The Fashion In Shrouds

by Margery Allingham

  Everyone so far forgot his manners as to stare out of the window at the newcomer. Even in flannels and a blazer Dr Harvey Juxton-Coltness managed to convey that he was a distinguished man. The white scarf round his throat was folded with precision and his step was firm and purposeful. His voice floated in to them from the hall. It was deep and reassuring. Here, at any rate, was a man with a manner, the kind of doctor who was entirely in keeping with Caesar’s Court.

  Georgia and Gaiogi hurried out to him. Wivenhoe gave them two minutes and then went out himself to bring her back. There was something familiar about her when she returned. Campion was reminded forcefully of the heroine in The Little Sacrifice. There was the same quiet, only-just-balanced movement, the same air of suppressed tragedy

  ‘I think I’ll sit down,’ she said. She glanced at Campion and smiled wanly. ‘They’ve promised to send for me the instant he’s conscious.’

  It was a horrible moment. The complete insincerity of the entire scene sickened Campion and he looked at Wivenhoe steadily. The young man frowned at him and bent over his glass.

  Georgia went on playing her part for some little time. It was not an inspired performance; rather a trifle mechanical as if her thoughts were not on it.

  ‘I can’t imagine Ray ill,’ she said. ‘He’s not the kind of person who ought to suffer. Haven’t you noticed it? There’s something so vital about him, like a child. I think that’s what I fell in love with first of all. He’s been going the pace terribly lately. I persuaded him to go and see Juxton-Coltness only a little while ago. He didn’t tell me what he said. He wouldn’t, you know, not if it was anything serious. That’s where Ray’s rather sweet.’

  Mr Campion was not given to hating people, but at that moment he conceived an active dislike for Georgia Ramillies and surprised himself in an impulse to take her by the shoulders and shake her till her teeth rattled. He felt she knew as well as he did, as well as Wivenhoe knew, as well as the ghoul knew, as well as Juxton-Coltness must know by this time, that Ramillies was dead, dead as mutton, and in appallingly fishy circumstances. He knew now what Val had meant when she had described Georgia as vulgar. Georgia’s vulgarity was staggering. It was the overpowering, insufferable vulgarity to which nothing is sacred. It was also, he found, the vulgarity which breeds vulgarity. His own inclination to stand and shout the brutal truth at her until he forced her out of her performance was almost uncontrollable and when someone came in he turned towards the door with physical relief.

  It was Val. She had evidently just made up her face, but her pallor made the colour look artificial and there were shadows round her large light eyes. She glanced from one to the other inquiringly.

  ‘I met a servant on the landing,’ she said, ‘and he told me something quite incredible. Is it true?’

  The direct question in the clear, startled voice brought a draught of reality into the room. Georgia looked up at her and became, miraculously, a human being again.

  ‘It’s Ray,’ she said bluntly. ‘He was taken ill in the plane. The doctor is with him now. Everyone’s being awfully kind, but I’m afraid it’s serious.’

  It was an odd situation. For a moment it was Georgia who was softening a staggering blow to the other woman. There was alarm in her eyes and something dreadfully like apology in her tone.

  Like most men Mr Campion was at heart conventional, and when he saw brutal, practical reality thrust under his very nose he could not bring himself to recognize it. He watched the two women with growing bewilderment. They were both entirely female, both sharp-witted, both realists, but whereas the one had a balanced intellect in control the other was as wanton and unexpected as a rudderless steamboat in a gale. Val sat down.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  Wivenhoe, even more out of his depth than Campion, made a disparaging sound, but for once Georgia did not respond to him. She seemed to be absorbed by the other woman.

  ‘I think so,’ she said. ‘They’ve been preparing me for it. Oh, Val, isn’t it fantastic? I mean, it’s frightful, terrible, the most ghastly thing that could have happened! But – it’s amazing, isn’t it?’

  Mr Campion felt his eyes widening. Now it was impossible to misunderstand. He and Wivenhoe had been forgotten as completely as if they had been children, to be ignored as soon as a grown-up entered. Georgia was doing no play-acting for Val. They were equals coming down to essentials in the face of the unexpected.

