Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

A motor horn sounded distantly. They both turned to the windows.

“And here,” Désirée said, “are your friends. I expect you want to go to meet them. Good-bye.”

When Mr. Cartell had left her, she moved into the French window and, unlike Moppett, very openly watched the scene outside.

The Scorpion came up the drive at a great pace, but checked abruptly. Then it moved on at a more decorous speed and pulled up. Leonard and Moppett got out simultaneously. Sergeant Noakes advanced and so did they, all smiles and readiness, but with the faintest suggestion of self-consciousness, Désirée considered, in their joints. It’s people’s elbows, she reflected, that give them away.

They approached the group of three. Moppett, with girlish insouciance, linked her arm through Mr. Cartell’s, causing him to become rigid with distaste.

First blood to Moppett, thought Désirée with relish.

Leonard listened to Sergeant Noakes with an expression that progressed from bonhomie through concern towards righteous astonishment. He bowed ironically and indicated the Scorpion. Catching sight of Désirée, he shook his head slowly from side to side as if inviting her to share his bewilderment. He then removed two large packages from the Scorpion.

Désirée opened the French window and strolled down the steps towards them. Mr. Cartell furiously disengaged himself from Moppett.

“I think,” he said, “that we should get back, Noakes. If Copper drives the other car, you, I suppose—”

Sergeant Noakes glanced at Moppett and muttered something.

“Don’t let us keep you,” Leonard said quickly and with excessive politeness. “Please.”

They touched their hats to Désirée and mounted their respective cars. They drove away, inexplicably at a disadvantage.

“Well,” Désirée asked cheerfully, “did you find my tiresome food?”

Moppett and Leonard, all smiles, began to chatter and give way to each other.

Finally Moppett said: “Dear Lady Bantling — yes. We’ve got it all, but, as you see, we ran into a muddle of sorts. Mr. Copper’s made a nonsense about the Scorpion, and we’ve missed buying it.”

“Inefficient,” Leonard said. “It appears somebody else had first refusal.”

“How very disappointing.”

“Isn’t it!” Moppett agreed. “Too sickening.” She gave a little scream and put her hand to her mouth. “Leonard!” she cried. “Fools that we are!”

“What, darling?”

“We ought to have gone back with them. Look at us! Now what do we do?”

Leonard allowed the slightest possible gap to occur before he said: “I’m afraid Mr. George Copper will have to make a return trip in my car. Too bad!”

“What will you think of us?” Moppett asked Désirée.

“Oh,” she said lightly, “the worst,” and they laughed with possibly a shade less conviction.

“At least,” Moppett said, “we can bring the food in, can’t we? And if we might ring up for some sort of transport…”

Bimbo came out of the house and fetched up short when he saw them. Désirée grinned at him.

“Why not stay?” she said very distinctly to Moppett. “After fetching all our food, the least we can do is to ask you to eat it. Do stay.”

Andrew put Nicola’s overcoat on the seat and sat opposite to her.

“The best thing about this train,” he said, “is that it’s nearly always empty. So you’re returning to the fold tomorrow, are you?”

Nicola said Mr. Period had asked her to do so, and that was why she had left her typewriter behind.

“But you’re not returning to Little Codling tomorrow,” Andrew said, with the air of taking a plunge, “you’re returning tonight. At least I hope so. Don’t say another word. I’ve got an invitation for you.”

He produced it and gave it to her with an anxious smile.

It was from his mother and it said:

Do come to my dotty party tonight. Andrew will bring you and we’ll put you up. He’ll explain all about it, but do come .

Nicola stared at him in amazement.

“My mum,” he said, “has taken a fancy to you. So, as is no doubt abundantly obvious, have I. Now don’t go into a brouhaha and say you can’t. Just say: ‘Thank you, Andrew. How sweet of your mum, I’d love to.’ ”

“But how can I?”

“How?” Andrew said grandly. “Anyhow. Why not?”

“I tell you what,” Nicola said. “You’ve nagged at your mum to ask me.”

“I swear I haven’t. She nagged at me and I said I would if you would.”

“There you are, you see.”

“No, I don’t. And anyway, do stop carping and come. It’s definitely not one of my mama’s more rococo parties. I wouldn’t dream of taking you to one of them, of course.”

Nicola, who remembered hearing rumours of some of Lady Bantling’s parties, felt relieved.

“What I thought,” Andrew continued, “I’ll drop you wherever you live and you can nip into your Number One ceremonials and then I’ll pick up my dinner jacket. I have a car of sorts and we’ll dine somewhere and then we’ll drive down to Bayneshelme.”

“What about the cocktail party you’re all dressed up for?”

“Forget it, completely. Do come, Nicola. Will you?”

“Thank you, Andrew. How sweet of your mum to ask me. I’d love to.”

“Thank you, Nicola.”

For the rest of the journey Andrew talked to Nicola about himself. He said he wanted to paint more than anything else in life and that he’d been having lessons and was “meant to be not too bad,” but bad or not he had to go on with it. He said that if he could take the Grantham Gallery over, there was a studio at the back where he could paint and manage the Gallery at the same time. Then he described his unproductive and bad-tempered meeting that morning with his guardian and stepfather, Mr. Cartell.

“It was a snorter,” Andrew said thoughtfully. “He treated the whole thing as if it were a sort of adolescent whim. I’d brought down all the figures of the turnover and he wouldn’t look at them, damn him. I gave him the names of jolly good people who would supply an expert opinion, and he wouldn’t listen. All he would say was that my father wouldn’t have wanted me to resign my commission. What the hell,” Andrew shouted and then pulled himself up. “It’s not so much the practical side that infuriates me — I could, after all, I imagine, borrow the money and insure my life or whatever one does. It’s his bloody pontificating philistinism. What I believe I most resented,” he said, “was having to talk about my painting. I said things that are private to me and he came back at me with the sort of remarks that made them sound phony. Can you understand that?”

“I think I can. And I suppose in the end you began to wonder if, after all, you were any good.”

“You do understand, don’t you? Does everybody off-load their difficulties on you, or…No,” Andrew said, “I’d better not say that — yet. Thank you, anyway, for listening.”

“Do you admire Agatha Troy’s painting?”

He stared at her. “Well, of course. Why?”

“I know her. She’s married to Roderick Alleyn in the C.I.D. I go there quite often. As a matter of fact, I’m paying them a visit tomorrow evening.”

“What’s she like? I know what she looks like. Lovely bone. Kind of gallant. Is she alarming?”

“Not at all. She’s rather shy. She’s jolly good about being interested in younger people’s work,” Nicola added. She hesitated and then said: “You may not care for the idea at all, but if you liked I could show her one of your things.”

He turned very red and Nicola wondered if she had offended him.