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Hand in Glove
Ngaio Marsh


One of Ngaio Marsh’s most ingenious novels.The April Fool’s Day had been a roaring success for all, it seemed – except for poor Mr Cartell who had ended up in the ditch – for ever.Then there was the case of Mr Percival Pyke Period’s letter of condolence, sent before the body was found – not to mention the family squabbles.It was a puzzling crime for Superintendent Alleyn…









NGAIO MARSH

Hand in Glove










DEDICATION (#u3cd56510-94c6-5b3a-8895-38d7aaacc9b0)


for Jonathan Elsom




CONTENTS


Cover (#u3f970bd9-fbae-56e1-bdd3-8bb4ebbd4c8a)

Title Page (#uc2b7c8d6-6730-5fd6-82c3-987fde2db8dd)

Dedication

Cast of Characters

1. Mr Pyke Period

2. Luncheon

3. Aftermath to a Party

4. Alleyn

5. Postscript to a Party

6. Interlude

7. Pixie

8. Period Piece

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher




CAST OF CHARACTERS (#u3cd56510-94c6-5b3a-8895-38d7aaacc9b0)









CHAPTER 1 (#u3cd56510-94c6-5b3a-8895-38d7aaacc9b0)

Mr Pyke Period (#u3cd56510-94c6-5b3a-8895-38d7aaacc9b0)


While he waited for the water to boil, Alfred Belt stared absently at the kitchen calendar: ‘With the compliments of The Little Codling Garage. Service with a smile. Geo. Copper’. Below this legend was a coloured photograph of a kitten in a boot and below that the month of March. Alfred removed them and exposed a coloured photograph of a little girl smirking through apple blossom.

He warmed a silver teapot engraved on its belly with Mr Pyke Period’s crest: a fish. He refolded the Daily Press and placed it on the breakfast tray. The toaster sprang open, the electric kettle shrieked. Alfred made tea, put the toast in a silver rack, transferred bacon and eggs from pan to crested entrée dish and carried the whole upstairs.

He tapped at his employer’s door and entered. Mr Pyke Period, a silver-haired bachelor with a fresh complexion, stirred in his bed, gave a little snort, opened his large brown eyes, mumbled his lips, and blushed.

Alfred said: ‘Good morning, sir.’ He placed the tray and turned away in order that Mr Period could assume his teeth in privacy. He drew back the curtains. The village green looked fresh in the early light. Decorous groups of trees, already burgeoning, showed fragile against distant hills. Wood-smoke rose delicately from several chimneys and in Miss Cartell’s house across the green, her Austrian maid shook a duster out of an upstairs window. In the field beyond, Miss Cartell’s mare grazed peacefully.

‘Good morning, Alfred,’ Mr Period responded, now fully articulate.

Alfred drew back the curtains from the side window, exposing a small walled garden, a gardener’s shed, a path and a gate into a lane. Beyond the gate was a trench, bridged with planks and flanked by piled-up earth. Three labourers had assembled beside it.

‘Those chaps still at it in the lane, sir,’ said Alfred, returning to the bedside. He placed Mr Period’s spectacles on his tray and poured his tea.

‘Damn’ tedious of them, I must say. However! Good God!’ Mr Period mildly exclaimed. He had opened his paper and was reading the Obituary Notices. Alfred waited.

‘Lord Ormsbury’s gone,’ Mr Period informed him.

‘Gone, sir?’

‘Died. Yesterday it seems. Motor accident. Terrible thing. Fifty-two, it gives here. One never knows. “Survived by his sister – ”’ He made a small sound of displeasure.

‘That would be Desirée, Lady Bantling, sir, wouldn’t it?’ Alfred ventured, ‘at Baynesholme?’

‘Exactly, Alfred. Precisely. And what must these fellows do but call her “The Dowager”. She hates it. Always has. And not even correct, if it comes to that. One would have expected the Press to know better.’ He read on. A preoccupied look, indeed one might almost have said a look of pleasurable anticipation, settled about his rather babyish mouth.

Below, in the garden, a dog began to bark hysterically.

‘Good God!’ Mr Period said quietly and closed his eyes.

‘I’ll attend to her, sir.’

‘I cannot for the life of me see – however!’

‘Will there be anything further, sir?’ Alfred asked.

‘What? No. No, thank you. Miss Cartell for luncheon, you remember. And Miss Maitland-Mayne.’

‘Certainly, sir. Arriving by the ten twenty. Will there be anything required in the library, sir?’

‘I can’t think of anything. She’s bringing her own typewriter.’ Mr Period looked over the top of his paper and appeared to come to a decision. ‘Her grandfather,’ he said, ‘was General Maitland-Mayne. An old friend of mine.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Ah – yes. Yes. And her father. Killed at Dunkirk. Great loss.’

A padded footfall was heard in the passage. A light tattoo sounded on the door and a voice, male but pitched rather high, called out, ‘Bath’s empty. For what it’s worth.’ The steps receded.

Mr Period repeated his sound of irritation.

‘Have I or have I not,’ he muttered, ‘taken my bath in the evening for seven uncomfortable weeks?’ He glanced at Alfred. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Alfred rejoined and withdrew.

As he crossed the landing, he heard Mr Cartell singing in his bedroom. ‘It won’t answer,’ Alfred thought, ‘I never supposed it would,’ and descended to the kitchen. Here he found Mrs Mitchell, the cook; a big and uninhibited woman. They exchanged routine observations, agreeing that spring really did seem to have come.

‘All hotsey-totsey in the upper regions?’ Mrs Mitchell asked.

‘As well as can be expected, Mrs M.’

A shrill yelp modulating into a long drawn out howl sounded outside. ‘That dog!’ Mrs Mitchell said.

Alfred went to the back door and opened it. An enormous half-bred boxer hurled itself against his legs and rushed past him to the kitchen. ‘Bitch!’ Alfred said factually, but with feeling.

‘Lay down! Get out of my kitchen! Shoo!’ Mrs Mitchell cried confusedly.

‘Here – Pixie!’

The boxer slavered, ogled and threshed its tail.

‘Upstairs! Pixie! Up to your master.’

Alfred seized the bitch’s collar and lugged it into the hall. A whistle sounded above. The animal barked joyously, flung itself up the stairs, skating and floundering as it went. Alfred sent a very raw observation after it and returned to the kitchen.

‘It’s too much,’ he said. ‘We never bargained for it. Never.’

‘I don’t mind a nice cat.’

‘Exactly. And the damage it does!’

‘Shocking. Your breakfast’s ready, Mr Belt. New-laid egg.’

‘Very nice,’ Alfred said. He sat down to it, a neat man with quite an air about him, Mrs Mitchell considered. She watched him make an incisive stab at the egg. The empty shell splintered and collapsed. Mrs Mitchell, in a trembling voice, said: ‘First of April, Mr B.,’ and threw her apron over her face. He was so completely silent that for a moment she thought he must be annoyed. However, when she peeped round her apron, he shook his egg-spoon at her.

‘You wait,’ he threatened. ‘You just wait, my lady. That’s all.’

‘To think of you falling for an old wheeze like that.’

‘And I changed the calendar too.’

‘Never mind. There’s the genuine articles, look. Under your serviette.’

‘Napkin,’ Alfred said. He had been in Mr Period’s service for ten years. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of the fact,’ he added, taking the top off his egg, ‘but April Fool’s Day goes back to pagan times, Mrs Mitchell.’

‘Fancy! With your attainments, I often wonder you don’t look elsewhere for employment.’

‘You might say I lack ambition.’ Alfred paused, his spoon half-way to his mouth. ‘The truth of the matter is,’ he added, ‘I like service. Given favourable circumstances, it suits me. And the circumstances here are – or were – very nice.’

A telephone rang distantly. ‘I’ll answer it,’ Mrs Mitchell offered. ‘You take your breakfast in peace.’

She went out. Alfred opened his second egg and his Daily Mail and was immersed in both when she returned.

‘Miss Cartell,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

‘Asking for her brother, “Oh,” she says. “Mrs Mitchell!” she says, “just the person I wanted to have a word with!” You know her way. Bluff, but doing the gracious.’

Alfred nodded slightly.

‘And she says, “I want you,” she says, “before I say anything to my brother, to tell me, absolutely frankly,” she says, “between you and me and the larder shelf, if you think the kweezeen would stand two more for lunch.” Well!’

‘To whom was she referring?’

‘To that Miss Moppett and a friend. A gentleman friend, you may depend upon it. Well! Asking me! As far as the kweezeen is concerned, a nice curry can be stretched, as you know yourself, Mr Belt, to ridiculous lengths.’

‘What did you say?’

‘“I’m sure, miss,” I says, just like that! Straight out! “My kitchen,” I says, “has never been found wanting in a crisis,” I says, and with that I switched her up to his room.’

‘Mr Period,’ Alfred said, ‘will not be pleased.’

‘You’re telling me! Can’t stand the young lady, to give her the benefit of the title, and I’m sure I don’t blame him. Mr Cartell feels the same, you can tell. Well, I mean to say! She’s no relation. Picked up nobody knows where and educated by a spinster sister to act like his niece, which call her as you may have remarked, Mr Belt, he will not. A bad girl, if ever I see one, and Miss Cartell will find it out one of these days, you mark my words.’

Alfred laid aside his paper and continued with his breakfast. ‘It’s the arrangement,’ he said, following out his own thought, ‘and you can’t get away from it. Separate rooms with the joint use of the bathroom and meals to be shared, with the right of either party to invite guests.’ He finished his tea. ‘It doesn’t answer,’ he said. ‘I never thought it would. We’ve been under our own steam too long for sharing. We’re getting fussed. Looking forward to a nice day, with a letter of condolence to be written – Lady Bantling’s brother, for your information, Mrs M., with whom she has not been on speaking terms these ten years or more. And a young lady coming in to help with the book, and now this has to happen. Pity.’

