Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

He said at last, “Do you know, I don’t think I’d dare.”

“So Mr. Cartell really has downed you, I see.”

“No, he hasn’t, you low-cunning girl.”

“If you’d rather not I shan’t take umbrage. On the other hand I’ll be delighted if you say: ‘Thank you, Nicola. How sweet of you to ask me. I’d love to.’ ”

Andrew grinned and for an appreciable interval was silent.

“You win,” he said at last. “I’ll say that same small thing.”

The rest of the journey passed quickly for both of them, and in London they followed the plan proposed by Andrew.

At half past eight they were in his car on their way back into Kent. The night was warm for early April, the lights sailed past and there was a young moon in the sky. Nicola knew that she was beginning to fall in love.

“I tell you what, Mrs. M.,” Alfred said as he prepared to set the dinner table. “The weather in this household has deteriorated and the forecast is for atmospheric disturbances followed by severe storms.”

“Go on!” Mrs. Mitchell said eagerly. “How?”

“How, I don’t know. If you ask me why , I can give a pretty good guess. For ten years, Mrs. M., We’ve organized ourselves quietly and comfortably in the way that suits Us. Everything very nice and going by clockwork. Nothing unexpected. Settled. No upsets of any kind whatsoever. Suits Us and, incidentally, I may say, suits you and me. Now what? What’s the present situation? Look at today! We’ve had more upsets in this one day, Mrs. M., than We’ve had to put up with in the total length of my service.”

Mrs. Mitchell executed the toss of the head and upward turn of the eyes that had only one connotation.

“Him?” she suggested.

“Exactly. Him,” Alfred said. “Mr. Harold Cartell.”

“Good God, Mr. Belt!” Mrs. Mitchell ejaculated. “What ever’s the matter?”

“The matter, Mrs. M.?”

“The way you looked! Coo! Only for a sec. But my word! Talk about old-fashioned.”

“You’d look old-fashioned yourself,” Alfred countered, “if suggestions of the same nature were made to you.”

“By ’im?” she prompted unguardedly.

“Correct. In reference to Our cigarette case. Which, as I mentioned earlier, was left by those two on the window ledge and has disappeared. Well. As we noticed this afternoon, Mr. Cartell went off in the Bloodbath with George Copper and Bert Noakes.”

“Very peculiar, yes.”

“Yes. All right. It now appears they went to Baynesholme.”

“To the Big House?”

“Exactly.”

“Well! To see her ladyship?”

“To see them . Those two. They’d gone there, if you please. Unasked, by all accounts.”

“Sauce!”

“What it was all about I have not yet gathered, but will from George Copper. The point is that when I take drinks to the library just now, they’re at it hammer-and-tongs.”

“Our two gentlemen?”

“Who else? And so hot they don’t stop when they see me. At least he doesn’t — Mr. C. He was saying he’d forgotten in the heat of the moment at Baynesholme to ask young Leiss and that Moppett about where they’d left the cigarette case, and Mr. Period was saying the young lady, Miss Maitland-Mayne, saw it on the sill. And I was asked to say if it was there when I cleared and I said no. And I added that someone had opened the window.”

“Who?”

“Ah! You may well ask. So Mr. Cartell says, in a great taking-on, that the chaps doing the sewage in Green Lane must have taken it and my gentleman says they’re very decent chaps and he can’t believe it. ‘Very well, then,’ says Mr. C, very sharp and quite the lawyer, ‘perhaps Alfred would care to reconsider his statement.’ And the way he said it was sufficient! After that suggestion, Mrs. M., I don’t mind telling you it’s him or me. Both of us this residence will not accommodate.”

“What did our gentleman say?”

“Ah! What would you expect? Came out very quiet and firm on my behalf. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that Alfred has given us a perfectly clear picture and that there is no need to ask him to repeat it. Thank you, Alfred. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’ So, of course, I said: ‘Thank you, sir,’ with what I trust was the proper emphasis, and withdrew. But you can take it from me, there’s serious trouble and deep feeling in more than one direction. Something was said at luncheon that was very ill-received by our gentleman. Said by Mr. C. Speculation,” added Alfred, who had grown calmer and reverted to his normal habit of speech, “speculation is unprofitable. Events will clarify.”

“Why Noakes, though?” she pondered.

“Ah! And I happened to ascertain from the chaps in the lane that Noakes brought Mr. C. back in George Copper’s Bloodbath and George himself turned up in that Scorpion he’s got in his garage. And what’s more, the rural mail van gave those two a lift back. They’ve been invited to the Big House party tonight. They’re dining and staying with Miss Cartell. They were very pleased with themselves, the mail van said, but cagey in their manner.”

The kitchen door was ajar and Mr. Cartell’s voice sounded clearly from the hall.

“Very well,” he was saying. “If that should prove to be the case I shall know how to act and I can assure you, P.P., that I shall act with the utmost rigour. I trust that you are satisfied.”

The front door slammed.

“Mercy on us!” Mrs. Mitchell apostrophized. “Now what?” And added precipitately: “My bedroom window!”

She bolted from the kitchen and Alfred heard her thundering up the back stairs.

Presently she returned, flushed and fully informed.

“Across the Green,” she reported, “to Miss Cartell’s.”

“And you may depend upon it, Mrs. M.,” Alfred said, “that the objective is Miss Moppett.”

Moppett had changed into the evening dress she kept in her bedroom at Miss Cartell’s house. It was geranium red, very décolleté and flagrantly becoming to her. She lay back in her chair, admiring her arms and glancing up from under her eyebrows at Mr. Cartell.

“Auntie Con’s at a Hunt Club committee do of sorts,” she said. “She’ll be in presently. Leonard’s collecting his dinner jacket off the bus.”

“I am glad,” Mr. Cartell said, giving her one look and thereafter keeping his gaze on his own folded hands, “of the opportunity to speak to you in. private. I will be obliged if, as far as my sister is concerned, you treat our conversation as confidential. There is no need, at this juncture, to cause her unnecessary distress.”

“Dear me,” she murmured, “you terrify me, Uncle Hal.”

“I will also be obliged if the assumption of a relationship which does not exist is discontinued.”

“Anything you say,” she agreed after a pause, “Mr. Cartell.”

“I have two matters to put before you. The first is this. The young man, Leonard Leiss, with whom you appear to have formed a close friendship, is known to the police. If he persists in his present habits it will only be a matter of time before he is in serious trouble, and, if you continue in your association with him, you will undoubtedly become involved. To a criminal extent. I would prefer, naturally, to think you were unaware of his proclivities, but I must say that I am unable to do so.”

“I certainly am unaware of anything of the sort and I don’t believe a word of it.”

“That,” Mr. Cartell said, “is nonsense.”

“I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid it’s you that’s talking nonsense. All this to-do because poor Leonard wants to buy a car and I simply mention to Copper that Auntie Con — I hope you don’t mind if I go on calling her that — knows him and that you and P.P. might give him the O.K. It was only a matter of form, anyway. Of course, if we’d thought you wouldn’t like it we wouldn’t have dreamt of doing it. I’m jolly sorry we did, and Leonard is, too.”