Читать книгу Black As He’s Painted - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 8
ОглавлениеMr Whipplestone had been in residence for over a month. He was thoroughly settled, comfortable and contented and yet by no means lethargically so. On the contrary, he had been stimulated by his change of scene and felt lively. Already he was tuned in to life in the Capricorns. ‘Really,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘it’s like a little village set down in the middle of London. One runs repeatedly into the same people in the shops. On warm evenings the inhabitants stroll about the streets. One may drop in at the Sun in Splendour where one finds, I’m happy to say, a very respectable, nay, quite a distinguished, white port.’
He had been in the habit of keeping a diary for some years. Until now it had confined itself to the dry relation of facts with occasionally a touch of the irony for which he had been slightly famous at the FO. Now, under the stimulus of his new environment, the journal expanded and became, at times, almost skittish.
The evening was very warm. His window was open and the curtains, too. An afterglow had suffused the plane trees and kindled the dome of the Basilica but now was faded. There was a smell of freshly-watered gardens in the air and the pleasant sound of footfalls mingling with quiet voices drifted in at the open window. The muted roar of Baronsgate seemed distant, a mere background to quietude.
After a time he laid down his pen, let fall his eyeglass and looked with pleasure at his room. Everything had fitted to a miracle. Under the care of the Chubbs his nice old bits and pieces positively sparkled. The crimson goblet glowed in the window and his Agatha Troy seemed to generate a light of its own.
‘How nice everything is,’ thought Mr Whipplestone.
It was very quiet in his house. The Chubbs, he fancied, were out for the evening but they were habitually so unobtrusive in their comings and goings that one was unaware of them. While he was writing, Mr Whipplestone had been aware of visitors descending the iron steps into the area. Mr Sheridan was at home and receiving in the basement flat.
He switched off his desk lamp, got up to stretch his legs and moved over to the bow window. The only people who were about were a man and a woman coming towards him in the darkening Square. They moved into a pool of light from the open doorway of the Sun in Splendour and momentarily he got a clearer look at them. They were both fat and there was something about the woman that was familiar.
They came on towards him into and out from the shadow of the plane trees. On a ridiculous impulse, as if he had been caught spying, Mr Whipplestone backed away from his window. The woman seemed to stare into his eyes: an absurd notion since she couldn’t possibly see him.
Now he knew who she was: Mrs or Miss X. Sanskrit. And her companion? Brother or spouse? Brother, almost certainly. The pig-potters.
Now they were out of the shadow and crossed the Walk in full light straight at him. And he saw they were truly awful.
It wasn’t that they were lard-fat, both of them, so fat that they might have sat to each other as models for their wares, or that they were outrageously got up. No clothes, it might be argued in these permissive days, could achieve outrageousness. It wasn’t that the man wore a bracelet and an anklet and a necklace and earrings or that what hair he had fell like pond-weed from an embroidered headband. It wasn’t even that she (fifty if a day, thought Mr Whipplestone) wore vast black leather hotpants, a black fringed tunic and black boots. Monstrous though these grotesqueries undoubtedly were, they were as nothing compared with the eyes and mouths of the Sanskrits which were, Mr Whipplestone now saw with something like panic, equally heavily made-up.
‘They shouldn’t be here,’ he thought, confusedly protecting the normality of the Capricorns. ‘People like that. They ought to be in Chelsea. Or somewhere.’
They had crossed the Walk. They had approached his house. He backed further away. The area gate clicked and clanged, they descended the iron steps. He heard the basement flat bell. He heard Mr Sheridan’s voice. They had been admitted.
‘No, really!’ Mr Whipplestone thought in the language of his youth. ‘Too much! And he seemed perfectly respectable.’ He was thinking of his brief encounter with Mr Sheridan.
He settled down to a book. At least it was not a noisy party down there. One could hear little or nothing. Perhaps, he speculated, the Sanskrits were mediums. Perhaps Mr Sheridan dabbled in spiritism and belonged to a ‘circle’. They looked like that. Or worse. He dismissed the whole thing and returned to the autobiography of a former chief of his Department. It was not absorbing. The blurb made a great fuss about a ten-year interval imposed between the author’s death and publication. Why, God knew, thought Mr Whipplestone, since the crashing old bore could have nothing to disclose that would unsettle the composure of the most susceptible of vestal virgins.
His attention wandered. He became conscious of an uneasiness at the back of his mind: an uneasiness occasioned by sound, by something he would rather not hear, by something that was connected with anxiety and perturbation. By a cat mewing in the street.
