Flowers For the Judge Read Online Free Page A

it? Send it back?’
    Miss Curley considered. Somewhere neatly pigeon-holed in her mind was the information. It was this gift for relatively unimportant detail which had made her so valuable in her youth, and now in her age her skill was a fetish.
    ‘It’s on a shelf with a lot of other miscellany on the right of the doorway in the strong-room,’ she said at last, not without a certain pride.
    Mike, who caught Mr Campion’s expression of polite astonishment, hastened to explain.
    ‘The strong-room is a bit of an anachronism these days,’ he said. ‘It’s a sort of fortified basement in the cellar at Twenty-three and dates from the days when authors insisted on being paid cash down in gold. We haven’t much use for it now, so it’s used as a junk cupboard for odds and ends we don’t want to lose – addresses and that sort of thing. It’s a very fine affair. Tin-lined walls in the best Victorian style.’
    ‘All very interesting,’ said John dryly. ‘Would you like to run round there and get that folder?’
    Mike hesitated. The older man’s tone had been unnecessarily peremptory and he was in the mood to resent it.
    ‘I’ll get it for you, Mr Widdowson. I know just where it is.’ Curley was already on her feet.
    ‘Rubbish, Curley. I’ll get it. The key’s in your desk as usual, isn’t it? All right. I shan’t be a moment.’
    Mike strode out of the room and John sat down in the chair he had vacated.
    ‘Fog’s getting very thick,’ he remarked, leaning forward to jab unceremoniously at the fire.
    At sixty-three, John, the eldest of the cousins, was as forceful a personality as he ever had been. Campion, leaning back in the shadows, had opportunity to consider him. A spoilt child of his profession, he decided. A little tyrant nurtured in his uncle’s carefully prepared nursery. Still, he had met his battles and had fought and won them. Not a weak face, by any means.
    Conversation became desultory. Curley never expanded in John’s presence, and Gina was lost in her own unhappy thoughts. Mr Campion did his best to keep the ball rolling, but without great success, since his peculiar line in small talk was hardly appreciated by the elder man. Long silences were bound to occur, and in the last of these they heard Mike’s quick steps in the passage outside.
    Just for a moment a wave of apprehension touched them all. It was swiftly gone, but the sight of the young man with the red and gilt folder in his hand was somehow reassuring.
    Campion might have fancied that he was unduly jumpy had it not been for John, who, after peering at his cousin inquisitively, inquired abruptly:
    ‘What’s the matter? Seen a ghost?’
    They all glanced at the newcomer. His dark face was a little paler than usual and he was certainly breathless. However, he seemed genuinely surprised.
    ‘I’m all right. A bit out of training, that’s all. Fog’s getting very thick outside.’
    John grunted, and, taking his folder, trotted out again. Campion took up the main conversation where it had left off and spoke reassuring words.
    After a while Miss Curley left, and presently Mr Campion followed, leaving Gina and Mike by the fire.
    Campion had reflected upon the peculiarities of other people’s lives and had dismissed Gina and her truant husband from his mind by the time he turned in just after midnight, so that it came with all the more of a shock to him when Miss Curley dragged him from his bed at ten o’clock the following morning with a startling story.
    ‘Miss Marchant, one of the typists, found him, Mr Campion.’ Her voice was unnaturally business-like over the phone, and he had a vision of her, hard, cool and practical in the midst of chaos. ‘I sent down to get an address file as soon as I got here, about half an hour ago. The door was locked. I gave her the key from my desk. She screamed from the basement and we all rushed down to see Mr Paul lying there. Can you come over?’
    Mr Campion put a question and she answered