Murder a la Mode Read online

  The first person he saw was his wife’s niece, Veronica Spence. She was going into the fashion room in the company of a very tiny and exquisitely pretty girl in a grey flannel suit, which (had Henry known it) was an excellent copy of a Balenciaga. Both were chattering excitedly. Veronica was saying over and over again, “Gosh! Really, Beth? It can’t be true, can it? Really? Gosh!”

  “Veronica,” said Henry loudly.

  Veronica wheeled around. “Uncle Henry!” she cried. “Gosh, Beth, it must be true. I mean Uncle Henry wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. Would you, poppet?” she added, and flung her arms round Henry’s neck. “Gosh, it was awful being shut up downstairs. Gosh, I am glad to see you!”

  Firmly, Henry removed Veronica’s clinging arms from his neck. The corridor was by now full of a crowd of the most elegant young women that he had ever seen—outside, as he reflected, the pages of Style. Voices were raised in glorious confusion.

  “I don’t care what Uncle says. Those layouts are…”

  “Helen, of all people! I always thought…”

  “We’re all going to be third-degreed by divine policemen…”

  “I suppose the pink and white cotton is just usable…”

  “What does one wear for being grilled? I think the well-dressed suspect should concentrate on…”

  “All I’m asking for is a purple Jaguar and two wolfhounds at Ham House this afternoon…”

  “Nancy in the white with masses of jade beads, and Ronnie in…”

  “Who’s going to do the copy, anyhow? Helen and I were supposed…”

  “Oh, well, if Teresa takes that attitude I suppose I’ll just have to start tramping up Poland Street again. How she thinks I can…”

  “Darling, I’m sorry, but I am not going to kill the mink. I’ve told Uncle…”

  “Helen! Now if it had been…”

  Breathlessly, Veronica said, “Beth, darling, this is my uncle. Henry Tibbett.”

  More brusquely than he had intended, Henry said, “What are you doing here, Ronnie?”

  “A job, of course,” said Veronica. “A retake with Miss Manners, and then Young Style cotton dresses with Beth. This is Beth Connolly, the Young Style editor.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Tibbett,” said Beth Connolly, wrinkling her minuscule nose and looking up at Henry like a baby doll. “I’m afraid you’ve caught us on a bad day. Even more of a shambles than usual.”

  She smiled enchantingly, and Henry’s heart sank. Clearly, it was going to be extremely difficult to conduct a serious enquiry among these scatterbrained children, charming though they might be. Even as this thought crossed his mind, Beth Connolly turned away and said crisply to a tall, blonde girl, “Marilyn, I want you to telephone Barrimodes at once and cancel the white lace. Send a messenger to Gardell’s to pick up the blue silk, number eight-seventy-two, and then get me lots of gold bracelets and some river pearls. Mr. Howard of Mayfair Jewels knows about it—I’ve spoken to him. And we’ll need the blue glacé kid pumps from Fairfeet in Veronica’s size. Then tell the studio that we won’t be starting till noon, and make sure that Michael is free after lunch. If he’s not, book him for as soon as you can, and get the models lined up.” She turned back to Henry. “I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I just had to speak to my secretary. My whole sitting is being reorganized because of Paris.”

  Henry felt ashamed of his earlier assessment. This girl, young as she was, was an expert in her own field, and very far from being a scatterbrained child. He said, “May I borrow Veronica for a few minutes?”

  “Of course. I shan’t need her until noon.”

  “Thank you.”

  Beth smiled again, and went into the fashion room.

  Henry and his niece faced each other across the desk in the bleak office.

  “You’re the last person I expected to find here,” said Henry.

  “Why? I do a lot of work for Style now. Uncle Henry—is it really true—that she’s dead, I mean?”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “Murdered?” Veronica’s eyes were as large as saucers.

  “We don’t know for sure yet,” Henry answered diplomatically. “As a matter of fact, Ronnie, you can probably help me quite a bit.”

  “Can I?”

  “You know the people here personally.”

