Death in High Heels (5 page)

It seemed that it had been Irene’s ‘day’ to take the twelve-to-one lunch hour, and afterwards to remain on duty in the
salon
while the rest of the staff was downstairs. This entailed the duty of helping Mrs. Harris to juggle with the plates and dishes and serve out the portions of food, afterwards placing them in hot cupboards, from which the girls helped themselves on their, often belated, release from the showroom. On this occasion, as she counted the plates, Cecil came finicking up and announced that he would carve.

“There’s nothing to carve, Mr. Cecil, thank you very much,” said Irene. “It’s curry.”

“Well then, I’ll serve out the curry and you can do the vegetables; and I shall stay and have mine down here with you girls—so you needn’t lay a tray for the office, Mrs. Harris. Mr. Bevan’s going out.”

“He’s taking Doon out, I believe,” said Irene. “That’ll be only seven plates, then, won’t it? yourself and Victoria and Rachel (I’ve had mine), and the two mannequins and Macaroni and Gregory. Put that fat bit on Gregory’s, Mr. Cecil, will you? She’s such a fuss-pot, she’ll scream the place down if she doesn’t get the best helping.”

Toria came running down the stairs. “Rene, you’re wanted in the
salon.
Lady Norman’s here. What’s for lunch? Curried rabbit? How nice. Can I have this lovely fat bit, Mr. Cecil?”

“That’s booked as a sweetener for Miss Gregory,” said Cecil, giggling; “but I’ll keep a special bit for you.”

“Will you? Thanks awfully. And did you both remember that Doon’ll be out? Come on, Irene, the old girl will be gnashing her teeth. I’ll send Ray down to help you, Mr. Cecil.”

Rachel arrived, panting. “What’s for lunch? Curried rabbit? Good. Can I have this bit of back, Mr. Cecil?”

“No, you can’t—that’s reserved for Miss Gregory,” explained Cecil, patiently. “Here’s a nice bit for you.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Cecil, my pet. Mr. Bevan!” she called as Bevan emerged from Doon’s office and walked past the table. “You
are
going to be out to lunch, aren’t you? because we haven’t counted you.”

“Yes, I shall be out,” said Bevan, “and don’t serve out any for Miss Gregory; she’s having lunch with me.” He leant across the table and murmured something to Cecil before proceeding on his way upstairs.

“There now, isn’t that tarsome,” cried Cecil, all flustered. “We’ve already done a plate for Miss Gregory, and now we shall have one too many.”

“No, we won’t, Mr. Cecil. If Gregory’s having lunch with Mr. Bevan, then Doon isn’t, so she can have Gregory’s. Hallo, Macaroni, what do
you
want, my chicken?”

“I came to tell you that Miss Doon won’t be in to lunch. I believe she’s going out with Mr. Bevan,” said Macaroni, sniggering delightedly.

“Well, as it happens, my child, she is not going out with Mr. Bevan, because Miss Gregory is. I suppose that means,” added Rachel,
sotto voce
to Cecil, “that Gregory’s definitely going to Deauville?”

“Yes, she is. Mr. Bevan told me so when he whispered across the table. He rang me up over the week-end about it, and he said that he thought after all he would send Miss Gregory.”

“I wonder if she knows?”

“Well, they were together all this morning, before they came to the shop; I expect he told her.”

“Why has he decided on her, Mr. Cecil, do you know?”

Cecil tossed back his fair hair, and gave her a confidential look. “Perhaps Miss Gregory was becoming rather tarsome.…”

Aileen and Judy strolled downstairs. “Isn’t lunch ready yet?”

“No, I’m sorry,” said Rachel. “Mr. Cecil and I are in a huddle together. Put the rest of the vegetables out for me, one of you, will you, like a darling? That’s yours, Aileen, with extra potatoes—how you can do it, I don’t know! None on this one for me and only a little for Victoria and lots of greens here for Doon. Not all
that
lot, you idiot,” she added, as Aileen half-emptied the vegetable-dish on to Doon’s plate. “You do it, Judy, for goodness’ sake. Macaroni, don’t stand like a lump, child! Help Mrs. ’Arris put the plates in the hot-cupboard; better keep Miss Doon’s apart till we see what she’s doing.…” She returned to her confidences with Cecil.

Gregory came downstairs. She looked rather white and excited and Rachel felt sure that she knew of Bevan’s decision. She could not stifle her complacency at having a luncheon date and went off with a good deal of parade to tell “poor Doon” that Bevan had changed his arrangements.

