Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

“I don’t want to go in there,” Moppett said with a sidelong look at the mortuary. “That’s the dead-place, isn’t it?”

“We’ll use the Station,” Alleyn said, and to that small yellowwood office she was taken. The window was open. From a neighbouring garden came an insistent chatteration of birdsong and the smell of earth and violets. Fox shut a side door that led into the yard. Moppett sat down.

“Mind if I smoke?” she said.

Alleyn gave her a cigarette. She kept her hands in her pockets while he lit it. She then began to talk rapidly in a voice that was pitched above its natural level.

“I can’t be long. Lennie thinks I’m dropping the car at the garage. It’s sprung a leak,” she added unnecessarily, “in its waterworks. He’d be livid if he knew I was here. He’s livid anyway about the gloves. He swears they were in his overcoat pocket.”

Alleyn said: “They were not there when we collected the coat. Did he have them last night, do you know?”

“He didn’t wear them. He wore his other ones. He’s jolly fussy about his gloves,” said Moppett. “I tell him Freud would have had something to say about it. And now I suppose I’ll get the rocket.”

“Why?”

“Well, because of yesterday afternoon. When we were at Baynesholme. We changed cars,” Moppett said, without herself changing colour, “and I collected his overcoat from the car he decided not to buy. He says the gloves were in the pocket of the coat.”

“What did you do with the coat?”

“That’s just what I can’t remember. We drove back to Auntie Con’s to dine and change for the party, and our things were still in the car. His overcoat and mine. I suppose I bunged the lot out while he went off to buy cigarettes.”

“You don’t remember where you put the overcoat?”

“I should think I just dumped it in the car. I usually do.”

“Mr. Leiss’s coat was in his wardrobe this morning.”

“That’s right. Trudi put it there, I expect. She’s got a letch for Lennie, that girl. Perhaps she pinched his gloves. And now I come to think of it,” Moppett said, “I wouldn’t mind betting she did.”

“Did you at any time wear the gloves yourself?”

After a longish silence Moppett said: “That’s funny. Lennie says I did. He says I pulled them on during the drive from London yesterday morning. I don’t remember. I might or I might not. If I did I just don’t know where I left them.”

“Did he wear his overcoat when you returned to Baynesholme for the party?”

“No,” Moppett said, quickly. “No, he didn’t. It was rather warm.” She got to her feet. “I ought to be going back,” she said. “You don’t have to tell Lennie I came, do you? He’s a bit tricky about that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Well — you know.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

She watched him for a second or two: then, literally, she bared her teeth at him. It was exactly as if she had, at the same time, laid back her ears. “You’re lying,” she said. “I know. You’ve found them, and you’re sticking to them. I know the sort of things you do.”

“That statement,” Alleyn said mildly, “is utter nonsense, and you will create an extremely bad impression if you persist in it. You have reported the loss of the gloves and the loss has been noted. Is there anything else you would like to discuss?”

“My God, no!” she said and walked out of the Station. They heard her start up the car and go roaring off down the lane.

“Now, what do we make of that little lot?” Fox asked.

“What we have to do is find the damn’ gloves.”

“He’ll have got rid of them. Or tried to. Or else she really has lost them and he’s dead-scared we’ll pick them up. That’d be a good enough reason for him giving her the works.”

“Hold on, Br’er Fox. You’re getting yourself wedded to a bit of hearsay evidence.”

“Am I?”

“We’ve only her word that he’s giving her fits.”

“That’s right,” Fox agreed in his rather heavy way. “So we have.” He ruminated for a short time. “Opportunity?” he said.

“They collared a bottle of their host’s champagne and set themselves up in his study. He had to turf them out, I gather, at the tag end of the party. And, by the way, he handed Leiss his overcoat, so that bit was a lie. I imagine they could have nipped off and back again without much trouble. It may interest you to learn, Br’er Fox, that when they were discovered by Bimbo Dodds, Mr. Leiss was assuring his girl friend that Mr. Cartell was disposed of and she had no need to worry.”

