The Fashion In Shrouds (20 page)

‘I did. Don't shout at me.'

‘Darling,
am
I shouting?' The injustice of the accusation took his breath away. ‘You saw him. You know as well as I do that he's only going to be obliging as far as it suits him, and it doesn't suit any doctor on earth to hush up anything
really serious unless he's personally involved. It's an ordinary question of value for risk. If Ramillies was poisoned, as I'm open to bet he was, the P.M. will uncover it and there'll be an almighty row.'

‘I don't agree with you.'

Mr Campion breathed deeply.

‘Are you getting any fun out of baiting me or are you just not listening?'

She squeezed his arm and her head touched his shoulder.

‘I can't argue,' she said. ‘I'm only telling you. However Ramillies died there won't be a row.'

‘If you think that doctor could be bribed I very much doubt it.'

‘I don't think that.'

‘Well then, Val, Val darling, put me out of my misery; how's it going to be done?'

‘I don't know,' she said frankly. ‘I just realize that if a P.M. will reveal anything unpleasant or dangerous there won't be a P.M.'

‘But there's
going
to be a P.M., woman!'

‘Then they won't find anything.'

‘Do you think it was a natural death?'

She closed her eyes.

‘I think someone hoped very much it would happen.'

Mr Campion sniffed. ‘And administered some dangerous drug unknown to science, no doubt,' he murmured.

Val's expression was infuriatingly vague.

‘Perhaps so,' she agreed absently.

He looked down at her with a mixture of rage and affection and finally slid an arm round her shoulders.

‘You're a dear little bloody, aren't you?' he said. ‘Let's be practical. You've got no access to anything dangerous yourself, have you? Nothing anyone could get silly about in case the dangerous drug wasn't unknown to science after all?'

Val considered and finally glanced up at him.

‘I've got about half a pound of morphine crystals at the Park Lane house,' she said.

‘How much?'

‘An enormous amount. About half a pound. A little under, perhaps.'

‘Don't play the fool, Val. This is fairly serious.'

‘I'm not, my dear. I'm telling you the literal truth. Tante Marthe knows about it. It's in a drawer at the back of my desk in a big cigarette tin. It's been there for two years at least.'

She looked up at him and laughed softly.

‘It came over from Lyons in the cardboard cylinder of a roll of taffeta which we hadn't ordered,' she said. ‘Rex found there was one odd bale and the silk was put in my office to be returned. Tante Marthe knocked it over and the cap fell off. There were about twenty-five little packets of this stuff inside. We talked it over and decided that it was quite obvious that someone was using us as a cover, and we suspected a woman on the buying side. Naturally we didn't want a fuss, police in the place and that sort of horror, so we sacked the woman, kept the material and stuck the stuff in a drawer, where it still is, as far as I know.'

‘How do you know it was morphine?'

Val raised her eyebrows.

‘I sent a little down to a chemist and asked, naturally.'

‘Weren't they curious?'

‘No. I told some likely story about finding it in an old medicine chest I'd bought. I sent very little. And when I had the report I told them they needn't return it.'

‘I see,' said Mr Campion a trifle blankly. ‘You're an alarmingly matter-of-fact lot, you business women, aren't you?'

‘I suppose so.' The depth of bitterness in her voice startled him and he felt again that old bewilderment at her range of thought and her staggering inconsistencies. His common sense reasserted itself.

‘Look here,' he said seriously, ‘I'm going to collect that stuff immediately and you forget you ever had it unless I tell you to come out with the whole story. I hope to God you can substantiate it.'

‘All right.' He had the impression that she was laughing at him a little and he regarded her helplessly.

‘I don't understand you,' he said. ‘You come roaring to me in Town, making a mountain out of a positive worm-cast, and yet when a situation which is really unpleasant does arise you behave as if I were an over-excited Boy Scout.'

‘I'm sorry. I'm really very grateful.' The clear high voice sounded flat and she bestirred herself. ‘It's a question of proportion,' she said. ‘When I came to you in London I was afraid of losing something really important for always; now I think I have lost it. It's altered my entire perspective.'

