The Fashion In Shrouds

by Margery Allingham

  ‘This young woman is good-looking,’ said Pullen dubiously, ‘but she hasn’t much voice left, poor kid, with a damned great wound clean through her chest. It’s a funny wound. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything quite like it except once, and that was made by a sword. However, that’s for Sir Henry to say.’

  The rest of the drive took place in comparative silence, both parties having indicated quite clearly just how far they were prepared to talk, but as soon as they entered the long cool room at the back of the police station at Coaching Cross Mr Campion realized that the mischief was done. The canker had come to the surface. Now there was no hiding, no saving of faces nor guarding of reputations. The realization thrust a little thin stab of alarm behind his diaphragm, but in the back of his mind he was aware of a sense of relief. The pseudo-Nemesis had slipped up at last. The hand of Providence so seldom has a knife in it.

  The detective-sergeant of the Essex Constabulary, who had lifted the sheet from the sharp-angled mass on the table, looked at him inquiringly and he nodded.

  It was Caroline Adamson. Rigor had set in before the body had been moved and she lay in a dreadful, unnatural attitude, with one knee a little bent and her spine curved. Her face lay on the sheet, so that he had to stoop to see it properly. She was still beautiful, even with the greying flesh shrinking away from the cosmetics on her face and her long eyelashes stiff with mascara, and Mr Campion, who had never quite got over his early astonishment at the appalling waste when death comes too soon, drew back from her with pity.

  ‘Do you recognize her?’ Oates was touching his elbow.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and was aware of a general sigh of relief from the assembled policemen. One more step in the inquiry had been accomplished.

  There was an immediate adjournment to the Charge Room, where there was an embarrassment of important police officials. The Essex superintendent, who, etiquette demanded, should receive a place of honour, sat on Oates’s right hand at the solid kitchen table which half filled the room. Pullen was beside him, while Flood and the Essex detective-sergeant stood behind. A constable perched at the desk, pen in hand.

  Mr Campion sat on the other side of the table before this impressive array and gave Miss Adamson’s name and a list of addresses where he had sought her without success.

  Oates listened to him with his head a little on one side. He looked like a very old terrier at a promising rat-hole, and Mr Campion spoke casually and with engaging candour.

  ‘I didn’t know the girl at all,’ he said. ‘I only had one conversation with her in my life and that was over the phone yesterday morning, but I’d seen her once when she was a mannequin at Papendeik’s and once or twice at various restaurants.’

  ‘Yet you knew all these former addresses of hers?’ Pullen sounded puzzled rather than suspicious.

  ‘Yes, I’d been looking for her. I thought she might be able to give me a little information on a private matter.’

  Mr Campion regarded the London superintendent steadily as he spoke, and Oates, who knew better than any man the advantage of having a willing witness, hurried on with routine questions. He had the statement finished in fifteen minutes and as soon as Campion had signed it the telephone wires began to buzz and purposeful detectives in London went off to make inquiries at the houses where Miss Adamson had lodged.

  Oates had a word apart with Pullen and returned to Campion with an entirely unprecedented invitation to take a stroll down the road to see the scene of the discovery of the body.

  ‘It’s only a step,’ he said and added charmingly, ‘I know you’re interested in these things. I’ve got full instructions. I think I’ll find it. Pullen will be along in a moment. He wants a word with Sir Henry on the phone.’

  On a less uncomfortable occasion his guest might have been amused. Oates in tactful mood was delightfully unconvincing.

  They avoided the loitering sightseers and circumnavigated the Press, and as they walked down the narrow lane together, the flint-dust eddying before them and the brown grasses nodding in the hedgerows, the air was warm and clear, soft and sweet-smelling. The superintendent breathed deeply.

  ‘If I hadn’t been ambitious I might still be getting a lungful of this every night,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘This isn’t Dorset, but it’s not bad. That’s what getting on does for you. Nowadays I never see a bit of uncut grass but what it leads me to a perishing corpse. What about this girl, Campion?’

