The Fashion In Shrouds Page 11

  ‘The sun has come out,’ he shouted to Amanda. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Excited,’ said Amanda obligingly.

  Gaiogi met her eyes and laughed, and it occurred to Campion that it was the meeting and mutual recognition of two persons of resource.

  Madame Laminoff met them in the hall, which would have been a grim box with a black-and-white squared marble floor if Gaiogi had not taken it into his head to have a set of red chessmen painted on the stones and to enliven an alcove with a red glass lobster in place of the seventh Earl’s bust of Cicero.

  Sofya Laminoff was herself unexpected. She was plump and gracious and succeeded in looking like a very exotic film star unsuccessfully disguised as Queen Victoria. She was far more placid than her husband, but her eyes, which were theatrically black against her magnificent white hair, had a twinkle in them and her small fat hands fluttered charmingly as she talked.

  ‘Still no news of him?’ Her anxious inquiry stood out from the flurry of welcome as though it had leapt into blacker type. ‘No? Never mind. He’ll come. I tell Gaiogi he will come. He is simply a man who likes to make himself interesting. Come in.’

  She swept them into the salon, where the hang-over party was already in progress. The room itself was charming. It ran through to the back of the house and ended in wide windows giving on to a small formal garden. Here again the seventh Earl had not been so much suppressed as made a little tipsy. His graceful fireplace and flat-fluted columns remained, while much of the furniture was pure Georgian, but the rest was Gaiogi’s own collection of interesting pieces, many of which were of the frankly bought-for-fun variety. It was all remarkably comfortable. Tante Marthe sat in a rocking-chair in a patch of sunlight, and Val, looking like one of her own advertisements in Vogue, was curled up on a Madame Récamier chaise-longue. There were four or five strangers present; an affable young man from the B.B.C., a gloomy youngster with a big nose whose name was Wivenhoe and who seemed to be something to do with Towser of the Colonial Office, two quiet little men who talked together respectfully and might have had ‘Money’ neatly embroidered on sashes round their middles, and a large gentleman with a Guardee moustache who devoted himself to Val and turned out most unexpectedly to be the managing editor of one of the larger dailies.

  Gaiogi himself was happy, playing apothecary, and he dispensed his three sovereign remedies, champagne, tea or iced draught beer, according to the condition of the individual patient.

  Campion wandered over to him.

  ‘I’ve phoned his house, his clubs and every Turkish bath in London,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll give him another couple of hours and then I’ll go to Town and get the bloodhounds out. We can’t very well do a thing like that too soon. I also tried to get hold of a Miss Adamson, but apparently Annie doesn’t live there any more.’

  ‘Ah? Oh yes, that girl.’ Gaiogi hunched his shoulders and looked vaguely introspective. ‘Yes, a pretty girl. No head. No perception. No, she doesn’t live here or at Papendeik’s any more.’

  ‘Nor with her Aunt Maggie either, it would appear.’

  ‘Really?’ Gaiogi did not seem interested. ‘That may be. Very likely. We will give him until after lunch. Meanwhile, my dear fellow, don’t let it distress you. What will you drink? Let us all forget the miserable chap. Towser is coming to the lunch. He wants a round of golf before the ceremony. I had hoped that Ramillies would be here to help entertain him, but from what Wivenhoe tells me perhaps it is almost as well. Not all these charming people like one another.’

  He exploded with laughter on the last word and his round brown eyes met Campion’s shyly.

  ‘That fellow Wivenhoe is a bit of a stick. Marthe Papendeik keeps talking to him about his chief, Pluto. He is quite offended. She is innocent. It is a natural slip. I thought I’d warn you.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll remember that.’ Campion spoke gravely and it went through his mind that more than half Gaiogi’s secret lay in his naïveté and the rest was deep understanding of important fun. There was an air of magnificent goings-on about this morning’s party, much of which was justified if one accepted the all-importance of the success of Caesar’s Court.

  ‘I talked to Ferdie Paul on the telephone just now,’ Gaiogi went on. ‘He says, don’t worry. In his opinion the fellow is something of an exhibitionist. He knows him well. That is between friends, of course. He says, like all these people, when the moment on which their job depends actually arrives they are always there.’

