The Fashion In Shrouds

by Margery Allingham

  Fatness and curliness are relative terms, but there is a degree at which either condition becomes remarkable. In each case Andreas Hakapopulous strained the description to its limit. He was nearly spherical, and the oily black hair, which carried the line of his stupendous nose to a fine natural conclusion somewhere about six inches above the top of the back of his head, was curly in the way that the leaves of the kale are curly, or Italian handwriting, or the waves surrounding an ascending Aphrodite in a pre-Raphaelite painting.

  He came downstairs daintily, like a big rubber ball, bouncing a very little on each step. His welcoming smile was more than friendly. It had a quality of greasy joy in it, and he winked at the divisional superintendent with such convincing familiarity that Inspector Pullen had to glance at the other man’s unbending stare to reassure himself.

  ‘We will all ’ave a nize bot’le of wine.’ The newcomer made the suggestion as if he were announcing a rich gift to the Police Orphanage. ‘Louis, quickly. A nize bot’le of wine for everybody ’ere.’

  ‘That’ll do.’ Oates was not amused. ‘We want a few words with you only, Mr Hakapopulous. Will you please look at this photograph and tell us if you have ever seen the girl before?’

  Andreas Hakapopulous was not abashed. He stood balancing on the last step but one of the staircase, exuding a strong odour of jasmine and an ingratiating affectionateness which in that particular room was almost unbearable. He put out a shapeless hand for the pasteboard and looked at it with a casual interest which, although unconvincing, was also, unfortunately, negative.

  He peered at Miss Adamson’s lovely, languorous face for some moments and finally carried the photograph under the window, where he held it at arm’s length.

  ‘Euh!’ he said at last. ‘A nize little bit. Who iz shee?’

  ‘We’re asking you.’ The divisional superintendent put the words in briskly. ‘Come along, Andreas. Don’t be a b.f. We’re not interested in your theatricals. Have you seen her before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Oates was smiling sourly. ‘Have you seen the papers?’

  The Greek perceived his mistake and rectified it jauntily.

  ‘She might be a girl who was found dead somewheres,’ he said. ‘I don’ know. I see something this morning. I don’ take much account of it.’

  ‘Yes, well, you clean up your memory, my lad. Where’s your brother?’

  ‘Jock iz upstairs.’

  Andreas kept his smile, and his soft, satisfied tone. He was neither sulky nor reproachful. A divisional plain-clothes man went up to find the other member of the firm and a minor inquisition began in the dining-room.

  ‘Now, Mr Hakapopulous, think carefully: have you ever seen that girl in the flesh?’

  ‘In the flesh?’

  ‘Yes. Have you seen her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You understand me, don’t you? Have you ever seen the girl alive?’

  ‘Has she been ’ere?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you.’

  Andreas smiled. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘So many girls come ’ere. I don’ think I ever saw ’er before.’

  Pullen thrust his chin out and butted into Oates’s inquiry.

  ‘Have you seen her dead, by any chance?’

  ‘Dead?’ Andreas raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You heard what I said.’

  ‘Dead? No.’

  ‘Look here, Hakapopulous.’ The name was cramping to Pullen’s staccato style but he took it manfully. ‘Do you want to come inside and think it over? You know what the inside of a cell is like, don’t you?’

  Andreas laughed aloud. It was a little teetering giggle which displayed his magnificent teeth.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I tell you I don’ know the girl. Ask someone else. Don’ let’s quarrel. We understand each other. I have not seen the girl except in the papers.’

  ‘I see.’ Oates took up the questioning again. It made an interesting picture in the gloom, the lean grey-haired policeman with the eyes which were as bleak and honest as the North Sea, and before him, supremely happy in his security, the monstrous Greek, smiling and guileful.

  ‘Mr Hakapopulous,’ the old super was always studiously polite, ‘you have several private dining-rooms here, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, for business conferences.’ Andreas made the statement with unblushing simplicity.

