Читать книгу Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 3: Death in a White Tie, Overture to Death, Death at the Bar - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 23

MYSTERY OF UNKNOWN FARE

‘Bunchy’ Gospell dead

Who was the Man in Dress Clothes?

Miss Harris finished her cup of tea but her bread and butter remained untasted on her plate. She told herself she did not fancy it. Miss Harris was gravely upset. She had encountered a question to which she did not know the answer and she found herself unable to stuff it away in one of her pigeon-holes. The truth was Miss Harris’s heart was touched. She had seen Lord Robert several times in Lady Carrados’s house and last night Lord Robert had danced with her. When Lady Carrados asked Miss Harris if she would like to come to the ball she had never for a moment expected to dance at it. She had expected to spend a gratifying but exceedingly lonely night watching the fruits of her own labours. Her expectations had been realized until the moment when Lord Robert asked her to dance, and from then onwards Miss Harris had known a sort of respectable rapture. He had found her on the upper landing where she was sitting by herself outside the little green boudoir. She had just come out of the ‘Ladies’ and had had an embarrassing experience practically in the doorway. So she had sat on a chair on the landing to recover her poise and because there did not seem to be anywhere else much to go. Then she had pulled herself together and gone down to the ballroom. She was trying to look happy and not lost when Lord Robert came up and remembered his request that they should dance. And dance they did, round and round in the fast Viennese waltz, and Lord Robert had said he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much for ages. They had joined a group of dizzily ‘right’ people and one of them, Miss Agatha Troy the famous painter it was, had talked to her as if they had been introduced. And then, when the band played another fast Viennese waltz because they were fashionable, Miss Harris and Lord Robert had danced again and had afterwards taken champagne at the buffet. That had been quite late – not long before the ball ended. How charming he had been, making her laugh a great deal and feel like a human young woman of thirty and not a dependent young lady of no age at all.

And now, here he was, murdered.

Miss Harris was so upset that she could not eat her breakfast. She glanced automatically at her watch. Twelve o’clock. She was to be at Lady Carrados’s house by two in case she was needed. If she was quick she would have time to write an exciting letter home to the Buckinghamshire vicarage. The girl-friend with whom she shared the flatlet was still asleep. She was a night operator in a telephone exchange. But Miss Harris’s bosom could contain this dreadful news no longer. She rose, opened the bedroom door and said:

‘Smithy!’

‘Uh!’

‘Smithy, something awful has happened. Listen!’

‘Uh?’

‘The girl has just brought in a paper. It’s about Lord Gospell. I mean Lord Robert Gospell. You know. I told you about him last night –’

‘For God’s sake!’ said Miss Smith. ‘Did you have to wake me up again to hear all about your social successes?’

‘No, but Smithy, listen! It’s simply frightful! He’s murdered.’

Miss Smith sat up in bed looking like a sort of fabulous goddess in her mass of tin curling-pins.

‘My dear, he isn’t,’ said Miss Smith.

‘My dear, he is!’ said Miss Harris.