  Val was sitting on a low chair, her hands folded in her lap. She was wearing a bright red dress of some smooth material which had been designed for her, and in it she made a complete and finished work of art, as artificial in appearance as any other ornament in that mannered room, but her personality was vivid and entirely human. She alone expressed that sense of shock and calamity which her brother now realized was the element he had missed throughout the entire incident.

  ‘What happened?’ she inquired quietly.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Georgia glanced at Wivenhoe. ‘What was it? Some sort of stroke? How did he die?’

  ‘I say, you know – really. We – we must wait for the doctor.’ The young man was flustered. ‘I mean, we don’t actually know yet, do we? He was breathing in the plane. I’m sure of it. That is definite. Otherwise he couldn’t have been moved, do you see? It was probably some sort of embolism. He was getting on for fifty, wasn’t he? I know that sort of thing does happen. An uncle of mine died the same way. It’s dreadful when it does occur, but it’s very much kinder for the old boys . . .’

  He was drivelling and seemed to realize it. Neither of the two women was looking at him. Val’s eyes were holding Georgia’s.

  ‘You saw him when he came in to-day, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘How was he? I thought he seemed so well last night.’

  There was no hint of accusation in her voice or in the words, but Georgia recoiled.

  ‘He was in a fearful state this afternoon,’ she said sharply. ‘He’d been drinking all night. He said so. He was thick and loquacious and – oh, Val, don’t look at me like that! I’m broken-hearted, really I am. I’m holding myself together with tremendous difficulty, darling. I am sorry. I am. I am sorry. When you’re married to a man, whatever you do, however you behave to one another, there is an affinity. There is. It’s a frightful shock. I haven’t begun to realize it yet. When I do I –’

  ‘My dear Lady Ramillies!’ Wivenhoe’s startled voice was what she needed. She swung towards him, put both her hands in his, and began to cry. Val blushed. The slow resentful colour spread over her face and neck and her eyes were sombre.

  ‘You poor, poor darling,’ she said.

  Georgia wiped her eyes.

  I hate hysterical women,’ she murmured, smiling wryly at Campion. ‘I’m all right, I’m all right now.’ She patted Wivenhoe’s hands and released them. Then, rising, she went over to Val and sat down beside her with an arm round her shoulders. ‘You see, dearest, I don’t know what’s happened,’ she said earnestly. ‘Nobody knows yet. It’s all so – so utterly extraordinary. It’s incredible. But Val, incredible things do happen to me, don’t they? You know that, don’t you? We’re always commenting on it, aren’t we?’

  She seemed to be pleading with the fair girl, striving to force some reassurance out of her, and Campion saw the strong, capable fingers pressing into the shoulder of the red dress. Val laid a hand on Georgia’s knee, but she did not speak. She was rigid, and there was a short, unhappy silence before it was mercifully broken by footsteps in the hall.

  Gaiogi and the doctor came in solemnly and shut the door behind them.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE PERSONAL HUMILITY of all medical men is jeopardized throughout their career by the fact that one of the disadvantages of their profession is that they should be treated with much greater seriousness than any other visitor to the normal household. Their lightest words are hung upon and they receive every hour the flattery of absorbed attention. Some noble natures can stand up to this and some cannot, but there is a small class which t
urns a disadvantage into an asset and thrives upon the things that should defeat it.

  Dr Harvey Juxton-Coltness was one of these. Critical colleagues told each other bitterly that it was Juxton-Coltness’s conceit alone which kept him on the register. His head, they said, was like a balloon which lifted him gently over morass and crevice, bearing him gracefully from cocktail party to ducal bedroom, from exorbitant nursing-home to fashionable funeral, with a grace and ease not afforded to any man with his feet set firmly upon the ground.

  Mr Campion recognized his type as soon as he saw him and another little detail in the key of the problem flickered under his nose.

  The doctor was a large man with what is called a fine presence. His light grey eyes were entirely without humour in spite of the laughter-lines beside them, and his shapely pink hands were graceful and expressive. He waited for Gaiogi to introduce him to Georgia and bestowed a general nod upon the rest of the room. When he judged the right moment had come he made his announcement tactfully.

