Ngaio Marsh - Clutch of Constables

Miss Rickerby-Carrick commanded rather less tact than a bull-dozer and it must be clear, Troy thought, to everybody in the saloon that a happening was on the brew.

Determined to look anywhere but at her tormentor, Troy caught the ironical, skew-eyed glance of Caley Bard. He winked and she lowered her gaze. Mr Pollock stared with distaste at Miss Rickerby-Carrick and the Hewsons caught each other’s glances and assumed a mask-like air of detachment. Mr Lazenby and Dr Natouche swopped bits of medieval information about the ruins.

Troy went straight on deck when she had finished her dinner and was about to go ashore when up came Miss Rickerby-Carrick from below, hailing her in a curious kind of soft-pedalled shout. “Mrs Alleyn! I say! Mrs Alleyn!” Troy paused. “Look!” said Miss Rickerby-Carrick coming close to her and whispering. “I — are you going up to the village? Can I come with you? I’ve got something—” she looked over her shoulder and up and down the deck though she must have known as well as Troy that the others were all below. “I want to ask your advice. It’s awfully important. Really. I promise,” she whispered.

“Well — yes. All right, if you really think—”

“ Please . I’ll just get my cardi. I won’t be a tick. Only as far as the village. Before the others start—it’s awfully important. Honest injun. Please .”

She advanced her crazy-looking face so close that Troy took an involuntary step backward.

“Be kind!” Miss Rickerby-Carrick whispered. “Let me tell you. Let me!”

She stood before Troy: a grotesque, a dreadfully vulnerable person. And the worst of it was, Troy thought, she herself was now so far caught up in a web of intangible misgivings that she could not know, could not trust herself to judge, whether the panic she thought she saw in those watery eyes was a mere reflection of the ill-defined anxiety which was building itself up around her own very real delight in the little cruise of the Zodiac . Or whether Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s unmistakable schwarm was about to break out in a big way.

“Oh please!” she repeated, “for God’s sake! Please.”

“Well, of course,” Troy said, helplessly. “Of course.”

“Oh, you are a darling,” exclaimed Miss Rickerby-Carrick and bolted for the companionway. She collided with Mr Pollock and there was much confusion and incoherent apology before she retired below and he emerged on deck.

He had brought back to Troy the Signs of the Zodiac with the lettering completed. It was beautifully done, right in scale and manner and execution and Troy told him so warmly. He said in his flat voice with its swallowed consonants and plummy vowels that she need think nothing of it, the obligation was all his and he hung about in his odd way offering a few scraps of disjointed information to the effect that he’d gone from the signwriting into the printing trade but there hadn’t been any money in that. He made remarks that faded out after one or two words and gave curious little sounds that were either self-conscious laughs or coughs.

“Do you paint?” Troy asked. “As well as this? Or draw?”

He hastened to assure her that he did not. “Me? A flippin’ awtist? Do you mind!”

“I thought from the way you looked at this thing—”

“Then you thought wrong,” he said with an unexpected slap of rudeness.

Troy stared at him and he reddened. “Pardon my French,” he said, “I’m naturally crude. I do not paint. I just take a fancy to look.”

“Fair enough,” Troy said pacifically.

He gave her a shamefaced grin and said oh well he supposed he’d better do something about the nightlife of Crossdyke. As he was evidently first going below Troy asked him to keep the drawing for the time being.

He paused at the companionway for Miss Rickerby-Carrick. She erupted with monotonous precipitancy through the half-door, saw Mr Pollock who had the Zodiac drawing open in his hands, looked at it as if it was a bomb and hurried on to Troy.

“Do let’s go,” she said. “Do come on.”

They took their long strides from the gunwale to the bank, a simple exercise inevitably made complex by Miss Rickerby-Carrick, who, when she had recovered herself, seized Troy’s arm and began to gabble.

“At once. I’ll tell you at once before anyone can stop me. It’s about—about—” She drove her free hand through her dishevelled hair and began distractedly to whisper and stammer quite incomprehensibly.

“—about last evening — And — And — Oh God! — And—”

“About what ?”

“And — wait — And—”

But it was not to be. She had taken a deep breath, screwed up her eyes and opened her mouth, almost as if she were about to sneeze, when they were hailed from the rear.

“Hi! Wait a bit! What are you two up to?”

It was Mr Lazenby. He leapt nimbly ashore and came alongside Troy. “We can’t have these exclusive ladies’ excursions,” he said roguishly. “You’ll have to put up with a mere man as far as the village.”

Troy looked up at him and he shook a playful finger at her. “He’s rescued me,” she thought and with what she herself felt to be a perverse change of mood suddenly wanted to hear Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s confidences. “Perhaps,” Troy thought, “she’ll tell us both.”

But she didn’t. By means of sundry hard-fingered squeezes and tweaks she conveyed her chagrin. At the same time Mr Lazenby went through much the same routine with Troy’s left arm and she began to feel like Alice between the Queens.

She produced, once more, her story of the lost fur and said she was going to inquire at the local police-station.

“I suppose,” Miss Rickerby-Carrick observed, “they make great efforts for you. Because — I mean — your husband — and everything.”

“Ah!” Mr Lazenby archly mocked. “How right you are! Police protection every inch of the way. Big drama. You heard her say yesterday, Miss Rickerby-Carrick. The landscape’s swarming with Constables.”

The hand within Troy’s right arm began to tremble. “She meant the painter,” whispered Miss Rickerby-Carrick.

“That’s only her cunning. She’s sly as you make ‘em, you may depend upon it. We’re none of us safe.”

The fingers on Troy’s right arm became more agitated while those on her left gave it a brief conspiratorial squeeze. “Arms,” Troy thought. “Last night Dr Natouche and tonight, these two, and I’m not the sort to link arms.” But she was aware that while these contacts were merely irksome, last night’s had both disturbed and reassured her.

She freed herself as casually as she could and talking disjointedly they walked into the village where they were overtaken by Caley Bard, complete with butterfly-net and collector’s box. All desire for the Rickerby-Carrick disclosures had left Troy. She scarcely listened to madly divergent spurts of information: “… my friend, Mavis… you would love her… such a brilliant brain… art… science… butterflies even, Mr Bard… though not for me — Lamborine—… my friend, Mavis… Highlands… how I wish she was here… Mavis…”

The undisciplined voice gushed and dwindled, gabbled and halted. Troy had an almost overwhelming urge to be alone with her headache.

They came up with the cottage police-station. A small car and a motor-cycle stood outside.

“Shall we wait for you?” Bard asked. “Or not?”

“Not, please, I may be quite a time. They’ll probably want to telephone about it. As a matter of fact,” Troy said, “I believe when I’ve finished here I’ll just go back to the Zodiac . For some reason I’ve got a bit of a headache.”

It was an understatement. Her headache was ripening. She was subject to occasional abrupt onsets of migraine and even now a thing like a starburst pulsed in one corner of her field of vision and her temples had begun to throb.