The Fashion In Shrouds Read online

  ‘You may in an hour or so of fooling about.’ Ramillies’s contempt was bitter. ‘But that’s the straightforward, elementary way of finding a thing out . . . ask.’

  ‘Just one little moment,’ murmured Tante Marthe over her shoulder. ‘This is not a thing that has never happened before.’

  Ramillies shrugged his shoulders. ‘As you please. But I still think the intelligent thing to do is to get on the phone to the woman. Tell her all about it if you must. But if I was doing it myself I should say I was a magazine and get it out of her that way. However, it’s nothing to do with me, thank God.’

  He swung on his heel and made for the door.

  ‘Ray, where are you going?’ Georgia still sounded apprehensive.

  He paused on the threshold and regarded her with cold dislike which was uncomfortably convincing.

  ‘I’m simply going downstairs to see if they’ve got a telephone book,’ he said and went out.

  Val glanced at Georgia, a startled question in her eyes, but it was Ferdie Paul who answered her.

  ‘Oh no, that’s all right. He won’t phone,’ he said, and looked across at the small boy, who nodded reassuringly and, sliding off his chair, passed unobtrusively out of the room. It was an odd incident and Dell glanced at Campion.

  ‘Astonishing chap,’ he said under his breath and regarded Georgia with increased interest.

  Meanwhile Rex, who had been permitted to get a word in at last, was talking earnestly to Tante Marthe. He had a nervous habit of wriggling ingratiatingly and now, all the time he was talking, he seemed to be making surreptitious attempts to stroke his calves by leaning over backwards to get at them. But his observations were to the point.

  ‘I know Leonard Lôke used to dress her,’ he said, ‘and if the design has gone there of course it means it’ll be turned over to the worst kind of wholesalers and produced by the hundred. It’s a tragedy.’

  ‘The Premier who made it, the vendeuse, Mrs Saluski, the child in the fitting-room, you, myself, and Val,’ murmured Lady Papendeik, shooting her little lizard head up. ‘No one else saw the finished dress. The sketch was never completed. Val cut it on the living model.’

  Rex straightened.

  ‘Wait,’ he said in an altered voice. ‘I’ve remembered. Leonard Lôke is two partners, Pretzger and Morris. Pretzger had a brother-in-law in the fur trade. You may remember him, Madame; we’ve dealt with him once or twice? A fortnight ago I saw that man dining at the Borgia in Greek Street and he had Miss Adamson with him.’

  The dramatic point of this statement was not clear to Mr Campion at first, but, as all eyes were slowly turned upon the one person in the room who had hitherto taken no interest whatever in the proceedings, the inference dawned slowly upon him.

  The mannequin had remained exactly where she was when the general attention had first been distracted from her. She was standing in the middle of the room, beautiful, serene and entirely remote. Her lack of reality was almost unpleasant and it occurred to Campion that her personality was as secret as if she had been a corpse. Now, with everyone staring at her rather than her dress, she did not come to life, but remained looking at them blankly with brilliant, foolish eyes.

  ‘Caroline, is this true?’ demanded Tante Marthe.

  ‘Is what true, Madame?’ Her voice, a jews’ harp with a Croydon accent, came as a shock to some of them. Campion, who knew from experience that the beauty of porcelain lies too often in the glaze, was not so much surprised as regretfully confirmed in an opinion.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, my dear.’ Lady Papendeik betrayed unexpected heartiness. ‘You must know if you’ve eaten with a man or not. Do not let us waste time.’

  ‘I didn’t know whose brother-in-law he was,’ protested Miss Adamson sulkily.

  ‘Did you describe the model? Did it slip out by accident? These things have happened.’

  ‘No, I didn’t tell him, Madame.’

  ‘You understand what has occurred?’

  Miss Adamson did not change her expression. Her dark eyes were liquid and devastatingly unintelligent.

  ‘I didn’t tell him anything. I swear it, I didn’t.’

  Tante Marthe sighed. ‘Very well. Go and take it off.’

  As the girl floated from the room Val made a gesture of resignation.

