The Fashion In Shrouds (40 page)

‘Aren't you?'

‘Well, no, I wasn't exactly.' He was laughing a little. ‘I wanted to talk about myself. This is my trouble, Val. I am in love and I want to marry, but there are difficulties, my own mainly. I don't want a mistress or a companion. I want a wife.'

Val paused in her walk. She was surprised. She held her head stiffly and her eyes were interested. Her business people knew her thus and in certain Parisian quarters the attitude was viewed with deep respect. Madame was alert.

Dell smiled at her. He seemed to find her charming.

‘It's not so easy,' he said. ‘Wives are out of fashion. I love you, Val. Will you marry me and give up to me your independence, the enthusiasm which you give your career, your time and your thought? That's my proposition. It's not a very good one, is it? I realize that I've made a fine old exhibition of myself with Georgia Wells, which has hardly enhanced my immediate value in the market, but I can't honestly say that I regret the experience. That woman has maturing properties. However, that is the offer. In return – and you probably won't like this either – in return, mind you (I consider it an obligation), I should assume full responsibility for you. I would pay your bills to any amount
which my income might afford. I would make all decisions which were not directly in your province, although on the other hand I would like to feel that I might discuss everything with you if I wanted to; but only because I wanted to, mind you; not as your right. And until I died you would be the only woman. You would be my care, my mate as in plumber, my possession if you like. If you wanted your own way in everything you'd have to cheat it out of me, not demand it. Our immediate trouble is serious, but not so serious as this. It means the other half of my life to me, but the whole of yours to you. Will you do it?'

‘Yes,' said Val so quickly that she startled herself. The word sounded odd in her ears, it carried such ingenuous relief. Authority. The simple nature of her desire from him took her breath away with its very obviousness and in the back of her mind she caught a glimpse of its root. She was a clever woman who would not or could not relinquish her femininity, and femininity unpossessed is femininity unprotected from itself, a weakness and not a charm.

He pulled her towards him and her shoulders were slim and soft under his hands.

‘It's the only unfashionable thing you've ever done, Val.'

Her eyes were clever as a monkey's and sunny as a child's.

‘My fashions are always a little in advance,' she said, and laughed in that sudden freedom which lies in getting exactly what one needs to make the world that place in which one's own particular temperament may thrive.

They walked on through the meadow, and finding the road, came back to the front of the cottage. Georgia's chauffeur had driven away and the Lagonda now lay first in the line. The sight of it brought the general situation back to their minds with an overpowering sense of dismay. Dell was holding Val's elbow and he pressed it encouragingly.

‘We'll get by,' he said. ‘Come on.'

Their first impression was that the party had dwindled. Ferdie was talking to Hal about ju-jitsu and Gaiogi and Tante Marthe were standing together in more serious consultation. The three glass doors on the lawn stood wide, and through them, on the edge of the river's bank, Mr Campion was listening to Amanda. Ferdie looked up as Val came in and his glance followed her own to the two on the lawn.

‘Hallo,' he said suddenly. ‘What's this? A reconciliation? That lad's in a nasty state. I thought she was going to take pity on him when she took him out there.'

‘I don't think . . .' Hal began stiffly and paused abruptly as the conversation on the lawn took a sudden turn.

As Amanda ceased to speak Mr Campion took her hand and raised it to his lips with a gallantry which might or might not have been derisive. Amanda recovered her hand and hit him. It was no playful salutation but a straight broadside attack delivered with anger, and the noise of the impact sounded clearly in the room.

‘Indeed,' murmured Gaiogi with an embarrassed laugh, and added instantly ‘Good God!'

Campion had picked up his ex-fiancée and they saw him poised for an instant with the girl over his head. He said something which no one caught, but which possessed that peculiar quality of viciousness which is unmistakable, and then, while they all stared at him, pitched her from him into the deep river with a splash like a water-spout. He did not wait to see what became of her, but swung away and strode up the garden, the imprint of her hand showing clearly on his white face. As they reached the water's edge they heard the roar of the Lagonda.

Amanda's comment as she swam ashore and was lifted, breathless and dripping, on to the lawn by a bewildered gathering, was typical of her new mood.