  “Not all of them. I never met Miss Pankhurst—everyone says she was an awful dragon. But then they said that about Miss Field, and she turned out to be sweet in the end. I really only know Beth and Miss Manners and Michael.”

  “Michael Healy, the photographer?”

  “That’s right. We were all in Paris together till yesterday. Oh, and of course I know Uncle vaguely—everyone does.”

  “Who’s Uncle?”

  “Patrick Walsh, the art editor. He’s a poppet. Everyone calls him Uncle, but not to his face. He roars at people,” Veronica added.

  “I know he does,” said Henry feelingly. He consulted his notes. “Do you know his assistant, Donald MacKay?”

  Veronica, to Henry’s surprise, blushed. “Yes,” she said, and studied the sharp toes of her shoes with unnecessary concentration.

  “And what about…?”

  The telephone rang. Henry picked it up. “Ernest Jenkins is here,” said the sergeant. He sounded exhausted.

  “Good,” said Henry. “Send him straight up.” He rang off and said to Veronica, “I want to see this boy straight away. You’d better be off. I’ll see you again later on.”

  “Can I go out?”

  “Of course. But you have to be back at twelve, don’t you, for your sitting?”

  “Oh, before that. Half past eleven. I have to make up.”

  “You’ve got quite enough make-up on already,” said Henry, rather primly.

  Veronica smiled pityingly. “All the girls in Paris,” she said, “had dead white faces and sooty eyes and brown lips outlined in black. I’ve brought some of the new lipstick back with me.”

  “It sounds repellent.”

  “It’s marvellous. You wait and see.”

  “If you think it’s going to make you more attractive to…” Henry began, committed now to pomposity and uncledom, and regretting it. He got no further, however, for at that moment bedlam broke loose in the corridor outside.

  It was heralded by a sharp knock on the door. Before Henry had time to say “Come in,” Patrick’s voice bellowed from somewhere down the passage, “Olwen! What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “That’s Uncle,” said Veronica.

  “I know,” said Henry gloomily.

  A girl’s voice, deep and with a Welsh lilt to it, said, “I’m going to see the Inspector and tell him…”

  “You’re bloody well not!”

  “Come in!” Henry called loudly.

  The door opened slightly, and was immediately slammed again from the outside, to the accompaniment of scuffling sounds.

  “Let go of me, you great brute!” The girl’s voice was rising now, and she sounded near to tears. “Let go of me! I’m going in there!”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, idiot!”

  “Oh yes, I do. It’s you…”

  “Will you listen to me, imbecile child!”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  The door started to open again, and again was slammed. By this time, not unnaturally, other doors had opened, and the corridor was full of voices—angry, hysterical, conciliatory.

  “I think,” said Henry to Veronica, “that I had better see what’s going on. You wait here.”

  He took hold of the door handle, turned it, and pulled as hard as he could. Henry’s weight, combined with pressure from outside, evidently turned the scales and defeated even Patrick’s strength. The door flew open, and Olwen Piper literally fell at Henry’s feet. Behind her, still grasping her arm, Patrick loomed, enormous and cross. Behind him again was a blur of faces and a babble of voices, amongst which Henry could pick out a high, aristocratic female bray which kept repeating, “I can’
t stand it! Stop her, Uncle! I can’t stand it!” The only other distinguishable voice was young, masculine, and cockney, and kept on saying, “The sergeant said for me to come up. ’E said for me to come up. I tell you, ’e said…”

  “Now, now,” said Henry, in his best policeman’s voice, “what’s all this?”

  “I’m trying to save this lunatic girl from making a bloody idiot of herself, that’s all,” said Patrick.

  “I wish you’d stop interfering,” said Henry. He helped Olwen to her feet. “You must be Miss Piper, the features editor.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Olwen defiantly, as if she expected the statement to be challenged.

  Henry looked at her. He saw the same earnest young face, the same spectacles knocked slightly awry in the fray, the same dumpy figure and lack of chic which had caused Margery French such a painful moment of truth the previous night. He also saw that Olwen had been crying, and would almost certainly do so again soon.