  ‘There’s a lot in that,’ said Campion. ‘Is Paul coming down this afternoon?’

  ‘No, unfortunately no. He is just off to Paris. He has interests over there and must be back in London to-morrow.’

  ‘He’s a clever chap,’ Campion remarked absently.

  ‘Oh, extraordinary.’ Gaiogi pronounced each syllable of the word in his admiration. ‘Brilliant. If only he weren’t so lazy he’d be a force, a power.’

  ‘Lazy? I should hardly have thought that.’

  Gaiogi filled a glass.

  ‘There is a phrase for him in English,’ he said. ‘Do you know it? He is “born tired”. He never does anything at all if he can get someone to do it for him. Will your beautiful betrothed drink champagne?’

  Mr Campion glanced at his beautiful betrothed with a certain amount of apprehension. She was talking to Val and Tante Marthe and the older woman’s little lizard head was cocked on one side and her eyes were dancing.

  ‘You’re both darlings to want to help,’ Amanda was saying firmly, ‘but you don’t know my brother. We’ve decided to let him grow. His mind will expand. Meanwhile we’re perfectly happy, aren’t we, Albert?’

  ‘You have your aeroplanes, my dear,’ said Mr Campion with caddish resignation.

  Amanda blinked. ‘That’s terribly true,’ she agreed earnestly. ‘I must try not to be selfish – or vulgar,’ she added warningly.

  Campion caught Val’s eye and turned away hastily. She had looked a little sorry for him.

  ‘You didn’t find him?’ Tante Marthe put the question in an undertone and she grimaced when he shook his head. ‘He expected to find that girl here last night. That is why he went off. He was piqued, like a child. I told Gaiogi so Georgia was being thoughtless, I know, but he’s been married to her for over two years. He must be used to that sort of thing by this time. Who’s that coming now?’

  There was a stir in the room and Gaiogi hurried to the window and they caught over his plump shoulders a fleeting vision of a small vehicle passing up the drive. It was a calash, one of the pneumatic-tyred electric cars like glorified Bath chairs for two which Gaiogi had acquired to transport his lazier lotus-eaters about the grounds and which were proving very popular in this little world of toys. Val glanced at Campion questioningly and once again he avoided her eyes.

  ‘Georgia,’ he said briefly.

  ‘And Alan?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  She did not speak but glanced out across the little flower garden as if she were half a mind to escape into it, but there was no sign of any emotion on her face.

  With the sound of Georgia’s warm happy voice in the hall outside a flatness passed over the company. For the first time the title of the party became apt, as though everyone had just remembered that he had taken part in an uproarious ceremony the night before.

  Georgia came in with Dell in attendance. She was beautiful, alive and blatantly triumphant. In any other circumstances her naïve delight in her captive would have been disarming, but this morning, in view of everything, it was not quite forgivable and succeeded in striking a démodé note in that aware community. Campion caught Amanda regarding them speculatively and, as was his gift, saw them for a moment through her eyes. He was startled. She was thinking that they were poor old things.

  Georgia crossed the room, her white silk sports suit emphasizing the warmth of her skin and the strong grace of her figure. She kissed Tante Marthe, nodded to the two decent young men and sat down beside Val with an arm round her sho
ulders. Dell remained by the door talking to Gaiogi. There was a distinct air of defiance about him which was young and sat oddly upon him, destroying his dignity, but when he came over at Georgia’s imperious command they saw that his eyes were bewildered and unhappy.

  ‘Something will have to be done,’ said Georgia clearly above the chatter. ‘He’s got to go in that plane. Where on earth is he?’

  It was the first time that the subject of Ramillies’s absence had been mentioned in any tone above a whisper and the effect upon the whole room was interesting. Everybody stopped talking and Campion realized for the first time that every member of the party had a definite reason for being present. It was another evidence of Gaiogi’s celebrated diplomacy and was, for some obscure psychological reason, faintly disturbing, as if one had accidentally discovered that the floor was laid over a well.