“Good gracious.”

“Makes you fink, don’t it?”

“When was this?”

“Dodds thinks it was about two a.m. He, by the way, is the B. A. Dodds who was mixed up in the night club affair that later became the Hacienda case and Leonard Leiss is a member of the Hacienda.”

“Fancy!”

“Of course he may have invented the whole story. Or mistaken the implication.”

“Two a.m. About . The only firm time we’ve got out of the whole lot,” Fox grumbled, “is one a.m. According to everybody, the deceased always took the dog out at one. Mr. Belt and Mrs. Mitchell reckon he used to wait till he heard the church clock. The last car from the treasure hunt was back at Baynesholme by midnight. Yes,” Fox concluded sadly, “it was an open field all right.”

“Did either Alfred or Mrs. Mitchell hear anything?”

“Not a thing. They’re both easy sleepers. Alfred,” Fox sighed, “was thinking of turning in his job, and she was thinking of following suit.”

“Why?”

“He reckoned he couldn’t take the new setup. The bitch worried him. Not even clean, Mrs. Mitchell says. And the deceased seems to have suggested that Alfred might have had something to do with the missing cigarette case, which, Mrs. Mitchell says, Alfred took great exception to. They were both very upset, because they’ve been there so long and didn’t fancy a change at their time of life. Alfred went so far as to tell Mr. Period that it was either them or Mr. Cartell.”

“When did he do that, Fox?”

“Last evening. Mr. Period was horribly put out about it, Mrs. Mitchell says. He made out life wouldn’t be worth living without Alfred and her. And he practically undertook to terminate Mr. Cartell’s tenancy. They’d never known him to be in such a taking-on. Quite frantic, was the way she put it.”

“Indeed?…I think he cooked the baptismal register, all right, Fox, and I think Mr. Cartell rumbled it,” Alleyn said, and described his visit to Ribblethorpe.

“Now, isn’t that peculiar behaviour!” Fox exclaimed. “A gentleman going to those lengths to make out he’s something he is not. You’d hardly credit it.”

“You’d better, because I’ve a strong hunch that this case may well turn about Mr. Period’s obsession. And it is an obsession, Br’er Fox. He’s been living in a world of fantasy, and it’s in danger of exploding over his head.”

“Lor!” Fox remarked, comfortably.

“When you retire in fifty years’ time,” Alleyn said with an affectionate glance at his colleague, “you must write a monograph on Snobs I Have Known . It’s a fruitful field and it has yet to be exhausted. Shall I tell you what I think might be the Period story?”

“I’d be obliged,” said Fox.

“Well, then. A perfectly respectable upper-middle-class origin. A natural inclination for grandeur and a pathologically sensitive nose for class distinctions. Money, from whatever source, at an early enough age to provide the suitable setting. Employment that brings him in touch with the sort of people he wants, God save the mark, to cultivate. And all this, Br’er Fox, in, let us say, the twenties, when class distinctions were comparatively unjolted. It would be during this period — what a name he’s got, to be sure! — that a fantasy began to solidify. He became used to the sort of people he had admired, felt himself to be one of them, scarcely remembered his natural background and began to think of himself as one of the nobs. The need for justification nagged at him. He’s got this unusual name. Somebody said: ‘By the way, are you any relation to the Period who married one of the Ribblethorpe Pykes?’ and he let it be thought he was. So he began to look into the Ribblethorpe Pykes and Periods and found that both sides have died out. It would be about now that ‘Pyke’ was adopted as a second name — not hyphenated, but always used. He may have done it by deed poll. That, of course, can be checked. And — well, there you are. I daresay that by now he’d persuaded himself he was all he claimed to be and was happily established in his own fairy tale until Cartell, by some chance, was led to do a little private investigation and, being exasperated beyond measure, blew the gaff at yesterday’s luncheon party. And if that,” Alleyn concluded, “is not an excursion into the hateful realms of surmise and conjecture, I don’t know what it is.”