The Fashion In Shrouds (25 page)

Campion raised his head sharply.

‘It's reached you too, has it?' he said. ‘Isn't that jolly? New York will get it to-morrow when the
Queen Mary
docks and Uncles Henry and Edwin will mail their protests from the outposts of Empire a couple of months from now. That's Georgia. That's what comes of emancipating the wrong type of female. For a thousand years they breed a species to need
a keeper and then they let it off the chain and expect it to behave. Progress has made things damned difficult. Twenty years ago Val would have been forced to bring an action for slander, but nowadays, when we have decided that quarrelling is childish, friendship is the fashion, and we're all one big unhappy family, there's nothing to be done at all except to produce an even better story to contradict the first, and that, let me tell you, is not so frightfully easy.'

Amanda slid down into the chair and sat looking up at him gravely. Her heart-shaped face was intelligent and he noticed again in an absent-minded fashion how much her appearance had improved. She would never have Val's extraordinary elegance, but there was strength and breeding in her fine bones and her personality was as refreshing as the small clear streams of her own county.

‘It's this hand-of-fate method that's the trouble,' she remarked. ‘We can't get at anything, not even the body. I suppose those doctors were all right?'

‘Oh, I think so.' He smiled at her seriousness. ‘They'd hardly risk their own necks. Why should they? No, I fancy they were genuinely fogged, just as I am, and I think that whoever arranged that Ramillies should die – and I'm open to bet that somebody did – knew that any ordinary doctor would be taken in. The P.M. didn't disclose anything at all, you see, not even why the fellow died. I wish that Adamson girl had turned up.'

‘You think she meant to come?'

‘Well, I wondered,' he began and shot her a glance which was half amused and half genuinely grateful. ‘What a pleasant girl you are, Amanda. Did you deduce that from my reported telephone conversation? You comfort me. Thank you. I need it. I wasn't quite my usual coruscating self this morning. But when she phoned I admit it did go through my mind that she might have a girl friend in the box with her. There was a distinct flavour of third person in the air and if so, you see, the whole thing may be a discreet inquiry to find out just how much I'm interested.'

‘In that case there's something definite to know, which is a comfort, and the sooner we find her the better.' Amanda rose with determination. ‘What are you looking like that for?'

Mr Campion had taken off his spectacles and was staring absently at the carpet. He looked older and, as Amanda had said, a trifle bleached.

‘I was thinking,' he said slowly, ‘I was thinking that suppose we do find out who got rid of Sieur Ramillies, and supposing, when we do, it's not quite such a good telling story after all?'

‘Then we shut up about it, of course,' said Amanda cheerfully. ‘It's our hanging. Where do we go from here? If you know anything you'd better tell me. It'll save time and I'm bound to find out in the end.'

He sighed. ‘I don't know much. During my little mug round after the elusive Miss Adamson I picked up a crumb here and there. Nothing sensational like your Boot's Hotel bomb. That's the irony of life. Poor old Blest and I go nosing about like a pair of bloodhounds for days on end and discover practically nothing, and you go dancing into your horrible home from home and discover Ramillies's name and address in the visitors' book. Just before you descended on me and we went to the Tulip that night Blest had been round with the useful information that someone besides myself had been looking into a trifling matter in Georgia's past, and since then I have discovered that it was Caroline Adamson. That's one crumb. I then found out from various Aunt Maggies that our Caroline was the daughter of a former employee of Gaiogi Laminoff's and that she began her career at the Old Beaulieu when Gaiogi was managing It. She was the girl who sat in a box in the vestibule and exchanged one's hat and coat for a ravishing smile and an artificial gardenia. After that he seems to have got Ferdie Paul to give her a chance on tour, and when everyone was perfectly certain that although the flesh was beautiful the voice was foul, she landed a mannequin job at Papendeik's. That's the other crumb.'

‘It's a bit,' said Amanda. ‘Have you been to see Gaiogi?'

‘About Miss Adamson? No.'

‘But why not? He's the obvious person to go to. He knows more about her than anyone. Let's go now.'

She was already half-way to the door, but paused, when he did not follow her, to stand regarding him with open suspicion in her eyes.