Pah! he thought, as far as one can think ‘pah’. Cats abounded in London streets. He had seen any number of them in the Capricorns: pampered pet cats. There was an enormous tortoiseshell at the Sun in Splendour and a supercilious white affair at the Napoli. Cats.
It had come a great deal nearer. It was now very close indeed. Just outside, one would suppose, and not moving on. Sitting on the pavement, he dared say, and staring at his house. At him, even. And mewing. Persistently. He made a determined effort to ignore it. He returned to his book. He thought of turning on his radio, loudly, to drown it. The cries intensified. From being distant and intermittent they were now immediate and persistent.
‘I shall not look out of the window,’ he decided in a fluster. ‘It would only see me.’
‘Damnation!’ he cried three minutes later. ‘How dare people lock out their cats! I’ll complain to someone.’
Another three minutes and he did, against every fibre of disinclination in his body, look out of the window. He saw nothing. The feline lamentations were close enough to drive him dotty. On the steps: that’s where they were. On the flight of steps leading up to his front door. ‘No!’ he thought. ‘No, really this is not good enough. This must be stopped. Before we know where we are –’
Before he knew where he was, he was in his little hall and manipulating his double lock. The chain was disconnected on account of the Chubbs but he opened the door a mere crack and no sooner had he done so than something – a shadow, a meagre atomy – darted across his instep.
Mr Whipplestone became dramatic. He slammed his door to, leant against it and faced his intruder.
He had known it all along. History, if you could call an incident of not much more than a month ago history, was repeating itself. In the wretched shape of a small black cat: the same cat but now quite dreadfully emaciated, its eyes clouded, its fur staring. It sat before him and again opened its pink mouth in now soundless mews. Mr Whipplestone could only gaze at it in horror. Its haunches quivered and, as it had done when they last met, it leapt up to his chest.
As his hand closed round it he wondered that it had had the strength to jump. It purred and its heart knocked at his fingers.
‘This is too much,’ he repeated and carried it into his drawing-room. ‘It will die, I dare say,’ he said, ‘and how perfectly beastly that will be.’
After some agitated thought he carried it into the kitchen and, still holding it, took milk from the refrigerator, poured some into a saucer, added hot water from the tap and set it on the floor and the little cat sat beside it. At first he thought she would pay no attention – he was persuaded the creature was a female – her eyes being half-closed and her chin on the floor. He edged the saucer nearer. Her whiskers trembled. So suddenly that he quite jumped, she was lapping, avidly, frantically as if driven by some desperate little engine. Once she looked up at him.
Twice he replenished the saucer. The second time she did not finish the offering. She raised her milky chin, stared at him, made one or two shaky attempts to wash her face and suddenly collapsed on his foot and went to sleep.
Some time later there were sounds of departure from the basement flat. Soon after this, the Chubbs affected their usual discreet entry. Mr Whipplestone heard them put up the chain on the front door. The notion came to him that perhaps they had been ‘doing for’ Mr Sheridan at his party.
‘Er – is that you, Chubb?’ he called out.
Chubb opened the door and presented himself, apple-cheeked, on the threshold with his wife behind him. It struck Mr Whipplestone that they seemed uncomfortable.
‘Look,’ he invited, ‘at this.’
Chubb had done so, already. The cat lay like a shadow across Mr Whipplestone’s knees.
‘A cat, sir,’ said Chubb tentatively.
‘A stray. I’ve seen it before.’
From behind her husband, Mrs Chubb said: ‘Nothing of it, sir, is there? It don’t look healthy, do it?’
‘It was starving.’
Mrs Chubb clicked her tongue.
Chubb said: ‘Very quiet, sir, isn’t it? It hasn’t passed away, has it?’
‘It’s asleep. It’s had half a bottle of milk.’
‘Well, excuse me, sir,’ Mrs Chubb said, ‘but I don’t think you ought to handle it. You don’t know where it’s been, do you, sir?’
‘No,’ said Mr Whipplestone, and added with a curious inflection in his voice. ‘I only know where it is.’
‘Would you like Chubb to dispose of it, sir?’
This suggestion he found perfectly hateful but he threw out as airily as he could: ‘Oh, I don’t think so. I’ll do something about it myself in the morning. Ring up the RSPCA.’
‘I dare say if you was to put it out, sir, it’d wander off where it come from.’
‘Or,’ suggested Chubb. ‘I could put it in the garden at the back, sir. For the night, like.’
