The Fashion In Shrouds

by Margery Allingham

  ‘Oh well, if you say so, cock. I can’t talk about trade risks.’ Mr Lugg was magnanimous. ‘I’ll do you a bit o’ bacon.’

  ‘I suppose the threat was divorce information for Georgia,’ Amanda observed. ‘That might have cooked his County Court ambitions. Was it done purely for the money? How much had he got?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, but I think he must have got through about four thousand pounds in the last six months of his life. He died broke. I had taken it that he’d been wallowing in diamonds, costly furs and ballet shoes of champagne, but it seems not.’ Campion spoke lightly, but his eyes were not amused. ‘All the same, I don’t believe money was the primary motive, although somebody thought a lot about it. Our Caroline did, for one. I may be braying in the wilderness, but whenever I consider the events in the round I smell fish. It’s fishy that Portland-Smith should have been driven to suicide just as Georgia met Ramillies, and fishier still that Ramillies should have looked up his ancestors just as Georgia fell for Dell. I may merely have a beastly mind, of course, but it shouts to heaven to me.’

  Amanda nodded gloomily.

  ‘A.D.’s back at work,’ she observed. ‘He looks a bit tempered but he’s making up for lost time. We’re getting the old atmosphere back. Sid’s like a dog who’s discovered he’s got his collar on after all. I say, Albert?’

  She sat back from the table and remained looking at him, her face scarlet and her honey-brown eyes embarrassed.

  ‘She couldn’t possibly have persuaded them to do it, could she?’

  ‘What? Persuaded each succeeding boy-friend to “do in” the retiring chairman?’ Mr Campion was impressed. ‘That’s a very beautiful idea, Amanda. It’s got a flavour of the classics. Lovely stuff. All clean, ruthless lines and what not. But I don’t fancy it for a bet. It belongs to a more artistic age.’

  ‘I find that very comforting,’ said Amanda candidly. ‘Would you like some more to eat?’

  The downstairs button sounding a cuckoo-clock device in the hall outside forestalled Mr Campion’s acceptance. Lugg paused, frying-pan in hand, his eye-ridges raised.

  ‘Eh?’ he demanded.

  ‘That damned owl again,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Go and see who it is.’

  ‘Three o’clock in the mornin’?’ Lugg’s little black eyes were startled. ‘’Ere, is your aunt in London, yer Ladyship?’

  ‘My dear fellow, you could chaperone a regiment of Georgias.’ Amanda was cheerful. ‘Don’t put on a collar. Décolletage is perfectly all right at this time of night. Buck up.’

  The cuckoo called again and Lugg surged to the door.

  ‘I’ve laid them eggs there and I want to see ’em when I come back,’ he said warningly. ‘I’m coming! I’m coming!’

  ‘His mother-instinct is strong, isn’t it?’ commented Amanda as he disappeared. ‘Who is this? The police?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Mr Campion looked uneasy. ‘I don’t like this show, Amanda. I’d feel much happier if you were out of it. You don’t mind, do you?’

  Amanda laughed at him. ‘Don’t drop the pilot,’ she said. ‘I’m the only disinterested intelligence in the whole outfit. My motive is nice clean curiosity. I’m valuable. Listen.’

  It was Lugg’s breathing, of course. The noise of it came up from the stairs like a wind-machine. As he reached the flat door they heard him speak.

  ‘On a bicycle?’ he protested. ‘That’s a nice way to get about! Would you care for an egg or a nice fresh bit of ’erring?’

  Mr Campion and Amanda exchanged startled glances and were on their feet when the visitor appeared shyly round the doorpost. It was Sinclair. He looked smaller than ever in his grey suit, his hair untidy from his ride in the wind.

  ‘It’s stinkingly late,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I thought I might find you up, and it seemed important.’

