And here's the second vintage crime story for July, this time by Margery Allingham (1904-66).

Published in 1945, it's the 12th in a series featuring secret-squirrel-cum-detective Albert Campion. (So, once again, I'm doing things the wrong way round. The one I read previously, More Work for the Undertaker, was published in 1948, and was Campion No 13.)

Here, we're told that Campion has been off on some secret war work for the last three years -- "at large on two warring continents employed on a mission for the Government so secret that he never found out quite what it was, or at least that was the version of his activities which it seemed most prudent to give at the moment". Now he's back in England for some R&R, but finds his return has coincided with the arrival of a dead body in his flat.

Once again, it's a bizarre title... It's "pidgin" in the sense of "affair" or "business". When Campion's alibi is established (he has briefly come under suspicion, because of that thing with the body), he says to his policeman friend, "It's the Coroner's pidgin, and yours. Not mine, thank God." Later, another character, referring to one of the police officers, says: "It's Oates's pidgin."

You don't hear this turn of phrase much these days (and I'm embarrassed to admit that I thought it was "pigeon" rather than "pidgin"...). In the United States, the book was called Pearls Before Swine, which makes a LOT more sense, given that the plot revolves around a load of loot that is being minded by the totally innocent and radically philistine Miss Dorothy Pork.



Although I quite enjoyed Undertaker, I liked this much more. The characters are somewhat less bizarre, yet still interesting.

There's a nice little summary of the opening scenes here, but at the centre of the plot is John, Marquess of Carados, aka Wing Commander Lord Carados, aka Johnny. He's a friend of Campion's, and before the war, he was a great patron of the arts, as well as "one of the leading amateur fliers of the age". He's an inspiring figure, not only rich and aristocratic, but also charismatic, kind, and considerate. He has gathered a little coterie around himself: "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."

The main driver of the tension in the book is the cloud of suspicion that starts to swirl around Carados, who himself realizes he is somehow caught up in something mysterious: "Whenever I get a thread and follow it up and see a vague figure disappearing at the end of it, and I press on until I see his face, whom do you think it turns out to be? Me, Campion. Myself."

Early on in the story, we're introduced to a rare bottle of wine, which is connected to a string of thefts that took place in the early years of the war. We later find out that these crimes have involved 32 killings, "and God knows how much irreplaceable stuff in the wrong hands". And, as "an enemy-inspired job", they have political implications. While treasures were being evacuated from big cities, there was "systematic enemy-inspired looting" -- "pre-victory looting", as it were. A nasty business... As Oates puts it: "Spies are all right... We catch theirs, and they catch ours. Spies are almost clean. No, the men I'm after are the Judases. The men who kiss and serve and sell; the lads who sit snug in one way of life and still serve the other... We've still got them here, and when we've won we'll still have them waiting to do it again." Of the 41 attempted heists, the police frustrated 23; and they put some of perpetrators away, but they never nailed the higher-ups.

The idea that Johnny might be involved in all this is therefore very shocking. So the looming quality of the story -- which is very well done -- builds not on the question of who committed the murders (the body in Campion's flat is only the first), or even who is behind the enemy action, but rather on the key conundrum of whether Johnny is guilty. As one of his friends says: "The old boy's a hero... He's just over life-size... We've shoved him on a pedestal and he's damned well got to stay there for all our sakes."



So that's a nicely interesting angle (and see here for the real story of the evacuation of artworks).

The story is also a great window onto the world of war-time London. As Miss Pork puts it, with unmatched understatement: "I've experienced many wars, but this one is far more inconvenient than any I can remember."

The city's scenery has changed: "The blitzed windows in the bedroom were neatly pasted up with cardboard"; "she lives in the square, on the side wot's still standing;" a place is easy to spot because it's "practically the only building with a roof for a mile". The Minoan Restaurant is still functioning, a representative of "the era of elegant make-do". But the restaurateur greets the long-absent Campion like this: "How are you? Are you all right? I thought you were killed. Oh, my friend, my friend, the chaos, the disaster -- we don't think of it." Campion's erstwhile manservant, Magersfontein Lugg (now an air raid warden doing "heavy rescue" work) keeps a pig in a dugout on one of London's once-smart but now bombed-out squares.

And people have changed. The era before the war was a time "when little affairs were fashionable, and no one seemed to have very much to do". As one character reflects, "We're not quite the gay don't-cares we used to be, are we, any of us?" Several of the characters speak of living in several different worlds. Susan, for example, knew Tom, her dead husband, for just six weeks. He was killed five days after their wedding. "It's all part of the different world I was telling you about," she tells Campion. Johnny also (in words that, of course, increase our suspicions of him) maintains that being actively at war means doing what is expedient: "Ordinary peace-time considerations and institutions come to look a bit remote."



The other fascinating theme in this novel is Allingham's sharp-eyed diagnosis of Britain's class disease. Campion is affable and largely free of condescension, but Kate Macdonald is right when she remarks that "he’s from the upper classes, and can speak to any of them as a familiar, and frequently as an old acquaintance".

As Oates says of Carados: "Half the influential people in the country seem to have been at school with him... You've known of him for a lifetime, therefore he can't be a crook. I hear it on all sides, everybody says it. I admit I like him myself and I say that the fellow doesn't know if he's guilty or if he isn't."

Lady Carados is Johnny's mother, and she is, quite simply, used to being obeyed, even when she is commanding people to break the law: "She had such poise and authority, even now when she was in her softest mood, that Campion could understand much which had hitherto puzzled him... Her potential dangerousness grew at every moment. She was like a beautiful, high-powered car driven by an engaging maniac."

After a string of lies and manipulations, she says: "Even now I don't think I did anything really wrong unless someone decides to get officious about it." Which makes Campion take notice: "He wondered just how spoiled she was, just how far her notions of her private rights to do things which in more ordinary people were not permissible ranged into that abnormal which is politely called eccentricity."

I can think of a number of British politicians who still don't really get those distinctions... For Superintendent Yeo, the proper place for "class" is on the stage. He's so right.

Allingham is very readable, and definitely has a nice turn of phrase. A couple of examples:

-- "She wore her age ruefully, as if it were an unbecoming garment of which she was determined to make the best."

-- "The big club-room of The Red Queen at Chessing was set for the inquest, and the landlord had done what he could. Nothing could remove the comforting smell of beer, of course, but the narrow white-scrubbed tables had been rearranged, the spittoons set inconveniently under them, and about seventy-five of the ash-trays put away."

All in all, I would agree with a contemporary reviewer: "There is a preposterous plot which somehow becomes almost alarmingly real."