Читать книгу Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 8: Death at the Dolphin, Hand in Glove, Dead Water - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 20

Moppett had changed into the evening-dress she kept in her bedroom at Miss Cartell’s house. It was geranium red, very décolleté and flagrantly becoming to her. She lay back in her chair, admiring her arms and glancing up from under her eyebrows at Mr Cartell.

‘Auntie Con’s at a Hunt Club committee do of sorts,’ she said. ‘She’ll be in presently. Leonard’s collecting his dinner-jacket off the bus.’

‘I am glad,’ Mr Cartell said, giving her one look and thereafter keeping his gaze on his own folded hands, ‘of the opportunity to speak to you in private. I will be obliged if, as far as my sister is concerned, you treat our conversation as confidential. There is no need, at this juncture, to cause her unnecessary distress.’

‘Dear me,’ she murmured, ‘you terrify me, Uncle Hal.’

‘I will also be obliged if the assumption of a relationship which does not exist is discontinued.’

‘Anything you say,’ she agreed after a pause, ‘Mr Cartell.’

‘I have two matters to put before you. The first is this. The young man, Leonard Leiss, with whom you appear to have formed a close friendship, is known to the police. If he persists in his present habits it will only be a matter of time before he is in serious trouble and, if you continue in your association with him, you will undoubtedly become involved. To a criminal extent. I would prefer, naturally, to think you were unaware of his proclivities, but I must say that I am unable to do so.’

‘I certainly am unaware of anything of the sort and I don’t believe a word of it.’

‘That,’ Mr Cartell said, ‘is nonsense.’

‘I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid it’s you that’s talking nonsense. All this to-do because poor Leonard wants to buy a car and I simply mention to Copper that Auntie Con – I hope you don’t mind if I go on calling her that – knows him and that you and P.P. might give him the okay. It was only a matter of form, anyway. Of course, if we’d thought you wouldn’t like it we wouldn’t have dreamt of doing it. I’m jolly sorry we did and Leonard is, too.’

Mr Cartell raised his eyes and looked at her. For a moment she boggled, but only for a moment. ‘And I must say,’ she said boldly, ‘we both take a pretty poor view of you coming to Baynesholme and creating a scene. Not that it made any difference with Lady Bantling. She’s asked us both for tonight in spite of whatever nonsense she may have been told about us,’ Moppett announced and laughed rather shrilly.

He waited for a moment and then said: ‘It would be idle to discuss this matter any further. I shall turn to my second point and put it very bluntly. What did you do with Mr Period’s cigarette-case?’

Moppett recrossed her legs and waited much too long before she said: ‘I don’t know what you mean?’

‘Precisely what I have said. You and Leiss examined it after luncheon. What did you do with it?’

‘How dare you’ – Moppett began – ‘how dare you –’ and Leonard came into the room.

When he saw Mr Cartell he fetched up short. ‘Pardon me,’ he said elegantly. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

Moppett extended her arm towards him. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I’m being badgered. Can you cope?’

He took her hand and sat on the arm of her chair. ‘What goes on?’ he asked. He was normally a white-faced young man: this characteristic at the moment was particularly noticeable.

‘To be perfectly honest,’ Moppett began, ‘I haven’t a clue. But it appears that we’re meant to know where poor old P.P. puts his museum pieces.’

‘Mr Period’s cigarette-case has disappeared,’ Mr Cartell said, addressing Leonard exclusively. ‘You and Miss Ralston were the last persons known to handle it. You may care to make a statement as to what you did with it.’

Leonard said: ‘Disappeared! By Jove, that’s too bad, isn’t it?’ His pale fingers closed tightly over Moppett’s. ‘Of course, we must help if we can. Yes, now – yes. I do remember. I left it on the window-ledge in the dining-room. You remember, sweetie, don’t you?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Was the window open or shut?’

‘Oh,’ Leonard said easily, ‘open. Yes. Open.’

‘Did you open it, Mr Leiss?’

‘Me? What would I do that for? It was open.’

‘It was shut,’ Mr Cartell said, ‘during luncheon.’

‘Then I suppose the butler-chap – what’s-’is-name – must have opened it.’

‘No.’

‘That,’ Leonard remarked, smiling, ‘is what he says.’

‘It is what I say.’

‘Then I’m afraid I don’t much fancy the way you say it.’ Leonard produced a silver case from his pocket, offered it to Moppett, helped himself and with great deliberation, lit both cigarettes. He snapped the case shut, smiled at Mr Cartell and returned it to his pocket. He inhaled deeply, breathed out the vapour and fanned it with his hand. He wore an emerald ring on his little finger. ‘How about the sewer in the lane?’ he asked. ‘Anything in that?’

‘They could not open the window from outside.’

‘Perhaps it was opened for them.’

