Death in High Heels

by Christianna Brand

  “Miss Doon? Did you know her?”

  “Well, not to say know,” admitted Mrs. Simpson reluctantly. “But I remember ’er coming ’ere once to see Aileen, and she spoke ever so pleasant when I let ’er in at the front door. Quite upset she was when I told ’er I thought Aileen was out. ‘But I must see ’er,’ she says, ‘it’s most urgent,’ she says. Then she looks at me, ever so nice, and ‘Do try and find ’er for me,’ she says. Matter of fact, she was in, after all. She was a ’andsome girl, Miss Doon—and where is she now? Lying there in the mortuary, stark and stiff, dead and murdered.”

  “Beastly, isn’t it?” agreed Charlesworth, absently.

  “The perlice arst young Aileen about it and, like a silly girl, she lorst ’er ’ead and said Miss Doon never come ’ere, and she never saw ’er outside of the shop. She told me not to say nothink about it, if they come ferreting round ’ere, and I shan’t. Nothink to do with them, is it? She only come the once and Aileen ’aving denied it in the ’eat of the moment like, it would look a bit funny if they found out about it now, wouldn’t it?”

  “Very funny indeed,” said Charlesworth, grimly.

  “So don’t put it in your paper, will you now? because I wouldn’t like to get young Aileen into trouble; she’s got enough coming to ’er with that Arthur of ’ers, the sloppy thing. By the way, what is your paper?”

  “The Evening Light,” said Charlesworth, at a venture.

  “The Evening Light? Lor’, you are thorough! I told all this once to the chap what come round before you.”

  “Don’t say someone’s been here from the Light already!” cried Charlesworth, leaping to his feet. “Good heavens, I have been wasting your time. What a shame; they must have sent two of us out on the same job. Anyway, it’s been awfully interesting, Mrs. Simpson, and I for one don’t feel that I’ve wasted my time at all. Very pleased to have met you.”

  “Same to you, I’m shore,” said Mrs. Simpson, to his huge delight.

  He drove westwards, and, on an impulse, stopped at Rachel’s unpretentious door. A refined edition of Mrs. Simpson answered the bell. “Excuse me, but I’m from the Press.…”

  “Well, I have nothing to say to the Press.” She shut the door in his face.

  Charlesworth drove on, unruffled. Before his mind’s eye was Aileen’s lovely, expressionless face, and ringing in his ears Aileen’s unhurried voice.

  “Did you know her personally apart from your work?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Were you on friendly terms with her in the shop?”

  “The mannequins hardly saw anything of her in the shop; I’ve never even spoken to her outside.”

  Not much of the ’eat of the moment about that.

  2

  Bedd was waiting in Charlesworth’s office and received an invitation to lunch. Over their chops and beer they compared notes. The sergeant had renewed acquaintance with Miss Doon’s landlady, who, her memory refreshed by the Press photographs, was able to confirm that Bevan had been a frequent visitor. There was a gentleman in the habit of staying very late, but she could not swear that it was he. Delicate handling elicited the admission that by very late the landlady meant all night … with a hurried qualification that the young lady paid her weekly for the flat and it was no business of hers what she done in it.

  “Did you get any dates?” said Charlesworth.

  “No, sir, she began to regret having said so much and she shut up after that.”

  “Well, damn it, couldn’t you have had a shot, Bedd? Here I’ve got all the nights that Bevan has been out lately and we could have done a beautiful bit of dove-tailing.”

  “Very sorry, sir.”

  “I’m a better blinking sleuth than you are, Bedd, that’s what it is. I’ve discovered that young Aileen has been lying like a trooper about not knowing the Daon girl in her private life; and what’s more, that she has an illicit intrigue going on with Bevan, presumably without the knowledge of her Arthur, of whom you are also about to hear. She was closeted with Bevan in his office at half-past nine this morning.…”

  “But …”

  “Hang on a minute, just let me say my piece, and then you can but away as much as you like. Now, here’s how I see it, Bedd: we have Aileen, a regular peach, one has to admit, and Bevan has an eye on her. But at the same time he has an eye on Doon—and Doon begins to get the upper hand, so that Aileen is obliged to stake her all on Arthur. But Bevan turns dog-in-the-manger, and he starts to chase Aileen again. Doon isn’t having any and she tries a little moral blackmail—‘You lay off my Bevan,’ she says, ‘or I’ll tell your Arthur.’ So Doon dies; and Aileen and Bevan are busy necking in his office at a most ungodly hour this morning, and no one to breathe a word to Aileen’s Arthur; incidentally, perhaps now that Aileen’s got Bevan all to herself again, she won’t worry so much in the future about poor Arthur.”

