Death in High Heels

by Christianna Brand

  “Don’t be silly, Toria, there’s only a few grains there,” said Rachel as Irene bustled forward. “Put the rest of the stuff on my table and I’ll help Irene pick up the bits. Here you are,” she added a moment later, tipping half a dozen grains of crystal on to the rest of the heap; “that’s most of it. Sorry, Rene, my pet, but it wasn’t very bad.”

  Irene threw two or three crystals on to the little pile, and dusted her hands over it. “Supposing Mr. Bevan had come in or a customer, and found us picking dirt off the carpet!” she said, irritably. “I do think you two are inconsiderate. It’s so childish.” She went off to her desk in the corner of their little room and turned her back on them.

  Rachel and Toria tipped the crystals on to a sheet of paper and began rubbing feverishly at the hat. Twenty minutes’ work showed little improvement. Judy strolled over from the mannequins’ room and stood watching them, automatically going through her tummy exercises and inquiring anxiously as to the reduction of her almost non-existent behind. She was a curly-haired blond who would one day be Rubenesque and was for ever preoccupied with the postponement of this tragedy. Aileen, who ate heartily without ever suffering the slightest deviation in her measurements, was her envy and despair; she said so now as the elegant figure drifted past, on a languid progress down from the workroom.

  “It’s no use being cross with me, dear,” said Aileen, unruffled. “If I went to fat like you do I’d just starve, I wouldn’t eat a thing; not a sausage,” she added, applying this phrase literally for the first, and probably only, time in her life. Her wandering attention was diverted to the panama. “What on earth are you doing to Rachel’s hat?”

  “Cleaning it,” said Rachel, “but it’s still pretty mucky.”

  Aileen picked up the hat and perched it on her red-gold hair. “It looks like a million dollars on you,” said Rachel, with a characteristic mixture of chagrin and laughter. A twang of Hoxton came out in Aileen’s carefully modulated Mayfair voice as she said with studied indifference that she would give ten bob for it.

  “Got any money?” asked Toria, before Rachel could reply. Aileen confessed, unconcerned, that she hadn’t a sausage, and strolled away with Judy, grumbling without rancour about the new grey model.

  Cecil came through the silver doors with a customer and stood clapping girlish, impatient hands. “Miss Irene, Miss Irene…. I want you, please. And Miss Aileen, fetch Miss Doon…. ask her to bring up the new peacock silk we got in last week. You’re going to adore it, Lady Bale, you really are. It’s the loveliest thing, it’ll suit your delicate colouring down to the ground, I’m really quite excited about it.…,” He danced round her, draping and pinning, pushing back his smooth, fair hair from his forehead. Lady Bale raised leaden eyes in a mud-coloured face and said that she was sure she would like anything Mr. Cecil chose for her. “Only nothing elaborate, Mr. Cecil, just cut quite plain, with a vee neck; you know I don’t like these naked shoulders!”

  Cecil, nearly swooning at the idea of his peacock silk creation with a vee neck, nevertheless controlled himself into a semblance of acquiescence, and Doon at last gathered the lengths of satin and chiffon into her arms and prepared to descend to her basement; on her way she paused at the door of the salesgirls’ room to ask what they were doing.

  “Cleaning Rachel’s hat. There hasn’t been a soul in all the morning, except this old cow with Cissie, and we’ve had nothing else to do.”

  “The workroom would have done it for you.”

  “Oh, the showroom’s rather out of favour upstairs since that idiot Aileen smuggled out the new chiffon model to wear at a party and tore it right across the hem and had to take it up to them to be mended. Gregory found them doing it and asked awkward questions. Then Irene seemed to think that this stuff would do the trick, but it hasn’t—not the hat trick, anyway.”

  “You’re very humorous to-day,” said Rachel, laughing. “She made a lovely one this morning in the chemist’s … what was it you said, Toria?”

  Victoria proudly related her joke about Gregory and the nine lives.

  “Would it be any good for a plain white straw, do you think?” asked Doon, having paid suitable tribute.

  “Goodness knows, my dear. You can have some and try, if you like.”

