Free Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham Page A

work, were astonishingly steady and were further reinforced by a tangle of American Pillar and wild white convolvulus. The bright red roses looked unreal and somehow Victorian in the artificial light of the torch as Campion examined the hedge of flowers carefully, his discomfort increasing. The creosoted boards beneath his feet told him nothing. The dry summer had left them smooth and barely even dusty.
    He worked over the ground with hurried inquisitiveness and at every step his uneasiness grew. Yet it was not his discoveries which so disturbed him. Poyser’s voice, carefully lowered to an inarticulate murmur, floated up to him with the scent of the flowers in the warm, soft air. Now and again Sutane answered, his voice clear and irritable.
    â€˜It would be like her,’ Campion heard him admit.
    And again, after a prolonged muttering from Poyser:
    â€˜Yes, she liked secrets.’
    At this point another beam of light swung down the lane and came racing towards them. Campion hurried off the bridge and plunged back through the laurels. In view of everything he was anxious to be present when the police arrived.
    He came out through the bushes and slid into the road just as a car came to a standstill within a few feet of him so abruptly that the engine stopped. He saw it was a large Fiat, a few years old, a portly vehicle. The near-side window came down with a rattle and an old voice, slow with the affectations of the educated seventies, the father, as it were, of Uncle William’s voice, said sternly:
    â€˜My name’s Bouverie. Somebody telephoned to my house to tell me that someone was hurt.’
    â€˜Doctor Bouverie?’
    â€˜Yes.’ The curtness of the monosyllable suggested that the speaker was irritated at finding himself unknown. ‘Get that car out of the way. You’ve taken the patient up to the house, I suppose.’
    â€˜No. No, we haven’t. She’s here.’ It was Sutane who interrupted. He had hurried forward and now adopted unconsciously the tone of nervous authority which he kept for such of those strangers whom he did not instantly set out to charm.
    â€˜Are you Mr Sutane?’
    The voice in the car had authority also, and of the magisterial variety.
    â€˜I think I met you at your house this afternoon. Were you driving the car?’
    Sutane was momentarily taken off his balance.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said. ‘Er, yes, I was.’
    â€˜Ah!’
    The door opened.
    â€˜Well, I’ll take a look at your victim, don’t you know.’
    Campion never forgot his first glimpse of the figure who climbed slowly out of the darkness of the car into the tiny circle of light from the torch. His first impression was of enormous girth in a white lounge suit. Then he saw an old pugnacious face with drooping chaps and a wise eye peering out from under the peak of a large tweed cap. Its whole expression was arrogant, honest, and startlingly reminiscent of a bulldog, with perhaps a dash of bloodhound. He was clean-shaven except for a minute white tuft on his upper lip, but his plump, short-fingered surgeon’s hands had hair on the backs of them.
    A Georgian tough, thought Campion, startled, and never had occasion to alter his opinion.
    He had not seen the doctor at the disastrous party of the afternoon and rightly supposed that he had been one of the many who had come late only to leave almost immediately afterwards.
    Sutane remembered him; so much was obvious. His face wore that indignant, contemptuous expression which is always more than half embarrassment.
    Poyser, who saw trouble brewing, came forward ingratiatingly.
    â€˜It was a pure accident,’ he volunteered, attempting to be matter-of-fact and succeeding in sounding casual.
    â€˜Oh!’ The new-comer raised his head and stared at him. ‘Were you in the car?’
    â€˜No, I wasn’t. Mr Sutane was alone. Mr Campion and I have just come down from the house. We –’
    â€˜Quite.