Here Lies Gloria Mundy

‘A chance likeness, that’s all. But even if you’re right’ — I remembered the story of the dead girl’s hair which got scorched but not burnt, whereas her face was so scorched and blackened as to be not only a thing of horror but unrecognisable as a human countenance, and I began to feel a thrill of excitement — ‘even if you’re right,’ I repeated, ‘it was no ghost that you saw. It must have been Gloria in the flesh.’

‘No,’ he said obstinately, ‘it was her ghost. I can prove it. It disappeared.’

‘Disappeared? You mean it recognised you and melted into thin air?’

‘It amounted to that. We went to the part of the shop which Kate wanted to look in and this black-haired, black-clad, white-faced thing appeared from nowhere — ’

‘No, from a fitting-room or from behind a rack of clothes. I know these dress shops.’

McMaster ignored this.

‘I couldn’t believe my eyes. I really thought at first it was Gloria in the flesh,’ he said. ‘Well, I didn’t want any Auld Lang Syne stuff with Kate there, so I turned my back and began to look at some dresses, and I heard Gloria’s ghost say the usual ‘Can I help you, madam?’ or something of that sort, and I knew it was a disembodied voice, not a human one.’

‘But, my dear chap, they tell me ghosts can’t speak unless you address them first, and even then they don’t always bother to answer. Seriously, though, this girl didn’t look like Gloria and didn’t sound like Gloria, so what?’

‘All right, have it your way. All I know is that, when I half turned to have another peep, a tall, buxom blonde was with Kate and there was no sign of Gloria at all. What do you make of that?’

‘Easy,’ I said. ‘These days you give an impression of opulence beyond that of the Great Cham himself. The blonde was the senior assistant in that department and wasn’t going to let a lucrative sale, with its nice fat commission, get away from her. Kissing goes by seniority in these establishments and the top girls pull their rank, same like everywhere else. The blonde must have gone through the secret motions which meant “Hop it; this is my pigeon for the plucking”, and the girl you mistook for Gloria sank without trace. Probably just slipped behind a rack of long dresses.’

‘It sounds all right when you put it like that, but it isn’t all right. If it wasn’t Gloria’s ghost, it was Gloria herself, as I thought at first, and that, as we know, is unthinkable.’

I told him that I was beginning to consider it not so unthinkable after all. What had Wotton and I had to go on, when, separately, we had identified that very dead creature? Nothing but hair of two colours and the declaration from two unrelated and, one would suppose, disinterested sources that Gloria had been seen inside the old house after she was supposed to have left Beeches Lawn many hours previously. I reminded him that, upon his arrival there, Gloria had not been in the house, certainly, but that he himself had seen her in the grounds.

‘Quite likely she had been hanging around hoping that one of you would come out and offer her a lift to the station, so there was nothing much in that,’ he said. ‘It only proves that she was still alive at that time.’

‘Well, if you saw her in Trends, she was still alive then, too,’ I said, ‘but don’t you think it was some other girl who had eyes and a figure similar to those of Gloria? You had read of Gloria’s death, you had reminded yourself of your previous association with her and, in other words, she was very much in the forefront of your mind. Add to that the fact that you had Kate with you and you were going to buy clothes for her. Did you ever buy clothes for Gloria?’

‘Yes, of course, and was nearly beggared by Trends’ prices, although, as an employee, she got a discount and I was never present.’ He looked hopefully at me. ‘So it wasn’t a ghost. All the same — ’

‘All the same, it wasn’t Gloria either. Besides, from what little I saw of her at Beeches Lawn, her two-coloured hair was her only claim to distinction and I don’t believe she would have sacrificed it. Snap out of it, old man.’

‘You make out a good case,’ he said, ‘but — well, I dunno.’

We had another drink before he left. I could tell that I had not convinced him, but I remembered him from the old days as an obstinate fellow who, once he got an idea into his head, retained it against all opposition or argument. All the same, his ‘I wined and dined Gloria, I took her to ballet and the theatre, I went to Paris with her… I slept with her’ showed me that his association with her had lasted longer and had been much closer than I had suspected.