  “I may as well if you don’t want it all. I can’t take it now, with all this stuff in my arms, but I’ll send Macaroni up for some.”

  Macaroni was Doon’s secretary, so christened for reasons obscure enough in the beginning but now lost in the mists of time. She was a plump, dark maiden, who giggled and wept with equal facility and she professed a sentimental attachment for Doon, who treated her with kindly contempt. She arrived now, lumbering up the stairs on her half-comprehended mission, and pocketing the small screw of paper which Rachel gave her, picked up the sheet containing the remaining amount of crystals and asked with bovine playfulness what they were.

  “They’re poison, that’s what they are,” said Rachel, sharply. “Put it down, child, for goodness’ sake.” She swung round as she spoke and Macaroni, startled by the irritation in her voice, fumbled to return the paper and finally dropped it, crystals and all, on to the floor.

  At that moment Bevan, accompanied by Gregory, appeared in the doorway.

  3

  “What’s going on here?” said Bevan, angrily. “What’s all this mess? and what did I hear you saying about poison?”

  “It’s my fault, Mr. Bevan,” apologized Rachel. “It’s oxalic acid and I’ve been cleaning a hat with it, and I’m afraid it’s got spilt.”

  “Oxalic acid? Good heavens, what are you doing with that stuff all over the place? Where did you get it?”

  “We—I bought it at the chemist’s, Mr. Bevan.”

  “Rachel and I did,” amended Victoria.

  “But, my dear Mrs. Gay, this is most terribly dangerous stuff,” said Bevan, ignoring Victoria and addressing himself to Rachel. “Half of what you’ve got there would kill a man. Surely you can’t just buy it at a chemist’s?”

  “Yes, you can, Mr. Bevan. He has to know who you are, but you don’t have to sign for it or anything.”

  “Nonsense, they have no business to sell you such stuff. Which chemist gave it to you?”

  “It was Mr. Mitchell, across the road, Mr. Bevan. But honestly, I’m sure it’s quite all right for him to let us have it; he doesn’t know our names, I suppose, but he knows us very well: we’re always going in there for soap and things—” Rachel cast a glance at Gregory, who stood behind Bevan, just outside the doorway.

  Bevan stooped and picked up a few grains of the powder in the palm of his hand. Gregory, looking over his shoulder, said, with a virtuous sniff: “I’ll clear it all up for you, Mr. Bevan.”

  “No, no, don’t touch it. Mr. Cecil—Mr. Cecil, come here, please. Did you know the girls had this dangerous stuff in the showroom?”

  Cecil came bounding across the room. “No, I didn’t, Mr. Bevan. I don’t know anything at all about it; I’ve been with a client all the morning, and really, Mr. Bevan, it does take all one’s mind creating for a customer, especially when one doesn’t feel well, and I don’t feel at all well this morning; I can’t be looking after the girls and contacting the customers, Mr. Bevan, really—”

  “Well, see to it that this stuff is cleared up and destroyed—destroyed, please.”

  “You don’t expect me to brush it up myself, I suppose, Mr. Bevan?” cried Cecil, on a rising note. The tears came into his eyes and he wrung his hands hysterically.

  Bevan turned away impatiently and marched downstairs. Gregory took Cecil by the arm. “There, Mr. Cecil,” she said, fixing him with her unsmiling grey eyes, “don’t bother about it any more. I’ll send Mrs. Harris to sweep it all up and then she can hand it over to you and you can get rid of it. I really do think, Rachel, that you might be a little less childish, when Mr. Bevan has so much to think about just now, what with the new branch and so on; this isn’t a nursery, dear, is it? You should try not to be so irresponsibl
e….” She hurried downstairs in deep disgust to give orders to the charwoman. Victoria muttered rudely; Irene, from her corner, stared angrily after the retreating form; Rachel made a vulgar grimace; the two mannequins appeared from their room and said that, honestly, Gregory was a perfect bitch; even Cecil, who owed her nothing but gratitude over the whole affair, looked after her with indignant, querulous dislike, and Mrs. ’Arris, labouring up the stairs with her dustpan and broom, announced that there was two ways of asking a body to do anything, a pleasant way and an unpleasant way, and that that Miss Gregory fairly made her boil.

