Suspects—Nine Read Free

beauty, the perfection of face and form and feature for which it was designed.
    On another it might be, Mademoiselle admitted, a shade too much, a nuance too little. For Flora Tamar— and then Mademoiselle lapsed into that silence which is so far, far more eloquent than any mere form of words.
    It was, she told Olive, as though perfect hat and perfect wearer had for once come together, as we are told time and the man do never, but, as in this event had done the woman and the hat!
    Olive turned uneasily in her chair. Outside, in the shop, there roared the voice of Lady Alice, as no doubt it had roared when she met and faced and tamed that crowd of armed savages of whom the story told.
    A door banged—banged so that the whole place shook. A bang of doom, in fact. The door communicating with the shop opened and Mademoiselle flew in. She collapsed into a chair. Olive had a glimpse of the pale, scared face of Jenny, the junior assistant. Even the errand boy himself, who had just come in, looked scared and disturbed— a thing Olive would never have thought possible. Mademoiselle gasped out,
    â€œShe’s gone off with it.”
    Simple words, perhaps, but charged with fate and fear. Olive clasped her hands. She did not understand but already she was shaken.
    â€œShe’s gone off with it,” said Mademoiselle once again.
    â€œWho? what?” said Olive.
    â€œLady Alice. The Hat. Mrs. Tamar’s hat,” said Mademoiselle.
    â€œVicky,” said Olive. “Oh, Vicky.”
    Mademoiselle’s name out of business hours was Victoria Alexandria Bates, her father having been a loyal linen draper in Camden Town. In business she was Mademoiselle Valclos, usually addressed as Mademoiselle, but in moments of emotion, such as those caused by an unexpected ‘R.D.’, or a sale of a last season’s model at a this season’s price, known to her employer as ‘Vicky’.
    This was clearly a ‘Vicky’ moment, though even yet Olive did not fully understand.
    â€œVicky!” said Olive once again. “You don’t mean...?”
    â€œPinched it and bunked off,” said Vicky simply.
    â€œNot,” said Olive, hardly daring to bring out the words, “not the Flora Tamar?”
    Vicky did not answer. There was no need to. One might as well, in the middle of an earthquake, have asked, ‘Is it an earthquake?’
    Olive said,
    â€œWell!”
    It wasn’t ‘well’ at all, anything but ‘well’ indeed. But then words are poor inadequate things when the depths are really plumbed.
    â€œWell,” said Olive once more, and this time the accent, if not the word, expressed something of the emotions seething within.
    â€œShe had heard about it,” Vicky explained with a kind of desperate calm. “She seems somehow to keep tabs on Mrs. Tamar and she asked if she might see the Tamar hat and so I let her. Then she asked if she might hold it and I let her”—at this point Vicky’s voice rose almost to a wail of anguish—“and she said might she try it on, and she did. It looked silly on her. I knew it would, but we all kept straight faces. She said, ‘I’ll keep it. How much is it?’ I thought she was joking and I said Mrs. Tamar was paying us twenty guineas. She said she would give us twenty-five. I thought she was just trying to be funny—at least I tried to but I was beginning to feel funny myself—here.” Vicky indicated the exact spot. “I said it wasn’t for sale, and she shouted that every hat in a hat shop was for sale or what was it there for? And then before I could say a word, before I could lift a finger, before I knew what she was up to, the cat—she, she bounced out.”
    â€œWith the—wearing the—Hat?” almost whispered Olive.
    â€œWearing the hat,” confirmed Vicky.
    â€œOh, Vicky,” said Olive.
    â€œI flung her own after her,” said Vicky,