The Fashion In Shrouds Page 12

  ‘Where’s Gaiogi?’ she demanded, flying into the hall, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘My dear, he’s turned up! Raymond’s back. They say he’s tight as forty owls, the abominable old brute. He must have been drinking like a fish all night. He’s gone straight to his room. He says he’ll sleep for an hour. I think it’s best to let him, don’t you? He’s got to go on that plane. If it’s the last thing he does he’s got to go back to-day.’

  Chapter Ten

  THE ULANGI FLIGHT Luncheon given by Alan Dell in the Degas Room at Caesar’s Court was, as is the fashion, strictly informal. In spite of the fact that Towser spoke, Dell spoke, the heads of the various departments in the huge Alandel works responsible for the machine spoke, a wit from Towser’s party who could speak spoke, and even the pilot drawled a few shy, halting words, the informality was strictly preserved. In spite of the amusing aeroplane of flowers suspended in a block of ice on a pillar in the centre of the horseshoe table, in spite of the silver-gilt souvenirs that Gaiogi had so thoughtfully provided, in spite of the Ulangi pears, a rather dreadful fruit imported at great trouble and expense for the occasion and served mercifully soaked in kirsch to deaden their own unpalatable flavour, the happy-family-party atmosphere was firmly maintained.

  The one genuinely unconventional note was provided by Ramillies’s absence and a great many excuses were offered, both publicly and privately, for that omission.

  Towser, who was one of the older school of politicians with a big head and such an affectation of plain-mannishness on top of a natural bent in that direction that one automatically suspected him, most unjustly, of every sort of insincerity, explained at laborious length what he honestly understood about Sir Raymond’s slight indisposition. It came out an overpowering story, hinting at sickly relatives dying in inaccessible parts of the island, cross-country journeys, and a noble if exhausted Ramillies crawling gamely home, to be persuaded by an adoring wife to snatch what rest he might before attempting the feat of endurance which lay before him as a passenger on an almost epic flight.

  It was unfortunate that the impression which this recital conveyed to that experienced audience was even worse than the facts. By the time the distinguished speaker had gone on to something else there was a universal conviction that Sir Raymond had been brought in drunk on a police stretcher and was even now lying unconscious on the floor of a private cell in the barber’s shop. The pilot and the navigator exchanged glances and shrugged their shoulders philosophically. They were both lean stringy youngsters with faded hair and the curious clear-eyed, unimaginative stare of that new and magnificent breed that seems to have been created by or for the air. So long as their cargo avoided delirium tremens they did not care.

  Sir Raymond’s adoring wife, who was getting on very nicely in her place of honour between the minister and the host, looked properly tolerant of her husband’s misfortunes, and the meal progressed happily with everyone being as charming as possible to the one uncertain element in their midst, the bored but ungullible Press.

  Mr Campion was not present. He lunched alone in the open-air restaurant in the water garden and avoided the eyes of more acquaintances than he had realized he possessed. Caesar’s Court was flourishing. Gaiogi’s principality was in its golden age.

  With Ramillies safely in his room recovering from a night out, his own immediate charge was at a standstill. Like all professionals who are doing a little work on the side to oblige a friend, he felt at a disadvantage. Friendship is a hampering thing at the best of times, and the demands made in its name are often unreasonable. As far as he could see, everybody in his immediate circle was beseeching him to avert something different. Looking round this pleasant and expensive scene, it struck him forcibly that such universal alarm was quite extraordinary. Ramillies appeared to be the focal point of the general anxiety. Ramillies was clearly expected to do something spiteful or sensational or both. So far, it seemed to Campion, he had simply behaved like a spoilt undergraduate with a gift for the offensive, yet neither Val nor Gaiogi was unduly nervous or even inexperienced. He reminded himself that he knew all these decorative, volatile people very slightly. They were all such natural exhibitionists, all so busy presenting various aspects of themselves, that to meet them was like watching a play in which, by the end of the evening, all the actors seem old friends and yet, in the back of one’s mind, there is the conviction that ten minutes behind the scenes would make them all strangers again. He decided to wander up and take a look at the patient.

