Remembering her aeroplane and her paperwork, I did not suppose that any trifling danger to Julia’s merely moral welfare would persuade her to set forth so precipitately for Chelsea. I inquired what more there was to it.
“It seems,” said Selena, “that the name of her red-haired friend was Rowena. That was the name, you remember, of the girl at Rupert’s party—the one dressed as a parlormaid. It sounds as if Julia’s trying to investigate Rupert; and in view of the Rustington business and so forth, I’d really rather she didn’t.”
To a place of such ambiguous repute as Vashti’s my readers will wish no precise directions. Nor, indeed, am I in a position to give them: it is my custom, when being driven by Selena on any errand which she considers urgent, to keep my eyes firmly closed. When at last it seemed safe to open them, we were somewhere in that area of south-west London where the artistic overlaps the opulent, no doubt to their mutual advantage.
Having reflected during the journey on the best means of obtaining news of her missing friend, Selena had concluded that it was in the character of one who loved not wisely but too well that she was most likely to attract sympathetic assistance. She proposed, therefore, to enter the wine bar in that state of solitary dejection appropriate to one misused in an affair of the heart: Ragwort and I would appear to be strangers to her, but would endeavor to find a table in close proximity.
The interior decoration of Vashti’s House has a certain Moorish quality: arched recesses in whitewashed walls, a floor of terracotta tiles, many curls and arabesques of black wrought-ironwork. Our orders for lunch were taken by a tall, dark girl, short-haired and aquiline-nosed, dressed in a costume reminiscent of the bull-ring—very tight black trousers, white shirt and scarlet cummerbund.
It being now almost two hours since our lunch in the Corkscrew, neither Ragwort nor I found any difficulty in disposing of our slices of quiche lorraine and their accompanying salads. Selena, on the other hand, sitting alone at the next table, toyed listlessly with the contents of her plate; considering the frugality of her lunch, the performance did her credit. She drank her glass of wine, however, with unaccustomed rapidity, and forthwith asked for another.
“Are you all right, love?” inquired the girl in black trousers, as she brought the second glass.
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” said Selena, in a tone of wretchedness bravely dissimulated. “It’s only…” She concluded with a wan smile and a sad little shrug of the shoulders.
“If you’re fine,” said the dark girl, “why are you sitting there not eating anything and looking like a wet Sunday in Highgate Cemetery?” Selena repeated the wan smile and the sad little shrug, throwing in for good measure an understated but moving gesture of the hands. Construing this as an invitation to act as confidante, the girl sat down, facing her earnestly across the wrought-iron table.
“I wouldn’t like you to think,” said Selena, “that I’m jealous or possessive or anything.”
“Of course not, love,” said the girl in black trousers. “Just who is it you’re not jealous and possessive about?”
Sipping her second glass of wine, Selena explained that she had a friend of whom she was very fond; who was, she believed, fond of her; but who sometimes behaved unpredictably and as if indifferent to her feelings. On the previous evening, although aware that Selena could not accompany her, she had announced an intention to visit Vashti’s House; and she had not returned. “So you’d like to know who she came with?”
“I’d like to know who she left with,” said Selena, with some asperity.
The dark girl, it seemed, had been serving in the bar of the discotheque on the previous evening, and might be able to assist; Selena described Julia.
“Strewth,” said the girl, “you don’t mean the woman who dropped things?”
“Yes,” said Selena. “Yes, that sounds like Julia. What exactly did she drop last night?”
“Well, love, you might ask ‘What didn’t she?’” said the dark girl, looking at Selena with what seemed to be a mixture of pity and amazed admiration.
“Oh dear.” Selena’s anxiety, I thought, was only partly feigned. “She does sometimes tend to get a trifle exuberant.”
“Has exuberant got an ‘x’ in it?”
Selena admitted that it had.
“I think your friend’s the woman who put it there.”
