The Fashion In Shrouds (21 page)

‘I was christened Rudolph,' said Mr Campion. ‘I get people to call me Albert.'

‘You have to, don't you?' said Sinclair with earnest sympathy. ‘Georgia says my father insisted on the name in case I went on the stage.' His lip trembled and he scrubbed his face angrily with a sodden handkerchief.

‘You're not attracted to the stage?'

‘Oh, it's not that.' The voice broke helplessly. ‘I wouldn't care, really. I wouldn't care about anything. I'd be
anything
, only – only I did think it was all settled at last. That's why I'm blubbing. It ought to be about Ray, but it's not.
He was all right really, friendly, you know, and rather exciting when he got on to his adventures in Ireland, but he was an awful worry to you. You had to follow him around the whole time and play up to him and coax him into being reasonable and doing what Georgia wanted. I liked him sometimes and sometimes I got jolly tired of him. I was frightened when I heard he was dead. I mean, I thought I was going to cat, like you said. But I was blubbing because of myself.'

He sniffed violently and kicked the bench for support again.

‘I thought I'd better tell you – not that I think you'd care, of course – but after all it's the truth and it's ghastly to have someone sympathize with you because he thinks you're cut up about your stepfather dying when you're really being selfish. I don't really care frightfully for anyone except Bunny Barnes-Chetwynd and old Grits. Grits is Georgia's housekeeper. She looked after me when I was a kid.'

‘Who is Bunny?'

Sinclair brightened.

‘Bunny's a good chap. We came on from Tolleshurst Prep to Haverleigh last term. He has trouble with his people, too. They keep on starting divorces and changing their minds. Bunny's all right. He'd be able to explain this better than I can. It's all so stinkingly mouldy. I don't want to be a snob or a squirt, but when you're
in
a thing you've got to
be
in it, haven't you?'

The last question was a plea from the heart and Mr Campion, who was ever honest, gave a considered reply.

‘It's very unsettling if you're not.'

‘That's what I mean.' There was despair in the red eyes, ‘Before Ray turned up I was always in such a
mess
. It began at Tolleshurst. It's a snoop sort of Prep and at first I was a sort of curiosity because of Georgia being so well known, and then –' he paused. ‘Oh, things happened, you know,' he said vaguely.

‘Scandal, you mean?'

‘Yes, I suppose so.'

‘About Georgia?'

‘Yes. Nothing beastly, of course.' Sinclair was scarlet with shame. ‘I didn't follow it very well at first, of course,
because I was a little kid, but you know what Prep schoolmasters are. They talk like a lot of old women and fellows' people take their kids on one side and put them off you and that sort of thing. It wasn't anything beastly. It was just a sort of feeling that we were a bit low. My father appeared in a rather hot sort of farce in the town one term while Georgia was having a lot of publicity and being photographed with one of the fighters.'

He took a deep breath and leant forward.

‘I didn't really care,' he said earnestly, ‘but I wish they'd sent me to a lower place. I don't want to be bogus and pretend. I only want to be something definite. I find things awfully confusing, anyway. It's not the work; I like that. But it's not knowing ordinary things, like that shock business, for instance, and why you suddenly feel you must go and do something silly even though you know it's silly, like telling barmy lies or pretending you're awfully keen on poetry when you're not.
You
know.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Mr Campion and saw for the first time the use of Raymond Ramillies. The advent of Ramillies must have made a great difference to Sinclair. Ramillies sounded all right. His family was good and his position unquestionable. As a stepfather he must have been a rock. Much has been said against the English system of moulding young gentlemen to a certain pattern, but, whatever the arguments for and against it may be, the system itself when in operation is a formidable machine. The passage through it is painful, anyway, if one's corners are stubborn, but to be jerked in and out of it by the capricious tricks and antics of one's parents' fluctuating whims or incomes is a mangling process not to be endured.

‘Do you like Haverleigh?' he asked.

Sinclair stared at his feet. His eyes were swimming.

‘It's marvellous,' he said. ‘It's pretty good.'

