The Fashion In Shrouds (4 page)

The Salon was golden. Val held that a true conceit is only a vulgarity in the right place and had done the thing thoroughly.

The room itself had been conceived in the grand manner. It was very long and high, with seven great windows leading out on to a stone terrace with bronzes, so that the general effect might easily have become Period had not the very pale gold monotone of the walls, floor and furnishings given it a certain conscious peculiarity which, although satisfactory to the eye, was yet not sufficiently familiar to breed any hint of ignorant contempt.

The practical side of the colour-scheme, which had really determined the two ladies to adopt it and which was now quite honestly forgotten by both of them, was that as a background for fine silk or wool material there is nothing so flattering as a warm, polished metal. Also, as Tante Marthe had remarked in an unguarded moment, ‘gold is so
comforting,
my dears, if you can really make it unimportant.'

So Mr Campion tramped through pale golden pile and was confronted at last by a vivid group of very human people, all silhouetted, framed and set and thus brought into startling relief against a pale golden wall. He was aware first of a dark face and then a fair one, a small boy of all unexpected things and afterwards, principally and completely, of Georgia Wells.

She was bigger than he had thought from the auditorium and now, without losing charm, more coarse. She was made up under the skin, as it were, designed by nature as a poster rather than a pen drawing.

He was aware that her eyes were large and grey, with long strong lashes and thick pale skin round them. Even the brown flecks in the grey irises seemed bolder and larger than is common and her expression was bright and shrewd and so frank that he felt she must have known him for some time.

She kissed Lady Papendeik ritualistically upon both cheeks, but the gesture was performed absently and he felt that her attention was never diverted an instant from himself.

‘Mr Campion?' she echoed. ‘Really? Albert Campion?'

Her voice, which, like everything else about her, was far stronger and more flexible than the average, conveyed a certain wondering interest and he understood at once that she knew who he was, that she had seen the newspapers and was now considering if there was some fortunate coincidence
in their meeting or if it were not fortunate or not a coincidence.

‘Ferdie, this is Mr Campion.
You
know. Mr Campion, this is Ferdie Paul.'

The dark face resolved itself into a person. Ferdie Paul was younger than Mr Campion had expected. He was a large, plumpish man who looked like Byron. He had the same dark curling hair that was unreasonably inadequate on crown and temples, the same proud, curling mouth which would have been charming on a girl and was not on Mr Paul, and the same short, strong, uniform features which made him just a little ridiculous, like a pretty bull.

When he spoke, however, the indolence which should have been part and parcel of his make-up was surprisingly absent. He was a vigorous personality, his voice high and almost squeaky, with a nervous energy in it which never descended into irritability.

There was also something else about him which Campion noticed and could not define. It was a peculiar uncertainty of power, like pinking in a car engine, a quality of labour under difficulties which was odd and more in keeping with his voice than his appearance or personality.

He glanced at Campion with quick, intelligent interest, decided he did not know or need him, and dismissed him from his mind in a perfectly friendly fashion.

‘We can begin at once, can't we?' he said to Lady Papendeik. ‘It's absolutely imperative that they should be quite right.'

‘They are exquisite,' announced Tante Marthe coldly, conveying her irrevocable attitude in one single stroke.

Paul grinned at her. His amusement changed his entire appearance. His mouth became more masculine and the fleeting glimpse of gold stopping in his side teeth made him look, for some reason, more human and fallible.

‘You're a dear, aren't you?' he said and sounded as if he meant it.

Lady Papendeik's narrow eyes, which seemed to be all pupil, flickered at him. She did not smile, but her thin mouth quirked and it occurred to Campion, who was watching them, that they were the working brains of the gathering. Neither of them were artists but they were the masters
of artists, the Prosperos of their respective Ariels, and they had a very healthy admiration for one another.

By this time new visitors had arrived and were drifting towards the quilted settees between the windows. Rex was very much in evidence. He had lost his anger but retained his pathos, interrupting it at times with little coy exuberances always subdued to the right degree of ingratiating affability.