The particulars of Julia’s exuberance were so deplorable, it seemed, as to require telling sotto voce, and Ragwort and I heard no more of the conversation. Save for occasional murmurs of apology and extenuation, Selena took little active part in it. Eventually she sighed, tendered payment for her lunch, and rose to leave.
“If you take my advice, love,” said the dark girl, handing her her change, “you’ll forget about her. All right, so she’s got curves. So’s a roller-coaster got curves—it doesn’t mean you can have a steady relationship with it.”
“You know how it is,” said Selena, “when you’re fond of someone.” With a final wistful smile she took her departure, leaving the dark girl to shake her head in resigned acknowledgment of the power of passion over judgment.
“We weren’t able to hear the whole of your conversation,” said Ragwort when we rejoined Selena in her motor-car. “You’d better tell us the worst.”
“It appears,” said Selena, “that Julia was thrown out. Her conduct fell short of the standards of decorum which Vashti’s expects of its clients.”
“It can’t have done,” said Ragwort. “There aren’t any.”
“There are and it did. The attitude of the management is that they want people to enjoy themselves but they have to draw the line somewhere. They drew it at Julia.” Selena inserted her vehicle into the stream of westbound traffic. “No doubt she was simply trying to enter into the spirit of things and do what was expected of her. But she does seem to have overdone it rather.”
“Did you discover,” I asked, “at what hour she was ejected? And in whose company?”
“At about two o’clock in the morning. And she was still with the parlormaid person—the girl called Rowena. It seems that Rowena was staying in the flat of a friend of hers—a friend of the masculine gender—while he was away on holiday. They apparently intended to go back there and console themselves by drinking his whiskey.”
“Selena,” said Ragwort, perceiving that we were now moving briskly westwards along the Embankment, “where are we going?”
“Mortlake, of course,” said Selena.
Among the amenities of the opulent block of flats in which Rupert Galloway resided was an entryphone device; but our arrival at the main entrance coincided with that of another visitor, who obligingly held the door open without inquiring our business. The lift conveyed us with unnatural smoothness to the top floor of the building.
Neither the first ring at Rupert’s doorbell nor the second caused the door of his flat to be opened to us.
“There’s no one there,” said Ragwort.
“No one who chooses to answer,” said Selena. “Fortunately, however, it seems to have the same kind of lock as the main door to the Nursery.” She began to search for something in her handbag.
“What exactly,” said Ragwort, with a certain apprehensiveness, “is the relevance of the door to the Nursery?”
“I know how to open it without a key. Cantrip very kindly showed me how, in case I accidentally locked myself out. Ah, here we are.” She took from her handbag a credit card widely publicized as ensuring entry to places from which the holder might without its aid be excluded.
“My dear Selena,” said Ragwort, “are you proposing to commit a burglary?”
“Certainly not,” said Selena, dexterously inserting the plastic rectangle between the door and the doorpost. “We don’t intend, do we, when we have entered the flat, to steal or maliciously damage any property, or ravish any woman therein or cause grievous bodily harm to any person?”
“No,” said Ragwort, “of course not.”
“In that case it isn�
�t burglary. The book about criminal law that I read for Bar exams was quite clear on the point. Ah, that’s it.” She regarded the open door with the satisfaction natural in one who successfully displays a little-used accomplishment.
Cautiously she led the way into the entrance-lobby, and from there, with even greater circumspection, into the drawing-room. The room was expensively furnished and of not unpleasing proportions, though curtains of woven hessian drawn across the full-length windows, shutting out the afternoon sunlight, gave it a slightly funereal look. Selena looked carefully about her, as if Julia might be hidden somewhere behind one of the vast leather sofas or the cocktail cabinet of chrome and tinted glass; but the room was plainly unoccupied.
“I think,” she said, after a pause, “that we ought to try the bedroom.”
The door on our right led to a short corridor, off which there opened the door to the bedroom. Selena tapped on it and received no answer. After a moment’s hesitation, she turned the knob and went in, closely followed by Ragwort. I heard her draw breath rather sharply.