‘Yes,’ Mr Whipplestone gabbled, ‘thank you. Never mind. I’ll think of something. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ they said, meaninglessly.
Because they didn’t immediately make a move and because he was in a tizzy, Mr Whipplestone, to his own surprise said, ‘Pleasant evening?’
They didn’t answer. He glanced up and found they stared at him.
‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ they said.
‘Good!’ he cried with a phoney heartiness that horrified him. ‘Good! Good night, Chubb. Good night, Mrs Chubb.’
When they had gone into the kitchen, he felt sure they opened the refrigerator and he distinctly heard them turn on a tap. Washing the saucer, he thought guiltily.
He waited until they had retired upstairs and then himself sneaked into the kitchen with the cat. He had remembered that he had not eaten all the poached scallop Mrs Chubb gave him for dinner.
The cat woke up and ate quite a lot of scallop.
Entry into his back garden was effected by a door at the end of the passage and down a precipitous flight of steps. It was difficult, holding the cat, and he made rather a noisy descent but was aided by a glow of light from behind the blinds that masked Mr Sheridan’s basement windows. This enabled him to find a patch of unplanted earth against the brick wall at the rear of the garden. He placed the cat upon it.
He had thought she might bolt into the shadows and somehow escape, but no: after a considerable wait she became industrious. Mr Whipplestone tactfully turned his back.
He was being watched from the basement through an opening between the blind and the window frame.
The shadowy form was almost certainly that of Mr Sheridan and almost certainly he had hooked himself a peephole and had released it as Mr Whipplestone turned. The shadowy form retreated.
At the same time a slight noise above his head caused Mr Whipplestone to look up to the top storey of his house. He was just in time to see the Chubbs’ bedroom window being closed.
There was, of course, no reason to suppose they, also, had been watching him.
‘I must be getting fanciful,’ he thought.
A faint rhythmic scuffling redirected his attention to the cat. With her ears laid back and with a zealous concentration that spoke volumes for her recuperative powers, she was tidying up. This exercise was followed by a scrupulous personal toilette, which done, she blinked at Mr Whipplestone and pushed her nut-like head against his ankle.
He picked her up and returned indoors.
II
The fashionable and grossly expensive pet-shop round the corner in Baronsgate had a consulting-room, visited on Wednesday mornings by a veterinary surgeon. Mr Whipplestone had observed their notice to this effect and the next morning, being a Wednesday, he took the cat to be vetted. His manner of conveying his intention to the Chubbs was as guarded and non-committal as forty years’ experience in diplomacy could make it. Indeed, in a less rarefied atmosphere it might almost have been described as furtive.
He gave it out that he was ‘taking that animal to be attended to’. When the Chubbs jumped to the conclusion that this was a euphemism for ‘put down’ he did not correct them. Nor did he think it necessary to mention that the animal had spent the night on his bed. She had roused him at daybreak by touching his face with her paw. When he opened his eyes she had flirted with him, rolling on her side and looking at him from under her arm. And when Chubb came in with his early morning tray, Mr Whipplestone had contrived to throw his eiderdown over her and later on had treated her to a saucer of milk. He came downstairs with her under The Times, chose his moment to let her out by the back door into the garden, and presently called Mrs Chubb’s attention to her. She was demanding vigorously to be let in.
So now he sat on a padded bench in a minute waiting-room, cheek by jowl with several Baronsgate ladies, each of whom had a dog in tow. One of them, the one next to Mr Whipplestone, was the lady who trod on his foot in the Napoli, Mrs Montfort as he subsequently discovered, the Colonel’s lady. They said good morning to each other when they encountered, and did so now. By and large Mr Whipplestone thought her pretty awful, though not as awful as the pig-pottery lady of last night. Mrs Montfort carried on her overdressed lap a Pekinese, which, after a single contemptuous look, turned its back on Mr Whipplestone’s cat who stared through it.
He was acutely conscious that he presented a farcical appearance. The only container that could be found by the Chubbs was a disused birdcage, the home of their parrot, lately deceased. The little cat looked outraged sitting in it, and Mr Whipplestone looked silly nursing it and wearing his eye-glass. Several of the ladies exchanged amused glances.
‘What,’ asked the ultra-smart surgery attendant, notebook in hand, ‘is pussy’s name?’
He felt that if he said ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘It hasn’t got one,’ he would put himself at a disadvantage with these women. ‘Lucy,’ he said loudly and added as an afterthought: ‘Lockett.’