‘Perspective?' he ejaculated, resenting the intolerance which she engendered in him without being able to suppress it. ‘Do you know the meaning of the word? Val, you're an intelligent woman. Your mind works, so do use it, darling. This may be a beastly situation.'

‘If there's a P.M. they won't find anything,' she repeated placidly.

He caught his breath and resisted the impulse to shake her.

‘How can you possibly know that?'

‘I do. You must leave it at that. Whatever we're up against it's not something childish or careless. But I can't discuss it now. I can't be bothered with it. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter. I'm full, satiate, with my own personal aspect of this affair. I've got to pull myself together and behave, and I'm funking it. Now do you see what I mean by “perspective”?'

‘I think you're off your head,' said Mr Campion frankly.

She looked at him with surprise.

‘I am,' she said. ‘I thought I'd explained all that pretty thoroughly. Oh, Albert, my dear good ape, do try and understand. You're a sensible, reasonable, masculine soul. If you fell in love and something went wrong you'd think it all out like a little gent and think it all quietly away, taking the conventional view and the intelligent path and saving yourself no end of bother because your head plus your training is much stronger than all your emotions put together. You're a civilized masculine product. But when it happens to me, when it happens to Georgia, our entire world slides round. We can't be conventional or take the intelligent path except by a superhuman mental effort. Our feeling is twice as strong as our heads and we haven't been trained for thousands of years. We're feminine, you fool! I'm trying to use my head constructively: she isn't. She's sailing with the tide.'

‘Oh,' said Mr Campion furiously, ‘this is damned silly
introspective rot. What you need, my girl, is a good cry or a nice rape – either, I should think.'

Val's laughter was spiteful.

‘There's a section of your generation who talks about rape as a cure for all ills, like old Aunt Beth used to talk about flannel next to the skin,' she said witheringly. ‘This mania for sex-to-do-you-good is idiotic. You'd far better get back to blood-letting or cod-liver oil. No, my dear, you may have the mental discipline, but we're the realists. At least, we don't kid ourselves even if we try to put on a decent performance for everyone else. When I heard Ramillies was dead I didn't think, “Oh, poor man, what a shock for his wife!” I thought, “My God, now Georgia will be able to marry Alan.” I'm still thinking that. And so is she. It's disgusting and shocking to the sentimental or conventional mind, but at least it's not false. Georgia may change round suddenly. It all depends on whether she happens to see herself in some new dramatic situation which demands a genuine regret for Ramillies.'

‘Hush,' said Mr Campion and swung her gently round. Georgia was advancing towards them across the grass. She was crying unaffectedly. There were tears on her cheeks and tears swimming in her eyes. She held out her hands to Val with a gesture that was oddly youthful.

‘Val darling, where are you? Come and help me. I don't know what to do. I can't bear it alone – I can't! I've got to get on to Ferdie in Paris and I've got to tell Ray's half-brother, and there are some old aunts somewhere. Alan's still down at the hangar. They're not putting off the flight. There's no one, no one I can rely on at all. You must come. You must. Whatever you feel about me you can't desert me. I couldn't help falling in love any more than you could.'

Mr Campion stared, wondering if his ears had deceived him. Georgia had flung her arms round Val and was crying like a child.

‘Oh, come in,' she sobbed, ‘do come in! There's a dreadful nurse there. She seems to think I ought to go up and look at him, and I don't want to. I'm terrified of him. What shall I do? What shall I do?'

‘I'll come.' Val sounded very cool and quiet after her revealing outburst of five minutes before, and Campion saw
that she looked as comfortingly calm and matter of fact as ever she did.

‘When Alan comes he'll look after everything.' There was a naïve warning in Georgia's tearful announcement. ‘But until then you can't leave me, Val. You can't. I've no one to turn to.'

‘There, there,' said Val. ‘There, there,' and they went into the house together.