She went to the door and opened it slightly. ‘Mr C.,’ she said with a jerk of her head. ‘Coming down.’

‘His breakfast’s in the dining-room,’ said Alfred.

A light tattoo sounded on the door. It opened and Mr Cartell’s face appeared: thin, anxious and tightly smiling. The dog, Pixie, was at his heels. Alfred and Mrs Mitchell stood up.

‘Oh – ah – good morning, Mrs Mitchell. ’Morning, Alfred. Just to say that my sister telephoned to ask if we can manage two more. I hope it won’t be too difficult, Mrs Mitchell, at such short notice.’

‘I dare say we’ll manage quite nicely, sir.’

‘Shall we? Oh, excellent. Ah – I’ll let Mr Period know. Good,’ said Mr Cartell. He withdrew his head, shut the door and retired, whistling uncertainly, to the dining-room.

For the second time in half an hour Alfred repeated his leitmotiv. ‘It won’t answer,’ he said. ‘And I never thought it would.’




II


‘Sawn-lee,’ a hollow voice on the loudspeaker announced. ‘Sawn-lee. The four carriages in the front portion of the train now arrived at number one platform will proceed to Rimble, Bornlee Green and Little Codling. The rear portion will proceed to Forthampstead and Ribblethorpe. Please make sure you are in the correct part of the train. Sawn-lee. The four carriages –’

Nicola Maitland-Mayne heard this pronouncement with dismay. ‘But I don’t know,’ she cried to her fellow passengers, ‘which portion I’m in! Is this one of the first four carriages?’

‘It’s the fifth,’ said the man in the corner. ‘Next stop Forthampstead.’

‘Oh, damn!’ Nicola said cheerfully and hauled her typewriter and overcoat down from the rack. Someone opened the door for her. She plunged out, staggered along the platform and climbed into another carriage as the voice was saying: ‘All seats, please, for Rimble, Bornlee Green and Little Codling.’

The first compartment was full and so was the second. She moved along the corridor, looked in at the third, and gave it up. A tall man, farther along the corridor said: ‘There’s plenty of room up at the end.’

‘I’m second class.’

‘I should risk it if I were you. You can always pay up if the guard comes along but he never does on this stretch, I promise you.’

‘Oh, well,’ Nicola said, ‘I believe I will. Thank you.’

He opened the door of the first-class compartment. She went in and found nobody there. A bowler, an umbrella, and a Times, belonging, she supposed, to the young man himself, lay on one seat. She sat on the other. He shut the door and remained in the corridor with his back to her, smoking.

Nicola looked out of the window for a minute or two. Presently she remembered her unfinished crossword and took her own copy of The Times out of her overcoat pocket.

Eight across. ‘Vehicle to be sick on or just get a ringing in the ears? (8).’

The train had roared through a cutting and was slowing down for Cabstock when she ejaculated: ‘Oh, good lord! Carillon, of course, how stupid!’ She looked up to find the young man smiling at her from the opposite seat.

‘I stuck over that one, too,’ he said.

‘How far did you get?’

‘All but five. Maddening.’

‘So did I,’ Nicola said.

‘I wonder if they’re the same ones. Shall I look?’

He picked up his paper. She noticed that under the nail of the first finger of his right hand there was a smear of scarlet.

Between them they continued the crossword. It is a matter of conjecture how many complete strangers have been brought into communication by this means. Rimble and Bornlee Green were passed before they filled in the last word.

‘I should say,’ the young man remarked as he folded up his Times, ‘that we’re in much the same class.’

‘That may be true of crosswords, but it certainly isn’t of railway carriages,’ Nicola rejoined. ‘Heavens, where are we?’

‘Coming in to Codling. My station, what a bore!’

‘It’s mine, too,’ Nicola exclaimed, standing up.

‘No! Is it really? Jolly good,’ said the young man. ‘I’ll be able to bluff you past the gate. Here we go. Are you putting your coat on? Give me that thing: what is it, a typewriter? Sorry about my unsuitable bowler, but I’m going to a cocktail party this evening. Where’s me brolly? Come on.’

They were the only passengers to leave the train at Little Codling. The sun was shining and the smell of a country lane mingled with the disinfectant, cardboard and paste atmosphere of the station. Nicola was only mildly surprised to see her companion produce a second-class ticket.

‘Joy-riding as usual, I suppose, Mr Bantling,’ said the man at the gates.

Nicola gave up her ticket and they passed into the lane. Birds were fussing in the hedgerows and the air ran freshly. A dilapidated car waited outside with a mild-looking driver standing beside it.

‘Hallo,’ the young man said. ‘There’s the Bloodbath. It must be for you.’

‘Do you think so? And why “Bloodbath”?’

‘Well, they won’t have sent it for me. Good morning, Mr Copper.’

‘Good morning, sir. Would it be Miss Maitland-Mayne?’ asked the car driver, touching his cap.

Nicola said it would and he opened the door. ‘You’ll take a lift, too, sir, I dare say. Mr Cartell asked me to look out for you.’

‘What!’ the young man exclaimed, staring at Nicola. ‘Are you, too, bound for Ye Olde Bachelor’s Lay-by?’

‘I’m going to Mr Pyke Period’s house. Could there be some mistake?’

‘Not a bit of it. In we get.’

‘Well, if you say so,’ Nicola said and they got into the back of the car. It was started up with a good deal of commotion and they set off down the lane. ‘What did you mean by “Bloodbath”?’ Nicola repeated.

‘You’ll see. I’m going,’ the young man shouted, ‘to visit my step-father who is called Mr Harold Cartell. He shares Mr Pyke Period’s house.’

‘I’m going to type for Mr Pyke Period.’

‘You cast a ray of hope over an otherwise unpropitious venture. Hold very nice and tight, please,’ said the young man, imitating a bus conductor. They swung out of the lane, brought up short under the bonnet of a gigantic truck loaded with a crane and drain-pipes, and lost their engine. The truck driver blasted his horn. His mate leaned out of the cab.

‘You got the death-wish, Jack?’ he asked the driver.

The driver looked straight ahead of him and restarted his engine. Nicola saw that they had turned into the main street of a village and were headed for the green.

‘Trembling in every limb, are you?’ the young man asked her. ‘Never mind; now you see what I meant by “Bloodbath”.’ He leant towards her. ‘There is another rather grand taxi in the village,’ he confided, ‘but Pyke Period likes to stick to Mr Copper, because he’s come down in the world.’ He raised his voice. ‘That was a damn’ close-run thing, Mr Copper,’ he shouted.

‘Think they own the place, those chaps,’ the driver rejoined. ‘Putting the sewer up the side lane by Mr Period’s house, and what for? Nobody wants it.’

He turned left at the green, pulled in at a short drive and stopped in front of a smallish Georgian house.

‘Here we are,’ said the young man.

He got out, extricated Nicola’s typewriter and his own umbrella, and felt in his pocket. Although largish and exceptionally tall, he was expeditious and quick in all his movements.

‘Nothing to pay, Mr Bantling,’ said the driver. ‘Mr Period gave the order.’

‘Oh, well. One for the road anyway.’

‘Very kind of you, but no need, I’m sure. All right, Miss Maitland-Mayne?’

‘Quite, thank you,’ said Nicola, who had alighted. The car lurched off uproariously. Looking to her right, Nicola could see the crane and the top of its truck over a quickset hedge. She heard the sound of male voices.

The front door had opened and a small dark man in an alpaca coat appeared.

‘Good morning, Alfred,’ her companion said. ‘As you see, I’ve brought Miss Maitland-Mayne with me.’

‘The gentlemen,’ Alfred said, ‘are expecting you both, sir.’

Pixie shot out of the house in a paroxysm of barking.

‘Quiet,’ said Alfred, menacing her.

She whined, crouched and then precipitated herself upon Nicola. She stood on her hind legs, slavering and grimacing and scraped at Nicola with her forepaws.

‘Here, you!’ said the young man indignantly. ‘Paws off!’

He cuffed Pixie away and she made loud ambiguous noises.

‘I’m sure I’m very sorry, miss,’ said Alfred. ‘It’s said to be only its fun. This way, if you please, miss.’

Nicola found herself in a modest but elegantly proportioned hall. It looked like an advertisement from a glossy magazine. ‘Small Georgian residence of character’ and, apart from being Georgian, had no other character to speak of.

Alfred opened a door on the right. ‘In the library, if you please, miss,’ he said. ‘Mr Period will be down immediately.’

Nicola walked in. The young man followed and put her typewriter on a table by a window.

‘I can’t help wondering,’ he said, ‘what you’re going to do for P.P. After all, he’d never type his letters of condolence, would he?’

‘What can you mean?’

‘You’ll see. Well, I suppose I’d better launch myself on my ill-fated mission. You might wish me luck.’

Something in his voice caught her attention. She looked up at him. His mouth was screwed dubiously sideways. ‘It never does,’ he said, ‘to set one’s heart on something, does it? Furiously, I mean.’

‘Good heavens, what a thing to say! Of course, one must. Continuously. Expectation,’ said Nicola grandly, ‘is the springboard of achievement.’

‘Rather a phoney slogan, I’m afraid.’

‘I thought it neat.’

‘I should like to confide in you. What a pity we won’t meet over your nice curry. I’m lunching with my mamma who lives in the offing with her third husband.’

