The Fashion In Shrouds Page 8

  ‘Yes,’ said Val slowly. She shivered and stretched herself with a graceful, furtive movement like a little cat. ‘I envy those women who just love normally and nobly with their bodies,’ she observed unexpectedly. ‘Then they’re only engulfed by a sort of lovely high tragedy. The hero persists. That’s at least decent. Once you cultivate your mind you lay yourself open to low tragedy, the mingy, dirty little tragedy of making an ass of yourself over an ordinary poor little bloke. Female women love so abjectly that a reasonable hard-working mind becomes a responsibility. It’s a cruelty that shouldn’t have to be endured. I tell you I’d rather die than have to face it that he was neither better nor even more intelligent than I am!’

  Her passionate sincerity demanded his consideration and he looked at her helplessly.

  ‘You’re asking rather a lot of him, old girl, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Val rose to her feet. ‘That’s what I’m kicking at. I’m asking much too much of most men. I’ve so constructed myself that I’ve either got to ask too much or go maternal. Anyway, that’s how it looks to me when I pull myself together and remember that I’m one of the most important business women in Europe, with a reputation to keep up and a staff to look after.’

  She looked very slim and small standing on his hearthrug and it came to him with something of a shock that she was not overestimating herself.

  ‘Do you always see your – er – passion in this slightly inhuman light?’

  ‘No.’ She glanced down at her exquisitely-cut shoes, which a Viennese manufacturer had materialized from her design. ‘No, my other viewpoint is ordinary and howlingly undignified. I wish she were dead.’

  She met his eyes with sudden fire.

  ‘My God, I hate her,’ she said.

  Mr. Campion blinked. ‘I can’t do her in,’ he said.

  ‘Of course not. Don’t be an ape.’ She was laughing. ‘Don’t take any notice of me. I am nervy, very nervy. I had no idea I could behave like this. It’s come rather late – I ought to be twenty-two to feel like this and enjoy it – and it’s frightening me for the time being. Look here, all I want you to do is to see that Ramillies goes quietly out of the country without any fuss on Sunday. Then Georgia will follow him in six weeks’ time and meanwhile –’

  She broke off so sharply that he was startled.

  ‘Meanwhile what?’

  ‘Meanwhile Alan will at least be safe physically.’

  ‘Whom from? Ramillies? My poor girl, you’re cuckoo. Husbands don’t go around pigsticking their rivals these days. They seize another woman and sit showing off with her at the other end of the drawing-room until the wife’s boy-friend leaves out of sheer embarrassment.’

  Val was not disarmed.

  ‘You’re vieux jeu, my pet,’ she said. ‘Like most men you’re between three and five years out of date. Don’t you notice a change in the fashion? Gaiogi’s right. To-day anything can happen. People can wear anything, say anything, do anything. It’s the motif of the moment; look at the waist-line. Besides, consider Ramillies. He’s a man who might have taken up a blasé attitude if he thought it would be in any way shocking. Nowadays it’s not. It’s dull, it’s ordinary, it’s provincial. D’you know, last week the most fashionable woman in London rushed in to tell me that her husband had thrashed her within an inch of her life and pitched her boy-friend through a first-story window into a holly hedge. She was scandalized but terribly excited.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Mr Campion mildly. ‘You matched up her black eye in your new peau de pêche noire, I hope? Oh well, you surprise me. The old man must catch up on his homework. Let me get this straight. You seriously think that Sir Raymond Ramillies is capable of making a physical assault on Alan Dell?’

  ‘I know he’s capable of it,’ said Val bluntly. ‘I’m telling you that I’m haunted by the idea that it’s likely. Naturally I’m bothered because I can’t tell if my worry is reasonable or just some silly physical reaction. I do have to explain things in detail to you. I thought you were so hot on understanding people.’

  ‘I’ve been cheating all these years. I’m really Alice in Wonderland,’ said Mr Campion humbly. ‘Still, I’m picking up a crumb or two now in my fiddling little way. What am I expected to do? Stand by to plant my body between them to stop the bullet?’

  ‘Oh, darling, don’t be a lout.’ Val was at her sweedling best. ‘I don’t know what I want. Can’t you see that? Just be about. I’m frightened of Ramillies. I don’t think he’d simply hit out like a Christian, but I think he might do something – something – well, elaborate. That’s the impression he gives me. I’m uneasy with him. After all, there was Portland-Smith, you know.’

