‘I’m going to take you home now and then I’m going to leave you,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone you to-morrow.’
‘Oh, but why?’ She moved away and sat looking at him with the wide-open eyes of an injured child. It was Georgia at her most appealing, her warmest and most vulnerable. He hesitated.
‘Don’t you think I ought to?’ he said at last.
‘“Ought to”?’ She was honestly bewildered and he laughed uneasily.
‘I think I will,’ he said.
Georgia could see herself faintly mirrored in the glass between them and the chauffeur’s dark back. It was a flattering reflector and she was reassured after a momentary misgiving. His obvious reason, which was a natural conventional distaste for the proximity of love and death, escaped her and she was puzzled. She slid an arm through his.
‘I want to be with you this evening, Alan,’ she said. ‘I’m not playing to-night, you know, because of the service. No, my dear, this is the first time, the very first time, I’ve felt free.’ There was no mistaking her confiding. It was genuine, voluptuous, and entirely generous.
He did not speak and she felt him stiffen. She looked up and was amazed. She had caught him unawares and there had been nausea on his face.
‘All right,’ she said, releasing him. She was laughing but obviously deeply hurt. ‘All right. I shall be terribly rushed to-morrow. Phone me the day after.’
He sighed and rubbed his hard, scrubbed hands over his face.
‘You don’t understand at all, do you?’ he said.
‘My dear, I do, of course I do,’ said Georgia with more conviction than truth, and sat looking at him with patent speculation in her tweed-grey eyes, so that he felt like a medical specimen and was revolted and ashamed of himself and very unhappy.
Meanwhile Val proceeded calmly to her office. Rex met her in the hall with two queries concerning dresses which she had forgotten and she dragged her mind out of its self-protective coma and considered them intelligently. He noticed nothing unusual about her and when she stepped into the little wrought-iron gazebo of a room, Lady Papendeik, who was sitting at her desk, thought she looked particularly well and was grateful for the circumstance in view of the letter before her.
They talked of trivialities for some moments and touched on business. Val pulled off her small black hat and her yellow hair shone in a stray shaft of sunlight cutting through to them from the west landing window, where the sun was breaking through after the rain.
‘It was tiring,’ she explained, smiling in faint apology.
Tante Marthe’s little black eyes glinted.
‘Georgia played the leading part well, no doubt? Did she enjoy herself?’
‘Oh, I think so. She behaved excellently.’
‘Did she? That must have been a comfort to her husband’s ghost.’
‘Mustn’t it?’ Val agreed absently.
She had not seated herself and there was an undercurrent of restlessness in her movements which did not escape the old woman.
‘Are you feeling irritable?’
‘No, not particularly.’
‘Good.’ Lady Papendeik sniffed over the word. ‘I had a letter this afternoon from Emily.’
‘From Mother?’ There is nothing like surprise to ease emotional tension and Val moved over to the desk with her natural step.
Lady Papendeik spread her small hands over the blotter.
‘It is annoying.’
‘I can imagine it.’
‘I wonder. I hope not.’ Tante Marthe shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, read it,’ she said. ‘It must be true or she could never have heard of it. No one can do anything.’
Val took up the thick cream double sheet with the well-known crimson heading, the single arrogant house-name and county which had once been so familiar and which even now brought a far-off memory of a peach-tree of all things, a sprawling peach-tree on a rosy wall.
