The Fashion In Shrouds (38 page)

Mr Campion stirred in his corner.

‘If I might suggest,' he said slowly, ‘if your man – I take it, it was a man – came into that place up the back stairs he must have known his way about;
ergo
he'd been there before. Do you think Flood's little packet of trouble could recognize a photograph?'

‘That's an idea, sir.' Pullen shot up. His energy was amazing and it flashed through Campion's mind that one could almost see his body pumping it out. ‘It won't be evidence but it might be useful. If we could only get something to jolt those greasy beggars in the next room out of their damned complacency it would be something.'

Oates unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out a bundle of photographs. They were all there, taken from illustrated papers or begged or borrowed from servants; Val, Georgia, Gaiogi, Tante Marthe, Ferdie, Alan Dell, even Mr Campion himself. Pullen gathered them up.

‘I'll mix 'em with the usual,' he said. ‘We'll see.'

As the door closed behind him Oates swung round in his chair and looked at Campion.

‘You're still on the blacking?'

‘Yes,' said Campion with a complete lack of hesitation which was unusual in him. ‘It's blackmail all right, Guv'nor. Think of it. What a place for a transaction of that kind! Complete safety. Complete secrecy. Our Caroline has used that place before for the same purpose. Andreas recognized her immediately and it wasn't a good photograph if
one had only seen her dead. Besides, my dear chap, how could she get into the place alone if they didn't know her? If this little Louis person is any good and he's been there long I should be very much inclined to show him a photograph of Portland-Smith. Don't you see, someone knew that place well. Whoever he was, he got Caroline Adamson to book a room there by promising her money. Then he sneaked across the yard and slipped up the stairs. He need not have met anybody. It was made for him. It was a place where muffled figures were always slipping in and out. The Mazarini mob used to use it for a paying-out place last year; did you know that? That's where Mazarini used to pay his thugs for services rendered on the racecourse.'

‘Is it? I didn't know that. When did you hear that?'

‘This afternoon, from a friend who gave me the name of the place as a likely dive.'

‘Oh, I see.' Oates glanced at the younger man with a smile that was only part amusement. ‘You and your friends,' he said. ‘
All
your friends.'

Mr Campion's expression grew serious.

‘I don't mind my friends' troubles,' he remarked feelingly, ‘but I draw a line when they get mixed up with the family.'

They were still eyeing each other when Pullen came in. He walked over to the desk and laid the photographs down without a word. His heavy face was blank and his eyes looked bloodshot.

‘Well, did he recognize anyone?' Oates was hopeful.

‘He did.' The inspector could barely trust himself to speak. ‘He knew 'em all. Why shouldn't he? They're all fairly well-known people. He knew Miss Wells and Mr Dell and Mrs Ferris and Laminoff, of course. He'd waited on every one of 'em, he said. He also recognized a photograph of the ex-Emperor of Germany, Sergeant Withers of the K Division, and the portrait of you, sir, as an inspector. He's worse than hopeless. Flood seems to understand about half he says, but I'm hanged if I do. I'll go back and have one more talk to those perishing Greeks. I can't keep 'em here all night without charging 'em and although there's plenty we could hold 'em for, I don't see much point in it. They won't run away. Why should they? I don't suppose the boys on the car have phoned yet, sir, have they?'

‘No, nothing. That's a forlorn hope, Inspector, I'm afraid. We didn't get on to it soon enough. I'll leave you to it. I've had forty-eight hours solid and I'm no longer intelligent. If you want me you know where you can find me.'

The phone bell answered him, and he pounced on the instrument hopefully, all trace of weariness receding from his eyes. Mr Campion had seen the same phenomenon in the face of an angler who had noticed a nibble when he was just about to wind in his line.

‘What? Yes, Superintendent Stanislaus Oates here. Yes, Sanderson speaking? Yes. You have? Really? Good man. She saw 'em, did she? Splendid! Saw the two brothers lifting a girl into the car? She thought the girl was what? Oh, drunk. Yes, of course. Fine. Bring her round. She's just what we want. What? What? Oh. Oh, I see. Oh. What a pity! No, no, of course. Of course not. Well, yes, yes, you may as well. Yes, Inspector Pullen will be here. Yes, right-o. Good-bye.'