  Bedd made no comment. Charlesworth glanced at him in surprise, and then penitently. “Come, now, Sergeant, no ill-feeling. I had to wag my tail a little about my great discoveries. What have you got to say about them?”

  Bedd took a swig of beer and with much deliberation wiped the froth from his lips. He folded his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket and, leaning back in his chair, regarded the great detective with a twinkling eye.

  “I’m sorry about the dates, sir,” he said, ponderously.

  “That’s all right, Bedd, that’s quite all right, old man. I do realize that if anyone could possibly have got the dates you would have. Now, what do you think of all this business about Aileen?”

  “’Arf past nine this morning, sir? In Mr. Bevan’s office?”

  “Yes, what do you think of that?”

  “Only,” said Sergeant Bedd, happily, “that at ’arf-past nine this morning, Miss Aileen was walking along Oxford Street as fast as ’er legs could carry ’er. Because I ’appened to see ’er.”

  Charlesworth rushed round to Christophe et Cie. “Aileen,” he said, encountering her at the door, “you’re a very naughty girl; you were late for work this morning.”

  “You police know everything,” said Aileen, laughing. “But don’t tell Mr. Bevan.”

  They walked over to where the salesgirls sat. Victoria drew him like a magnet and he went and stood beside her and joined in their easy conversation. A customer came in, fussy and. self-important, and Rachel went to her. “A two-piece, madam? Yes, of course. We have a little silk one that would suit you terribly well. Aileen, put on that ‘July’ model for madam, will you, please … didn’t you have a green one, madam, just before the summer? This is rather the same in style and I’m sure you’ll like it.…”

  The customer hated it. “Well, never mind, madam, there’s lots more for you to choose from. Mr. Cecil has some drawings for a new one, in a slightly heavier material … would you like to see those?…”

  Cissie appeared from Bevan’s office and Irene went to speak to him. “Mr. Cecil, Lady Mary’s coming in at four o’clock; she isn’t satisfied with the hat, that blue felt you know—isn’t it a bother?…”

  Charlesworth, left alone with Victoria, found himself, for once in his life, tongue-tied and self-conscious. She caught his embarrassment, though she was innocent of the cause of it, and, for something to say, commented on his silk handkerchief. He pulled it out of his pocket and she rubbed the thick silk between her fingers and said lightly, “Oh, lovely—how rich and luxurious you must be!”

  “You can have it if you like,” he said, foolishly.

  “Don’t be silly,” cried Toria. “I didn’t mean it that way at all.” She laughed a soft little laugh, and it rang in his heart like a knell for he thought he knew when he had heard it before.

  He picked up the handkerchief and deliberately laid a trap for her. “What will you give me for it?” he said, and she answered as he had known she would, “Not a sausage!” and laughed again.

  So it wasn’t Aileen who had been in Bevan’s office; but someone who used Aileen’s absurd phrase a
nd imitated Aileen’s absurd accent and laughed at her own imitation. Victoria! He thrust the handkerchief into his pocket and marched blindly out of the shop.

  3

  Rachel, released from her customer, came back to the cubby-hole. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Toria. What the hell shall I do about Bevan? He’s getting terribly amorous again.”

  “Smack his beastly face,” said Victoria, viciously.

  “He’d give me the sack if I did. I have to keep in with him, that’s the trouble. I can’t afford to be out of a job.”

  “I know, darling. But you shouldn’t be so attractive—wherever you go it’ll be the same thing.”

  “I must say, it generally is,” said Rachel, mournfully. “It’s this beastly sex-appeal; I wish I didn’t have it. It was awful when I was on the stage; you know what people are like there.”

