Murder a la Mode

by Patricia Moyes

  He spent Monday evening at Scotland Yard, sitting by a telephone. Emmy was gallantly coping with Veronica’s distraught parents, who had arrived from Devon to be greeted by a battery of photographers and journalists. Emmy, abetted by several stalwart policemen, had managed to get them safely into a taxi. Now, back at the flat, the three of them sat in a miserable, strained silence full of accusation and despair. In fact, it never occurred either to Jane or to Bill to turn on Emmy and say, “If you hadn’t encouraged her to be a model, this would never have happened!” But to Emmy, in her guilt and misery, the walls seemed to be oozing with unspoken reproaches. The words screamed silently in Emmy’s ears, until she longed to shout aloud, “Come on, then! Say it and have done with it! Say it!” It was not a happy evening.

  Meanwhile, at Scotland Yard, news was filtering in. The publicity in the evening papers and on television had produced the usual crop of cranks, exhibitionists, and genuinely misguided characters, all of whose stories had to be patiently investigated. There was the unbalanced beatnik boy from Clapham who swore that Veronica was his discarded girl friend, whose throat he personally had slit with a flick-knife. There was the apparently demure spinster from Oxford who maintained that she had met Veronica in the Second Class Buffet at Waterloo, where the latter had confided to her that she was in fear of her life, as she was being pursued by a gang of international spies from Moscow. Unfortunately, the copy of the paper in which this lady had read the story contained a misprint, describing Veronica as carrying a vase instead of a case. When the spinster proceeded to describe the vase in great detail, her story was dismissed as improbable. Then there was the myopic but kindly old gentleman who insisted that he had sat opposite to Veronica on an underground train…the District Line, he thought…or was it the Central?…anyway he thought it was an underground train. When pressed, however, he was forced to admit that the young lady he had seen was wearing a dark blue suit…or was it green?…a fur hat and horn-rimmed spectacles. But she had such a sweet face, and he was almost sure she had a red suitcase with her. He was still talking to himself when a kind policeman led him gently out into the street.

  The first sign of something genuinely interesting came in the form of a telephone call at about seven P.M. This was from a Mrs. Trout, of Surbiton. This good lady sounded neither cranky nor hysterical, and she was quite positive that she had seen Veronica in the ladies’ cloakroom at Waterloo a few minutes past eleven o’clock on Saturday morning.

  “I know the time, you see, because I was catching the 11:12 home after a visit to my oculist, and I wondered whether I’d have time to…em…powder my nose. I noticed her because she was so pretty, even with that funny new-fashioned lipstick, and then there was her bright red coat. I’m convinced it was her. We went into adjoining…em…conveniences. When I came out, there was no sign of her. The door of her…that is, next door to mine…was still marked ‘Engaged,’ so I presume she was still in there. I had to hurry off for my train. I didn’t see her again.”

  “Did you notice anything else, Mrs. Trout?” Henry asked. “Anything that might give us a line on…”

  “Well, I did notice that she looked excited. Flushed, you know, and smiling to herself. That girl’s going to meet some young man, I said to myself.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No, nothing. I do hope you find her, Inspector. Such a lovely girl.”

  Following on Mrs. Trout’s call, a detective was sent to interview the ladies’ cloakroom attendant, a Mrs. O’Reilly, whom he found off duty, ensconced in front of the fire in a cosy bedsitter in the Waterloo Road. She was playing cards and swigging Guinness, and she greeted him cordially.

  As luck would have it, Mrs. O’Reilly turned out to belong to the one percent of the British public who had neither bought an evening paper nor switched on a radio that evening, and who did not possess a television set. Consequently, the hue and cry had escaped her completely. She confirmed Mrs. Trout’s statement at once, her sharp brown eyes twinkling as chirpily as a sparrow’s under her thatch of grey hair.