Mr Cartell stood up. ‘Mr Leiss,’ he said, ‘I consider myself responsible to Mr Period for any visitors who, however unwelcome, come to his house under my aegis. Unless his case is returned within the next twelve hours, I shall call in the police.’

‘You’re quite an expert at that, aren’t you?’ Leonard remarked. He looked at the tip of his cigarette. ‘One other thing,’ he said. ‘I resent the way you’re handling this, Mr Cartell, and I know exactly what I can do about it.’

Mr Cartell observed him with a sort of astonished disgust. He addressed himself to Moppett. ‘There’s no point,’ he said, ‘in pursuing this conversation.’

A door banged, footsteps were heard in the hall together with an outbreak of yapping and long drawn-out whines. A loud, uninhibited voice shouted: ‘Geddown! Geddown, you brute.’ There followed a canine yelp and a renewed outbreak of yapping.

‘Quiet, Li. Quiet sweetie. Who the hell let this blasted mongrel in! Trudi!’

‘I have changed my mind,’ Mr Cartell said. ‘I shall speak to my sister.’

He went out and found her, clasping a frenzied Pekinese to her bosom, kicking Pixie and shouting at her Austrian house-parlourmaid.

‘My God, Boysie,’ she said when she saw her brother, ‘are you dotty, bringing that thing in here. Take it out. Take it out!’

The Pekinese turned in her arms and bit her thumb.

Mr Cartell said with dignity: ‘Come along, old girl, you’re not wanted.’ He withdrew Pixie to the garden, tied her to the gate-post and returned to the hall where he found his sister staunching her wound. The Pekinese had been removed.

‘I am sorry, Constance. I apologize. Had I imagined –’

‘Oh, come off it,’ Miss Cartell rejoined. ‘You’re hopeless with animals and let’s leave it at that. If you want to see me, come in here while I get some stuff on my thumb.’

He followed her into her ‘den’: a small room, crowded with photographs that she had long ago ceased to look at with the possible exception of those that recorded the progress of Moppett from infancy to her present dubious effulgence.

Miss Cartell rummaged in a drawer and found some cotton-wool which she applied to her thumb with stamp-paper and a heavy coating of some black and evil-smelling unguent.

‘What is that revolting stuff?’ asked her brother, taking out his handkerchief.

‘I use it on my mare for girth-gall.’

‘Really, Connie!’

‘Really what? Now then, Boysie,’ she said, ‘what’s up? I can see you’re in one of your moods. Let’s have a drink and hear all about it.’

‘I don’t want a drink, Connie.’

‘Why not? I do,’ she shouted, with her inevitable gust of laughter and opened a little cupboard. ‘I’ve been having a go at the Hunt Club,’ she added and embarked on a vigorous exposé of a kennelmaid. Mr Cartell suffered her to thrust a whisky-and-soda into his hand and listened to her with something like despair.

In the end he managed to get her to attend to him. He saw the expected and familiar look of obstinacy come into her face.

‘I can’t put it too strongly, Connie,’ he said. ‘The fellow’s a bad lot and unless you put your foot down, the girl’s going to be involved in serious trouble.’

But it was no use. She said, readily enough, that she would tackle Moppett, but almost at once she began to defend her and before long they had both lost their tempers and had become a middle-aged brother and sister furiously at odds.

‘The trouble with you, Boysie, is that you’ve grown so damned selfish. I don’t wonder Desirée got rid of you. All you think of is your own comfort. You’ve worked yourself up into a stink because you’re dead scared P.P. will turn you out.’

‘That’s an insufferable construction to put on it. Naturally, I don’t relish the thought –’

‘There you are, you see.’

‘Nonsense, Constance! Will you realize that you are entertaining a young man with a criminal record?’

‘Moppett has told me all about him. She’s taken him in hand and he’s going as straight as a die.’

‘You’ve made yourself responsible for Mary, you appear to be quite besotted on her and yet you can allow her to form a criminal association –’

‘There’s nothing like that about it. She’s sorry for him.’

‘She’ll be sorry for herself before long.’

‘Why?’

‘This cigarette-case –’

‘P.P.’ll find it somewhere. You’ve no right –’

‘I have every right,’ Mr Cartell cried, now quite beside himself with chagrin. ‘And I tell you this, Connie. The girl is a bad girl. If you’ve any authority over her, you’d better use it. But in my opinion your sensible course would be to let her be brought to book and pay the consequences. She’s got a record, Connie. You’ll be well rid of her. And I promise you that unless this wretched cigarette-case is returned before tomorrow, I shall call in the police.’

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘I shall. And the upshot no doubt will be gaol for the pair of them.’

‘You miserable little pip-squeak, Boysie!’

‘Very well,’ Mr Cartell said and rose. ‘That’s my final word, Connie. Good evening to you.’

He strode from the hall into the garden where he fell over his dog. With some commotion, they effected an exit and returned, presumably, to Mr Period’s house across the green.