Death in High Heels

by Christianna Brand

  “I’m doing my best,” said Charlesworth, humbly, “but it’s a tricky business.”

  “Is it? I thought it must be. All the same, the position is pretty beastly, isn’t it? I don’t like to think of Toria working at that place with somebody running loose who has already done one person in. I’ve tried to get her to chuck it, but she doesn’t want to leave Rachel, and Rachel can’t afford to lose her job; and, of course, we do need the money,” added the Dazzler with disarming candour.

  “Oh, I think they’re fairly safe, if that’s what you mean,” said Charlesworth, who had not previously considered this side of the affair. “The murder was an unpremeditated one, of that I’m pretty sure, and the only danger would be to anyone who knew too much. As long as the killer is safe from discovery, I think the others will be safe too …”

  “Of course we’re perfectly safe,” said Victoria, who had strolled back to them; “don’t listen to him, Mr. Charlesworth. He thinks Bevan’s a sort of Bluebeard who will do for us, one by one, systematically.…” She wandered away again.

  “Well, I do think Bevan’s the dirty dog,” admitted Bobby Dazzler, with quite a show of enthusiasm. “He’s the most awful bounder and he’s always messing around with one or other of the girls. I don’t know how he went about it, but a man who can muck about on his own doorstep in such an undesirable fashion, is likely to get into some sort of trouble sooner or later and to have to take a dramatic way out.”

  “I realized, of course, that Mr. Bevan was more than an uncle to Miss Doon,” said Charlesworth, interested; he did not mention Aileen; but he remembered the voices in the little office, and went on doggedly: “Do you suggest that Miss Doon wasn’t the only attraction on the staff?”

  “Good heavens, no, of course she wasn’t. He’s a man who can’t keep his hands off any female; that’s obvious, isn’t it? Loathsome chap, to my mind. He made a few passes at Victoria once, before we were married, but I went and had a few words with him and, without stating anything in open court, we came to a mutual understanding that if there was any more of it, I would knock his bloody block off. Rachel’s had an awful time and of course that woman Gregory is in it up to the neck.”

  “Miss Gregory!”

  “Well, my dear chap, surely that’s plain to see, I mean a woman like that—sex-starved and what not—all I can say is, I wouldn’t he shut up alone with her for all the tea in China; and Bevan isn’t the sort of man that needs asking twice.”

  “I did inquire about her, though not from this point of view; but the porter at Bevan’s flats told me that she never went there except in the mornings, presumably in a secretarial capacity.”

  “Ah, well, ‘a secretarial capacity’ covers a multitude of sins; besides, she has a nice quiet flat of her own. Personally, I think he got tied up between the lot of them and did poor Doon in; a little spiritual blackmail going on perhaps, or something of the kind. She was a nice thing, too—I painted her once or twice and she had the best hips I ever saw on a woman.”

  “Didn’t Mrs. David object to that?” asked Charlesworth fatuously, but before he could stop himself.

  The Dazzler looked at him quickly, and then dropped his heavy lids again: “My dear chap, if Toria thought twice about every model I rave over, the place would be littered with foaming corpses. At least, I suppose they would foam, because she would obviously murder them with arsenic extracted from my green paints; do people foam when they die of arsenic?”

  Charlesworth left the court, and after a hasty snack at the nearest pub went round to Doon’s flat. The place had been combed for possible clues to her death, but he thought that, in the light of his more recently acquired knowledge, he might come upon something that would give him a lead.

  The landlady, very much frightened, appeared at the door. “There’s a gentleman there already, sir.”

  “Nobody except the police has any right in the flat.”

  “’E forced ’is way in, sir. ’E’s got ’is own key and it wasn’t for me to stop ’im.” A ten-shilling note still clasped in her hand told the rest of her story.

  He pushed the door open abruptly and marched into the flat. Bending over a desk in one corner was Bevan.

  Charlesworth hailed him politely. “I expect we’re looking for the same thing,” he suggested. “Perhaps I can help you?”

  Bevan was disconcerted but gave no sign of alarm. “I’m looking for my letters,” he said, and calmly returned to the search.