  “Couldn’t be worse than Bevan. What’s he been doing now?”

  “Well, he got here at dawn this morning, and made me go into his office and started worrying me again. I’m so petrified my husband will find out about that wretched evening. I tried to make Bevan promise to be a bit more discreet.…”

  “That won’t do any good, my dear.”

  “Not a sausage,” agreed Rachel, laughing ruefully.

  Irene appeared in the doorway. “You sounded just like Aileen when you said that. You two shouldn’t copy her so much; I can’t tell you apart now, and you soon won’t be able to speak the King’s English yourselves.”

  “Come and sit down, Irene darling, and tell Rachel what she’s to do about Bevan. He’s been pestering her again.”

  “You should never have gone to his flat that evening, dear. We told you so at the time.”

  “Well, he was very nice in those days, Rene, and I must say he behaved terribly well up to then.”

  “I think he was really keen on her for a bit,” said Victoria, judicially.

  “Would you have married him, Rachel?”

  “I might have,” said Rachel. “He was rather attractive, you know, and he must have pots of money; it would have been nice for Jessica to have had a rich stepfather and I’m a bit sick of scraping along at four pounds ten a week. But since the flat episode—no, thank you.” “You shouldn’t have stayed so late, dear.” “I know, Irene. It was asking for trouble. Anyway, it put an end to my girlish illusions, so it may have been a good thing, in the end.”

  “It’s easy for us to talk, Rene,” said Toria. “Bevan’s never cast his lecherous eye in our direction. I wonder why,” she added with genuine interest.

  “Well, you’re too heavily married, dear, and as for me—I’ve been with Christophe’s so long that he looks on me as part of the fixtures and fittings. Awkward when the detective asked us about Doon being engaged, wasn’t it? You were very good then, Rachel, putting him off. We didn’t want to get mixed up in all those revelations, did we?”

  “We didn’t put him off very much,” said Victoria, thoughtfully. “He’s an odd young man. He’s just offered to give me his silk hankie, because I said I liked it; and when I wouldn’t take it he rushed out of the place like a madman.”

  “Victoria! You don’t mean to say that he’s fallen for you?”

  “God forbid,” said Victoria, piously.

  “Why do all the free men get keen on Toria?” asked Rachel, with mock petulance. “Only the dirty old men go for you and me, Irene.”

  “I don’t want them, bond or free,” said Victoria. “I’ve got Bobby Dazzler and he’s all I can do with. Anyway, you can hardly call Bevan a dirty old man, Rachel!”

  They fell into a discussion of Bevan’s attributes: but Charlesworth, doggedly determined to put the detective before the man, was closeted in his little office, with the notes of the case spread around him, trying to find some connection between Doon’s murder and an affair between Bevan and Victoria. Pushed out of sight in a drawer was a blue silk handkerchief.

  4

  To Gregory a murder in the shop was no excuse for slackening efficiency. She cheerfully shouldered Doon’s work as well as her own and filed from morning till night and calculated with unabated enthusiasm, until the luckless Macaroni almost cried for mercy. On the Thursday morning, three days after Doon’s death, the work was completely up to date and she dismissed the snivelling secretary to her own dungeon and sat complacently in Bevan’s office, reviewing her handiwork. Bevan came in and threw himself into a chair.

  “Oh, Frank, I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve been wanting to ask you …”

  “For God’s sake don’t call me Frank in business hours,” said Bevan, roughly. “How many times have I told you that? Can’t you be more careful?”

  It was the first time she had ever made such a slip and he had certainly never mentioned it before. Her eyes filled with tears and she sat silent, gazing at the neat papers before her.

  “Well, what is it?” he asked, and as she made no reply, “What’s the matter? Why don’t you say what you were going to say?”

  “Never mind now; I’ll ask you another time.”

  “What the devil’s the matter with you, these days?” said Bevan in a savage undertone. “What are you always weeping and moping about?”

  “Don’t you think I’ve got something to weep and mope about?”

  “That’s just the damn silly kind of thing a woman always says; what sort of a reply do you expect me to make to such a remark as that?”