  ‘For business conferences?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well.’ The glimmer of a smile passed over the superintendent’s thin lips. ‘We’re not going into that now. Where are these dining-rooms?’

  His question was answered somewhat precipitately by the hurried return of the divisional detective, who made a startled announcement from the head of the staircase.

  ‘Painting?’

  Pullen was across the room in an instant. The Greek’s smile broadened.

  ‘That is so,’ he admitted placidly. ‘We do a little redecoration. My brother makes a ’obby of it.’

  ‘Does he?’ Oates was very grim. ‘We’ll go up there, please.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The entire company mounted the staircase, Campion and Lugg dropping in behind the procession. They came up into a dark, quiet passage which had four solid doors on either side and a small half-glassed one at the far end. The doors were all numbered very plainly, odd on the left and even on the right. Number Eight alone stood open. In the passage the atmosphere so noticeable in the room below was intensified. It was not unlike the box of a very old theatre Muffling festoons of drapery hung everywhere, and the strong smell of turpentine issuing through the one open doorway came as a relief. With the turpentine fumes came a little song. Jock Hakapopulous was singing at his work.

  They found him on a step-ladder, his head protruding through a hole in an old sheet which was tied about his tremendous middle with a blind-cord. Apparently he wore no shirt, for his great forearms were naked save for a thatch of long soft black hair. He was engaged in painting the cornice, and his head, which was exactly like his brother’s, save that it was bald, was very near the ceiling.

  The room was uncompromisingly bare. There was not a vestige of furniture in it anywhere. Even the walls had been stripped and the dirty boards of the floor were furred where linoleum had been removed

  Oates avoided Pullen’s eyes and a gloom descended on the raiding party. Andreas indicated the visitors.

  ‘The police,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘They want to know if we seen a girl.’

  ‘That’ll do.’ Pullen snapped out the admonition and the pantomime with the photograph was repeated.

  Jock Hakapopulous was even blander than his brother. He, too, was ingratiating, but he was an older man, and there was an underlying capability about him and a dreadful rat intelligence which were not only not negligible but, somehow, in that atmosphere, alarming.

  He too professed himself unhappy not to be able to oblige. There were so many girls in the world, he said. One was very much like another. He himself had no use for women.

  The divisional superintendent remarked that this fact would hardly seem to emerge from his police record, and both brothers were inordinately amused.

  Since there was nothing to be seen in Number Eight, always excluding Jock Hakapopulous in his drapery, which was a sight with merits of its own, Mr Campion and Mr Lugg drifted away from the police party and explored the other rooms. As soon as they opened the doors the story was evident. Every dining-room was suspiciously clean and there were uneven, discoloured patches on the wallpaper where furniture had been removed and replaced. Every room on the floor had been recently rearranged.

  ‘They’ve got the police cold.’ Mr Lugg made the observation through closed lips. ‘There’s not much those two don’t know. Where are you going?’

  Mr Campion did not reply. He had opened the half-glass door and was already some way down a flight of dirty stairs which he had discovered behind it.

  When Oates joined him five m
inutes later he was still standing at the foot of the staircase looking out of the back door into the small yard which gave on to Augean Passage. The old superintendent had left the Greeks to the pack and he came down to Campion, holding the skirts of his coat closely round him like a fastidious woman.

  ‘Lumme,’ he said expressively.

  Mr Campion nodded. ‘A corner of our picturesque London,’ he observed. ‘Mind that swill-can. See what this is?’

  Oates glanced up the staircase and then out into the yard again.

  ‘A convenient get-away,’ he said. ‘Get-away, or, of course, a get-in. Trusted clients take the back stairs, I suppose. Let’s get out in the air. I don’t really fancy the atmosphere of this place. They’re a couple o’ daisies, aren’t they? How did you come to stumble on them?’

  ‘Old-fashioned footwork. Lugg and I have been round every fishy club and suspicious eatery in London. What do you think?’

  ‘About them?’ Oates jerked his head upward and smiled with his lips only. ‘They know something, don’t they?’ he said.

  It was not effusive thanks, but Mr Campion knew his Oates.

