Death in High Heels (12 page)

“She did pick up a few grains off the floor,” said Rachel, “but it was awfully little, because I saw it. And she was right in her corner when Macaroni spilt it; she never moved at all.…”

“And also,” began Victoria, but the words froze on her lips; she looked up and saw that Rachel had gone very white—they stared into each other’s eyes, and at that moment Irene came out of Bevan’s room and Bevan himself, standing at the door, called out pleasantly: “Mrs. Gay, come over here, will you? I want to have a word with you.”

Irene looked excited, but not entirely happy. Gregory, still in the glow of their recent confabulation, caught her hand and poured out congratulations on her getting the post at Deauville; but Irene released herself coldly and, with a brief word to Victoria, took her handbag and went downstairs to the cloakroom. A clock struck six. The doors were locked, frocks and hats removed from their stands and carefully put away in cupboards, and all but the window lights extinguished one by one. Blue satin overalls were hitched on to pegs, silk-stockinged legs twinkled up the area steps: the traffic of London held out its greedy arms.

Left to herself, Gregory walked home in an agony of self-examination. She knew that she was unpopular. Everywhere she went, she met with the same spirit of distrust and frustration. “I can’t understand it,” she thought, drearily, stepping along in her sharp, businesslike way, leaning forward a little from the hips, grasping her uncompromising handbag by its handle; “can it really be only because they’re silly and shallow and not worth while? Look at Aileen: a brainless little idiot and not even a lady; and yet Rachel is quite upset at the idea of losing her. Rachel herself—she’s as generous and warm and good-natured as a child; but she closes up her heart when I come near. Victoria’s voice changes and they all stop laughing and talking; and then when I move away everything’s free and natural and friendly again.” She began to pray to some half-forgotten personal gods of her childhood: “What can I do to make them like me more? Is it because they recognize that I’m, perhaps, in a different class from them, that I’ve got a better brain, more—more
depth
… maybe if I pretended to be just as silly and aimless and easy-going … oh, God! I really believe I’d do that, if I could feel that they would be friends with me, be fond of me … if only I needn’t walk through the world so utterly, and unbearably, alone.…” Her heart was humble and her eyes full of tears as she put her key in the latch and opened the door of her room. Over a biscuit-box peeped two pointed ears and a pair of startled eyes. She caught up a heavy slipper and, holding it by the heel, gave chase.

Five

1

C
HARLESWORTH,
with a sigh of relief, abandoned all thoughts of a Bevan-Victoria alliance. After all, he told himself, the laughing voice in the office had given no indication of consent; and, whatever lay behind that little mystery, there was a minus B registered against Victoria’s name in the list of suspects: she had not known that Doon was going to be in to lunch, so she could not possibly be guilty of murdering her. Moreover, he could think of no conceivable reason that she might have had; the job at Deauville had not been remotely within reach, nor on account of her marriage could she have accepted it. Her husband’s work had hitherto proved meritorious rather than profitable, but she lived with him on terms of extravagant devotion and was apparently perfectly happy to continue with her job until the day when his genius should burst upon an astonished and undeserving world…. Jealousy? It was true that Doon had sat to him and that he had “been terribly thrilled with her,” but Charlesworth had the sense to know that admiration of his model is by no means invariably a cause of disruption in a painter’s home. Besides, if she were interested in Bevan—but Charlesworth fought against that.

No, he could confine his attentions to the six suspects who had all had the two famous Opportunities: Cecil, Bevan, Rachel; Judy, Aileen, Mrs. Harris. Despairing of discrimination he shut his eyes tightly and applied a pin. The lot fell upon Cecil and, without wasting time on needless speculation, Charlesworth drove himself round to the bijou service flats to begin his battle anew.

Cecil was out and was not expected back that night. Charlesworth proceeded to pump the servants, but without result; he was turning away when the housekeeper, disappointed at having been of so little assistance, casually added that it was a pity they couldn’t have asked Mr. Cecil’s friend about it, as he had been ever such a friend of that Miss Doon; but that he, of course, had disappeared.

“Disappeared!”

“That’s right, sir, and neither Mr. Cecil nor anyone else knows where he is.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” asked Charlesworth, heatedly.

“You never asked, sir; and I’m sure I couldn’t know there was any connection, or I’d ’ve told you at once. Tuesday night, it was; the night after the pore young lady died.”

