Murder a la Mode

by Patricia Moyes

  Before Nicholas could reply, the doors from the corridor opened, and the salon was suddenly full of dark blue uniforms. Henry said, “Rachel Field, and Nicholas Field, otherwise Nicholas Knight, I arrest you both for the willful murder of Helen Pankhurst. I must warn you that anything you say will be…”

  The rest of the sentence was lost in uproar. Rachel had turned on Henry like a tigress. “It was me!” she screamed. “Leave Nicky alone! He had nothing to do with it! It was me…” It took two policewomen to drag her away. As for Nicholas, he was weeping hysterically as they led him downstairs to the waiting police car.

  “Oh, Uncle Henry, how horrible!” cried Veronica, her composure suddenly shattered. She flung her arms round Henry’s neck and burst into a flood of tears.

  Henry patted her back encouragingly. “Take it easy, Ronnie. It’s all over now. You were splendid. I was proud of you.”

  It was at that moment that Donald MacKay, looking white and exhausted, came diffidently through the curtains from the atelier. Gently, Henry disengaged his niece’s arms from around his own neck and transferred them to Donald’s. “I think,” he said with a grin, “that you can probably do more good than I can. I should let her have a good cry and then buy her a stiff drink.”

  “I’ll do that, sir,” said Donald. Veronica did not protest. Indeed, she merely clutched Donald more tightly than ever when he picked her up, orange blossoms and all, and carried her out of the salon.

  Henry turned to Michael and Teresa, who were sitting holding hands in stunned silence. “You two can go home now,” he said. “You’ve got nothing more to worry about.”

  “But…” Teresa began.’

  “Oh, I was forgetting. Elvira has something for you. Elvira!”

  The blonde sauntered up, unconcerned and smiling. She had in her hands a large envelope, marked “Photographs, with care.”

  “Elvira thinks they’re all there,” said Henry. “In future, I should take rather more care, as the label advises.” He handed the envelope to Michael. “Now, if Miss French agrees, I think you should go back home for the rest of today. You’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Teresa stood up. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said to Henry. “Come on, Mike. Home.” Unprotesting, Michael followed her out of the salon and downstairs.

  Henry, feeling very self-conscious, climbed on to the rostrum. “Let’s have some more light, Elvira,” he said. Languidly, Elvira pulled back the remaining curtains. Henry addressed the audience, which was just beginning to recover from its shock. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I can’t apologize enough for putting you through such a harassing afternoon. I can only ask you to believe that it was the only way of bringing two criminals to justice. I don’t have to tell you that the case I outlined against Mr. MacKay was pure fiction. He is not only completely innocent, but he has helped us a great deal. As have other members of the staff of Style,” he grinned at Margery, “not to mention my friend Elvira, who has been a tower of strength, for no more reward than a cup of coffee.”

  Elvira simpered. “Delayted, I’m sure, Inspector,” she said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IT WAS AFTER TEN O’CLOCK that night when Henry eventually got home, but he found the flat ablaze with light and merrymaking. Emmy was dispensing drinks in celebration of a double occasion—Veronica’s return from the dead, and the announcement of her engagement to Donald MacKay. Everybody was in high spirits, and Henry found it difficult to put the necessary degree of severity into his voice as he said to Veronica and Donald, “Well, I hope you two are thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.”

  “Ashamed!” cried Veronica with spirit. “I like that! You’d never have caught them without us, and you know it.” She jumped onto the sofa and declaimed—“Model girl solves murder mystery. ‘We were baffled,’ admits Chief Inspector Tibbett of Scotland Yard…”

  “We were not baffled,” said Henry, piqued. “I admit that your ridiculous scheme was useful in the end, but only when I took charge of it. Heaven knows what would have happened if…”

  “Henry,” said Emmy, gently but firmly, “I think you had better explain to Jane and Bill and myself, before our brains burst. Ronnie keeps babbling about Paris toiles and invisible ink and horn-rimmed spectacles, and I can’t make head nor tail of it. I don’t think she can herself.”