‘Can I say something rather rude?' she said. ‘If you're thinking that there's the least chance that the story about Val is true you're nuts. You don't mind me putting it like that, do you?'

‘Not at all. I agree with you.'

‘Thank goodness for that. Let's go to Gaiogi at once.'

‘I don't think I would.'

‘Why not?'

Mr Campion looked uncomfortable beneath her steady gaze.

‘It's a little question of self-advertisement,' he explained evasively. ‘While I admire your forthrightness, Amanda, it gives me pins and needles in the soles of my feet. In view of everything I think Ferdie Paul is our most likely bet. He'll know who she was on tour with. In situations like this the girl friends have a tendency to cling together.'

‘All right.' Amanda sounded dubious. ‘He has a flat over the Sovereign Theatre, the one Sir Richard built for Lucy Gay. He's not likely to be in at this hour of the night, but we can try.'

‘How true, my sweet, how true,' said Mr Campion and reached for the telephone.

Ferdie was not only in but in cheerful mood. His thin voice, which suited so ill with his appearance, squeaked heartily over the wire.

‘I've got to leave town in forty minutes. Come round and have a drink. I'll tell you all I know about the bit, which isn't much. Is young Amanda with you? She is? Good God, what are you worrying about another woman for? I'll expect you both then, in five minutes. Fine. Good-bye.'

The flat, which a great actor-manager had built for a charming leading lady on top of the Sovereign Theatre, was, if sumptuous in the main, a trifle furtive about the entrance. The back of the theatre possessed a yard, now used by privileged persons as a car park, and in the yard beside the stage door was another, smaller and even meaner in appearance, giving on to a flight of uninviting concrete stairs. Once inside, however, the atmosphere changed, and Campion and Amanda came up in a small hand-worked passenger lift to a front door as impressive as any in Victorian London.

They were admitted by a Japanese man-servant, who led
them across a narrow hallway to the main living-room, which was a quarter as large as a church and not at all unlike one in structural design.

Ferdie Paul, who had employed most of the great
décor
men of the day in his productions, had not permitted their work to get into his home. The vast untidy room had grown. No man on earth could have sat down in cold blood and visualized such jolly chaos.

Ferdie himself sat on a gigantic chesterfield with his feet up, and around him were manuscripts, books, papers, sketches, and even patterns of material, in happy confusion.

On the floor before an open suitcase knelt a now familiar figure. She rose as they came in and stood waiting to be introduced with the same hidden discomfort which Campion had noticed in her when he had first seen her at Papendeik's dress show and later with Ferdie at the Tulip.

‘Haven't you met Anna? Surely? Oh, you must meet Anna. She's the most extraordinary woman in London.'

Ferdie rose lazily.

‘Lady Amanda, Mrs Fitch. Anna, the Lady Amanda Fitton. Anna, Mr Albert Campion; Campion, Mrs Fitch. And now, darling, I shan't need four pairs of socks for twelve hours in Frogland. Would you like to be barmaid?'

He sank down on the couch again, moved a pile of loose papers to make room for Amanda beside him, and waved Campion to an arm-chair opposite. Mrs Fitch mixed the drinks. As she moved about her home her position in it was as clear as if she had announced it in lights round her head, and it was odd that the fashionable little hat which she wore on one side of her carefully waved hair, and the fact that her bag and gloves lay conspicuously on the side-table, should have made this position even more apparent. She was self-contained and polite without being friendly, yet conveyed that because they were friends of Ferdie's they were delightful and exalted beings on whom it was her duty and privilege to wait.

She was the mistress of the house and the handmaid of Ferdie Paul, and it occurred suddenly to Mr Campion that what she really represented was an old-fashioned, pre-Chaucerian wife, entirely loyal, completely subject, her fortunes inescapably her husband's own. The notion amused
him, since he reflected that, in view of all the excitement in the past century over the legal status of females, the only way for a man to achieve this natural if somewhat elementary relationship with a woman at the present time was to persuade her to love him and never to marry her.

He glanced at her with interest. She could never have been beautiful and the cut of her dark gown showed ugly little spaniel haunches and plump elbows, but her face was placid and there was a veiled expression in her pretty diamond-shaped eyes which might have hidden intelligence. Ferdie was supremely unaware of her save as an added comfort.

