The Fashion In Shrouds by Margery Allingham Page A

said, a cloud passing over her face, ‘I don’t suppose I ever shall.’
    Georgia stretched out a strong hand and drew the other girl towards her.
    â€˜Darling, that was mean,’ she said with a sweet gentleness which was out of period, let alone character. ‘You’re upset because your lovely design has been stolen. You’re naturally livid and I understand that. But you’re lucky, you know. After all, Val, it’s such a little thing. I hate to repeat all this, but I can’t get it off my mind. Richard’s poor murdered body has been found and here are we all fooling about with stupid idiot dresses for a stupid idiot play.’
    She did not turn away but sat looking at them and her eyes slowly filled with tears and brimmed over. If she had only sounded insincere, only been not quite so unanswerably in the right, the outburst would have been forgivable: as it was, they all stood round uncomfortably until Mr Campion elected to drop his little brick.
    â€˜I say, you know, you’re wrong there,’ he said in his quiet, slightly nervous voice. ‘I don’t think the word “murder” hasgone through any official mind. Portland-Smith committed suicide; that’s absolutely obvious – to the police at any rate.’
    Val, who knew him, guessed from his expression of affable innocence that he hoped for some interesting reaction to this announcement, but neither of them was prepared for what actually took place. Georgia sat up stiffly in her chair and stared at him, while a dark stream of colour rose up her throat, swelling the veins in her neck and passing over her expressionless face.
    â€˜That’s not true,’ she said.
    With what appeared to be well-meaningness of the most unenlightened kind, Mr Campion persisted in his point, ignoring all the danger signals.
    â€˜Honestly,’ he said. ‘I can reassure you on that question. I’m hand in glove with the fellow who found the body. As a matter of fact, I was actually on the spot myself this morning. The poor chap had killed himself all right . . . at least, that’s what the Coroner will decide, I’m sure of it.’
    The quiet plausible voice was conversational and convincing.
    â€˜No.’ Georgia made the word a statement. ‘I don’t believe it. It’s not true.’ She was controlling herself with difficulty and when she stood up her body was trembling with the effort. There was no doubt at all about her principal emotion and it was so unaccountable and unreasonable in the circumstances that even Mr Campion showed some of the astonishment he felt. She was angry, beside herself with ordinary, unadulterated rage.
    Campion looked to Ferdie Paul for assistance, but he did not intervene. He stood regarding her speculatively, almost, it seemed to Campion, with the same sort of puzzled conjecture that he felt himself.
    It was left to Tante Marthe to make the inquiry that was on the tip of everybody’s tongue.
    â€˜My dear child,’ she said, with faint reproof in her tone, ‘why be so annoyed? The poor man has been dead these three years. Had he been murdered it must have meant that someone killed him and that would entail trouble for everyone who knew him. If he killed himself no one need think of him with anything except pity.’
    â€˜Oh, don’t be so silly, angel.’ Georgia turned on the old woman in exasperation. ‘Can’t you see the damage a story like that can do once it gets about? I won’t believe it. I know it’s not true.’
    â€˜You
know
?’ Campion’s eyes were mild behind his spectacles, but they did not disarm her into answering him impulsively.
    â€˜Richard was not a suicidal type,’ she said after a pause which lasted too long. ‘This is the final insufferable straw. I can’t bear it. You must all forgive me and manage as best you can. I must go home.’
    â€˜Going home?’