queer chap, Wyatt: Oxford turned out a lot of
interesting young men with bees in their bonnets. Wyatt was a good
lad, one of the best. He was profoundly grateful to Wyatt. Good Lord,
what a profile she had, and there was brain there too, not empty
prettiness. If only . . . ! He pulled himself together and mentally
rebuked himself.
This problem must be attacked like any other, decently and in order.
He must talk to her; get to know her better, find out what she liked,
what she thought about. With his mind still on these things the
booming of the dinner gong surprised him, and he hurried down the
low-stepped Tudor staircase as nearly flurried as he had ever been in
his life.
However bleak and forbidding was Black Dudley’s exterior, the rooms
within were none the less magnificent. Even here there were the same
signs of neglect that were so evident in the Park, but there was a
certain dusty majesty about the dark-panelled walls with the
oil-paintings hanging in their fast-blackening frames, and in the
heavy, dark-oak furniture, elaborately carved and utterly devoid of
polish, that was very impressive and pleasing.
The place had not been modernized at all. There were still candles in
the iron sconces in the hall, and the soft light sent great shadows,
like enormous ghostly hands, creeping up to the oak-beamed ceiling.
George sniffed as he ran down the staircase. The air was faintly
clammy and the tallow smelt a little.
‘Damp!’ said he to himself. ‘These old places need a lot of looking
after . . . shouldn’t think the sanitary system was any too good. Very
nice, but I’m glad it’s not mine.’
The dining-hall might have made him change his mind. All down one side
of the long, low room was a row of stained-glass windows. In a great
open fireplace a couple of faggots blazed whole, and on the long
refectory table, which ran nearly the entire length of the flagged
floor, eight seven-branched candlesticks held the only light. There
were portraits on the walls, strangely differing in style, as the
artists of the varying periods followed the fashions set by the
masters of their time, but each face bearing a curious likeness to the
next – the same straight noses, the same long thin lips, and above
all, the same slightly rebellious expression.
Most of the party had already assembled when Abbershaw came in, and it
struck him as incongruous to hear the babble of bright young
conversation in this great tomb of a house with its faintly musty air
and curiously archaic atmosphere.
As he caught sight of a gleam of copper-coloured hair on the other
side of the table, however, he instantly forgot any sinister dampness
or anything at all mysterious or unpleasant about the house.
Meggie Oliphant was one of those modern young women who manage to be
fashionable without being ordinary in any way. She was a tall, slender
youngster with a clean-cut white face, which was more interesting than
pretty, and dark-brown eyes, slightly almond-shaped, which turned into
slits of brilliance when she laughed. Her hair was her chief beauty,
copper-coloured and very sleek; she wore it cut in a severe ‘John’
bob, a straight thick fringe across her forehead.
George Abbershaw’s prosaic mind quivered on the verge of poetry when
he looked at her. To him she was exquisite. He found they were seated
next to each other at table, and he blessed Wyatt for his
thoughtfulness.
He glanced up the table at him now and thought what a good fellow he
was.
The candle-light caught his clever, thoughtful face for an instant,
and immediately the young scientist was struck by the resemblance to
the portraits on the wall. There was the same straight nose, the same
wide thin-lipped mouth.
Wyatt Petrie looked what he was, a scholar of the new type. There was
a little careful disarrangement in his dress, his brown hair was not
quite so sleek as his guests’, but he was obviously a cultured,
fastidious man: every shadow on his face, every line and crease of his
clothes indicated as much in a subtle and elusive way.
Abbershaw regarded him thoughtfully and, to a certain degree,
affectionately. He had the admiration for him that one first-rate
scholar always has for another out of his own line. Idly he reviewed
the other man’s record. Head of a great public school, a First in
Classics at Oxford, a recognized position as a minor poet, and above
all a good fellow. He was a rich man, Abbershaw knew, but his tastes
were simple and his charities many. He was a man with an urge, a man
who took life, with its problems and its pleasures, very seriously. So
far as the other man knew he had never betrayed the least interest in
women in general or in one woman in particular. A month ago Abbershaw
would have admired him for this attribute as much as for any other.
Today, with Meggie at his side, he was not so sure that he did not
pity him.
