Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

Moppett opened her eyes very wide and her mouth slightly. She turned in fairly convincing bewilderment from Leonard to Alleyn.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “P.P.’s cigarette case? Do you mean the old one he showed us when we lunched with him?”

“Yes,” Alleyn agreed. “That’s the one I mean.”

“Lenny, darling, what did happen to it, do you remember? I know! We left it on the window sill. Didn’t we? In the dining-room?”

“O.K., O.K., like I’ve been telling the Chief Godal-mighty High Commissioner,” Leonard said and behind his alarm, his fluctuating style and his near-Americanisms, there flashed up an unrepentant barrow-boy. “So now it’s been found. So what?”

“It’s been found,” Alleyn said, “in the open drain a few inches from Mr. Cartell’s body.”

Leonard seemed to retreat into himself. It was as if he shortened and compressed his defenses.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He shot a glance at Moppett. “That’s a very nasty suggestion, isn’t it? I don’t get the picture.”

“The picture will emerge in due course. A minute or two ago,” Alleyn said, “you told me I was welcome to search this room. Do you hold to that?”

Leonard went through the pantomime of inspecting his fingernails but gave it up on finding his hands were unsteady.

“Naturally,” he murmured. “Like I said. Nothing to hide.”

“Good. Please don’t go, Miss Ralston,” Alleyn continued as Moppett showed some sign of doing so. “I shan’t be long.”

He had moved over to the wardrobe and opened the door when he felt a touch on his arm. He turned and there was Moppett, smelling of scent, hair and bed, gazing into his face, unmistakably palpitating.

“I won’t go, of course,” she said opening her eyes very wide, “if you don’t want me to, but you can see, can’t you, that I’m not actually dressed for the prevailing climate? It’s a trifle chilly, this morning, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure Mr. Leiss will lend you his dressing-gown.”

It was a brocade and velvet affair and lay across the foot of the bed. She put it on.

“Give us a fag, ducks,” she said to Leonard.

“Help yourself.”

She reached for his case. “It’s not one of those…?” she began and then stopped short. “Fanks, ducks,” she said and lit a cigarette, lounging across the bed.

The room grew redolent of Virginian tobacco.

The wardrobe doors were lined with looking-glass. In them Alleyn caught a momentary glimpse of Moppett leaning urgently towards Leonard and of Leonard baring his teeth at her. He mouthed something and closed his hand over her wrist. The cigarette quivered between her fingers. Leonard turned his head as Alleyn moved the door and their images swung out of sight.

Alleyn’s fingers slid into the pockets of Leonard’s checked suit, dinner suit and camel’s-hair overcoat. They discovered three greasy combs, a pair of wash-leather gloves, a membership card from a Soho club called La Hacienda, a handkerchief, loose change, a pocketbook and finally, in the evening trousers and the overcoat, the object of their search: strands of cigarette tobacco. He withdrew a thread and sniffed at it. Turkish. The hinges of Mr. Period’s case, he had noticed, were a bit loose.

He came out from behind the wardrobe door with the garments in question over his arm. Moppett, who now had her feet up, exclaimed with a fair show of gaitey: “Look, Face, he’s going to valet you.”

Alleyn said: “I’d like to borrow these things for the moment. I’ll give you a receipt, of course.”

“Like hell you will,” Leonard ejaculated.

“If you object, I can apply for a search warrant”

“Darling, don’t be bloody-minded,” Moppett said. “After all, what does it matter?”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Leonard mumbled through bleached lips. “That’s what I object to. People break in without a word of warning and start talking about bodies and — and—”

“And false pretenses. And attempted fraud. And theft,” Alleyn put in. “As you say, it’s the principal of the thing. May I borrow these garments?”

“O.K., O.K., O.K.”

“Thank you.”

Alleyn laid the overcoat and dinner suit across a chair and then went methodically through a suitcase and the drawers of a tallboy: there, wrapped in a sock, he came upon a flick-knife. He turned, with it in his hand, and found Leonard staring at him.

“This,” Alleyn said, “is illegal. Where did you get it?”

“I picked it up,” Leonard said, “in the street. Illegal, is it? Fancy.”

“I shall take care of it.”

Leonard whispered something to Moppett, who laughed immoderately and said: “Oh, Lord!” in a manner that contrived to be disproportionately offensive.

Alleyn then sat at a small desk in a corner of the room. He removed Leonard’s pocketbook from his dinner jacket and examined the contents, which embraced five pounds in notes and a photograph of Miss Ralston in the nude. They say that nothing shocks a police officer, but Alleyn found himself scandalized. He listed the contents of the pocketbook and wrote a receipt for them, which he handed, with the pocketbook, to Leonard.

“I don’t expect to be long over this,” he said. “In the meantime I should like a word with you, if you please, Miss Ralston.”

“What for?” Leonard interposed quickly, and to Moppett: “You don’t have to talk to him.”

“Darling,” Moppett said. “Manners! And I’ll have you know I’m simply dying to talk to the — Inspector, is it? Or Super? I’m sure it’s Super. Do we withdraw?”

She was stretched across the foot of the bed with her chin in her hands: a “lost girl,” Alleyn thought, adopting the Victorian phrase, if ever I saw one.

He walked over to the window and was rewarded by the sight of Inspector Fox seated in a police car in Miss Cartell’s drive. He looked up. Alleyn made a face at him and crooked a finger. Fox began to climb out of the car.

“If you don’t mind,” Alleyn said to Moppett, “we’ll move into the passage.”

“Thrilled to oblige,” Moppett said. Drawing Leonard’s gown tightly about her she walked round the screen and out of the door.

Alleyn turned to Leonard, “I shall have to ask you,” he said, “to stay here for the time being.”

“It’s not convenient.”

“Nevertheless you will be well advised to stay. What is your address in London?”

“76 Castlereagh Walk S.W. 14. Though why—”

“If you return there,” Alleyn said, “you will be kept under observation. Take your choice.”

He followed Moppett into the passage. He found her arranging her back against the wall and her cigarette in the corner of her mouth. Alleyn could hear Mr. Fox’s bass voice rumbling downstairs.

“What can I do for you, Super?” Moppett asked with the slight smile of the film underworldling.

“You can stop being an ass,” he rejoined tartly. “I don’t know why I waste time telling you this, but if you don’t you may find yourself in serious trouble. Think that one out, if you can, and stop smirking at me,” Alleyn said, rounding off what was possibly the most professional speech of his career.

“Oi!” said Moppett. “Who’s in a naughty rage?”

Alleyn heard Miss Cartell’s edgeless voice directing Mr. Fox upstairs. He looked over the bannister and saw her upturned face, blunt, red and vulnerable. His distaste for Moppett was exacerbated. There she stood, conceited, shifty and complacent as they come, without scruple or compassion. And there belowstairs was her guardian, wide open to anything this detestable girl liked to hand out to her.

Fox could be heard saying in a comfortable voice: “Thank you very much, Miss Cartell. I’ll find my own way.”