  ‘I’ve told you practically all I know.’ The younger man was speaking slowly. ‘She was once the hat and coat attendant at the Old Beaulieu. From there she went on the stage, where she was not successful. After that she got a job at Papendeik’s, where there was a spot of bother over a stolen design for a dress and she was sent down to Caesar’s Court to show models there. While she was at the hotel she participated in a silly joke on a client and got the sack. This was about six weeks ago. Where she’s been since then I cannot find out.’

  Oates trudged along in silence. His shoulders were bent and his hands were deep in his pockets, rattling his money.

  ‘Caesar’s Court,’ he said at last. ‘Seems like I’ve heard that name before, quite recently.’ He pursed his lips, and Campion, glancing up, caught him peering at him out of the corners of his eyes. The superintendent laughed, drawing back his lips from his fine narrow teeth. ‘I’m a terrible one for a bit of gossip,’ he said. ‘It seems to me I heard a funny story about this lad who died in an aeroplane down at Caesar’s Court. He died so pretty there wasn’t an inquest or anything. It was about him and his wife and a very clever lady who’s the head of Papendeik’s, a very clever, pretty lady. She’s a sister of yours, isn’t she?’

  Mr Campion’s eyelids flickered and for a long time he said nothing at all. Oates walked along, jingling his money.

  ‘It’s not far down here,’ he remarked conversationally. ‘We’re to look out for a turn to the left and a cop with a bike. I don’t believe all I hear,’ he added as his companion made no comment. ‘When a man’s safely buried, with a certificate backed by a P.M. report and nobody making any complaints, I know he died as naturally as makes no difference. I just happened to pick up a bit of high-class scandal which fixed it in my mind. That was all. Who was this dead girl exactly? Did she know Ramillies?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid she did. She got the sack from Papendeik’s when he dressed her up as his wife, whom she resembles, and took her to dine at the restaurant where Lady Ramillies was having supper after her show. Ramillies got hopelessly tight the night before he died and no one knew where he spent the hours between midnight and noon. I thought he might have been entertained by Caroline Adamson. That was why I looked for her.’

  ‘Oh.’ The superintendent seemed relieved. ‘That accounts for it. That covers the telephone number very nicely. It’s funny how I stumble on things, isn’t it? I never seem to forget a name. Faces often mislead you but names have a way of linking up. That “Caesar’s Court” stuck in my head. You can’t call to mind anyone else who knew this girl besides the landladies at these addresses? Papendeik’s, of course; they knew her. What about the Caesar’s Court people?’

  ‘That place is run by Mr Laminoff,’ remarked Campion without expression.

  ‘Laminoff?’ Oates turned the name over on his tongue. ‘Gaiogi Laminoff, a naturalized British subject. He used to run the Old Beaulieu.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘He did.’ Oates wagged his head. ‘It’s funny, I should have thought you would have known that, somehow,’ he said. ‘There’s the footpath and there’s our man with his bike. Good afternoon, Constable. Detective-Superintendent Oates of the Central Division here. Can you take us along?’

  As Mr Campion stood on the bald path and peered over the superintendent’s shoulder through a gap between two bramble bushes at the spot where Miss Adamson had been found, a distressing sense of travesty assailed him. The scene was the traditional Midsummer Night’s Dream set. There was the overhanging oak-tree, the lumpy bank, and even the w
ings of thorn for Moth and Mustard to vanish into, but here was none of the immortal wild thyme, the sweet musk roses nor the eglantine. This was a forest which three hundred years of civilization had laid bald and waste. The brown grass was thin and there were roughnesses and threadbare patches which suggested that the coaching of Coaching Cross was motor-coaching and the place had been frequented by untidier souls than sweet Bully Bottom and his company.

  The constable indicated the position of the body and the sordid joke was complete. Unlike Titania, Miss Adamson had lain head downwards on the bank, one leg drawn up and her face cushioned on a tuft of soiled twitch.