  He was evidently excited but his self-possession was extraordinary and he reminded them both of some little old gentleman in his old-fashioned ease. Amanda made room for him on the edge of her chair and pushed rolls and butter towards him.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said affably. ‘What’s up? New developments?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know.’ Sinclair glanced questioningly at Lugg and, receiving Campion’s reassuring nod, hurried on. ‘It’s about Ray. I say, they – they’re not going to dig him up, are they? That’s why I came at once. I didn’t like to wait until the morning if there was anything I could do to stop them. It’s such a filthy thing to happen.’

  ‘My dear chap, don’t worry about that.’ Mr Campion had caught a glimpse of the horror behind the small white face. ‘That’s all right. That won’t happen. And even if it did there’d be a tremendous set-out first. The Home Office would have to move, for one thing, and that takes weeks even if everyone there happens to be awake. What put the idea in your head?’

  Sinclair looked relieved and afterwards a little foolish.

  ‘I’m sorry to have come so soon,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know this, you see, and I got worrying. Georgia came in just now. I was waiting up for her; I often do, as a matter of fact. She was a bit hysterical, I’m afraid, and she rather frightened me. I hadn’t heard of the murder of this girl friend of Ray’s. I read the case in the evening papers, of course, but she hadn’t been identified then. Georgia wept over me and I finally got it out of her that she was afraid the police might get suspicious over Ray’s death. That upset us both, naturally. Then I suddenly realized that I knew something that might help, so I got out my bicycle and came down to see you. I didn’t want to go to the police if it wasn’t necessary.’

  ‘Jolly sensible,’ encouraged Amanda. ‘Eat while you talk. There’s nothing like food when you’re rattled; even if it gives you indigestion that takes your mind off the main trouble. It’s actually about Ray, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sinclair accepted the plate which Lugg placed before him, showing a certain amount of enthusiasm. ‘It’s about old Ray getting tight that morning. I’ve been thinking. Perhaps he wasn’t so tight, you see.’

  They stared at him and he hurried on, wrestling with his bacon in between remarks.

  ‘I don’t know if you knew old Ray very well,’ he said shyly, ‘but I did and I saw him pretty tight dozens of times. He used to weep, as a rule, and then thresh round a bit and finally sleep. I never saw him as chatty as he was on that day and yet so sort of thick and unsteady.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t want to sneak on the old man,’ he said, ‘but he told me something one day in strict confidence which may be rather important. It was about courage.’

  ‘Courage?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sinclair flushed. ‘He used to go a bit kiddish and earnest at times. He was nuts about courage. He thought it was the one really big thing. He’d done some pretty brave stunts, you know, and I think he was frightfully proud of them really. We were talking one night about six weeks ago when he suddenly told me something and made me swear I’d never repeat it. I don’t like doing it now, but he is dead, and, my hat! I’d hate them to disturb him. Ray told me that, in spite of everything he did about it, there was one thing that put the wind up him. He said he had a complex about flying.’

  ‘Had he, by George?’ said Mr Campion with interest.

  Sinclair nodded.

  ‘So he said, and I believed him, because he was pretty well sweating when he told me. He said he used to make himself go up now and again, but he couldn’t stand it and he used to get the breeze up for days, both before and afterwards.’

  ‘There are people like that, of course,’ put in Amanda, ‘but it doesn’t seem possible in Ramillies. Why on earth did he take on this big flight?’

  ‘I asked him that,’ agreed Sinclair, nodding to her, ‘but, as a matter of fact, though, I understood pretty well. It was because of the flight that he told me about the complex. He was so jolly scared that he had to tell someone. I’ve felt like that about other things. What he actually said was that he’d arranged the whole business because he thought that as flying was
the one last thing in the world that he was afraid of he ought to make one great effort to cure himself of it once and for all.’ He blushed. ‘That wasn’t true, though. Old Ray used to pretend a bit. You know how people do. As a matter of fact, he didn’t arrange it. The Government did that. He was asked to make the flight and it would have looked stinkingly bad if he’d refused. He was simply telling me to make it sound all right to himself.’

  He sighed for the weaknesses of man and the perversities of circumstance.

  ‘Your idea is that he died of shock induced by fright, I take it?’ inquired Mr Campion with interest.

