Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

“Not me, thank you,” Alleyn said, rather startled. He glanced at a clock: it was twenty to three.

“I’ve only just had lunch,” she explained. “I thought brandy might be rather a thing. Where did you have lunch?” She looked at him. “Wait a moment, will you? Sorry. I won’t be long. Have a smoke.” She added over her shoulder as she walked away: “I’m not trying to escape.”

Alleyn lit a cigarette and looked about him. It was a conventional country-house boudoir, with incongruous dabs of Désirée scattered about it in the form of “dotty” bits of French porcelain and one astonishing picture of a nude sprouting green bay leaves and little flags.

There were photographs of Andrew Bantling and a smooth-looking youngish man whom Alleyn supposed must be Désirée’s third husband. It was a rather colourless photograph but he found himself looking at it with a sense of familiarity. He knew the wide-set eyes were grey rather than blue and that the mouth, when smiling, displayed almost perfect teeth. He knew he had heard the voice: a light baritone, lacking colour. He knew he had at some time encountered this man but he couldn’t remember where or when.

“That’s Bimbo,” said Désirée, returning. “My third. We’ve been married a year.” She carried a loaded tray. “I thought you were probably hungry,” she said, putting it on her desk. “You needn’t feel awkward,” she added. She strolled off and lit a cigarette. “Do have it, for God’s sake, after all my trouble getting it. If I’m arrested, I promise I won’t split on you. Eat up.”

“Since you put it like that,” Alleyn rejoined, “I shall, and very gratefully.” He sat down to chicken aspic and salad, bread, butter, cheese, a bottle of lager and something in an oversized cocktail glass.

“Dry martini,” Désirée said. She herself had a generously equipped brandy glass. She picked up a magazine and disappeared into a sofa. “Is that all right?”

By the smell he supposed it to be made up of nine parts gin to one of French. He therefore tipped it quickly into a vase of flowers on the desk and poured out the lager. The chicken aspic was quite excellent.

“Andrew tells me,” Désirée said, “that you seem to think Hal was murdered.”

“Yes, I do.”

“It appears so unlikely, somehow. Unless somebody did it out of irritation. When we were married, I promise you I felt like it often enough. Still, being rid of him I no longer do — or did. If you follow me.”

“Perfectly,” said Alleyn.

“Andrew says it’s all about a kind of booby-trap, he thinks. Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“I expected,” Désire said after a pause, “that it would be you asking me the questions.”

“If you fill my mouth with delectable food, how can I?”

“Is it good? I didn’t have any. I never fancy my lunch except for the drinks. Was Hal murdered? Honestly?”

“I think so.”

There was a longish silence and then she began to talk about people they had both known and occasions when they had met. This went on for some time. In her offhand way she managed to convey an implicit familiarity. Presently she came up behind him. He could smell her scent, which was sharp and unfamiliar. He knew she was trying to get him off balance, to make him feel vulnerable, sitting there eating and drinking. He also knew, as certainly as if she had made the grossest of advances, that she was perfectly ready for an unconventional interlude. He wondered where her Bimbo had taken himself off to and if Andrew Bantling was in the house. He continued sedately to eat and drink.

“My Bimbo,” she said as if he had spoken aloud, “is having his bit of afternoon kip. We were latish last night. One of my parties. Quite a pure one, but I suppose you know about that.”

“Yes, it sounded a huge success,” Alleyn said politely. He laid down his knife and fork and got up. “That was delicious,” he said. “Thank you very much, jolly kind of you to think of it.”

“Not at all,” she murmured, coming at him with cigarettes and a lighter and an ineffable look.

“May we sit down?” Alleyn suggested and noticed that she took a chair facing a glare of uncompromising light: she was evidently one of those rare ugly, provocative women who can’t be bothered taking the usual precautions.

“I’ve got to ask you one or two pretty important questions,” Alleyn said. “And the first is this. Have you by any chance had a letter from Mr. Pyke Period? This morning, perhaps?”

She stared at him. “Golly, yes! I’d forgotten all about it. He must be dotty, poor lamb. How did you know?”

Alleyn disregarded this question. “Why dotty?” he asked.

“Judge for yourself.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, leant across him and pulled out a drawer in her desk, taking her time about it. “Here it is,” she said and dropped a letter in front of him. “Go on,” she said. “Read it.”

It was written in Mr. Period’s old-fashioned hand, on his own letter paper.

My dear:

Please don’t think it too silly of me to be fussed about a little thing, but I can’t help feeling that you might very naturally have drawn a quite unwarrantable conclusion from the turn our conversation took today. It really is a little too much to have to defend one’s own ancestry, but I care enough about such matters to feel I must assure you that mine goes back as far as I, or anyone else, might wish. I’m afraid Hal, poor dear, has developed a slight thing on the subject. But, never mind! I don’t! Forgive me for bothering you, but I know you will understand.

As ever,

P.P.P.

“Have you any idea,” Alleyn said, “what he’s driving at?”

“Not a notion. He dined here last night and was normal.”

“Would you have expected another sort of letter from him?”

“Another sort? What sort? Oh! I see what you mean. About Ormsbury, poor brute? He’s dead, you know.”

“Yes.”

“With P.P.’s passion for condolences it would have been more likely. You mean he’s done the wrong thing? So, who was meant to have this one?”

“May I at all events keep it?”

“Do if you want to.”

Alleyn pocketed the letter. “I’d better say at once that you may have been the last person to speak to Harold Cartell, not excepting his murderer.”

She had a cigarette ready in her mouth and the flame from the lighter didn’t waver until she drew on it,

“How do you make that out?” she asked easily. “Oh, I know. Somebody’s told you about the balcony scene. Who? Andrew, I suppose, or his girl. Or P.P., of course. He cut in on it from his window.”

“So you had a brace of Romeos in reverse?”

“Like hell I did. Both bald, and me, if we face it, not quite the dewy job either.”

Alleyn found himself at once relishing this speech and knowing that she had intended him to have exactly that reaction.

“The dewy jobs,” he said, “have their limitations.”

“Whereas for me,” Désirée said, suddenly overdoing it, “the sky’s the limit. Did you know that?”

He decided to disregard this and pressed on. “Why,” he asked, “having deposited Mr. Period at his garden gate, did you leave the car, cross the ditch and serenade Mr. Cartell?”

“I saw him at his window and thought it would be fun.”

“What did you say?”

“I think I said: ‘But soft, what light from yonder window breaks?’ ”

“And after that?”

“I really don’t remember. I pulled his leg a bit.”

“Did you tell him you were on the warpath?”

There was a fractional pause before she said: “Well, I must say P.P. has sharp ears for an elderly gent. Yes, I did. It meant nothing.”