Death in High Heels (4 page)

2

Charlesworth cleared off odds and ends of work, did some telephoning and arranged a meeting with Sergeant Bedd. The post-mortem had been hurried forward and while he waited for the report he strolled down to the mortuary and asked to see the body. The attendant, who knew him well, jerked a thumb at one of the slabs, and bent again over his grisly task. Charlesworth pulled back the sheet.

The auburn hair and strong, sweeping brows looked as though they had been painted over the magnolia skin. Doon had died in torment and her mouth was still ugly with pain. Her blunt white hands were clenched at her sides, though the lovely body had been mercifully straightened out. He made a note that her hands and feet were manicured, her skin delicately cared for, and her whole person eloquent of the most meticulous attention. Sick and depressed, he flung back the covering to hide the ugly seam pulling together the thick white skin, and began to jot down remarks in his little black book.

“Who did the p.m.?” he asked the attendant.

“Dr. Littlejohn, sir.”

“Oh, thank the Lord; he’s a fellow I know. Can I have a word with him?”

Littlejohn appeared, wiping fastidious hands. “Hallo, Charlesworth, what do you want?”

“Somewhere to be sick, said Charlesworth, promptly.”

“Good heavens, you’ve been here often enough; it isn’t like you to be squeamish.”

“Well, I’ve been looking at the girl, and she was a nice-looking wench.”

“Oh, are you on that job? Yes, poor kid, she had enough oxalic acid in her to slay an ox.”

“Oxalic acid, was it?”

“Tons of it.”

“You haven’t got the report out yet, Is uppose?”

“Have a heart, man, I’ve got half a dozen more of ’em to do. I’ll send it up to you as soon as I can. It’s quite straightforward, anyway; lots of oxalic acid, probably in crystal form.”

“How do you know it was crystals?”

“Well, I don’t actually; only she seems to have had access to some, according to the history, and she certainly died of oxalic.”

“Was it taken with food?”

“I think so, yes. About seven or eight hours before death.”

Charles worth did rapid calculations. “That would bring it down to about lunch-time.”

“Round about.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s what it all boils down to; actual quantities and so forth will be in the reports.”

Charlesworth took his leave, but returned on an impulse. “Littlejohn, for my private information—was she a whatsaname?”

“For your private information, Charles, she was not.”

“My faith in human nature is always getting these jolts,” said Charlesworth and cheerfully went his way.

Sergeant Bedd met him outside and they stood together on the steps of the mortuary, poring over the notes, a tall, fair, smiling young man and a grizzled, thick-set, middle-aged one. Charlesworth’s eyes are an honest and friendly grey; but Bedd’s are as blue as the summer skies, set deeply in his square, brown face. He wears plain clothes, the coat straining across his broad shoulders, the trousers not quite wide enough in the leg. Charlesworth is in grey, a well-cut suit, chosen last year with care, worn for a week with uneasy pride and thenceforward without any consideration whatsoever. Bedd has one new suit a year with unfailing regularity; he pays five guineas for it, off the peg, and its pockets bulge with pens and pencils, foot-rules and tape-measures, an over-stuffed wallet, a fat cigarette case of inferior silver which he would not lose for a fortune, and finally the notebook which he now produces for Charlesworth, full of details and information. The girl’s parents are in New Zealand and have been notified. He has called at Christophe et Cie and informed the principals that an officer from Scotland Yard will shortly be calling to ask a few questions about Miss Doon’s death. He has advised that the routine of the shop shall continue, and has asked that all members of the staff shall remain on the premises. He has called upon Miss Doon’s landlady and made similar arrangements.…

“Jolly well done, Bedd,” says Charlesworth, relieved of much dirty work. “You must have wings to get about the way you do.”

“I used one of the cars, sir,” says Bedd, whose mind works along literal lines.

They transferred to Charlesworth’s own car and Bedd suggested starting off at the shop. “She spent most of the day there, sir, and if she died of poison she must have taken it while she was there, I suppose.”

“Oh, she died of poison all right,” said Charlesworth comfortably, as they started off. “I’ve just seen Littlejohn and he gave me the result of the p.m. Oxalic acid. Easy enough to come by, isn’t it?”

“Get it at any chemist’s, sir; no restrictions. It’s used for cleaning brass and various things like that. Shall I check up and see if she bought any?”

