The Fashion In Shrouds (42 page)

‘I'll leave it to you.' Mr Campion sounded listless. ‘The Lagonda's in the yard. You can take it if you like.'

‘My dear good chap, pull yourself together.' Ferdie was reproachful. His own energy was boundless. All trace of his old lackadaisical manner had vanished and he seemed possessed of an enthusiasm which might have been undergraduate had it not been for its obviously nervous origin. ‘Never lend your car, your shoes or your girl friend. I've got my bus in the garage. I say, Campion?'

‘Yes.'

‘I think we're going to pull this off with luck.'

‘I hope so.'

Ferdie stood looking at him.

‘I don't want to offend you,' he said, ‘but I'm an experienced sort of bloke, you know. I know a lot about women. That girl of yours is going to Sweden to-morrow, isn't she? Do you know what train?'

‘They're going from Harwich. They'll motor over. It's not far from their place. It's the early boat, I think.' Mr Campion made the confidence unwillingly and Ferdie did not move. He made an odd, uncouth figure standing there looking down, a quizzical expression on his face.

‘Send her some flowers.'

Mr Campion began to laugh. He laughed with savage amusement for quite a long time. Ferdie appeared hurt.

‘Women like that sort of thing,' he said.

‘I'm sorry.' Mr Campion sat up. ‘Forgive me. It's got its damnably amusing side. In fact, it's not a bad idea. If there was time I'd do it. I could phone them, of course, couldn't I?'

‘Send some from the Court. They've got the best florist in England down there. I'll do it for you myself when I collect Gaiogi, if you like.' Ferdie seemed completely oblivious of any incongruity in the two errands. ‘What will you have? Roses?'

A pot of basil would be nice.' Mr Campion's interest in life seemed to have revived for an instant and his smile had a curious intensity of derision.

‘You're a fool, you know.' Ferdie was perfectly serious. ‘Send a straight armful of red roses and a card with a sentimental message down to the boat and it'll work miracles. Women are like that. Their minds run on those sort of lines. Give me the card and I'll send it with the flowers. She's sailing for Sweden from Harwich to-morrow early? That's all I need know. They'll do the rest. Her name's Fitton, isn't it? Right.'

Mr Campion took out his wallet and found a card.

‘You think a message, do you?' he said, a trickle of amusement in his voice.

‘I do, and not a rude one either.' Ferdie was emphatic. ‘Say “
A happy journey, my dear
”, or something of that sort.'

Mr Campion wrote obediently and looked up, his pencil poised.

‘You're an extraordinary chap, aren't you?' he said. ‘You keep your mind very mobile, what with one thing and another. A murderer to be apprehended here, an engagement to be patched up there. It's amusing how you find the time, really.'

Ferdie took up the card.

‘You're too conscious of the personal angles, my dear fellow,' he said. ‘You let yourself be obsessed. “
Amanda
–
you'll never forget me
–
Albert
.” That's all right. Bit didactic but not bad. You know the girl, after all. Very well then, I'll send the roses from the Court, collect Gaiogi and persuade him to come back here. We shall be back before eleven. You'll wait, will you? Good man. We'll put it to him.'

He hurried out, and Mr Campion, his plans made for him, was left alone with his thoughts. The room was very quiet and still cold and the noise of the traffic below sounded far away, a remote sea in another world. He heard the front door of the flat shut behind Ferdie and then, after a long pause, Mrs Fitch came in.

She did not speak but moved quietly about the room, tidying up odds and ends, replacing books in their shelves and plumping up the cushions on the couch. There was an indefinable air of neatness about her, a suggestion of making all safe in her very walk, and a finality in the pat of her plump hands on the upholstery.

When she came to Campion's side in her tour of orderliness she looked down at his glass.

‘You haven't touched your drink,' she said. ‘Would you like a nice cup of tea?'

‘No, thanks I'm all right.'

‘You don't look it. Been to bed lately?'

‘No, not for a night or two.'

