Ngaio Marsh - Swing, Brother, Swing

‘I’ll go up to Hendy,’ she thought. ‘I’ll ask Hendy to tell them I’m not coming to the Metronome.’

She went out on the landing. Somewhere on the second floor her stepfather’s voice shouted: ‘My sombrero, you silly chap – somebody’s taken it. That’s all. Somebody’s collared it.’ Spence came through the drawing-room door, carrying an envelope on a salver.

‘It’s for you, Miss,’ he said. ‘It was left on the hall table. I’m sure I’m very sorry it was not noticed before.’

She took it. It was addressed in typescript. Across the top was printed a large ‘Urgent’ with ‘by District Messenger’ underneath. Félicité returned to the study and tore it open.

Three minutes later Miss Henderson’s door was flung open and she, lifting her gaze from her book, saw Félicité, glowing before her.

‘Hendy – Hendy, come and help me dress. Hendy, come and make me lovely. Something marvellous has happened. Hendy, darling, it’s going to be a wonderful party.’

Against a deep blue background the arm of a giant metronome kept up its inane and constant gesture. It was outlined in miniature lights, and to those patrons who had drunk enough, it left in its wake a formal ghost-pattern of itself in colour. It was mounted on part of the wall overhanging the band alcove. The ingenious young man responsible for the décor had so designed this alcove that the band platform itself appeared as a projection from the skeleton tower of the metronome. The tip of the arm swept to and fro above the bandsmen’s heads in a maddening reiterative arc, pointing them out, insisting on their noise. This idea had been considered ‘great fun’ by the ingenious young man but it had been found advisable to switch off the mechanism from time to time and when this was done the indicator pointed downwards. Either Breezy Bellairs or a favoured soloist was careful to place himself directly beneath the light-studded pointer at its tip.

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