Murder at Renard's (Rose Simpson Mysteries Book 4) Page 5

  There was a moment or two of silence as Bertram tried to conjure up the image in his mind of Celia modelling a beautiful and elaborate gown made of some fine stuff, swishing gracefully this way and that. He laughed heartily.

  ‘You are a good sport, darling. I suppose that’s why I love you so.’

  Celia beamed at him adoringly.

  ‘So I’m to model a gown at Renard’s tonight and have some frightful customers stare at me. Well, that’s not quite true. I’m really only introducing the gowns, another –’

  ‘Renard’s?’ enquired Bertram sharply.

  ‘Yes, that’s the name of the boutique. Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘No, you mentioned that the proprietor was a Madame Renard. I suppose I should have put two and two together.’

  ‘Why ... what do you mean?’

  Celia, Bertram noticed, was watching him carefully. Was it his imagination, or was she holding her breath? He averted his gaze and fiddled with the cutlery on the table.

  ‘No, of course … I … I mean to say that there was no reason why –’

  ‘Have you heard of Renard’s? Do you know of it?’

  ‘No. Really, Celia, you do ask the strangest things. Why would I be familiar with a women’s dress shop? Do you think I get my shirts there?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s just that you sounded surprised, that’s all, when I said the name of the shop, as if you knew of it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t. And really, Celia, must you go on and on about it? I can’t imagine why you are. Ah … good, here’s the consommé. Let’s eat, shall we? I’m absolutely starving and I haven’t much time.’

  ‘Will you come tonight and see it?’ asked Celia. The eager note in her voice was not lost on the young man.

  ‘Come to see what?’ Bertram looked up from his soup and turned pale. ‘Surely you’re not suggesting that I come to see this fashion show, are you? I’d be the only man there.’

  ‘Nonsense. I expect quite a few of the customers will bring their husbands with them. They pay their wives’ dress bills after all.’

  ‘Well, I don’t pay yours … at least not yet.’

  Celia stared for a moment at the crisp white tablecloth in front of her and clasped its comforting fabric between her fingers. She hardly dared look up and catch her companion’s eye. She played back his words in her mind and wondered if she had misheard them. No … he had definitely hesitated and then insinuated that in future he might be responsible for paying for her clothes. If that was the case, then …

  ‘I’d like you to come. Please, say you will. I’ll only be wearing one gown and it is rather hideous. Why, it’s not even as nice as that nippy’s little uniform.’ She paused to indicate the neatly clad waitress. ‘But I’ll be presenting the other outfits. Bertie, darling.’ She leaned forward and grasped his arm. He found her hold surprisingly strong and possessive. Almost instinctively he had the urge to recoil from her clutches as if he were about to set foot into a trap.

  ‘I’d like you to be there, really I would,’ Celia persisted. ‘You must be there, darling, you must be. I couldn’t possibly do it if you’re not.’’

  ‘I don’t see why I must. It isn’t my sort of thing at all, just as it isn’t yours. Upon my word, Celia, I don’t know why you’re doing it at all.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Celia whispered the words so quietly that he was forced to lean forward to hear her.

  There was another awkward silence between them as she awaited his response. He knew that if he looked up she would be watching him intently again. His thoughts went inadvertently to a cat waiting for an opportunity to pounce on its prey. He shivered.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ he said at last, shrugging his shoulders and staring gloomily at his cold consommé, which he all of a sudden found distinctly unappealing. ‘If it means that much to you, darling, then of course I will.’

  ‘Oh, it does.’ Celia gave a sigh of relief and leaned forward. She held his hand for a moment in her large, gloved one. He felt the strength in her grip. ‘You know I love you, Bertie, don’t you? You know that I love you more than anything else in the world?’

  Bertram gasped, somewhat taken aback. ‘Of course,’ he mumbled in an embarrassed sort of way. She let go his hand instantly and drew back in her seat so that the table, with its white starched tablecloth, was between them like some impenetrable barrier.’

  ‘Now that’s settled, let’s eat, shall we?’ Celia said in a completely different tone of voice. ‘I’ve got to get back myself, for the fitting, you know. They’ll be wondering what’s become of me.’