Mr. Cecil and Mr. Elliot, they’d been as devoted as could be. Fair sloppy, was the housekeeper’s private opinion, but this she did not communicate to the gentleman. Never a cross word, however, it was
not
too much to say; never a cross word until the terrible week-end, when high voices had been heard from behind the communal door; high voices and angry words and the terrible, embarrassing sound of a man in tears.

“On the Monday Mr. Cecil went off to the shop, sir, as gloomy as could be; as soon as ’e’d gone, Mr. Elliot came downstairs and the porter saw ’im go off with his little suitcase, and no one’s set eyes on him since. None of us ’ere, that’s to say; though ’e came back that evening and had supper with Mr. Cecil, I believe. They didn’t eat much, I can tell you; and next morning all his things had been packed away and there were his suitcases and a big, old-fashioned trunk in the ’all of the flat.”

“Didn’t anyone see him leave after supper?”

“No, sir. I went up to the flat in the morning as Mr. Cecil didn’t ring for ’is breakfast—we looks after our gentlemen very careful ’ere, sir, and I thought they might ’ave overslept. Mr. Elliot wasn’t there and his bed hadn’t been slept in, as I found afterwards. Mr. Cecil came to the door looking ’orrible ill; ’e was just going off to the shop without ’is breakfast, saying ’e didn’t want none. Ill all night ’e’d been, ’im or Mr. Elliot, and the mess in the bathroom was somethink awful, sir, if you’ll forgive me mentioning it; Mr. Cecil ’e looked as if ’e’d seen a ghost. He come ’ome early and took the suitcases and the trunk in a taxi and …” At this second mention of the trunk, realization suddenly dawned upon Mrs. Boot and she was took so faint as to be of no further assistance.

The porter, a smart young Welshman with his wits about him, corroborated this story. He remembered showing Mr. Charlesworth up to the flat on the previous evening; Cecil had then only half an hour returned from his expedition with the luggage, but of course he had not thought of mentioning it.

“Did he take a cab off the rank?”

“No, sir, it was a passin’ one’e called.”

“I suppose you didn’t hear what address he gave?”

“No, sir, indeed; I’m verry sorry, but I couldn’t know it was important, could I? I’m verry sorry indeed, sir.”

“No, no, of course you couldn’t know; possibly it wasn’t important, after all. Isn’t it odd that you didn’t see Mr. Elliot leave on the Tuesday night, after he’d had supper with Mr. Cecil?”

“Well, I dunno, sir. We ’aven’t got a lot of porters ’ere, only me, bein’ a small block, you see; and of course I’m not in the ’all the whole time. ’E might ’ave gone out without my seein’ ’im, sir.”

“You’re sure he came, I suppose?”

“I dunno, indeed, sir. I didn’t see ’im, but Mr. Cecil ordered dinner for two, and Mrs. Boot was sure it was for Mr. Elliot because Mr. Cecil ordered a duck, sir; Mr. Elliot was very fond of duck, but Mr. Cecil didn’t like it at all, accordin’ to Mrs. Boot; you see ’ow it is, sir, we can’t say for certain.”

To Charlesworth it was certain enough. “I must get hold of that trunk,” he thought. Aloud he said to the porter, “Did you bring the luggage down from the flat?”

“Yes, I did, sir. I ’ad to get the valet to ’elp me with the trunk; Mr. Cecil would never put ’is ’and to a thing like that;’e just stood and looked on … indeed, I never saw a man look so ill! ‘It’s very heavy!’ ’e said.”

“They always say that,” thought Charlesworth, joyfully. He climbed into his car and, sitting stationary at the wheel, gave himself up to a good deal of anxious thought.

There was a certain young man at the Yard who, by his smug efficiency, had earned for himself the deadly loathing of all his colleagues; he had recently added to his laurels by unearthing, in a murder case, not only the murderer but a haul of long-missing jewelry. Charlesworth had a vision of this gentleman’s face when he, Charlesworth, should appear at the Chief’s office for congratulation and approval on his single-handed apprehension of a totally unsuspected trunk murderer, over and above the little matter in hand; and he straightway determined that, for the remainder of that day, at least, he would see it through alone.

He put himself mentally into the position of a trunk murderer, with a body to hide. In this case, he thought, the gruesome baggage would have been deposited at a large railway station as far as possible from the scene of the crime, and he headed the car for Liverpool Street. Here, however, he drew a blank and, after a heated and infuriating half-hour, found himself once more obliged to assume the mental outlook of a man with a load of mischief; by eight o’clock that evening he had decided that his mind and Cecil’s must work along totally different lines; and at nine, somewhat belatedly, he rang up Scotland Yard. It was agreed that a search should be made for the taxi-driver and investigations carried out at all likely baggage depositories. “Good work,” said the authority, to whom he gave his own somewhat prejudiced version of the affair. “Quite a feather in your cap, Charlesworth.” Charlesworth, glowing with modest satisfaction, returned to his muttons.