‘Not everybody's form of humour,' she said briefly. ‘Will you all go and have a drink while I change?'

Tante Marthe accompanied her and Val made helpless apologies to Hal, who was devastatingly polite.

‘He's not taking it very well,' he said. ‘Frankly I was afraid something like this might happen. Anyway, she'll be out of the country for a bit. It's really nothing to do with you, Mrs Ferris. Please don't worry about it. Fortunately there was no one here who could make a gossip paragraph of it.'

‘He's obviously off his head with worry,' put in Alan Dell hastily. ‘That résumé which he gave was most enlightening. He evidently knows what the police intend to do. I heard this morning that there was talk of an exhumation order for Ramillies's body. What he said is quite true. If there is no
arrest the inquiry may turn into a long ordeal for all of us. A murder is the one and only thing which cannot be hushed up in this country.'

Amanda's brother regarded him with a curious little smile on his young mouth.

‘Believe me, I appreciate that,' he said. ‘If you'll excuse me I'll just have a word with my sister.'

Ferdie looked after his retreating figure.

‘There's not much that that kind of kid in that kind of position couldn't hush up, is there?' he said. ‘What was the row about? Anybody know?'

And Gaiogi, who had been listening with his bright eyes on Ferdie's face, shrugged his shoulders.

‘That is how it should be,' he said.

Val laughed uneasily.

‘I thought you were going to say, “What is a little murder to disturb an aristocrat?” Gaiogi,' she murmured.

The Russian looked at her steadily, his round eyes intelligent.

‘Among clever aristos, what is?' he said.

FERDIE PAUL WAS
on the telephone when Mrs Fitch brought Campion in. The room was much tidier than usual and struck cold after the warmth of the summer streets, but Ferdie himself was slightly dishevelled in his anxiety.

‘Well, do what you can, anyway, old boy, won't you?' he said into the instrument, his thin voice carrying a world of nervous force and irritability behind it. ‘Yes, I know, but it's not a pleasant experience for any of us, is it? You were an old friend, that was all.'

He hung up and glanced at Campion, the welcoming smile fading from his face as he saw him.

‘Hullo, you all right?' he inquired.

‘All right?' Mr Campion threw himself down in the armchair which Mrs Fitch pulled up for him. He barely remembered to thank her, but she did not seem to notice the
omission. ‘Yes, I'm all right. I'm alive, anyway. The corpse-like effect is induced by lack of sleep.'

‘It's getting you down, is it? I don't blame you.' His host was grimly amused. ‘Have a drink. Anna, for God's sake, dear, get the man a snifter. Don't hang about. Don't hang about.'

If Mrs Fitch resented his tone she did not show it. She mixed a drink on the sideboard and carried it to the visitor, who took the glass from her absently and set it down untasted. He looked like a skeleton in a dinner-jacket. There were blue hollows round his eyes, while the skin stretching over his jaws seemed to have pulled his lips back a little. His normal affability had vanished completely and a sort of spiteful recklessness, which was wrong in him, had taken its place. Ferdie watched him, his shiny eyes laughing a little contemptuously in spite of his friendliness.

‘Your girl friend swam ashore last night,' he remarked.

‘Did she?' Mr Campion was profoundly disinterested.

‘They have nine lives, all of 'em.' Ferdie was not intentionally tasteless, but the little joke amused him. ‘You forgot the brick,' he said.

Mr Campion did not smile.

‘You said you wanted to see me?' he inquired pointedly.

Ferdie raised his eyebrows and turned round to frown at Mrs Fitch.

‘Just a moment, dear,' he said, every tone in the request indicating that she and everyone else in the world exasperated him unbearably. ‘Shut the door behind you. I've asked Mr Campion round here to talk. You don't mind, do you? We shan't be long.'

Anna Fitch went out obediently and Ferdie got up and shook his loose clothes.