  But it was Doon who died.

  4

  Victoria and Rachel sat in a clean, impersonal little room in the great hospital, and waited for Doon to die. “It’s strange to think what a lot of emotions must have gone on in this room,” Victoria said, gazing round at the blank green walls and rows of stiff-backed chairs. “It looks as if nobody but us had ever even been into it; but I suppose as much agony has gone on in here, agony in people’s minds, I mean, as in any other place in London. It always seems to me as if all the thoughts must be tangled up just under the ceiling in a place like this, not able to get out. Have you ever felt like that?”

  “Don’t be whimsical, my pet; and you look awful, you’ve got an absolute moustache of dirt!”

  “It’s because I will keep on rubbing my nose on the back of my hand,” said Victoria, ruefully. “I’ve always got a filthy face at the end of the day. What time is it?”

  “Nearly eleven. This is hell, Toria. Why did we ever take it on?”

  “We couldn’t very well help it, could we? After all, poor Doon, it would be a bit off if there was nobody at all to worry about her; her friends aren’t the kind of people who are much good in a crisis, and anyway, we’ve no idea where any of them live. It’s funny how little you can know about a person, even when you work with them all day long.”

  “All we really know is that she lived in a lousy room in Guilford Street and put up with an awful old landlady, because nobody minded what she did there.”

  “And we also know what she did there. She certainly made no secret about it. And we know that she came from Australia.”

  “New Zealand, darling.”

  “Well, New Zealand; she hasn’t got any relations over here, has she?”

  “Not a soul. We couldn’t have left her to die all by herself.”

  “Do you really think she’s going to die?” said Rachel.

  “The Sister seemed to think so, Ray, didn’t she? I feel awful about the oxalic acid.”

  “I don’t see how she could have taken any, Toria, honestly I don’t. It wasn’t as if we left it lying about; and we told her it was poison, so that she could hardly have eaten any by mistake…. I wonder what happened to the lot we gave her to do her white straw with. She couldn’t have taken any of that, I suppose? You don’t think for a moment she could have done it on purpose, do you?”

  “Why on earth should she, Rachel? She was perfectly happy; even if Bevan was sending Gregory to Deauville instead of her, it meant that she would get a rise and be kingpin at the shop, and she’d have been able to stay near him, which was all she really cared about just lately. There was nothing to commit suicide for.”

  “I suppose she was just as keen on the old swine as ever?”

  “Oh, I think so, darling, don’t you? or if she wasn’t it only meant that she’d fallen for somebody else; she never fell out of love for any other reason, and she was always doing it.”

  “Perhaps it was because Bevan’s going off her a bit?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Victoria, thoughtfully. “I don’t believe she saw it, any more than Gregory realized that she’d been completely cut out by Doon. Doon was awfully blind in that way—is, I mean—how awful! I keep talking about her as if she were dead already. What I was going to say was that she’s quite insensitive to other people’s feelings and reactions and things. After all, she goes blithely through the shop and never realizes that she isn’t beloved by everybody, and, when you come to think of it, she isn’t beloved by anybody.”

  “Oh, I like her; and you like her, don’t you?”

  “Well, I do, Ray. I can’t say I approve of her goings on, but I can’t help being rather fond of her and she can be the best company in the world. Macaroni loves her, of course, though even she’s a bit scared of her—but no one else. Judy’s never forgiven her for pinching her fiancé and Aileen detests her because she’s afraid of what she’ll tell her young man, and of course Gregory loathes her, since they stopped being so thick together; Mrs. ’Arris has never liked her and she’s foul to the old girl sometimes; Cecil hates her because she’s cruel and sarcastic and makes fun of his boy friend; and even Bevan the beloved is starting to make sheep’s eyes at you again. None of them really care for her, but I’m sure she’d be terribly surprised if you told her so. She goes barging through life and because she’s got rather a crude sort of mind herself, and no funny feelings to get hurt and no pettinesses like the rest of us, she never thinks that she may be hurting people, or that they may bear small grudges against her. If Judy had pinched one of her young men, she’d have been furious, but in a week she’d have got a new one and forgotten all about it—so she couldn’t understand that Judy hasn’t.”