“She needn’t look so damn delighted,” said Rachel to Cecil, scowling after Gregory’s cocksure back. “As soon as she’s well away, bang will go what little chance she ever had with her precious Bevan. Doon’ll have him good and proper then.”

“Or somebody else,” said Cecil, insinuatingly.

“Good heavens, don’t palm him off on
me
,” said Rachel, laughing. “They can tear him to bits for all I care, and have half each.”

Victoria came downstairs again and collected her lunch from the hot-cupboard nearest the table. “Don’t forget, Mr. Cecil, that you have to be at the Ritz by two. Irene’ll be all ready, she’s got her hat and things upstairs.” She sat down at the dining-table and the others joined her, each carrying a plate of food; they had started their meal when Gregory returned with a troubled and angry Doon. “Is my lunch in the hot-cupboard…. which, the further one?” She went to the cupboard and got out the plate.… “Here, Doon dear, take this. I’m so sorry about it, but Mr. Bevan just wants to talk over a little business with me—I expect he’ll ask you out tomorrow to make up for it.…” She advanced to the table, half-propelling Doon, who wriggled uncomfortably in her grasp. “Judy, make room for Doon. Now, you sit down here, my dear, and have your lunch.…”

“Oh, for God’s sake shut up, Gregory,” cried Judy, in a fury. “Doon’s got a mind of her own; she knows whether she wants her lunch or not. Silly bitch,” she added long before Gregory was out of earshot; “I’d like to wring her ruddy neck.”

“Stinking cat,” agreed Toria automatically, her mouth full of curry.

All this, with the exception of the actual conversations and of a certain amount of detail which Charlesworth unearthed later in the morning, Bevan was able to relate. “I think that’ll help to clear matters up a lot,” said Charlesworth, privately thinking nothing of the sort. “Oh, here’s Bedd. Is Mr. Cecil ready, Sergeant? Good. Now, perhaps you’ll just let us have your full name and private address, Mr. Bevan; and then would you ask Mr. Cecil to come up right away?”

“Yes, certainly; and—er—before I go, Inspector, I’d like to thank you very much for the—er—the very decent way in which you’ve conducted this interview. It could have been pretty disagreeable and, of course, I’m worried and upset about the whole affair. You must forgive me if I was a bit irritable.”

“Good lord, yes,” cried Charlesworth, pleased. “I quite appreciate your feelings…. rather a pleasant chap,” he added to the sergeant as the door closed.

“Very pleasant, sir. Funny thing, though—he
was
n’t particularly irritable; not to make a song about, was he? nor was you particularly inoffensive, not while I was in here.”

“Bedd, you’re a psychologist! The gentleman’s worried, eh? And now I come to think of it—did you see what I saw when I trotted out the idea of murder?”

“A shade of relief, Mr. Charlesworth?”

“Funny thing, wasn’t it, Bedd?”

They were nodding their heads sagaciously at one another when Bevan returned; but they broke off and Charlesworth sat staring, with his mouth wide open, at the vision of his remarkable companion. Bevan broke the spell with a brief introduction and then left them and Cecil sat himself down at the extreme edge of a chair and twisted his delicate hands. He was a slim, fair man, with huge, brown, long-lashed eyes, a well-modelled nose and over-feminine mouth; at first sight one took him for a youth, but soft living had given him, too early, pouches beneath the eyes and a suspicion of a paunch. His trousers were draped over girlish hips and his suit and shirt were a miracle of lavender grey; over his forehead a lock of yellow hair was trained to fall, and be pushed back with a graceful hand. Charlesworth took one more look at the brassy gold of this lock of hair, and retired to a corner to conceal his mirth, while Bedd stolidly noted Mr. Cecil’s name and address. “All very well for old Charles, giggling to hisself in the background and leaving me to get on with the job,” thought Sergeant Bedd grimly; he wiped a grin from his face with a huge brown hand and announced that Mr. Cecil was now ready to be questioned.

There was a frightful silence. Charlesworth struggled to control himself and came forward to put a polite and restrained question; but his voice betrayed him and they all three jumped as he asked suddenly with a tremendous roar: “What did you do with the poison?”

The colour left Cecil’s face, leaving two little patches of rouge high up on his cheekbones; his brown eyes stared at Charlesworth in stark terror and he said not a word. There was no temptation to giggle now. Charlesworth pulled his chair in front of the other and sat down facing him. “Now then, quickly—what did you do with the poison?”

“I haven’t got any poison! I never touched any poison!”

