Murder a la Mode Page 3

  “Urgent lot of stuff to pick up here at seven prompt, and they’re all asleep.”

  “Still, mustn’t wake the whole neighbourhood, you know,” said the policeman, affably. “Tell you what. There’s a phone box in the mews at the back. You go and ring them. That’ll wake ’em up. I’ll mind your bike.”

  “Thanks, chum.”

  The young man disappeared like an eel into the misty darkness. Soon, the policeman heard the shrilling of a telephone inside the building. For two minutes it rang continuously. Then the despatch rider returned, disconsolate.

  “Reckon there’s nobody in there,” said the policeman.

  “Must be. The light’s on. Besides, there’s the stuff to collect…”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you, son.” The policeman was genuinely regretful. “Best wait until someone turns up with a key.” He grinned, and ambled off in search of crime.

  It was a long wait. At half past seven the despatch rider telephoned Sydenham, and was much aggrieved to be sworn at roundly by the foreman compositor. As if it was his fault… At ten to eight, when the whole street was beginning to stir and stretch and collect its milk bottles, Alf arrived, grumbling at the weather and his rheumatism.

  “Don’t you worry,” he said, encouragingly. “I’ll go up and see what’s what. You come in and wait in the warm.” He fumbled with his key, and the door swung open. Alf got into the lift. “Shan’t be more than a minute,” he said.

  It was, in fact, a minute and a half later that the lift was down in the hall again. Alf came out of it like a rabbit out of a trap, ashen-faced and trembling. He grabbed the young man by the arm. “Quick! Police! Doctor! Quick!”

  “But what’s up?”

  “Miss…Miss Pankhurst…something awful… I think she’s dead…”

  “And where’s my envelope?”

  “To hell with your envelope!” Alf was recovering. “Get a policeman, boy! I tell you, she’s dead!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hotel Crillon,

  Paris

  Monday

  DEAREST AUNT EMMY,

  Just a line to tell you what a super-terrific time I’m having, but, gosh, I’ve never worked so hard! To think I once imagined that modeling would be nothing but standing around in gorgeous dresses!! We’ve been up the Eiffel Tower most of the day (lucky I’ve got a good head for heights), and straight from there to the studios, which are screaming chaos. I’m so tired I can hardly stand.

  But what fun! And what clothes! You’ve no idea. I’m much luckier than some of the other girls, because the Style people are so sweet. Miss Manners isn’t a bit frightening and Michael Healy is a POPPET. Remember how scared I was at the thought of working for him? And Miss Field has been terribly kind—she’s a sort of super-secretary and scared the wits out of me at first, but she’s a marvelous organizer—without her we’d never get the clothes out of the salons, sometimes she has to FIGHT for them!

  Do you know, I actually met Pierre Monnier himself!! And he said he might be able to use me one day if I learned to walk! I nearly died!

  I wish I could stay on and see a bit of Paris, but we fly home tomorrow evening and I’ve got another job with Style on Wednesday morning—some Young Style clothes with Beth Connolly on Hampstead Heath (Or in the studio if wet. I hope it’s wet.)—and an evening dress retake with Miss Manners.

  Lots of love to you and a big kiss for Uncle Henry. Can I come and see you when I get back?

  Ronnie

  P.S. I really think Michael Healy likes me. He said I had bones like a young giraffe!

  Emmy Tibbett smiled to herself as she read the letter. She had always been specially fond of her goddaughter—her sister’s youngest child—and she had, with affection and pride, watched Veronica grow from a tubby schoolgirl into a raving beauty. In fact, it was Emmy who had championed the girl when, on her seventeenth birthday, she had announced her passionate desire to become a fashion model.

  Emmy’s elder sister, Jane, had married a farmer named Bill Spence, and the family lived in a quiet Devonshire village, where the greatest excitement of the year was the Vicarage Flower Show. Not unnaturally, Veronica’s parents had been taken aback by their daughter’s exotic ambition, and had appealed to Emmy, as a Londoner and the most sophisticated person they knew, to “talk all this nonsense out of the girl’s head.”