‘We used to play you,' Mr Campion observed. ‘You were very strong in those days. You are still, aren't you?'

The boy nodded. ‘We're the top,' he said. ‘It was foul at Tolleshurst, being not quite sound – presentable, you know – but here it would be hell. You'd let the place down, you see. They wouldn't chuck it at you, of course, but you'd feel you were doing it.'

Since the talk was an intimate one and complete frankness seemed in order, Mr Campion put forward a comforting suggestion somewhat baldly.

‘Perhaps you'll get someone as good.'

‘Yes,' said Sinclair and let the air sizzle through his teeth. There was a flicker of hope in his eyes stifled immediately, which was among the most genuinely pathetic sights Campion had ever seen. ‘Mother was engaged to Portland-Smith once,' the boy remarked presently. ‘I liked him. He was hopelessly stiff and conventional, but he did know what he wanted and what he was going to do next. He was going to be a County Court Judge. Georgia would have to have left the stage if she'd married him. I hoped she would, but that was pretty low of me. I was only thinking of myself. He was a moody person, though. He shot himself. Did you know?'

‘Yes. I found him, as a matter of fact.'

‘Did you?' Sinclair hesitated over the obvious question, instinctive to everyone and yet always false to the ear. Campion answered it for him.

‘In a place very much like this,' he said, looking round at the leaves.

Sinclair considered the astounding vagaries of life for some time and finally reverted to his own problems, which were at least concrete.

‘It's filthy to sit and blub about oneself,' he remarked. ‘A lot of what I've been saying is filthy. But I've started, you see. I've started to be one sort of chap. Ray said if I worked I could go to Oxford and have a shot at the Diplomatic. I meant to hold him to that if it was possible. I tried to make it square with him by trailing round and doing what I could. It's putrid talking like this when he's just dead, and I liked him. I did like him, but it's my
life
, you see. It's all I've got. Now I may have to change everything again, and, anyway, I won't know what I'm doing for a bit. I wish I'd started on something where none of this mattered a hang. That's not quite true. I love Haverleigh and I'd miss Bunny.'

The name made him laugh.

‘Bunny would burst if he heard me talking like this,' he said with a chuckle. ‘Bunny's “fearfully decent”. Sorry I told you. I'll go and pack. She'll be going back to Town, and
if I'm not there when the car's ready I'll have to cadge a lift from someone. There's not a train for miles. Good-bye, Mr Campion. Thank you for the tip about shock.'

Having no other convenient place to carry it, he stuffed Sir Walter's great romance into the seat of his flannels and hoisted himself up the wall. Perched on the top he looked down at Campion.

‘I've been talking like Ray did when he was tight,' he said with a bravado which deceived neither of them. ‘Forget it, please, won't you? It was seeing things working again that put the wind up me. It does, doesn't it?'

‘“Things working again”?' echoed Mr Campion sharply.

Sinclair seemed surprised.

‘Things do work, don't they?' he said. ‘Things happen and link up rather peculiarly. Haven't you noticed it? They do round Georgia and me, anyway. Don't they do it everywhere?'

‘I don't know,' said Mr Campion slowly.

‘I think they do,' persisted Sinclair. ‘You'll jolly well see it if you watch, or at least I think you will. I do. I say, this wall's giving. Good-bye, sir.'

Raymond Ramillies's chief mourner dropped out of sight and Mr Campion was left alone, thinking.

He was still there, sitting with his arms clasping his bent knees, when Amanda found him. She was dishevelled and almost weary, for once in her life.

‘Gone to ground?' she inquired, pausing before him. ‘I don't altogether blame you. The plane's off at last. Nearly an hour late. What a show!'

She sat down on the step behind him and re-tied her shoelace, her red hair hanging over her face.

‘How did that chap die?'

Mr Campion related the entire story truthfully, omitting only Val's incredible admission about the morphine. He knew from experience that there was not much which could be hidden from Amanda for long and so made the rest of the tale as exact as possible.

She listened to him in complete silence and when he had finished began to whistle a little tune, very flat and breathy.

‘Albert,' she said suddenly, ‘I'll tell you something. I can
hear machinery
.'