  She gripped his arm. “You must let me speak to you, Inspector,” she said.

  “Of course you can speak to me.”

  “Olwen,” said Patrick. “I’m warning you. If you tell—”

  “Mr. Walsh,” said Henry, “what makes you think you know what Miss Piper wishes to say to me?”

  “I can guess.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “A bunch of damned lies!”

  “It’s not!” cried Olwen. “It’s not!”

  “You don’t understand…”

  “I shall see Miss Piper now,” said Henry firmly. “Mr. Walsh, if you don’t go away I shall have to call up my men and have you removed by force. Is Ernest Jenkins there?”

  “I’m ’ere,” piped the cockney voice. “The sergeant said for me to…”

  “I know he did,” said Henry. “I’m sorry, I’ll have to see you later. Wait in the darkroom until I call you. Now, everybody else—Go away!”

  For a moment, Patrick stood facing Henry, his big head lowered dangerously. Henry seriously thought that Patrick might attack him. The moment passed, however. Patrick raised his head, and said, “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” And with that he turned on his heel and strode away down the passage. The rest of the crowd, subdued and silent now, drifted back to their own rooms.

  Henry turned back into the office.

  “Ronnie…” he said. But his niece had gone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OLWEN PIPER SAT down in the chair opposite Henry, and burst into tears. Henry, feeling very sorry for her, proffered his handkerchief. She shook her dark head vigorously in refusal, and brought out her own from a rather shabby handbag. Then she blew her nose loudly, and said, “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “That’s quite all right,” said Henry. “Do you feel strong enough to talk now?”

  “Yes,” said Olwen, rather uncertainly. There was a pause.

  “All this must have been a terrible shock to you,” Henry went on. “You shared a flat with Helen Pankhurst, didn’t you?”

  Olwen nodded mutely.

  “You got on well, the two of you?”

  “Oh, yes. Well, that is…mostly…”

  “Not all the time?”

  “Not since Michael…” said Olwen, and began to cry again.

  “Why did you want to come and see me so urgently? What did you want to tell me?”

  Getting no reply to this apart from sniffs and sobs, Henry said firmly, “Look here, Miss Piper. I may as well tell you that I know all about Helen’s affair with Michael Healy.”

  Sheer surprise seemed to take Olwen completely aback. She stopped crying and looked at Henry, wide-eyed. “All about it? How do you know?”

  “Never mind. The point is that I know. What I don’t know is whether or not it has any bearing on her death. Can you help me?”

  “Of course it has.” The words came out with a rush. “He killed her! He killed her just as much as if he’d actually murdered her!”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that he was a cad and a swine, and that Helen was absolutely desperate. That’s why she did it. I heard her saying she’d kill herself…”

  “Miss Piper,” said Henry, “your friend Helen almost certainly didn’t kill herself. She was murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Olwen faltered. “Oh, no. No, that can’t be true. Who on earth would murder Helen?”

  “That’s exactly what I want to know,” said Henry. “Now, please tell me all you know about Helen and Michael Healy.”

  “It started about six months ago. Helen began going out in the evenings without saying anything to me; she’d never done that before. Of course, I’m out at the theatre a lot, because of my job, so at first I hardly noticed. But then it got worse and worse. I…I was very upset. You see, I admired Helen more than anyone in the world, and we’d always been such friends…”

  “She was quite a bit older than you, wasn’t she?”

  “Oh, yes, more than ten years…but it didn’t seem to matter. She was the most marvellous person…until all this started.”

  “When did she first meet Michael Healy?”

