Coroner's Pidgin Read Free

is cooler now than wot they was,” said Lugg succinctly. “But a part of the ’ouse where ’is nibs, ’er Ladyship’s son, used to live, that’s all right, and that’s wot we’re coming to.”
    Johnny Carados’s house and only part of it all right. In his mind’s eye Campion saw again the Carados mansion, which George Quellett had redecorated in his Bakst period. It seemed impossible that it should not still exist. It was the Music Room he remembered best; it had been at the top of the building, so probably it had gone, and its Indian red hangings, its gilt and its green, all reduced to a mass of blackened spars.
    All the same, it had been worth doing, even for so short a life. It had been from that room that Johnny hadconducted his remarkable activities. Of course, as a man with such a background and with such a fortune, Carados had had every opportunity to give his genius full rein, but he had never wasted those opportunities; he had been a great patron. It was Johnny who had financed the Czesca Ballet, Johnny who established the Museum of Wine, Johnny who had put the Pastel Society on its feet, who had given Zolly his first half-dozen concerts in London, and who had rebuilt the Sicilian Hall.
    Moreover, he had always fostered his own art, and was, incongruously, one of the leading amateur fliers of the age. Campion remembered him as an inspiring figure with the power to draw brains round him, and who had had, despite his youth and his money, very little trace of the dilettante in his make-up. He had held his friends, too. Peter Onyer and his wife Gwenda had lived with him. Campion remembered, Peter managing his financial affairs and Gwenda acting as her husband’s secretary. There had been other members of the household also—that queer little fish, Ricky Silva, who had existed solely to do the flowers, as far as anyone knew, and the plump cheerful girl who was the social secretary, whose name Campion had forgotten; not to mention the silent Captain Gold, who ruled the servants and did the housekeeping. It had been an odd, interesting outfit, the members all of an age and all highly intelligent. Together they had formed one of the most closely knit of all the little gangs which had characterized the social life of pre-war London.
    Carados had lived his own life in his own magnificent fashion. Evangeline Snow, the revue star, had never married him, but she was always there amongst them, and Johnny was faithful to her as far as anyone knew.
    The brilliant picture of the past faded into the dust and rubble of the present, and Mr. Campion blinked. The war must have split them up, of course, he reflected. He thought he remembered hearing something about Johnny getting himself into the R.A.F. at an age which at the time had appeared fantastic; his record as an amateur had stood him in good stead, and it had been arranged. The movemust have taken him clean away from his old surroundings and now, most of the house itself had gone.
    Campion turned to Lugg. “Where is Carados now?”
    â€œâ€™Is Lordship? At ’is ’ome, I ’ope. They’ve got the two lower floors and the basement going. He was just due there when we got the stiff away.”
    His large white face was growing more and more lugubrious. “We’ve got ourselves in a mess and no mistake,” he said. “The girl coming in so unlikely, not to mention you—that’s torn it. I was going to manage it all quiet, you see.”
    â€œI don’t, quite,” said Mr. Campion frankly, “not yet. Go on from where you were sitting in your pigsty.”
    Lugg was hurt. “It’s not only a pigsty,” he said, “it’s a whole depot. A.R.P., you know, ’eroes of the Blitzes. It’s right in the middle of the square where the grass used to be. That’s where I picked up ’er Ladyship. All through the Blitz she ran a voluntary canteen there, a real