  “You see,” Veronica said, “I didn’t know who it was. The second person, I mean. That’s why…”

  “Maybe it would be best, Ronnie,” said Henry, “if you let me tell it. You can correct me where I go wrong.”

  “You bet I will.”

  “I would like to start by saying,” said Henry, “that I hope never again to have to work on a case with such a bunch of people.”

  “What’s the matter with us, Uncle Henry? We’re all so nice. And some of us are intelligent.” She ruffled Donald’s hair.

  “That’s just the trouble,” said Henry. He took a drink, sat down, and said, “It’s difficult to know where to begin. I suppose the right place is Helen’s love affair with Godfrey Goring.”

  “With…with Mr. Goring?” Veronica sat bolt upright, her big eyes round with amazement. “But I thought it was Michael…”

  “So did most people,” said Henry, “except the people who really mattered. I very soon realized that there was some sort of conspiracy between Margery French, Teresa, Goring, Michael himself, and possibly Patrick to pull the wool over my eyes.”

  “Uncle couldn’t pull the wool over anybody’s eyes,” said Veronica scornfully.

  “That’s the conclusion I came to,” said Henry. “He wasn’t part of this conspiracy, because Helen knew him too well to tell him the truth. He was an old and dear friend, and she longed to confide in him, but she couldn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut, so she told him the situation without telling him the name of the man she loved. Uncle was one of the few people who were fooled into believing it was Michael.”

  “I thought all along it might be Goring,” said Donald.

  “You liar!” Veronica said affectionately. “It never even occurred to you.”

  “Actually, it was the most obvious solution,” stated Henry. “They had been in love for some time, in fact. He found in her everything that his wife lacked—business sense, efficiency, tidiness, intelligence. There was one thing, however, that Lorna Goring had which Helen hadn’t, and that was money. Of course, it was her fortune which had been poured into Style, although she didn’t appear officially on the list of shareholders. Goring did not dare to leave her. More, she is a fiery and jealous woman and adores him. He did not dare risk her finding out that he was emotionally involved with a member of his staff.

  “I think I ought to say, in fairness, that both Helen and Goring behaved perfectly honourably. They had no affair in the ordinary sense of the word. They loved each other deeply, and hoped to marry when Goring felt that the magazine was stable enough financially. Meanwhile, Goring spent the week in London—and some week ends as well, according to Lorna—and he and Helen spent most evenings together at his town house.

  “Everything was fine until Olwen Piper came to share Helen’s flat. I was surprised at first that Helen should have consented to such an arrangement, until I remembered that Goring had been on a prolonged trip to America when Olwen moved in, and that it was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement. However, when Goring returned, Olwen was firmly established, and Helen was, as Teresa said, too soft-hearted to throw her out. However, Helen realized she would have to think up some story to account for her frequent evenings out. She and Goring talked it over, and appealed to Michael and Teresa. I may say that Goring is an old friend of Teresa and her family, and they were the only people who knew about the affair.

  “Michael and Teresa agreed quite cheerfully that Helen should use them as an excuse—say she was going to dinner there, and so on. What nobody reckoned on was that Olwen would develop a sort of schoolgirl crush on Helen, and grow violently jealous of the Healys. When she accidentally
found the truth—that Helen had not been there to dinner as she said—she jumped to the conclusion that Helen and Michael were lovers, and tried to put a stop to it by circulating wild rumours. This put the Healys, Helen, and Goring all in awkward positions, but they decided to laugh it off. At all costs, the truth about Helen and Goring must not come out, for the sake of the magazine. Michael has the reputation of a philanderer—all right, so let people think he has added Helen to his list of conquests. In fact, Michael and Teresa tell me that they all regarded it as something of a joke. At first.

  “But then something serious happened. A couple of months ago, Goring began to get worried about his health. He told Helen about it, but refused to go to his doctor, because he did not want Lorna to get wind of it and start fussing. Helen, who had a shrewder notion than he of what the trouble might be, at last persuaded him to go to a cancer specialist. They visited him together, calling themselves Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dodgson.”

  “What a strange name to choose,” said Emmy. Then she added suddenly, “And yet it rings a bell. Wasn’t it…?”

