Читать книгу The Fashion in Shrouds - Margery Allingham - Страница 5

Table of Contents

It was never Mr Campion’s custom to make an entrance. In early youth he had perfected the difficult art of getting into and out of rooms without fuss, avoiding both the defensive flourish and the despicable creep, but he swept into Papendeik’s grand salon like the rear guard of a conqueror, which in a way, of course, he was.

Lady Papendeik at work was a very different person from Tante Marthe in Val’s office. She appeared to be a good two inches higher, for one thing, and she achieved a curious sailing motion which was as far removed from ordinary walking as is the goose step in an exactly opposite direction. Mr Campion found himself stalking behind her as though to fast and martial music. It was quite an experience.

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 a 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 only find charm 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 dramatises 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 realise 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 civilised 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’ 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 connection 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 recognised 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 unself-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 purely 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.

Georgia put about.

“My pretty,” she said, stretching out both hands. “Come and comfort me with clothes. I’m in a tragedy.”

Her fine strong body was beautiful as she swung forward and a warmth of friendliness went out to meet the other girl. Val responded to it cautiously.

“I’ve got just the dress for it, whatever it is,” she said lightly. “The ultimate garment of all time.”

Georgia drew back. She looked pathetically hurt behind her smile.

“I’m afraid it’s a real tragedy,” she said reproachfully.

“My pet, I’m so sorry. What is it?” Val made the apology so unjustly forced from her and her eyes grew wary.

Georgia glanced over her shoulder before she spoke. Ramillies still stood swinging on his toes, his glance resting consideringly upon the small boy in the corner. Georgia shook her head.

“Tell me about the lovely dresses,” she said, and added before Val or Campion could speak, “Who is this?” a demand which brought Dell forward with the conviction that there had been a general disinclination to present him.

He shook hands with unexpected gaucherie and stood blinking at her, suffering no doubt from that misapprehension so common to shy folk, that he was not quite so clearly visible to her as she was to him.

Georgia regarded him with that glowing and intelligent interest which was her chief weapon of attack.

“The second last person on earth to find in a dress shop,” she said. “My dear, are you going to enjoy all this? Have you ever been to this sort of show before?”

“No,” he said and laughed. “I stayed to see you.”

Georgia blushed. The colour flowed up her throat and over her face with a charm no seventeen-year-old could have touched.

“That’s very nice of you,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m going to be very dull. Something rather beastly has happened to me and I’m just behaving disgustingly and blurting it out to everyone.”

It was a dangerous opening and might well have proved disastrous but that her gift of utter directness was a lodestone. Dell’s sudden gratified sense of kindly superiority was communicated to them all and he murmured something bald about seeing her in trouble once more.

“The Little Sacrifice?” she said quickly. “Oh, I adored that woman Jacynth. I found myself putting all I’d ever known or ever felt into her, poor sweetie. It was very nice of you to go and see me.”

From that moment her manner changed subtly. It was such a gradual metamorphosis, so exquisitely done, that Campion only just noticed it, but the fact remained that she began to remind him strongly of the heroine in The Little Sacrifice. Touches of the character crept into her voice, into her helpless little gestures, into her very attitude of mind, and he thought ungenerously that it would have been even more interesting, besides being much more easy to follow, if the original part had only been played in some strong foreign accent.

Dell was openly enchanted. He remained watching her with fascinated attention, his blue eyes smiling and very kind.

“It was a long time ago and all very sad and silly even then.” Georgia sounded both brave and helplessly apologetic. “He was such a dear, my sweet moody Richard. I knew him so awfully well. We were both innately lonely people and ... well, we were very fond of one another. When he simply vanished I was brokenhearted, but naturally I couldn’t admit it. Could I?”

She made a little fluttering appeal to them all to understand.

“One doesn’t, does one?” she demanded with that sudden frankness which, if it is as embarrassing, is also as entirely disarming as nakedness. “I mean, when one really is in love one’s so painfully self-conscious, so miserably mistrustful of one’s own strength. I’m talking about the real, rather tragic thing, of course. Then one’s so horribly afraid that this exquisite, precious, deliriously lovely sanctuary one’s somehow achieved may not be really solid, may not be one’s own for keeps. One’s so conscious all the time that one can be hurt beyond the bounds of bearing that in one’s natural pessimism one dreads disaster all the time, and so when something does happen one accepts it and crawls away somewhere. You do know what I mean, don’t you?”

They did, of course, being all adult and reasonably experienced, and Mr Campion, who was shocked, was yet grudgingly impressed. Her tremendous physical health and that quality which Dell had called “confiding” had clothed an embarrassing revelation of the ordinary with something rather charming. He glanced at Val.

She looked past him and did not speak aloud, although her lips moved. He thought he read the words “strip tease,” and regarded her with sudden respect.

Georgia did not let the scene drop.

“I’m so sorry,” she said helplessly. “This is all so disgustingly vulgar of me, but oh, my dears!—suddenly to see it on the placards, to make Ferdie leap out of the car and get a paper, to snatch it away from him and then to look and find it all true! They’ve found his skeleton, you see.”