‘I see!’ she said brightly and noted it down. ‘You haven’t an appointment, have you?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Lucy won’t have long to wait,’ she smiled, and passed on.
A woman with a huge, angry, short-haired tabby in her arms came through from the surgery.
The newly-named Lucy’s fur rose. She made a noise that suggested she had come to the boil. The tabby suddenly let out a yell. Dogs made ambiguous comments in their throats.
‘Oh lor!’ said the newcomer. She grinned at Mr Whipplestone. ‘Better make ourselves scarce,’ she said, and to her indignant cat: ‘Shut up, Bardolph, don’t be an ass.’
When they had gone Lucy went to sleep and Mrs Montfort said: ‘Is your cat very ill?’
‘No!’ Mr Whipplestone quite shouted and then explained that Lucy was a stray starveling.
‘Sweet of you,’ she said, ‘to care. People are so awful about animals. It makes me quite ill. I’m like that.’ She turned her gaze upon him. ‘Kitty Montfort. My husband’s the warrior with the purple face. He’s called Colonel Montfort.’
Cornered, Mr Whipplestone murmured his own name.
Mrs Montfort smelt of very heavy scent and gin.
‘I know,’ she said archly, ‘you’re our new boy, aren’t you? At No. 1, The Walk? We have a piece of your Chubb on Fridays.’
Mr Whipplestone, whose manners were impeccable, bowed as far as the birdcage would permit.
Mrs Montfort was smiling into his face. She had laid her gloved hand on the cage. The door behind him had opened. Her smile became fixed as if pinned up at the corners. She withdrew her hand, and looked straight in front of her.
From the street there had entered a totally black man in livery with a white Afghan hound on a scarlet leash. The man paused and glanced round. There was an empty place on the other side of Mrs Montfort. Still looking straight in front of her, she moved far enough along the seat to leave insufficient room on either side of her. Mr Whipplestone instantly widened the distance between them and with a gesture, invited the man to sit down. The man said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ and remained where he was, not looking at Mrs Montfort. The hound advanced his nose towards the cage. Lucy did not wake.
‘I wouldn’t come too close if I were you, old boy,’ Mr Whipplestone said. The Afghan wagged his tail and Mr Whipplestone patted him. ‘I know you,’ he said, ‘you’re the Embassy dog, aren’t you? You’re Ahman.’ He gave the man a pleasant look and the man made a slight bow.
‘Lucy Lockett:?’ said the attendant, brightly emerging. ‘We’re all ready for her.’
The consultation was brief but conclusive. Lucy Lockett was about seven months old and her temperature was normal, she was innocent of mange, ringworm or parasites, she was extremely undernourished and therefore in shocking condition. Here the vet hesitated. ‘There are scars,’ he said, ‘and there’s been a fractured rib that has looked after itself. She’s been badly neglected – I think she may have been actively ill-treated.’ And catching sight of Mr Whipplestone’s horrified face he added cheerfully: ‘Nothing that pills and good food won’t put right.’ He said she had been spayed. She was half-Siamese and half God knew what, the vet said, turning back her fur and handling her this way and that. He laughed at the white end to her tail and gave her an injection.
She submitted to these indignities with utter detachment, but when at liberty, leapt into her protector’s embrace and performed her now familiar act of jamming her head under his jacket and lying next his heart.
‘Taken to you,’ said the vet. ‘They’ve got a sense of gratitude, cats have. Especially the females.’
‘I don’t know anything about them,’ said Mr Whipplestone in a hurry.
Motivated by sales-talk and embarrassment, he bought on his way out a cat bed-basket, a china dish labelled ‘Kit-bits’, a comb and brush and a collar for which he ordered a metal tab with a legend: ‘Lucy Lockett. 1 Capricorn Walk’ and his telephone number. The shop assistant showed him a little red cat-harness for walking out and told him that with patience, cats could be induced to co-operate. She put Lucy into it and the result was fetching enough for Mr Whipplestone to keep it.
He left the parrot cage behind to be called for and heavily laden, with Lucy again in retreat under his coat, walked quickly home to deploy his diplomatic resources upon the Chubbs, little knowing that he carried his destiny under his jacket.
III
‘This is perfectly delightful,’ said Mr Whipplestone, turning from his host to his hostess with the slight inclinations of his head and shoulders that had long been occupational mannerisms. ‘I am so enjoying myself.’
‘Fill up your glass,’ Alleyn said. ‘I did warn you that it was an invitation with an ulterior motive, didn’t I?’
