Death in High Heels (2 page)

“My dear, he thought she was unattainable; after all, if ever there was a craggy virgin it was Gregory. The moment I set eyes on her I knew what her trouble was, and I actually had her round to a few parties and tried to get her off, as you know … but nothing doing. It never occurred to Bevan that she would succumb if he tried it on, and he couldn’t resist the temptation: he told me he was shaken to the core when she fell without a struggle! Then, of course, she got really keen on him, and when I appeared on his horizon it was a bit awkward to get rid of her. I don’t believe she realizes yet that he wants to.”

“Doon, you
are
awful, telling everyone,” said Irene, enjoying it thoroughly.

“Well, my dear, it’s perfectly obvious; everybody knows it already. Why be silly about it?”

“Don’t you mind knowing that he used to be keen on her?”

“Not in the least—he’d been keen on dozens of women before her, and I’ve been keen on dozens of men; as long as he doesn’t love anyone else now, that’s all I mind about.”

Irene looked sideways at Rachel. “Won’t you miss him if you go to Deauville?”

“Oh, he’ll be coming over a lot; it’s only a couple of hours if you fly … my God, I believe I’ve left a cigarette burning on the edge of my desk!” She unpropped herself from her pillar and ran downstairs.

“Evidently it’s definitely between those two,” said Irene, frowning after her. “I seem to be quite out of the running for the job.”

“Should you be very disappointed, Rene?” asked Rachel, kindly.

“Oh, Ray, you know I would. After all, you two have something to keep you in England: Toria’s practically a bride still, and Rachel couldn’t leave her little Jessica without her mumsey; but what have I got? Nothing; and my rotten hanger-on of a brother’s turned up again.”

“
Irene!
No!”

“Yes, he has. I had a letter from him last night. The truth is that I shall never be rid of him till I can get away from here and he doesn’t know where to find me. I wish I’d made a clean break with him years ago.”

“Like me,” said Rachel, thoughtfully.

“Yes, Ray; this is why I’ve always been so keen for you to get your divorce and be done with it. It never pays to go on with these half-and-half arrangements; you don’t love your husband and he doesn’t love you and he was unkind to you—well then, finish the whole thing and be free to start your life all over again.”

“Yes, you were quite right, darling; it was far the best thing to do; but I’d never have had the courage to go through with it, if it hadn’t been for you making me, and I shall always be grateful to you for helping me so much; only three months now and I’ll get my
decree nisi
and it’ll be all over.”

“I hope you’re behaving yourself, my girl?”

“I’ve got no one to misbehave with,” said Rachel, smiling. “My life at the moment is a model of monotonous virtue. The only thing I worry about is that time I went out with Bevan … you see the way he talks, he tells Doon everything. Still, it’s ages ago, before even Gregory’s time, and I don’t see how the King’s Proctor could nose it out. Please heaven!” she added, piously.

“How’s the kid?”

“Oh, she’s all right, Toria. It’s a bit rotten for her in London, but I’ll get her away on Wednesday to her Granny’s and she goes back to school after that, poor brat.”

“Doon seems very certain of going to the new branch,” said Irene, reverting to the only topic which, at the moment, really interested her.

“She’s going to be disappointed; but still, she can’t lose either way. If Gregory goes, Doon gets a rise in salary and can at least stay in London with her precious Bevan—not like poor old Rene; it really does matter to you, doesn’t it, darling?”

“I’d give anything to go,” said Irene again. “This place gets on my nerves these days with Gregory always carping and criticizing … if it was only to Manchester, I’d be crazy to go. But think of Deauville! Blue skies and sunshine and gaiety, and everybody rich and idle and beautifully dressed … and I’ve only to give a week’s notice at my digs, and pack a suitcase to be as free as the air.” Her injuries clamoured for utterance and she added, in a whining voice: “And talking about digs, my dear, I must tell you—
again
this morning a filthy black rim round the bath! It’s those women in number six, I told you about.…”

2

“If Rene tells us just once more about those women in number six, I shall scream,” said Victoria ten minutes later, as she sat down with Rachel in their little cubbyhole. “Bless her heart, she is the sweetest thing, but it does rather get on one’s nerves.”

“And I do wish she wouldn’t call me Jessica’s mumsey. Jessica would be sick if she knew—she’s a very tough child for six. Look, Toria, darling, what am I going to do about this
blasted
hat? I’ve hardly worn it, and it’s filthy already. What cleans panama? Rene—Oi, Rene,” she called across the empty showroom. “Do you know what cleans panama?”