  Bertram felt resentment well up inside him. They had been playing some sort of game and he had lost. She had defeated him. He, weak and pathetic, had given in to her wishes. Now, why had he done that? It was so unlike him, and now he came to think of it, it was so unlike her to be so insistent. That was why he had given in to her. But there had been something else, another reason. It was only when the waitress had cleared away their bowls and brought them steaming plates of lamb stew that he realised what it was. He had felt afraid.

  Chapter Five

  Lady Celia returned to the shop at the allotted hour to try on the semi-made outfit that had been finished to her precise measurements. Madame Renard, her heavily ringed fingers knotted together, hovered at the door of her office, her face anxious.

  ‘Ah, parfaitement,’ exclaimed the proprietor as Lady Celia studied her reflection in the mirror. ‘You see this skirt, it is of rippling flares and tiny pleats. See how it swirls when you move? Voila. It fits you perfectly.’

  ‘Does it? Of course I’m sure you’re right … but,’ said Lady Celia. ‘I think I may have preferred it in black rather than in royal blue.’

  ‘In royal blue you will be seen, in black you may fade into the shadows. My customers, they want to see you.’

  ‘They want to see Lady Lavinia,’ Lady Celia corrected her. ‘And I’m not at all sure about this column of bows down the front. There’s rather a lot of them, the bows I mean. And it’s all rather symmetrical, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ agreed Madame Renard. ‘It is the style and it suits you to perfection.’

  ‘I’m sure you are right,’ said Lady Celia again, although she said it in such a way as to imply the opposite. ‘But it’s just a little fussier than what I usually wear. You don’t think it looks a little common?’

  Madame Renard gaped and said nothing. If truth be told, she was afraid that if she were to open her mouth she could not keep a civil tongue.

  Lady Celia, apparently oblivious to the reaction her words had caused, toyed with the fabric of the dress, feeling it between her fingers. ‘The material, it does not look or feel too cheap.’ She sounded surprised.

  ‘Non, non, non. It is not cheap. It is the very finest.’

  Lady Celia raised her eyebrows and looked for a moment as if she were about to disagree. Instead she sighed and then all of a sudden looked distinctly bored.

  Madame Renard breathed a sigh of relief. Her temper had passed. She put her hand to her head. The throbbing, nagging headache that had plagued her earlier in the day appeared to have retreated. Perhaps this evening would go well after all. But, just as these very thoughts were drifting through her mind, there was a knock on the door and Rose appeared.

  ‘Madame? Oh, I am sorry. I thought you were alone. Lady Celia.’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said Madame Renard ushering her in. ‘Lady Celia, she looks very fine in her new frock, does she not, Rose? Very elegant. The style, it suits her, oui?’

  ‘Indeed, it does,’ concurred Rose, although privately she was of the view that, if anything, the dress rather accentuated Lady Celia’s portly figure. ‘Madame, Sylvia is outside wearing the silver gown. Monsieur Girard insisted that she come in and show you. He is quite beside himself with how well it looks on her.’

  ‘Oh? He is adamant that we include that dress, is he? It was not decided. He knows I have my reservations –’

  ‘On account of it be
ing so expensive, yes. But he thinks when your customers set eyes on it the orders will come flooding in and I must admit I think he might be right.’

  Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘I know –’’

  ‘This silver gown it sounds intriguing,’ said Lady Celia, following the exchange with interest. ‘Do bring the girl in so we can see it on her.’

  Rose beckoned to Sylvia and then stood aside, standing in the narrow corridor, so that the girl might enter Madame Renard’s office. With three occupants the room now appeared distinctly overcrowded and so Rose remained in the corridor looking on. This position afforded her the ideal opportunity to register the reactions on the two women’s faces as Sylvia glided forward in the silver gown, a vision of loveliness.

  As she had predicted, Madame Renard clapped her hands together and exclaimed loudly with delight, her voice shrill and her eyes bright. However it was Lady Celia’s reaction that she found more interesting, unexpected as it was and in its own way no less intense than the proprietor’s more effusive display of emotion. For, as Sylvia had walked forward and the sheen from the silk satin of her gown had seemed to brighten the room like the light emanating from a silver moon, the colour had drained from Lady Celia’s face. Her jaw had dropped and she had gaped, mouth open, looking for a moment like a half-wit or a fish stranded and dying on a river bank.

