Free Flowers For the Judge by Margery Allingham Page A

very great shock indeed – and your grief has naturally worn you down.’
    The inquisitive soul which lurked behind the physician in Doctor Gordon Roe prompted the faint question contained in the last remark, and the girl responded to it without thinking.
    ‘It’s not grief,’ she said. ‘Not real grief. I’m sorry for Paul, but I was not in love with him.’
    Doctor Roe started. Even his most mischievous and unworthy hopes had not included a statement quite so damaging. He was both shocked and frightened by it.
    ‘Come, come, you don’t mean that, Mrs Brande,’ he said peremptorily. ‘You’re overwrought.’
    The girl looked at him in surprise for a moment and then her nerves seemed suddenly to fail her altogether.
    ‘How horrible you all are!’ she said explosively. ‘If I’d said that before my husband died you wouldn’t have thought anything of it – no one would – and yet it’s just as true now as it was then. Now I’ve only got to say that I didn’t love my husband and you look at me as though you thought I’d murdered him.’
    Doctor Roe was panic-stricken.
    ‘I – I must protest. Really!’ he murmured into his collar, and made for the door, from which he summoned Mrs Austin. ‘Get your mistress to bed,’ he ordered so sharply that she wondered whether he had divined that she had listened outside the door, and, having done what he considered was his duty, made his escape.
    Meanwhile in a small flat over the police station in Bottle Street, Piccadilly, Mr Campion was sitting at his desk attempting to write letters and at the same time to take a comparatively intelligent share in a conversation which he was holding with someone in the room next door.
    ‘It’s going to be a nasty case,’ a thick, inexpressibly melancholy voice announced bitterly. ‘Anyone can see that with ’alf an eye. You keep out of it. You don’t want to get notorious. The way your name’s been gettin’ about lately you’re a positive publicity ’ound.’
    ‘I resent that,’ said Mr Campion, writing ‘hound’ irrelevantly in the midst of a note to his bank manager and crossing it out again. ‘These people are my friends, you know.’
    ‘All the more reason you want to keep away,’ said the voice, adopting this time a flavour of worldly wisdom. ‘Friends’ll ask you to do things what strangers would never dare. It’s a sex crime, I suppose you know that?’
    ‘What?’ said Mr Campion. He had removed his spectacles, which somewhat obscured his vision when writing, but now he replaced them and laid down his pen.
    ‘Sex crime,’ said the voice from within. ‘You’ve bin pretty lucky so far keepin’ out of that sort of degradation, but you won’t look so pretty trailin’ about with the mud of the cheap Press all over you. I couldn’t associate meself with you after that, for one thing. You’ll lose all your old friends.’
    ‘Lugg,’ said Mr Campion sternly. ‘Come in here.’
    There was a rumble in the other room as though a minor earthquake had disturbed it, and preceded by the sound of deep breathing, Magersfontein Lugg surged into the room.
    His girth was increasing with the years and with it his melancholy. He had also achieved a certain sartorial elegance without losing his unconventionality in that direction. At the moment he was clad in what appeared to be the hind legs of a black elephant, a spotless but collarless boiled shirt and a black velvet jacket.
    His employer surveyed him coldly. ‘The
vie de bohème
, I see,’ he observed. ‘How are the tiny hands?’
    Mr Lugg shook his head ponderously. ‘Turn it aside with a light word if you like,’ he said mournfully, ‘but here we are, all respectable, nice, good class and the first nasty eruption that breaks out you’re in it up to the neck.’
    ‘Where did you get that coat?’
    ‘’Ad it made for me,’ said Mr Lugg, with intent to snub. ‘It’s a gentleman’s ’ouse coat and very smart. All the wear just now. I bought it