  “Shure, an’ I saw the young lady,” she said. “It’s the one in the red leather coat you’ll be meanin’. Now don’t ask me what time she came in, dear, because I couldn’t tell you. The middle of the mornin’—that’s as near as I can say. I took her penny and showed her in, like I do for all the ladies, with a bit of a wipe-round to the seat, because you never know, do you? She had a suitcase with her, that I do remember, and she was as pretty as a picture. That’ll be some model or film star or such, I thought.”

  “Did you see her leave?”

  “Now, it’s funny, isn’t it, but I didn’t. Of course, it’s a busy time, Saturday mornin’, with all the ladies tired from shopping and anxious to relieve themselves. She must have slipped out while I was attending to some other lady. I show them all in, you see, but they go out by themselves. Will you be taking a bottle of Guinness, Officer?”

  There seemed little more that Mrs. O’Reilly could contribute, except that she recollected that Veronica had used the last lavatory on the left as you go in. The cloakroom was immediately cordoned off, causing great inconvenience to the feminine half of the traveling public, and Henry himself went along to inspect the last known spot where his niece had been seen. He had no real hope of finding anything interesting there, but it was something to do.

  There was nothing remarkable about the particular cubicle which Veronica had used. It was as clean and as uninspiring as all the rest. In the rubbish rack on the back of the door were the usual assortment of used face tissues, pieces of cotton wool, and wrapping papers off chocolate bars. These were solemnly sorted out and inspected one by one. Suddenly Henry said, “That was Veronica’s.”

  His sergeant looked at him in awed surprise, as though he had manifested supernatural powers. “However can you tell, sir?” Henry picked up the soiled tissue. It was liberally smudged with the strange shade of sepia-brown lipstick which he had seen Veronica wearing at the Style studio. There were also several streaks of darker brown on it, and a trace of green.

  “I can’t be absolutely certain, of course,” said Henry, “but I don’t think that shade of lipstick exists in England yet. It would be a strange coincidence if another girl had brought one from Paris and used this same cubicle.”

  “Looks like she redid her make-up, then,” said the sergeant. “Not that it helps us much. What we want to know is what she did next.”

  “Indeed we do,” said Henry, but he looked thoughtful.

  The trail seemed to end there, dead and cold. What had happened to Veronica in those few short yards between the ladies’ room and the barrier of Platform Ten? The most likely explanation seemed to be that she had met someone—someone she knew, and who knew that she would be there. This person had spun her a story which had changed her mind about taking the train to Porchester. Since she imagined that she was meeting Donald at the barrier, the chances were that her acquaintance had offered her a lift to Hampshire, claiming that Donald was already in the car, waiting. This was, Henry reflected, the obvious explanation. There were two other possible alternatives, however, both of which filled him with even graver misgivings.

  Back at Scotland Yard, Henry checked once more through the statements which he had taken during the afternoon. It was vital to establish the exact whereabouts at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning of all the people who knew Donald and Veronica’s plans. He opened his notebook and made two lists of names—those with alibis and those without.

  Donald MacKay headed the list of those whose movements were satisfactorily accounted for. While Henry did not seriously doubt the word of Donald’s father, he had taken the precaution of getting the local police to check up. Donald was well known in the village, and there was ample confirmation from the railway staff and from neighbouring shopkeepers that he had arrived on Friday evening and stayed until Sunday. His father volunteered that he had got up early and gone for a long walk on Saturday morning and by twelve fifteen he had been playing d
arts in the local pub.

  Donald’s name was followed by that of Beth Connolly, who had been at her hairdresser’s from ten thirty until midday, and had then gone straight on to lunch with a girl friend.

  Teresa and Michael provided alibis for each other, which was less satisfactory. They had been at home, they said. In fact, Michael had stayed in bed until lunchtime. He had not been feeling well, and was dreading the ordeal of Helen’s funeral in the afternoon. Teresa had pottered around the house, arranging flowers and writing letters. Their maid could confirm this, they said. Of course, she could not. The maid certainly believed that both of them had been in the whole morning, but she could not be sure. Michael had given orders that he was not to be disturbed, and she had not seen him between the time when she took up his breakfast at nine o’clock, and half past twelve, when he had rung and asked her to bring him a whisky and soda in his room; by which time, she agreed, he was up and dressed. Henry put a query beside both names.