From the nephew, his glance passed slowly round to the uncle, Colonel
Gordon Coombe, host of the week-end.
He sat at the head of the table, and Abbershaw glanced curiously at
this old invalid who liked the society of young people so much that he
persuaded his nephew to bring a houseful of young folk down to the
gloomy old mansion at least half a dozen times a year.
He was a little man who sat huddled in his high-backed chair as if his
backbone was not strong enough to support his frame upright. His crop
of faded yellow hair was now almost white, and stood up like a hedge
above a narrow forehead. But by far the most striking thing about him
was the flesh-coloured plate with which clever doctors had repaired a
war-mutilated face which must otherwise have been a horror too
terrible to think upon. From where he sat, perhaps some fourteen feet
away, Abbershaw could only just detect it, so skilfully was it
fashioned. It was shaped roughly like a one-sided half-mask and
covered almost all the top right-hand side of his face, and through it
the Colonel’s grey-green eyes peered out shrewd and interested at the
tableful of chattering young people.
George looked away hastily. For a moment his curiosity had overcome
his sense of delicacy, and a wave of embarrassment passed over him as
he realized that the little grey-green eyes had rested upon him for an
instant and had found him eyeing the plate.
He turned to Meggie with a faint twinge of unwanted colour in his
round cherubic face, and was a little disconcerted to find her looking
at him, a hint of a smile on her lips and a curious brightness in her
intelligent, dark-brown eyes. Just for a moment he had the
uncomfortable impression that she was laughing at him.
He looked at her suspiciously, but she was no longer smiling, and when
she spoke there was no amusement or superiority in her tone.
‘Isn’t it a marvellous house?’ she said.
He nodded.
‘Wonderful,’ he agreed. ‘Very old, I should say. But it’s very
lonely,’ he added, his practical nature coming out in spite of
himself. ‘Probably most inconvenient . . . I’m glad it’s not mine.’
The girl laughed softly.
‘Unromantic soul,’ she said.
Abbershaw looked at her and reddened and coughed and changed the
conversation.
‘I say,’ he said, under the cover of the general prittle-prattle all
around them, ‘do you know who everyone is? I only recognize Wyatt and
young Michael Prenderby over there. Who are the others? I arrived too
late to be introduced.’
The girl shook her head.
‘I don’t know many myself,’ she murmured. ‘That’s Anne Edgeware
sitting next to Wyatt – she’s rather pretty, don’t you think? She’s a
Stage-cum-Society person; you must have heard of her.’
Abbershaw glanced across the table, where a striking young woman in a
pseudo-Victorian frock and side curls sat talking vivaciously to the
young man at her side. Some of her conversation floated across the
table to him. He turned away again.
‘I don’t think she’s particularly pretty,’ he said with cheerful
inconsequentialness. ‘Who’s the lad?’
‘That boy with black hair talking to her? That’s Martin. I don’t know
his other name, he was only introduced to me in the hall. He’s just a
stray young man, I think.’ She paused and looked round the table.
‘You know Michael, you say. The little round shy girl next him is
Jeanne, his fiancée; perhaps you’ve met her.’
George shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but I’ve wanted to; I take a personal interest in
Michael’ – he glanced at the fair, sharp-featured young man as he
spoke – ‘he’s only just qualified as an M.D., you know, but he’ll go
far. Nice chap, too . . . Who is the young prize-fighter on the girl’s
left?’
Meggie shook her sleek bronze head at him reprovingly as she followed
his glance to the young giant a little higher up the table. ‘You
mustn’t say that,’ she whispered. ‘He’s our star turn this party.
That’s Chris Kennedy, the Cambridge rugger blue.’
‘Is it?’ said Abbershaw with growing respect. ‘Fine-looking man.’
Meggie glanced at him sharply, and again the faint smile appeared on
her lips and the brightness in her dark eyes. For all his psychology,
his theorizing, and the seriousness with which he took himself, there
was very little of George Abbershaw’s mind that was not apparent to
her, but for all that the light in her eyes was a happy one and the
smile on her lips unusually tender.
‘That,’ she said suddenly, following the direction of his gaze and
answering his unspoken thought, ‘that’s a lunatic.’
