Ngaio Marsh: Hand in Glove

FOR

JONATHAN ELSOM

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Alfred Belt — Manservant to Mr. Period

Mrs. Mitchell — Cook to Mr. Period

Mr. Percival Pyke Period

Nicola Maitland-Mayne

Désirée, Lady Bantling — Now Mrs. Bimbo Dodds, formerly Mrs. Harold Cartell, n ée Désirée Ormsbury

Andrew Bantling — Her son by her first marriage

Bimbo Dodds — Her third and present husband

Mr. Harold Cartell — Her second husband

Constance Cartell — His sister

Trudi — Her maid

Mary Ralston (“Moppett”) — Her adopted niece

Leonard Leiss

George Copper — Garage proprietor

Mrs. Nicholls — Wife of Vicar of Ribblethorpe

Superintendent Williams — Little Codling constabulary

Sergeant Noakes — Little Codling constabulary

A foreman drainlayer

Superintendent Roderick Alleyn — C.I.D. New Scotland Yard

Agatha Troy Alleyn — Wife of Superintendent Alleyn

Inspector Fox — C.I.D. New Scotland Yard

Detective Sergeant Thompson — C.I.D. New Scotland Yard

Detective Sergeant Bailey — C.I.D. New Scotland Yard

Sir James Curtis — Pathologist

Dr. Elkington

While he waited for the water to boil, Alfred Belt stared absently at the kitchen calendar: with the compliments of the Little Codling garage. Service with a smile. Geo. Copper . Below this legend was a coloured photograph of a kitten in a boot and below that the month of March. Alfred removed them and exposed a coloured photograph of a little girl smirking through apple blossoms.

He warmed a silver teapot engraved on its belly with Mr. Pyke Period’s crest: a fish. He re-folded the Daily Telegraph and placed it on the breakfast tray. The toaster sprang open, the electric kettle shrieked. Alfred made tea, put the toast in a silver rack, transferred bacon and eggs from pan to crested entrée dish, and carried the whole upstairs.

He tapped at his employer’s door and entered. Mr. Pyke Period, a silver-haired bachelor with a fresh complexion, stirred in his bed, gave a little snort, opened his large brown eyes, mumbled his lips, and blushed.

Alfred said: “Good morning, sir.” He placed the tray and turned away, in order that Mr. Period could assume his teeth in privacy. He drew back the curtains. The Village Green looked fresh in the early light. Decorous groups of trees, already burgeoning, showed fragile against distant hills. Woodsmoke rose delicately from several chimneys, and in Miss Cartell’s house, across the Green, her Austrian maid shook a duster out of an upstairs window. In the field beyond, Miss Cartell’s mare grazed peacefully.

“Good morning, Alfred,” Mr. Period responded, now fully articulate.

Alfred drew back the curtains from the side window, exposing a small walled garden, a gardener’s shed, a path, and a gate into a lane. Beyond the gate was a trench, bridged with planks and flanked by piled-up earth. Three labourers had assembled beside it.

“Those chaps still at it in the lane, sir,” said Alfred, returning to the bedside. He placed Mr. Period’s spectacles on his tray and poured his tea.

“Damn’ tedious of them, I must say. However! Good God!” Mr. Period mildly ejaculated. He had opened his paper and was reading the obituary notices. Alfred waited.

“Lord Ormsbury’s gone,” Mr. Period informed him.

“Gone, sir?”

“Died. Yesterday, it seems. Motor accident. Terrible thing. Fifty-two, it gives here. One never knows. ‘Survived by his sister…’ ” He made a small sound of displeasure.

“That would be Désirée, Lady Bantling, sir, wouldn’t it,” Alfred ventured, “at Baynesholme?”

“Exactly, Alfred. Precisely. And what must these fellows do but call her ‘The Dowager’! She hates it. Always has. And not even correct, if it comes to that. One would have expected the Telegraph to know better.” He read on. A preoccupied look, indeed one might almost have said a look of pleasurable anticipation, settled about his rather babyish mouth.

Below, in the garden, a dog began to bark hysterically.

“Good God!” Mr. Period said quietly and closed his eyes.

“I’ll attend to her, sir.”

“I cannot for the life of me see… However!”

“Will there be anything further, sir?" Alfred asked.

“What? No. No, thank you. Miss Cartell for luncheon, you remember. And Miss Maitland-Mayne.”

“Certainly, sir. Arriving by the 10:20. Will there be anything required in the library, sir?”

“I can’t think of anything. She’s bringing her own typewriter.” Mr. Period looked over the top of his paper and appeared to come to a decision. “Her grandfather,” he said, “was General Maitland-Mayne. An old friend of mine.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Ah — yes. Yes. And her father. Killed at Dunkirk. Great loss.”

A padded footfall was heard in the passage. A light tattoo sounded on the door, and a voice, male but pitched rather high, called out: “Bath’s empty. For what it’s worth.” The steps receded.

Mr. Period repeated his sound of irritation.

“Have I or have I not,” he muttered, “taken my bath in the evening for seven uncomfortable weeks?” He glanced at Alfred. “Well, well,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Alfred rejoined and withdrew. As he crossed the landing, he heard Mr. Cartell singing in his bedroom. It won’t answer, Alfred thought, I never supposed it would — and descended to the kitchen. Here he found Mrs. Mitchell, the cook, a big and uninhibited woman. They exchanged routine observations, agreeing that spring really did seem to have come.

“All hotsy-totsy in the upper regions?” Mrs. Mitchell asked.

“As well as can be expected, Mrs. M.”

A shrill yelp modulating into a long-drawn-out howl sounded outside. “That dog!” Mrs. Mitchell said.

Alfred went to the back door and opened it. An enormous half-bred boxer hurled itself against his legs and rushed past him to the kitchen. “Bitch!” Alfred said factually, but with feeling.

“Lay down! Get out of my kitchen! Shoo!” Mrs. Mitchell cried confusedly.

“Here — Pixie!”

The boxer slavered, ogled and threshed its tail.

“Upstairs! Pixie! Up to your master.”

Alfred seized the bitch’s collar and lugged it into the hall. A whistle sounded above. The animal barked joyously, flung itself up the stairs, skating and floundering as it went. Alfred sent a very raw observation after it and returned to the kitchen.

“It’s too much,” he said. “We never bargained for it. Never.”

“I don’t mind a nice cat.”

“Exactly. And the damage it does!”

“Shocking. Your breakfast’s ready, Mr. Belt. New-laid egg.”

“Very nice,” Alfred said.

He sat down to it, a neat dark man with quite an air about him, Mrs. Mitchell considered. She watched him make an incisive stab at the egg. The empty shell splintered and collapsed. Mrs. Mitchell, in a trembling voice, said: “First of April, Mr. B.,” and threw her apron over her face. He was so completely silent that for a moment she thought he must be annoyed. However, when she peeped round her apron, he shook his eggspoon at her.

“You wait,” he threatened. “You just wait, my lady. That’s all.”

“To think of you falling for an old wheeze like that.”

“And I changed the calendar, too.”

“Never mind. There’s the genuine article, look. Under your serviette.”