  The last two on the list seemed quite straightforward. Nicholas Knight and Horace Barry. Henry had included them, because he remembered that Veronica and Barry had both been at Knight’s atelier on Friday morning, and sure enough both agreed at once that they knew all about the projected week end in Porchester. Equally, both denied that they knew anything about Donald MacKay or his mother, but Henry had decided to check, all the same. It appeared that Nicholas had worked in the atelier from ten in the morning until five in the evening, sending out for a sandwich lunch. A dozen of his staff could confirm this. Horace Barry had been weekending with friends in Brighton since Friday evening.

  The other list started with Rachel Field, who said that she had spent Saturday morning shopping for week-end provisions in Kensington High Street. The only shops which she could recall visiting were all large supermarkets, and Henry, thinking of the Saturday morning crowds, was not surprised that none of the staff remembered her. It proved nothing, either way. Unlike Veronica, Rachel was not a memorable person.

  The next name was Patrick’s. He had been at home, he said, painting. Apart from opening the door to the postman, who had delivered a parcel at about half-past nine, he had seen nobody. Margery French’s account of her movements was equally inconclusive. She told Henry that she had taken a lot of work home, and spent the morning writing copy. There was one curious feature about her statement, however. She claimed that she had attempted to telephone Patrick’s number several times during the morning, with the idea of arranging to meet him to go to Helen’s funeral, and that she had received a persistent “engaged” signal. Eventually, she said, she had contacted the operator, who tested the line and informed her that the receiver had been left off its hook. She finally got an answer from Patrick, she said, at half past one. When taxed with this, Patrick merely replied that he frequently unhooked the receiver when he was working and did not want to be disturbed. It was an entirely reasonable explanation, on the face of it, but it still left room for doubt.

  Olwen Piper had given a thoroughly unsatisfactory account of herself. She had started the morning, she said, by packing up Helen’s clothes, but this sad task, together with the thought of the funeral in the afternoon, had preyed on her mind to such an extent that she decided to resort to her usual remedy of aimless walking. She had also decided that she could not face the funeral at any price. She had left the house about half past ten, and just walked. She didn’t know where…round the streets. She was too upset to notice anything. At three o’clock she suddenly realized she was hungry, and took stock of herself. She found she had wandered as far as Kilburn. She had eggs and chips in a café, and took an underground home. By great good fortune, Henry located the café from her description, and the owner remembered her. This, again, proved nothing, either way. Mrs. Sedge, who had been working at the flat, confirmed that Olwen had left at half past ten, and had not returned when she, Mrs. Sedge, went home at noon.

  The last name on Henry’s non-alibi list was that of Godfrey Goring. Although the latter denied categorically that he had ever even heard of Veronica Spence, Henry reflected that he had been in the office on Friday, and should be checked. Goring said that he had spent Saturday morning at the office, working. Nobody else was there—the place was deserted. He had, however, lunched as usual at The Orangery, and this was amply confirmed. Here, again, however, there was a small inconsistency. The doorman at The Orangery maintained that Goring had not walked across the street from his office to lunch, but had driven up in his Bentley. Goring dismissed this by saying that he had left his car on a parking meter, and, realizing that time was running out, had decided to move it and to leave it to The Orangery to find him another space.

  Henry studied his two lists carefully. Then, on the second one, he put small crosses by the names of Patrick, Margery, and Goring. That was to indicate the people who owned cars.

  Then he settled down to think, with great concentration. He thought about Veronica, and the things she had said, and the soiled face tissue. He thought about the members of Style’s staff, and about the missing key and Nicholas Knight and Horace Barry, and the package that Teresa had brought back from Paris. Above all, he thought about Donald MacKay.

  At a quarter to ten, he telephoned Donald’s home number, and was told by the landlady that Mr. MacKay had been out since six, and she couldn’t say where he was or when he would be back. Henry put on his raincoat and took a bus to Piccadilly. From there, he walked to Earl Street.