  “It was the sort of double-bluffing pun which would have appealed to both of them,” said Henry. “As far as his affair with Helen was concerned, Goring was hiding behind the disguise of Michael Healy. Obviously, they did not want to give Michael’s name to the doctor, so they picked on the name of another famous photographer.”

  “Charles Dodgson?” said Veronica, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve never heard of him. Which magazines does he work for? If he’s so famous, my agent ought to ring him up and…”

  Henry smiled. “He’s been dead a long time,” he said. “He was a pioneer of photography who became even more celebrated under a pseudonym of his own. Lewis Carroll.”

  “Alice in Wonderland?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Gosh, you are clever, Uncle Henry,” said Veronica. “How did you find all this out?”

  “By tracking down the doctor, who told me his diagnosis. Goring is dying of cancer, and has less than a year to live. At Helen’s request, the doctor told her the whole truth, but to Goring he merely said that he had a stomach ulcer and should go on a diet.”

  “But how did you find out that it was Mr. Goring?”

  “I admit,” said Henry, “that when the doctor identified Helen as Mrs. Dodgson, I had qualms for a moment. The name seemed to point so obviously to Michael.”

  “So why were you so sure it wasn’t him?” Emmy asked.

  “Partly because I’m cussed,” Henry answered. “When a lot of people start to ram a certain fact down my throat, I get suspicious. And Donald confirmed my suspicions by pointing out that the whole thing was phoney. Of course, when Helen was killed, it became doubly important to keep Goring away from any sort of scandal, so the ranks of the conspirators closed up. It wasn’t very pleasant for Michael to be thrown to the wolves, but it was better than having the magazine fold up.”

  “Was that the only reason you decided it wasn’t Michael?” asked Veronica. “Just pure cussedness?”

  “Not entirely,” said Henry. “I had a much sounder reason, and that was Michael’s reaction when I told him that Helen was pregnant.”

  “Pregnant! Was she?”

  “No,” said Henry, “but at the time I thought she was. I put it to Michael, and he was completely shattered. He had always believed, correctly, that Helen and Goring were not lovers in the technical sense. But when I produced this bombshell, and accused him of being the father, what could he do? He was committed to his story, and he had to stick to it. He admitted the whole thing. Then I found out that Helen was a virgin.

  “The only possible reason for Michael’s behaviour was that he was covering up for somebody. But who? The answer was simple as soon as I heard that the doctor had put ‘Mr. Dodgson’ on to a diet for a stomach ulcer. As you know, that means light food and no alcohol. The only person who adhered rigidly to such a diet was Goring. He also qualified by having a rich wife. What was more, when Helen died, he was extremely upset and rattled, and he went out of his way to warn me not to believe anything Michael might say. He was determined that Michael should carry on the fiction to the bitter end, but he was terrified that, under stress, he might break down and tell me the truth.”

  “I feel terribly sorry for Mr. Goring,” said Veronica seriously. “What will happen to him now?”

  “His wife,” said Henry, “is neither so scatterbrained nor insensitive as people imagine, and she’s devoted to him. She, too, was worried about his health, and, in spite of all his precautions, she had more than a suspicion about his affair with Helen. As soon as I mentioned a doctor to her, she did her best to get his name out of me. When she was persistent about it, I gave her enough clues to find the name if she really wanted to, and I warned the doctor that he might hear from her. Sure enough, she ferreted him out and told him who she was. Sir James says that she was extraordinarily brave and sensible. She’s going to leave with her husband next week for a cruise round the world. There’s very little hope of curing him, but at least she will nurse him devotedly.”

  “All this is fascinating,” said Emmy, “but it gets us no nearer Helen’s murder or the invisible ink or…”

  “Or me,” put in Veronica. “Do get on with it, Uncle Henry.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Henry. “I had to tell you all that first, so that you could understand what comes next. And the two are, in fact, connected. There was never any problem about how Helen was killed; the question was, why. For a start, I ruled out the possibility of suicide.” He sketched briefly the arguments that he had already expounded to Goring. “So, Helen was murdered. And from this point of view, Rachel Field’s suitcase was even more interesting than Helen’s body. Somebody, in frantic haste, had ransacked that case, throwing everything onto the floor. Had this person found what he was looking for? Was there anything missing? There didn’t seem to be. The light didn’t dawn on me until Helen’s funeral, when that nice Mrs. Sedge started talking about…”

  “Tissue paper!” cried Veronica triumphantly.