  “Ah, but Judy couldn’t just ‘get a new one’.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not saying it as against Judy, Rachel. Poor darling, I think she went through hell, and I think she still does in a quiet way; she isn’t changeable like Doon; I’m simply saying that you couldn’t make Doon understand a thing like that.”

  A Sister came into the room, spruce and immaculate, with gentle eyes in a mask-like face. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I have to tell you that your friend is dead.”

  They sprang to her feet: Victoria took two or three steps towards her, holding out unconsciously pleading hands…. “Dead!—she can’t be dead?”

  “I’m afraid so; I did explain to you, didn’t I, that there wasn’t any hope?”

  “Yes, I know. I’m sorry, Sister, only—couldn’t we have gone to see her or something?”

  “She was quite unconscious. It was better not to, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, we know that, really,” said Rachel, miserably, “Thank you, Sister, for coming and telling us and for letting us wait here and all that. Do we—what do we do now? Shall we just go home?”

  “Yes, I think you’d better go and get some sleep. We’ll arrange all the rest. You aren’t relations, are you?”

  “No,” said Rachel. “Just friends.”

  They went down the broad steps and walked in silence along the deserted pavement. “I can’t help howling,” said Victoria at last, half apologetically. “Poor Doon … somehow one can’t believe that she of all people can be dead. That Sister must have thought I was an ass—she’d explained to us that Doon was going to die.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything, when she was telling us, except the little wart on her nose,” said Rachel, reminiscently. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I can see it now, a horrid little brown wart on her quite nice face. It’s funny how things take you—I was really fonder of Doon than you were, and yet when I hear she’s dead all I can think of is a little brown wart on somebody’s face. You’d better take a taxi, darling.”

  “Yes, I can’t face a bus with my eyeblack all running and a moustache of dirt, as you so kindly put it. Good night, darling; go to bed like the nurse said and try to forget about it for a bit. I’m afraid it’s going to be hell to-morrow.”

  Rachel dragged herself up her stairs and opened the front door of her tiny flat. Here were the relics of her first happy years of married life: two good, comfortable chairs covered now with an inexpensive linen; a Persian carpet, a couple of water-colours, silk brocade curtains that once had framed windows looking out on to country fields. The chairs had been made up into some sort of bed for herself; from her divan in the corner a small voice greeted her: “Mummy! I thought you was never com
ing.”

  “Oh, Jess, darling, couldn’t you have gone to sleep?”

  “Well, I did but then I woke up, and I’ve been waiting and waiting for you.”

  “I had to go out, my rabbit; I’m so sorry. That’s the worst of Mummy working in London, isn’t it? It’s very boring for you stuck here all day long with Alice.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and took the child into her arms. Jessica wriggled free and, moving up to the top of the divan, perched herself on the pillow and regarded her mother with shining, precocious eyes. “I don’t like being mauled,” she said, deliberately.

  Rachel flinched. “Jessica darling!What do you mean? Where did you learn to say that?”

  “I’ve heard you say it to Daddy.”

  “Have you, Jessica? But that must have been a long, long time ago. We haven’t seen Daddy for a long time now. You ought to forget those things.”

  “I saw him to-day,” said Jessica, her voice full of an uncomprehending hostility against she knew not what.

  “You saw Daddy to-day? Where?”

  “He came and saw me here. Alice went to answer the bell and there was Daddy. He told Alice she could go out for half an hour and he stayed and played with me. He gave me a lovely book—look, Mummy!”

  Rachel snatched the book, and with a Vicious twist, sent it flying towards the wastepaper-basket. “You can’t have it, baby. I’m sorry but you can’t keep it. I’ll get you another one to-morrow.” She looked at the child, afraid of the effect of her anger on the delicate mind, and said more gently: “Daddy ought not to have come here to see you, darling. You know we decided long ago, three months ago, that he was unkind and unfriendly to Mummy so he couldn’t be your Daddy any more; Mummy went and told the Judge and he agreed with her and said that you and Mummy must stick together and do without a Daddy.…”