Death in High Heels (11 page)

“Would you have married him, Rachel?”

“I might have,” said Rachel. “He was rather attractive, you know, and he must have pots of money; it would have been nice for Jessica to have had a rich stepfather and I’m a bit sick of scraping along at four pounds ten a week. But since the flat episode—no, thank you.” “You shouldn’t have stayed so late, dear.” “I know, Irene. It was asking for trouble. Anyway, it put an end to my girlish illusions, so it may have been a good thing, in the end.”

“It’s easy for us to talk, Rene,” said Toria. “Bevan’s never cast his lecherous eye in our direction. I wonder why,” she added with genuine interest.

“Well, you’re too heavily married, dear, and as for me—I’ve been with Christophe’s so long that he looks on me as part of the fixtures and fittings. Awkward when the detective asked us about Doon being engaged, wasn’t it? You were very good then, Rachel, putting him off. We didn’t want to get mixed up in all those revelations, did we?”

“We didn’t put him off very much,” said Victoria, thoughtfully. “He’s an odd young man. He’s just offered to give me his silk hankie, because I said I liked it; and when I wouldn’t take it he rushed out of the place like a madman.”

“Victoria! You don’t mean to say that he’s fallen for you?”

“God forbid,” said Victoria, piously.

“Why do all the free men get keen on Toria?” asked Rachel, with mock petulance. “Only the dirty old men go for you and me, Irene.”

“
I
don’t want them, bond or free,” said Victoria. “I’ve got Bobby Dazzler and he’s all I can do with. Anyway, you can hardly call Bevan a dirty old man, Rachel!”

They fell into a discussion of Bevan’s attributes: but Charlesworth, doggedly determined to put the detective before the man, was closeted in his little office, with the notes of the case spread around him, trying to find some connection between Doon’s murder and an affair between Bevan and Victoria. Pushed out of sight in a drawer was a blue silk handkerchief.

4

To Gregory a murder in the shop was no excuse for slackening efficiency. She cheerfully shouldered Doon’s work as well as her own and filed from morning till night and calculated with unabated enthusiasm, until the luckless Macaroni almost cried for mercy. On the Thursday morning, three days after Doon’s death, the work was completely up to date and she dismissed the snivelling secretary to her own dungeon and sat complacently in Bevan’s office, reviewing her handiwork. Bevan came in and threw himself into a chair.

“Oh, Frank, I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve been wanting to ask you …”

“For God’s sake don’t call me Frank in business hours,” said Bevan, roughly. “How many times have I told you that? Can’t you be more careful?”

It was the first time she had ever made such a slip and he had certainly never mentioned it before. Her eyes filled with tears and she sat silent, gazing at the neat papers before her.

“Well, what is it?” he asked, and as she made no reply, “What’s the matter? Why don’t you say what you were going to say?”

“Never mind now; I’ll ask you another time.”

“What the devil’s the matter with you, these days?” said Bevan in a savage undertone. “What are you always weeping and moping about?”

“Don’t you think I’ve got something to weep and mope about?”

“That’s just the damn silly kind of thing a woman always says; what sort of a reply do you expect me to make to such a remark as that?”

“Well, I think a few kind words wouldn’t be a bad reply,” said Gregory, sadly. “They’d be the first you’d spoken to me for a very long time.”

“My dear girl, you don’t want me to make love to you before the whole shop, do you? Do pull yourself together and keep that sort of thing for out-of-business hours.”

“I never see you now in out-of-business hours.”

“I like that—only last Monday I spent most of the morning at your flat.”

“And talked business all the time!” said Gregory, bitterly.

“Good lord, woman, what did you expect, directly after breakfast?”

“But you’ve just quoted it as—well, never mind.…” Gregory gave it up as hopeless. “I was only going to ask what you are doing about Deauville. Monsieur Georges is agitating and we can’t put it off much longer. Besides, we shall have to think about getting somebody else here.”

“I’ve decided to send Mrs. Best.”

“You’re not going to send me, after all?”

“How can I, and leave myself here without a stock-keeper and without you?” said Bevan, impatiently. “You’ll have to carry on with Miss Doon’s work as well as your own and we must train somebody to replace her. Irene Best can go to the new branch—you’ll have to run through the work very carefully with her, but she knows quite enough about it—and Rachel Gay can pick up her showroom routine easily enough.”