George turned to her gravely.
‘Really?’ he said.
She had the grace to become a little confused.
‘His name is Albert Campion,’ she said. ‘He came down in Anne
Edgeware’s car, and the first thing he did when he was introduced to
me was to show me a conjuring trick with a two-headed penny – he’s
quite inoffensive, just a silly ass.’
Abbershaw nodded and stared covertly at the fresh-faced young man with
the tow-coloured hair and the foolish, pale-blue eyes behind
tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, and wondered where he had seen him
before.
The slightly receding chin and mouth so unnecessarily full of teeth
was distinctly familiar. ‘Albert Campion?’ he repeated under his
breath. ‘Albert Campion? Campion? Campion?’ But still his memory would
not serve him, and he gave up calling on it and once more his
inquisitive glance flickered round the table.
Since the uncomfortable little moment ten minutes ago when the Colonel
had observed him scrutinizing his face, he had been careful to avoid
the head of the table, but now his attention was caught by a man who
sat next to his host, and for an instant he stared unashamedly.
The man was a foreigner, so much was evident at a glance; but that in
itself was not sufficient to interest him so particularly.
The man was an arresting type. He was white-haired, very small and
delicately made, with long graceful hands which he used a great deal
in his conversation, making gestures, swaying his long, pale fingers
gracefully, easily.
Under the sleek white hair which waved straight back from a high
forehead his face was grey, vivacious, and peculiarly wicked.
George could think of no other word to describe the thin-lipped mouth
that became one-sided and O-shaped in speech, the long thin nose, and
more particularly the deep-set, round, black eyes which glistened and
twinkled under enormous shaggy grey brows.
George touched Meggie’s arm.
‘Who is that?’ he said.
The girl looked up and then dropped her eyes hurriedly.
‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, ‘save that his name is Gideon or
something, and he is a guest of the Colonel’s – nothing to do with our
crowd.’
‘Weird-looking man,’ said Abbershaw.
‘Terrible!’ she said, so softly and with such earnestness that he
glanced at her sharply and found her face quite grave.
She laughed as she saw his expression.
‘I’m a fool,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize what an impression the man
had made on me until I spoke. But he looks a wicked type, doesn’t he?
His friend, too, is rather startling, don’t you think – the man
sitting opposite to him?’
The repetition of the word ‘wicked’, the epithet which had arisen in
his own mind, surprised Abbershaw, and he glanced covertly up the
table again.
The man seated opposite Gideon, on the other side of the Colonel, was
striking enough indeed.
He was a foreigner, grossly fat, and heavily jowled, and there was
something absurdly familiar about him. Suddenly it dawned upon George
what it was. The man was the living image of the little busts of
Beethoven which are sold at music shops. There were the same
heavy-lidded eyes, the same broad nose, and to cap it all the same
shock of hair, worn long and brushed straight back from the amazingly
high forehead.
‘Isn’t it queer?’ murmured Meggie’s voice at his side. ‘See – he has
no expression at all.’
As soon as she had spoken George realized that it was true. Although
he had been watching the man for the last few minutes he had not seen
the least change in the heavy red face; not a muscle seemed to have
moved, nor the eyelids to have flickered; and although he had been
talking to the Colonel at the time, his lips seemed to have moved
independently of the rest of his features. It was as if one watched a
statue speak.
‘I think his name is Dawlish – Benjamin Dawlish,’ said the girl. ‘We
were introduced just before dinner.’
Abbershaw nodded, and the conversation drifted on to other things, but
all the time he was conscious of something faintly disturbing in the
back of his mind, something which hung over his thoughts like a black
shadow vaguely ugly and uncomfortable.
It was a new experience for him, but he recognized it immediately.
For the first time in his life he had a presentiment – a vague,
unaccountable apprehension of trouble ahead.
He glanced at Meggie dubiously.
Love played all sorts of tricks with a man’s brains. It was very
bewildering.
The next moment he had pulled himself together, telling himself
soberly not to be a fool. But wriggle and twist as he might, always
the black shadow sat behind his thoughts, and he was glad of the
candle-light and the bright conversation and the laughter of the
dinner-table.