  Mr Campion’s eyelids drooped.

  ‘What about Portland-Smith?’ he said. ‘He committed suicide.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I do. There’s no doubt about it.’

  Val shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘It was very convenient for Ramillies, wasn’t it?’ she said, sweeping away the facts with a carelessness that left him helpless. ‘There’s been no end of chatter about it in the last few weeks.’

  ‘Then someone will get into trouble,’ Campion insisted firmly. ‘That’s pure slander.’

  ‘You can’t have smoke without fire, my dear,’ said Val, and he could have slapped her because she was both unreasonable and quite right. ‘Now I’m going,’ she said. ‘Don’t come down with me. I’m sorry I’ve behaved like a neurotic. You ought to fall in love yourself sometime and get the angle.’

  He did not answer her immediately, but when he looked up his eyes were apologetic.

  ‘It wouldn’t take me like that, you know,’ he remarked seriously.

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, where is she?’ Val’s glance round the room was expressive and she went off, leaving him reflecting that the gentle, conservative dog with his taboos, his conscience and his ideals was a rather pathetic, defenceless animal beside his ruthless, hag-ridden sister, the cat.

  Lugg’s stomach appeared round the doorway.

  ‘Sex rearin’ its ugly ’ead again, eh?’ he remarked, coming into fuller view. ‘I didn’t ’ear ’er speak because I kep’ in the kitchen like a gent, but you can see it in ’er face, can’t you? Funny, we seem to ’ave struck a patch of it lately. It’s pitch, sex is. Once you touch it it clings to you. Why don’t you sneak off and come on this cruise we’re always talking about? Crime’s vulgar enough, but sex crime is common. There’s no other word for it. ’Oo’s she in love with? ’Andle to ’is name?’

  Mr Campion regarded him with disgust.

  ‘You turn my stomach,’ he said. ‘I believe if you had a fortune you’d try to buy a title.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ Lugg appeared to be giving the suggestion more serious thought than it warranted. ‘Not a title. I wouldn’t mind being a Councillor of a nice classy little burrow. That’s about my mark. I’m sorry about your sis, but we can’t ’elp ’er troubles. You look out. I don’t like sex. Remember the set-out we ’ad down in the country. Which reminds me, I ’ad a note from my little mate the other day. Like to see it? She’s at boarding school.’

  He waddled over to the bureau and pulled open the bottom drawer.

  ‘’Ere you are,’ he said with the nonchalance that ill disguises bursting pride. ‘Not bad for a kid, is it?’

  Mr Campion took the inky square of expensive notepaper and glanced at the embossed address.

  ‘The Convent of the Holy Sepulchre, Lording, Dorset.’

  ‘Dear Mr Lug,’ – the handwriting was enormous and abominable – ‘I am at scool. Here we speak French. Some of the nuns like the tricks you showed me and some do not. I have written “I must not swindle” 50 times for S. Mary Therese but S. Mary Anna laffed. I am going to read the Gompleat works of William Shakespeare. Lots and lots of love from Sarah.’

  Mr Lugg put the note back among his better shirts, which he insisted on keeping in the burea
u in defiance of all objections.

  ‘I could ’ave done a lot with that poor little bit if I’d ’ad the educatin’ of ’er,’ he remarked regretfully. ‘Still, she’d ’ave bin a nuisance, you know. Per’aps she’s better off, reelly, with them nuns.’

  ‘Indeed, perhaps so,’ said Mr Campion not without derision.

  Lugg straightened his back and regarded his employer under fat white eyelids.

  ‘I found this ’ere in one of yer suits,’ he said, feeling in his waistcoat pocket. ‘I’ve bin waitin’ for an opportunity to give it to you. There you are, a little yeller button. It came off one of Mrs Sutane’s dresses, I think. Correc’ me if I’m wrong.’

  Mr Campion took the button, turned it over and pitched it out of the open window into the street below. He said nothing and his face was an amiable blank.

  Mr Lugg’s complacent expression vanished and he pulled his collar off.

