The Fashion In Shrouds (32 page)

‘Albert?' said Val dubiously. ‘What about Amanda?'

‘Oh yes. The pretty little red-haired child.' Georgia was thoughtful. ‘Isn't it tragic when you think what all these babies have got to go through?' she added, sighing. ‘All the hurts, the heartaches, the wretched emotional agonies which make one mature.'

‘Darling, I don't know and I don't care. It's nearly half-past two. Don't you live somewhere along here?'

‘No, it's miles further yet.' Georgia peered out into the darkness. ‘I love my little house,' she remarked. ‘Ray and I adored each other there. When I get sentimental I think of it as a little shrine. Don't be angry with me, Val. After all, I've given up Alan. You can have him now if you want to.'

Val was silent. The car sped on down the faintly lit street and only now and again, when they passed a street-lamp, was her face visible.

‘Don't look like that.' There was a note of panic in the childish phrase. ‘Val, don't look like that. You're grim. You're frightening me. Say something.'

‘Can you see that you've put that man out of my life for ever?'

The words were spoken unemotionally and Georgia considered them.

‘No,' she said at last. ‘No, honestly I don't see that, darling. Not if you love him. Nothing in love is “for ever”, is it? Be reasonable.'

They were two fine ladies of a fine modern world, in which their status had been raised until they stood as equals with their former protectors. Their several responsibilities were far heavier than most men's and their abilities greater. Their freedom was limitless. There they were at two o'clock in the morning, driving back in their fine carriage to lonely little houses, bought, made lovely and maintained by the proceeds of their own labours. They were both mistress and master, little Liliths, fragile but powerful in their way, since the livelihood of a great number of their fellow beings depended directly upon them, and yet, since they had not relinquished their femininity, within them, touching the very core and fountain of their strength, was the dreadful primitive weakness of the female of any species. Byron, who knew something about ladies if little enough about poetry, once threw off the whole shameful truth about the sex, and, like most staggeringly enlightening remarks, it degenerated into a truism and became discountenanced when it was no longer witty.

‘Love really can rot any woman up,' Georgia observed contentedly. ‘Isn't it funny?'

‘Dear God, isn't it dangerous!' said Val.

They drove on in silence, both of them thinking of a very different thing from the common disaster which they had met to discuss and which, had they been less preoccupied, must have terrified them by its imminence and its tremendous risk.

MR CAMPION, ARRIVING
home a little before three in the morning full of the deepest misgivings and secretly uneasy because the police had not called upon him to identify
anyone whom the amorous lorry-driver might have described found, instead of the expected detective, Lugg and Amanda in the kitchenette eating bacon and eggs.

‘The poor kid's got to get to work at the factory by seven-thirty termorrow.' Lugg's greeting was reproachful. ‘I thought at least I'd give 'er a bit of breakfast. What will you 'ave yourself? Eggs or a mite of 'erring? I've got a lovely little tin 'asn't been opened above a couple of days. I was savin' it for when I fancied it.'

The kitchen was warm and odorous, and Mr Campion, who suddenly felt he had been too long among the sophists, sat down on the other side of the enamel-topped table and glanced at his lieutenant with satisfaction. She was rosy with sleep but bright-eyed and very interested.

‘I've been here since ten, sleeping in a chair. I thought I'd better wait in case you needed any help. What happened?'

He gave her the rough outline of the momentous interview, while Lugg sizzled contempt and bacon fat in the background.

‘So you see,' he said at last, ‘Portland-Smith was being blackmailed. That emerged with a blinding flash and a smell of damp fireworks. No one who heard Georgia's story of the six months before he vanished – heard it with anything beside his ears, I mean – could possibly have missed that.'

‘Who blackmailed him? Miss Adamson?'

Amanda's untroubled logic was comforting after the tortuous mental fancy-work of the past three hours.

‘She was in it; I think that's certain.' He spoke decisively and paused, a shadow of embarrassment passing over his face. She caught his expression and grinned.

‘I'm getting a big girl now,' she said. ‘You can mention it in front of me. It was the usual story, but “she had her Auntie Jessie underneath the kitchen sink”, I suppose? When and where did all this happen?'

