Ngaio Marsh - Hand in Glove

“Well—”

“Come on. Honestly.”

“There wasn’t anything to think. Just a rather negative, fashionable, ambiguous sort of person.”

“I simply can’t imagine what persuaded my Mama to marry him. Well, I suppose I can, really.” Andrew hit his closed fist once upon the driving wheel. “Still, don’t let’s talk about that.”

He drove on for some minutes in silence while Nicola tried to sort out her desperate misgivings. “Andrew,” she said at last, and because he answered “What, dear?” so gently, and with such an old-fashioned air, found herself at a complete disadvantage.

“Look,” she said. “Have you thought — I know it’s fantastic — but have you…?”

“All right,” Andrew said. “I know. Have I thought that Hal’s death is a material advantage to me and that your Cid probably knows it? Yes, I have. Strangely enough, it doesn’t alarm me. Nicola, it’s not fair to wish all this business on you. Here I am, doing nothing but talk about me and setting myself up as an insufferable egoist, no doubt. Am I boring you very much?”

“No,” Nicola said truthfully. “You’re not doing that. You’re talking about yourself, which is the usual thing.”

“My God!” Andrew ejaculated. “How very chastening.”

“This time it’s a bit different.”

“Is it? How much?”

“No,” Nicola said. “Don’t let’s rush our fences. We only met yesterday morning. Everything’s being precipitated like one of those boring chemical experiments. Don’t let’s pay too much attention.”

“Just as you like,” he said huffily. “I was going to ask if you’d dine with me. Is that too precipitate?”

“I expect it is, really, but I’d like to. Thank you, Andrew. I have a motive.”

“And what the hell is that?”

“I did mention it before. I’m going to visit Troy Alleyn this evening, and I wondered if you’d come with me and show her a picture. As I told you, the Cid says she’d be delighted.”

Andrew was silent for a moment and then burst out laughing. “Well, I must say!” he ejaculated. “As one of the suspects in a murder charge — yes, I am, Nicola. You can’t escape it — I’m being invited to pay a social call on the chief cop’s wife. How dotty can you get?”

“Well, why not?”

“Will he be there? No, I suppose not. He’ll be lying flat on his stomach in Green Lane looking for my boot-prints.”

“So it’s a date?”

“It’s a date.”

“Then, shall we collect your pictures? I live quite close to the Alleyns. Could you make do with an omelette in my flat?”

“Do you share it with two other nice girls?”

“No.”

“Then I’d love to.”

Nicola’s flat was a converted studio off the Brompton Road. It was large and airy and extremely uncluttered. The walls were white and the curtains and chairs yellow. A workmanlike desk stood against the north window and a pot of yellow tulips on the table. There was only one picture, hung above the fireplace. Andrew went straight to it.

“Gosh,” he said, “it’s a Troy. And it’s you.”

“It was for my twenty-first birthday, last year. Wasn’t it wonderful of her?”

There was a long silence. “Wonderful,” Andrew said. “Wonderful.” And she left him to look at it while she rang Troy Alleyn and then set to work in her kitchen.

They had cold soup, an omelette, white wine, cheese and salad, and their meal was extremely successful. They both behaved in an exemplary manner, and if their inclination to depart from this standard crackled in the air all round them, they contrived to disregard it. They talked and talked and were happy.

“It’s almost nine o’clock,” Nicola said. “We mustn’t be too late at Troy’s. She’ll be delighted to see you, by the way.”

“Will she?”

“Why did you leave your pictures in the car?”

“I don’t know. Well, yes I do, but it doesn’t matter. Wouldn’t it be nice to stay here?”

“Come on,” Nicola said firmly.

When they had shut the door behind them, Andrew took her hands in his, thanked her for his entertainment and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“Here we go,” he said.

They collected the canvases from the car and walked to the Alleyns’ house, which was at the end of a blind street near Montpelier Square. It was such a natural and familiar thing for Nicola to take this evening walk that her anxieties left her, and by the time they reached their destination and Troy herself opened the door to them, she felt nothing but pleasure in their expedition.

Troy was wearing the black trousers and smock that meant she had been working. Her shortish dark hair capped a spare head and fell in a single lock across her forehead. Andrew stood to attention and carried his canvases as if they were something rather disgraceful that had been found in the guardroom.

“I’m in the studio,” Troy said. “Shall we go there? It’s a better light.”

Andrew himself fell in and followed them.

There was a large charcoal drawing on the easel in Troy’s studio: a woman with a cat. On the table where Troy had been working were other drawings under a strong lamp.

Andrew said: “Mrs. Alleyn, it’s terribly kind of you to let me come.”

“Why?” Troy said, cheerfully. “You’re going to show me some work, aren’t you?”

“Oh God!” Andrew said. “So Nicola tells me.”

Troy looked at him in a friendly manner and began to talk about the subject of the drawing, saying how paintable and silly she was, always changing her hair and coming in the wrong clothes, and that the drawing was a study for a full-scale portrait. Andrew eased up a little.

Nicola said: “There are one or two things to explain.”

“Not as many as you may think. Rory rang up an hour ago from Little Codling.”

“Did he tell you about Andrew’s stepfather?”

“Yes, he did. I expect,” Troy said to Andrew, “it seems unreal as well as dreadful, doesn’t it?”

“In a way it does. We — I didn’t see much of him. I mean—”

“Andrew,” Nicola said, “insists that the Cid has got him down among the suspects.”

“Well, it’s not for me to say,” Troy replied, “but I didn’t think it sounded like that. Let’s have a look at your things.”

She took her drawing off the easel and put it against the wall. Andrew dropped all his paintings on the floor with a sudden crash. “I’m frightfully sorry,” he said.

“Come on,” Troy said. “I’m not a dentist. Put it on the easel.”

The first painting was a still life: tulips on a window sill in a red goblet with rooftops beyond them.

“Hul-lo!” Troy said and sat down in front of it.

Nicola wished she knew a great deal more about painting. She could see it was incisive, freely done and lively, with a feeling for light and colour. She realized that she would have liked it very much if she had come across it somewhere else. It didn’t look at all amateurish.

“Yes, well of course,” Troy said, and it was clear that she meant: “Of course you’re a painter and you were right to show me this.” She went on talking to Andrew, asking him about his palette and the conditions under which he worked. Then she saw his next canvas, which was a portrait. Désirée’s flaming hair and cadaverous eyes leapt out of a flowery background. She had sat in a glare of sunlight and the treatment was far from being conventional.

“My mum,” Andrew said.

“You had fun with the colour, didn’t you? Don’t you find the eye-round-the-corner hell to manage in a three-quarter head? This one hasn’t quite come off, has it? Look, it’s that dab of pink that hits up. Now, let’s see the next one.”

The next and last one was a male torso uncompromisingly set against a white wall. It had been painted with exhaustive attention to anatomy. “Heavens!” Troy ejaculated. “You’ve practically skinned the man.” She looked at it for some time and then said: “Well, what are you going to do about this? Would you like to work here once a week?”