  ‘Oh no, I think he took something.’ Sinclair was innocent of any attempt at dramatic effect. ‘You see,’ he continued awkwardly, ‘he went on talking to me for quite a bit. He explained how frightfully brave he was in everything else except this, and then he said that in a way he was really extra brave over the flight, because he knew someone who could give him a drug to make him perfectly fit and confident throughout the whole thing. It was quite easy, he said. You just took it in your arm and you felt a bit rotten for four hours and then you suddenly felt magnificent and that lasted for about a day. He pointed out what a temptation it was, and then he said he wasn’t going to give in to it and that he’d made up his mind to make the flight without.’

  ‘I see.’ Mr Campion’s pale eyes were darker than usual. ‘Did he mention the name of this stuff?’

  ‘No. He wouldn’t tell me. He just said he knew someone who could see he got it if he wanted it. I half thought this person, whoever it was, had found out how scared old Ray was. I think he’d told them. But he didn’t want to go on talking about it to me and so, naturally, I didn’t mention it.’

  ‘Four hours feeling rotten and then a day feeling fine?’ Amanda repeated the words dubiously. ‘Is there such stuff, Albert?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it. It sounds to me like a tale from someone with an unpleasantly perverted sense of humour.’ Mr Campion’s precise tone was grim. ‘You think Ray succumbed to the temptation after all, then, Sinclair?’

  ‘He might have done, mightn’t he?’ The young voice was very reasonable. ‘When I heard that he’d cleared out in the middle of the farewell party, I thought at once that it was probably because he’d suddenly realized that he couldn’t face the flight after all, and had dashed up to Town to get hold of this drug stuff somewhere. That would have been frightfully like him.’

  ‘There you are.’ Amanda was sitting up. ‘There you are. That’s it. Sinclair’s right. Ramillies left the party in a blue funk, went to Boot’s to be quiet and attempt to pull himself together. In the morning he found it was no good and he went round to Miss Adamson, who gave him this stuff. He must have taken it round about noon. Probably he began to feel peculiar almost at once and told that story about being tight in order to cover up any obvious ill-effects. That must be right, because the flight was timed for four. Don’t you see, the murderer would have expected him to die in the air. Ramillies thought he was going to feel fine in four hours and instead of that it killed him. Miss Adamson realized what had happened and tried to blackmail the person who had given her the drug for Ramillies. She used you as a threat and got herself killed. It all fits in.’

  ‘I know, I know, my dear, but there’s no proof.’ The words escaped Campion reluctantly. ‘I’m sorry to be so unhelpful, but there’s no proof that he went near our Caroline after he left Boot’s. Besides – and this is vital – what was it? What was the stuff? There was a P.M., you know, and an analysis.’

  ‘That’s irritatingly true.’ Amanda was deflated. ‘I thought we were on to it. It’s frightfully good, though, Sinclair. Part of the truth is there. Don’t you think so, Albert?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mr Campion still spoke cautiously. ‘Yes, there was no mention of alcohol in the report on the body, and the entire story points to him having been poisoned somewhere in Town. And yet what about that badge in the plane?’

  ‘The Quentin Clear?’ Amanda had the grace to look startled. ‘I’d forgotten it. I’ve still got it, too; A.D.’s never inquired about it. That’s odd. You’re right. We shall have to consider that. And yet I don’t know, though. It was an obvious plant, wasn’t it? We decided that at once.’

  ‘Is that the badge of the Award?’ Sinclair was interested. ‘It’s frightfully good, isn’t it? What did Mr Dell get it for?’

  ‘The first Seraphim.’ In spite of her preoccupation there was tremendous pride in Amanda’s statement. ‘It’s only given for exceptional pioneer work in aviation design. Look here, Albert, it does fit in. Whoever gave Miss Adamson the stuff to kill Ramillies would naturally be there watching him, and when they saw that the man was going to die in the plane before she went up they planted the Quentin Clear there to pin the thing on A.D. How’s that?’