DEAR LADY PAPENDEIK,
I am an old woman [the letter had originally begun ‘We are both’, but the three words had been struck out with a single broad line from the hard steel pen and remained a shining example of British county tact at its unhappiest], and I am writing to you instead of to my daughter because I feel that you at least will appreciate to the full my natural reactions to the monstrous situation which has arisen. This morning I received a letter from Dorothy Phelps. She is a fool, of course, but I am sure she wrote me out of the kindest of motives. She is a distant relation of my husband’s, a collateral branch of his mother’s family, and I am sure she would never do anything to wound me maliciously. I enclose her letter, which I hope you will return to me. You will see she says ‘everyone is talking about it’. This is quite intolerable. I have suffered enough from my children, God knows, but even they must see that this is the last straw. Will you kindly see that Val has nothing more to do with this woman? Val should never again visit this hotel, Caesar’s Court, and must be brought to realize that, even if she has obstinately thrown away every advantage to which her birth has entitled her, she cannot escape from the responsibility which is hers as much as it is mine or any other owner of our name or those few names like ours which are left. They tell me times have changed, but they have not changed here. This precious little part of England is as it ever was, thank God, and until I die it will remain so. After that I dare not contemplate. Of course, no action is possible. Val, I am sure, will recognize this in spite of the subversive influences of the past few years, but in my opinion a threatened action might have some effect, and I am instructing our solicitors to put themselves at her disposal. I do not want to hear from Val. Explanations do not interest me, as all my children know. In my world explanations and excuses have ever been taken, rightly or wrongly, as signs of guilt or weakness. This abominable slander should never have been uttered. No daughter of ours should ever have put herself into a position which made its utterance possible. Since it has been uttered, I am forced to take steps to see that it is silenced and I appeal to you to bring Val to her sense of responsibility in the matter. If she can do nothing she should at least go abroad for six months. Meanwhile, you will oblige me by refusing, of course, to have any future transactions with this woman, Georgia Ramillies.
Believe me,
Yours sincerely,
EMILY K –
The rest of the signature was illegible.
Val put the letter down quietly and picked up the enclosure, which was written on single sheets with a club address and was in an 1890 calligraphy.
DEAREST AUNT EMILY,
I do not know how to write to you, Darling, without hurting you much more than you could ever deserve, but something has come to my ears which Kenneth and I feel we ought to let you know about. I was playing bridge here yesterday and a Mrs Fellowes – her husband is one of the Norfolk people I think – was talking about poor Val. Of course I listened and said nothing. Amy Fellowes has a daughter who is in the stage set (many quite good young people play at this nowadays, you know dear) and when the conversation turned to the death of Raymond Ramillies (no doubt you read about it; it was very sudden) Mrs Fellowes came out with an extraordinary story. According to this, Lady Ramillies, who is Georgia Wells, the actress, actually said to Amy Fellowes’s daughter, in front of several other people, that it was a very extraordinary thing that her husband should have died so suddenly after taking some aspirin which Val had given Lady Ramillies for herself. What made it worse is that she hinted that Val and this Ramillies woman had some quarrel over a man whose name I did not hear although several were mentioned. Of course this cannot be true. Neither Kenneth nor I would believe it for a moment. But I felt it was my duty to write to you because it is the kind of gossip which should be stopped. Everyone is talking about it. Val, I know, is very clever and probably very foolish. I am sure if she realized the pain she gave you she would be more careful. Forgive me for sending you such bad news but I thought it best to come out in the open, and so did Kenneth.
I expect your dear garden is very be
autiful now. How you must love it!
Very affectionately, dear Auntie, yours,
DOROTHY PHELPS
Val let the paper drop and her fingers fluttered over it in a little gesture of distaste.
‘A frightful old woman,’ she said. ‘I remember her. Yes – well, that accounts for it.’
‘Accounts for what?’ demanded Tante Marthe sharply.
‘Oh – things.’ Val walked down the room and stood looking across the landing to the west window blazing in the evening sun.
‘Georgia must have said this thing to someone,’ remarked Tante Marthe.
‘Oh Lord yes, she’s said it.’ Val sounded weary. ‘She’s said it to everyone she’s become confidential with in the last fortnight. There must be dozens of them. You know what Georgia is. She doesn’t really mean it. She doesn’t think I tried to poison her. She simply knows it’s a good story but doesn’t realize how good. She doesn’t actually think at all. She goes entirely by feel.’
‘It’s dangerous, my dear.’
‘Is it?’ The younger woman spoke bitterly. ‘There’s been a P.M. Ramillies is safely buried. It’s all perfectly normal. Am I likely to sue her?’
‘You could.’
‘I could. But am I likely to? If she weren’t one of our most important clients would I be likely to admit I’ve even heard that I am so much in love with Alan Dell that I attempted to murder the woman he preferred?’
Lady Papendeik did not speak for a moment.