‘I don't know, of course.' Mr Campion sighed and his lean face looked less weary. Amanda was easy to talk to. ‘He went off on a walking tour in October and came back all peculiar. He seems to have been batty about his wife at this time and she evidently loathed him, so I take it that a solicitous Caroline who resembled the Dear Unkind might easily have had a walk-over. That angle is a job for Blest.
I'll get hold of Portland-Smith's itinerary and Blest must go round all the pubs he might have stayed in. That should put us on to it. But we must be prepared for it only leading us to the girl, and I'm more than certain she didn't do it alone. It was too opportune. The whole thing has a curious organized flavour, like everything else. Portland-Smith was caught and bled until he took the shortest way out, poor beast. All this evening I've been quaggly in the middle at the thought of that fellow. He must have had hell's delight.'

‘Very nice dick work, but it's unsatisfactory,' remarked Mr Lugg, flopping another egg on to the plate before his keeper. ‘There's no fear of blackmail nowadays. It's Mr A and Miss X and three years, yes yer Lordship, thankyer very much. You don't even read the papers.'

‘That's where you're wrong, you with your mammy's eyes, poor hideous woman.' Mr Campion spoke without resentment. ‘It's because of the anonymity rule that I'm certain the whole thing was a more subtle affair than would at first appear. Miss Adamson's own methods were just plain abominable. I gathered that much when she phoned me. There usually is a third, negotiating party in this sort of case and it's pretty obvious that this particular third was the brains of the act. You see, Portland-Smith was a barrister, i.e. he had the one kind of job which makes the anonymity rule a trifle less than useless. He couldn't go into the Central Court at the Old Bailey calling himself Mr X, at least not with any marked success, unless of course he wore a false beard or a cagoulard hood, either of which might so easily have been misunderstood.'

‘Oh well, if you say so, cock. I can't talk about trade risks.' Mr Lugg was magnanimous. ‘I'll do you a bit o' bacon.'

‘I suppose the threat was divorce information for Georgia,' Amanda observed. ‘That might have cooked his County Court ambitions. Was it done purely for the money? How much had he got?'

‘I don't know exactly, but I think he must have got through about four thousand pounds in the last six months of his life. He died broke. I had taken it that he'd been wallowing in diamonds, costly furs and ballet shoes of champagne, but it seems not.' Campion spoke lightly, but
his eyes were not amused. ‘All the same, I don't believe money was the primary motive, although somebody thought a lot about it. Our Caroline did, for one. I may be braying in the wilderness, but whenever I consider the events in the round I smell fish. It's fishy that Portland-Smith should have been driven to suicide just as Georgia met Ramillies, and fishier still that Ramillies should have looked up his ancestors just as Georgia fell for Dell. I may merely have a beastly mind, of course, but it shouts to heaven to me.'

Amanda nodded gloomily.

‘A.D.'s back at work,' she observed. ‘He looks a bit tempered but he's making up for lost time. We're getting the old atmosphere back. Sid's like a dog who's discovered he's got his collar on after all. I say, Albert?'

She sat back from the table and remained looking at him, her face scarlet and her honey-brown eyes embarrassed.

‘She couldn't possibly have persuaded
them
to do it, could she?'

‘What? Persuaded each succeeding boy-friend to “do in” the retiring chairman?' Mr Campion was impressed. ‘That's a very beautiful idea, Amanda. It's got a flavour of the classics. Lovely stuff. All clean, ruthless lines and what not. But I don't fancy it for a bet. It belongs to a more artistic age.'

‘I find that very comforting,' said Amanda candidly. ‘Would you like some more to eat?'

The downstairs button sounding a cuckoo-clock device in the hall outside forestalled Mr Campion's acceptance. Lugg paused, frying-pan in hand, his eye-ridges raised.

‘Eh?' he demanded.

‘That damned owl again,' said Mr Campion. ‘Go and see who it is.'

‘Three o'clock in the mornin'?' Lugg's little black eyes were startled. ‘'Ere, is your aunt in London, yer Ladyship?'

‘My dear fellow, you could chaperone a regiment of Georgias.' Amanda was cheerful. ‘Don't put on a collar.
Décolletage
is perfectly all right at this time of night. Buck up.'