‘How do you know it’s going to be curry?’

‘It often is.’

‘Well,’ Nicola said, ‘I wish you luck.’

‘Thank you very much.’ He smiled at her. ‘Good typing!’

‘Good hunting! If you are hunting.’

He laid his finger against his nose, pulled a mysterious grimace and left her.

Nicola opened up her typewriter and a box of quarto paper and surveyed the library.

It looked out on the drive and the rose garden and it was like the hall in that it had distinction without personality. Over the fireplace hung a dismal little water-colour. Elsewhere on the walls were sporting prints, a painting of a bewhiskered ensign in the Brigade of Guards, pointing his sword at some lightning, and a faded photograph of several Edwardian minor royalties grouped in baleful conviviality about a picnic luncheon. In the darkest corner was a framed genealogical tree, sprouting labels, arms and mantling. There were bookcases with uniform editions, novels, and a copy of Handley Cross. Standing apart from the others, a corps d’élite, were Debrett, Burke, Kelly’s and Who’s Who. The desk itself was rich with photographs, framed in silver. Each bore witness to the conservative technique of the studio and the well-bred restraint of the sitter.

Through the side window, Nicola looked across Mr Period’s rose garden, to a quickset hedge and an iron gate leading into a lane. Beyond this gate was a trench with planks laid across it, a heap of earth and her old friend the truck, from which, with the aid of the crane, the workmen were unloading drain-pipes.

Distantly and overhead, she heard male voices. Her acquaintance of the train (what had the driver called him?) and his step-father, Nicola supposed.

She was thinking of him with amusement when the door opened and Mr Pyke Period came in.




III


He was a tall, elderly man with a marked stoop, silver hair, large brown eyes and a small mouth. He was beautifully dressed with exactly the correct suggestion of well-worn scrupulously tended tweed.

He advanced upon Nicola with curved arm held rather high and bent at the wrist. The Foreign Office, or at the very least, Commonwealth Relations, was invoked.

‘This is really kind of you,’ said Mr Pyke Period, ‘and awfully lucky for me.’

They shook hands.

‘Now, do tell me,’ Mr Period continued, ‘because I’m the most inquisitive old party and I’m dying to know – you are Basil’s daughter, aren’t you?’

Nicola, astounded, said that she was.

‘Basil Maitland-Mayne?’ he gently insisted.

‘Yes, but I don’t make much of a to-do about the “Maitland”,’ said Nicola.

‘Now, that’s naughty of you. A splendid old family. These things matter.’

‘It’s such a mouthful.’

‘Never mind! So you’re dear old Basil’s gel! I was sure of it. Such fun for me because, do you know, your grandfather was one of my very dear friends. A bit my senior, but he was one of those soldiers of the old school who never let you feel the gap in ages.’

Nicola, who remembered her grandfather as an arrogant, declamatory old egoist, managed to make a suitable rejoinder. Mr Period looked at her with his head on one side.

‘Now,’ he said gaily, ‘I’m going to confess. Shall we sit down? Do you know, when I called on those perfectly splendid people to ask about typewriting and they gave me some names from their books, I positively leapt at yours. And do you know why?’

Nicola had her suspicions and they made her feel uncomfortable. But there was something about Mr Period – what was it? – something vulnerable and foolish, that aroused her compassion. She knew she was meant to smile and shake her head and she did both.

Mr Period said, sitting youthfully on the arm of a leather chair: ‘It was because I felt that we would be working together on – dear me, too difficult! – on a common ground. Talking the same language.’ He waited for a moment and then said cosily: ‘And you now know all about me. I’m the most dreadful old anachronism – a Period Piece, in fact.’

As Nicola responded to this joke she couldn’t help wondering how often Mr Period had made it.

He laughed delightedly with her. ‘So, speaking as one snob to another,’ he ended, ‘I couldn’t be more enchanted that you are you. Well, never mind! One’s meant not to say such things in these egalitarian days.’

He had a conspiratorial way of biting his under-lip and lifting his shoulders: it was indescribably arch. ‘But we mustn’t be naughty,’ said Mr Pyke Period.

Nicola said: ‘They didn’t really explain at the agency exactly what my job is to be.’

‘Ah! Because they didn’t exactly know. I was coming to that.’

It took him some time to come to it, though, because he would dodge about among innumerable parentheses. Finally, however, it emerged that he was writing a book. He had been approached by the head of a publishing firm.

‘Wonderful,’ Nicola said, ‘actually to be asked by a publisher to write.’

He laughed. ‘My dear child, I promise you it would never have come from me. Indeed, I thought he must be pulling my leg. But not at all. So in the end I madly consented and – and there we are, you know.’

‘Your memoirs, perhaps?’ Nicola ventured.

‘No. No, although I must say – but no – You’ll never guess!’

She felt that she never would and waited.

‘It’s – how can I explain? Don’t laugh! It’s just that in these extraordinary times there are all sorts of people popping up in places where one would least expect to find them: clever, successful people, we must admit, but not, as we old fogies used to say – “not quite-quite”. And there they find themselves, in a milieu, where they really are, poor darlings, at a grievous loss.’

And there it was: Mr Pyke Period had been commissioned to write a book on etiquette. Nicola suspected that his publisher had displayed a remarkably shrewd judgement. The only book on etiquette she had ever read, a Victorian work unearthed in an attic by her brother, had been a favourite source for ribald quotation. ‘“It is a mark of ill-breeding in a lady,”’ Nicola’s brother would remind her, ‘“to look over her shoulder, still more behind her, when walking abroad.”’

‘“There should be no diminution of courteous observance,”’ she would counter, ‘“in the family circle. A brother will always rise when his sister enters the drawing-room and open the door to her when she shows her intention of quitting it.”’

‘“While on the sister’s part some slight acknowledgement of his action will be made: a smile or a quiet ‘thank you’ will indicate her awareness of the little attention.”’

Almost as if he had read her thoughts, Mr Period was saying: ‘Of course, one knows all about these delicious Victorian offerings – quite wonderful. And there have been contemporaries: poor Felicité Sankie-Bond, after their crash, don’t you know. And one mustn’t overlap with dear Nancy. Very diffy. In the meantime –’

In the meantime, it at last transpired, Nicola was to make a type-written draft of his notes and assemble them under their appropriate headings. These were: ‘The Ball-dance’, Trifles that Matter’, ‘The Small Dinner’, ‘The Partie Carrée’, ‘Addressing Our Letters & Betters’, ‘Awkwiddities’, ‘The Debutante – lunching and launching’, ‘Tips on Tipping’.

And bulkily, in a separate compartment, ‘The Compleat Letter-Writer’.

She was soon to learn that letter-writing was a great matter with Mr Pyke Period.

He was, in fact, famous for his letters of condolence.




IV


They settled to work: Nicola at her table near the front French windows, Mr Period at his desk in the side one.

Her job was an exacting one. Mr Period evidently jotted down his thoughts, piecemeal, as they had come to him and it was often difficult to know where a passage precisely belonged. ‘Never fold the napkin (there is no need, I feel sure, to put the unspeakable “serviette” in its place), but drop it lightly on the table.’ Nicola listed this under ‘Table Manners’, and wondered if Mr Period would find the phrase ‘refeened’, a word he often used with humorous intent.

She looked up to find him in a trance, his pen suspended, his gaze rapt, a sheet of headed letter-paper under his hand. He caught her glance and said: ‘A few lines to my dear Desirée Bantling. Soi-disant. The Dowager, as the Press would call her. You saw Ormsbury had gone, I dare say?’

Nicola, who had no idea whether the Dowager Lady Bantling had been deserted or bereaved, said: ‘No, I didn’t see it.’

‘Letters of condolence!’ Mr Period sighed with a faint hint of complacency. ‘How difficult they are!’ He began to write again, quite rapidly, with sidelong references to his note-pad.

Upstairs a voice, clearly recognizable, shouted angrily: ‘– and all I can say, you horrible little man, is I’m bloody sorry I ever asked you.’ Someone came rapidly downstairs and crossed the hall. The front door slammed. Through her window, Nicola saw her travelling companion, scarlet in the face, stride down the drive, angrily swinging his bowler.

‘He’s forgotten his umbrella,’ she thought.

‘Oh, dear!’ Mr Period murmured. ‘An awkwiddity, I fear me. Andrew is in one of his rages. You know him, of course.’

‘Not till this morning.’

‘Andrew Bantling? My dear, he’s the son of the very Lady Bantling we were talking about. Desirée you know. Ormsbury’s sister. Bobo Bantling – Andrew’s papa – was the first of her three husbands. The senior branch. Seventh Baron. Succeeded to the peerage –’ Here followed inevitably, one of Mr Period’s classy genealogical digressions. ‘My dear Nicola,’ he went on, ‘I hope, by the way, I may so far take advantage of a family friendship?’

‘Please do.’

‘Sweet of you. Well, my dear Nicola, you will have gathered that I don’t vegetate all by myself in this house. No. I share. With an old friend who is called Harold Cartell. It’s a new arrangement and I hope it’s going to suit us both. Harold is Andrew’s step-father and guardian. He is, by the way, a retired solicitor. I don’t need to tell you about Andrew’s mum,’ Mr Period added, strangely adopting the current slang. ‘She, poor darling, is almost too famous.’

‘And she’s called Desirée, Lady Bantling?’

‘She naughtily sticks to the title in the teeth of the most surprising remarriage.’

‘Then she’s really Mrs Harold Cartell?’

‘Not now. That hardly lasted any time. No. She’s now Mrs Bimbo Dodds. Bantling. Cartell. Dodds. In that order.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Nicola said, remembering at last the singular fame of this lady.

