The Fashion In Shrouds (16 page)

‘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 right,' 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.'

They sat chatting on the edge of the terrace until the sun passed over the edge of the house. Amanda was a stimulating conversationalist. Her complete lack of self-consciousness rendered no subject taboo, and he found her philosophy, which appeared to be part common sense and part mechanics, refreshing after the purely medical variety on which his generation had fed so long.

The ceremony was timed for a quarter to five, and by four o'clock there was a fair-sized crowd round the hangar, far away over the river at the end of the lawn. Amanda sat silent, considering the view. The scene was peaceful, there was a light wind, and the tree-tops were golden against an egg-shell sky.

‘There goes Ramillies,' she said, nodding towards his tweed-coated figure gliding over the gravel in a calash. ‘He's in good time. Since he's alone, I suppose that means that A.D. is back.'

Mr Campion looked surprised. Traces of femininity in Amanda were rare. She smiled at him.

‘I'm not one of your beastly “kind women”,' she said. ‘I don't go round shedding grace. That was quite justified. There goes that little ape Wivenhoe with his nose.'

They sat where they were for another half-hour, and then, when Georgia and Dell, Tante Marthe, Gaiogi and the rest of the morning's party had joined the stream winding over the bridge and across the turf, they rose themselves and wandered after the others. Campion was content. He felt rested and at ease. The air was soft and pleasant, and that tranquil mood which is induced by the contemplation of the derring-do of others was upon him.

The two boys with the faded hair and level eyes were going to fly Ramillies over the Sahara, and all Mr Campion had to do was to watch them go. The hundred-year-old turf was spongy beneath his feet, and Amanda, the least exacting woman in the world to entertain, was by his side. In his own mind he had dismissed Ramillies as a possible
source of disturbance. He felt sure that any project Ramillies had in mind was being preserved for his party with the Taretons.

The awakening came a minute or two later. Dell appeared, hurrying back with Georgia just behind him.

‘Have you seen Ramillies?' he demanded. ‘We thought he was down here. The – the fellow seems to have gone again. The ceremony begins in a minute.'

‘Oh, but he's there,' said Amanda inexplicitly. ‘We saw him go into the hangar, didn't we, Albert?'

‘He certainly came down this way just over half an hour ago, just before Wivenhoe,' said Campion more cautiously. ‘Are you sure you haven't missed him?'

‘There's a lot of people there, darling,' said Georgia nervously, pulling at Dell's sleeve. ‘He may be among them.'

‘My dear girl, that's impossible.' Dell stood hesitating. ‘Time's so short,' he said.

‘But I saw him,' insisted Amanda, and set off for the aeroplane shed at a run, with Campion behind her.

There was the usual excitement in the crowd round the entrance, and the platform was a seething jumble of privileged guests, guests who were not privileged, and experts who were trying to protect their untidy paraphernalia. Everyone seemed to have heard that Ramillies was missing again, and the long sibilant name sounded from all sides. Campion hoisted himself on the dais and looked around him. It seemed impossible that the man should be there unobserved. He pushed his way over to a mechanic.