“Oh, lord,” said Ragwort.
On the bed lay Julia, dressed in a small quantity of black underwear and only partly covered by the sheet flung carelessly over her. She lay at an awkward angle, her head thrown back, her dark hair spread in tangled disorder across the pillow, one bare arm trailing limply over the edge of the bed. She looked pale and curiously peaceful.
CHAPTER 9
And was, I need hardly say—though I must confess to a childish hope, unbecoming perhaps to the Scholar, of having aroused in my readers some measure of interesting apprehension—no more than soundly asleep.
Gently awoken by Selena, she appeared pleased by our presence, though less surprised than the circumstances seemed to warrant: she apparently regarded it as natural that Selena should discover her whereabouts by some system of telepathy. It was, she said, lighting a Gauloise, very kind of us all to come and find her: it had not been her intention to put us to so much trouble.
“And what, pray,” said Ragwort sternly, “did you expect us to be put to, when you disappeared in dubious company without a word to anyone and having as your destination the abode of a man of unsavory proclivities connected with at least two violent deaths? We have all been much inconvenienced and extremely worried. Really, Julia, what were you thinking of?”
“I acted,” said Julia, “for the best.” She paused to allow us to admire the excellence of her motives. “I was sitting in Guido’s, remembering how I’d taken Deirdre there and feeling rather troubled in my conscience. I couldn’t help thinking—if you will forgive my saying so, Hilary—that our investigation had been less than energetic. So when Rowena came in, whom we knew to be on intimate terms with Rupert, it seemed little short of providential. You will agree, Ragwort, that to forgo so remarkable an opportunity would have savored of the impious.”
“Hm,” said Ragwort.
“She greeted me like a long-lost friend, so there was no difficulty in engaging her in conversation, and since Rupert was our only mutual acquaintance it seemed natural to ask for news of him. She told me that she was at present living here in his flat, during his absence on holiday—he doesn’t like leaving it unoccupied. You will be interested, perhaps, to know that he is spending his holiday in Corfu.”
“Not, surely,” said Selena, “with the Demetriou family? Not after what passed between him and Constantine on Boat Race Day?”
“No, not exactly. He travelled out there with his mother-in-law, the formidable Jocasta, and she’s staying with the rest of the family in the villa at Casiope. But Rupert is at some hotel or other. His object is to spend some time with his daughter—he complains that now she’s at Cambridge he hardly sees her. Rowena is skeptical about his motives: she believes them financial rather than sentimental. Rupert, it seems, is in rather urgent need of money—his company needs an injection of capital, as he calls it, of the order of fifty thousand pounds before the middle of July. Failing this restorative treatment, there is likely to be unpleasantness from the Department of Trade—embarrassing questions, you know, and murmurs of fraud.”
“That,” said Selena, “does not surprise me. But how does he expect Camilla to help? She won’t have any capital until her grandmother dies.”
“The notion is that the trustees of the settlement should invest part of the trust fund in Galloway Opportunities. Rupert seems to believe that if Camilla and her grandmother both agreed to it, Tancred as his co-trustee would be obliged to cooperate.”
“Well,” said Selena, wrinkling her nose, “he wouldn’t have to—Camilla’s interest is contingent, after all, on surviving her grandmother. But if the life tenant and the probable remainderman both say that that’s what they want, it might be embarrassing for him to refuse.”
“So Rupert thinks; and thinking so has set out for the Ionian Islands to persuade his daughter of the inestimable benefits of such an investment. That, at any rate, is the construction placed by Rowena on his actions. She told me all this within minutes of our meeting, and since it seemed that reticence was not her watchword, I felt the acquaintance was worth pursuing.”
“My dear Julia,” said Ragwort, “are you quite sure that you were the one pursuing it?”