  ‘That’s all we shall ever know,’ she said to Dell, who was standing beside her. ‘There’s a direct link there, of course, but she was quite emphatic.’

  Campion joined them.

  ‘I thought I noticed a certain clinging to the letter,’ he ventured.

  ‘That was the diagnosis that leapt to my mind but I didn’t care to mention it,’ Dell said, and added with the smile which made him attractive, ‘she’s too lovely to be that kind of fool.’

  ‘No one’s too lovely to be mental, in my experience,’ remarked Lady Papendeik briskly. ‘What diagnosis is this?’

  ‘We thought she might be a letter-of-the-law liar,’ Dell said, glancing at Campion for support. ‘She didn’t tell the man, she drew it for him. They’re the most impossible people in the world to deal with. If you pin them down they get more and more evasive and convince themselves all the time that they’re speaking the literal truth . . . which they are, of course, in a way. In my experience the only thing to do is to get rid of them, however valuable they are. Still, I shouldn’t like to convict the girl on that evidence alone.’

  Tante Marthe hesitated and it went through Campion’s mind that she was suppressing a remark that might possibly turn out to be indiscreet.

  Ferdie Paul, who had remained silent throughout the interview, looked down at her.

  ‘Send her to Caesar’s Court,’ he said. ‘She’s too lovely to lose. Margaret is down there, isn’t she? Turn this kid over to her. She can talk about the gowns there as much as she likes; she won’t see them until they’re ready to be shown.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ said Tante Marthe and her black eyes wavered.

  Georgia resumed her seat.

  ‘I think you’re very generous, Val,’ she began. ‘I’m broken-hearted. I could weep. You’ll never make me anything so deliriously lovely again.’

  ‘No,’ Val said, a cloud passing over her face, ‘I don’t suppose I ever shall.’

  Georgia stretched out a strong hand and drew the other girl towards her.

  ‘Darling, that was mean,’ she said with a sweet gentleness which was out of period, let alone character. ‘You’re upset because your lovely design has been stolen. You’re naturally livid and I understand that. But you’re lucky, you know. After all, Val, it’s such a little thing. I hate to repeat all this, but I can’t get it off my mind. Richard’s poor murdered body has been found and here are we all fooling about with stupid idiot dresses for a stupid idiot play.’

  She did not turn away but sat looking at them and her eyes slowly filled with tears and brimmed over. If she had only sounded insincere, only been not quite so unanswerably in the right, the outburst would have been forgivable: as it was, they all stood round uncomfortably until Mr Campion elected to drop his little brick.

  ‘I say, you know, you’re wrong there,’ he said in his quiet, slightly nervous voice. ‘I don’t think the word “murder” has gone through any official mind. Portland-Smith committed suicide; that’s absolutely obvious – to the police at any rate.’

  Val, who knew him, guessed from his expression of affable innocence that he hoped for some interesting reaction to this announcement, but neither of them was prepared for what actually took place. Georgia sat up stiffly in her chair and stared at him, while a dark stream of colour rose up her throat, swelling the veins in her neck and passing over her expressionless face.

  ‘That’s not true,’ she said.

  With what appeared to be well-meaningness of the most unenlightened kind, Mr Campion persisted in his point, ignoring all the danger signals.

  ‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘I can reassure you on that question. I’m hand in glove with the fellow who found the body. As a
matter of fact, I was actually on the spot myself this morning. The poor chap had killed himself all right . . . at least, that’s what the Coroner will decide, I’m sure of it.’

  The quiet plausible voice was conversational and convincing.

  ‘No.’ Georgia made the word a statement. ‘I don’t believe it. It’s not true.’ She was controlling herself with difficulty and when she stood up her body was trembling with the effort. There was no doubt at all about her principal emotion and it was so unaccountable and unreasonable in the circumstances that even Mr Campion showed some of the astonishment he felt. She was angry, beside herself with ordinary, unadulterated rage.

  Campion looked to Ferdie Paul for assistance, but he did not intervene. He stood regarding her speculatively, almost, it seemed to Campion, with the same sort of puzzled conjecture that he felt himself.

