Ngaio Marsh - Black As He Is Painted

She submitted to these indignities with utter detachment, but when at liberty leapt into her protector’s embrace and performed her now familiar act of jamming her head under his jacket and lying next his heart.

“Taken to you,” said the vet. “They’ve got a sense of gratitude, cats have. Especially the females.”

“I don’t know anything about them,” said Mr. Whipplestone in a hurry.

Motivated by sales-talk and embarrassment, he bought on his way out a cat bed-basket, a china dish labelled “Kit-bits,” a comb and brush and a collar for which he ordered a metal tab with a legend: “Lucy Lockett. 1, Capricorn Walk” and his telephone number. The shop assistant showed him a little red cat-harness for walking out and told him that with patience cats could be induced to co-operate. She put Lucy into it and the result was fetching enough for Mr. Whipplestone to keep it.

He left the parrot cage behind to be called for, and heavily laden, with Lucy again in retreat under his coat, walked quickly home to deploy his diplomatic resources upon the Chubbs, little knowing that he carried his destiny under his jacket.

“This is perfectly delightful,” said Mr. Whipplestone, turning from his host to his hostess with the slight inclinations of his head and shoulders that had long been occupational mannerisms. “I am so enjoying myself.”

“Fill up your glass,” Alleyn said. “I did warn you that it was an invitation with an ulterior motive, didn’t I?”

“I am fully prepared: charmingly so. A superb port.”

“I’ll leave you with it,” Troy suggested.

“No, don’t,” Alleyn said. “We’ll send you packing if anything v.s. and c. crops up. Otherwise it’s nice to have you. Isn’t it, Whipplestone?”

Mr. Whipplestone embarked upon a speech about his good fortune in being able to contemplate a Troy above his fireplace every evening and now having the pleasure of contemplating the artist herself at her own fireside. He got a little bogged down but fetched up bravely.

“And when,” he asked, coming to his own rescue, “are we to embark upon the ulterior motive?”

Alleyn said, “Let’s make a move. This is liable to take time.”

At Troy’s suggestion they carried their port from the house into her detached studio and settled themselves in front of long windows overlooking a twilit London garden.

“I want,” Alleyn said, “to pick your brains a little. Aren’t you by way of being an expert on Ng’ombwana?”

“Ng’ombwana? I? That’s putting it much too high, my dear man. I was there for three years in my youth.”

“I thought that quite recently when it was getting its independence—?”

“They sent me out there, yes. During the exploratory period — mainly because I speak the language, I suppose. Having rather made it my thing in a mild way.”

“And you have kept it up?”

“Again, in a mild way: oh, yes. Yes.” He looked across the top of his glass at Alleyn. “You haven’t gone over to the Special Branch, surely?”

“That’s a very crisp bit of instant deduction. No, I haven’t. But you may say they’ve unofficially roped me in for the occasion.”

“Of the forthcoming visit?”

“Yes, blast them. Security.”

“I see. Difficult. By the way, you must have been the President’s contemporary at—” Mr. Whipplestone stopped short. “Is it hoped that you may introduce the personal note?”

“You are quick!” Troy said, and he gave a gratified little cackle.

Alleyn said: “I saw him three weeks ago,”

“In Ng’ombwana?”

“Yes. Coming the old-boy network like nobody’s business.”

“Get anywhere?”

“Not so that you’d notice — no, that’s not fair. He did undertake not to cut up rough about our precautions but exactly what he meant by that is his secret. I daresay that in the upshot he’ll be a bloody nuisance.”

“Well?” asked Mr. Whipplestone, leaning back and swinging his eyeglass in what Alleyn felt had been his cross-diplomatic-desk gesture for half a lifetime. “Well, my dear Roderick?”

“Where do you come in?”

“Quite.”

“I’d be grateful if you’d — what’s the current jargon? — fill me in on the general Ng’ombwanan background. From your own point of view. For instance, how many people would you say have cause to wish the Boomer dead?”

“The Boomer?”

“As he incessantly reminded me, that was His Excellency’s schoolboy nickname.”

“An appropriate one. In general terms, I should say some two hundred thousand persons, at least.”

“Good Lord!” Troy exclaimed.

“Could you,” asked her husband, “do a bit of name-dropping?”

“Not really. Not specifically. But again in general terms — well, it’s the usual pattern throughout the new African independencies. First of all there are those Ng’ombwanan political opponents whom the President succeeded in breaking, the survivors of whom are either in prison or in this country waiting for his overthrow or assassination.”

“The Special Branch flatters itself it’s got a pretty comprehensive list in that category.”

“I daresay,” said Mr. Whipplestone drily. “So did we until one fine day in Martinique a hitherto completely unknown person with a phoney British passport fired a revolver at the President, missed, and was more successful with a second shot at himself. He had no record and his true identity was never established.”

“I reminded the Boomer of that incident.”

Mr. Whipplestone said archly to Troy: “You know, he’s much more fully informed than I am. What’s he up to?”

“I can’t image, but do go on. I, at least, know nothing.”

“Well. Among these African enemies, of course, are the extremists who disliked his early moderation and especially his refusal at the outset to sack all his European advisers and officials in one fell swoop. So you get pockets of anti-white terrorists who campaigned for independence but are now prepared to face about and destroy the government they helped to create. Their followers are an unknown quantity but undoubtedly numerous. But you know all this, my dear fellow.”

“He’s sacking more and more whites now, though, isn’t he? However unwillingly?”

“He’s been forced to do so by the extreme elements.”

“So,” Alleyn said, “the familiar, perhaps the inevitable pattern emerges. The nationalization of all foreign enterprise and the appropriation of properties held by European and Asian colonists. Among whom we find the bitterest possible resentment.”

“Indeed. And with some reason. Many of them have been ruined. Among the older groups the effect has been completely disastrous. Their entire way of life has disintegrated and they are totally unfitted for any other.” Mr. Whipplestone rubbed his nose. “I must say,” he added, “however improperly, that some of them are not likeable individuals.”

Troy asked: “Why’s he coming here? The Boomer, I mean?”

“Ostensibly, to discuss with Whitehall his country’s needs for development.”

“And Whitehall,” Alleyn said, “professes its high delight. while the Special Branch turns green with forebodings.”

“Mr. Whipplestone, you said ‘ostensibly,’ ” Troy pointed out.

“Did I, Mrs. Rory? — Yes. Yes, well it has been rumoured through tolerably reliable sources that the President hopes to negotiate with rival groups to take over the oil and copper resources from the dispossessed, who have, of course, developed them at enormous cost.”

“Here we go again!” said Alleyn.

“I don’t suggest,” Mr. Whipplestone mildly added, “that Lord Karnley or Sir Julian Raphael or any of their associates are likely to instigate a lethal assault upon the President.”