He turned his head.

‘It's getting a bit obvious, isn't it?' he murmured. ‘Even my great ears began to throb. Who's the little god in charge?'

Amanda hesitated, her hand still on her shoe and her skinny young body arched forward.

‘Could she have the nerve?'

‘Has she the organizing ability? I know poison is supposed to be sacred to women, but she brought that P.M. on herself. Juxton-Coltness would have signed up like a lamb.'

Amanda grunted.

‘Perhaps she overplayed the part,' she said. ‘Or perhaps she knows she's safe.'

‘How can she know she's safe? The Juxton-Coltness combine may be a gaggle of quacks, but they're not criminal and presumably they can do a P.M. between them.'

Amanda opened her mouth and thought better of it.

‘I don't care about Ramillies,' she said at last. ‘I thought the chap was close to being a bounder and he was certainly a dreadful old cad, but I don't like us being used. It's this Old Testament touch that frightens me. I don't like being caught up in the cogwheels if I think someone's doing it. It's bad enough when it's the Lord.'

‘Organized machinations of fate,' murmured Mr Campion, and felt for the first time that old swift trickle down the spine. It was astounding that three such very different people should have expressed so unusual a thought to him within the hour.

Meanwhile Amanda was still talking.

‘What's going to happen next?' she said. ‘Something's up. When the pilot got into the Seraphim he found this lying on his seat and he gave it to me to attend to.'

Campion glanced at the little silver model in her outstretched hand. It was the
Quentin Clear
. Amanda's brown fingers closed over it.

‘I thought I'd better hang on to it, for a while, anyway,' she said. ‘What do you know about that?'

‘Georgia wasn't wearing it when she came down to the hangar after lunch.'

‘I know she wasn't. Nor was A.D. And why should it be lying on the seat, right under the nose of one of the few men
who would know what it was and whose it was when he saw it? It's a plant, another “Mysterious Way”.'

Mr Campion stirred.

‘It's so damned insulting,' he said. ‘Amanda, we'll get the impious god in this machine.'

THE POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION
on the body of Sir Raymond Ramillies was performed and an examination of certain organs was rushed through, the Richmond Laboratories performing in twenty-four hours a task over which the Public Analyst might have been expected to take three weeks.

After the reports had been made Dr Harvey Juxton-Coltness saw no reason to withdraw the certificate which he had given, and the funeral took place on the fifth day, Messrs Huxley and Coyne, the big furnishing and warehouse people, making an excellent job of the arrangements.

The details in the box headed ‘Cause of Death' in the Registrar's oblong black book read: ‘
Cardiac failure due to myocardial degeneration. Other conditions present: Chronic nephritis,'
and meant, in much plainer English, that Sir Raymond's heart had ceased to beat and that there was no really satisfactory reason, as far as Dr Juxton-Coltness, Mr Rowlandson Blake, FRCS, and the Richmond Laboratories could ascertain, why on earth this should have been so. It also meant, of course, that these three authorities were prepared to bet that no other experts could ascertain more, and there the official side of the matter rested.

Several people were surprised, Amanda among them, but Mr Campion was also angry. His sense of ourtage grew. His personal and professional dignity had been assailed, his reputation had been utilized, and Val's prophetic judgment confirmed. Moreover, the ‘mysterious drug unknown to science' seemed to have materialized at last. He became very affable and friendly and he and Amanda went everywhere together.

They went to the memorial service at St
Jude's-by-the-Wardrobe, near the Old Palace, and Val saw them there looking very charming and sleek in their black clothes, two rows behind Gaiogi. Val went with the widow. Georgia had phoned her in the morning.

‘Darling, you must. I'm relying on you, Val. The only women in the family are the aunts and the half-brother's wife and they're all definitely hostile besides being frightful females who smell like puppies' breath. I've got Sinclair, of course, but I must have a woman, mustn't I? I thought of having Ferdie sit with me, but somehow I don't think – do you? He's not old enough. Alan's to go alone. He must appear, but I can't have him near me. That would be too filthy. Darling?'