‘I am fully prepared: charmingly so. A superb port.’
‘I’ll leave you with it,’ Troy suggested.
‘No, don’t,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’ll send you packing if anything v.s. and c crops up. Otherwise it’s nice to have you. Isn’t it, Whipplestone?’
Mr Whipplestone embarked upon a speech about his good fortune in being able to contemplate a ‘Troy’ above his fireplace every evening and now having the pleasure of contemplating the artist herself at her own fireside. He got a little bogged down but fetched up bravely.
‘And when,’ he asked, coming to his own rescue, ‘are we to embark upon the ulterior motive?’
Alleyn said, ‘Let’s make a move. This is liable to take time.’
At Troy’s suggestion they carried their port from the house into her detached studio and settled themselves in front of long windows overlooking a twilit London garden.
‘I want,’ Alleyn said, ‘to pick your brains a little. Aren’t you by way of being an expert on Ng’ombwana?’
‘Ng’ombwana? I! That’s putting it much too high, my dear man. I was there for three years in my youth.’
‘I thought that quite recently when it was getting its independence –?’
‘They sent me out there, yes. During the exploratory period: mainly because I speak the language, I suppose. Having rather made it my thing in a mild way.’
‘And you have kept it up?’
‘Again, in a mild way: oh, yes. Yes.’ He looked across the top of his glass at Alleyn. ‘You haven’t gone over to the Special Branch, surely?’
‘That’s a very crisp bit of instant deduction. No, I haven’t. But you may say they’ve unofficially roped me in for the occasion.’
‘Of the forthcoming visit?’
‘Yes, blast them. Security.’
‘I see. Difficult. By the way, you must have been the President’s contemporary at –’ Mr Whipplestone stopped short. ‘Is it hoped that you may introduce the personal note?’
‘You are quick!’ Troy said and he gave a gratified little cackle.
Alleyn said: ‘I saw him three weeks ago.’
‘In Ng’ombwana?’
‘Yes. Coming the old-boy network like nobody’s business.’
‘Get anywhere?’
‘Not so that you’d notice: no, that’s not fair. He did undertake not to cut up rough about our precautions but exactly what he meant by that is his secret. I dare say that in the upshot he’ll be a bloody nuisance.’
‘Well?’ asked Mr Whipplestone, leaning back and swinging his eyeglass in what Alleyn felt had been his cross-diplomatic-desk gesture for half a lifetime. ‘Well, my dear Roderick?’
‘Where do you come in?’
‘Quite.’
‘I’d be grateful if you’d – what’s the current jargon? – fill me in on the general Ng’ombwana background. From your own point of view. For instance, how many people would you say have cause to wish The Boomer dead?’
‘The Boomer?’
‘As he incessantly reminded me, that was His Excellency’s schoolboy nickname.’
‘An appropriate one. In general terms, I should say some two hundred thousand persons, at least.’
‘Good Lord!’ Troy exclaimed.
‘Could you,’ asked her husband, ‘do a bit of name-dropping?’
‘Not really. Not specifically. But again in general terms – well, it’s the usual pattern throughout the new African independencies. First of all there are those Ng’ombwanan political opponents whom the President succeeded in breaking, the survivors of whom are either in prison or in this country waiting for his overthrow or assassination.’
‘The Special Branch flatters itself it’s got a pretty comprehensive list in that category.’
‘I dare say,’ said Mr Whipplestone drily. ‘So did we, until one fine day in Martinique a hitherto completely unknown person with a phoney British passport fired a revolver at the President, missed, and was more successful with a second shot at himself. He had no record and his true identity was never established.’
‘I reminded The Boomer of that incident.’
Mr Whipplestone said archly to Troy: ‘Y’ou know, he’s much more fully informed than I am. What’s he up to?’
‘I can’t imagine, but do go on. I, at least, know nothing.’
‘Well. Among these African enemies, of course, are the extremists who disliked his early moderation and especially his refusal at the outset to sack all his European advisers and officials in one fell swoop. So you get pockets of anti-white terrorists who campaigned for independence but are now prepared to face about and destroy the government they helped to create. Their followers are an unknown quantity but undoubtedly numerous. But you know all this, my dear fellow.’
‘He’s sacking more and more whites now, though, isn’t he? However unwillingly?’
‘He’s been forced to do so by the extreme elements.’
‘So,’ Alleyn said, ‘the familiar, perhaps the inevitable, pattern emerges. The nationalization of all foreign enterprise and the appropriation of properties held by European and Asian colonists. Among whom we find the bitterest possible resentment.’