  This, Emmy had not done. Instead she had been strictly practical. “Listen, Jane,” she said. “Ronnie’s never going to be a great scholar. Let’s face it, she’s pretty average dim. What’ll happen to her? She’ll take a secretarial course like a million other girls, and rot in some boring office until she marries.”

  “I know, Emmy, but modeling…”

  “Modeling is a perfectly respectable profession, and very hard work,” said Emmy, her eyes twinkling with laughter. “You surely don’t still think it means posing in the nude for disreputable artists, do you?”

  Jane blushed. “Well…I suppose not…but all the same, it doesn’t seem quite…”

  “Why not let her come to London and take a course?” suggested Emmy. “Henry and I haven’t room to put her up, but we’ll find her a bed-sitter nearby and keep an eye on her. If she’s no good at the job, she’ll soon find out, and it will have got it out of her system. If she is any good, she’ll have a splendid time and make lots of money.”

  “Well…if you really think so, Emmy…”

  So it was that Veronica Spence was launched on her career. It had taken very little time to establish that she was good. Within six months, her engagement book was satisfactorily full of appointments at photographic studios, and now, at nineteen, she had achieved the supreme distinction of being picked to go to Paris and model clothes for Style. Within the last six months, she had moved out of her room in Sydney Street and into a pretty flat in Victoria Grove, which she shared with another model, a girl called Nancy Blake, who had jet-black hair, the largest green eyes in London, and the disposition of an agreeably spoilt kitten.

  Veronica herself was all honey-coloured—spun-gold hair, a delicate skin which never seemed to lose its country tan, and wide-open, nut-brown eyes. She was everybody’s dream of the girl next door, redolent of sweet, simple country fare and the smell of hay, honeysuckle, and home-baked bread, and she was exactly what the photographers were looking for.

  Parkinson had launched her once and for all when he photographed her, roaring with laughter, standing knee deep in a village pond surrounded by ducks and small boys. It had ruined the dress she was modeling, but since the picture was instrumental in selling thousands of copies of that particular design, nobody minded. Then Henry Clarke had plunged her up to her neck in a haystack for his famous colour shot advertising the new make-up range, “Hayseed Honeypink.” Vernier had shot her underwater in the Dolphin Square swimming pool in a Mermaid swimsuit, and Dormer had perched her precariously in the open doorway of a helicopter fifty feet above the tower of Canterbury Cathedral. At nineteen, Veronica was earning nearly twice as much as her distinguished uncle, Chief Inspector Henry Tibbett of the C.I.D.

  For all this, Veronica had remained, to Emmy’s delight, simple and enthusiastic and unspoilt. She never forgot that she owed her exciting life to Emmy’s intervention, and so it was that she had found time, in the swirling bedlam of the Paris Collections, to scribble a note to her favourite aunt.

  Emmy read the letter again. Returning Tuesday. Today was Wednesday, so Veronica must be home already. Perhaps she should ring her up later on and ask her round for a drink. The thought in Emmy’s mind was cut short, like a broken dream, by the telephone ringing. At the first peal of the bell, she knew quite certainly that it was Veronica, and she felt a moment of mild surprise that the child should be ringing at half past ten in the morning, when she should be in the middle of her job for Style.

  Emmy had known that it would be Veronica: but she was not prepared for the near-hysterical outburst that scorched along the telephone wires and exploded in her ear.

  “Aunt
y Emmy! Oh, gosh, I’m glad I got you! Something awful has happened! Really awful! Uncle Henry’s here and everyone is going mad and it’s horrible but terribly exciting and they’ve only just taken her away…”

  “What are you talking about, Ronnie?”

  “Haven’t you seen? It’s in the Standard already, and there are policemen and reporters everywhere and Uncle’s having a fit…”

  “Henry is having a fit?”

  “I didn’t say he was. I said Uncle.”

  “Veronica, do try to make sense. Where are you speaking from?”

  “From Style, of course. I mean, not actually. Actually from a phone box round the corner. Uncle Henry said I could go and…”

  “Henry? What on earth is Henry doing at Style?”