  “That’s the funny thing,” said Olwen. “She’d known Michael and Teresa for ages—long before she knew me. When I first started asking Helen where she went in the evenings, she just said she was dining with the Healys, and although I was a bit cross and felt lonely and miserable, I never suspected anything. I just felt mad at them for monopolizing her. Then, one evening, when she was supposed to be having dinner there, I went to the theatre and saw Teresa there with a party of people. So I knew at once that Helen must be somewhere alone with Michael.” Olwen sniffed. “When she got home that night, I said something quite casually about Teresa, asking how she’d been, and Helen said, ‘Oh, she’s fine. She cooked us a wonderful dinner.’ I asked her what they had done, and she said, ‘Oh, nothing. Just dined and talked, the three of us.’ It was horrible! She did it so naturally…and I realized then that she’d been lying to me for months!”

  “Did Mrs. Healy—Miss Manners—know what was going on?”

  “I…I don’t know. Sometimes I'd think she must, and then at other times I’d see them being so friendly in the office, and I couldn’t believe that she’d…” Olwen stopped, and blew her nose again. “You don’t realize how splendid Helen was, Inspector. If she didn’t leave a note, it must have been because she didn’t want to upset Teresa.”

  “I have a feeling, Miss Piper,” said Henry, not unkindly, “that all the rumours about Helen and Michael which have been going round the office may have originated with you.”

  Olwen did not attempt to deny this. “Why shouldn’t I?” she said. “I thought Teresa ought to know, and put a stop to it. But I suppose for some reason the story never got to her. I couldn’t very well go and tell her straight out. Anyhow, none of that matters now. You don’t know what hell it’s been…”

  “What has?”

  “Seeing Helen so desperate and unhappy as she was the last month or so. Michael was getting tired of her. I know that’s what it was. And then, in the end…well, I knew this would happen.”

  Henry noticed that Olwen seemed to have dismissed his suggestion of murder as completely unimportant. He found himself wondering if it could possibly have been suicide after all. Margery French did not think so. And apart from that, there was other evidence. Even if in the end it turned out to have been suicide, it was by no means the simple case that it appeared. He became aware that Olwen was speaking again.

  “I still haven’t told you the worst,” she said, “but of course the doctor will find out. You probably know by now, anyway.”

  “You mean,” said Henry, “that Helen was pregnant?”

  Olwen nodded miserably.

  “Does anybody else know about this?”

  “Yes. Somebody.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Not Michael. I mean, she must have told him, obviously, but she told someone else as well. And she never told me!” It was a cry of
hurt misery. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “How do you know about it, then?”

  “Yesterday,” said Olwen, “Helen left the office early—just after lunch—because she was going to work all night. I got home to change for the theatre about half past six, and she was talking to somebody on the telephone when I arrived. I heard her say, ‘The doctor says it’s quite definite. I don’t know what I’m going to do. He’ll never leave her, you know that as well as I do. I honestly wish I were dead.’ Then she heard me, and she said, ‘I can’t talk now. Goodbye,’ and she rang off. When I went in, I tried to say…I mean, I asked her if she was all right, and she simply smiled and said, ‘Fine, apart from my wretched cold.’ Then she went off to the office, and the next thing I heard…”

  Anxious to prevent another storm of tears, which was clearly in the offing, Henry said, “Was that the last time you saw her? I believe you came to the office yourself to do some work later on, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I did just catch a glimpse of Helen. I said goodnight to her on my way to the lift. Her door was open, you see. I didn’t disturb her. Nobody ever dared disturb her when she was working.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Late. After three, I think. Everyone else had gone.”

  “So she was alive and well after three o’clock. Did you notice the Thermos in her office?”

  “I didn’t see it. I remember wondering where it was—she always had it on her desk when she worked at night.”

  “How did you get home at that hour?”

  “I walked.”

  “All the way to Kensington, in the rain?”

  “I was so miserable,” said Olwen simply. “I wanted to think. I’d had such an exciting evening at the theatre that I’d almost forgotten about Helen. Then, seeing her brought it all back. I wanted to decide what to do…how I could help her…”

  “Miss Piper,” said Henry, “how did you get into the offices here after the theatre? Wasn’t the front door locked?”

  “Oh, I have my own key.” Olwen fumbled in her handbag, and produced a jumbo-size Yale-type silver key. “There it is. I often work late.”