The Fashion In Shrouds by Margery Allingham Page A

wouldn’t.’ Lugg appeared to be giving the suggestion more serious thought than it warranted. ‘Not a title. I wouldn’t mind being a Councillor of a nice classy little burrow. That’s about my mark. I’m sorry about your sis, but we can’t ’elp ’er troubles. You look out. I don’t like sex. Remember the set-out we ’ad down in the country. Which reminds me, I ’ad a note from my little mate the other day. Like to see it? She’s at boarding school.’
    He waddled over to the bureau and pulled open the bottom drawer.
    â€˜â€™Ere you are,’ he said with the nonchalance that ill disguises bursting pride. ‘Not bad for a kid, is it?’
    Mr Campion took the inky square of expensive notepaper and glanced at the embossed address.
    â€˜The Convent of the Holy Sepulchre, Lording, Dorset.’
    â€˜
Dear Mr Lug
,’ – the handwriting was enormous and abominable – ‘
I am at scool. Here we speak French. Some of the nuns like the tricks you showed me and some do not. I have written “I must not swindle” 50 times for S. Mary Therese but S. Mary Anna laffed. I am going to read the Gompleat works of William Shakespeare. Lots and lots of love from Sarah
.’
    Mr Lugg put the note back among his better shirts, which he insisted on keeping in the bureau in defiance of all objections.
    â€˜I could ’ave done a lot with that poor little bit if I’d ’ad the educatin’ of ’er,’ he remarked regretfully. ‘Still, she’d ’ave bin a nuisance, you know. Per’aps she’s better off, reelly, with them nuns.’
    â€˜Indeed, perhaps so,’ said Mr Campion not without derision.
    Lugg straightened his back and regarded his employer under fat white eyelids.
    â€˜I found this ’ere in one of yer suits,’ he said, feeling in his waistcoat pocket. ‘I’ve bin waitin’ for an opportunity to give it to you. There you are, a little yeller button. It came off one of Mrs Sutane’s dresses, I think. Correc’ me if I’m wrong.’
    Mr Campion took the button, turned it over and pitched it out of the open window into the street below. He said nothing and his face was an amiable blank.
    Mr Lugg’s complacent expression vanished and he pulled his collar off.
    â€˜I’m more comfortable without it,’ he remarked in the tone of one making pleasant conversation under difficulties. ‘Now the company’s gone I can let out the compression. Blest came in while you was talkin’ to your sis. I tell ’im you was busy. I give ’im the end of one of my old bottles and made ’im leave a message.’
    â€˜Oh?’ Mr Campion seemed mildly interested. ‘And how did the ex-inspector take that from the ex-Borstal prefect?’
    â€˜Drunk up every drop like a starvin’ kitty.’ Mr Lugg’s conversational powers increased with his anxiety. ‘It did me good to see ’im “’Ave another mite of the wages of virtue, mate,” I said, smellin’ another ’arf empty, but he wouldn’t stop. Said ’e’d phone you, and meanwhile you might like to know that ’e’d found a little church down in Putney with some very interesting records of a wedding three and a ’alf years ago. ’E wouldn’t tell me ’oo the parties were; said you’d know and that it was all okay, he’d got the doings.’
    â€˜Anything else?’
    â€˜Yus. Wait a minute. ’Ullo, that’s the bell. It would be.’ Mr Lugg fumbled with his collar again. ‘It’s comin’ back to me,’ he said breathlessly in the midst of his struggle. ‘He said, did you know there was someone else snouting around for the same information less than a week ago, and if it was news to you, did you think it funny?’
    He lumbered out into the passage. Mr Campion’s eyebrows rose.
    â€˜Damn