The Fashion In Shrouds (23 page)

Then, this last orison performed, he scrambled up, caught a verger looking at him suspiciously, and hurried out, his ears burning. The car had gone and he looked about for a cab and would have taken one had not Amanda and Campion met him on a street island and carried him off to tea with them.

Meanwhile Val and Georgia sat side by side in Georgia's car and Alan Dell sat opposite them.

Georgia was on edge. There was a certain quality of defence about her also which was new in her in Val's experience. She was working hard. Every ounce of her physical magnetism was forced into service and, because this was hardly necessary and even a large car is a confined space, the effect was overwhelming and uncomfortable.

Val became very quiet, almost sedate. She sat gracefully in her corner, one knee tucked up under her and the four-inch heel of her little shoe showing against the grey rep-covered seat.

Dell looked preoccupied and morose, but Georgia was irresistibly warm. Her life flowed over him, forcing him to respond to it in spite of his inclination, which was towards peace.

‘Oh, darlings, this is the first time that I've felt happy since that dreadful afternoon. You're the two people I rely on most. I couldn't live without either of you. I know I say and do the filthiest things, but I don't mean it. Do you think I could take my hat off, Val? No one could see in here, could they? Not to recognize me, I mean.'

Dell took her hat from her outstretched hand and put it down on the seat beside him. The little black butterflies on the crown attracted him and he filliped one of them idly. Georgia laughed.

‘They're like aeroplane wings, aren't they?' she said. ‘Val's a genius. She's entirely brilliant. Do you realize that, Alan?'

He looked at the two of them dispassionately, his bright blue eyes reproving.

‘Val is a good friend,' he said. ‘The best friend you have.'

Georgia shrank back like an abashed baby and there was new colour in her cheeks.

‘Oh, but darling, I
know
,' she said with passionate reproach in her tone. She laid a hand on Val's wrist possessively. ‘I do know. Don't I know? Alan, why do you say that? I adore Val and Val likes me, don't you, Val? You do like me. We've been friends for years. We're all frightfully upset. The service was terribly emotional. That's why I dread these things. Let's stop and have a cocktail somewhere.
Oh no, I suppose we can't like this. My God, I suppose we can't be seen out at all to-night. Where shall we go?'

‘I must go back to Tante Marthe. She's waiting for me at Park Lane,' said Val.

‘Oh, must you.' Georgia did not make the words a question. ‘What a frightful nuisance. I don't know what we shall do. Alan?'

‘Yes.'

‘Take me up in a plane.'

‘What, now?'

‘Yes, as soon as we've changed. Drive me out to Caesar's Court and take me up in a plane. I want to get away, right away, just for a little tiny while. Do. Please, Alan, because I ask you.'

‘All right,' he said dubiously. ‘It'll be frightfully cold, you know, and it's raining.'

‘Oh, all right.' Georgia shrugged her shoulders. ‘We'll light a fire and sit round it and talk, or dress up in old clothes and go to some dirty little Soho restaurant where we shan't be recognized. What shall we do?'

Val glanced at Dell. He was watching the other woman gravely. There was no telling what was the thought in his mind. He was regarding her earnestly and with evident interest, but his opinion was secret. Val blinked and turned her head.

‘Here we are,' she said with relief. ‘Will you come in? No? All right. I'll see you soon, Georgia. Good-bye, Alan.'

Her small gloved hand rested in each of their own for an instant and then she was gone. Georgia looked after her and smiled with genuine sadness.

‘Poor pretty Val,' she said. ‘Isn't she a dear?'

Dell did not answer her directly. He moved over into the seat Val had vacated and laid a hand on Georgia's arm.

‘I'm going to take you home now and then I'm going to leave you,' he said. ‘I'll phone you to-morrow.'

‘Oh, but why?' She moved away and sat looking at him with the wide-open eyes of an injured child. It was Georgia at her most appealing, her warmest and most vulnerable. He hesitated.

‘Don't you think I ought to?' he said at last.

‘“Ought to”?' She was honestly bewildered and he laughed uneasily.

‘I think I will,' he said.