He had developed a passionate desire to discover the nature of the week-end row between Cecil and Elliot. He rang Bevan’s number but there was no reply, and with a pleasant excitement he tried Victoria’s. A voice, presumably that of the detestable painter, explained that Victoria was out, and mumbling an apology, he rang off. Rachel, however, answered his call, and after a rambling explanation he embarked upon his questionnaire. Rachel adopted the feminine attitude, all too familiar to Scotland Yard, of reluctance to say anything that might incriminate anybody, guilty or otherwise; but she could see no possible connection between Cissie’s friend Elliot and the murder of Doon, and she readily admitted that Doon had frequently enlarged to them, with much humorous detail, upon the attentions of that aesthetic young man.

“But you don’t think Cissie would have killed Doon, just because she wouldn’t be kind to his boy friend?” she asked, half-laughing, down the ’phone.

“More likely to have killed the boy friend,” suggested Charlesworth, lightly.

“Oh, Mr. Charlesworth, have a heart! Poor Cissie—he’d faint at the sight of blood.”

Charlesworth had a vision of Cecil appearing white and distraught at the door of a bedroom where someone had been ’orrible ill all night; of the trunk in the tiny hall and of Cissie remarking that it was “very heavy” and driving off with it in a taxi, heaven only knew where. A subdued mutter at the other end of the line roused him from these reflections and Rachel announced: “Victoria says that, anyway, Cissie’s boy friend has left him and disappeared.”

“Oh, is Mrs. David there?”

“Hallo, Mr. Charlesworth,” said Victoria’s voice. “If you want to know about Elliot it’s no good because he’s hopped off. Cissie told me so himself on Tuesday, when he came to the shop; he was in a terrible state about it—didn’t you notice how ill he looked?”

“I put it down to the upset about Miss Doon’s death. Was he very fond of this chap, or something?”

“Well, Mr. Charlesworth, you know what these people are. He was always getting violent friendships and they never lasted more than about six months. It came very expensive because the whole flat always had to be done up to suit the artistic peculiarities of the new soul-mate. Last year it was ultra-modern, but Elliot went all Edwardian and you couldn’t see the place for plush-framed photographs and china cats.”

“They’re all gone now,” said Charlesworth. “His belongings have been packed up and moved; as a matter of fact, I’ve been hunting them all over London.”

“Whatever for?’”

“There’s a sort of a—well, a sort of a paper which I want to see; I can’t explain, but it’s very important to the case.”

Mumble-mumble-mumble went the telephone; Rachel came back on the line. “Did you say you’d been looking for Elliot’s trunks and things?”

“I’ve spent the last three hours doing nothing else.”

“Oh. What a pity you didn’t ring us sooner,” said Rachel, casually. “Because they’re all at Christophe’s.”

“What!” yelled Charlesworth, leaping several feet into the air.

“Oi, don’t deafen me. Yes, Cissie brought them along on Wednesday evening just as we were shutting up the shop … what, Victoria?” … mumble-mumble … “oh, well, Victoria says to tell you that Cecil said he couldn’t bear to have them in the flat any more … what, darling? Well, don’t tell me while I’m trying to tell
him
.… Well, Mr. Charlesworth, Victoria says to explain to you that it’s nothing, because he always does this every time he breaks with anyone; he just stuck them in the basement until Elliot should come back for them.”

“Good God,” said Charlesworth, wiping a clammy brow. “How could I get hold of them, right away?”

“What, now, to-night?”

“Yes, it’s absolutely—I mean, this paper thing’s terribly important.”

An orgy of mumbling followed, at the end of which Rachel said doubtfully, “Toria says that as it’s so frightfully important and mysterious, we could let you in with one of our keys.”

Charlesworth picked them up at Rachel’s flat, two excited figures in summer frocks and swinging big straw hats; Victoria’s blue eyes were shining, her pale hair glinted in the light of the street lamps—she looked like a dryad, strayed from a woodland into the London streets. She wriggled into the seat beside Charlesworth, and her hair brushed his cheek as she turned to speak to Rachel, behind them. His heart melted within him; the determined young detective gave way to the love-lorn young man. “This is hell,” he thought…. “I never knew it could be so bad as this.…”