  He led the other man across the yard to an open shed which he and Lugg had inspected less than an hour before. The plain-clothes man inside looked up from the car which he was examining, shamefaced disappointment in his smile.

  ‘Well, here it is, sir,’ he said, ‘such as it is. I was just coming in to report.’

  The superintendent walked round the machine, his shoulders hunched. There it was indeed, a nondescript four-seater Morris Twelve which had been someone’s pride in 1929 and was still serviceable. The most irritating thing about it was its cleanliness. There were certainly a few traces of vegetable litter in the back, but the leather upholstery had been recently scrubbed and the paint positively scraped. Also, which was even more depressing, it possessed four new tyres.

  Oates said something under his breath, nodded to the man, and came out into the yard again. He looked at Campion.

  ‘I hate this kind of outfit,’ he said. ‘Did you see anyone in that house except those two and the waiter?’

  ‘No,’ said Campion. ‘And yet, of course, there must be other people about; kitchen staff and so on.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’ Oates was spiteful. ‘They’re all there somewhere. The place is full of people. We’ll find ’em, of course, but it’s like a rat warren. The whole house is so darned furtive you never know if the chair you’re leaning on hasn’t someone curled up in the bottom of it. They’re all the same, these places – cold, dark, dirty and alive. They get on my nerves. Come on, we’ll go in.’

  They picked their way to the back door through a miscellaneous collection of kitchen refuse, dirty delivery trays and fresh supplies of greengrocery. Campion was in front and in the doorway he stopped abruptly, so that the superintendent ran into him.

  ‘I say,’ he said.

  Oates peered over his shoulder and an exclamation escaped him. At Campion’s feet was a basket half full of cabbage leaves and among them, its bright blade gleaming wickedly against the green, was a long, thin, double-edged knife, about six-tenths of an inch wide at the shaft.

  Oates took up the basket without a word and went upstairs. The entire company had moved down to the main room again and as they passed along the passage curtains sighed dustily around them and the carpet swallowed up their tread.

  Pullen looked down at the knife and for the first time during his visit a gleam of satisfaction appeared in his face.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s something like, sir. Yes, indeed. Now then, you two.’

  The brothers Hakapopulous regarded the discovery without interest. Jock had removed his sheet and now stood clad in a torn singlet and a disreputable pair of trousers. His great neck flowed from his jowls and swelled into a double roll at the top of his spine.

  ‘Don’ you like it?’ he inquired. ‘We got a dozen of these. Show ’im, Andreas.’

  Andreas Hakapopulous was delighted to oblige in any way. He threw open the drawers of his sideboard. He invited Inspector Pullen and his friends into the unholy mystery of his dreadful kitchens. Jock had underestimated his possessions. They found twenty-seven knives of the same pattern in various parts of the establishment and the elder Hakapopulous took up one of them and balanced it in his hand.

  ‘Nize little knife,’ he said as the filtering light from the top of the window glistened on his shining face.

  ‘’Andy. They’re very popular just now in the trade. We get them from Loewenstein in Ol’ Compton Street. He tell me the other day he sells more of these knives to restaurants than any other kind. Sharp, you know. She goes through a tough ol’ chicken as though she was a little bit o’ butter.’ He wiped the blade affectionately along his forearm and Mr Campion, who was not unimaginative, turned away.

  In the shed, where the car stood, the police held a brief conference. Pullen faced the two superintendents while Mr Campion nosed about discreetly among the rubbish in the background.

  ‘I’d like to pull ’em in at once, sir, all three of them.’ Pullen spoke earnestly. Lack of sleep had changed the key of his machine-gun rattle and his eyes were angry. ‘They’re lying, of course, but you can’t seem to get at ’em in a place like this. You can’t see ’em, for one thing. I’d like to get ’em into the light. Jock has a record as long as your arm, and Andreas has been inside half a dozen times to my knowledge. That little waiter chap might be made to squeal, too,’ he added, not without a certain grim anticipation. He glanced across at Campion and gave him a conciliatory smile. ‘It makes you wild when you see it under your nose and can’t lay your hands on it, don’t it?’ he demanded. ‘The job was done here if it was done anywhere and you can see how it was done.’

