‘Selling evening gowns. She used to work there, you know.’
I looked at him with the deepest concern and asked him whether he had ever had a really bad knock on the head.
‘I expect I got a kick or two on it. You do sometimes when you go down in front of a forward rush, but that was donkey’s years ago. It’s never affected me except in the most temporary way. This wasn’t hallucination, Corin,’ he said earnestly.
‘Ghosts are hallucination. Tell me more,’ I said. ‘Were you under the influence at the time?’
13
The Revenant
« ^ »
He shook his head and said, ‘There isn’t any more to tell.’
‘Of course there is. Chapter and verse, man, chapter and verse!’
‘I’m no good at that sort of thing. It’s your department to fill in the padding, not mine.’
‘All right, I’ll help you out. What were you doing in Trends? I thought they catered exclusively — and I can say that again when I think of their prices — exclusively for the sex which we prize above rubies.’
‘That’s right. Kate had dragged me there so that I could buy her a couple of evening dresses.’
‘Ah, now we’re off. Begin at the beginning. This sounds like good stuff and I may be able to get some copy out of it.’
‘No naming any names, then. Yes, well, Kate and I go out quite a bit and she came to the conclusion, as women are all too apt to do, that she had nothing fit to wear. I suggested that I should supply her with funds and that she should take a woman friend with her and chase round the shops, but, as usual, she insisted on taking me along and we went to Trends. There I saw Gloria’s ghost.’
‘Trends wouldn’t allow ghosts in their exclusive emporium. I suppose you thought you recognised the hair.’
‘As a matter of fact, no. This girl was entirely black-haired and was wearing a black frock and she had a dead-white face.’
‘Well, there you are, then. She was a real girl, not a ghost and certainly not Gloria.’
McMaster took up his drink, looked at it and put it down again. ‘It was Gloria and she was a ghost. Look, Corin, in the old days I wined and dined Gloria, I took her to ballet and the theatre, I went to Paris with her — God knows what it did to my money, but I told you about that, I expect — and I slept with her. I couldn’t possibly be mistaken. Besides, although people can change their hair and their complexion and a man can grow a beard or shave one off, there is one thing neither man nor woman can alter, and that is the colour of their eyes and the way those eyes are set in the head. I know you can do a lot with eyeshadow and theatrical make-up, but you can’t really disguise the basics. Gloria had cats’ eyes, green as green glass and utterly without humour, kindness or pity. This ghost had those eyes.’
‘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.
I was sufficiently intrigued to carry the matter further. I was at a loose end for a little while. The brochures were finished, I had been extremely well-paid and I was not quite ready to get back to my writing, so, having both time and money on my hands, I thought it might be a graceful act to buy Celia and Anthony a little present and send it with a note of my gratitude for their hospitality. It would also give me a chance to check McMaster’s story.