“It is true,” said Julia, looking rather pleased with herself, “that Rowena showed a flattering willingness to remain in my company. She seemed to feel there was some sort of bond between us—in addition, that is, to the bond which must naturally exist between any two women who have shared the same balcony disguised respectively as a parlormaid and a schoolgirl while the premises within were raided by the police. In the matter of erotic preference, you see, she regards herself as inclining rather towards her own sex than the other—in her dealings with men, she likes to see her role as that of courtesan. She is,” added Julia in an explanatory tone, “a rather old-fashioned and romantic girl.”
“Oh quite,” said Ragwort. “And she is under the impression that you share her preference?”
“There was, you may remember, a misunderstanding on Rupert’s part—and also, in consequence, on Rowena’s—as to the nature of the friendship between Selena and myself. It seemed sensible, in the circumstances, not to correct it—I do hope, Selena, that you don’t mind?”
“I am resigned,” said Selena, “to its being an impression widely held in south-west London.”
“We adjourned after dinner, at Rowena’s suggestion, to a sort of nightclub she knows in Chelsea—a place, I need hardly say, with an exclusively female clientele. I rather enjoyed myself there. But I must have done the wrong thing somehow, because they asked us to leave.” Julia looked puzzled and a little hurt at the recollection. “So we came back here and drank brandy and talked about men. Rowena is inclined to regard them as an overrated sex. My own view, as you know, is that their many failings should all be forgiven them for the sake of the incomparable pleasure which they are sometimes capable of giving. To say so, however, would have been inconsistent with the impression I was seeking to give to my own tastes—I was rather at a loss, therefore, for any persuasive argument in their defense.”
“Is Rupert,” asked Selena, “exempt from her disapproval?”
“Oh, by no means—he was cited as the chief example of every defect to which the unfair sex is subject. I don’t think Rowena really likes him much—she seems to be wearying of the schoolgirl’s uniform routine. So I managed to learn a good deal to his discredit, though nothing, unfortunately, with any direct bearing on Deirdre’s death: he hadn’t talked to her about that, beyond telling her it had happened. I did try to look round the flat for clues, but I didn’t find any.” Julia looked crestfallen.
“And how,” inquired Ragwort, “did the evening conclude?”
“As to that,” said Julia, “I have no very clear recollection—I had drunk a good deal of wine and a certain amount of brandy, and that may well account for it. In due course, no doubt, I must have gone to bed.”
“And the Rowena person,” said Ra
gwort, with inquisitorial sternness, “must also have gone to bed. To, we are compelled to suppose, the same bed.”
“No doubt, my dear Ragwort, since there is only one. Considering, however, the lateness of the hour and the amount we had drunk, I cannot think it likely that anything of an improper nature occurred.”
“Hm,” said Ragwort. It was not an expression designed to convey unqualified belief.
“So the next thing you remember,” said Selena, “is waking up and finding us here?”
“Oh no,” said Julia, a little surprised. “Rowena woke me up at about ten o’clock, when she had to go to her agency, and gave me a cup of coffee. But I found, in spite of the coffee, that I was in that state of health in which one cannot usefully give one’s mind to the Taxes Acts. The sensible thing seemed to be to take one or two Alka-Seltzers and go to sleep again. But I knew, of course, that I mustn’t sleep too long, because of my conference this afternoon. So that’s when I rang and left my message for you.”
“What message?” asked Selena, puzzled.
“Saying where I was, and asking you to ring me at midday or so to make sure I was awake.”
“Julia,” said Selena, “with whom did you leave this message?”
“With your temporary typist, of course. And she must have given it to you,” added Julia, with the first dawning of anxiety, “or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Something,” said Ragwort wearily, “will have to be done about that girl.”
The cries, wails, protests and lamentations with which Julia received the news that it was now half past three and that she had irretrievably missed her conference, the clutchings of the forehead, the tearings of the hair, the knockings over of bedside tables, the rushings about wrapped only in a sheet—all these would be too pitiful to recount, and were so indeed to observe. I withdrew to the drawing-room.
The Shortest Way to Hades Page 11