‘Yes. ‘Nuff said,’ Mr Period observed, wanly arch, ‘under that heading. But Hal Cartell was Lord Bantling’s solicitor and executor and is the trustee for Andrew’s inheritance. I, by the way, am the other trustee and I do hope that’s not going to be diffy. Well, now,’ Mr Period went cosily on, ‘on Bantling’s death, Hal Cartell was also appointed Andrew’s guardian. Desirée at that time, was going through a rather farouche phase and Andrew narrowly escaped being made a Ward-in-Chancery. Thus it was that Hal Cartell was thrown in the widow’s path. She rather wolfed him up, don’t you know? Black always suited her. But they were too dismally incompatible. However, Harold remained, nevertheless, Andrew’s guardian and trustee for the estate. Andrew doesn’t come into it until he’s twenty-five: in six months’ time, by the way. He’s in the Brigade of Guards, as you’ll have seen, but I gather he wants to leave in order to paint, which is so unexpected. Indeed, that may be this morning’s problem. A great pity. All the Bantlings have been in the Brigade. And if he must paint, poor dear, why not as a hobby? What his father would have said – !’ Mr Period waved his hands.

‘But why isn’t he Lord Bantling?’

‘His father was a widower with one son when he married Desirée. That son of course, succeeded.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Nicola said politely. ‘Of course.’

‘You wonder why I go into all these begatteries, as I call them. Partly because they amuse me and partly because you will, I hope, be seeing quite a lot of my stodgy little household and, in so far as Hal Cartell is one of us, we – ah – we overlap. In fact,’ Mr Period went on, looking vexed, ‘we overlap at luncheon. Harold’s sister, Connie Cartell, who is our neighbour, joins us. With – ah – with a protégée, a – soi-disant niece, adopted from goodness knows where. Her name is Mary Ralston and her nickname, an inappropriate one, is Moppett. I understand that she brings a friend with her. However! To return to Desirée. Desirée and her Bimbo spend a lot of time at the dower house, Baynesholme, which is only a mile or two away from us. I believe Andrew lunches there today. His mother was to pick him up here and I do hope he hasn’t gone flouncing back to London: it would be too awkward and tiresome of him, poor boy.’

‘Then Mrs Dodds – I mean Lady Bantling and Mr Cartell still –?’

‘Oh, lord, yes! They hob-nob occasionally. Desirée never bears grudges. She’s a remarkable person. I dote on her but she is rather a law unto herself. For instance, one doesn’t know in the very least how she’ll react to the death of Ormsbury. Brother though he is. Better, I think, not to mention it when she comes, but simply to write – But there, I really mustn’t bore you with all my dim little bits of gossip. To work, my child! To work!’

They returned to their respective tasks. Nicola had made some headway with the notes when she came upon one which was evidently a rough draft for a letter. ‘My dear –’ it began, ‘What can I say? Only that you have lost a wonderful’ – here Mr Period had left a blank space – ‘and I, a most valued and very dear old friend.’ It continued in this vein with many erasures. Should she file it under ‘The Compleat Letter-Writer’? Was it in fact intended as an exemplar?

She laid it before Mr Period.

‘I’m not quite sure if this belongs.’

He looked at it and turned pink. ‘No, no. Stupid of me. Thank you.’

He pushed it under his pad and folded the letter he had written, whistling under his breath. ‘That’s that,’ he said, with rather forced airiness. ‘Perhaps you will be kind enough to post it in the village.’

Nicola made a note of it and returned to her task. She became aware of suppressed nervousness in her employer. They went through the absurd pantomime of catching each other’s eyes and pretending they had done nothing of the sort. This had occurred two or three times when Nicola said: ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve got the awful trick of staring at people when I’m trying to concentrate.’

‘My dear child! No! It is I who am at fault. In point of fact,’ Mr Period went on with a faint simper, ‘I’ve been asking myself if I dare confide a little problem.’

Not knowing what to say, Nicola said nothing. Mr Period, with an air of hardihood, continued. He waved his hand.

‘It’s nothing. Rather a bore, really. Just that the – ah – the publishers are going to do something quite handsome in the way of illustrations and they – don’t laugh – they want my old mug for their frontispiece. A portrait rather than a photograph is thought to be appropriate and, I can’t imagine why, they took it for granted one had been done, do you know? And one hasn’t.’

‘What a pity,’ Nicola sympathized. ‘So it will have to be a photograph.’

‘Ah! Yes. That was my first thought. But then, you see – They made such a point of it – and I did just wonder – My friends, silly creatures, urge me to it. Just a line drawing. One doesn’t know what to think.’

It was clear to Nicola that Mr Period died to have his portrait done and was prepared to pay highly for it. He mentioned several extremely fashionable artists and then said suddenly: ‘It’s naughty of dear Agatha Troy to be so diffy about who she does. She said something about not wanting to abandon bone for bacon, I think, when she refused – she actually refused to paint –’

Here Mr Period whispered an extremely potent name and stared with a sort of dismal triumph at Nicola. ‘So she wouldn’t dream of poor old me,’ he cried. ‘’Nuff said!’

Nicola began to say: ‘I wonder, though. She often –’ and hurriedly checked herself. She had been about to commit an indiscretion. Fortunately Mr Period’s attention was diverted by the return of Andrew Bantling. He had reappeared in the drive, still walking fast and swinging his bowler, and with a fixed expression on his pleasantly bony face.

‘He has come back,’ Nicola said.

‘Andrew? Oh, good. I wonder what for.’

In a moment they found out. The door opened and Andrew looked in.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ he said loudly, ‘but if it’s not too trouble-some, I wonder if I could have a word with you, P.P.?’

‘My dear boy! But, of course.’

‘It’s not private from Nicola,’ Andrew said. ‘On the contrary. At the same time, I don’t want to bore anybody.’

Mr Period said playfully: ‘I myself have done nothing but bore poor Nicola. Shall we “withdraw to the withdrawing-room” and leave her in peace?’

‘Oh. All right. Thank you. Sorry.’ Andrew threw a distracted look at Nicola and opened the door.

Mr Period made her a little bow. ‘You will excuse us, my dear?’ he said and they went out.

Nicola worked on steadily and was only once interrupted. The door opened to admit a small, thin, querulous-looking gentleman who ejaculated: ‘I beg your pardon. Damn!’ and went out again. Mr Cartell, no doubt.

At eleven o’clock Alfred came in with sherry and biscuits and Mr Period’s compliments. If she was in any difficulty would she be good enough to ring and Alfred would convey the message. Nicola was not in any difficulty, but while she enjoyed her sherry she found herself scribbling absent-mindedly.

‘Good lord!’ she thought. ‘Why did I do that? A bit longer on this job and I’ll be turning into a Pyke Period myself.’

Two hours went by. The house was very quiet. She was half-aware of small local activities: distant voices and movement, the rattle and throb of machinery in the lane. She thought from time to time of her employer. To which brand of snobbery, that overworked but always enthralling subject, did Mr Pyke Period belong? Was he simply a snob of the traditional school who dearly loves a lord? Was he himself a scion of ancient lineage; one of those old, uncelebrated families whose sole claim to distinction rests in their refusal to accept a title? No. That didn’t quite fit Mr Period. It wasn’t easy to imagine him refusing a title and yet –

Her attention was again diverted to the drive. Three persons approached the house, barked at and harassed by Pixie. A large, tweedy, middle-aged woman with a red face, a squashed hat and a walking-stick, was followed by a pale girl with fashionable coiffure and a young man who looked, Nicola thought, quite awful. These two lagged behind their elder who shouted and pointed with her stick in the direction of the excavations. Nicola could hear her voice, which sounded arrogant, and her gusts of boisterous laughter. While her back was turned, the girl quickly planted an extremely uninhibited kiss on the young man’s mouth.

‘That,’ thought Nicola, ‘is a full-treatment job.’

Pixie floundered against the young man and he kicked her rapidly in the ribs. She emitted a howl and retired. The large woman looked round in concern but the young man was smiling damply. They moved round the corner of the house. Through the side window Nicola could see them inspecting the excavations. They returned to the drive.

Footsteps crossed the hall. Doors were opened. Mr Cartell appeared in the drive and was greeted by the lady who, Nicola saw, resembled him in a robust fashion. ‘The sister,’ Nicola said. ‘Connie. And the adopted niece, Moppett, and the niece’s frightful friend. I don’t wonder Mr Period was put out.’






They moved out of sight. There was a burst of conversation in the hall, in which Mr Period’s voice could be heard, and a withdrawal (into the ‘withdrawing-room’, no doubt). Presently Andrew Bantling came into the library.

‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘I’m to bid you to drinks. I don’t mind telling you it’s a bum party. My bloody-minded step-father, to whom I’m not speaking, his bully of a sister, her ghastly adopted what-not and an unspeakable chum. Come on.’

‘Do you think I might be excused and just creep in to lunch?’

‘Not a hope. P.P. would be as cross as two sticks. He’s telling them all about you and how lucky he is to have you.’

‘I don’t want a drink. I’ve been built up with sherry.’

‘There’s tomato juice. Do come. You’d better.’

‘In that case –’ Nicola said and put the cover on her typewriter.

‘That’s right,’ he said and took her arm. ‘I’ve had such a stinker of a morning: you can’t think. How have you got on?’

‘I hope, all right.’

‘Is he writing a book?’

‘I’m a confidential typist.’

‘My face can’t get any redder than it’s been already,’ Andrew said and ushered her into the hall. ‘Are you at all interested in painting?’

‘Yes. You paint, don’t you?’