  It was raining hard, and a cold wind blew up the narrow street, tossing stray pieces of sodden paper ahead of it. The Style building was dark and apparently deserted. Only The Orangery was warmly lit and inviting, but the commissionaire had wisely decided to take shelter inside, emerging only when a taxi drew up, bearing customers. The only human being in sight was the man with the basket of roses, who kept his lonely vigil on the pavement. From Nicholas Knight’s atelier, two floors above, a light streamed out through uncurtained windows onto the rain-washed street below.

  Henry walked up to the rose seller. “How much for half a dozen?”

  The man’s shabby raincoat was pulled up almost to his nose against the cold, nearly meeting the checked cap which he wore well down over his eyes. “Ten bob, guv’nor,” he said, gruffly.

  “I think,” said Henry, “that it’s time we had a talk, Mr. MacKay.”

  Before Henry knew what was happening, the man had picked up the basket of roses and flung it in Henry’s face. By the time he recovered, the street was empty. Henry ran to the telephone box behind the Style building and put through a call to Scotland Yard.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t want him arrested. Not yet. I want him picked up and followed. And you’d better alert the Essex police and tell them to look for…”

  Back in Chelsea, Henry found Emmy sitting alone by the fire in a mood of acute depression and self-accusation. She had at last persuaded her sister and brother-in-law to go to bed, and was now drinking whisky in increasing melancholia. If only she had never encouraged Veronica to come to London…if only she had kept a stricter eye on her…if only…if only… It was with a tremendous sense of relief that she heard Henry’s key turning in the latch.

  Henry was able to reassure her a little. “I think there’s a good chance that Ronnie is still alive,” he said. “I don’t want to raise any false hopes, but my theory is that for the moment she’s just been put into cold storage, as it were. If I can play my cards right, tomorrow…”

  “Don’t try to be kind to me, Henry,” said Emmy brusquely. “Personally, I think she’s been dead since Saturday. After all, the murderer didn’t have any compunction in Helen’s case.”

  “Veronica’s case is quite different, Emmy.”

  “Henry, you must explain…”

  “I can’t,” said Henry wearily. “I really can’t, darling. I must go to bed. There’s a lot to do tomorrow before half past two.”

  “What’s happening at half past two?”

  “Nicholas Knight’s dress show,” said Henry. �
�I have an invitation.”

  Emmy was almost speechless. “You mean you’re going to spend the afternoon watching a fashion parade, while Veronica…?”

  “I think,” said Henry, “that it may be a fairly unusual fashion parade.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, Henry was at Scotland Yard. He put through a number of telephone calls, both to London and the country. He also gave certain instructions to his subordinates, and despatched a plain-clothes man to Somerset House to make some researches among the records there. He was pleased to find that a small parcel had arrived for him by express mail from Paris. He slipped it into his raincoat pocket. Then he went along to Wimpole Street, where he had a short, friendly talk with Sir James Braithwaite.

  After this, he made his way to the offices of Style. Here, he first had a private talk with Margery French, and asked her if certain things could be arranged.

  “It’s not usual, Inspector, but I can fix it for you,” she said, with her customary air of smooth competence. Henry noticed, however, that the dark rings under her eyes were more marked than usual, despite her make-up. He found—as did so many of her colleagues—that he had to keep reminding himself that this woman was ill, and about to retire on her doctor’s orders.

  Next, Henry went and spoke to Michael Healy. It was not an interview that he enjoyed, but it had to be done. After that, steeling himself, he had a long and painful talk with Teresa. Her distress was obvious, but Henry realized that, as he had guessed, she was not entirely surprised by what he had to say. He gave her what reassurance he could, and finally went off into the fashion room to pick up from Beth Connolly the heavily embossed card which invited Chief Inspector Tibbett to be present at the Press Showing of Nicholas Knight’s Spring Collection that afternoon. Then, feeling in need of solace, he went and took a cup of coffee in one of the many espresso bars in the neighbourhood, where he fell into pleasant conversation with a blonde sitting on the next stool. It was in a more cheerful frame of mind that he went back to the Yard.