Here Lies Gloria Mundy

‘Ah, but what a book it’s going to be! This is not a Rosie M. Banks, I’ll tell you. I’ve had a hell of a time, sometimes hilarious, sometimes very unpleasant — occasionally, when walking home alone after dark in some parts of London, even quite dangerous — but I’m sure it will be worth it. I plan a monumental opus after the style of Dostoievsky. I ended up at Trends, packed the job in — couldn’t stand the boss-lady for one thing — left my hotel and came to stay in this town with my sister and write the book. If you’d paid your sub to the lit. soc. as a gentleman should, and kept in with the rest of the crowd, you would have known I’d moved out of London.’

The gong went and we adjourned for lunch. The dining-room was full and, except for one mixed party at a central table which seated eight, all the guests except Imogen were men.

‘I always try to pick a place which caters mostly for men,’ she said, when we were seated, ‘then I know I’m going to get enough to eat.’

‘I always used to think you were on a perpetual diet. That’s one reason why old Hara-kiri mistook you for Gloria when he took his wife to buy a dress at Trends.’

‘I was called Gloria at Trends. Not my choice, needless to say. I inherited the name from my predecessor. As to my physique, I suppose I’m a fausse maigre like that girl in a novel by (I think) W.J. Locke. She looked like a starved cat in her clothes, but peeled to a goddess when she put on her swimsuit.’

‘Ah!’ I said. ‘Splendid! When do I — ?’

‘No lechery, please. I am convent bred,’ she said, laughing. ‘Now tell me your story.’

‘Not here and not now. I intend to do full justice to this meal. Game soup and Southdown lamb — the local produce, I trust — don’t go with murder and arson, so let me have my lunch and then you shall walk me round the town and I’ll tell you all. Remind me, though, to send a telegram before we begin our peregrinations. I’ve got to scrub the false information I enclosed in a letter to Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley.’

‘Goodness me, you are flying high! Do you really write informative letters to Dame Beatrice? I met her once when she lectured to the lit. soc. on Macbeth.’

‘I missed that. Yes, we are fellow sleuths. Get on with your soup or it will be cold. Everything shall be revealed when we are up on the Downs this afternoon.’

But I decided that it would be sacrilege to talk about burnt corpses while we were walking on the Downs so, as soon as I had sent off my telegram to the Stone House, I told Imogen all that I knew about Gloria Mundy as we explored the town.

We walked up the slope to the castle gatehouse and, as we were looking at what had been the outer bailey I said, ‘I knew old Hara-kiri was mistaken.’

‘About what?’

‘He thought you were the ghost of Gloria Mundy.’

‘Who is Hara-kiri?’

‘Do you remember a vast man with a lot of yellow hair? I brought him to one of the lit. soc. dinners when my first book was published.’

‘The man I called the Viking?’

‘That’s the chap.’

‘But how could he have thought I was Gloria Mundy’s ghost? That’s the one and only time I ever saw him.’

‘No. You saw him a few days ago in the Trends shop. He came with his wife to look at evening dresses.’

‘But, Corin, I wasn’t at Trends a few days ago. I left there weeks ago. That’s why you didn’t find me at that rather awful little guest-house. I was at Trends on a month’s approbation and I left at the end of that month. I had got what I wanted and they had had enough of me. Don’t look so moonstruck. Does it matter?’

‘No. I suppose not. Strange, though, that the light-haired girl I spoke to thought I meant you and not Gloria Mundy.’

‘I expect you asked for Gloria. We all had special names in that department. The light-haired girl you mentioned, and anybody who succeeded her in the job, was called Dorella. My number was five and all the fives would be known as Gloria and all the fours as Dorella and the third is always called Violetta and so on and so forth. Just an old Spanish custom at that particular shop.’

‘But what an odd coincidence that you, of all people, should have been called Gloria.’

‘Life drips with coincidences.’

‘God bless them,’ I said. ‘Do you know something? An elderly disciple of Sprenger and Kramer told me I should meet you again.’

‘You could have done that at the lit. soc.’ There was a silence after this. I broke it.

‘I ought to have tumbled to it, I suppose,’ I said thoughtfully.

‘Tumbled to what?’

I glanced at the fine dark-brown hair which a breeze was ruffling and replied, ‘Brown hair, not really black. And you left Culvert Green almost a fortnight before the real Gloria would have done. That has rather upset my theories.’

‘Oh, it was a bit of a dump, you know, and if you wanted a drink you had to go to the local. There wasn’t even a table licence at the hotel. I used to get bottles from the off-licence and drink secretly in my bedroom. How on earth did you come to get mixed up in this murder business? How did it start?’