  ‘Not bad, for the one “disinterested intelligence”,’ said Campion and grinned as she grew fiery at the dig. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know, my hearty young betrothed. I don’t really like to think.’

  He leant back in his chair and sat there, his head jutting forward and his hands in his pockets. For a long time he did not look up.

  At four the morning papers were on sale outside in Piccadilly and they all went down to get them. The story had made the wrong side headlines on the front pages, most of which also carried studio portraits of Miss Adamson, looking beautiful and more like Georgia than ever. Much of the published account was unusually accurate and fitted in with the superintendent’s own version, but there was one interesting new development. A formal police appeal, boxed and leaded, took the pride of place in every double column.

  ‘In connexion with the death of Miss Caroline Adamson, late of Petunia House, W 2, whose body was found yesterday morning on a piece of waste ground at Coaching Cross, Essex, the police are anxious to trace the whereabouts of two men, both of medium height and very heavy build, who are thought to be in possession of a small four-cylinder car of some considerable age. These men were observed by a witness near the scene of the discovery at 3 o’clock approx. on the morning of Wednesday, July 21st. Information should be lodged at any police station.’

  As they stood in the Circus, with the thin cold wind of dawn drawing its fingers up their spines, they looked up from the papers and stared at each other.

  ‘Two shortish, very fat men in an old car?’ translated Amanda in bewilderment. ‘They don’t fit in at all. We’re all wrong. It almost looks as though it was nothing to do with our business after all. It’s another incredible coincidence, another manifestation of the hand of Providence.’

  The words struck an answering note in Lugg’s mysterious consciousness. He looked over his paper with that plump, gratified satisfaction at a chance to shine which in the dog world is the peculiarity of the hound.

  ‘Providence, ’aving the advantage of knowin’ both the strengths and the weaknesses of men, ’as a facility for unostentatious organization undreamed of by our generals. Sterne,’ he said. ‘That come out of my book. What’s the matter, cock?’

  Mr Campion was staring at him with fascinated excitement.

  ‘What?’ he demanded.

  Mr Lugg obligingly repeated this latest fruit of his labours in the fields of culture.

  ‘Tell you anythink?’ he inquired with interest.

  Mr Campion put an arm round each of his two younger lieutenants.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and the old enthusiasm returned in his voice and in the gleam behind his spectacles. ‘Yes, my second-hand scholar, it does. Look here, I’ll drive you down to work, Amanda, and I’ll phone you in the lunch hour. We can drop Sinclair and his bicycle on the way. And when I come back, Lugg, I’ll want a bath, a clean shirt, and you ready for outside work. We start, we stir, we seem to feel the thrill of life beneath our keel.’

  Amanda laughed with pure excitement.

  ‘Seen his tail light?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Mr Campion, ‘but, the Lord be praised, I’ve seen his wheels go round.’

  Cha
pter Nineteen

  SIR MONTAGUE PALING, the Chief Commissioner, who was a soldier and a gentleman and everything that that phrase implies, phoned his superintendent of the Central Criminal Investigation Department early in the morning.

  ‘Oates? That you? You still there? Good man. Good man. About this girl-in-the-wood case of yours; is there a foreign element in that?’

  ‘We don’t know yet, sir.’ Stanislaus Oates tried to suppress any placatory tone which might have crept into his pleasant country voice. ‘Pullen found a quantity of drugs in her flat last night. We’re working on that angle with Wylde at the moment.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Detective-Inspector Wylde, sir – Narcotics.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. I didn’t catch you. Oh well, that’s very promising. What is it? Cocaine?’

  ‘No, sir. Morphine. Quite a bit of it. Seven or eight ounces.’

  ‘Really? She was a distributor, I suppose? Yes, yes, that’s satisfactory. I phoned you because I’ve had a private word from the Colonial Office. The girl was the mistress of one of their fellers who died the other day, and while they don’t want to interfere in any way, of course, they do hope we’ll be discreet. No need to drag up a lot of mud if it’s not necessary. We know that as well as anyone, don’t we?’