‘I won't drink, if you'll forgive me,' he said to Campion. ‘I may have a bumpy crossing to-night. I've got to run down to Caesar's Court to catch one of their planes. Bellairs is going over at ten-thirty and we fixed up to share a machine. Do you know Bellairs, the furniture man? That gives me six hours' sleep when I get to Paris and then a couple of appointments and I can catch the evening plane back. It's very convenient, this service. I used to have to stagger backwards and forwards once every six weeks. Now I can nip over every three and do the whole thing inside twenty-four hours.'

He glanced at his watch and laughed at the other man, his round brown eyes impudent.

‘Is your car downstairs? You wouldn't like to run me down to Caesar's Court? It wouldn't take you fifty minutes there and back.'

‘Not at all. I'd like to.' Campion glanced at Amanda questioningly and she answered at once. ‘I'll wait for you here if I may.' She looked at Mrs Fitch, who smiled politely.

‘That's grand,' said Ferdie, obviously delighted at getting his own way. ‘My car's laid up. I hate cabs. We'll start in ten minutes. Anna, no one's drinking. Give me a brandy.'

‘I shouldn't.' It was the first definite statement they had heard her make. She spoke flatly and placidly.

‘“Shouldn't” be blowed! She treats me as though I was ill already. One small brandy.'

She refused to hear him and there was quite a tussle between them, Ferdie laughing and the woman mutely obstinate. In the end he got his drink and sat sipping it, laughing at her over the glass.

‘It may be the best thing for me,' he said. ‘It hasn't proved so in the past, but still, one never knows. That's the exciting part of life. Isn't that so, Campion?'

‘It adds to the general gaiety,' agreed Campion affably ‘What about Miss Caroline Adamson?'

‘Zut! Before the
jeune fille
?' Ferdie set down his glass and raised his eyebrows. He looked more baroque and Byronic even than usual, with his dark-skinned face shining and his eyes dancing. ‘Oh, I didn't know. I was trying to be discreet. I don't know where she's living at the moment, but I remember the bit well. She got the sack from Papendeik's when poor old Ray dressed her up as Georgia and took her to the Tulip to annoy his wife. She ran around with Ray a bit, I believe. I say, we ought to go, old man. I'll tell you all I know about Caroline on the way down, and when you get there you can talk to Gaiogi about her. He'll know where she is. If Gaiogi feels like it he can put his hands on anyone in London within twenty-four hours. (Is that case packed, Anna? Send Yusai down with it.) What do you want Caroline for, Campion, or aren't you telling?'

‘She phoned me this morning and made an appointment with me which she didn't keep,' said Mr Campion mildly and with perfect truth.

Ferdie Paul stared at him, a questioning smile curling his mouth.

‘And when you called the number she gave you they put you on to the Zoo?' he suggested, grinning at Amanda.

‘That's right, and I answered the phone,' she said cheerfully. ‘He has had a beastly evening. You'd better hurry. Don't smash the car up. We may go to the races to-morrow.'

‘Oh no, be careful.' The words had escaped the other woman before she could stop them and they saw her for a moment with the visor up. The expression in her eyes was not intelligent. Its mute, adoring stupidity was startling.

Ferdie laughed at her good-humouredly.

‘She has a theory I'm going to drop to pieces at any moment,' he said, inviting them to join in his amusement at her. ‘We must go. Have I got everything? Is that contract in the portfolio, Anna? And the sketches? Good. Right. Last plane to-morrow if I don't miss it. Good-bye. Come on Campion.'

He did not kiss the woman but rubbed her solid shoulder affectionately as he passed her and, having said farewell to Amanda, bustled out of the room, taking with him an atmosphere of nervous excitement which was somehow backless and ephemeral, like a methylated spirit flame. As he descended the few steps to the lift they heard his thin voice rising heartily:

‘I warn you of one thing; Caroline's a good deal older than you think.'

Mrs Fitch stood watching the door for a moment. In the arrested movement she looked shorter and stockier than ever, but with Ferdie's going her poise increased. The handmaid vanished and the mistress of the house remained.