‘What a pity you lost that girl.' Mrs Fitch had gone past him now and had reached the untidy muddle on the end of the sofa table. Her tone was conversational. ‘She was a nice little thing. No sense of humour but very good class. Pretty hair, too, but I don't expect you want to talk about her. Now look here, the whisky is there on the side. There's some gin and French and a little Advocaat and some more siphons in the cupboard underneath. If you want more glasses ring for them and the Jap will bring them in. There's plenty of cigarettes in that red box on the shelf.'

‘You're not staying to meet Gaiogi?' Mr Campion put the question idly, but she looked at him sharply, her glance unnecessarily square.

‘No,' she said. ‘No, I don't think so. I'll just get my coat and then I'm off.'

He heard her giving some last instructions to the Japanese boy in the kitchen and then she popped in again, a dyed ermine coat hanging from her shoulders.

‘Good-bye,' she said.

‘Good-bye. I'll give your love to Gaiogi, shall I, or haven't you forgiven him?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.' She was smiling
at him boldly. ‘Gaiogi's always been very kind to me. I worked for him long ago at the Old Beaulieu. He was very generous to work for. Always putting me on to things. He's not a bad old stick.'

‘Yet he lost your money for you at the Poire d'Or. It was quite a packet, wasn't it? Two or three thousand pounds. Unlucky money.'

She stared at him and for a moment he thought he was going to see her angry. Bright patches appeared in her cheeks and her mouth was pale round its make-up. Suddenly, however, she laughed and a flash of the insouciance which is the keystone of her profession appeared in her smile.

‘I've learnt a thing or two since then, ducky,' she said.

She did not display her hands, but his eyes were drawn to them. They were ablaze with stones. Her square ugly neck was alight, too, and the clips on her dress shone with the unmistakable watery gleam of the true diamond.

‘Well, I'm off,' she said and paused abruptly as the phone began to ring. She took up the receiver and listened for a moment. ‘Yes, all right, all right,' she said. ‘What's the matter? I see, dear. It's Mr Paul,' she added, holding the instrument out to Campion. ‘He wants you. Something seems to be up.'

‘Hullo, Campion, is that you?' Ferdie's voice sounded loud and unsteady in his ear. ‘I say, can you come down here at once? Yes, I'm at Caesar's Court. I've just arrived. Look here, I can't tell you over the phone because of the girl on the house exchange. You understand? You come down, will you? Yes, just as soon as you can. There's an unexpected development in that business we were discussing. Very unexpected. I don't know what we'd better do, quite. What's the name of that man you know at Scotland Yard?'

‘Oates?'

‘Yes. I wondered if I'd ring him and tell him to come down here. No, I tell you what, you come down yourself first and then we'll have a conference. Hurry, old man, won't you? It's a question of time, I'm afraid. You'll be down at once, will you? Right-o. I won't do a thing till you come.'

‘What is it?' The woman put the question as he hung up the receiver.

‘I don't know.' Campion sounded puzzled. ‘He seems upset about something. He wants me down there at once. I'd better go, I suppose.'

‘It's not like him to get windy,' said Mrs Fitch and led the way into the hall. As they went down the stairs together she sighed. ‘It's a nice old flat,' she said. ‘Are you going by car?'

‘Yes, I've got the bus down here.'

‘Give me a lift as far as Marble Arch, or aren't you going that way? It's just as quick this time of night. Would you mind?'

‘Not at all.' Mr Campion seemed almost bored.

She scrambled into the front seat beside him and he swung the car out of the dark yard into the blazing Circus. He drove recklessly and she gripped the side.

‘Here, don't break
my
neck,' she said, laughing. ‘Put me down at the cinema, will you?'

‘Got a date?' he inquired.

‘You mind your own business,' she said. ‘There we are. Pull right up. What do you expect me to do? Jump for it?'

‘I'm sorry.' He stopped outside the cinema and the commissionaire opened the door and helped the woman out. Her jewels flashed in the lamplight and he touched his cap respectfully at the tip she gave him.

‘Well, good-bye,' she shouted. ‘Cheer up.'

Campion did not answer her but let in the clutch and swung out from the kerb, missing a bus by inches.