‘Indeed. And with some reason. Many of them have been ruined. Among the older groups the effect has been completely disastrous. Their entire way of life has disintegrated and they are totally unfitted for any other.’ Mr Whipplestone rubbed his nose. ‘I must say,’ he added, ‘however improperly, that some of them are not likeable individuals.’
Troy asked: ‘Why’s he coming here? The Boomer, I mean?’
‘Ostensibly, to discuss with Whitehall his country’s needs for development.’
‘And Whitehall,’ Alleyn said, ‘professes its high delight while the Special Branch turns green with forebodings.’
“Mr Whipplestone, you said “ostensibly”,’ Troy pointed out.
‘Did I, Mrs Rory? – Yes. Yes, well it has been rumoured through tolerably reliable sources that the President hopes to negotiate with rival groups to take over the oil and copper resources from the dispossessed who have, of course, developed them at enormous cost.’
‘Here we go again!’ said Alleyn.
‘I don’t suggest,’ Mr Whipplestone mildly added, ‘that Lord Karnley or Sir Julian Raphael or any of their associates are likely to instigate a lethal assault upon the President.’
‘Good!’
‘But of course behind those august personages is a host of embittered shareholders, executives and employees.’
‘Among whom might be found the odd cloak-and-dagger merchant. And apart from all these more or less motivated persons,’ Alleyn said, ‘there are the ones policemen like least: the fanatics. The haters of black pigmentation, the lonely woman who dreams about a black rapist, the man who builds Anti-Christ in a black image or who reads a threat to his livelihood in every black neighbour. Or for whom the commonplace phrases – “black outlook, black record, as black as it’s painted, black villainy, the black man will get you” and all the rest of them, have an absolute reference. Black is bad. Finish.’
‘And the Black Power lot,’ Troy said, ‘are doing as much for “white”, aren’t they? The war of the images.’
Mr Whipplestone made a not too uncomfortable little groaning noise and returned to his port.
‘I wonder,’ Alleyn said, ‘I do wonder, how much of that absolute antagonism the old Boomer nurses in his sooty bosom.’
‘None for you, anyway,’ Troy said, and when he didn’t answer, ‘surely?’
‘My dear Alleyn, I understood he professes the utmost camaraderie.’
‘Oh, yes! Yes, he does. He lays it on with a trowel. Do you know, I’d be awfully sorry to think the trowel-work overlaid an inimical understructure. Silly, isn’t it?’
‘It is the greatest mistake,’ Mr Whipplestone pronounced, to make assumptions about relationships that are not clearly defined.’
‘And what relationship is ever that?’
‘Well! Perhaps not. We do what we can with treaties and agreements, but perhaps not.’
‘He did try,’ Alleyn said. ‘He did in the first instance try to set up some kind of multi-racial community. He thought it would work.’
‘Did you discuss that?’ Troy asked.
‘Not a word. It wouldn’t have done. My job was too tricky. Do you know, I got the impression that at least part of his exuberant welcome was inspired by a – well, by a wish to compensate for the ongoings of the new regime.’
‘It might be so,’ Mr Whipplestone conceded. ‘Who can say?’
Alleyn took a folded paper from his breast pocket.
‘The Special Branch has given me a list of commercial and professional firms and individuals to be kicked out of Ng’ombwana, with notes on anything in their history that might look at all suspicious.’ He glanced at the paper.
‘Does the same Sanskrit mean anything at all to you?’ he asked. ‘X. and K. Sanskrit to be exact. My dear man, what is the matter?’
Mr Whipplestone had shouted inarticulately, laid down his glass, clapped his hands and slapped his forehead.
‘Eureka!’ he cried stylishly. ‘I have it! At last. At last!’
‘Jolly for you,’ said Alleyn, ‘I’m delighted to hear it. What had escaped you?’
‘“Sanskrit, Importing and Trading Company, Ng’ombwana”.’
‘That’s it. Or was it.’
‘In Edward VIIth Avenue.’
‘Certainly, I saw it there: only they call it something else now. And Sanskrit has been kicked out. Why are you so excited?’
‘Because I saw him last night.’
‘You did!’
‘Well, it must have been. They are as alike as two disgusting pins.’
‘They?’ Alleyn repeated, gazing at his wife who briefly crossed her eyes at him.
‘How could I have forgotten!’ exclaimed Mr Whipplestone rhetorically. ‘I passed those premises every day of my time in Ng’ombwana.’