‘How the hell did you know?’

‘Your first fingernail. And anyway, Mr Period told me.’

‘Talk, talk, talk!’ Andrew said, but he smiled at her. ‘And what a sharp girl you are, to be sure. Oh, calamity, look who’s here!’

Alfred was at the front door, showing in a startling lady with tangerine hair, enormous eyes, pale orange lips and a general air of good-humoured raffishness. She was followed by an unremarkable, cagey-looking man, very much her junior.

‘Hallo, Mum!’ Andrew said. ‘Hallo, Bimbo.’

‘Darling!’ said Desirée Dodds or Lady Bantling. ‘How lovely!’

‘Hi,’ said her husband, Bimbo.

Nicola was introduced and they all went into the drawing-room.

Here, Nicola encountered the group of persons with whom, on one hand disastrously and on the other to her greatest joy, she was about to become inextricably involved.





CHAPTER 2 (#u3cd56510-94c6-5b3a-8895-38d7aaacc9b0)

Luncheon (#u3cd56510-94c6-5b3a-8895-38d7aaacc9b0)


Mr Pyke Period made much of Nicola. He took her round, introducing her to Mr Cartell and all over again to ‘Lady Bantling’ and Mr Dodds; to Miss Connie Cartell and, with a certain lack of enthusiasm, to the adopted niece, Mary or Moppett, and her friend, Mr Leonard Leiss.

Miss Cartell shouted: ‘Been hearing all about you, ha, ha!’

Mr Cartell said: ‘Afraid I disturbed you just now. Looking for P.P. So sorry.’

Moppett said: ‘Hallo. I suppose you do shorthand? I tried but my squiggles looked like rude drawings. So I gave up.’ Young Mr Leiss stared damply at Nicola and then shook hands: also damply. He was pallid and had large eyes, a full mouth and small chin. The sleeves of his violently checked jacket displayed an exotic amount of shirt-cuff and link. He smelt very strongly of hair oil. Apart from these features it would have been hard to say why he seemed untrustworthy.

Mr Cartell was probably by nature a dry and pedantic man. At the moment he was evidently much put out. Not surprising, Nicola thought, when one looked at the company: his step-son, with whom, presumably, he had just had a flaring row, his divorced wife and her husband, his noisy sister, her ‘niece’ whom he obviously disliked, and Mr Leiss. He dodged about, fussily attending to drinks.

‘May Leonard fix mine, Uncle Hal?’ Moppett asked. ‘He knows my kind of wallop.’

Mr Period, overhearing her, momentarily closed his eyes and Mr Cartell saw him do it.

Miss Cartell shouted uneasily: ‘The things these girls say, nowadays! Honestly!’ and burst into her braying laugh. Nicola could see that she adored Moppett. Leonard adroitly mixed two treble Martinis.

Andrew had brought Nicola her tomato juice. He stayed beside her. They didn’t say very much but she found herself glad of his company.

Meanwhile, Mr Period, who it appeared, had recently had a birthday, was given a present by Lady Bantling. It was a large brass paper-weight in the form of a fish rampant. He seemed to Nicola to be disproportionately enchanted with this trophy and presently she discovered why.

‘Dearest Desirée,’ he exclaimed. ‘How wonderfully clever of you: my crest, you know! The form, the attitude, everything! Connie! Look! Hal, do look.’

The paper-weight was passed from hand to hand and Andrew was finally sent to put it on Mr Period’s desk.

When he returned Moppett bore down upon him. ‘Andrew!’ she said. ‘You must tell Leonard about painting. He knows quantities of potent dealers. Actually, he might be jolly useful to you. Come and talk to him.’

‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know what to say, Moppett.’

‘I’ll tell you. Hi, Leonard! We want to talk to you.’

Leonard advanced with drinks. ‘All right. All right,’ he said. ‘What about?’

‘Which train are you going back by?’ Andrew asked Nicola.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When do you stop typing?’

‘Four o’clock, I think.’

‘There’s a good train at twenty past. I’ll pick you up. May I?’

His mother had joined them. ‘We really ought to be going,’ she said, smiling amiably at Nicola. ‘Lunch is early today, Andrew, on account we’re having a grand party tonight. You’re staying for it, by the way.’

‘I don’t think I can.’

‘I’m sure you can if you set your mind to it. We need you badly. I’d have warned you, but we only decided last night. It’s an April Fool party: that makes the excuse. Bimbo’s scarcely left the telephone since dawn.’

‘We ought to go, darling,’ said Bimbo over her shoulder.

‘I know. Let’s. Goodbye.’ She held out her hand to Nicola. ‘Are you coming lots of times to type for P.P.?’

‘I think, fairly often.’

‘Make him bring you to Baynesholme. We’re off, Harold. Thank you for our nice drinks. Goodbye, P.P. Don’t forget you’re dining, will you?’

‘How could I?’

‘Not possibly.’

‘It was – I wondered, dearest Desirée, if you’d perhaps rather –? Still – I suppose –’

‘My poorest sweet, what are you talking about,’ said Lady Bantling and kissed him. She looked vaguely at Moppett and Leonard. ‘Goodbye. Come along, boys.’

Andrew muttered to Nicola: ‘I’ll ring you up about the train.’ He said goodbye, cordially to Mr Period and very coldly to his step-father.

Moppett said: ‘I had something fairly important to ask you, you gorgeous Guardee, you.’

‘How awful never to know what it was,’ Andrew replied and with Bimbo, followed his mother out of the room.

Watching Desirée go, Nicola thought: ‘Moppett would probably like to acquire that manner, but she never will. She hasn’t got the style.’

Mr Period in a fluster, extended his hands. ‘Desirée can’t know!’ he exclaimed. ‘Neither can he or Andrew! How extraordinary!’

‘Know what?’ asked Miss Cartell.

‘About Ormsbury. Her brother. It was in the paper.’

‘If Desirée is giving one of her parties,’ said Mr Cartell, ‘she is not likely to put it off for her brother’s demise. She hasn’t heard of him since he went out to the antipodes, where I understand he’s been drinking like a fish for the last twenty years.’

‘Really, Hal!’ Mr Period exclaimed.

Moppett and Leonard Leiss giggled and retired into a corner with their drinks.

Miss Cartell was launched on an account of some local activity, ‘– so I said to the rector: “We all know damn’ well what that means,” and he said like lightning: “We may know but we don’t let on.” He’s got quite a respectable sense of humour, that man.’

‘Pause for laugh,’ Moppett said very offensively.

Miss Cartell, who had in fact thrown back her head to laugh, blushed painfully and looked at her ward with such an air of baffled vulnerability, that Nicola, who had been thinking how patronizing and arrogant she was, felt sorry for her and furious with Moppett.

So, evidently, did Mr Period. ‘My dear Mary,’ he said. ‘That was not the prettiest of remarks.’

‘Quite so. Precisely,’ Mr Cartell agreed. ‘You should exercise more discipline, Connie.’

Leonard said: ‘The only way with Moppett is to beat her like a carpet.’

‘Care to try?’ she asked him.

Alfred announced luncheon.

It was the most uncomfortable meal Nicola had ever eaten. The entire party was at cross purposes. Everybody appeared to be up to something indefinable.

Miss Cartell had bought a new car. Leonard spoke of it with languid approval. Moppett said they had seen a Scorpion for sale in George Copper’s garage. Leonard spoke incomprehensibly of its merits.

‘Matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’d quite like to buy it. Trade in my own heap with him, of course.’ He leant back in his chair and whistled quietly through his teeth.

‘Shall we look at it again?’ Moppett suggested, grandly.

‘No harm in looking, is there?’

Nicola suddenly thought: ‘That was a pre-planned bit of dialogue.’

Alfred came in with an envelope which he placed before Mr Period.

‘What’s this?’ Mr Period asked pettishly. He peered through his eye-glass.

‘From the rectory, sir. The person suggested it was immediate.’

‘I do so dislike interruptions at luncheon,’ Mr Period complained. ‘’Scuse, everybody?’ he added playfully.

His guests made acquiescent noises. He read what appeared to be a very short letter and changed colour.

‘No answer,’ he said to Alfred. ‘Or rather – say I’ll call personally upon the rector.’

Alfred withdrew. Mr Period, after a fidgety interval and many glances at Mr Cartell, said: ‘I’m very sorry, Hal, but I’m afraid your Pixie has created a parochial crise.’

Mr Cartell said: ‘Oh, dear. What?’

‘At the moment she, with some half dozen other – ah – boon companions, is rioting in the vicar’s seed beds. There is a Mother’s Union luncheon in progress, but none of them has succeeded in catching her. It couldn’t be more awkward.’

Nicola had an uproarious vision of mothers thundering fruitlessly among rectorial flower-beds. Miss Cartell broke into one of her formidable gusts of laughter.

‘You always were hopeless with dogs, Boysie,’ she shouted. ‘Why you keep that ghastly bitch!’

‘She’s extremely well bred, Connie. I’ve been advised to enter her for the parish dog show.’

‘My God, who by? The rector?’ Miss Cartell asked with a bellow of laughter.

‘I have been advised,’ Mr Cartell repeated stuffily.

‘We’ll have to have a freak class.’

‘Are you entering your Pekinese?’

‘They’re very keen I should, so I might as well, I suppose. Hardly fair to the others but she’d be a draw, of course.’

‘For people that like lap-dogs, no doubt.’

Mr Period intervened: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to do something about it, Hal,’ he said. ‘Nobody else can control her.’

‘Alfred can.’

‘Alfred is otherwise engaged.’

‘She’s on heat, of course.’