Campion noticed one woman in particular, a very correctly dressed little matron whose excellent sartorial taste could not quite lend her elegance, finding him very comforting. He wondered who she was and why she should receive such deference. Rex, he felt certain, would genuinely find charm only where it was politic that charm should be found, yet she did not by her manner appear to be very rich nor did she seem to belong to anybody. He had little time to observe her or anyone else, however, for Georgia returned to him.

‘I'm so interested in you,' she said with a frankness which he found a little overwhelming. ‘I'm not at all sure you couldn't be useful to me.'

The naïveté of the final remark was so complete that for a second he wondered if she had really made it, but her eyes, which were as grey as tweed suiting and rather like it, were fixed on his own and her broad, beautiful face was earnest and friendly.

‘Something rather awful has happened to me this afternoon,' she went on, her voice husky. ‘They've found the skeleton of a man I adored. I can't help talking about it to somebody. Do forgive me. It's the shock, you know.'

She gave him a faint apologetic smile and it came to him with surprise that she was perfectly sincere. He learnt a great deal about Georgia Wells at that moment and was interested in her. The ordinary hysteric who dramatizes everything until she loses all sense of proportion and becomes a menace to the unsuspecting stranger was familiar to him, but this was something new. For the moment at any rate Georgia Wells was genuine in her despair and she seemed to be regarding him not as an audience but as a possible ally, which was at least disarming.

‘I ought not to blurt it out like this to a stranger,' she said.
‘I only realize how terrible these things are when I hear myself saying them. It's disgusting. Do forgive me.'

She paused and looked up into his face with sudden childlike honesty.

‘It is a frightful shock, you know.'

‘Of course it is,' Campion heard himself saying earnestly. ‘Terrible. Didn't you know he was dead?'

‘No. I had no idea.' The protest was hearty and convincing, but it lacked the confiding quality of her earlier announcements and he glanced at her sharply. She closed her eyes and opened them again.

‘I'm behaving damnably,' she said. ‘It's because I've heard so much about you I feel I know you. This news about Richard has taken me off my balance. Come and meet my husband.'

He followed her obediently and it occurred to him as they crossed the room that she had that rare gift, so rare that he had some difficulty in remembering that it was only a gift, of being able to talk directly to the essential individual lurking behind the civilized façade of the man before her, so that it was impossible for him to evade or disappoint her without feeling personally responsible.

‘Here he is,' said Georgia. ‘Mr Campion, this is my husband.'

Campion's involuntary thought on first meeting Sir Raymond Ramillies was that he would be a particularly nasty drunk. This thought came out of the air and was not inspired by anything faintly suggestive of the alcoholic in the man himself. From Ramillies's actual appearance there was nothing to indicate that he ever drank at all, yet when Campion was first confronted by that arrogant brown face with the light eyes set too close together and that general air of irresponsible power, the first thing that came into his mind was that it was as well that the fellow was at least sober.

They shook hands and Ramillies stood looking at him in a way that could only be called impudent. He did not speak at all, but seemed amused and superior without troubling to be even faintly antagonistic.

Mr Campion continued to regard him with misgiving and all the odd stories he had heard about this youthful
middle-aged man with the fine-sounding name returned to his mind. Ramillies had retired from a famous regiment after the Irish trouble, at which times fantastic and rather horrible rumours had been floating about in connexion with his name. There had been a brief period of sporting life in the shires and then he had been given the Governorship of Ulangi, an unhealthy spot on the West Coast, a tiny serpent of country separating two foreign possessions. There the climate was so inclement that he was forced to spend three months of the year at home, but it was hinted that he contrived to make his exile not unexciting. Campion particularly remembered a pallid youngster who had been one of a party to spend a month at the Ulangi Residency and who had been strangely loth to discuss his adventures there on his return. One remark had stuck in Campion's mind: ‘Ramillies is a funny bird. All the time you're with him you feel he's going to get himself hanged or win the V.C. then and there before your eyes. Wonderful lad. Puts the wind up you.'