  It was left to Tante Marthe to make the inquiry that was on the tip of everybody’s tongue.

  ‘My dear child,’ she said, with faint reproof in her tone, ‘why be so annoyed? The poor man has been dead these three years. Had he been murdered it must have meant that someone killed him and that would entail trouble for everyone who knew him. If he killed himself no one need think of him with anything except pity.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly, angel.’ Georgia turned on the old woman in exasperation. ‘Can’t you see the damage a story like that can do once it gets about? I won’t believe it. I know it’s not true.’

  ‘You know?’ Campion’s eyes were mild behind his spectacles, but they did not disarm her into answering him impulsively.

  ‘Richard was not a suicidal type,’ she said after a pause which lasted too long. ‘This is the final insufferable straw. I can’t bear it. You must all forgive me and manage as best you can. I must go home.’

  ‘Going home?’ Ramillies’s voice sounded disappointed in the doorway. ‘Why? What’s the matter now?’ He seemed to have forgotten his flamboyant exit of ten minutes before, and came in jauntily pleased with himself as ever.

  Georgia stood looking at him steadily.

  ‘Albert Campion says Richard committed suicide. He seems to think there’s no doubt about it.’

  ‘Oh?’ Ramillies’s casualness was remarkable and Campion wished he knew the man better. From what he had seen of him so far the reaction might mean absolutely anything, even genuine disinterest. Since no one else spoke it came to Ramillies somewhat belatedly that further comment was expected. ‘It’s a long time ago, anyhow,’ he remarked with singularly unhappy effect. ‘There’ll be no ferreting about either, which is one good thing. That’s the one advantage of suicide; everyone knows who did it,’ he ended lamely, and remained looking at his wife.

  Georgia kept her eyes upon him for almost a minute and, having subdued him, turned to Dell.

  ‘Would you be most terribly kind and drive me home?’

  ‘Why, yes. Yes, of course.’ He looked a little startled. ‘Of course,’ he repeated. ‘I’d like to.’

  ‘Bless you,’ said Georgia and smiled at him faintly.

  ‘Oh, I’ll take you home if you really want to go,’ put in Ramillies without much enthusiasm.

  She drew away from him.

  ‘I’m not sure if I ever want to speak to you again,’ she said distinctly and went out, taking Dell with her.

  ‘What on earth did she mean by that?’ demanded Ferdie Paul.

  Ramillies turned to look at him and there was, incongruously, the suggestion of a smile in the many creases round his eyes.

  ‘God knows, my dear fellow,’ he said. ‘God knows.’

  Chapter Five

  THERE IS A distinct difference between the state of believing something to be true and knowing it to be so, with the paid stamp of an official opinion affixed to the knowledge.

  When the embarrassed foreman of the Coroner’s jury stood up in the cool dark village hall at Wellferry and stated that he and his confrerès were convinced that the skeleton found in the bushes at Eves Hall on the Shelley road was the skeleton of Richard Portland-Smith, who had died by his own hand – a hand which had first thrust the barrel of a revolver into his mouth and then pulled the trigger – and that in their considered opinion he must have been of unsound mind at the time to have done such a thing, Mr Campion felt aware of a distinct wave of relief, a comforting confirmation and a full stop, as it were.

  He was sitting beside the man who was his friend and client at the end of a row of church chairs arranged against a wall of the converted army hut, and the scene before him was melancholy and very human. It was a Coroner’s Court in essence, the bare practical bones of that judicial proceeding which has remained sound and useful from far-off simple times. A man had died mysteriously and nine of his countrymen had met together on the common ground of their patrial birth to decide how such a calamity had befallen him. There had been no decoration, no merciful arabesques of judicial pomp to smother the stark proceedings. The witnesses had come to the T-shaped table and muttered their depositions with nervous humility, while the jury had listened stolidly and afterwards shuffled out to the little cloak-room behind the stage on which the Conservative Concerts were held in the spring, and had returned, self-conscious and unhappy, to give their verdict.