Georgia could see herself faintly mirrored in the glass between them and the chauffeur's dark back. It was a flattering reflector and she was reassured after a momentary misgiving. His obvious reason, which was a natural conventional distaste for the proximity of love and death, escaped her and she was puzzled. She slid an arm through his.

‘I want to be with you this evening, Alan,' she said. ‘I'm not playing to-night, you know, because of the service. No, my dear, this is the first time, the very first time, I've felt free.' There was no mistaking her confiding. It was genuine, voluptuous, and entirely generous.

He did not speak and she felt him stiffen. She looked up and was amazed. She had caught him unawares and there had been nausea on his face.

‘All right,' she said, releasing him. She was laughing but obviously deeply hurt. ‘All right. I shall be terribly rushed to-morrow. Phone me the day after.'

He sighed and rubbed his hard, scrubbed hands over his face.

‘You don't understand at all, do you?' he said.

‘My dear, I do, of course I do,' said Georgia with more conviction than truth, and sat looking at him with patent speculation in her tweed-grey eyes, so that he felt like a medical specimen and was revolted and ashamed of himself and very unhappy.

Meanwhile Val proceeded calmly to her office. Rex met her in the hall with two queries concerning dresses which she had forgotten and she dragged her mind out of its self-protective coma and considered them intelligently. He noticed nothing unusual about her and when she stepped into the little wrought-iron gazebo of a room, Lady Papendeik, who was sitting at her desk, thought she looked particularly well and was grateful for the circumstance in view of the letter before her.

They talked of trivialities for some moments and touched on business. Val pulled off her small black hat and her yellow hair shone in a stray shaft of sunlight cutting through to them from the west landing window, where the sun was breaking through after the rain.

‘It was tiring,' she explained, smiling in faint apology.

Tante Marthe's little black eyes glinted.

‘Georgia played the leading part well, no doubt? Did she enjoy herself?'

‘Oh, I think so. She behaved excellently.'

‘Did she? That must have been a comfort to her husband's ghost.'

‘Mustn't it?' Val agreed absently.

She had not seated herself and there was an undercurrent of restlessness in her movements which did not escape the old woman.

‘Are you feeling irritable?'

‘No, not particularly.'

‘Good.' Lady Papendeik sniffed over the word. ‘I had a letter this afternoon from Emily.'

‘From Mother?' There is nothing like surprise to ease emotional tension and Val moved over to the desk with her natural step.

Lady Papendeik spread her small hands over the blotter.

‘It is annoying.'

‘I can imagine it.'

‘I wonder. I hope not.' Tante Marthe shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, read it,' she said. ‘It must be true or she could never have heard of it. No one can do anything.'

Val took up the thick cream double sheet with the well-known crimson heading, the single arrogant house-name and county which had once been so familiar and which even now brought a far-off memory of a peach-tree of all things, a sprawling peach-tree on a rosy wall.

The rest of the signature was illegible.

Val put the letter down quietly and picked up the enclosure, which was written on single sheets with a club address and was in an 1890 calligraphy.

Val let the paper drop and her fingers fluttered over it in a little gesture of distaste.

‘A frightful old woman,' she said. ‘I remember her. Yes – well, that accounts for it.'

‘Accounts for what?' demanded Tante Marthe sharply.

‘Oh – things.' Val walked down the room and stood looking across the landing to the west window blazing in the evening sun.

‘Georgia must have said this thing to someone,' remarked Tante Marthe.

‘Oh Lord yes, she's said it.' Val sounded weary. ‘She's said it to everyone she's become confidential with in the
last fortnight. There must be dozens of them. You know what Georgia is. She doesn't really mean it. She doesn't think I tried to poison her. She simply knows it's a good story but doesn't realize how good. She doesn't actually think at all. She goes entirely by feel.'

‘It's dangerous, my dear.'

‘Is it?' The younger woman spoke bitterly. ‘There's been a P.M. Ramillies is safely buried. It's all perfectly normal. Am I likely to sue her?'

‘You could.'

‘I could. But am I likely to? If she weren't one of our most important clients would I be likely to admit I've even heard that I am so much in love with Alan Dell that I attempted to murder the woman he preferred?'

Lady Papendeik did not speak for a moment.