  He located the bedroom and was bearing down upon the door when it opened six inches or so and remained dark and ajar. He paused. Of all the minor incidents of life a door which opens at one’s approach is perhaps the most disconcerting. An eye regarded him through the aperture.

  ‘Campion.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Come in. Are the others still eating? Come in, will you?’

  The thin sharp voice was not so strident as usual, but the note of insolence was still there. Campion walked into a room whose only light crept in round the edges of drawn curtains and the door closed behind him. A shadowy figure laid an unsteady hand on his arm.

  ‘I’m going to take my things down to the plane now.’ Ramillies sounded excited and the confidential tone was new to him. ‘I’m not travelling much. They’re sticky about the weight because she’s carrying so much extra juice. My man’s gone on by sea and rail like a Christian and I don’t want any damned hotel servants touching my stuff. That’s natural, isn’t it?’

  A querulous anxiety in the question confirmed the general diagnosis, and his visitor made haste to reassure him. Ramillies tittered. It was an unpleasant sound in the gloom and reminded Mr Campion that he never had liked the man.

  ‘I’m going to shift it myself,’ Georgia’s husband continued huskily. ‘You come down with me and see it weighed. You bear witness that I haven’t got that gun. I’ve had my head talked off about that gun and I’m bloody sick of it. You come along. I’ve been on the look-out for a stranger, but you’re better. You’ll do nicely.’

  Campion disengaged himself from the gripping fingers.

  ‘Anything you like,’ he said easily. ‘Are you all right? I thought you weren’t feeling too good.’

  ‘I’ve been drunk. God, I’ve been drunk!’ He made the words a breathy little prayer of satisfaction. ‘I’m sobering up now. It’s rotten sobering up, but it won’t last. Nothing gets me down for long. Besides, I’ve got something to do. I’ve got something on. I can always snap out of it if I’ve got something on. It doesn’t really affect me.’

  The bravado sounded a trifle forlorn to Campion.

  ‘Have you packed?’ he inquired.

  ‘Lord, yes, packed in Town. What the hell are we doing chattering here in the dark?’

  This was a question which had occurred to Mr Campion himself and he said so.

  ‘Georgia pulled the curtains to keep the blasted light out of my eyes.’ Ramillies was blundering slowly across the room as he spoke. ‘She’s full of wifely concern, isn’t she? Have you noticed it?’

  He turned round suspiciously on the last word, letting in a shaft of sun with the same movement, but apparently the younger man’s expression was satisfactory, for he seemed content.

  ‘I’ve only got one little case and some coats,’ he said. ‘We’ll take them down and show them. Then I’ll come back and sleep. I’ll be all right by the time we leave. We go at five, they say, not four; weather or something damned silly. What are you looking at? Do I show it much? I do sometimes.’

  He lurched unsteadily towards a mirror and stared at himself, and Campion felt a twinge of pity for him. The man was grey and positively sweating, and his eyes had sunk into his head.

  ‘Where on earth did you get the stuff at two in the morning?’ he demanded involuntarily.

  Ramillies looked round and for an instant there was a flicker of his old childlike smile.

  ‘She had a cellar,’ he said. ‘Come on. I’m going to put on one coat
. They’ll weigh me as well as the baggage. I dislike those fellows. I dislike people who live for machinery. I dislike Dell himself. Not for the reason you think, Campion. Not for that reason. I dislike Dell because he’s a mechanic and a blasted prig.’

  He found the coat he wanted and struggled slowly into it.

  ‘A blasted sentimental petrol-scented prig,’ he added, standing swaying in the shaft of sunlight with the ulster flapping against his calves. ‘Georgia needs a sense of proportion. She’ll get one when she comes out to me with the Taretons. I shall probably have my gun by then. I’m going to show them some sport. You’re not the kind of chap who’d like what I call sport, Campion.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Campion, remembering him at school. ‘No, I don’t think I am.’

  Ramillies began to laugh but thought better of it and presently they began a weary descent. Side by side in a calash they set off for the footbridge and a hangar. Ramillies looked like a great tweed parcel and a death’s-head, and sat balancing a small suitcase on his knee while Campion drove the flimsy machine. It was nearly three-quarters of a mile over gravel and turf and they took it slowly to avoid jolting. Ramillies sat silent, hunched up in his coat in the blazing sun, and Campion glanced at his beaded forehead with apprehension.