  ‘I’m more comfortable without it,’ he remarked in the tone of one making pleasant conversation under difficulties. ‘Now the company’s gone I can let out the compression. Blest came in while you was talkin’ to your sis. I tell ’im you was busy. I give ’im the end of one of my old bottles and made ’im leave a message.’

  ‘Oh?’ Mr Campion seemed mildly interested. ‘And how did the ex-inspector take that from the ex-Borstal prefect?’

  ‘Drunk up every drop like a starvin’ kitty.’ Mr Lugg’s conversational powers increased with his anxiety. ‘It did me good to see ’im “’Ave another mite of the wages of virtue, mate,” I said, smellin’ another ’arf empty, but he wouldn’t stop. Said ’e’d phone you, and meanwhile you might like to know that ’e’d found a little church down in Putney with some very interesting records of a wedding three and a ’alf years ago. ’E wouldn’t tell me ’oo the parties were; said you’d know and that it was all okay, he’d got the doings.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yus. Wait a minute. ’Ullo, that’s the bell. It would be.’ Mr Lugg fumbled with his collar again. ‘It’s comin’ back to me,’ he said breathlessly in the midst of his struggle. ‘He said, did you know there was someone else snouting around for the same information less than a week ago, and if it was news to you, did you think it funny?’

  He lumbered out into the passage. Mr Campion’s eyebrows rose.

  ‘Damn funny,’ he said.

  He was still lost in unquiet thought when the fat man reappeared, his face shining.

  ‘Look ’ere,’ he said with even less ceremony than usual, ‘look ’ere. Look what I’ve found on the doorstep. ’Ere’s a bottle o’ milk for you.’

  Mr Campion raised his eyes to the newcomer and for an instant he did not recognize the heart-shaped face with the triangular smile and the expression that was as resourceful, as eager, and as infinitely young as when he had last seen it six years before.

  ‘Hullo, Orph,’ said Amanda Fitton. ‘The lieut. has come to report. This is a nice thing to get in my face when I look up at your window for the first time in six years.’

  She held out a small brown paw and displayed a yellow button with a rose painted on it lying in the palm.

  ‘Thank you, Amanda.’ Mr Campion took the button and pocketed it. ‘It burst off my waistcoat as my heart leapt at your approach. A most extraordinary phenomenon. I wondered what on earth it was. Why did you come? I mean, nothing wrong, I hope?’

  Amanda pulled off her hat and the full glory of the Pontisbright hair glowed in the evening light.

  ‘It’s about my Chief, Alan Dell,’ she said, ‘and frightfully confidential. I say, Albert, you don’t know a man called Ramillies, do you?’

  Chapter Seven

  MR CAMPION LEANT back in the taxi-cab, which smelt like the inside of the dressing-up trunk in the attic of his childhood’s home, and glanced at the shadowy form beside him with a return of a respect he had forgotten. The six years between eighteen and twenty-four had certainly not robbed Amanda of her pep. On the whole he was inclined to think they must have added power to her elbow.

  It was now a little after twelve, and the night, it seemed, was yet a babe.

  ‘What I still don’t understand is how you got there,’ he said. ‘I thought aeroplane works were holies of holies.’

  ‘So they are.’ Amanda sounded cheerful in the darkness. ‘It took me three and a half years to do it, but I’m a pretty good engineer, you know. I went straight into the shops when I got some money. I hadn’t a sufficiently decent education to take an ordinary degree, so I had to go the back way. My title helped, though,’ she added honestly.

  ‘Did it? What does your brother say about it?’

  ‘The little earl?’ Lady Amanda Fitton’s respect for young Hal did not seem to have increased. ‘He’s still at Oxford. He seemed to be dying of old age last time I saw him. He’s given me up for the time being. Aunt Hat says he’s gathering strength. Meanwhile don’t take your mind off the business in hand. This is serious. I’m up here on a sacred mission. You don’t seem to realize that. The man Ramillies and his crowd must be called off A.D. What am I going to tell the boys?’

  Mr Campion stirred.

  ‘Amanda,’ he inquired, ‘was I a hero in my youth?’