Ramillies was quiet enough at the moment. He had made no remark of any kind since their arrival, but had remained standing with his feet apart and his hands behind him. He was swinging a little on his toes and his alert face wore an expression of innocence which was blatantly deceptive. Campion received the uncomfortable impression that he was thinking of something to do.

‘I've just blurted out all my misery about Richard.' Georgia's deep voice was devoid of any affectation and indeed achieved a note of rather startling sincerity. ‘I had no idea how frightfully shaken up I am. You know who Mr Campion is, don't you, Raymond?'

‘Yes, of course I do.' Ramillies glanced at his wife as he spoke and his thin sharp voice, which had yet nothing effeminate about it, was amused. He looked at Campion and spoke to him as though from a slight distance. ‘Do you find that sort of thing terribly interesting? I suppose you do or you wouldn't do it. There's a thrill in it, is there, hunting down fellows?'

The interesting thing was that he was not rude. His voice, manner and even the words were all sufficiently offensive to warrant one knocking him down, but the general effect
was somehow naïve. There was no antagonism there at all: rather something wistful in the final question.

Mr Campion suddenly remembered him at school, a much older boy who had gone on to Sandhurst at the end of Campion's first term, leaving a banner of legend behind him. With a touch of snobbism which he recognized as childish at the time he refrained from mentioning the fact.

‘The thrill is terrific,' he agreed solemnly. ‘I frequently frighten myself into a fit with it.'

‘Do you?' Again there was the faint trace of real interest.

Georgia put her arm through Campion's, an un-self-conscious gesture designed to attract his attention, which it did.

‘Why did you come to see this dress show?'

He felt her shaking a little as she clung to him.

‘I wanted to meet you,' he said truthfully. ‘I wanted to talk to you.'

‘About Richard? I'll tell you anything I know. I want to talk about him.'

While there was no doubt about her sincerity there was a suggestion of daring in her manner, an awareness of danger without the comprehension of it, which gave him his first real insight into her essential character and incidentally half startled the life out of him.

‘You said he was dead, Raymond.' There was a definite challenge in her voice and Campion felt her quivering like a discharging battery at his side.

‘Oh yes, I knew the chap was dead.' Ramillies was remarkably matter of fact and Campion stared at him.

‘How did you know?'

‘Thought he must be, else he'd have turned up once I'd gone back to Africa and Georgia was alone.' He made the statement casually but with conviction, and it dawned upon the other man that he was not only indifferent to any construction that might be put upon his words but incapable of seeing that they might convey any other meaning.

Georgia shuddered. Campion felt the involuntary movement and was puzzled again, since it did not seem to be inspired by fear or disgust. He had the unreasonable impression that there was something more like pleasure at the root of it.

‘If it wouldn't upset you to talk about him,' he ventured, looking down at her, ‘I'd like to hear your impression of his mental condition the last time you saw him . . . if you're sure you don't mind.'

‘My dear, I
must
talk!' Georgia's cry came from the heart, or seemed to do so, but the next instant her grip on his arm loosened and she said in an entirely different tone: ‘Who's that coming over here with Val?'

Campion glanced up and was aware of a faint sense of calamity.

‘That?' he murmured guiltily. ‘Oh, that's Alan Dell, the aeroplane chap.'

‘Introduce us,' said Georgia. ‘I think he wants to meet me.'

Val came across the room purposefully and it occurred to Mr Campion that she looked like
The Revenge
sailing resolutely into battle with her pennants flying. She looked very fine with her little yellow coxcomb held high and every line of her body flowing with that particular kind of femininity which is neat and precisely graceful. He sighed for her. He was prepared to back the Spanish galleon every time.

Alan Dell came beside her. Having once met the man, Campion discovered that his shy and peculiarly masculine personality was now completely apparent and that his first superficial impression of him had vanished.