“Rachel, dear, don’t shout across the
salon
like that; supposing there was a customer!”

“There isn’t a customer, so what does it matter? Honestly, Toria, Irene’s getting as nervy as hell these days.”

“She’s worried about Deauville, and of course Gregory’s getting her down, always saying sweetly catty things to Bevan—still, she does that about us all. Rene, darling, stop worrying about the window and come and advise about Rachel’s hat. Look what a muck she’s made of it.”

“Oxalic acid’s the best thing for that,” said Irene, judicially, taking up the hat and holding it to the light. “You just rub it in and then brush it off again. It’s supposed to be marvellous.”

“Oh, that’s fine. You always know these things. What did you say it was called?”

“Oxalic acid. You get it from a chemist, I should think. There’s nobody in at the moment, and Bevan and Gregory won’t be here till late—go across and see if the man in Mitchell’s will let you have some,” suggested Irene generously, anxious to make amends for her recent irritability.

“I’ll go now—thank you, sweetie. Come on, Toria, you come with me.”

They rushed bareheaded across Regent Street, dodging the traffic with accustomed ease, and the chemist bobbed up from behind the counter of his little shop to greet them.

“Good morning, young ladies, and what can I do for
you
to-day?”

“I want some oxalic acid,” said Rachel.

“Oxalic acid crystals? What did you want them for?”

“She wants to murder Miss Gregory,” said Victoria, laughing. “You know Miss Gregory—she’s the one that made all the flap about your giving us tick for the showroom soap; don’t you remember?”

“Oh, yes, I remember Miss Gregory,” said the chemist, a trifle grimly. “I think everyone knows her in the small shops around here. But I can’t be a party to her murder, you know.”

“Don’t listen to Mrs. David,” said Rachel, “she reads too many detective stories. I want to clean a straw hat, that’s all it is.”

“Ah, yes, I believe I’ve heard of oxalic acid being used for that. How much would you want?”

“How much would kill a person?” asked Victoria, sticking to her point.

“Well, let’s see—about a drachm, I should say. Not quite a teaspoonful.”

“Then we’d better have nine teaspoonfuls for Gregory,” said Toria, laughing. “How does one buy it? By the ounce, or what?”

“I think an ounce would be enough for the hat, certainly. That would be about—er—about four big teaspoons.”

“Righto, we’ll have an ounce. Can we weigh ourselves for nothing on your scales?”

“You always do, so why bother to ask?” said Rachel. “She only does it to annoy, Mr. Mitchell, because she’s so much lighter than me. Don’t we have to sign the poisons book or anything?” she went on, as he handed the little packet across the counter. “I’m quite willing to, in fact I’d love to.”

“No, no, nothing like that. I know you ladies, you see; it isn’t as if you were strangers to me—I believe I’ve even seen Mrs. Gay’s panama hat!” They were out of the door by the time he added: “Anyway, you don’t have to sign for oxalic acid.”

They plonked their pennies down upon the counter and dodged their way back across Regent Street. “Easy enough to kill anybody, wouldn’t it be?” said Victoria, strolling in through the showroom door, “as long as you weren’t too particular about being found out; I suppose they could always trace you through the chemist, though. Look at this mouldy little packet—it’s only a flimsy bit of paper and it’s got a hole in it already. Oh, Rene, I’m so sorry, I’m dropping poison all over the carpet; look, a little paper-chase with Rachel’s oxalic acid—isn’t it sweet?”

“Don’t be silly, Toria, there’s only a few grains there,” said Rachel as Irene bustled forward. “Put the rest of the stuff on my table and I’ll help Irene pick up the bits. Here you are,” she added a moment later, tipping half a dozen grains of crystal on to the rest of the heap; “that’s most of it. Sorry, Rene, my pet, but it wasn’t very bad.”

Irene threw two or three crystals on to the little pile, and dusted her hands over it. “Supposing Mr. Bevan had come in or a customer, and found us picking dirt off the carpet!” she said, irritably. “I do think you two are inconsiderate. It’s so childish.” She went off to her desk in the corner of their little room and turned her back on them.