The Lagonda continued her breathless speed through the town, which was enjoying a temporary lull in the traffic before the theatres closed. Campion sat at the wheel, the light from the dashboard shining up on his expressionless face. The hooded car was like a little quiet universe inside the larger world. It possessed the same atmosphere which had been so noticeable in Ferdie's flat, a cold loneliness, an air of going away. It seemed very doubtful if Mr Campion was thinking at all. He drove brilliantly but apparently without interest and if he was consumed with a burning interest to discover what new disaster Ferdie might have brought to light in Gaiogi Laminoff's tight little kingdom he showed no sign of it.

He left London behind and travelled through those little townships which crowd on tiptoe round her skirts, jostling each other in their efforts to get close, and yet each retaining its essential characteristics, never merging either with a neighbour or with the mother city. He shot through Maidenhead at last and came swiftly into darker Berkshire. There was less than half a mile to go now. He had one long straight strip of tree-hung road, a dip and a hump-backed bridge, and then the turning and the long drive. This was Money's Acre: quiet reserves, well-kept grounds, protected reaches of river, here and there a little cottage like Amanda's built for working folk but dressed expensively and kept for pleasure, here and there a club or a discreet roadhouse, but country air and cool, unobscured starlit sky.

For the first time the Lagonda had the road clear. Nothing passed her and there was a gap in the oncoming traffic. He raced through the tree-hung stretch, bounced over the hump-backed bridge and slowed down for the turn. It was then, just at that moment when he was aware of the silence, of the lonely peace of his little world, dark in the midst of darkness, and when the brilliant lights of the Court sprang into sight through the shrouding elms, it was then that he felt the movement so close to him, so warm, so familiar and yet so horrible in its very intimacy. Someone was breathing on his neck.

He trod on the brakes and brought the car up with a scream and a jerk which stopped the engine and sent her slewing across the bend. The steering-wheel caught him in the stomach and as he turned he saw for an instant the face captured by the upward ray of the dashboard-light. The soft glow touched the unfamiliar under-curves, the nostrils, the insides of the arches of the eyes.

He did not speak. There was no time. The light glancing blow which, in the illegal science of the
Kempo,
has a very sinister name, touched the nerve-centre behind his ear and he stiffened and slid forward. As Mr Campion went out into the darkness a single thought ripped through his mind with the dazzling clarity of revelation:
This is why the knife went in at the right angle. This is why Caroline Adamson lay so still
.

THE HEADLIGHTS OF
the Lagonda described a wide arc over the grey meadows and laid yellow fingers on the boles of fine old trees as the great car swung round and crept smoothly on to the main road again.

She took the quarter-mile to the winding lane with the same swift efficiency which she would have afforded had her master been in command, passed the white gate through which Val and Dell had come up out of the green field together, and slid quietly to a standstill in the dark road outside Amanda's cottage. The lights went out and the engine died away.

It was a fine night with stars and a fine rain-promising wind. The flowers in the cottage garden nodded together like small white ghosts in the shadows and there were whispers in the grass and in the leafy billowings of the trees.

The small house waited with that forlorn secrecy which is the peculiarity of all empty houses. The windows shone like beetles where the starlight touched them and the chimneys showed squat and smokeless against the cloudless sky.

The door of the car opened noiselessly and a figure remained motionless, half in and half out of the driving-seat, as the twin searchlights of a traveller on the high road behind him climbed up to the stars, sank and disappeared again, leaving an inkier blackness behind.

The wind in the trees freshened and the whispering among the leaves grew more intense. The figure moved. It vanished behind the car, melted into the uncertain silhouette, and reappeared an instant later on the other side. There was a moment of tremendous noise as the door-catch clicked. The tiny alien sound seemed to silence the roar in the tree-tops, but there was no other movement. The cottage remained dead and the fussy wind busied itself about it caressingly.

There was a long pause which seemed interminable as the figure remained wedded inextricably to the black shadow which was the car. Afterwards came the sound of effort,
breathing, muscles straining, and once the single scrunch of a shoe on the loose flint road. Then out of the larger shadow came the other one. It was monstrous, horrible, a nightmare shape, top-heavy and enormous, limp arms flapping, the head of an elephant, and, when it turned, the great beak of a gigantic bird ending incongruously in a shoe, vividly described against the holey curtain of the sky.