“Rachel
Gay
—to have charge of the showroom!”

“Yes, why not?”

She looked at him oddly. “Nothing. Only I should have thought that Victoria ought to have had it. Won’t it look rather like favouritism?”

“Rachel Gay is a favourite with everybody,” said Bevan, curtly. “Even in a crowd of catty women I don’t believe there’s a soul who’d grudge her promotion—Victoria David least of all.”

“It was only that Victoria came a little before Rachel; but still—you know best. Will you get someone to replace Irene?”

“Not till the summer’s over. We’re slack enough as it is, goodness knows, and we shall probably go bust with the Press screaming their heads off over this wretched affair.”

“I don’t think we shall,” said Gregory, shrewdly. “Clients don’t mind publicity of this sort—not our kind of clients, anyway. They’re keeping off now, till Doon’s buried and so on—they couldn’t very well do anything else; but if you ask me, as soon as the inquest’s over they’ll start pouring in, trying to get the girls to talk and tell them tit-bits; if we handle it carefully it may not be a bad thing for us in the end. Of course it’s very dreadful about Doon and I’m very sorry,” she added perfunctorily, “but one can’t help recognizing that a bit of a fillip is just what we need, right in the middle of August; and that’s what her death may give us.”

Bevan gave her his sideways glance and smiled into her hard grey eyes. “You’re a strange girl,” he said; “in some ways you’re as sentimental as a schoolgirl and in others you’re as hard as nails—but you certainly are a help to a man at a time like this. I don’t know what the devil I should have done without you. Now, look here: you must tell the girls what you’ve just been saying to me… go out and see them now. Afterwards, send Mrs. Best in here, and I shall want to see Rachel after that—don’t say what about. But first of all get them together and have a word with them; tell them that this publicity must be turned to advantage if they don’t want to ruin the shop—and find themselves all out of jobs. Arrange with them how to deal with questions—try to fix up an atmosphere of regret, and so on, without too much of the funereal. The whole thing is ghastly and depressing, of course, but there’s no point in our making it worse. Personally, I’m afraid it will kill us, for this season, anyway, but you may be right. I hope to God you are!”

Here was a mission after Gregory’s own heart and she held court at one end of the empty
salon
, under a crystal chandelier. To divest the interview of too much air of authority which she knew would be bitterly resented, she seated herself on a small gilt table and swung her legs in quite a jolly schoolgirl fashion; but alas! the sight of the scraggy ankles above her tight, neat shoes inspired nothing but a nervy revulsion, and the long neck with its prominent lump in the centre seemed to the girls to twist and turn like a snake; the unsmiling eyes above the joyless smile looked into faces that responded with neither eyes nor lips and she told her story in an atmosphere of growing and almost deliberate misunderstanding. Judy was the first to reply and she did so with an outburst of scornful anger that took all of them aback.

“Do you mean that you want us to gas and gabble about poor old Doon to any morbid female that comes in here seeking for sensation?… I’m damned if
I
will.”

“I don’t mean that, of course, Judy, dear, and you know it, don’t you now?”

Judy wrenched herself free of Gregory’s deprecatory hand. “I don’t know anything except that you want us to make capital for this beastly shop out of Doon’s death. I never heard anything so filthy and indecent in my life.”

“That’s nonsense, my dear. I simply want to prevent the business from coming to unnecessary harm.”

“The business! You’d sell your soul for this bloody business, Gregory, I really believe you would. I believe you’re capable of murdering Doon yourself,” cried Judy, hysterically, “just to get publicity for Christophe et Cie.”

There was a horrible silence. “Don’t be an idiot, Judy,” said Rachel at last. “The publicity’s much more likely to harm Christophe’s than to do it good, and you know it. Gregory’s only trying to do her best to save it—though I must say, Gregory, I don’t think much of your way of going about it.”

But Gregory was staring at Judy, speechless with fury. “Since when have
you
been so much up in arms for Doon’s sake?” she burst out, disregarding Rachel’s efforts for peace. “Before you accuse other people of murder, you’d better examine your own conscience. What about Doon and your young man? Doon took him away from you, didn’t she?
You
didn’t particularly love her, did you?”