‘I clearly see that I mustn’t interrupt you.’
‘My dear Mrs Roderick, my dear Roderick, do please forgive me,’ begged Mr Whipplestone, turning pink. ‘I must explain myself: too gauche and peculiar. But you see –’
And explain himself he did, pig-pottery and all, with the precision that had eluded him at the first disclosure. ‘Admit,’ he cried when he had finished, ‘it is a singular coincidence, now isn’t it?’
‘It’s all of that,’ Alleyn said. ‘Would you like to hear what the Special Branch have got to say about the man – K. Sanskrit?’
‘Indeed I would.’
‘Here goes, then. This information, by the way, is a digest one of Fred Gibson’s chaps got from the Criminal Record Office. “Sanskrit. Kenneth, for Heaven’s sake. Age – approx 58. Height 5 foot 10. Weight: 16 stone 4. Very obese. Blond. Long hair. Dress: eccentric: Ultra modern. Bracelets. Anklet. Necklace. Wears make-up. Probably homosexual. One ring through pierced lobe. Origin: uncertain. Said to be Dutch. Name possibly assumed or corruption of a foreign name. Convicted of fraudulent practices involving the occult, London 1940. Served three months’ sentence. Sus. connection with drug traffic, 1942. Since 1950 importer of ceramics, jewellery and fancy goods into Ng’ombwana. Large, profitable concern. Owned blocks of flats and offices now possessed by Ng’ombwanan interests. Strong supporter of apartheid. Known to associate with Anti-Black and African extremists. Only traceable relative: Sister, with whom he is now in partnership, pottery business ‘The piggery’, Capricorn Mews, SW3.”’
‘There you are!’ said Mr Whipplestone, spreading out his hands.
‘Yes. There we are and not very far on. There’s no specific reason to suppose Sanskrit constitutes a threat to the safety of the President. And that goes for any of the other names on the list. Have a look at it. Does it ring any more bells? Any more coincidences?’
Mr Whipplestone screwed in his eyeglass and had a look.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said drily. ‘One recognizes the disillusioned African element. And the dispossessed. I can add nothing. I’m afraid, my dear fellow, that apart from the odd circumstance of one of your remote possibilities being a neighbour of mine, I am of no use to you. And none in that respect, either, if one comes to think of it. A broken reed,’ sighed Mr Whipplestone, ‘I fear, a broken reed.’
‘Oh,’ Alleyn said lightly, ‘you never know, do you? By the way, the Ng’ombwanan Embassy is in your part of the world, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, indeed. I run into old Karumba sometimes. Their Ambassador. We take our constitutional at the same hour. Nice old boy.’
‘Worried?’
‘Hideously, I should have thought.’
‘You’d have been right. He’s in a flat spin and treating the SB to a hell of a work-out. And what’s more he’s switched over to me. Never mind about security not being my proper pigeon. He should worry! I know The Boomer and that’s enough. He wants me to teach the SB its own business. Imagine! If he had his wish there’d be total alarm devices in every ornamental urn and a security man under The Boomer’s bed. I must say I don’t blame him. He’s giving a reception. I suppose you’ve been invited?’
‘I have, yes. And you?’
‘In my reluctant role as The Boomer’s old school chum. And Troy, of course,’ Alleyn said, putting his hand briefly on hers.
Then followed rather a long pause.
‘Of course,’ Mr Whipplestone said, at last, ‘these things don’t happen in England. At receptions and so on. Madmen at large in kitchens or wherever it was.’
‘Or at upstairs windows in warehouses?’
‘Quite.’
The telephone rang and Troy went out of the room to answer it.
‘I ought to forbear,’ Alleyn said, ‘from offering the maddening observation that there’s always a first time.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ flustered Mr Whipplestone. ‘Nonsense, my dear fellow! Really! Nonsense! Well,’ he added uneasily, ‘one says that.’
‘Let’s hope one’s right.’
Troy came back. ‘The Ng’ombwanan Ambassador,’ she said, ‘would like a word with you, darling.’
‘God bless his woolly grey head,’ Alleyn muttered and cast up his eyes. He went to the door but checked. ‘Another Sanskrit coincidence for you, Sam. I rather think I saw him, too, three weeks ago in Ng’ombwana, outside his erstwhile emporium, complete with anklet and earring. The one and only Sanskrit, or I’m a displaced Dutchman with beads and blond curls.’