  Charlesworth seated himself on the arm of a chair and swung his leg. After five minutes during which Bevan went methodically through the papers in the desk, he asked pleasantly, “Why the act? You’ve got them in your pocket all the time.”

  Bevan could hardly refrain from laughing. “How the devil did you know?”

  “I can see the bulge in your breast pocket; it wasn’t there when you were in court, because I happened to be struck all over again at the super-excellent fit of your suit; and you must have come straight here to have got in before me; you’d better let me take charge of them, will you?”

  “My dear fellow, spare my blushes! You only want them as evidence of the affair, and I’ll give you all you need. This kind of correspondence looks so ghastly, read by a third party, and I wanted to spare the poor girl now that she’s dead. Of course, you were bound to find out; she’s been my mistress for about eight or nine months, and a damned attractive creature she was too. Here’s my latchkey, the badge of iniquity, and I’ve no doubt Mother Whatsisname in the basement will confirm all you want to know.”

  “Were you—er—associating with Miss Doon right up to the end?”

  “I was in very close—er—association with her two days before she died,” said Bevan, mockingly.

  “Did she come often to your flat?”

  “Once or twice but not more often than I could help. I believe in keeping my wires apart.”

  “Do you mind my asking whether you have many ‘wires’ at the moment?”

  “At the moment, no. She was a very attractive young woman, and I had actually settled down to a sort of unblessed monogamy with her.”

  “There was no question of her having a rival in your affections?”

  Bevan looked uneasy but answered boldly enough: “Certainly not.”

  “What about Miss Gregory?” asked Charlesworth at a venture.

  “Miss Gregory? Do you know all about that, too?”

  “I know that Miss Doon replaced her.…”

  “Well, hardly; the Gregory was never anything more than an interlude, if that … in fact, the damn woman’s a perfect nuisance, and was already getting too hot to handle before I ever took up with the other one; Magda Doon didn’t give tuppence for her, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “But you did dismiss at least one young lady in Miss Doon’s favour?”

  “Ah, yes, but she was different.”

  “That would be the redhead?” suggested Charlesworth, remembering the porter’s description.

  “The redhead,” agreed Bevan, mildly surprised.

  “Miss Wheeler?”

  “Miss Wheeler, yes.”

  “Did she ‘go quietly,’ as they say?”

  “She did, thank goodness; there was very little sentimentality about that affair and she found all she wanted: somebody to take my place. Filthy Lucre are, I regret to say, Miss Wheeler’s first and second names.”

  Charlesworth reflected that Aileen’s Arthur did not appear, from all accounts, to represent Filthy Lucre to any great degree; marriage and respectability, however, might have still stronger charms. He switched the conversation from the living to the dead.

  “In spite of her attractions, you had almost decided to send Miss Doon to France?”

  Bevan reflected for a moment. “I’ll tell you how it was, Inspector,” he said at last, with every appearance of candour. “If the girl went to Deauville I could do what I liked about her; I could see a lot of her or I need hardly see her at all. To be absolutely frank, she was becomi
ng just a little bit of a bore, though I assure you that there was no question of a rival as you so refreshingly put it. She was very anxious to go, not realizing, of course, that it might be going to be her swan song; and I decided that I’d send her. In the meantime, however, Miss Gregory was becoming even more of a bore, and I decided that of the two I could better deal with Miss Doon.…”

  “A somewhat dangerous business?” suggested Charlesworth, smoothly.

  “Well, there are infinite advantages in having your women beholden to you for their bread and butter; it’s tricky, of course, but it’s the spice of life, and if they’re liable to land themselves out of a job, they’re more likely to ‘go quietly’—again, as you put it.”

  “Miss Doon didn’t go very quietly.”

  “My dear man, I’ve told you all this to show you how entirely unconnected Miss Doon’s death is with any of my affairs. When I first talked to you, you suggested suicide, and I admit that I got the wind up, in case she should have done away with herself, and that a scandal should come out which would be bad for the business; then I realized how unlikely it was—she hadn’t the faintest idea that I was cooling off her, and although she couldn’t go to the new place, she was having quite a leg up in the business and would be seeing a good deal more of me; as for the two others, Miss Gregory had got the job she wanted, so she was quite happy, and the Wheeler girl had got a new love, so there was no cause for ill-feeling there; what the reason of the murder may have been I don’t pretend to know; but it certainly wasn’t in any way connected with me.”