  ‘Didn’t he leave any message when he went off last night, Lady Ramillies?’ inquired Wivenhoe, who seemed constitutionally incapable of grasping the unconventional. ‘Surely he said something to somebody? I mean, a man doesn’t go off into the night like that without a word.’

  Georgia looked at him steadily, holding his eyes while she laughed.

  ‘It does sometimes happen, my pet,’ she said, and the large man with the moustache chuckled and the two little men who had been talking about money smiled at each other.

  ‘Well, darlings,’ said Georgia, looking round the room and conveying, most unjustifiably, that they were all in the family, ‘we were all at the party last night, weren’t we? Did anyone notice anything peculiar about the old villain? I rather lost sight of him myself.’ She glanced under her lashes at Dell, who blushed. The colour rushed into his face and suffused his very eyes. He was so mature for such an exhibition, so entirely the wrong sort of person for the reaction, that he could scarcely have been more obvious or caused more embarrassment if he had burst into tears. Everybody began to talk again.

  As Mr Campion turned his head he saw two profiles: Amanda as red as her hero and Val so white that her face looked stony. Georgia seemed surprised.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘He probably realized he was getting a bit tight and trotted off to a Turkish bath in Town. He’ll turn up very clean and hungry half an hour late for lunch. He hasn’t been frightfully fit, as a matter of fact. He went to a specialist a fortnight ago. He knows he ought not to drink. His sins are finding him out, wicked old thing.’

  Why these revelations should set everyone’s mind at rest was not very clear, but conversation became general again, indicating that everyone had found out that no one knew much more than he did and had decided to wait a little longer.

  Georgia’s attention returned to Dell, who was standing by the windows looking into the little garden. He came when she called him and paused before her. Georgia appeared to have forgotten what she wanted him for and was clearly about to tell the tasselled gentleman so when Val intervened.

  ‘What’s that in your coat?’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to place it. May I ask?’

  The ordinary question was a relief to him and he seized on it.

  ‘This?’ he inquired, pulling his lapel and squinting down at it. ‘That’s the Quentin Clear.’

  ‘Good heavens, I never noticed it.’ Georgia’s tone was vigorously possessive and her arm tightened about the other woman unconsciously, so that she was virtually holding Val back by main force. ‘My dear man, you can’t go about like that. You look like a darts champion. Whatever is it, pet? Give it here.’

  She held out her free hand and, after fidgeting with the split-pin that held it in place, he gave it to her unwillingly. It was a small silver medallion, not particularly distinguished in design but of exquisite workmanship, as these things sometimes are. Georgia turned it over.

  ‘It’s rather sweet,’ she said ‘I like the little propeller things, don’t you, Val? But you can’t wear it, dear, you simply can’t. I’ll keep it.’

  Dell hesitated. He looked profoundly uncomfortable.

  ‘I’m afraid you mustn’t,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’ll put it back.’

  ‘You won’t.’ Georgia was laughing. ‘If anyone wears it I will. It looks rather sweet on this revers.’

  There was a force in her voice that he seemed to find unanswerable and Mr Campion felt himself led firmly out into the garden.

  ‘Sorry, but I thought I was going to protest,’ said Amanda, striding across the grass plot. ‘That’s the Quentin Clear. The woman must be nuts. He is, God knows.’

  ‘That’s rather special, isn’t it?’

  ‘Special?’ Amanda made a noise like an angry old gentleman. ‘It is. It’s the one. Only about three men in the world have it. A.D. wouldn’t wear it if it wasn’t for this “do” this afternoon. She’s simply ignorant, of course, and evidently doesn’t understand that he isn’t just anybody, which is what I’ve complained of all along. He ought to be taken home and given a sedative, of course, but if Sid or any of the boys see her wearing that thing there’ll be a riot. It’s a howling insult. Can’t we tell her?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s his pigeon, my dear.’ Mr Campion spoke mildly. ‘Anything we do reflects on him, doesn’t it?’

  Amanda kicked the edge of the lawn with a small neat toe and glanced up at him.

  ‘The older one gets the more one understands that the small things are those that matter,’ she remarked. ‘It doesn’t get easier, does it? I’m sorry I cleared out. I suddenly felt it was all a bit beyond me. Hullo!’