The cuckoo called again and Lugg surged to the door.

‘I've laid them eggs there and I want to see 'em when I come back,' he said warningly. ‘I'm coming! I'm coming!'

‘His mother-instinct is strong, isn't it?' commented Amanda as he disappeared. ‘Who is this? The police?'

‘I don't know.' Mr Campion looked uneasy. ‘I don't like this show, Amanda. I'd feel much happier if you were out of it. You don't mind, do you?'

Amanda laughed at him. ‘Don't drop the pilot,' she said. ‘I'm the only disinterested intelligence in the whole outfit. My motive is nice clean curiosity. I'm valuable. Listen.'

It was Lugg's breathing, of course. The noise of it came up from the stairs like a wind-machine. As he reached the flat door they heard him speak.

‘On a bicycle?' he protested. ‘That's a nice way to get about! Would you care for an egg or a nice fresh bit of 'erring?'

Mr Campion and Amanda exchanged startled glances and were on their feet when the visitor appeared shyly round the doorpost. It was Sinclair. He looked smaller than ever in his grey suit, his hair untidy from his ride in the wind.

‘It's stinkingly late,' he said. ‘I hope you don't mind, but I thought I might find you up, and it seemed important.'

He was evidently excited but his self-possession was extraordinary and he reminded them both of some little old gentleman in his old-fashioned ease. Amanda made room for him on the edge of her chair and pushed rolls and butter towards him.

‘That's all right,' she said affably. ‘What's up? New developments?'

‘Well, I don't know.' Sinclair glanced questioningly at Lugg and, receiving Campion's reassuring nod, hurried on. ‘It's about Ray. I say, they – they're not going to dig him up, are they? That's why I came at once. I didn't like to wait until the morning if there was anything I could do to stop them. It's such a filthy thing to happen.'

‘My dear chap, don't worry about that.' Mr Campion had caught a glimpse of the horror behind the small white face. ‘That's all right. That won't happen. And even if it did there'd be a tremendous set-out first. The Home Office would have to move, for one thing, and that takes weeks even if everyone there happens to be awake. What put the idea in your head?'

Sinclair looked relieved and afterwards a little foolish.

‘I'm sorry to have come so soon,' he said. ‘I didn't know this, you see, and I got worrying. Georgia came in just now. I was waiting up for her; I often do, as a matter of fact. She was a bit hysterical, I'm afraid, and she rather frightened me. I hadn't heard of the murder of this girl friend of Ray's. I read the case in the evening papers, of course, but she hadn't been identified then. Georgia wept over me and I finally got it out of her that she was afraid the police might get suspicious over Ray's death. That upset us both, naturally. Then I suddenly realized that I knew something that might help, so I got out my bicycle and came down to see you. I didn't want to go to the police if it wasn't necessary.'

‘Jolly sensible,' encouraged Amanda. ‘Eat while you talk. There's nothing like food when you're rattled; even if it gives you indigestion that takes your mind off the main trouble. It's actually about Ray, is it?'

‘Yes.' Sinclair accepted the plate which Lugg placed before him, showing a certain amount of enthusiasm. ‘It's about old Ray getting tight that morning. I've been thinking. Perhaps he wasn't so tight, you see.'

They stared at him and he hurried on, wrestling with his bacon in between remarks.

‘I don't know if you knew old Ray very well,' he said shyly, ‘but I did and I saw him pretty tight dozens of times. He used to weep, as a rule, and then thresh round a bit and finally sleep. I never saw him as chatty as he was on that day and yet so sort of thick and unsteady.' He hesitated. ‘I don't want to sneak on the old man,' he said, ‘but he told me something one day in strict confidence which may be rather important. It was about courage.'

‘Courage?'

‘Yes.' Sinclair flushed. ‘He used to go a bit kiddish and earnest at times. He was nuts about courage. He thought it was the one really big thing. He'd done some pretty brave stunts, you know, and I think he was frightfully proud of them really. We were talking one night about six weeks ago when he suddenly told me something and made me swear I'd never repeat it. I don't like doing it now, but he is dead, and, my hat! I'd hate them to disturb him. Ray told me that, in spite of everything he did about it, there was one
thing that put the wind up him. He said he had a complex about flying.'