Free More Work for the Undertaker by Margery Allingham Page A

don’t. But there it was, all written out. “Having spent grim nights in an abominable cellar listening to the menacing roll of guns and the thunderbolts of enemy attack, with the man Bowels watching me and mentally measuring me up for one of his gimcrack carrion-caskets, I declare that should I die before him, which I would have him know I doubt, I will not have my body interred by him or any member of his insignificant firm.”’
    Her imitation was not unskilled and she finished with a gesture.
    â€˜I got it off like a part,’ she explained. ‘It seemed so wicked.’
    Her audience appeared delighted.
    â€˜A man of character,’ he observed.
    â€˜Pompous old idiot.’ She spoke with feeling. ‘He was full of smarty ideas and had no manners, even in his grave. He lost the family their money, being so clever. Well, there you are, mydear. If you hear any thumping it’s just the undertaker.’
    â€˜The ultimate reassurance,’ said Campion, and he got out of bed and into a dressing-gown.
    â€˜Are we going to have a look?’ She was so complacent about it that it occurred to him that it might have been her object from the beginning. ‘I’ve never liked to spy on him,’ she murmured confidentially, ‘because there was no excuse and anyway you can’t see from my room. It’s three or four months since he came last.’
    In the doorway Campion paused.
    â€˜How about Corkerdale?’ he demanded.
    â€˜Oh, we needn’t worry about him. He’s asleep in the kitchen.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Now, Albert,’ she used his christian name with daring, he felt, ‘don’t be unreasonable and don’t do anything to get the poor man into trouble. It was my idea. I didn’t want him to run into Bowels. “Everybody’s in,” I said, “and it’s the inside you’re watching. You come and sit down in a comfortable chair in the warm.” Of course he came. I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?’
    â€˜Only demoralized a good man.’ Mr Campion sounded cheerful. ‘Come on. Like to lead the way?’
    They went softly along the wide landing and down through the house, which was only comparatively silent. The Palinodes slept as they lived, with a fine disregard for the rest of the community. From one room a thunderous sound of snoring reminded Campion that brother Lawrence’s goose-like voice had probably an adenoidal explanation.
    On the ground floor Miss Roper paused. The man behind her stopped but his attention had been caught, not by a sound but by an odour. It crept up from the basement, a thin coil of appalling affront. He sniffed and smothered a cough.
    â€˜Good heavens, what is it?’
    â€˜Oh, that’s all right. That’s nothing. That’s only cooking.’ She was deliberately offhand. ‘Can you hear them?’
    There was a noise, he heard it now, very far off and muffled, a lumping, scraping sound suggesting hollow wood.
    Although there was nothing of the charnel house about thealarming odour from the lower floor, the effect of it in conjunction with the sound was eerie. He started when she touched him.
    â€˜This way,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll go in the drawing-room. There’s a window there just above the cellar door. Keep close to me.’
    The drawing-room door swung open quietly enough to admit them to a vast shadowy room, faintly lit by the subdued glow of a single far-away lamp outside on the corner of Apron Street.
    The bay window taking up most of one end was cut square at the top by the sharp line of a Venetian blind. The noise was much nearer now and as they waited a flicker of light appeared at the bottom of the centre pane.
    Campion made his way cautiously through an archipelago of furniture and peered over the final barrier, a set of empty fernpots wired together on a stand.
    The coffin appeared suddenly. It swung up vertically