He replaced the receiver and grimaced at them.

‘You heard that, did you? They've found a witness who saw the Greeks carry a girl out of the back door at two in the morning of the twenty-first. She thought the girl was drunk and took no notice of them. Unfortunately she's a vagrant and not a good witness. We could never put her in the box. She'd be discredited in five minutes. They're going to bring her round, but I don't see that she's going to help. There you are, Pullen; I'm sorry, but what do you expect in Augean Passage?'

The inspector thrust his hands into his pockets.

‘It's always the same with these cases,' he said. ‘Still, I'll get back to those two. This might rattle 'em. There's a chance. If only they'd play ball we might get a description of the man. That'd be something.'

‘If they saw him,' said Mr Campion.

Both men turned to look at him and he spread out his hands.

‘With a back entrance like that, why should anyone ever have seen him? Why shouldn't he have come and gone like any other of the shadows in that rats' nest? No one need ever have seen him there that night.'

‘Except the girl,' put in Oates. ‘She saw him and she
knew him. We're back where we started, Mr Campion. It's motive we want; motive and Miss Adamson's friends.'

‘Give me a week.' The demand was out of the younger man's mouth before he realized he had spoken. ‘Give me a week, Oates, before you stir up the dovecotes. The Chief won't like it if you do, the Colonial Office will be furious. What's the good of an exhumation order? What's the good of an unholy stink? What's the good of smearing all this appalling mud over people who don't even dream it exists? Give me a week, only a week.'

‘It'll take a week to get the Home Office to move,' said Oates.

ON THE SUNDAY
Amanda gave a formal sherry party to mark the breaking off of her engagement to Albert Campion.

It took place at her cottage on the river near the Alandel works and was one of those elaborately masochistic gestures which the modern cult for the proper sublimation of all the more commonplace emotions has made fashionable among the highly civilized.

Coming, as it did, at the end of one nightmare week and at the beginning of another, it seemed very appropriate and was almost, as Tante Marthe said, the only conceivable kind of celebration which one could decently bring oneself to face in the circumstances.

No one knew the cause of this new trouble, and most people were too worried to care, but the first impression, which was that young Pontisbright had put his foot down, was dispelled. The mischief lay between the two parties most concerned. So much was evident as soon as one set foot in the house.

Amanda's house was like Amanda, inasmuch as it was both small and astonishingly rational The main room, which, with a little kitchenette, comprised the whole of the ground floor, possessed one glass side which opened on to a steep lawn running down to the river, and was otherwise
individual, inasmuch as the furnishings had been taken over complete from the prim old lady who had lived there before, and had been made comfortable and attractive with anything which had taken Amanda's fancy, from a nice piece of machinery to a two-foot bowl of marigolds. The result of this marriage of tastes was a big, odd room in which a fine ‘tea-chest' clock and a plush-framed photograph of Edward the Seventh in a kilt lived in harmony with an architect's drawing-table and a magnificent Van Gogh.

Hal Fitton, Earl of Pontisbright, supported his sister at the gathering. He stood by her side, grave and old-fashioned as he had always been. At twenty he was a sturdy, serious young man with the family's eyes and hair and a double dose of the family's composure. The situation was one which appealed to his youthful sense of the dramatic, while appeasing his individual mania for decorum. He was very nice indeed to Mr Campion and frequently spoke to him, making it even more clear than if he had said so in so many words that the dissolution of the proposed partnership had been a matter of mutual arrangement, and that nothing unpleasant had been said or even thought on either side.

Amanda was at ease, if a trifle brittle, but Mr Campion was not so good. He looked hunted rather than harassed and there were fine lines running down his cheeks from ears to chin, as if his facial muscles were under particularly good control.

Val was inclined to be bitterly amused. She had come over with most of the others who had been lunching at Caesar's Court and she was, as never before, the complete professional woman, hard, experienced and aware of her responsibilities. Her tailored silk suit was a minor miracle. She looked unapproachable and, had it not been for her essential femininity, severe.