  ‘Lady Ramillies,’ he said, ‘I am afraid I have bad news for you. Can you bear it?’

  Georgia nodded. Even she seemed to feel that a return to artificiality would be indecorous.

  ‘I was so afraid,’ she said simply. ‘What – what was it, doctor? His heart?’

  ‘His heart – yes’ Dr Juxton-Coltness conveyed that he was making a very difficult thing very simple. He also seemed considerably relieved. ‘Yes, I think we may say, in actual fact, his heart.’ He took the hand which she had stretched out to him and stood looking down at her, his cold eyes cautious in spite of his general air of contented omnipotence. ‘Tell me, Lady Ramillies,’ he began, his voice rolling melodiously round the room, ‘is this quite the shock it might have been? Did Sir Raymond tell you nothing which might just conceivably have made you apprehensive?’

  There was a pause and he glanced round him inquiringly.

  ‘We are all in committee, are we not?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Georgia hastily. ‘We’re all very close friends.’

  She made some perfunctory introductions and returned to his question.

  ‘He told me he’d been to see you. He’d been worried about himself and some of our friends advised him to go to you. He told me you thought he ought to go slow.’

  ‘I did. I did, most emphatically.’ The deep voice was thick with sad conviction. ‘There were distinct symptoms of chronic nephritis, a considerably raised blood-pressure, and I diagnosed cardio-vascular trouble. I warned Sir Raymond to be very careful of himself. I told him to avoid every sort of excess. I can’t put it plainer than that, can I? Every sort of excess. I impressed it upon him that alcohol was definitely dangerous to him and I advised a visit to a spa. Now Mr. Laminoff tells me he can hardly have been said to have taken my advice. Do you agree with that?’

  Georgia looked at him blankly and he, mistaking her reaction, fell back upon his charm.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Of course, this is a very great shock for you. Surely it’s not necessary for you to give me these details yourself, is it? Isn’t there some member of the family you can depute to act for you? If I might prescribe for you, Lady Ramillies, I should go to bed immediately. Keep warm. Take a sedative. What do you usually use? Aspirin? Or do you like luminal? Anything like that. Wrap yourself up. Get your maid to bring you plenty of hot-water bottles.’

  ‘No,’ said Georgia with sudden decision. ‘No, I’m all right. I can tell you. We can all tell you. Ray hasn’t been looking after himself. He’s been very gay during the last week or so; more, I think, than usual.’

  She glanced round at them for confirmation, and Gaiogi, who was watching the scene with the bright anxiety of a squirrel, made a reassuring noise. Georgia went on steadily:

  ‘Then last night, in the middle of a farewell party, he went rushing off somewhere and came back this morning about lunch-time. He said he’d been drinking all night, and, frankly, that was obvious. He didn’t come to the farewell luncheon and when I saw him afterwards I thought he was even worse. He was unsteady, you know, and pale, and frightfully talkative and – well –’ She threw out her hands expressively and the doctor nodded.

  He glanced round at his small audience with sad resignation.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘There you are.’

  Georgia opened her mouth but did not speak. She stood staring at him. The matter-of-fact expression which he had used seemed to have jolted her. Presently she turned to Val, her eyes wide and dark.

  ‘Dead,’ she said. ‘Ray is dead. Val, do you realize it? Ray is dead.’

  The doctor moved to her side with unexpected agility.

  ‘Now, my dear lady,’ he began warningly, ‘my dear lady, sit down. I foresaw this. It was only to be expected. Sit down. Mr Laminoff, I want some water, please.’

  ‘No.’ Georgia pushed him away. ‘No, really. I’m not hysterical. I suddenly saw it. That was all. Why did he die? What was it?’

  She listened to his recital with deep attention and so did Campion.

  The full medical definition of the words ‘arteriothrombosis’ is impressive to the lay mind. It is one of those simple mechanical disasters which are easily comprehensible to anybody and, as Mr Campion sat listening to the full, confident voice his brows rose.