“Oh, look here, now.… Mr. Bevan’s just told us that he asked you to get rid of a whole lot of oxalic acid crystals that had been spilt in the showroom. I want to know what you did with them.”

“Oh, yes; well—I—” The moment had passed.

Cecil’s face cleared and he sat collecting his wits, looking down at his nervous hands. “I put it down the huh-hah,” he declared at last in a shaking voice.

“The lavatory, sir,” interpreted Bedd, without a smile.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Cecil, eagerly. “I went down with Mrs. Harris as soon as she had swept the powder up and I put it all down the huh-hah.”

“You went straight down with her?” asked Charlesworth, and, receiving a nod in reply: “Have you any idea how much it was? A tablespoonful? A teaspoonful?”

“Not more than a teaspoonful, I don’t think.”

“Well, that disposes of that. You realize, of course, that Miss Doon died from taking a similar poison and we’re trying to find out whether it can have been any of this lot.”

“Oh, I don’t think it can, Inspector. She couldn’t have got any—it wasn’t left lying about at all, at least I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think she might have taken some on purpose, do you?”

The uneasy look crept back into the brown eyes; the colour began to ebb again. He said, with rising hysteria: “No, no, of course not. Why should she have wanted to kill herself? It’s a dreadful idea.”

“Or that she might have had it deliberately given to her by somebody else.”

Cecil gave a girlish little scream at such a grisly thought and protested that it was more than unlikely: “She was not a very
nice
girl, Inspector, rather a
cruel
girl, but who could have wanted to kill her? Oh, I
don’t
think that’s quite likely!” He fluttered his lashes and flapped his hands and finally bowed himself out. Charlesworth turned with an explosion of laughter to Bedd: “This is the rummiest case I ever was on in all my life; God bless our home, whatever are we coming to next! And for heaven’s sake, Sergeant, explain to me if you can, why they should be so damn delighted when I suggest that the girl was murdered. There’s something behind all this.”

“It’s a long way be’ind as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Charlesworth,” said Sergeant Bedd, with a worried shake of his head.

3

The morning wore away and most of the afternoon, and Charlesworth thought that he had never before beheld such a galaxy of feminine beauty. Irene followed Cecil, a tiny brunette, agitated and in tears. She confirmed her part of the history of the luncheon hour; she had been with a customer from one to two, and then had rushed off with Cecil to the Ritz Hotel where a peeress was waiting impatiently for the famous grey model. She was terribly cross, said Irene, with a wealth of irrelevant detail; she had kept them pinning and ironing and fussing, although the model had only that moment been finished by the workroom, and they had not got back to Christophe’s until after four o’clock. By that time poor Doon had been taken off to hospital; it was all too awful, sobbed Irene, and crept away to summon Rachel.

Rachel looked white and strained, but was under a stern control. She gave her name and address composedly; she was married and had one child; she was in the process of divorcing her husband, having obtained her
decree nisi
three months previously, with the custody of her daughter. She was twenty-nine. “Anything else you want to know?” her attitude seemed to demand, contemptuously. Charlesworth made it clear that there was.

Rachel described her part in the purchase of the poison and in the events of the morning. Doon had been taken ill about three o’clock. Yes, of course she had been surprised. Mr. Bevan had sent her to the hospital after Doon, and the doctor there had asked her whether it was possible for Doon to have taken any corrosive poison; she had told him about the oxalic acid, of course, but she didn’t see how Doon could have taken any of that. She had reported it to Mr. Bevan and Mr. Bevan had made all sorts of inquiries as to whether it had been left lying about. After they left the shop at six o’clock she and Mrs. David, Victoria David, had gone to the hospital and stayed there till Doon was dead. She went off to fetch Victoria.

Mr. Charlesworth’s susceptible heart did three somersaults and landed at Victoria’s feet. Vivid and eager, exquisitely fragile with her pale-gold hair and shining eyes, she seemed like an April breeze in the stuffy little room. In a sort of a daze he heard her give her name and address, and then, conscious of a silence, started to put feverish questions. Was it correct that she had bought some oxalic acid with Mrs. Gay? “Oh, yes,” said Victoria. Could she think of any way in which Miss Doon might have accidentally taken a dose of it? “Oh, no,” said Victoria. Was it correct that she had gone down to the kitchen while the lunch was being served out? Well, yes, but only for a moment, to tell Irene that she was wanted upstairs. She herself and Mrs. Gay had spent half the night in the hospital till poor Doon died. “We were both rather fond of her,” added Victoria, sadly.