Ferdie Paul was there. He had come over with Gaiogi and his wife, and he stood in a corner, his quick brown eyes interested. Val fascinated him and the paralysing decency of the whole procedure evidently took his fancy, for he watched the brother and sister with a smile that was part genuine admiration.

Georgia arrived alone, her chauffeur driving. She caused a little sensation by appearing in white muslin, blue bows
and a picture hat, which, although decorative and eminently suitable to the weather, were out of keeping both with the last mood in which anyone present had seen her and the unfortunate nature of the gathering.

‘
Mon Dieu!
' said Tante Marthe aloud and turned away with interest, having caught sight of her own discreetly clad, silk-caped figure in a convex mirror.

Gaiogi alone seemed to appreciate the essential preposterous charm of the main idea of the party. He behaved as if he were at the funeral of an old enemy, looking about him with a kind of mock-solemn relish. Too, he alone seemed to have shaken off the real bond of calamity which encompassed them all. If ruin threatened, for him it was at least not yet. He talked earnestly in a low voice about trivialities and was delighted with Hal, whom he obviously took to be a particularly interesting English ‘piece'. But if Gaiogi could forget the main situation, the others were not so fortunate. After the first over-bright five minutes the morale broke down. The room was littered with Sunday papers and by the time Dell arrived, looking if anything a little more worn than Campion himself, the post-mortem upon them was in full swing.

The cheaper Press carried little new about the actual mystery. The Hakapopulous brothers had burst upon the world two days before and the photograph of ‘
Mr Andreas Hakapopulous, who has been questioned by the police in connexion with the death of beautiful Caroline Adamson (Miss Adamson was once a mannequin at a famous dress house)
', was still vivid enough in everyone's mind. So far the name of Ramillies had not appeared in print in connexion with the case, and the references to Papendeik's had been most carefully confined to the bare fact that the dead girl had once been in their employ, but what the laws of libel restrained in print had not been silenced in conversation, and the feature, or magazine, side of the family Sundays was littered with evidences of the trend of popular thought.

There was, in particular, an article by Lady Jevity called ‘
My life as a Mannequin. How I Saved Myself from the Dreaded Drug Habit. The Canker of the Upper Classes
,' which came as near being actionable as anyone dared go, and a catchpenny indictment headed
‘Hands off our Girls!'
by Honest John
McQuean, which began, ‘
In a little country morgue a lovely girl lies dead
', and ended with typical inconsequentiality, ‘
Will no one tell them drugs and lovely dresses are snares for little moths?
' printed in gothic letters.

Most of the other papers had something in the same vein, but
Oliphant's News
had taken another and more ominous line. They had merely written up Val very thoroughly. There was no reference to the crime in their article at all, but the house of Papendeik received a full-page spread adorned with Val's photograph and a Press picture of Georgia in a Val négligé. This publicity was a trifle suspicious in itself, but the writer of the copy had infused a touch of melancholy into her account which gave the whole thing the dreadful flavour of an obituary notice and left the uninitiated reader with the uncomfortable feeling that the end of the story would be sad and that he must wait until next week for it.

Georgia brought the ball out into the open field in her own matchless style.

‘It's very sweet of Alan, you know,' she said, smiling across at him. ‘Most people in his position would just keep away from us all, wouldn't they? I don't mean anything personal by that, Amanda. I know you and Albert just don't want to get married and that's all there is to that. Besides, you've got a family and a village and traditions and that sort of thing. But I mean, poor Alan is nothing to do with this and he could so easily just stay away, couldn't he? We all are a bit leprous just now. It's got to be faced. Do you know, my dears, I've been astonished. Quite a lot of people have been really awfully nice, which reminds me, what's the time?'

‘Half-past six,' said Ferdie, who appeared to be the only member of the party still coherent. ‘Got a boy friend?'

‘No, just a food appointment.' Georgia nodded to him, but glanced out of the front windows immediately afterwards and smoothed down her muslin frills with an expression of such tender artlessness on her lovely face that several people glanced at her sharply. After her original pronouncement normal reticence seemed a little affected and people began to talk freely.