‘Really, Connie!’

Mr Cartell, pink in the face, rose disconsolately but at that moment there appeared in the garden, a dishevelled clergyman dragging the over-excited Pixie by her collar. They were watched sardonically by a group of workmen.

Mr Cartell hurried from the room and reappeared beyond the windows with Alfred.

‘It’s too much,’ Mr Period said. ‘Forgive me!’ He too, left the room and joined the group in the garden.

Leonard and Moppett, making extremely uninhibited conversation, went to the window and stood there, clinging to each other in an ecstasy of enjoyment. They were observed by Mr Period and Mr Cartell. There followed a brief scene in which the rector, his Christian forbearance clearly exercised to its limit, received the apologies of both gentlemen, patted Mr Period, but not Mr Cartell, on the shoulder and took his leave. Alfred lugged Pixie, who squatted back on her haunches in protest, out of sight and the two gentlemen returned very evidently in high dudgeon with each other. Leonard and Moppett made little or no attempt to control their amusement.

‘Well,’ Mr Period said with desperate savoir-faire, ‘what were we talking about?’

Moppett spluttered noisily. Connie Cartell said: ‘You’ll have to get rid of that mongrel, you know, Hal.’ Her brother glared at her. ‘You can’t,’ Connie added, ‘make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

‘I entirely agree,’ Mr Cartell said, very nastily indeed, ‘and have often said as much, I believe, to you.’

There was quite a dreadful silence, broken at last by Mr Period.

‘Strange,’ he observed, ‘how, even in the animal kingdom, breeding makes itself felt.’ And he was off, in a very big way, on his favourite topic. Inspired, perhaps, by what he would have called Pixie’s lack of form, he went to immoderate lengths in praising this quality. He said, more than once, that he knew the barriers had been down for twenty years but nevertheless … On and on he went, all through the curry and well into the apple flan. He became, Nicola had regretfully to admit, more than a little ridiculous.

It was clear that Mr Cartell thought so. He himself grew more and more restive. Nicola guessed that he was fretted by divided loyalties and even more by the behaviour of Leonard Leiss who, having finished his lunch, continued to lean back in his chair and whistle softly through his teeth. Moppett asked him sardonically, how the chorus went. He raised his eyebrows and said: ‘Oh, pardon me. I just can’t seem to get that little number out of my system,’ and smiled generally upon the table.

‘Evidently,’ said Mr Cartell.

Mr Period said he felt sure that he himself made far too much of the niceties of civilized behaviour and told them how his father had once caused him to leave the dining-room for using his fish-knife. Mr Cartell listened with mounting distaste.

Presently he wiped his lips, leant back in his chair and said: ‘My dear P.P., that sort of thing is no doubt very well in its way, but surely one can make a little too much of it?’

‘I happen to feel rather strongly about such matters,’ Mr Period said with a small deprecating smile at Nicola.

Miss Cartell, who had been watching her adopted niece with anxious devotion, suddenly shouted: ‘I always say that when people start fussing about family and all that, it’s because they’re a bit hairy round the heels themselves, ha, ha!’

She seemed to be completely unaware of the implications of her remark or its effect upon Mr Period.

‘Well, really, Connie!’ he said. ‘I must say!’

‘What’s wrong?’

Mr Cartell gave a dry little laugh. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘“when Adam delved” you know.’

‘“Dolve”, I fancy, not “delved”,’ Mr Period corrected rather smugly. ‘Oh, yes. The much-quoted Mr Ball who afterwards was hanged for his pains, wasn’t he? “Who was then the gentleman?” The answer is, of course, “nobody”. It takes several generations to evolve the genuine article, don’t you agree?’

‘I’ve known it to be effected in less than no time,’ Mr Cartell said dryly. ‘It’s quite extraordinary to what lengths some people will go. I heard on unimpeachable authority of a man who forged his name in a parish register in order to establish descent from some ancient family or another.’

Miss Cartell laughed uproariously.

Mr Period dropped his fork into his pudding.

Leonard asked with interest: ‘Was there any money in it?’

Moppett said: ‘How was he found out? Tell us more.’

Mr Cartell said, ‘There has never been a public exposure. And there’s really no more to tell.’

Conversation then became desultory. Leonard muttered something to Moppett, who said: ‘Would anybody mind if we were excused? Leonard’s car is having something done to its guts and the chap in the garage seemed to be quite madly moronic. We were to see him again at two o’clock.’

‘If you mean Copper,’ Mr Period observed, ‘I’ve always understood him to be a thoroughly dependable fellow.’

‘He’s a sort of half-pi, broken-down gent or something, isn’t he?’ Leonard asked casually.

‘Jolly good man, George Copper,’ Miss Cartell said.

‘Certainly,’ Mr Period faintly agreed. He was exceedingly pale.

‘Oh,’ Leonard said, stretching his arms easily, ‘I think I can manage Mr George Copper quite successfully.’ He glanced round the table. ‘Smoking allowed?’ he asked.

Miss Cartell swallowed her last fragment of cheese and her brother looked furious. Mr Period murmured: ‘Since you are leaving us, why not?’

Leonard groped in his pockets. ‘I’ve left mine in the car,’ he said to Moppett. ‘Hand over, Sexy, will you?’

Mr Period said: ‘Please,’ and offered his gold case. ‘These are Turks,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry if you don’t like them. Old-fogishly, I can’t get used to the others.’

‘Makes a change,’ Leonard said obligingly. He took a cigarette, looked at the case and remarked: ‘That’s nice.’ It was extraordinary how off-key his lightest observations could sound.

‘Do let me see,’ Moppett asked and took the case.

‘It was left me,’ Mr Period said, ‘by dear old Lady Barsington. An eighteenth-century card case. The jewelled clasp is said to be unique. There’s an inscription, but it’s very faint. If you take it to the light –’

Moppett took it to the window and Leonard joined her there. He began to hum and then to sketch in the words of his little number: ‘“If you mean what I think you mean, it’s okay by me. Things aren’t always what they seem. Okay by me.”’ Moppett gaily joined in.

Alfred came in to say that Mr Period was wanted on the telephone and he bustled out, after a pointedly formal apology.

Leonard strolled back to the table. He had evidently decided that some conventional apology was called for. ‘So sorry to break up the party,’ he said winningly. ‘But if it’s all the same I think we’d better toddle.’

‘By all means. Please,’ said Mr Cartell.

‘What P.P. and Uncle Hal will think of your manners, you two!’ Miss Cartell said and laughed uneasily.

They got up. Moppett said goodbye to Mr Cartell quite civilly and was suddenly effusive in her thanks. Leonard followed her lead, but with an air of finding it only just worth while to do so.

‘Be seeing you, ducks,’ Moppett said in Cockney to Miss Cartell and they went out.

There followed a rather deadly little silence.

Mr Cartell addressed himself to his sister. ‘My dear Connie,’ he said, ‘I should be failing in my duty if I didn’t tell you I consider that young man to be an unspeakable bounder.’

Mr Period returned.

‘Shall we have our coffee in the drawing-room?’ he asked in the doorway.

Nicola would have dearly liked to excuse herself and go back to the study, but Mr Period took her gently by the arm and led her to the drawing-room. His fingers, she noticed, were trembling. ‘I want,’ he said, ‘to show you a newly acquired treasure.’

Piloting her into a far corner, he unfolded a brown-paper parcel. It turned out to be a landscape in water-colour: the distant view of a manor house.

‘It’s charming,’ Nicola said.

‘Thought to be an unsigned Cotman, but the real interest for me is that it’s my great-grandfather’s house at Ribblethorpe. Destroyed, alas, by fire. I came across it in a second-hand shop. Wasn’t that fun for me?’

Alfred took round the coffee tray. Nicola pretended she couldn’t hear Mr Cartell and his sister arguing. As soon as Alfred had gone, Miss Cartell tackled her brother.

‘I think you’re jolly prejudiced, Boysie,’ she said. ‘It’s the way they all talk nowadays. Moppett tells me he’s brilliantly clever. Something in the City.’

‘Too clever by half if you ask me. And what in the City?’

‘I don’t know exactly what. He’s got rather a tragic sort of background, Moppett says. The father was killed in Bangkok and the mother’s artistic.’

‘You’re a donkey, Connie. If I were you I should put a stop to the friendship. None of my business, of course. I am not,’ Mr Cartell continued with some emphasis, ‘Mary’s uncle, despite the courtesy title she is good enough to bestow upon me.’

‘You don’t understand her.’

‘I make no attempt to do so,’ he replied in a fluster.

Nicola murmured: ‘I think I ought to get back to my job.’ She said goodbye to Miss Cartell.

‘Typin’, are you?’ asked Miss Cartell. ‘P.P. tells me you’re Basil Maitland-Mayne’s gel. Used to know your father. Hunted with him.’

‘We all knew Basil,’ Mr Period said with an attempt at geniality.

‘I didn’t,’ Mr Cartell said crossly.

They glared at each other.

‘You’re very smart all of a sudden, P.P.,’ Miss Cartell remarked. ‘Private Secretary! You’ll be telling us next that you’re going to write a book.’ She laughed uproariously. Nicola returned to the study.




II


Nicola had a ridiculously over-developed capacity for feeling sorry. She was sorry now for Mr Period, because he had been upset and had made a silly of himself: and for Miss Cartell, because she was boisterous and vulnerable and besotted with her terrible Moppett who treated her like dirt. She was sorry for Mr Cartell, because he had been balanced on a sort of tight-rope of irritability. He had been angry with his guests when they let him down and angry with Mr Period out of loyalty to his own sister.