  The constable, who was a cheerful countryman, forgot his awe for the distinguished London detective after the first three stultifying minutes and presently so far forgot himself as to impart a circumstance which had been delighting his bucolic soul all day. The local detective, gathering clues, had removed at least two barrowloads of waste paper, cigarette-ends, used matches, cartons, tins and other delicacies which had lain defacing the clearing for the past three years. The constable also pointed out with some glee that the ground was so ‘turrible hard’ it afforded no wheel- or footmarks and was so trodden over at the best of times that any information which it might yield was practically certain to be misleading. Oates listened to him with a sad smile and a patience which made Campion suspect him until he realized that the old man was merely enjoying the country accent, and finally sent him back to his post with the gentlest of snubs.

  ‘Poor chap, he’s got too much sense of humour for a policeman,’ he remarked when the man was out of hearing. ‘He’ll stick to his helmet and his bicycle for the rest of his days, lucky bloke.’

  He looked round him and indicated a fallen tree-trunk which might have been a piece of sylvan loveliness had it not been for the remnants of a dozen picnic meals strewn around it.

  ‘Have a sit down,’ he suggested, wrapping his thin grey overcoat tightly round his haunches before perching himself uncomfortably upon the wood.

  Mr Campion took up a position beside him and waited for the ultimatum. It came.

  ‘I’ve always found you a particularly honest sort of a feller.’ The superintendent made the announcement as if it were an interesting piece of information. ‘You’ve been very fair, I’ve always thought. Your Dad brought you up nicely, too.’

  ‘A proper little Boy Scout,’ agreed Mr Campion helpfully. ‘If you are asking me in a delicate way if I am going to play ball with you or if I would rather not because I am afraid my sister may have murdered someone by mistake and I do not want to assist in her apprehension, let me say at once, as an old reliable firm with a reputation to maintain, I play ball. I did not know the young woman who is lying in your icebox, and what I knew of her did not amuse me particularly, but I don’t associate myself with anybody who sticks a bread-knife into any lady. I’m against him, whoever he is. I endorse your point of view in the matter. On the other hand, I do not want to be involved in a lot of unpleasant tittle-tattle or scandal in the daily press, nor do I want my innocent friends and relations to have that degrading experience either. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oates. ‘Yes, you do.’ He was silent for some moments and sat looking at the yellow evening light on the tree-tops with apparent satisfaction. ‘Why did you say “bread-knife”?’

  ‘Joke,’ explained his companion grimly. ‘Why?’

  ‘It might have been a bread-knife,’ said Oates seriously. ‘A thinnish bread-knife. Still, that’s conjecture.’ He showed no desire to rise but remained with his coat wrapped round him, staring down at his feet, and presently he began to talk about the case with a lack of official discretion which Mr Campion fully appreciated without altogether enjoying it, since any deviation from routine in such a diehard must have some specific purpose.

  ‘The local bobby found the corpse when he came past here on a bicycle at ten minutes past eight this morning,’ Oates began slowly. ‘He was taking a short cut to a farm down here in connexion with some foot-and-mouth regulations. Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this place, Campion, but it’s not very secret, is it? It’s simply the first piece of cover which a fellow would come to if he had taken a chance on a lonely turning off the main road.’

  ‘Arguing that the fellow who dumped the body need not have had any pre-knowledge of the district?’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ The superintendent nodded his appreciation of his guest’s intelligence. ‘As a matter of fact, the choice of this particular place rather argues that he didn’t know the village. Do you know what this is, Campion? This is the local sitting-out acre, the petting party field. Every decent village has something of the sort. I remember when I was a boy down in Dorset there was a little wood above a disused quarry. Go down there after tea alone and you’d feel like the one child at the party who hadn’t been given his present off the Christmas-tree. The place was alive with boys and girls minding their own affairs. Now wouldn’t that be a silly place to turn up to with a body? You’d walk into trouble the moment you set foot on the grass with a couple of witnesses behind every bush. No, I don’t think our feller knew where he was at all. I think he saw a tree or two and thought, “This’ll do”. Pullen, who is a good man, saw that at once. He’s got the local lads going round talking to country sweethearts now. That’ll mean some delicate interviews. Well, that’s one point. Then there’s another. That girl was stabbed clean through the chest. Sir Henry said the heart was grazed, in his opinion, but he couldn’t say for certain until he’d done his examination. We haven’t found the weapon, yet she wasn’t saturated with blood.’