Rachel and Toria tipped the crystals on to a sheet of paper and began rubbing feverishly at the hat. Twenty minutes’ work showed little improvement. Judy strolled over from the mannequins’ room and stood watching them, automatically going through her tummy exercises and inquiring anxiously as to the reduction of her almost non-existent behind. She was a curly-haired blond who would one day be Rubenesque and was for ever preoccupied with the postponement of this tragedy. Aileen, who ate heartily without ever suffering the slightest deviation in her measurements, was her envy and despair; she said so now as the elegant figure drifted past, on a languid progress down from the workroom.

“It’s no use being cross with me, dear,” said Aileen, unruffled. “If I went to fat like you do I’d just starve, I wouldn’t eat a thing; not a sausage,” she added, applying this phrase literally for the first, and probably only, time in her life. Her wandering attention was diverted to the panama. “What on earth are you doing to Rachel’s hat?”

“Cleaning it,” said Rachel, “but it’s still pretty mucky.”

Aileen picked up the hat and perched it on her red-gold hair. “It looks like a million dollars on you,” said Rachel, with a characteristic mixture of chagrin and laughter. A twang of Hoxton came out in Aileen’s carefully modulated Mayfair voice as she said with studied indifference that she would give ten bob for it.

“Got any money?” asked Toria, before Rachel could reply. Aileen confessed, unconcerned, that she hadn’t a sausage, and strolled away with Judy, grumbling without rancour about the new grey model.

Cecil came through the silver doors with a customer and stood clapping girlish, impatient hands. “Miss Irene, Miss Irene…. I want you, please. And Miss Aileen, fetch Miss Doon…. ask her to bring up the new peacock silk we got in last week. You’re going to adore it, Lady Bale, you really are. It’s the loveliest thing, it’ll suit your delicate colouring down to the ground, I’m really quite excited about it.…,” He danced round her, draping and pinning, pushing back his smooth, fair hair from his forehead. Lady Bale raised leaden eyes in a mud-coloured face and said that she was sure she would like anything Mr. Cecil chose for her. “Only nothing elaborate, Mr. Cecil, just cut quite plain, with a vee neck; you know I don’t like these naked shoulders!”

Cecil, nearly swooning at the idea of his peacock silk creation with a vee neck, nevertheless controlled himself into a semblance of acquiescence, and Doon at last gathered the lengths of satin and chiffon into her arms and prepared to descend to her basement; on her way she paused at the door of the salesgirls’ room to ask what they were doing.

“Cleaning Rachel’s hat. There hasn’t been a soul in all the morning, except this old cow with Cissie, and we’ve had nothing else to do.”

“The workroom would have done it for you.”

“Oh, the showroom’s rather out of favour upstairs since that idiot Aileen smuggled out the new chiffon model to wear at a party and tore it right across the hem and had to take it up to them to be mended. Gregory found them doing it and asked awkward questions. Then Irene seemed to think that this stuff would do the trick, but it hasn’t—not the hat trick, anyway.”

“You’re very humorous to-day,” said Rachel, laughing. “She made a lovely one this morning in the chemist’s … what was it you said, Toria?”

Victoria proudly related her joke about Gregory and the nine lives.

“Would it be any good for a plain white straw, do you think?” asked Doon, having paid suitable tribute.

“Goodness knows, my dear. You can have some and try, if you like.”

“I may as well if you don’t want it all. I can’t take it now, with all this stuff in my arms, but I’ll send Macaroni up for some.”

Macaroni was Doon’s secretary, so christened for reasons obscure enough in the beginning but now lost in the mists of time. She was a plump, dark maiden, who giggled and wept with equal facility and she professed a sentimental attachment for Doon, who treated her with kindly contempt. She arrived now, lumbering up the stairs on her half-comprehended mission, and pocketing the small screw of paper which Rachel gave her, picked up the sheet containing the remaining amount of crystals and asked with bovine playfulness what they were.

“They’re poison, that’s what they are,” said Rachel, sharply. “Put it down, child, for goodness’ sake.” She swung round as she spoke and Macaroni, startled by the irritation in her voice, fumbled to return the paper and finally dropped it, crystals and all, on to the floor.

At that moment Bevan, accompanied by Gregory, appeared in the doorway.

3

“What’s going on here?” said Bevan, angrily. “What’s all this mess? and what did I hear you saying about poison?”

“It’s my fault, Mr. Bevan,” apologized Rachel. “It’s oxalic acid and I’ve been cleaning a hat with it, and I’m afraid it’s got spilt.”

“Oxalic acid? Good heavens, what are you doing with that stuff all over the place? Where did you get it?”