Even Nicola was unable to feel sorry for either Moppett or Leonard.

She ordered herself back to work and was soon immersed in the niceties of polite behaviour. Every now and then she remembered Andrew Bantling and wondered what the row with his step-father had been about. She hoped she would meet him on the train though she supposed Lady Bantling would insist on him staying for the party.

She had worked solidly for about half an hour when her employer came in. He was still pale, but he smiled at her and tiptoed with playful caution to his desk.

‘Pay no attention to me,’ he whispered. ‘I’m going to write another little note.’

He sat at his desk and applied himself to this task. Presently he began dismally to hum an erratic version of Leonard Leiss’s song: ‘If you mean what I think you mean, it’s okay by me’. He made a petulant little sound. ‘Now, why in the world,’ he cried, ‘should that distressingly vulgar catch come into my head? Nicola, my dear, what a perfectly dreadful young man! That you should be let in for that sort of party! Really!’

Nicola reassured him. By and by he sighed, so heavily that she couldn’t help glancing at him. He had folded his letter and addressed an envelope and now sat with his head on his hand. ‘Better wait a bit,’ he muttered. ‘Cool down.’

Nicola stopped typing and looked out of the window. Riding up the drive on a bicycle was a large policeman.

He dismounted, propped his machine against a tree trunk and removed his trouser clips. He then approached the house.

‘There’s a policeman outside.’

‘What? Oh, really? Raikes, I suppose. Splendid fellow, old Raikes. I wonder what he wants. Tickets for a concert, I misdoubt me.’

Alfred came in. ‘Sergeant Raikes, sir, would like to see you.’

‘What’s it all about, Alfred?’

‘I don’t know, I’m sure, sir. He says it’s important.’

‘All right. Show him in, if I must.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

The impressive things about Sergeant Raikes were his size and his mildness. He was big, even for a policeman, and he was mild beyond belief. When Mr Period made him known to Nicola, he said: ‘Good afternoon, miss,’ in a loud but paddy voice and added that he hoped she would excuse them for a few minutes. Nicola took this as a polite dismissal and was about to conform, when Mr Period said that he wouldn’t dream of it. She must go on typing and not let them bore her. Please. He insisted.

Poor Nicola, fully aware of Sergeant Raikes’s wishes to the contrary, sat down again and banged away at her machine. She couldn’t help hearing Mr Period’s airy and inaccurate assurance that she was entirely in his confidence.

‘Well,’ Sergeant Raikes said, ‘sir. In that case –’

‘Sit down, Raikes.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’ve dropped in to ask if you can help me in a small matter that has cropped up.’

‘Ah, yes? More social activities, Raikes?’

‘Not exactly, this time, sir. More of a routine item, really. I wonder if you’d mind telling me if a certain name is known to you –’ He lowered his voice.

‘Leiss!’ Mr Period shrilly ejaculated. ‘Did you say Leonard Leiss?’

‘That was the name. Yes.’

‘I encountered him for the first time this morning.’

‘Ah,’ said Sergeant Raikes warmly. ‘That makes everything much easier, sir. Thank you. For the first time. So you are not at all familiar with Mr Leiss?’

‘Familiar!’

‘Quite so, sir. And Mr Cartell?’

‘Nor is Mr Cartell. Until this morning Mr Leiss was a complete stranger to both of us. He may be said to be one still.’

‘Perhaps I could see Mr Cartell?’

‘Look here, Raikes, what the deuce are you talking about? Nicola, my dear, pray stop typing, will you be so good? But don’t go.’

Nicola stopped.

‘Well, sir,’ Sergeant Raikes said. ‘The facts are as follows. George Copper happened to mention to me about half an hour ago, that he’s selling a Scorpion sports model to a young gentleman called Leonard Leiss and he stated, further, that the customer had given your name and Mr Cartell’s and Miss Cartell’s as references.’

‘Good God!’

‘Now, sir, in the service there’s a regular system by which all stations are kept informed about the activities of persons known to be operating in a manner contrary to the law or if not contrary, within the meaning of the Act, yet in a suspicious and questionable manner. You might describe them,’ Sergeant Raikes said with a flash of imagery, ‘as ripening fruit. Just about ready for the picking.’

‘Raikes, what in heaven’s name – Well. Go on.’

‘The name of Leonard Sydney Leiss appears on the most recent list. Two previous convictions. Obtaining goods under false pretences. The portrait-parlé coincides. It’s a confidential matter, Mr Period, but seeing that the young man gave your name with such assurance and seeing he was very warmly backed up by the young lady who is Miss Constance Cartell’s adopted niece, I thought I would come and mention it, quietly. Particularly, sir, as there’s a complication.’

Mr Period stared dismally at him. ‘Complication?’ he said.

‘Well, sir, yes. You see, for some time Leiss has been working in collusion with a young female who – I’m very sorry, I’m sure, sir – but the description of this young female does tally rather closely with the general appearance of Miss Cartell’s aforesaid adopted niece.’

There was a long silence. Then Mr Period said: ‘This is all rather dreadful.’

‘I take it, sir, you gave the young man no authority to use your name?’

‘Merciful heavens, no.’

‘Then perhaps we may just have a little chat with Mr Cartell?’

Mr Period rang the bell.

Mr Cartell behaved quite differently from Mr Period. He contracted into the shell of what Nicola supposed to be his professional manner as a solicitor. He looked pinched. Two isolated spots of colour appeared on his cheek-bones. Nicola thought he was very angry indeed.

‘I am much obliged to you, Sergeant,’ he said at last, ‘for bringing this affair to my attention. You have acted very properly.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Very properly. If I may suggest a course of action it will be this. I shall inform my sister of the undesirability of having any further communication with this person: and she will see that his acquaintance with Miss Mary Ralston is terminated. Copper, of course, must be advised at once and he may then, if he thinks it proper, decline any further negotiations.’

Sergeant Raikes opened his mouth, but Mr Cartell raised a finger and he shut it again.

‘I need not add,’ Mr Cartell said crisply, ‘that no undertaking of any kind whatever was given by Mr Period or by myself. Permission was not asked, and would certainly have been declined, for the use of our names. It might be as well, might it not, if I were to telephone Copper at once and suggested that he rids himself of Leiss and the other car which he left, I understand, to be repaired at the garage. I shall then insist that Miss Ralston, who I imagine is there, returns at once. What’s the matter, Raikes?’

‘The matter,’ Sergeant Raikes said warmly, ‘is this, sir. George Copper can’t be told not to make the sale and Miss Ralston can’t be brought back to be warned.’

‘My dear Raikes, why not?’

‘Because George Copper has been fool enough to let young Leiss get away with it. And he has got away with it. With the sports car, sir, and the young lady inside it. And where they’ve gone, sir, is to use the expression, nobody’s business.’




III


Who can form an objective view of events with which, however lightly, he has been personally involved? Not Nicola. When, after the climax, she tried to sort out her impressions of these events she found that in every detail they were coloured by her own preferences and sympathies.

At the moment, for instance, she was concerned to notice that, while Mr Period had suffered a shrewd blow to his passionate snobbery, Mr Cartell’s reaction was more disingenuous and resourceful. And while Mr Period was fretful, Mr Cartell, she thought, was nipped with bitter anger.

He made a complicated noise in his throat and then said sharply: ‘They must be traced, of course. Has Copper actually transacted the sale? Change of ownership and so on?’

‘He’s accepted Mr Leiss’s car, which is a souped-up old bag of a job, George reckons, in part payment, and he’s let Mr Leiss try out the Scorpion on the understanding that, if he likes it, the deal’s on.’

‘Then they will return to the garage?’

‘They ought to,’ Sergeant Raikes said with some emphasis. ‘The point is, sir, will they? Likely enough, he’ll drive straight back to London. He may sell the car before he’s paid for it and trust to his connection here to get him out of the red if things become awkward. He’s played that caper before and he may play it again.’

Mr Cartell said: ‘May I, P.P.?’ and reached for the telephone.

‘If it’s all the same with you gentlemen, I think I’ll make the call,’ Sergeant Raikes said unexpectedly.

Mr Cartell said: ‘As you wish,’ and moved away from the desk.

Mr Period began feeling, in an agitated way, in his pockets. He said fretfully: ‘What have I done with my cigarettes?’

Nicola said: ‘I think the case was left in the dining-room. I’ll fetch it.’

As she hurried out she heard the telephone ring.

The dining-room table was cleared and the window open. The cigarette-case was nowhere to be seen. She was about to go in search of Alfred when he came in. He had not seen the case, he said. Nicola remembered very clearly that, as she stood back at the door for Miss Cartell, she had noticed it on the window-sill and she said as much to Alfred.

A shutter came down over Alfred’s face.

‘It wasn’t there when I cleared, miss.’

Nicola said: ‘Oh, well! I expect after all, Mr Period—’ and then remembered that Mr Period had left the dining-room to answer the telephone and had certainly not collected the cigarette-case when he briefly returned.

Alfred said: ‘The window was on the latch as it is now, when I cleared, miss. I’d left it shut, as usual.’

Nicola looked at it. It was a casement window and was hooked open to the extent of some eight inches. Beyond it were the rose garden, the side gate and the excavations in the lane. As she stared out of it, a shovelful of earth was thrown up; derisively, she might almost have thought, by one of the workmen, invisible in the trench.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘We’ll find it. Don’t worry.’

‘I hope so, I’m sure, miss. It’s a valuable object.’

‘I know.’

They were staring doubtfully at each other when Mr Period came in looking exceedingly rattled.