  In a well-ordered society it is easy to think of some things as concrete when they are nothing of the kind. After long years of experience Mr Campion had come to consider a sudden and suspicious death as synonymous with a post-mortem and a Coroner’s inquest, but now for the first time it was brought strongly to his mind that this was not so in actual fact. No ordinary hard-working general practitioner would dream of giving a certificate of natural death in the present case, for the excellent reason that, should any talk arise afterwards, as well it might in ordinary circumstances, the consequences would be thunderingly inconvenient for him, and whereas he would have everything to lose he would have precious little to gain. But there was no earthly reason why a man like Harvey Juxton-Coltness should not give a certificate; rather, every reason that he should.

  Juxton-Coltness’s practice was not bounded by any district. His patients were all wealthy folk recommended to him by each other. The more influential friends he made the better for him, and here he was in a nest of influential people. It was clearly to everyone’s advantage that there should be no fuss over Ramillies’s death. Towser, for one, would be more than grateful to hear that it was a natural tragedy. Gaiogi, Georgia herself, nobody wanted publicity. The ghoul’s words returned to him forcefully:

  It’s all ’ush-’ush with the smart people. . . . Coo, ’e’s ill. Shove ’im in a nursing ’ome and don’t let me see ’im. That’s the cry every time.

  It was horribly true and nobody could possibly know it better than the fashionable doctor with his partnership in Mayfair, his colossal fees and his magnificent manner. There was no reason why he should not issue a certificate of death from thrombosis of a main artery following kidney disease and cardio-dilatation, and attend the funeral at Willesden Cemetery, fixing himself in yet another twenty useful minds as that charming man who was ‘so clever and considerate when poor Ray died after getting so abominably tight’. And if there was a little talk afterwards, what was the real danger? It would only be talk among people who would never risk seeing themselves in Court on a slander charge. At worst it would be frivolous and meaningless talk, and not in any case detrimental to the doctor.

  Mr Campion blinked. He saw how it was going to be done. Juxton-Coltness was going to give the certificate and there was only one thing that would stop him. That was Immediate talk. Talk now. He glanced round the room. He saw Gaiogi, Wivenhoe, Georgia and Val. Even Val was financially interested in the preservation of the peace and privacy of Caesar’s Court. There remained himself. He was the sole representative of the general public who might demand to know more definitely the cause of Raymond Ramillies’s extraordinarily opportune death. He alone was unsatisfied. He alone was curious to know exactly wha
t sort of seizure had caused those last convulsions. It was up to him. He was the only disinterested agent.

  The hesitant words were on the tip of his tongue when he saw the pitfall, and as it opened beneath his feet he experienced for the first time that deep anger which altered him so and changed him from the affable universal uncle to the man with an intolerable personal affront to avenge. How could he protest? He was the guest of a host who had expressly invited him to prevent just such trouble as he was preparing to make. Moreover, he had spent the day watching a man who had died under his nose. If the circumstances were suspicious, had he not had every opportunity to alter them as they occurred? Both his professional dignity and his natural ingrained reluctance to abuse his position as a guest prevented him from speaking. They were his two vulnerable spots, his two vanities. It was almost as though someone had sized him up and sized him up accurately, a degrading experience for anybody at the best of times.

  Most people dislike to be made use of and resent being forced into a position wherein their hands are tied, but in some folk the experience raises a devil. Mr Campion was one of these. Had he been sure of his ground, he flattered himself, he would have conquered his weaknesses and taken the strong, if oafish, course, but he was not sure. If Providence’s celebrated Mysterious Ways department was actually as blatantly at work as it appeared to be, then Ramillies might have died from a thrombosis, a cerebral haemorrhage, or any other natural thunderbolt known to Medicine.

  As it was, Campion would do nothing. He saw that at once and his sense of personal outrage grew. He was trapped by himself, fettered by his own personality. The thing was mental ju-jitsu. The ‘plaything of fate’ sensation was bad enough, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that the fate in question had a human brain behind it, and there was insult as well as inconvenience to counter.

  Mr Campion’s amiable brown face became dangerously blank and he stood looking at the company, his hands deep in his pockets and his pale eyes narrowed behind his spectacles.