  “Why did you come for the letters, then?”

  “For the reasons I’ve already given you. I knew that she kept them in a comic little drawer in her desk—your people would never spot it if they weren’t looking for it; and she had a whole lot of her own notes to me which she took back one day when she was round at my flat. I’m not the sort of man who commits himself on paper to a woman, but those made pretty warm reading, and I couldn’t quite remember what I might have written myself; I was all against the desk being sold or disposed of, with these incriminating documents still in it.”

  Charlesworth got to his feet. “Well, I’ll have them now.” He held out his hand.

  “For God’s sake——” said Bevan, impatiently.

  “I must have them, I’m afraid, Mr. Bevan. Come on, quickly, please, you’re not in a position to argue. Clear out now, will you … and, murder or no murder,” he added viciously behind Bevan’s retreating back, “hanging’s too good for you!”

  A further search of the desk failed to produce anything of the slightest interest, and driving back to the Yard, he asked himself whether his visit had really been very productive, except as a proof, if any were needed, as to Bevan’s relations with the dead girl and with her colleagues. Bedd, however, hearing the story, put his finger on an important point. “I don’t see that we need look any further for a motive for that Miss Aileen, sir. She may have gone a lot less quietly than he thinks, Arthur or no Arthur. A woman scorned, Mr. Charlesworth, that’s when the poison gets flying around.”

  “You may be right, Bedd. I must have a word with Aileen Wheeler. What a mess it all is—I never was so muddled up with a case in all my life. I’m having dinner with the Chief to-night, and what on earth I’m going to say to him …”

  2

  “You’re unusually silent to-night, my boy,” said the great man, as they lit their after-dinner cigarettes. “What am I to tell your father when I see him on Saturday? That we’re knocking the stuffing out of you in the department?”

  “Don’t say that, sir, or mother will be round at all hours with antidotes to night starvation!”

  “And how’s the love affair going—let’s see, it isn’t Miss Humphreys any more. What was the new one’s name?”

  Charlesworth looked silly. “I expect you’re thinking of Louise, sir. She was a jolly sweet girl, Louise was, but, of course, it wasn’t serious, sir, and as a matter of fact this—er—this case has rather put her out of my head.…”

  “Ah, yes, the case. I was going to ask you about that. You’re getting along all right, Charlesworth, are you? because—this is unofficial, you know—Sir George was asking me yesterday how things were going. He thinks you’re a bit young to be handling an affair which is so much in the public eye. Don’t take it to heart, my dear boy,” he added at the sight of Charlesworth’s clouded face. “We aren’t going to snatch it away from you without a word of warning; but, of course, when you took it on we had no idea that it was going to turn into such a terrific affair. I thought I would have you along to-night and just have a quiet chat with you so that I shall know what line to take with Sir George in the morning.”

  Charlesworth looked miserably round the quiet club room, with its shaded lights, its well-polished mahogany and its velvet hangings. The waiters moved softly among the damask-covered tables, the diners golloped their soup or sipped their port, solid, contented, respectable. “Silly old buffers,” he thought, irritably. “Just like Sir George, with his walrus moustache and pink eyes; they’re all Sir Georges—everything must go like clockwork or they begin wanting to know why. As if I can’t manage my own job in my own way.…” He fished out a pencil and made a large black blob on a menu card. “Of course, it is rather complicated, sir,” he admitted slowly. “All the same, I don’t see that anyone could have done more than I have in the time. When I started we had no idea whether it was murder or suicide or accident; I’ve been able to rule out accident and suicide. I’ve boiled it down to a list of ten suspects and I’ve already gone a long way towards establishing motives—though I must say,” he added, ruefully, “that all the wrong ones seem to have motives. But it isn’t a simple business of two and two make four and whoever you put on the job, I don’t see how they could make it so.”