  Rose, from where she stood, was unable to see the expression on Sylvia’s face. However she did not doubt that the girl was fully aware of the effect her appearance had caused and was basking in the afterglow, her lips upturned in a self-satisfied smile.

  Rose had been similarly taken aback when she had first glimpsed Sylvia in the gown, for the girl had been transformed in appearance almost beyond belief. The dress had given Sylvia, almost impossibly thin, slender curves due to the softly draped bodice gathered at the waist by a large diamanté clasp. The front of the dress was covered in the most delicate of lace on which had been hand sewn the smallest of glass beads, hardly visibly from a distance, but the overall effect of which was to make the dress appear to glisten in the light.

  Sylvia had slowly turned so that the two women could admire the low decollate back of the gown, set off by diamanté straps running across the back of the neck. The shoulders of the dress itself were formed of strings of silver and glass beads accentuated here and there with a smattering of diamanté which seemed to accentuate the plunging backline of the dress and the paleness of Sylvia’s skin.

  ‘It is magical,’ cried Madame Renard. ‘Sylvia, it makes you look like a princess from a fairy tale. Why, I think it looks even finer on you than it did on dear Lavinia if such a thing were possible. Perhaps, I think, because your hair, it is a little darker. Pale brown, mousy one calls it, yes? You permit me to say that I have always thought it looked a little drab. But here it is perfect. It softens and compliments the silver of the gown do you not think, Lady Celia?’

  Madame Renard turned to regard her companion, who by this time had closed her mouth but was still staring, transfixed by the vision before her, as if she had seen a ghost or indeed a figure actually emerge from the pages of a book of fairy tales. She did not seem to have heard the proprietor, for she did not utter a word in reply or even nod her head.

  ‘Rose, don’t you think I look beautiful?’ asked Sylvia. The spell was broken. Her posture followed. Gone was the straight back and the expression of quiet aloofness on her face as she caressed the lace of her gown and put a hand up to her shoulder to feel the beaded straps. ‘Don’t you think I look like one of those film stars?’

  ‘Yes, you do …’

  ‘Why, I think it’s just the sort of dress that would make a man fall in love with a woman, don’t you, Rose? Or propose marriage. If you have the figure for it, of course, like I do.’

  ‘That dress,’ said Lady Celia slowly. ‘I want to wear it tonight. Not this rag.’ She pointed dismissively to her own ensemble.

  ‘But Lady Celia that is not possible. The dress, it takes hours to make, no, days to sew, it –’

  ‘I want to wear that dress tonight, Madame,’ said Lady Celia in a voice so final that no one said a word to contradict her no matter how absurd they thought her demand. The woman herself had turned back to the mirror and Rose fancied that she saw her hand shake.

  Sylvia had taken advantage of Lady Celia having turned her back to them to roll her eyes at Rose and make a face. Momentarily it appeared that the girl had forgotten that Lady Celia could see their reflection in the mirror as clearly as if she had been facing them. Rose saw that Sylvia realised her mistake almost immediately, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Lady Celia had swung around, her face barely containing the fury that she must have felt at such a show of insolence.

  ‘I shall wear that dress, not a copy or a replica, that one,’ said Lady Celia very slowly and quietly as if she were speaking to a young child. ‘You, Madame, will take it off the back of that wretched girl there and see that it is altered to fit me. I alone will wear that dress tonight.’

  ‘But Lady Celia –’

  ‘If you do not do as I ask, Madame, I shall not honour your event with my presence. Do you understand?’

  Madame Renard’s face crumbled and she clutched at the side of her desk as if for support. Sylvia cried and wailed as if she were fit to burst, her body shaking and trembling with each sob.

  Rose put an arm around the distressed girl’s shoulders, although the gesture seemed sadly inadequate and futile. She stared at Lady Celia finding it difficult to contain her own anger at the woman’s spiteful

  ness. It was only later that she wondered if matters might have turned out very differently had Lady Celia not caught sight of Sylvia’s mocking gesture or indeed if there had been no exquisite silver gown of silk satin to stir up such emotion.