‘It’s very naughty of Georgia,’ she observed, somewhat Inadequately, when the silence had gone on long enough. ‘What shall one say to Emily?’
‘She’s seventy.’ Val sounded tolerant. ‘Say you’ll do all you can. She’s a hundred and fifty miles away and a hundred and fifty years off. She’s living in the past, somewhere just before the Napoleonic Wars. You get like that down there. The house hasn’t changed and nor has she. If she weren’t so gloriously hard it would be pathetic. Still, it’s idiotic. You can’t behave like Queen Charlotte just because you live in a Georgian pile.’
Lady Papendeik nodded regretfully.
‘Will you mention this to Georgia?’
‘Oh no.’ Val was standing with her back to the room, the sun turning her hair into a blazing halo. ‘No. She’ll forget it in a day or so. If I talk to her it’ll give her something else to add to it, or else she’ll be broken-hearted and contrite and have to confess to someone terribly confidentially, and the whole thing’ll blaze up again.’
‘You’re very wise for your age.’ Lady Papendeik seemed to find the fact a pity. ‘Perhaps this niece of Emily’s has exaggerated.’
‘Perhaps so. Let us look on the bright side by all means.’
‘You are afraid the man will hear of it?’
‘I’m afraid he has.’ Val’s tone was commendably matter of fact. Ever since she had read Dorothy Phelps’s letter the full significance of Dell’s muttered injunction on the church step had been slowly sinking into her mind. It is the little unexpected nicenesses which creep through the armour chinks, and suddenly her restraint shivered. She laid her forehead against the pane.
‘My dear, oh my dear, my dear, my love, oh sweet, sweet, oh my dear.’ The idiotic refrain made existence just bearable until the moment was over.
She turned away from the window and glanced at Tante Marthe.
‘It passes,’ said the old woman, answering her thought. ‘Of all the things that pass that passes most completely. Enjoy it while you can.’
‘Enjoy it?’
Lady Papendeik looked down at her hands with the little brown mottles on them.
‘There’s a great deal to be said for feeling anything,’ she remarked. ‘I don’t.’
Val sat down at her table and began to scribble. Presently the other woman rose to look over her shoulder.
‘What’s that?’ she demanded. ‘A nightgown?’
Val ran a pencil through the design. She looked up, her cheeks red and her eyes laughing.
‘A tiddy little shroud,’ she said. ‘It should be made in something rather heavy and expensive. Berthé’s new corded chine-chine, I think.
‘Morbid and silly,’ said Lady Papendeik. ‘I like the little bows. What’s the pocket for?’
‘Indulgences,’ said Val cheerfully. ‘They’re always in fashion.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘I TELL YOU wot, cock,’ said Mr Lugg, looking at an enormous gold hunter which had been entirely ruined, from his point of view, by an engraved tribute in the back which rendered it of little interest to pawnbrokers. ‘I tell you wot. She’s not coming.’
Mr Campion turned away from his sitting-room window and wandered across the carpet, his lean dinner-jacketed shoulders hunched.
‘A nasty little girl,’ he observed. ‘Take the crème de menthe away. Drink it if you like.’
‘And smell like a packet o’ hiccorf suckers. I know.’ Lugg waddled to the coffee-table and restored the offending bottle to the cocktail cabinet. ‘You treat me as a sort of joke, don’t you?’ he remarked, his great white face complacent. ‘I’m a regular clown. I make you laugh. I say funny things, don’t I?’
His employer regarded him dispassionately. In his velvet house-coat, his chins carelessly arranged over a strangling collar and his little black eyes hopeful, he was not by any means an uncomic figure.
‘Well, go on, say it. I’m a laugh, ain’t I?’
‘Not to everyone.’
‘Wot?’ He seemed hurt and also incredulous.
‘Not to everyone. A lot of my friends think you’re overrated.’
‘Overrated?’ The black eyes wavered for a moment before a faint smile spread over the great face. ‘Reelly?’ he said at last, adding tolerantly, ‘it takes all sorts to make a world, don’t it? It’s a funny thing, I often give meself a laugh. I think we’d better give ’er up, don’t you? It’s no use me sitting around dressed like a parcel if company’s not expected. That’s makin’ trouble. Mr Tuke advises me to wear lower collars. One inch above the shirt-band, in ’is opinion, is quite sufficient if a gentleman ’as an ’eavy neck. What would you say?’