  “Now you’ve spoilt the point of my story,” said Henry.

  “I don’t understand at all, Henry.” Emmy’s sister, Jane, put a timid oar into the conversation for the first time. “It’s normal to use tissue paper for packing, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is,” said Henry. “Not for some young hooligans, perhaps,” he added, with a meaning glance at Veronica, “but certainly for a meticulous person like Rachel Field. In fact, Ronnie told me that she wrapped everything up.”

  “If you’d only let me go in there, I’d have seen straightaway,” Veronica said. “I mean, her hotel bedroom was a mass of tissue paper…”

  “And there wasn’t a scrap of it in Helen’s office next morning,” added Henry. “It sounded crazy, but Helen was apparently murdered so that somebody could extract the tissue paper from Rachel Field’s case, and Rachel herself must be somehow implicated, because she never remarked on the fact that it had gone. Then two things happened. Some mysterious writing appeared on a piece of paper which had been blank before, and I remembered Emmy making a skirt.”

  “You’re talking in riddles, Henry,” said Jane, a little severely. Her farmer husband, Bill, had long since fallen asleep on the sofa, and now let out a ripe snore, as if in support of Jane’s censure.

  “I’d already gathered,” Henry went on, “a certain amount about the world of high fashion. I knew that toiles—exact copies of a model in cheap cotton—could be bought in Paris from the designers at a great price. I knew, too, that some wholesalers and designers—notably Nicholas Knight—had caused a scandal by coming out with copies apparently made from a toile which had never left Paris. I also knew that experts had ruled that it would be impossible to smuggle a toile out of a Paris atelier. Yet apparently it was being done. I asked myself what could be taken out of a workshop without arousing suspicion, and the obvious answer was tissue paper. Then I thought of Emmy cutting out from her paper pattern, and I saw the l
ight.”

  “Now, wait a minute, Henry,” said Emmy. “I’m not a detective, but I do know something about dressmaking. Do you suggest that somebody cut out a paper pattern of the toile, put in all the marking that it needs, and then walked out with it over her arm, simply saying airily, ‘Just a few bits of old paper to wrap things in’? Come now.”

  Veronica was bouncing up and down on the sofa in excitement. “Aunty Emmy, don’t you see?”

  “Shut up, Ronnie,” said Henry. “You can take over in a minute. No, Emmy, I don’t suggest that. The toiles came out of the workrooms in the guise of perfectly plain, square, new sheets of tissue paper with no markings on them at all. In fact, these sheets were used to wrap certain garments taken out to be photographed by Style.”

  Emmy clapped a hand to her forehead. “Of course! What a fool I am. Invisible ink!”

  “Got it at last!” cried Veronica. “And d’you know, I actually bought the ink myself!”

  “You did? Don’t tell me that you…”

  “No, no. I bought it for Teresa, for Helen…”

  “Ronnie!” Henry was stern. “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to.” Veronica giggled. Henry went on. “The method of smuggling out the designs was beautifully simple, and only required the collaboration of one employee in each couture house. So far, our only sure proof comes from Monnier’s. The girl would make an excuse to work late, and then trace a paper pattern of the pieces of a toile, together with sewing instructions, in invisible ink on white tissue paper. She would then mark the paper unobtrusively, and put it away. We know that Rachel Field was responsible for getting the dresses from the ateliers to be photographed by Style. The dress would come wrapped in this apparently innocuous paper. It was easy enough for Rachel to send it back wrapped in ordinary tissue paper, and keep the marked sheets for her own packing. Once safely home, she would send the sheets to Nicholas Knight, who had only to expose them to the heat of an electric fire to bring up the markings, and there were his Paris models. Of course, he couldn’t expect more than a few toiles each season. His other copies he did, as he said, cut by eye from photographs. And here we must have a slight digression.