  ‘Oh, don’t go on so, Sylvia, please’ said Rose for what seemed to her the umpteenth time. She sighed. ‘There’s nothing to be done about it, really there isn’t.’

  ‘But it isn’t fair,’ wailed the shop assistant, her eyes red and puffy from crying. ‘Horrible, beastly woman.’

  ‘Well, you only have yourself to blame. Whatever possessed you? Didn’t it occur to you that she could see your reflection in the mirror?’

  ‘I suppose I wasn’t thinking,’ sniffed Sylvia, drying her eyes on her sleeve.

  ‘For goodness sake don’t let Madame see you do that, Sylvia. Haven’t you got a handkerchief about you? And do try and look on the bright side. This morning you weren’t going to be modelling any of Monsieur Girard’s outfits and now you’ll be modelling all of them but one.’

  ‘Yes, but the silver gown’s the only one that matters.’

  ‘Well, as I’ve said, it’s all your own fault. You have no one to blame but yourself.’

  ‘I know you’re right. That makes it worse somehow. But I don’t like the other dresses nearly so much, Rose. They’re not a patch on the silver one. They’re very commonplace, you know they are. But the silver gown … it made me look like a princess, Rose,’ Sylvia said, a dreamy expression crossing her face for an instant, ‘even Madame said so.’

  Sylvia dabbed at her eyes again with her sleeve. There was a pause before she added: ‘Do you think she was jealous of me, Rose? The way I looked in that dress? Do you think that’s why Lady Celia was so very mean?’’

  ‘I daresay it had something to do with it,’ agreed Rose, deciding that the best way to cheer the girl up was to appeal to her vanity.

  ‘It’s rather nice to think,’ said Sylvia, a sly smile creeping over her face, ‘that I have something that Lady Celia would love to have.’

  Rose raised her eyebrows and looked up sharply. There was something in the girl’s tone that had caught her attention.

  ‘Beauty, Rose,’ said Sylvia hurriedly, almost as if she were afraid that she had said too much. ‘No matter how rich she is, it can’t buy her a fine figure and good looks, can it?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose it can,’ agreed R
ose, although she had the oddest impression that Sylvia was referring to something else entirely.

  It seemed to Rose that she had done nothing that day but soothe ruffled feathers, calm tattered nerves and generally mollify all those involved with the fashion event. The arrangements were proving so annoyingly tiresome that she was beginning to feel heartily sick of it all and wishing that the occasion had never been mooted. It was only early afternoon and yet it felt as if she had already worked a full day and a half. The afternoon and evening stretched out long and unyielding before her. Undoubtedly there would be many more ups and downs along the way before the event was over and the day had reached its welcome conclusion. In time she knew the event would become a thing of the past to be looked back on with affection or relief depending on the outcome. She sighed. It was all very well to be philosophical but now she was faced with the present and, to make matters worse, she had the beginnings of a headache. How she wished that she could act on the advice she had given Madame Renard and lie down in a quiet room for an hour or so.

  However, that was quite out of the question of course with so much to do and so many of the evening’s key players out of sorts in one way or the other. Not for the first time did Rose curse Lavinia for her unfortunate and unexplained absence from the evening’s festivities which seemed to be at the root of all the issues and problems that had occurred. What was her friend thinking, suggesting that Lady Celia take her place? Regardless of their different builds, the woman was arrogant and rude and decidedly unhelpful, almost as if she were intentionally going out of her way to be objectionable.

  It suddenly occurred to Rose that only Mary had been relatively unaffected by the trials and tribulations of the day. Quiet, inoffensive Mary, with her washed out appearance as Lady Celia had so unkindly put it, and unobtrusive manner which made it all too easy to overlook her in the presence of more forceful personalities. Yet it was Mary who got on with the task in hand without fuss. Sylvia, as always, was scarce when there was work to be done, and yet here was Mary diligently rearranging the shop by herself in preparation for the evening’s entertainment, clearing a space in the middle of the store, struggling with moving the overladen tables by herself to the very edges of the room, putting out the chairs in clusters and sweeping the floor.