  ‘A hero? No, of course not. What’s the matter with you?’ She was surprised. ‘You’ve got introspective or had a serious illness or something. You were a useful, dependable sort of person and the only soul I could think of to come to in this idiotic mess. Besides, in view of one thing and another, I thought you might know something about it already. Look here, you forget about yourself for a minute and consider the situation. Here’s a man – a genius, Albert; there’s no one like him – and in the middle of serious and important work he’s got hold of by the wretched Ramillies and his crowd and taken completely off his course. It’s a frightful calamity; you must see that. We can’t get on without him. The whole machine-room is held up. Drawings are waiting for his okay. Specimen parts are ready to be tried out. All kinds of details you wouldn’t understand. And it’s not only that. There’s the morale of the whole place to consider. He’s endangering it. We stuck it as long as we could and then Sid sent me up to find out how bad things really were. We talked it all over and decided that real loyalty isn’t just sentimental and unpractical. A.D. has been got at. He’s a child in some things. He must be persuaded back to work.’

  Mr Campion, thirty-eight next birthday, was aware of a chill. It began in the soles of his feet and swept up over him in a tingling wave. Behind Amanda’s story he had caught a glimpse of a world which he had practically forgotten. In many ways it was an idiotic, exasperating but tremendously exciting world wherein incredible dreams fed fine enthusiasms and led to fierce consultations, pathetically noble sacrifices, and astounding fears of endeavour, to say nothing of heights of impudence which made one giddy even in considering them.

  ‘You’re all pretty young down there, I suppose?’ he ventured.

  ‘A lot of us are. A.D.’s wonderful like that.’ Amanda’s eyes were shining in the dusk. ‘It’s just ability that counts with him. Of course, there are a few old people too, but they’re all fanatically keen on the work and that keeps them young. We’re all so helplessly worried, Albert, or at least all those of us are who realize what’s up. It’s such a wizard show. We’re all behind him, you see. We’d do anything for the work, absolutely anything. We all would. He couldn’t let us all down, could he?’

  Her voice was wonderfully young and clear and he was reminded of the first time he had ever heard it in the drawing room at Pontisbright Mill when the curtains had been drawn to hide the tears in the furniture. A lot of water had gone through the wheel since then, he reflected.

  ‘It all depends,’ he said cautiously. ‘A man has a private life, you know, apart from his work.’

  ‘Not A.D.’ Amanda was vehement. ‘His work’s his life and he’s a very great man. That’s why we all depend on him so He’s a genius.’

  It went through Mr Campion’s mind that he had had a s
pot of trouble with geniuses before, but he thought it politic not to say so. He continued with his diffident questioning.

  ‘What put you on to Ramillies?’

  ‘That’s the only telephone number that seems to reach Dell. He’s got some money in Caesar’s Court, you know, and he must have picked up that crowd down there. Ramillies is all right really, I believe; I mean, his family is all right and he’s a Governor on the West Coast somewhere; but he’s wild and in with a wild crowd. A.D. has probably never met anything like him before and is going into some idiotic scheme for setting up an airport in an African swamp. He gets wrapped up in things like that sometimes. The only alarming thing is that he’s never neglected us before and we are so hoping that there aren’t any sharks in Ramillies’s lot. You don’t know, do you? Sometimes these clever crooks get hold of wild hearties like Ramillies and impress them. A.D. wouldn’t fall in the ordinary way. but if they approached him through a county mug he might just possibly be taken in.’

  Mr Campion’s eyebrows rose in the darkness.

  ‘I say,’ he murmured, ‘don’t you think you may be getting a bit melodramatic? No offence, of course, but if a lad doesn’t turn up at the office for a day or two it doesn’t always mean that he’s in the hands of what counsel calls “a wicked and unscrupulous gang”.’

  ‘An office, yes,’ conceded Amanda with contempt, ‘but not our Works. You don’t seem to understand at all. He’s neglecting his work. We haven’t seen him at all for a fortnight and before then he was vague and preoccupied. Sid and I diagnosed a succession of hangovers. It really is serious. Sid has sent me to find out, and I must. Then if things don’t improve we must have it out with him and get him back to normal.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Campion a little helplessly. ‘Who is Sid?’

  Amanda chuckled. ‘Sid’s my immediate boss. A grand chap. He was born in Wallington and went to the Polytechnic and starved through the shops, finally got his M.I.M.E and is one of the finest men in his own line in the kingdom. He’s only twenty-nine and an awful snob, but so absolutely honest as a workman.’