“Yes, sometime; but I’d like you to stick to me for the moment while I ask questions of all this dress shop lot; and see that I don’t drop any bricks. Talking of bricks, Bedd, I’ve a nasty feeling that this may be one of yours. The whole thing looks mighty straightforward to me: I bet it was nothing but an accident—muddled up the oxalic acid tin with the slimming salts, or something—though, by gum,” he added reminiscently, “she had nothing much to worry about in that direction. What’s this something fishy you’re so set on?”

“Something fishy?
I
never said nothing about something fishy, sir,” said Bedd, earnestly. “It wasn’t anything in perticular, but just this: the first report from the hospital said that they suspected corrosive poisoning in crystal form, and as far as they could tell it must have been taken not long before she was brought in. Now, I thought to meself that there isn’t much in crystal form that you take in the daytime, is there, sir? Salts and them things you take first thing in the morning; of course, that’s very broadly speaking—there might be lots of stuff a woman would take, but I couldn’t think of any. 1 wondered if it could be suicide by any chance, so I thought I’d better make a note of it; it wasn’t anything you could call fishy, sir.”

“Have you inquired at her home?”

“I was only there a minute, just to tell them not to disturb things. It’s not very far in the car; would you like to drop in before we start at the shop?”

They stopped at a dubious-looking door in a Bloomsbury street. An old woman, consumed with curiosity, showed them into a large and rather musty room, still in the state of almost incredible disorder in which Doon had left it. “I done nothink to it, sir,” said the harridan, observing Charlesworth’s look of surprise. “Miss Doon she used to leave it till she come ’ome in the evening as often as not. I did it out two days a week for ’er, and I would ’ave come in and straightened it up a bit to-day, though it’s not my day, properly speaking; but this gentleman ’ere, ’e told me not to touch it.” She started automatically to pick up a few scattered garments and fling them on to the bed. “She was a one and no mistake,” she went on, regarding the confusion with an indulgent eye. “Poor girl, this is a terrible thing, sir, ’er dying so sudden. Oo’d ’ave thought it? Accident I suppose it was, if you’ll pardon me askin’?”

“I suppose so,” said Charlesworth, abstractedly, his mind occupied with the discrepancy between the expensive scents and lotions on the dressing-table, the profusion of extravagant clothes and possessions, and the cheap and dingy appearance of the lodgings. “You have no reason to think it was anything else, have you? She wasn’t depressed or anything?”

“Oh, I don’t think so, sir. Oh, no, nothink like that, sir, I don’t think. Why, only yestidy, as she was going out in the morning, she says to me, ‘’Ow do you like me new ’at, Mrs. Briggs?’ she says; ‘pretty good, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘It is, indeed, Miss,’ I says; ‘that’ll fetch the boys,’ I says, ’aving me joke, like. ‘That’s good,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a lunch date to-day that’s going to change me ’ole life,’ she says.”

“But she had lunch at the shop,” said Bedd.

“Well, I don’t know nothink about that, sir. Them’s the words she said to me, ‘I’ve got a lunch date to-day as’ll change me ’ole life,’ she says.…”

“Had she lived here for long?” asked Charlesworth

“Best part of a year, sir. It isn’t nothink grand, but she liked it; she wasn’t one to fuss, Miss Doon wasn’t, and if she could ’ave ’er parties and make a bit of a row now and agen and nobody to arst any questions, she didn’t mind if a lick of paint was missing ’ere and there. She paid well, she did, and I’ve nothink to complain of.”

“Funny thing about the lunch,” said Charlesworth, as he and the sergeant climbed into the car again. “I do believe it’s beginning to look a bit fishy after all.”

“Well, I couldn’t ’elp wondering.”

“I hope your wondering comes off, anyway. We should look a couple of fools, ferreting out a bit of carelessness among a pack of women—my God!” exclaimed Charlesworth as they pulled up at the silver door. “What’s this—this isn’t the shop?”

“Pretty ’igh class, sir, isn’t it?” said Bedd, with proprietary satisfaction.

High blue heels pattered across the floor. “Can I show you something?” asked Victoria with her sweetest smile.

“I am an officer from Scotland Yard,” said Charlesworth, severely; “and I should like to see the manager. Did she think I’d come to order my trousseau?” he muttered to the sergeant, as they followed her across the thick carpet.