  ‘I should take that thing off if I were you,’ he remarked. ‘You’ll suffocate yourself.’

  ‘That would suit Dell, wouldn’t it?’ said Ramillies. ‘I expect he prays, don’t you? That sort of chap hugs his virtue and prays I’ll die – blasted prig! Damned fool, too. I’ll tell you something, Campion. You’re sitting there thinking I’m more offensive drunk than sober, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Campion, not wishing to be offensive himself, ‘roughly that sort of thought, you know.’

  ‘I am,’ said Ramillies modestly, as if he had received a much-prized compliment. ‘I am. D’you know why I ever thought of leaving my wife here with that fellow hanging around her? Nobody knows Georgia. That’s the cream of the joke. She’s out of date. She’s the nineteen-hundred-and-two chorus-girl type. It’s damned low-class blood in her. She’s got the careful virgin mentality. I know. My God, I know! She wears a ceinture de chasteté with a wedding-ring key. She’ll come out with the Taretons in six weeks’ time and when I get her there she’ll give up the stage. This is a prophecy. You listen to it. Write it down somewhere. Georgia won’t come back to the stage. I’ve got something on, you know. I’m not the complacent husband. I’ve got a surprise for Georgia and that fellow Dell. Sorry I’m being so vulgar. I don’t know you well, do I?’

  ‘We’re not buddies,’ said Mr Campion mildly. ‘You’re tight.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sir Raymond agreed in his thin flat voice. ‘I’m very, very tight.’ He laughed. ‘These Government fellows,’ he said, ‘they wouldn’t stand me for ten minutes if it wasn’t for one thing. Do you know what that is? I’m a genius with my niggers. My province is the most damned degenerate hole in the entire creation. My niggers would make your hair stand on end. They even startle me at times and I like ’em. The rest of the West Coast doesn’t mention us when it writes home. It doesn’t want to be associated with us. But my niggers and I understand one another. I suit them and they suit me. I’m not afraid, you know. I’m not afraid of anything on earth.’

  ‘Jolly for you,’ murmured Mr Campion politely.

  Ramillies nodded. ‘I’ve never tolerated fear; there’s only one thing I’m afraid of and I’ve overcome that,’ he said earnestly and with that naïveté which Campion had noticed in him once before, ‘and I have just a touch of the miraculous with my two dirty little tribes. You look at this plane.’

  They were admitted somewhat grudgingly into the hangar. The plane stood half in and half out of the shed and was certainly something to see. It was a pretty four-seater single-engined machine of the Alandel Seraphim class, with the typical sharp nose and a specially designed undercarriage in anticipation of the Ulangi landing grounds, but by far the most sensational feature to the lay observer was the yellow metal paint which transformed the whole thing into a gaudy toy.

  The mechanics who surrounded her each wore the slightly sullen expression reserved by the conscientious workman for anything unconventional in the way of decoration and one of them made so bold as to comment upon it.

  ‘’Is Coloured ‘Ighness will find this ’ere all colours o’ the rainbow in three months,’ he observed ostensibly to a colleague but with a sidelong glance at Ramillies.

  ‘He’ll have broken his neck in it long before then or sold it to a dangerous relation,’ muttered Sir Raymond under his breath to Campion. ‘Where do I get myself weighed?’

  Since practically everyone in authority was at the lunch there was a certain amount of confusion over this preliminary, and Mr Campion fancied that he detected a certain transparency in his charge’s motive in choosing this particular moment to make his arrangements. There was a brief delay, and he had leisure to observe the preparations for the official send-off. A narrow wooden platform had been erected against the wall just inside the hangar, and while at the moment this was smothered in cables and batteries in anticipation for the broadcast, a cut-glass water carafe and two enormous pots of hydrangeas standing precariously in a corner indicated the general effect desired

  Meanwhile Ramillies had got himself in the centre of a small group and Campion was summoned to be a witness to the fact that his small suitcase contained nothing to which anyone could possibly take exception. It was also sealed – an unnecessary precaution embarrassing to everyone except its owner, who insisted upon it being taken. Ramillies then clambered upon the scales himself while the old dangerous and irresponsible expression returned to his pallid face.