  “Well, I think a few kind words wouldn’t be a bad reply,” said Gregory, sadly. “They’d be the first you’d spoken to me for a very long time.”

  “My dear girl, you don’t want me to make love to you before the whole shop, do you? Do pull yourself together and keep that sort of thing for out-of-business hours.”

  “I never see you now in out-of-business hours.”

  “I like that—only last Monday I spent most of the morning at your flat.”

  “And talked business all the time!” said Gregory, bitterly.

  “Good lord, woman, what did you expect, directly after breakfast?”

  “But you’ve just quoted it as—well, never mind.…” Gregory gave it up as hopeless. “I was only going to ask what you are doing about Deauville. Monsieur Georges is agitating and we can’t put it off much longer. Besides, we shall have to think about getting somebody else here.”

  “I’ve decided to send Mrs. Best.”

  “You’re not going to send me, after all?”

  “How can I, and leave myself here without a stock-keeper and without you?” said Bevan, impatiently. “You’ll have to carry on with Miss Doon’s work as well as your own and we must train somebody to replace her. Irene Best can go to the new branch—you’ll have to run through the work very carefully with her, but she knows quite enough about it—and Rachel Gay can pick up her showroom routine easily enough.”

  “Rachel Gay—to have charge of the showroom!”

  “Yes, why not?”

  She looked at him oddly. “Nothing. Only I should have thought that Victoria ought to have had it. Won’t it look rather like favouritism?”

  “Rachel Gay is a favourite with everybody,” said Bevan, curtly. “Even in a crowd of catty women I don’t believe there’s a soul who’d grudge her promotion—Victoria David least of all.”

  “It was only that Victoria came a little before Rachel; but still—you know best. Will you get someone to replace Irene?”

  “Not till the summer’s over. We’re slack enough as it is, goodness knows, and we shall probably go bust with the Press screaming their heads off over this wretched affair.”

  “I don’t think we shall,” said Gregory, shrewdly. “Clients don’t mind publicity of this sort—not our kind of clients, anyway. They’re keeping off now, till Doon’s buried and so on—they couldn’t very well do anything else; but if you ask me, as soon as the inquest’s over they’ll start pouring in, trying to get the girls to talk and tell them tit-bits; if we handle it carefully it may not be a bad thing for us in the end. Of course it
’s very dreadful about Doon and I’m very sorry,” she added perfunctorily, “but one can’t help recognizing that a bit of a fillip is just what we need, right in the middle of August; and that’s what her death may give us.”

  Bevan gave her his sideways glance and smiled into her hard grey eyes. “You’re a strange girl,” he said; “in some ways you’re as sentimental as a schoolgirl and in others you’re as hard as nails—but you certainly are a help to a man at a time like this. I don’t know what the devil I should have done without you. Now, look here: you must tell the girls what you’ve just been saying to me… go out and see them now. Afterwards, send Mrs. Best in here, and I shall want to see Rachel after that—don’t say what about. But first of all get them together and have a word with them; tell them that this publicity must be turned to advantage if they don’t want to ruin the shop—and find themselves all out of jobs. Arrange with them how to deal with questions—try to fix up an atmosphere of regret, and so on, without too much of the funereal. The whole thing is ghastly and depressing, of course, but there’s no point in our making it worse. Personally, I’m afraid it will kill us, for this season, anyway, but you may be right. I hope to God you are!”

  Here was a mission after Gregory’s own heart and she held court at one end of the empty salon, under a crystal chandelier. To divest the interview of too much air of authority which she knew would be bitterly resented, she seated herself on a small gilt table and swung her legs in quite a jolly schoolgirl fashion; but alas! the sight of the scraggy ankles above her tight, neat shoes inspired nothing but a nervy revulsion, and the long neck with its prominent lump in the centre seemed to the girls to twist and turn like a snake; the unsmiling eyes above the joyless smile looked into faces that responded with neither eyes nor lips and she told her story in an atmosphere of growing and almost deliberate misunderstanding. Judy was the first to reply and she did so with an outburst of scornful anger that took all of them aback.