Judy walked away without a word, but after a moment she came back. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she said, deliberately, honesty struggling with her angry pride. “I didn’t mean it when I said that you killed Doon: I happen to know that you didn’t. As for my young man as you call him, you’re on the wrong tack there; it’s true that Doon took him away, and I hated her for it; I hated her like hell, and I don’t care who knows it—but if I
had
killed her, I wouldn’t have poisoned her; and I’m not going to gossip about her now that she’s dead.” She walked away again.

Rachel stood irresolute. “Have you finished your speech, Gregory? Because, if so …”

“Leave her alone, dear; she’ll get over it. I’m afraid we’re all unstrung and say things we don’t mean,” said Gregory, apologizing a little for her own behaviour. They were indeed all of them nervy and on edge. Doon’s last hour in their midst had not been beautiful and her death was a terrible shock; moreover, among them moved a murderer—a murderer might even be one of the little group in which they stood. Aileen said, evidently following this train of thought: “Arthur wants me to leave.”

“Oh, Aileen, don’t do that,” cried Rachel, impulsively affectionate. “Let’s all stick together and get through it somehow. Whatever should we do without our redhead?”

Aileen looked at her in mild surprise and Rachel felt a little abashed at her own eagerness; but Gregory fell upon the embryo of emotionalism and proceeded to develop the theme of a united sisterhood until the original perpetrator could have sunk through the floor with shame, and Victoria felt cold slugs of embarrassment crawling down her spine. Irene, never averse to a little sentimentality, remained in earnest discussion with Gregory, half enjoying it, half hypnotized by the staring eyes; but Rachel and Victoria crept away and hid themselves in their little room, propping their aching foreheads upon their hands.

“Things are getting terrible, Rachel, aren’t they?” said Victoria, miserably. “Fancy Judy flying off the handle like that. Heaven knows, she never was one to mince her words, as Mrs. Harris would say, but to go all hysterical and practically accuse Gregory of murdering Doon!…”

“But she took it back very handsomely. She sounded very certain, Toria; why should she have said that she
knew
Gregory didn’t do it?”

“You don’t think there can be any truth in what Gregory said—I mean about Judy’s Bill, and all that?”

“Oh, my dear, no! Not Judy. Judy might have hit Doon over the head or something, but it was true when she said she wouldn’t have poisoned her. Anyway, all that fuss was ages ago—it was when Gregory was so thick with Doon; I suppose that’s how she knew—and Judy’s engaged again now.”

“Yes, but Rachel, only since Doon’s death! Judy rang Bill up that night Doon was ill … of course, as soon as they started talking, she began to undestand that he’d fallen out of love with Doon long ago, and was only waiting and praying for the chance to come back to her… it didn’t come until Doon was dead.”

“I suppose she
might
have seen the poison lying about.…”

“Rachel, this is ghastly, isn’t it? How can we be saying such things and about dear little Judy of all people? But it’s all so dark and beastly—I shall start suspecting myself next. Thank God I’ve got you, Ray,” she added, soberly. “I can say with absolute faith that I know you didn’t do it, and I know
I
didn’t do it, so that does make two of us at least. And Rene, of course,” she added, hurriedly.

“Toria, you haven’t noticed anything funny about Rene? She’s been terribly queer since this affair, hasn’t she?”

“She’s upset about Doon, that’s all. She’s a tenderhearted little thing.”

“Yes, but, Toria, she did want to go to Deauville most
terribly
.…”

“But Doon wasn’t going to Deauville, Rachel. Gregory was.”

“Gregory won’t go now. Bevan can’t possibly spare her. It means that Irene will go—it comes to the same thing.”

“But, my dear, nobody would kill anyone for such a round-about reason as that; it’s fantastic! And, anyway, Irene, of all people; she’s terribly sentimental—she wouldn’t kill a mouse.”

“There’s a lot of difference between sentiment and sentimentality,” said Rachel, slowly. “Irene’s sentimental, and lots of sentimental people have a very hard streak in them. She wouldn’t kill a mouse, it’s true; but she’d set a trap for one, and if it got caught by its leg and squeaked and struggled, she’d go away somewhere where she wouldn’t hear it—but she’d leave it to die.
I’d
set a trap for it myself; but if it wasn’t killed outright I’d—I’d release the trap and let it go or at least put it out of its pain.”

“And I’m so sentimental that I wouldn’t even set the trap,” said Victoria, smiling. “But Rachel, don’t worry about Irene. I did, too, but it’s all right, I’m sure it is. After all, she couldn’t have had any of the oxalic acid…”