  Since there appeared to be no deception here, either, everything was being satisfactorily concluded when there was an unexpected interruption as Georgia appeared, very sweet and gracious and maternal.

  ‘Darling,’ she said earnestly, hurrying over to her husband, ‘you ought to be lying down. I nearly had a fit when I found you’d gone. I’m going to take you back at once. My dear man, you’re starting in a couple of hours. You must get some rest. Mr Campion, you do agree, don’t you?’

  It was a charming little domestic scene and the group of interested minor officials were properly impressed. Ramillies proclaimed ‘night out’ as clearly as if the words had been stamped all over him, and Georgia did much to counteract the gossip which had been floating about by as charming an exhibition of wifely devotion as the most sentimental British working man could have wished to see. She no longer wore the Quentin Clear, Campion was relieved to notice.

  Ramillies eyed her narrowly and Campion, who was watching him, was startled to see a sudden docility come into his face. He smiled at her happily, almost triumphantly, and tucked her arm into his.

  ‘We’ll go back together,’ he said. ‘Campion won’t mind us taking the calash.’

  They went off arm in arm and Mr Campion added another interesting and contradictory fact to his collection. Ramillies was genuinely in love with his wife and was therefore, presumably, deeply jealous of her.

  He was strolling back across the turf when he encountered Amanda, who greeted him enthusiastically and seemed disposed to gossip.

  ‘A.D.’s gone golfing with Towser,’ she said, ‘and I’ve just passed Georgia and Ramillies sitting side by side in a Bath chair. It was very pretty. “Having ten minutes to spare I spent them with my husband.” I almost like her, don’t you? She’s so comfortingly obvious. The lunch was good – the food, I mean. Did you like the plane? It’s only one of the Seraphim, of course. You should come and see the new Archangels we’re building.’

  ‘I’d like it,’ he said gravely. ‘Tell me, do you do Cherubim as well?’

  ‘Yes, we did, but the model wasn’t too satisfactory.’ She shook her head over the failure.

  ‘Too short in the tail, perhaps?’ he suggested sympathetically. ‘Nothing to – er – catch hold of.’

  ‘That’s r
ight,’ she agreed, eyeing him admiringly. ‘You’re picking up, aren’t you? The pink feathers came off the wings, too, just as you were going to say. Did you know Val was ill?’

  ‘Ill?’

  Amanda nodded and her big honey-coloured eyes were thoughtful.

  ‘Not seriously. But she looked pretty white and sort of hunted at lunch and afterwards she went off to lie down.’ She hesitated and shot him one of those odd direct glances which were peculiarly her own. ‘It’s terrifying and ludicrous and ugly, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Not Val, of course, but the thing itself; cake-love.’

  ‘“Cake-love”?’ he inquired, remembering her interest in food. Amanda raised her eyebrows at him.

  ‘Oh, use your head,’ she said. ‘Don’t embarrass me. This thing they’ve all got that’s hurting them so and making us all feel they may blow up. Cake-love as opposed to the bread-and-butter kind.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You’re plumping for bread and butter, are you, my young hopeful?’

  ‘I’m full of bread and butter,’ said Amanda with content.

  Campion looked down at her. ‘You’re very young,’ he remarked.

  She grunted contemptuously.

  ‘Please God I’ll stay like it, you poor old gent,’ she said. ‘Let’s sit on the terrace and digest. We can keep our eye on ’em all from here. Ramillies is up to something, isn’t he? You don’t think he’s going to pop his head out of the plane and pick Georgia off just as they start to taxi?’

  ‘Relying on the engine row to hide the shot?’ Campion laughed. ‘That would be rather pretty. If he wasn’t seen doing the deed the body wouldn’t be noticed till they were away, and nobody would suspect him.’

  ‘Except us,’ agreed Amanda complacently. ‘It’s not such a batty idea. It’s the kind of childish thing he might do. Fancy dressing that girl up as his wife the other night.’