‘You're taking that engagement bust of yours too hard,' he said. ‘I was talking to Georgia on the phone just now. She said Val seemed to be very worried about you. Still, that's your affair,' he added hastily as his visitor prepared to rise. ‘I didn't phone all over London simply to tell you that no woman's worth it. You'll discover that in your own time. I've got my hands full at the moment. This is all pretty nasty, Campion, isn't it? Where's it going to end? We're in the soup, aren't we?'

Mr Campion sighed. ‘It's comforting to find that someone realizes that,' he said bitterly. ‘These silly women don't see what's stewing up for them. They haven't savoured the Hakapopulous variety of stink. They don't know what it's like. Their innocent little snouts don't register anything stronger than cheating at bridge. The Home Secretary is considering the exhumation petition now, I believe.'

‘Oh, he is, is he? I was afraid that was coming.' Ferdie spoke gloomily, but his eyes were still bright with interest. ‘I've been trying to pull a few strings myself, as a matter of fact, but there's an ominous frigidity on all sides which doesn't feel too healthy. Still, supposing the police do get the order through, what can they expect to find? Wasn't there a P.M. at the time?'

‘Yes, but the police aren't satisfied.' Mr Campion made the statement wearily. ‘They've got the report of the first P.M. and in it there's a mention of a hypodermic puncture in the left upper arm, yet the analysis found nothing to account for this. Not unnaturally the police feel they'd like their own man to go over the ground again. They've got the viscera from Richmond now, as a matter of fact, and it's in Wryothsley's lab., but he wants to see the rest of the cadaver.' He laughed briefly at the other man's expression. ‘I'm sorry to be so forthright, but there you are. That's the sort of detail which next Sunday's Press is going to dish up with comment. Meanwhile, if there is anything in the body which was overlooked in the first P.M., Wryothsley will find it.'

Ferdie looked up. There's always a chance that there's nothing to find,' he observed, but his optimism was not convincing.

‘The “unknown drug”?' Mr Campion sounded derisive. ‘Don't you believe it, Guv'nor. There ain't no such thing. What they don't find they'll deduce, same as I have, and that deduction, if it doesn't give them proof, will certainly give them the lead they want. It's going to be an almighty mess.'

Ferdie Paul wandered about the big cold room. His body looked heavier than usual as his shoulders drooped and his chin rested thoughtfully on his chest. After a while he came to a pause before Campion's chair and stood looking down at him.

‘
I
haven't any illusions, you know, Campion,' he said at last. ‘
I
see the danger.
I've
got the wind up all right. But, if you don't mind me saying so, my business has trained me to keep a bit quieter about it than yours has. Also, of course, I'm not personally touched by it as you are. I'm not a fool, though. I've lived with it for over three weeks and I've had my mind working. It's a question of proof now, isn't it?'

‘Practically.' Mr Campion met the other man's eyes and seemed to make the reservation unwillingly.

‘You mean you don't actually
know.
Is that it?' Ferdie was merciless and Mr Campion was forced to hedge badly.

‘Well,' he said, ‘since Val is so closely involved the police don't trust me entirely. Why should they? Then this row of my own broke on Friday and, frankly, I made a fool of myself, got tight and that sort of thing, and after the exhibition I put up I fancy the super may be wondering if I'm the white-headed boy after all. Still, I'm fairly well acquainted with police movements. Just now they're concentrating on the Hakapopulous pair. Inspector Pullen has worked it out that whoever murdered Miss Adamson must have known the restaurant very well or had at least used the back entrance before. They've decided that she was killed about eight in the evening. Just now he is spending his time trying to get the Greeks to identify photographs of everyone who has ever had anything to do with the poor wretched girl. Jock Hakapopulous is still as resilient as a sphere of solid rubber, but Andreas, I understand, is showing signs of wear and tear. Those two are holding out because of the accessory-after-the-fact charge, of course.'

Ferdie perched himself on the edge of the table and the light behind his thin hair made his curls look forlorn and inadequate.

‘Campion,' he said quietly, ‘who do you think it is? Does your idea coincide with mine?'

Mr Campion raised his weary eyes.

‘That's a very delicate question,' he murmured cautiously.

‘Because it involves a friend of mine, you mean?' Ferdie's driving force was tremendous. The air seemed to quiver with it.