  “Well, of course he’s here. Naturally.”

  “Why naturally?”

  “Because she’s been killed.”

  “Who’s been killed?”

  “Well, I don’t actually know…”

  “Ronnie!”

  “I was going to say, I don’t actually know her myself. I mean, I didn’t. Miss Pankhurst. She was second-in-command to Miss French, the editor. They say she was poisoned, and I think Uncle knows something that he won’t tell Uncle Henry…of course, he doesn’t know he’s Uncle Henry.”

  “I think,” said Emmy, “that you’d better get into a taxi and come round here at once. This conversation is beginning to undermine my reason.”

  “You think I’m being unreasonable?” said Veronica. “Gosh, you haven’t seen anything. I’ll be along in ten minutes.”

  Chief Inspector Henry Tibbett arrived at the Style offices soon after nine. Outside in the street, a small crowd had already collected, and several pleasant, patient young constables were doing their best to get it to move along. Otherwise, the place seemed calm enough. Henry went into the eighteenth-century hallway, which was guarded by a solid-looking sergeant.

  “Glad to see you, sir,” said this worthy, as if he meant it. “We’re in for trouble here, and no mistake.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Women,” said the sergeant, pessimistically. “Hysterics. Models and the like.”

  “I don’t see any,” said Henry. “Where have you put them?”

  “They’ve not arrived yet, thank God,” said the sergeant. “Just got a batch of charwomen and the doorman who found the body, so far.”

  “Then what makes you so sure?”

  “You know what this place is, don’t you, sir?” The sergeant was plunged in gloom. “Fashion magazine. Ruddy hen-house.”

  “What time do the staff arrive?” Henry asked.

  “Half past nine, in theory,” said the sergeant. “But according to the doorman, there’s a lot may be late this morning.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Some sort of late-night working session last night, as far as I…” There was a commotion at the outer door, and Henry turned to see a hefty constable wrestling with a young man in a leather jacket. The sergeant sighed. “You see?” he said to Henry. And then, to the young man, “I’ve told you ten times to go away!”

  “My envelope!” shouted the young man. “You don’t understand! I must have my envelope! It’s Paris!”

  “What’s Paris?”

  “The envelope, of course. We were supposed to go to bed at eight!”

  “Mad,” said the sergeant phlegmatically. “And that’s only the first of them.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Henry. He addressed the young man. “Do I understand that you’re waiting for some reports from Paris which should have been with the printers by eight o’clock?”

  The young man seemed to find a gleam of hope. “Can you get them for me, sir? It’s bloody urgent, really it is.”

  “There’s been a serious accident, you know,” said Henry. “Someone has died. You’d better ring your printers and tell them there’s bound to be a delay, and then wait down here. I’ll do my best for you.”

  “Thank you, sir. You can’t miss the envelope. It’ll be in Editorial, and marked ‘Pictorial Printers—to be called for.’ And if you can get it soon, sir…”

  His pleas were still echoing round the hall as Henry and the sergeant got into the lift.

  “Now,” said Henry, “put me in the picture.” He looked small and insignificant beside the big sergeant—an unremarkable, sandy-haired man in his forties, with gentle blue eyes, a diffident manner and a quiet voice—but his air of mild vagueness was as deceptively simple as any of Monnier’s little black dresses. The sergeant knew very well that he must give a concise and complete report, and chose his words carefully.

  “I was called,” he said, “by P.C. Hutchins, the man on this beat, at seven fifty-six. It seems our friend with the Paris envelope came running out of the house and nearly knocked him over. Hutchins had spoken to him earlier—about a quarter past seven—when the lad was trying to wake up the building to get hold of his precious envelope. It’s clear that the lady who should have given it to him was lying there dead all the time. He even went and telephoned, while Hutchins waited outside the door here and watched his motor bike, but of course there was no reply.

  “Anyhow, it seems that the doorman, Alfred Samson, arrived as usual at ten to eight, and went up to see what was going on. He found the lady dead. Cyanide poisoning, no doubt about that. The doctor’s with her now, but I remember that case last year—this is cyanide, all right. Very unpleasant.”