“I rather doubt it, sir,” said Bedd, innocently. “She’s seen me ’ere this morning, and she must know who we are. I’m rather afraid, Mr. Charlesworth, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so, that the young lady was pulling your leg!”

Bevan was in his office, a slim, grey-haired man of middle height, in an obtrusively well-cut suit. He had an odd trick of turning his head with a sharp movement away from the speaker, and looking at him out of the corners of his eyes. He did so now while Charlesworth introduced himself and explained the reason of his visit.

“We have definitely established the cause of Miss Doon’s death, and I hope you can make it convenient to allow me to ask some questions of the people who worked here with her.”

“Yes, yes, the sergeant was round here this morning and arranged all that. This is a ghastly thing to have happened.” He swung himself round in his black and chromium chair and glanced sideways at Charlesworth again. “I hope to goodness there’s not going to be a whole lot of publicity. It’ll be terribly bad for the business.”

“I’m afraid that simply depends on the Press,” explained Charlesworth. “If they get hold of a story and plug it, we can’t stop them. Lack of information from the police is the last thing they’ll worry about. However, if it turns out to have been just an accident …”

“Of course it was an accident; what else could it have been?”

“Well, Mr. Bevan, Miss Doon died of corrosive poison, taken in crystal form. She took an awful lot of it, and it’s difficult to see how she can have made a mistake about it. Of course she may have thought she was taking something else and that’s the easiest answer; but we’re bound to make sure that she mightn’t have taken it deliberately.”

Bevan went grey, and Charlesworth followed up the lead. “Or, of course, that it wasn’t given to her deliberately.…”

“That’s simply nonsense!”

“Yes, it may be, but as I said, we’re bound to find out. I suppose you couldn’t think of any motive there might have been to get Miss Doon out of the way?”

“My dear Inspector, this is simply fantastic. Girls don’t murder each other in respectable dress shops.”

“Well, it has been done,” said Charlesworth, nonchalantly. “And, of course, it needn’t necessarily have been someone in the dress shop. Do you know any of her associates outside her work?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You didn’t know her outside the shop, I suppose?”

“No, I didn’t—that is, I saw her occasionally.”

“How did you come to employ her in the first place?”

“She answered an advertisement for a sales assistant, but she was much too valuable to be left in that kind of post; she did some secretarial work for me and a certain amount of buying and two years ago I gave her the management of the stock—models and materials and so on. Heaven knows what I shall do without her; I was going to …”

“Were you going to say something?” asked Charlesworth, sweetly.

“Well, I was going to promote her to being my personal assistant.”

“It’s certainly odd, under those circumstances, that she should have taken her life.”

“Good heavens, man,” cried Bevan, as much exasperated as Charlesworth could have wished. “Why do you keep harping on that? Of course she didn’t kill herself.” There was a pause and he went on more quietly: “The girls were messing about in the showroom with a lot of stuff which they said was poison. She probably took some of that, by mistake.”

“Oh, ah, this is a bit more like. What sort of poison was it?”

“It was oxalic acid, and they were using it to clean a hat. I had it cleared up and thrown away.”

“Who did the throwing away?”

“My showroom manager, Mr. Cecil.”

“Oh, did he? Well, I shall want to have a word with Mr. Cecil before I go very much further. You might go down and get hold of him, will you, Bedd? Now, Mr. Bevan—when you say ‘they” who exactly had the stuff?’

Bevan hesitated. “I hardly know,” he said. “The three salesgirls were sitting together, as far as I remember: Rachel Gay, Victoria David, and Irene Best—no, no, Mrs. Best was at her desk, in the corner.” “Was Miss Doon there?”

“No, she wasn’t. I went on downstairs to her office and spoke to her.”

“Is it true that she had lunch here, in the shop?”

Bevan looked uncomfortable; he had been going to take Miss Doon out to lunch, he said, to discuss matters of business, but—er—he had had to alter his plans.

“Did you yourself have lunch in the shop? I ask you, because it will be necessary for me to get some sort of an account of what went on during the luncheon hour, so that I can discover whether it was possible for the girl to have taken poison with her food.”

Bevan, for reasons of his own, had made most careful inquiries as to what had happened while he was out; he had foreseen the questions of the police and, for all his apparent surprise and distress, was not unprepared for suggestions of either suicide or murder. He embarked now upon a résumé of the hour from one to two.