‘What’s the time?’
‘Close on arf-past. She’s not comin’. She’s led you up the gardin. That’s a woman all over. I don’t know what you want to bother with them for. Two blokes ’ave died and are tucked up tidy, and what if there is a lot of talk about your Sis and a sleepin’ tonic? That’s nothin’. Leave it alone. Fergit it. Be a gent and look it in the face and don’t see it.’
‘A sleeping tonic?’ Mr Campion’s pale eyes were cold behind his spectacles and Mr Lugg perceived the pitfall too late.
‘A naspirin, then,’ he said defiantly. ‘Fergit it. Don’t roll in the mud. Don’t bathe yerself in it.’
‘When did you hear this?’
‘Oh, ages ago. Months, it was. Last week per’aps.’ Mr Lugg was throwing the subject about until he lost it. ‘I changed the conversation, if you want to know, same as any gent would ’oo ’adn’t fergot ’isself.’
‘Where was this? At your beastly pub?’
‘I may ’ave ’eard a careless word at the club. I really fergit.’ Mr Lugg’s eyes were veiled and his dignity was tremendous.
‘The club!’ said Mr Campion with a force and bitterness which were unusual in him. ‘All the blasted clubs. Oh, my God, what a mess! There’s the bell at last. Let her in, there’s a good chap. Where on earth has she been?’
Mr Lugg raised his eyebrows, or rather the ridge of fat where his eyebrows should have been, and shuffled out of the room. His voice came back from the passage a moment or so later.
‘No luck. It’s only Miss Amanda. This way, yer Ladyship. She’s let ’im down. No, ’asn’t showed up at all.’
Amanda came in full of sympathy. She did not take off the thick ivory silk coat which covered her from throat to toe but seated herself on the arm of a chair and regarded her host inquiringly.
‘What do we do now?’
He grinned
at her. Her enthusiasm was infectious and comforting and it occurred to him then that she would retain it all her days. It was part of her make-up and sprang from a passionate and friendly interest in all the many and exciting surfaces of life.
‘I was considering,’ he said seriously. ‘At the moment we face an impasse. The old maestro allows beautiful suspect to slip through nicotine-stained fingers. I had been all over London for that wretched girl and I was lying harmlessly in bed this morning, wondering if the Salvation Army wasn’t the next most likely hunting ground after all, when she phoned me. I recognized the jews’-harp voice immediately and promptly fell out of the bed on to the bear I shot in the Afghanistan campaign. She gave her name at once and plunged into business. “It’s Miss Caroline Adamson speaking. Is that Mr Albert Campion? Oh, it is?” Light laugh. “I don’t know if you remember me?” Pause. “Oh, you do? That’s divine of you.” Gasp. “Well, Mr Campion, would you be in to-night about eight if I was to call round? I think you’ve been looking for me and I think I know what you’re interested in. You want me to tell you something, don’t you?” Seductive, upward inflection. “I’ll call then. Oh no, no thanks, that’s sweet of you. No, I won’t dine. I just want a little business chat. You understand it will be business, don’t you?” Firm, straight-from-the-shoulder tone. “Oh, you do? I thought you did.” Relief. “I’ve only seen you once to speak to, but I thought I was right about you.” Unnecessary laugh. “Well, I’ve got your address so I’ll drop in about eight, then. What d’you want to know where I live for?” Hur hur hur. “I’ll come round to you. No, really, I’m on a diet, I am really. About eight then. Righty-ho”.’
He finished his impersonation with a realistic giggle.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t discover where the call came from. Never try to trace a London telephone call unless you’re a Superintendent of Police. So I washed my hands and face, bought three pennyworth of mimosa for the desk vase, lassoed Lugg into a collar and sat down to wait. When I asked you to come along at half-past nine I thought we’d have some jolly gossip to discuss. Instead of that the little canine has ditched me and here I am, disconsolate and foolish.’
The Fashion In Shrouds Page 18