  Her final remark was addressed to a small boy who was seated on a wooden settle against a southern wall. He had been hidden from them as they came out by the angle of the house and was sitting very quietly all by himself, a book on his knee. He rose politely and pulled off his Haverleigh cap as Amanda spoke and Campion recognized him as the child he had seen at Papendeik’s. He looked now much as he had done then, self-contained and patient, like somebody waiting on a railway station.

  ‘It’s very pleasant out here in the sun,’ he remarked, more, they felt, in an attempt to put them at their ease than to cover any embarrassment of his own. ‘I like this little garden.’

  He was an undersized fourteen, Campion judged, and he tried somewhat hurriedly to remember his own mentality at that age. Meanwhile, however, Amanda came to the rescue.

  ‘Haverleigh is shut, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘What was it? I.P. in the village? Do you think you’ll get back at half?’

  He shrugged his shoulders and smiled wryly.

  ‘We hope so. The last case was reported three weeks ago. Meanwhile one can only wait. It’s rather rotten. It’s only my second term.’

  The confidence was the first sign of immaturity he had shown and Campion was relieved to notice it.

  ‘I saw you in Town the other day,’ he said, trying to avoid the accusing tone one so often uses to children.

  The boy looked up with interest.

  ‘With Georgia and Raymond at Papendeik’s?’ he said. ‘Yes, I remember you. I’m afraid I’m not as interested in clothes as I should be,’ he added apologetically. ‘Mother – that’s Georgia, you know – is doing her best with me, but I’m not really keen. That sort of interest grows on one later, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s not a thing you’re born with, necessarily,’ remarked Amanda cheerfully. ‘We’re going back to the party. Are you coming?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I will, thank you very much,’ he said, reseating himself. ‘I’ve got this that I must read, and it’s very warm out here in the sun.’

  Amanda eyed the solid green volume on his knee.

  ‘Holiday task?’

  He nodded. ‘Ivanhoe,’ he admitted, a touch of amused embarrassment in his eyes.

  ‘Heavy going?’ inquired Campion sympathetically.

  ‘Well, he wrote in a hurry, didn’t he?’ There was no affectation in the pronouncement, nor did he censure, but appeared to be offering an explanation merely. ‘It’s a bit theatrical, you know, or at least I think so. The pe
ople aren’t like anyone I’ve met.’ He paused and added, ‘So far,’ with a cautiousness which gave his age away again.

  ‘That’s all very true,’ said Mr Campion, ‘but I shouldn’t put it in your essay if I were you.’

  The child met his eyes with a startled expression.

  ‘Good lord, no,’ he said fervently and smiled at Campion as if he felt they shared a secret about schoolmasters.

  They had been longer in the garden than they realized and the party had broken up when they returned. The room was deserted and the débris of empty glasses and overfilled ash-trays made it look forlorn in spite of its essential gaiety. Through the front window the departing crowd was visible, straggling towards the wicket gate.

  Amanda turned aside to look for her handbag and Campion went on to the hall alone. In the doorway he paused. Georgia was standing with her back to him looking up the staircase, and as he appeared she spoke to Dell over her shoulder.

  ‘I shan’t be a moment. You start the little Bath chair thing.’

  With some vague idea of allowing them to get away first Campion remained where he was and he was still in the salon doorway when Val came hurrying downstairs, a small square box in her outstretched hand.

  ‘There’s only one left,’ she said. ‘You know how to take it? Soften it in water and gulp it down.’

  ‘Bless you, darling, you’ve saved my life.’ Georgia took the box without glancing at the other woman. ‘I must fly. He’s waiting for me like a little dog on the step, the sweetie. Thanks so much.’

  She hurried across the hall and Val stood on the lowest stair looking after her. There was a startled expression upon her face and her lips were parted. Campion stared at her and she turned and saw him.

  She did not speak but stared violently, made a little inarticulate sound and, turning, fled up the staircase, leaving him bewildered and, in spite of every ounce of common sense that he possessed, alarmed. He had half a mind to follow her, and would, of course, have altered a great many things had he obeyed the impulse, but Georgia’s precipitate return drove the incident from his mind.