  “Who is—or was—she?”

  The sergeant consulted his notebook. “Miss Helen Pankhurst, assistant editor,” he said. “That’s about as far as I got with Samson before the chars started to arrive. I didn’t let them go up, of course. I’ve got them all cooped up in a sort of reception room if you want to see them.”

  “Good. What else did you do?”

  “I telephoned the editor,” said the sergeant. “A Miss Margery French. The doorman gave me her number. She’s coming round right away. I thought it was best.”

  “Very sensible,” said Henry. “Any line on the next of kin?”

  “Not so far. Miss French will probably know. I thought it best not to touch the handbag or anything like that until you arrived.”

  The lift slid to a smooth stop at the fourth floor. Henry stepped out and looked around him.

  The eighteenth-century dwelling which now housed Style had made a determined effort to retain its identity, in the face of stiff odds. On the ground floor, the pretty, period hallway held its own between the modern plate-glass entrance doors and the neon-lit dreariness of the Accounts’ Department at the back. Here, in the main editorial section on the fourth floor, the façade was maintained at the front, in that part of the building that overlooked Earl Street and The Orangery.

  Henry found himself standing on a dark lilac carpet in a corridor charmingly paneled in honey-coloured waxed wood. Two doors, with cornices and pilasters matching the paneling, stood facing him, each discreetly labeled with an engraved visiting card framed in gilt. The left-hand one read, Miss Helen Pankhurst, Assistant Editor; the other, Miss Teresa Manners, Fashion Editor. At the end of the corridor, where it turned at right angles and ran towards the back of the building, was a similar door marked Miss Margery French, Editor, while its opposite number, to Henry’s right, was designated more simply and boldly by a projecting wooden plaque with the one word FASHION.

  Even from the lift, Henry could see that the lilac carpet ended abruptly at these limits, and gave way to plain concrete corridors and whitewashed walls. Beyond the editor’s office, a functional notice with a large black arrow proclaimed STUDIO THIS WAY; underneath it, another sheet of cardboard bore the sinister injunction, “ART DEPARTMENT. Absolutely NO ADMITTANCE on ANY pretext whatsoever.” On the door marked FASHION, two further announcements were attached with celluloid tape. One said cryptically, “Messengers and models for fitting in here”; and the other, “WALK STRAIGHT IN. If you knock, nobody will hear.”

  The sergeant cleared his throat, a little ap
ologetically. “She’s in there, sir. In her own office.”

  “Tell me a little,” said Henry, “about this late-night working session. I presume she was part of it.”

  “I couldn’t find out much,” said the sergeant. “You’ll have to ask Miss French. All the doorman knew was that people were going to work late because of some special number on the Paris fashions. He doesn’t know exactly who was here, but he says it’s always what he calls ‘the top brass.’ Apparently, this poor lady did the actual writing, so she always stayed all night on these occasions, and handed the stuff over to our young friend downstairs at seven. The others would have gone home earlier. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Oh well,” said Henry, “let’s have a look at her.” He opened the door of Helen’s office and walked in.

  There are few objects more compelling to the attention than a dead body in the centre of a small room. Nevertheless, when Henry first entered the office, his immediate impression was not of Helen herself: it was, simply, an impression of overwhelming confusion. The desks were bad enough. There were two of them, one for Helen and the other, presumably, for her secretary. Both had disappeared under a deluge of papers, as though some maniac had been rifling the green filing cabinet in the corner, and had scattered its contents like falling blossoms round the room. Even worse, however, and less expected, was the state of the floor behind Helen’s desk, for it was littered with a selection of pink and white feminine underwear, festooned with nylon stockings, and scattered with shirts and sweaters and beads and hairbrushes; all of which had presumably erupted from the open, empty suitcase which stood in the centre of the chaos. A box of face powder had flown open, cascading its pink dust over the room, and there was a reek of heavy, cloying scent emanating from a broken bottle with a Paris label, which lay on the floor. The combined effect of central heating and the still-burning electric fire had intensified the pungency of the perfume to the point of suffocation. Henry felt slightly sick.