The Fashion in Shrouds

CHAPTER ONEProbably the most exasperating thing about the Fashion is its elusiveness. Even the word has a dozen definitions, and when it is pinned down and qualified, as “the Fashion in woman’s dress,” it becomes ridiculous and stilted and is gone again. To catch at its skirts it is safest to say that it is a kind of miracle, a familiar phenomenon. Why it is that a garment which is honestly attractive in, say, 1910 should be honestly ridiculous a few years later and honestly charming again a few years later still is one of those things which are not satisfactorily to be explained and are therefore jolly and exciting and an addition to the perennial interest of life. When the last Roland Papendeik died, after receiving a knighthood for a royal wedding dress—having thus scaled the heights of his ambition as a great couturier—the ancient firm declined and might well have faded into one of the amusing legends Fashion leaves behind her had it not been for a certain phoenix quality possessed by Lady Papendeik. At the moment when descent became apparent and dissolution likely Lady Papendeik discovered Val, and from the day that the Valentine cape in Lincoln-green facecloth flickered across the salon and won the hearts of twenty-five professional buyers and subsequently five hundred private purchasers Val climbed steadily, and behind her rose up the firm of Papendeik again like a great silk tent. At the moment she was standing in a fitting room whither she had dragged a visitor who had come on private business of his own and was surveying herself in a wall-wide mirror with earnest criticism. Like most of those people whose personality has to be consciously expressed in the things they create, she was a little more of a person, a little more clear in outline than is usual. She had no suggestion of overemphasis, but she was a sharp, vivid entity, and when one first saw her the immediate thing one realised was that it had not happened before. As she stood before the mirror considering her burgundy-red suit from every angle she looked about twenty-three, which was not the fact. Her slenderness was slenderness personified and her yellow hair, folding softly into the nape of her neck at the back and combed into a ridiculous roll in front, could have belonged to no one else and would have suited no other face. It occurred to her visitor, who was regarding her with the detached affection of a relation, that she was dressed up to look like a female, and he said so affably. She turned and grinned at him, her unexpectedly warm grey eyes, which saved her whole appearance from affectation, dancing at him happily. “I am,” she said. “I am, my darling. I’m female as a cartload of monkeys.” “Or a kettle of fish, of course,” observed Mr Albert Campion, unfolding his long thin legs and rising from an inadequate gilt chair to look in the mirror also. “Do you like my new suit?” “Very good indeed.” Her approval was professional. “Jamieson and Fellowes? I thought so. They’re so mercifully uninspired. Inspiration in men’s clothes is stomach-turning. People ought to be shot for it.” Campion raised his eyebrows at her. She had a charming voice which was high and clear and so unlike his own in tone and colour that it gave him a sense of acquisition whenever he heard it. “Too extreme,” he said. “I like your garment, but let’s forget it now.” “Do you? I was wondering if it wasn’t a bit ‘intelligent.’ ” He looked interested. “I wanted to talk to you before these people come. Aren’t we lunching alone?” Val swung slowly round in only partially amused surprise. For a moment she looked her full age, which was thirty, and there was character and intelligence in her face. “You’re too clever altogether, aren’t you?” she said. “Go away. You take me out of my stride.” “Who is he? It’s not to be a lovely surprise, I trust?” Campion put an arm round her shoulders and they stood for a moment admiring themselves with the bland unself-consciousness of the nursery. “If I didn’t look so half-witted we should be very much alike,” he remarked presently. “There’s a distinct resemblance. Thank God we took after Mother and not the other side. Red hair would sink either of us, even Father’s celebrated variety. Poor old Herbert used to look like nothing on earth.” He paused and considered her dispassionately in the mirror, while it occurred to him suddenly that the relationship between brother and sister was the one association of the sexes that was intrinsically personal. “If one resents one’s sister or even loathes the sight of her,” he remarked presently, “it’s for familiar faults or virtues which one either has or hasn’t got oneself and one likes the little beast for the same rather personal reasons. I think you’re better than I am in one or two ways, but I’m always glad to note that you have sufficient feminine weaknesses to make you thoroughly inferior on the whole. This is a serious, valuable thought, by the way. See what I mean?” “Yes,” she said with an irritating lack of appreciation, “but I don’t think it’s very new. What feminine weaknesses have I got?” He beamed at her. In spite of her astonishing success she could always be relied upon to make him feel comfortingly superior. “Who’s coming to lunch?” “Alan Dell—Alandel aeroplanes.” “Really? That’s unexpected. I’ve heard of him, of course, but we’ve never met. Nice fellow?” She did not answer immediately and he glanced at her sharply. “I don’t know,” she said at last and met his eyes. “I think so, very.” Campion grimaced. “Valentine the valiant.” She was suddenly hurt and colour came into her face. “No, darling, not necessarily,” she objected a little too vehemently. “Only twice shy, you know, only twice, not forever.” There was dignity in the protest. It brought him down to earth and reminded him effectively that she was after all a distinguished and important woman with every right to her own private life. He changed the conversation, feeling, as he sometimes did, that she was older than he was for all her femininity. “Can I smoke in this clothespress without sacrilege?” he enquired. “I came up here once to a reception when I was very young. The Perownes had it then as their town house. That was in the days before the street went down and a Perowne could live in Park Lane. I don’t remember much about it except that there were golden cream horns bursting with fruit all round the cornice. You’ve transformed the place. Does Tante Marthe like the change of address?” “Lady Papendeik finds herself enchanted,” said Val cheerfully, her mind still on her clothes. “She thinks it a pity trade should have come so near the park, but she’s consoling herself by concentrating on ‘our mission to glorify the Essential Goddess.’ This is a temple, my boy, not a shop. When it’s not a temple it’s that damned draughty hole of Maude Perowne’s. But on the whole it’s just exactly what she always wanted. It has the grand manner, the authentic Papa Papendeik touch. Did you see her little black pages downstairs?” “The objects in the turbans? Are they recent?” “Almost temporary,” said Val, turning from the mirror and slipping her arm through his. “Let’s go up and wait. We’re lunching on the roof.” As he came through the wide doorway from a hushed and breathless world whose self-conscious good taste was almost overpowering to the upper, or workshop, part of the Papendeik establishment, Mr Campion felt a gratifying return to reality. A narrow uncarpeted corridor, still bearing traces of the Perowne era in wallpaper and paint, was lit by half-a-dozen open doorways through which came a variety of sounds, from the chiming of cups to the hiss of the pressing iron, while above all there predominated the strident, sibilant chatter of female voices, which is perhaps the most unpleasant noise in the world. An elderly woman in a shabby navy-blue dress came bustling along towards them, a black pincushion bumping ridiculously on her hipbone as she walked. She did not stop but smiled and passed them, radiating a solid obstinacy as definite as the clatter of her old-lady shoes on the boards. Behind her trotted a man in a costume in which Campion recognised at once Val’s conception of the term “inspired.” He was breathless and angry and yet managed to look pathetic, with doggy brown eyes and the cares of the world on his compact little shoulders. “She won’t let me have it,” he said without preamble. “I hate any sort of unpleasantness, but the two girls are waiting to go down to the house and I distinctly promised that the white model should go with the other. It’s the one with the draped corsage.” He sketched a design with his two hands on his own chest with surprising vividness. “The vendeuse is in tears.” He seemed not far off them himself and Mr Campion felt sorry for him. “Coax her,” said Val without slackening pace and they hurried on, leaving him sighing. “Rex,” she said as they mounted the narrow uncarpeted staircase amid a labyrinth of corridors. “Tante says he’s not quite a lady. It’s one of her filthy remarks that gets more true the longer you know him.” Campion made no comment. They were passing through a group of untidy girls who had stepped aside as they appeared. “Seamstresses,” Val explained as they came up on to the landing. “Tante prefers the word to ‘workwomen.’ This is their room.” She threw open a door which faced them and he looked into a vast attic where solid felt-covered tables made a mighty horseshoe whose well was peopled with dreadful brown headless figures each fretted with pinpricks and labelled with the name of the lady whose secret faults of contour it so uncompromisingly reproduced. Reflecting that easily the most terrifying thing about women was their practical realism, he withdrew uneasily and followed her up a final staircase to a small roof garden set among the chimney-pots, where a table had been laid beneath a striped awning. It was early summer and the trees in the park were round and green above the formal flower beds, so that the view, as they looked down upon it, was like a coloured panoramic print of eighteenth-century London, with the houses of the Bayswater Road making a grey cloud on the horizon. He sat down on a white basketwork settee and blinked at her in the sunlight. “I want to meet Georgia Wells. You’re sure she’s coming?” “My dear, they’re all coming.” Val spoke soothingly. “Her husband, the leading man, Ferdie Paul himself and heaven knows who else. It’s partly mutual publicity and partly a genuine inspection of dresses for The Lover, now in rehearsal. You’ll see Georgia all right.” “Good,” he said and his lean face was unusually thoughtful. “I shall try not to be vulgar or indiscreet, of course, but I must get to know her if I can. Was she actually engaged to Portland-Smith at the time he disappeared, or was it already off by then?” Val considered and her eyes strayed to the doorway through which they had come. “It’s almost three years ago, isn’t it?” she said. “My impression is that it was still on, but I can’t swear to it. It was all kept so decently quiet until the family decided that they really had better look for him, and by then she was stalking Ramillies. It’s funny you never found that man, Albert. He’s your one entire failure, isn’t he?” Apparently Mr Campion did not care to comment. “How long has she been Lady Ramillies?” “Over two years, I think.” “Shall I get a black eye if I lead round to Portland-Smith?” “No, I don’t think so. Georgia’s not renowned for good taste. If she stares at you blankly it’ll only mean that she’s forgotten the poor beast’s name.” He laughed. “You don’t like the woman?” Val hesitated. She looked very feminine. “Georgia’s our most important client, ‘the best-dressed actress in the world gowned by the most famous couturier.’ We’re a mutual benefit society.” “What’s the matter with her?”