  Now the Coroner with the patchy pink face and the unfortunate air of being unaccustomed to his job wriggled in his chair. He glanced shyly at the four pressmen at the far end of the table, almost, it would seem, in the hope of getting a little appreciation from them, or at least some indication that he had been ‘all right’, and returned to his formalities with the jury.

  The witnesses, who had been sitting with their friends around the walls, began to file out into the sunlight and the Inspector came across to ask Mr Campion’s companion about the funeral. He was not tactful but he was kindly, and his pleasant Kentish voice rumbled on, explaining with simple practicalness that the shed where the remains now lay was not public property and the owner needed it for his hand-cart, whose paint was even now blistering in the sun. He added that the local builder, who had been on the jury, was also the undertaker and he had no doubt but that he would be over in a minute, so that no time would be lost.

  While the sad little details were being arranged Mr Campion had leisure to reflect on the evidence which had brought the Sunday-suited jury, with their perpetual jingle of darts medals and their solid, sensible faces, to their conclusions.

  The identification had provided the most interesting fifteen minutes of the morning. The brown-paper parcels of grey-green rags, the mildewed wallet complete with discoloured notes and visiting cards, and the rusty gun had been first displayed and sworn to by tailor and manservant. Afterwards, even more gruesome, had come the evidence of the self-important little dentist, who had rushed in to rattle off his formidable list of degrees and testify that the dental work in the remains of the dead man’s jaw was his own and that it corresponded to his records of Portland-Smith’s mouth. He had given place to the County Pathologist, who had described the wound in detail and given his opinion on the length of time during which the body must have lain undiscovered.

  Finally, Mr Campion’s companion had walked to the table, his enormous shoulders held erect and the light from a window high in the wall falling on his white hair, which was silky and theatrically handsome. He had given his word that as far as he knew his son had no worries of sufficient magnitude to drive him to take his life. That had been all. The Coroner had summed up and the jury had shambled out. Richard Portland-Smith had retired from the round dance of life while his measure in it was yet incomplete and nobody knew why.

  Mr Campion and his companion walked down the road to the inn where lunch was awaiting them. It was bright and clean in the sunlight, with summer in the air and all that promise of breathless festivity just round the corner which is the spirit of that time of year.

  Campion did not speak, since his companion showed no desire to do so, but he glanced at the man out of the corner of his eye and thought that he was taking it very
well.

  In his own sphere Sir Henry Portland-Smith was a great man. In his hospital in South London he was a hard-working god whose every half-hour was earmarked for some separate and important purpose. This was probably the first morning he had set aside for purely personal considerations during the past twenty years.

  Like many great physicians, he had a fine presence allied to enormous physical strength, and although he was nearly seventy his movements were vigorous and decisive. He did not talk until they sat down together in an alcove of the big dining-room, which smelt faintly of creosote and plaster from recent restoring. The place was very quiet. They were early and a fleet of little tables, which looked homely and countrified in spite of an effort at sophistication, spread out before them.

  ‘Satisfied?’ The old man looked at Campion directly. He had taken off his spectacles and his cold but rather fine grey eyes had that pathetic, naked look which eyes which are normally hidden behind lenses achieve when the barrier is down.

  ‘I think it was a true verdict.’

  ‘Unsound mind?’

  Campion shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘What is “unsound mind”?’ he said helplessly. ‘It means nothing.’

  ‘Merely a form to get round the Christian burial difficulty?’ There was bitterness in the query, which was unusual and slightly shocking to find in the old, and Campion, looking up, found himself thinking irrelevantly that if over-busy people keep young they also keep raw, retaining the prejudices and sophistries of their first period. He prepared to listen to an outburst against the hypocrisy of the Law and the Church, but it did not come. Sir Henry planted his great elbows on the table and pushed his hands over his face as if he were cleansing it. He had the long, fine hands of the man who does not use them and the younger man remembered that he was not a surgeon.

  ‘I’m trying to make up my mind,’ he said presently. ‘I appreciate what you’ve done, Albert. I like your reticence and your quiet persistence. I’m grateful to you for finding the boy. It’s all over now with the least possible scandal. In a few months now he might never have been born.’