Джорджетт Хейер - Death in the Stocks

“You speak for yourself, Master Kenneth, and let others do likewise,” replied Murgatroyd, who had come into the studio with her usual purposeful tread, and was ruthlessly clearing the table of its load of impedimenta. “Well, Miss Tony, so you're back, I see. Where's Mr Giles?”

“He wouldn't come in. He says Kenneth will have to go to the funeral, by the way.”

“There's others could have told him that. And a decent suit of blacks,” said Murgatroyd cryptically.

“Be damned to you, I won't.”

“That's quite enough from you, Master Kenneth, thank you. You'll be chief mourner, what's more. Don't put any of your nasty wet brushes down on the tablecloth, and not that smelly turps neither.”

“Kenneth,” said Leslie Rivers, “could I have the sketch?”

He glanced down at her, his brilliant, slightly inhuman gaze softening. “You can.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“You really ought not to give your sketches away,” said Violet, overhearing this interchange. “I mean, of course, as a general rule. They may become quite valuable one day.”

“Who cares?” said Kenneth, wiping his brushes.

Leslie flushed, and said gruffly: “Sorry. I didn't think.”

He smiled lovingly at her, but said nothing. Violet got up, and shaking out her skirt, said graciously: “Oh, naturally, it's different with such an old friend as you, dear. Shall I pour out, Tony, or would you rather?”

“Anyone can pour out as far as I'm concerned,” said Antonia, with complete indifference. “We may as well have the loaf in while we're about it, Murgatroyd. I'll come and get it.”

She went out and was followed in a few moments by Leslie Rivers, who came into the kitchen, and said unhappily: “I hate her and hate her.”

Neither Antonia nor Murgatroyd experienced the least difficulty in interpreting this remark. Murgatroyd set the loaf down on the wooden bread-board with a thud. “Her!” she said darkly. “Doing the hostess all over our flat! A beauty, is she? Well, handsome is as handsome does, and brown eyes are what I never did trust and never will, not without more reason than I've had yet.”

“I shouldn't mind - at least not nearly as much - if only I thought she'd look after him and understand about his painting,” pursued Miss Rivers. “But I can't see that she cares about anything except being admired, and having the best of everything.”

“Ah!” said Murgatroyd, emerging from the pantry to collect an errant knife, “still waters run deep. You mark my words!”

“Yes,” agreed Leslie, when Murgatroyd had vanished again, “but she doesn't run deep. She's purely mercenary, and she'll hurt Kenneth.”

“Not she,” replied Antonia. “He knows she's a moneygrubber. Kenneth isn't extraordinarily vulnerable, as a matter of fact.”

Miss Rivers blew her nose rather fiercely. “She's the sort that would wear away a stone,” she said. “Quiet persistence. Hard and cold and calculating. And even if I dyed my hair it wouldn't do any good.” With which sibyllic utterance she picked up the bread-board and marched back to the studio.

From the pantry doorway Murgatroyd watched her go, and remarked that that was what she called a lady. “Why Master Kenneth can't see what's been under his nose ever since you was all of you in the nursery is what beats me,” she declared. “A proper little wife Miss Leslie would make him, but that's men all over. What happened at that Inquest, Miss Tony?”

“Oh, pretty much what Giles said. It was very dull, and they brought in a verdict of Murder against Person or Persons Unknown. The Superintendent's going to go and have a friendly talk with Giles this evening, so probably Giles will put in a good word for us.”

“Hm!” said Murgatroyd grimly. “I don't doubt that's what he thinks, but it's a lot likelier that policeman will get him talking about the family, and go fastening on to something that'll land us all in goal.”

“Good Lord!” said Antonia. “I didn't know there was anything.”

“There's always something if you look for it,” replied Murgatroyd. “And the more smooth-spoken the police are the more you want to mistrust them. Always on the look-out to trip you up. Cat and mouse, they call it.”

The simile, as applied to Superintendent Hannasyde and Giles Carrington, was not strikingly apt, nor, if Giles was full of mistrust and Hannasyde on the watch for an unguarded remark, were these respective attitudes at all apparent when Giles's servant ushered the Superintendent into the comfortable book-lined sitting-room that evening. Hannasyde said as he shook hands: “Nice of you to ask me to look in. I envy you your quarters. They tell me you can't get one of these Temple flats for love or money nowadays.”

Murgatroyd might have detected a sinister trap in these seemingly harmless remarks, but Giles Carrington accepted them at their face value, invited the Superintendent to sit down in one of the deep leather chairs, and supplied him with a drink and a cigar. He had been idly engaged on a chess problem when his visitor arrived, and the sight of the board on the table, with a few pieces set out, naturally inspired Hannasyde, also a humble follower of the game, to inspect the problem narrowly. There was no room for any other thought in either man's head until Black had been successfully mated in the requisite three moves, but when this had been worked out, the pieces put away, a few chess reminiscences exchanged, the scarcity of really keen players deplored, a pause ensued and Giles said: “Well, what about this tiresome murder? Is it going to be an unsolved crime?”

“Not if I can help it,” replied Hannasyde. “It's early days yet - though I won't deny that I don't altogether like the look of it.” He scrutinised the long ash on the end of his cigar, debating whether to tip it off or to wait a little longer. “Hemingway - the chap with me today - is feeling aggrieved.” He smiled. “Says there oughtn't to be any mystery about the murder of a man like Vereker. You expect to be baffled when it's a case of some unfortunate girl being taken for a ride and bumped off, but when a prominent City man is stabbed it ought to be fairly plain sailing. You have what Hemingway calls the full decor. His hobby is amateur theatricals - it's the worst thing I know of him. Well, we've got plenty of decor, and we've got dramatis personae, and the net result” - he paused, and at last tipped off the ash of his cigar - “is that we seem most of the time to have got mixed up in a Chekhov play instead of the Edgar Wallace we thought we were engaged for.”

Giles grinned. “My deplorable cousins. I'm really very sorry about it. It would be interesting to know what you make of them.”

“I haven't the least objection to telling you that I don't know what to make of them,” replied Hannasyde calmly. “On the face of it, things point young Vereker's way. The motive is there, the opportunity is there, and unless I'm very much mistaken in my reading of his character, the nerve is there, too.”

“I agree with you,” said Giles.

“Yes,” said Hannasyde, with a kind of grim humour. “I know you do. I'm perfectly well aware that you're as much in the dark over him as I am, and equally well aware that you think things look rather black for him. Well, they do, but I'll be quite frank with you: I wouldn't apply for a warrant for that young man's arrest until I had a cast-iron case against him. His story is the weakest I've ever had to listen to - and I wouldn't let him tell it to a jury for anything you could offer me. Which reminds me, by the way, that Mesurier came up to see me at the Yard this afternoon, with yet another weak story. But I daresay you know about that.”

“I believe I know the story, but I didn't know he'd been to see you.”