  He paused and cocked an inquiring eye at his companion.

  ‘The sword, or whatever it was, was removed some time after death?’

  ‘Looks like it, doesn’t it? They’re searching for it now, but somehow I don’t think they’ll find it. If a murderer doesn’t throw away the weapon within ten minutes of the crime he’s a cool hand and that means we’ll never find it, like as not.’

  The old detective was working up to his argument and Campion listened, fascinated by the placid common sense which is the essence of all good police work.

  ‘Then there’s the question of rigor.’ Oates sounded contemptuous. ‘I don’t trust it. I’ve known it have some amazing vagaries. But we can’t afford to ignore it. Rigor is now well advanced and there’s no sign of it abating. That shows the chances are a hundred to one that she’s not been dead thirty hours yet. So, say the crime took place after one o’clock midday yesterday. She was wearing a black silk dress and a small fur cape. It didn’t look to me like a morning get-up. It was the kind of outfit you might go to a cinema in.’

  Mr Campion blinked intelligently.

  ‘Had rigor set in before she was put on the bank?’

  ‘No, after. That’s the expert opinion.’

  ‘So she must have been brought here within six hours of death?’

  ‘There’s no “must” about it, my lad, and don’t you forget it.’ Oates sounded irritable. ‘We can only say that the probability is that it was round about six hours after. Yet rigor was well advanced when she was found at eight o’clock. Therefore it’s fairly certain that she was killed before two a.m. at the latest. As we see it, the poor thing was murdered somewhere, probably in London, and the weapon was left in the wound for a time, thus staunching the blood-flow. Then, some little time later, say within six or seven hours at least, she was brought down here by car and dumped and the weapon removed. She was wearing high-heeled black patent shoes when she was found and these were grazed on top of the toes, indicating that she’d been carried face forward, with her legs sprawling behind her. There was also a smear on one of her stockings which looked to me like oil. None of this is proved, of course; the whole thing is pure conjecture; but that’s how we see it at the moment. You follow where that takes us?’

  ‘Nowhere at all,’ said Mr Campion cheerfully, his pale eyes belying his tone.

  Oates grunted.
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  ‘It takes us to you, mate,’ he said bluntly. ‘It takes us back to you and your pals, and you know that better than anyone. We’ve got to go over that girl’s immediate past with a magnifying glass and we’ve got to have a chat with everyone who knew her. It’s the motive that’s going to put us on to our man and that’s what we’re after. That’s plain speaking, isn’t it?’

  ‘Almost homely,’ agreed Mr Campion absently. ‘I’ve told you all I can, I think. There’s one trivial little thing which may be interesting. It’s only an impression, but they’re sometimes useful. I don’t think she was alone when she phoned me yesterday.’

  ‘An accomplice?’

  ‘I don’t know. An audience, anyway. She hadn’t her entire mind on me.’

  The superintendent was interested.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘That’s corroboration. This isn’t an ordinary knifing. I said that to Pullen as soon as I heard the details. In the normal way, when a good-looking young woman gets herself stabbed it’s a perfectly straightforward human story, but this is different. This is what I call Number One Murder. It’s an honest, done-on-purpose killing for a reason. There was no “Gawd-I-love-you – take-that” about that stab. Do you know her dress was rolled down neatly off her shoulders and the weapon inserted as carefully as if she’d been on an operating table? Not torn down, mind you, but rolled.’

  Mr Campion stared at him in natural astonishment at this bewildering piece of information.

  ‘What was she doing while all this was happening?’

  ‘The Lord alone knows.’ Oates shook his bowler hat over the mystery. ‘I tell you, Campion, the poor thing was barely untidy. Her hands weren’t torn and there wasn’t another mark on her skin. She hadn’t defended herself at all. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.’ He hesitated and laughed because he was embarrassed at the fancifulness of his own thoughts. ‘There’s a sort of inhuman quality about that killing,’ he said. ‘It’s almost as if it had been done by a machine or the hand of Fate or something. Where are you going?’