  ‘Those two wouldn’t kill in their own house,’ said the divisional superintendent, unaware that he was making a nice distinction

  ‘No, no, they didn’t do the killing.’ Oates made the pronouncement out of the fund of his vast experience. ‘They had a corpse wished on ’em. They’re accessories after the fact.’

  ‘And they’ve had two days to clear up the mess.’ Pullen was bitter. ‘Let’s get ’em inside,’ he said. ‘No arrest, of course; just a little friendly chat. They know something.’

  ‘Of course they do.’ Oates was laughing in spite of his weariness. ‘You’ll leave someone to go over the house. That’s your pigeon, Super.’

  ‘Right-o.’ The divisional man grinned. ‘God knows what I’ll find,’ he said. ‘Half a dozen stiffs, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Pullen went off to superintend the exodus and Oates looked at Campion.

  ‘We’ll go back together, I think,’ he said. ‘Not forgetting Master Lugg either. I want to talk to you two. I was just going to see your sister when you phoned. Don’t worry, I put her off.’ He paused. ‘We don’t want to make trouble,’ he added presently. ‘You’ll come along, will you?’

  ‘Right by your side,’ said Mr Campion. ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  At ten o’clock on the same evening he had not gone back on his word. Lugg had returned to the flat for sustenance and a relief from his collar and shoes, but in a corner of the superintendent’s office Mr Campion sat on, and because of his service, and because he might be even more useful, no one disturbed him. Oates remained at his desk. The hard artificial light made him look old and his shoulders were prominent under his coat.

  Four hours’ intensive questioning in the little office next door had elicited a number of things from the Hakapopulous brothers, among them the fact that the respectability of their establishment was, in spite of several extraordinary miscarriages of justice in the past, absolutely above reproach. They agreed, moreover, that they had used their car not only in the small hours on the morning of the twenty-first, but on every other morning for the past two years. A car, they explained, was indispensable for an early visit to Smithfield or Covent Garden, and if one was to provide one’s customers with good clean wholesome food, personal m
arketing was the only way to avoid economic ruin. Both brothers professed themselves charmed by the photograph. It reminded them of several customers, they said, and offered names and addresses to prove it. As for the redecoration – well, it was about time. The house was just a little old-fashioned. Had the inspector noticed it? It was indeed a coincidence that they should have chosen just this particular time to make a start; but then, one must begin some time, and the summer air carried away the smell of the paint.

  It was an unequal contest. The police were handicapped and knew it. Their one forlorn hope, the lorry-driver, had let them down badly. He had been rushed from Coaching Cross and had arrived eager to help. For a long, wearisome hour he had watched the brothers parading in half-darkness in company with half a dozen or so other well-nourished aliens, only to confess himself ‘a bit muddled’ at the end of it. In despair Pullen had dismissed him and returned to the direct attack.

  The brothers remained friendly, oily and untired. Although the whole story was clear for anyone to read, and no one appreciated that fact more deeply than themselves, they knew that so long as they kept their heads they had nothing worse than inconvenience to fear. They were both men of tremendous physical stamina and mental agility. Moreover, their experience of police procedure was considerable. Nothing was new to them. Any deviation from the beaten track of police questioning brought a bland demand for their solicitor and the farce began again.

  At a little after eleven Pullen came in to Oates. He was hoarse and irritable, and there was a limpness about his appearance which suggested that a portion of the grease of his captives had somehow got on to himself.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said savagely. ‘Absolutely nothing. Something’s happened to that race since they did all that marble work.’

  Mr Campion grinned and looked up.

  ‘Those two are “wide”, are they?’

  ‘“Wide”?’ The inspector threw out his arms expressively. ‘Not only do they know all the answers but they enjoy giving them. I’ve got my hands right on it, you know. Chorge! That makes me wild.’