Look to the Lady by Margery Allingham Read Free Book Online Page B

glistening with sweat when he came up with Campion on the broad doorstep of the inn.
    â€˜Let’s get away from here,’ he said. ‘I loathe that woman.’
    â€˜ “I did but see her passing by.” The rest of the song does not apply,’ said Mr Campion. ‘That’s her car, I suppose.’ He indicated a superb red and white Frazer Nash. ‘Hallo, here comes Lugg, looking like a man with a mission.’
    At that moment Mr Lugg appeared from the doorway of the four-ale bar. His lugubrious face was almost animated.
    â€˜â€™Op in,’ he said huskily as he came up with them. ‘I got something to tell yer. While you’ve bin playing the gent, I’ve bin noticin’.’
    It was not until they were once more packed into the Bentley that he unburdened himself. As they shot out of the town he leant forward from the back seat and breathed heavily into Mr Campion’s ear.
    â€˜â€™Oo d’yer think I saw in the bar?’ he mumbled.
    â€˜Some low friend of yours, no doubt,’ said his master, skilfully avoiding a trade van which cut in front of an approaching lorry.
    â€˜I should say!’ said Lugg heavily. ‘It was little Natty Johnson, one of the filthiest, dirtiest, lousiest little racegang toughs I’ve ever taken off me ’at to.’
    Mr Campion pricked up his ears. ‘The Cleaver Gang?’ he said. ‘Was he with anyone?’
    â€˜That’s what I’m coming to,’ said Lugg reproachfully. ‘You’re always ’urrying on, you are. ’E was talking to a funny chap with a beard. An arty bloke. I tell yer wot – ’e reminded me of that Bloomsbury lot ’oo came to the flat and sat on the floor and sent me out for kippers and Chianti. They were talkin’ nineteen to the dozen, sittin’ up by theirselves in the window. I ’ad a bit o’ wool in one ear or I’d ’ave ’eard all they was saying.
    â€˜â€™Owever, that’s not the reely interestin’ part. Where we come in is this. The artist chap, and some more like ’im, is staying at the Tower, Sanctuary. I know, because the barman told me when I was laughin’ at ’em. Friends of Lady Pethwick’s, they are, ’e said, as if that explained ’em.’
    Mr Campion’s pale eyes flickered behind his spectacles. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said. ‘And this man –’
    â€˜Yes,’ cut in Mr Lugg, ‘’e was talkin’ confidential with Natty Johnson. I know first-class dicks ’oo’d arrest ’im fer that.’

CHAPTER 5
Penny: For Your Thoughts
    â€”
    T HE village of Sanctuary lay in that part of Suffolk which the railway has ignored and the motorists have not yet discovered. Moreover, the steep-sided valley of which it consisted, with the squat Norman church on one eminence and the Tower on the other, did not lie on the direct route to anywhere, so that no one turned down the narrow cherry-lined lane which was its southern approach unless they had actual business in the village. The place itself was one of those staggering pieces of beauty that made Morland paint in spite of all the noggins of rum in the world.
    A little stream ran across the road dividing the two hills; while the cottages, the majority pure Elizabethan, sprawled up each side of the road like sheep asleep in a meadow. It is true that the smithy kept a petrol store housed in a decrepit engine boiler obtained from Heaven knows what dumping ground, but even that had a rustic quality. It was a fairy-tale village peopled by yokels who, if they did not wear the traditional white smocks so beloved of film producers, at least climbed the rough steps to the church on a Sunday morning in top hats of unquestionable antiquity.
    The Three Drummers stood crazily with its left side a good two feet lower down the northern hill than its right side. It was of brown unrestored oak and yellow plaster,