Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

She broke into one of her ungainly laughs and blew her nose on a man’s handkerchief.

“There was a luncheon party,” Alleyn said, “wasn’t there? Yesterday, at Mr. Pyke Period’s house?”

Instead of answering him she suddenly blurted out: “But I thought it was an accident! The way they told me, it sounded like an accident.”

“Who told you?”

“P.P.” she said. “Alfred told him and he told me. He made it sound like an accident.”

“The odds against,” Alleyn said, “are considerable.”

“Why?”

Everything about her was dull: her face, her manner, her voice. He wondered if she was really attending to him.

“Because,” he said, “accident would imply at least two lots of people behaving independently like dangerous hoodlums at the same spot and with different objectives.”

“I don’t follow that,” said Miss Cartell.

“Never mind. Just tell me about the luncheon party. There were you and your adopted niece and Miss Nicola Maitland-Mayne and Mr. Leonard Leiss. And of course, your brother and Mr. Period. Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“What did you talk about?”

Nicola had given him a pretty full account of the luncheon party. Miss Cartell was much less explicit. She described the Pixie incident with one or two dismal hoots of retrospective laughter and she dwelt, disjointedly, upon Mr. Period’s references to blue blood and polite behaviour. She was clearly very ill-at-ease.

“He’s got a bee in his bonnet over that sort of thing,” she said. “My brother ragged him about it, and he got jolly ratty. You could see. Can’t take a joke.”

“What sort of joke?” Alleyn ventured.

“Well — I dunno. Some story about a baptismal register in a vestry. I didn’t listen.”

Alleyn asked her about the cigarette case and she at once exhibited all the classic signs of a clumsy and unaccustomed liar. She changed colour, avoided his glance and again fondled the unenthusiastic Pekingese.

“I didn’t notice anything about that,” she said. “He’d got the case. I didn’t know he’d lost it. He’s an old fuss-pot anyway.” The colour started out in blotches on her flattish cheeks. “He probably lost it himself,” she said, “muddling about.”

Alleyn said: “Miss Cartell, I’m sorry to badger you when you’ve had such a shock, but I’m sure you want to get this wretched business cleared up, don’t you?”

“Don’t know,” she countered. “Not if it’s going to lead to a lot of unpleasantness. Won’t bring poor old Boysie back, will it?”

Alleyn disregarded this. “Your adopted niece and a friend of hers, called Mr. Leiss, were at the luncheon, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” she said, staring at him. She seemed to be in two minds whether to go on. Then she said: “You don’t want to pay any attention to what P.P. says about them. He’s out of touch with the young. Expects them to behave like his generation: and a lot of pie-faced little humbugs they were, if you like.”

“Was there some talk of Mr. Leiss buying a car?”

She bent over the dog. “That’s enough,” she said to it. “You’ve had enough.” And then to Alleyn: “It all petered out. He didn’t buy it.”

The door opened and her Austrian maid came in with a letter.

“From Mr. Period, please,” she said. “The man left it.”

Miss Cartell seemed unwilling to take the letter. The maid put it on the desk at her elbow.

“All right, Trudi,” Miss Cartell mumbled. “Thank you,” and the maid went out.

“Pay no attention to me,” Alleyn said.

“It’ll wait.”

“Don’t you think, perhaps, you should look at it?”

She opened the letter unhandily, and as she read it turned white to the lips.

“What is it?” he asked. “Miss Cartell, what’s the matter?”

The letter was still quivering in her hands.

“He must be mad,” she said. “Mad!”

“May I see it?”

She seemed to consider this, but in an aimless sort of way as if she only gave him half her attention. When he took the sheet of paper from her fingers she suffered him to do so as if they were inanimate.

Alleyn read the letter.

My dear Connie:

What can I say? Only that you have lost a devoted brother and I a very dear old friend. I know so well, believe me, so very well, what a shock this has been for you and how bravely you will be taking it. If it is not an impertinence in an old friend to do so, may I offer you these few simple lines written by my dear and so Victorian Duchess of Rampton? They are none the worse, I hope, for their unblushing sentimentality.

So must it be, dear heart, I’ll not repine

For while I live the Memory is Mine .

I should like to think that we know each other well enough for you to believe me when I say that I hope you won’t dream of answering this all-too-inadequate attempt to tell you how sorry I am.

Yours sincerely,

Percival Pyke Period

Alleyn folded the paper and looked at Miss Cartell. “But why,” he said, “do you say that? Why do you say he must be mad?”

She waited so long, gaping at him like a fish, that he thought she would never answer. Then she made a fumbling inelegant gesture towards the letter.

“Because he must be,” she said. “Because it’s all happening twice. Because he’s written it before. The lot. Just the same.”

“You mean—? But when?”

“This morning,” Connie said and began rooting in the litter on her desk. “Before breakfast. Before I knew.”

She drew in her breath with a whistling noise. “Before everybody knew,” she said. “ Before they had found him .”

She stared at Alleyn, nodding her head and holding out a sheet of letter paper.

“See for yourself,” she said miserably. “Before they had found him.”

Alleyn looked at the two letters. Except in a few small details they were, indeed, exactly the same.

Connie raised no objections to Alleyn’s keeping the letters, and with them both in his pocket he asked if he might see Miss Ralston and Mr. Leiss. She said that they were still asleep in their rooms and added with a slight hint of gratification that they had attended the Baynesholme festivities.

“One of Désirée Bantling’s dotty parties,” she said. “They go on till all hours. Moppett left a note asking not to be roused.”

“It’s now one o’clock,” Alleyn said, “and I’m afraid I shall have to disturb Mr. Leiss.”

He thought she was going to protest, but at that moment the Pekingese set up a petulant demonstration, scratching at the door and raising a crescendo of imperative yaps.

“Clever boy!” Connie said distractedly. “I’m coming!” She went to the door. “I’ll have to see to this,” she said, “in the garden.”

“Of course,” Alleyn agreed. He followed them into the hall and saw them out through the front door. Once in the garden the Pekingese bolted for a newly raked flower-bed.

“Oh, no!” Connie ejaculated. “After lunch,” she shouted as she hastened in pursuit of her pet. “Come back later.”

The Pekingese tore round a corner of the house and she followed it.

Alleyn re-entered the house and went quickly upstairs.

On the landing he encountered Trudi, the maid, who showed him the visitors’ rooms. They were on two sides of a passage.

“Mr. Leiss?” Alleyn asked.

A glint of feminine awareness momentarily transfigured Trudi’s not very expressive face.

“He is sleeping,” she said. “I looked at him. He sleeps like a god.”

“We’ll see what he wakes like,” Alleyn said, tipping her rather handsomely. “Thank you, Trudi.”