Campion stood looking after them. From the depth of his memory came a remark of old Belle Lafcadio's: ‘Women are terribly shocking to men, my dear. Don't understand them. Like them. It saves such a lot of hurting one way and the other.'

That was all very well, he reflected, but in the present situation this feminine inability to adjust the viewpoint was appallingly dangerous. Now, without Val's level-eyed gaze to help convince him, her story of the morphine was terrifying, more especially when, having glimpsed her state of heart, he saw Georgia rubbing caustic into the wounds with a wanton recklessness which no man in his senses would risk. He shook his head impatiently. Val was getting him muddled with her intuitive convictions and airy statements. The facts were the thing. Had Ramillies died naturally? It seemed most unlikely. If he had been murdered, who had done it? Who had any motive? Georgia? Alan Dell? If, on the other hand, he had died from some noxious thing intended for his wife, who then?

He was pacing down the grass plot trying to force all personal considerations out of his reckoning when another thought occurred to him. To whose interest was it that Ramillies should be avenged if he deserved vengeance? Who in his entire circle minded if Ramillies died? Who, during the two hours since his death, had thought for an instant of Raymond Ramillies suddenly and tragically ended? Who cared?

As it happened it was at that particular moment that he heard the shuddering breaths in the shrubbery. Someone was weeping.

THE BOY SAT
on the edge of an ornate marble love-seat hidden in the shrubbery. His feet were set squarely on the ground and his head rested in his hands. He was crying in that steady absorbed fashion which is peculiar to childhood. His grief engrossed him and he was blind and deaf to everything else in the world.

The hop-vine growing over the high wall behind the seat made a yellow curtain and its scented folds hung down to spill over the stone. There were birds about and the lazy grumble of bees. Art was out of the way for once and Fashion might never have existed. There was life and reality in the garden and this ridiculous weeping figure was a part of it. Mr Campion felt suddenly grateful to him. He sat down on the stone step and took out a cigarette.
Ivanhoe
lay at his feet and presently he turned over the pages, looking for the Black Knight.

He had been reading for several minutes when the shuddering breaths ceased and he glanced up to find a pair of fiery red eyes regarding him.

‘It happens,' he said when the silence had to be broken. ‘It's one of the things that do. It's beastly, but it's part of the experience of being alive.'

‘I know.' The boy wiped his face and kicked the foot of the bench with his heel. ‘I know.' He spoke with the resignation of a much older person. ‘This is silly. I just felt like it. That was all.'

‘My dear chap, it's perfectly natural. The weakness part of it is only shock. It's physical. That's nothing.'

‘Is it?' There was quick relief in the question. ‘One doesn't
know
, you know,' he added presently and summed up the whole misery of youth in the statement.

Mr Campion did his best to recount the physical effects of shock and Georgia's son listened to him with interest.

‘That does explain it,' he said at last. ‘That makes it understandable, anyway. How about Georgia? Do you think I
ought to go in to her? I don't want to. This – er – shock might make me blub again and, anyhow, I should probably be in the way. Is Mr Dell with her?'

‘I don't know. She had my sister there with her the last time I saw her.'

‘Your sister? Oh, that's good. That's all right then. I'll get over the wall and sneak back to the hotel to wash in a minute. I'd better pack. She may want to get back to Town.'

Mr Campion glanced at the small pointed face with interest. It was not unattractive, but the son would never have his mother's dark handsomeness nor her magnificent physique. All his life he would be small and in age would look very much as he did now. He was a funny sort of child.

They sat in silence for a long time, both of them unexpectedly at ease.

‘Ray wasn't my father, you know.' The announcement was made bluntly and sounded like a confession. ‘My name's Sinclair.'

‘Fine. I didn't know what to call you. What's the other name?'

Campion was sorry for the question as soon as it was out of his mouth. His companion's embarrassment was considerable

‘I was christened “Sonny”,' the boy said with a protective formality which was clearly of some years' growth. ‘It seems to have been all right then. Fashionable, you know. Now, of course, it's ghastly. Everyone calls me Sinclair, even Mother.'