‘Nicola, my dear: Andrew Bantling on the telephone, for you. Would you mind taking it in the hall? We are un peu occupé, in the study. I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh, dear!’ Nicola said, ‘so am I, that you’ve been bothered. Mr Period – your cigarette-case isn’t in here, I’m afraid.’

‘But I distinctly remember –’ Mr Period began. ‘Well,’ never mind. Your telephone call, child.’

Nicola went into the hall.

Andrew Bantling said: ‘Oh, there you are at last! What goes on in the lay-by? P.P. sounded most peculiar.’

‘He’s awfully busy.’

‘You’re being discreet and trustworthy. Never mind, I shall gimlet it out of you on the train. You couldn’t make the three thirty, I suppose?’

‘Not possibly.’

‘Then I shall simply have to lurk in the lane like a follower. There’s nowhere for me to be in this district. Baynesholme has become uninhabitable on account –’ he lowered his voice and evidently put his mouth very close to the receiver, so that consonants popped and sibilants hissed in Nicola’s eardrum.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said the Moppett and her Leonard have arrived in a smashing Scorpion under the pretence of wanting to see the family portraits. What’s the matter?’

‘I’ve got to go. Sorry. Goodbye,’ Nicola said, and rushed to the library.

Mr Cartell and Mr Period broke off their conversation as she entered. Sergeant Raikes was dialling a number.

She said, ‘I thought I should tell you at once. They’re at Baynesholme. They’ve driven there in the Scorpion.’

Mr Cartell went into action.

‘Raikes,’ he said, ‘tell Copper I want him here immediately in the car.’

‘Which car, sir?’ Raikes asked, startled, the receiver at his ear.

‘The Bloodbath,’ Mr Period said impatiently. ‘What else? Really, Raikes!’

‘He’s to drive me to Baynesholme as fast as the thing will go. At once, Raikes.’

Sergeant Raikes began talking into the telephone.

‘Be quick,’ Mr Cartell said, ‘and you’d better come too.’

‘– yes, George,’ said Sergeant Raikes into the telephone. ‘That’s correct. Now.’

‘Come along, Raikes. My hat and coat!’ Mr Cartell went out. ‘Alfred! My top-coat.’

‘And you might ask them, Harold, while you’re about it,’ Mr Period quite shouted after him, ‘what they did with my cigarette-case.’

‘What?’ the retreating voice asked.

‘Lady Barsington’s card case. Cigarettes.’

There was a shocked pause. Mr Cartell returned, half in and half out of an overcoat, and a tweed hat cocked over one eye.

‘What do you mean, P.P.? Surely you don’t suggest …’

‘God knows! But ask them. Ask!’




IV


Desirée, Lady Bantling (ex-Cartell, factually Dodds), sat smiling to herself in her drawing-room. She smoked incessantly and listened to Moppett Ralston and Leonard Leiss and it would have been impossible for anyone to say what she thought of them. Her ravaged face, with its extravagant make-up, and her mop of orange hair made a flagrant statement against the green background of her chair. She was possibly not unamused.

Moppett was explaining how interested Leonard was in art and what a lot he knew about the great portrait painters.

‘So I do hope,’ Moppett was saying, ‘you don’t think it too boring and bold of us to ask if we may look. Leonard said you would, but I said we’d risk it and if we might just see the pictures and creep away again –?’

‘Yes, do,’ Desirée said. ‘They’re all Bantling ancestors. Gentlemen in skin-tight breeches, and ladies with high foreheads and smashing bosoms. Andrew could tell you all about them, but he seems to have disappeared. I’m afraid I’ve got to help poor Bimbo make up pieces of poetry for a treasure hunt and in any case I don’t know anything about them. I want my pictures to be modern and gay and, if possible, rude.’

‘And of course, you’re so right, Lady Bantling,’ Leonard said eagerly. He leant forward with his head on one side sending little waves of hair-oil towards her. Desirée watched him and accepted everything he said without comment. When he had talked himself to an ingratiating standstill, she remarked that, after all, she didn’t really think she was all that interested in painting.

‘Andrew has done a portrait of me which I do quite fancy,’ she said. ‘I look like the third witch in Macbeth before she gave up trying to make the best of herself. Hallo, my darling, how’s your Muse?’

Bimbo had come in. He threw an extremely cold glance at Leonard.

‘My Muse,’ he said, ‘is bitching on me. You must help me, Desirée; there ought to be at least seven clues and it’s more amusing if they rhyme.’

‘Can we help?’ Moppett suggested. ‘Leonard’s quite good at really improper ones. What are they for?’

‘A treasure hunt,’ he said, without looking at her.

‘Treasure hunts are my vintage,’ Desirée said. ‘I thought it might be fun to revive them. So we’re having one tonight.’

Moppett and Leonard cried out excitedly. ‘But I’m utterly sold on them,’ Moppett said. ‘They’re quite the gayest way of having parties. How exactly are you working it?’ she asked Bimbo. He said shortly that they were doing it the usual way.

Desirée stood up. ‘Bimbo’s planting a bottle of champagne somewhere and the leading-up clues will be dotted about the landscape. If you don’t mind just going on your picture crawl under your own steam we’d better begin racking our brains for rhymes. Please do look wherever you like.’ She held out her hand to Moppett. ‘I’m sorry not to be more hospitable, but we are, as you see, in a taking-on. Goodbye.’ She looked at Leonard. ‘Goodbye.’

‘My God!’ Bimbo said. ‘The food from Magnums! It’ll be at the station.’

Moppett and Leonard stopped short and looked passionately concerned.

‘Can’t you pick it up,’ Desirée asked, ‘when you lay your trail of clues?’

‘I can’t start before we’ve done the clues, can I?’

‘They’re too busy to send anyone from the kitchen and they want the stuff. Madly. We’d better get the Bloodbath to collect it.’

‘Look!’ Moppett and Leonard said together and then gaily laughed at each other. ‘“Two minds with butter –”’ Moppett quoted. ‘But please – please do let us collect the things from Magnums. We’d adore to.’

Desirée said: ‘Jolly kind, but the Bloodbath will do it.’

Bimbo much more emphatically added: ‘Thank you, but we wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘But why not!’ Moppett protested. ‘Leonard’s longing to drive that thing out there, aren’t you, sweetie?’

‘Of course. And, as a matter of fact,’ Leonard said, ‘I happen to know the Bloodbath – if that’s George Copper’s crate – is out of commission. It won’t take us any time.’

‘Do let us or we’ll think,’ Moppett urged engagingly, ‘that we really are being hideously in the way. Please.’

‘Well –’ Desirée said, not looking at her husband, ‘if you really don’t mind, it would, I must say, be the very thing.’

‘Andrew!’ Bimbo ejaculated. ‘He’ll do it. Where is he?’

‘He’s gone. Do you know, darling, I’m afraid we’d better accept the kind offer.’

‘Of course!’ Moppett cried. ‘Come on, Face! Is there anything else to be picked up, while we’re about it?’

Desirée said, with a faint twist in her voice: ‘You think of everything, don’t you. I’ll talk to the kitchen.’

When she had gone, Bimbo said: ‘Isn’t that the Scorpion Copper had in his garage?’

‘The identical job,’ Leonard agreed, man-to-man. ‘Not a bad little heap by and large, and the price is okay. Like to have a look at her, Mr Dodds? I’d appreciate your opinion.’

Bimbo, with an air of mingled distaste and curiosity, intimated that he would and the two men left Moppett in the drawing-room. Standing back from the French window, she watched them at the car; Leonard talking, Bimbo with his hands in his pockets. ‘Trying,’ thought Moppett, ‘not to be interested, but he is interested. He’s a car man. He’s married her for his Bentley and his drinks and the grandeur and fun. She’s old. She can’t have all that much of what it takes. Or, by any chance, can she?’

A kind of contempt possessed her; a contempt for Desirée and Bimbo and anybody who was not like herself and Leonard. ‘Living dangerously,’ she thought, ‘that’s us.’ She wondered if it would be advisable to ask Leonard not to say ‘appreciated’, ‘okay’, ‘pardon me’, and ‘appro’. She herself didn’t mind how he talked: she even enjoyed their rows when he would turn foul-mouthed, adder-like, and brutal. Still, if they were to crash the county – ‘They’ll have to ask us,’ she thought, ‘after this. They can’t not. We’ve been clever as clever.’

She continued to peer slantwise through the window.

When Desirée returned, Moppett was looking with respect at a picture above the fireplace.

Desirée said there would be a parcel at the grocer’s in Little Codling. ‘Your quickest way to the station is to turn right, outside the gates,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t be more obliged to you.’

She went out with Moppett to the car and when it had shot out of sight down the avenue, linked her arm in her husband’s.

‘Shockers,’ she said, ‘aren’t they?’

‘Honestly, darling, I can’t think what you’re about.’

‘Can’t you?’

‘None of my business, of course,’ he muttered. She looked at him with amusement.

‘Don’t you like them?’ she asked.

‘Like them!’

‘I find myself quite amused by them,’ she said and added indifferently, ‘they do know what they want, at least.’

‘It was perfectly obvious, from the moment they crashed their way in, that they were hell-bent on getting asked for tonight.’

‘I know.’

‘Are you going to pretend not to notice their hints?’

‘Oh,’ she said with a faint chuckle, ‘I don’t think so. I expect I’ll ask them.’

Bimbo said: ‘Of course I never interfere.’

‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘And how wise of you, isn’t it?’ He drew away from her. ‘You don’t usually sulk, either.’

‘You let people impose on you.’

‘Not,’ she said gently, ‘without realizing it,’ and he reddened.

‘That young man,’ he said, ‘is a monster. Did you smell




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