  He made a second large blob beside the first and added four long spikes. “This is only the fourth day,” he went on, scribbling away gloomily, “and out of my ten possibles I’ve got it down to five probables, and out of my five probables I’ve got two very-likelies.… I don’t think it’s too bad, sir. I don’t see why Sir George …”

  “Now, hold your horses, Charlesworth. Nobody’s accusing you of mishandling the case. I think you’ve done very well so far, and so does Sir George. He had a look through your notes and he thought they were extremely clear and very much to the point.”

  “Oh, Bedd does those,” said Charlesworth airily and quite inaccurately, his good-humour entirely restored. “He’s a treasure, is old Bedd. Between us, we can cope with things, sir, if you’ll give me the chance. Of course, I’d like to talk it over with you, very much. I’m in a bit of a fog at the moment, I must confess, but my point is that so would anybody else be. It’s the manager fellow, Bevan, that did it, only I can’t prove it, and I can’t quite see the motive. In any case, I don’t see how we’re ever going to get a conviction, whoever it is; what makes it so difficult is that it was obviously done on the spur of the moment and because the poison was available; especially as a good many people were there to share the suspicion by having access to the girl’s food.”

  “Sir George and I were playing with a theory that someone might have come, either out of the shop through the back door of Bevan’s office or from somewhere else altogether, gone down the area steps and done the deed at some unspecified time.”

  “Oh, I considered that, but it won’t wash, sir. Bevan went straight to Miss Doon’s office, after he had ordered the poison to be swept up, and he stayed there, with the door shut, until he came out again and spoke to Cecil on his way upstairs. The little secretary was with them in the office the whole time. Besides, Mrs. Harris was standing at her sink washing up from the moment that she came downstairs from brushing the stuff up; she was keeping an eye out for a knife-grinder and she had a full view of the area steps; no one could have come down them without being seen by her, and nobody did. Nobody passed through the kitchen, in fact, nobody came into the kitchen at all, until Mrs. Best came d
own at twelve o’clock to have her own lunch and afterwards to help serve out for the one o’clock lunch; the girls from the workroom have theirs sent upstairs.”

  “But later on Mrs. Harris was serving the lunch?”

  “Yes, but still with an eye out for the knife-grinder; anyway, by that time Cecil was standing at the head of the service table, very close to the area door which is just under the stairs, and at least one or two of the girls were with him all the time. Nobody could have come in then.”

  “Could anyone have come down the area steps during the few minutes in which the woman was upstairs sweeping up the crystals?”

  “I suppose they could have, sir, but the food wasn’t out of the kitchen then, and nobody had had time to get hold of any of the poison; in any event, nobody left the showroon except Miss Gregory, who came down to tell Mrs. Harris to take her dustpan and brush upstairs.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Well, she says that she went off into the ladies’ cloakroom, which is also in the basement; there’s no proof of that; but, anyway, she had no poison, that’s as certain as can be. Bevan and the secretary were giving each other alibis in the little office; I think we must definitely cut out any time for administration of the poison, except for the twenty minutes between the time Cecil and Mrs. Best started to serve out the curry and the time the girl sat down to eat it.”

  “Anyway, that’s getting somewhere. Who have you got on your very-probable list besides Mr. Bevan?”

  “Well, there’s Cecil and there’s the char. There’s something very peculiar about this chap Cecil, but I hope I can clear it up pretty soon. That friend of his, Elliot, is missing, and he’s in a terrible state and obviously has something to hide … though not in a trunk,” added Charlesworth, grinning foolishly. “The friend appears to have had a crush on Miss Doon and I’ve been wondering since last night whether Cecil can have murdered her for the benefit of the other man. I must say I think that that’s stretching the claims of friendship rather far; a better explanation would be that he murdered her in a fit of jealousy because the other fellow was keen on her. He’s an unbalanced, hysterical sort of creature; one of these Oedipus complexes, by all accounts. If he did kill the girl he’ll be the easiest to convict because he’ll give himself away. The odd thing, though, is this; during my first interview with him, and with Bevan, both the sergeant and I noticed that when I mentioned the possibility of murder, each of them seemed relieved. Bevan’s explained his since—he was afraid the girl had committed suicide; but I can’t see why it should have been in Cecil’s case.”