Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham Read Free Book Online Page A

wish and led the way into the bar, where they interviewed the landlord. This worthy turned out to be a stocky, rather startled little man in shirtsleevesand a cloth cap. He seemed very dubious about providing them with accommodation, and they got the impression that he was genuinely put out by their unexpected arrival. Finally, however, he fell a victim to Guffy’s powers of persuasion, and his wife, a large, red-faced woman, who shared her husband’s faintly scared expression, conducted them upstairs to big unspoiled Tudor bedrooms.
    As it was too late to go visiting, the personnel of the Court of Averna contented themselves with an evening devoted to deliberately casual enquiry. Eager-Wright and Guffy joined the dart players in the bar, while Mr Campion engaged Mr Bull, the landlord, at shove-ha’penny on the taproom table, polished to glass by long years of eager play.
    The landlord was a past master with the five coins, and at sixpence a game was quite content to beat the harmless-looking young man from London until closing time and after.
    Shove-ha’penny is a great leveller, and as the evening wore on, Mr Bull and Mr Campion reached a state of amity which might have been achieved only by years of different fostering. Mellowed, Mr Bull revealed a streak of conscious virtue which his acquaintances somewhat naturally discredited instantly from his very insistence upon it.
    â€˜I wouldn’t cheat you,’ he said to Mr Campion, fixing the young man with a softening eye. ‘I wouldn’t cheat you, because that wouldn’t be right. When I pick up my glass I might flip a coin into the bed with my sleeve.’ He illustrated the point with remarkable dexterity. ‘But I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it because that’d be cheating and that wouldn’t be right.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t do it either,’ said Mr Campion, feeling that he was called upon to make some sort of echo to this important statement.
    The landlord depressed his chin until it disappeared into the folds of his neck.
    â€˜Very likely not,’ he said. ‘Very likely you wouldn’t. Andvery likely you couldn’t, either. Takes a bit of practising, that does. There’s some people in this house now’ – he nodded to an innocent-looking old man swigging beer in a corner – ‘who’ve been trying to do it for fifty years and never have, not without being caught. But I tell you what,’ he went on, breathing hops and confidence into Mr Campion’s ear, ‘there’s one man you want to be careful of at shove-ha’penny, and that’s Scatty Williams. Scatty Williams is a clever one.’
    Mr Campion appeared to be momentarily off his game. ‘Sounds an attractive bird,’ he ventured.
    â€˜Bird?’ said the landlord, and spat. ‘He’s just an ordinary old man. Looks a bit like a bird, now you come to say so. Bit like a duck. Bald head and a long yeller nose. Not bright yeller, mind you; about the colour of these walls.’
    Mr Campion glanced at the mellowed plaster and his mental picture of Scatty Williams grew from the merely interesting to the fantastic.
    â€˜He works up at the mill,’ continued the landlord. ‘Him and Miss Amanda practically run the business.’
    Mr Campion’s expression became vacant almost to the point of imbecility and he watched the landlord carefully as he stepped back and screwed up his eyes preparatory to taking a shot into the top bed.
    â€˜She’s a one with the wireless,’ Mr Bull remarked without further explanation. ‘That’s what the mill’s mostly used for nowadays. They’ve got electric light down there.’
    It had not occurred to Mr Campion before that the mill might be a running concern, and his interest in the Fitton family grew.
    â€˜I shouldn’t have thought there was enough grain around here to support a mill,’ he said stupidly.
    â€˜Oh