Her eyes were holding them all and there was real wretchedness in the grey shadows.

“You never think of people you know having skeletons, do you?”

“My dear, how horrible!” Val’s ejaculation was startled out of her. “When did all this happen?”

“Now,” said Georgia miserably. “Now, just as I was coming here. I’d have gone home, my pet, but I couldn’t let you and everybody else down just when we were all so rushed. I didn’t realise it was going to have this dreadful loquacious effect upon me.”

“Darling, what are you talking about?” Ferdie Paul slipped his arm round her and drew her back against him. His face over her shoulder was dark and amused, but there was more in his voice than tolerance. “Forget it. You’ll upset yourself.”

Georgia shivered, smiled and released herself with a gentle dignity, directed, Campion felt, at himself and Dell. She glanced at her husband, who came forward promptly, his natural springy walk lending him a jauntiness which added considerably to his disturbing air of active irresponsibility.

“That’s right, Georgie,” he said in his flat staccato voice. “Forget the fellow if you can, and if you can’t don’t make an ass of yourself.”

Even he seemed to feel that this admonition might sound a trifle harsh to the uninitiated, for he suddenly smiled with that transfiguring, sunny happiness usually associated with early childhood. “What I mean to say is, a lovely girl looks very touching grizzling over a corpse but she looks damned silly doing it over a skeleton. She’s missed the boat. The great lover’s not merely dead, dearest; he’s dead and gone. Should I be a bounder if I asked for a drink?”

The last remark was directed towards Val with a quick-eyed charm which was ingratiating.

“Certainly not. You must all need one.” Val sounded thoroughly startled. She glanced at Rex, who had been hovering on the edge of the group, and he nodded and disappeared. Ferdie Paul resumed his hold on Georgia. He had a gently contemptuous way with her, as if she were a difficult elderly relative of whom he was fond.

“We’re going to see the great dress for the third act first,” he said. “I want to make sure that when Pendleton gets you by the throat he can only tear the left shoulder out. It’s got to be restrained and dignified. I don’t want you running about in your brassière. The whole danger of that scene is that it may go a bit vieux jeu if we don’t look out ... nineteen twenty-sixish or so. Lady Papendeik wants us to see the dress on the model first because apparently it’s pretty hot. Then I want you to get into it and we’ll run through that bit.”

Georgia stiffened.

“I’m not going to rehearse here in front of a lot of strangers,” she protested. “God knows I’m not temperamental, sweetheart, but there are limits. You’re not going to ask me to do that, Ferdie, not this afternoon of all times?”

“Georgia.” Paul’s arm had tightened, and Campion saw his round brown eyes fixed firmly upon the woman’s own with a terrifying quality of intelligence in them, as if he were trying to hypnotise some sense into her. “Georgia, you’re not going to be silly, are you, dear?”

It was an idiotic little scene, reminding Campion irresistibly of a jockey he had once heard talking to a refractory horse.

“We’ll go. Mr Campion and I will go, Miss Wells.” Alan Dell spoke hastily and Paul, looking up, seemed to see him for the first time.

“Oh no, that’s all right,” he said. “There’s only a few of us here. It’s a purely technical matter. You’re going to be reasonable, aren’t you, darling? You’re only a bit jittery because of the boy friend.”

Georgia smiled at him with unexpected tolerance and turned to Dell with a little deprecating grimace.

“My nerves have gone to pieces,” she said and it occurred to Mr Campion that she might easily be more accurate than she realised.

It was at this moment that Tante Marthe came over with one of her small coloured pages at her elbow.

“The Trumpet is on the phone, my dear,” she said. “Will you speak to them?”

Georgia’s hunted expression would have been entirely convincing if it had not been so much what one might have expected.

“All right,” she said heavily. “This is the horrible part of it all. This is what I’ve been dreading. Yes, I’ll come.”

“No.” Ramillies and Paul spoke together and paused to look at one another afterwards. It was the briefest interchange of glances and Mr Campion, who was watching them both, became aware for the first time that the undercurrent which he had been trying to define throughout the entire afternoon was an unusual, and in the circumstances incomprehensible, combination of alarm and excitement.

“No,” said Ramillies again. “Don’t say a thing.”

“Do you mean that?” She turned to him almost with eagerness and he did not look at her.

“No, dear, I don’t think I would.” Ferdie Paul spoke casually. “We’ll put out some sort of statement later if it’s necessary. It’s not a particularly good story so they won’t get excited. Tell them Miss Wells is not here. She left half an hour ago.”

The page went off obediently and Paul watched the child until it disappeared, his figure drooping and his prominent eyes thoughtful. Georgia looked at Dell, who moved over to her.

“That must be a very great relief to you,” he said.

She stared at him. “You understand, don’t you?” she said with sudden earnestness. “You really do.”

Mr Campion turned away rather sadly and became aware of Val. She was looking at the other woman and he caught her unawares. Once again she surprised him. Jealousy is one emotion but hatred is quite another and much more rare in a civilised community. Once it is seen it is not easily forgotten.