IV
The Chubbs raised no particular objection to Lucy: ‘So long as it’s not unhealthy, sir,’ Mrs Chubb said, ‘I don’t mind. Keep the mice out, I dare say.’
In a week’s time Lucy improved enormously. Her coat became glossy, her eyes bright and her person plumpish. Her attachment to Mr Whipplestone grew more marked and he, as he confided in his diary, was in some danger of making an old fool of himself over her. ‘She is a beguiling little animal,’ he wrote, ‘I confess I find myself flattered by her attentions. She has nice ways.’ The nice ways consisted of keeping a close watch on him, of greeting him on his reappearance after an hour’s absence as if he had returned from the North Pole, of tearing about the house with her tail up, affecting astonishment when she encountered him and of sudden onsets of attachment when she would grip his arm in her forelegs, kick it with her hind legs, pretend to bite him and then fall into a little frenzy of purrs and licks.
She refused utterly to accommodate to her red harness but when Mr Whipplestone took his evening stroll, she accompanied him: at first to his consternation. But although she darted ahead and pranced out of hiding places at him, she kept off the street and their joint expeditions became a habit.
Only one circumstance upset them and that was a curious one. Lucy would trot contentedly down Capricorn Mews until they had passed the garage and were within thirty yards of the pottery-pigs establishment. At that point she would go no further. She either bolted home under her own steam or performed her familiar trick of leaping into Mr Whipplestone’s arms. On these occasions he was distressed to feel her trembling. He concluded that she remembered her accident and yet he was not altogether satisfied with this explanation.
She fought shy of the Napoli because of the dogs tied up outside but on one visit when there happened to be no customers and no dogs she walked in. Mr Whipplestone apologized and picked her up. He had become quite friendly with Mr and Mrs Pirelli and told them about her. Their response was a little strange. There were ejaculations of ‘poverina’ and the sorts of noises Italians make to cats. Mrs Pirelli advanced a finger and crooned. She then noticed the white tip of Lucy’s tail and looked very hard at her. She spoke in Italian to her husband, who nodded portentously and said ‘Si’ some ten times in succession.
‘Have you recognized the cat?’ asked Mr Whipplestone in alarm. They said they thought they had. Mrs Pirelli had very little English. She was a very large lady and she now made herself a great deal larger in eloquent mime, curving both arms in front of her and blowing out her cheeks. She also jerked her head in the direction of Capricorn Passage. ‘You mean the pottery person,’ cried Mr Whipplestone. ‘You mean she was that person’s cat!’
He realized bemusedly that Mrs Pirelli had made another gesture, an ancient one. She had crossed herself. She laid her hand on Mr Whipplestone’s arm. ‘No, no, no. Do not give back. No. Cattivo. Cattivo,’ said Mrs Pirelli.
‘Cat?’
‘No, signor,’ said Mr Pirelli. ‘My wife is saying “bad”. They are bad, cruel people. Do not return to them your little cat.’
‘No,’ said Mr Whipplestone confusedly. ‘No, I won’t. Thank you. I won’t.’
And from that day he never took Lucy into the Mews.
Mrs Chubb, Lucy accepted as a source of food and accordingly performed the obligatory ritual of brushing round her ankles. Chubb, she completely ignored.
She spent a good deal of time in the tub garden at the back of the house making wild balletic passes at imaginary butterflies.
At 9.30 one morning, a week after his dinner with the Alleyns, Mr Whipplestone sat in his drawing-room doing The Times crossword. Chubb was out shopping and Mrs Chubb, having finished her housework, was ‘doing for’ Mr Sheridan in the basement. Mr Sheridan, who was something in the City, Mr Whipplestone gathered, was never at home on weekday mornings. At 11 o’clock Mrs Chubb would return to see about Mr Whipplestone’s luncheon. The arrangement worked admirably.
Held up over a particularly cryptic clue, Mr Whipplestone’s attention was caught by a singular noise, a kind of stifled complaint as if Lucy was mewing with her mouth full. This proved to be the case. She entered the room backwards with sunken head, approached crab-wise and dropped something heavy on his foot. She then sat back and gazed at him with her head on one side and made the inquiring trill that he found particularly fetching.
‘What on earth have you got there?’ he asked.
He picked it up. It was a ceramic no bigger than a medallion but it was heavy and must have grievously taxed her delicate little jaws. A pottery fish, painted white on one side and biting its own tail. It was pierced by a hole at the top.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asked severely.
Lucy lifted a paw, lay down, looked archly at him from under her arm and then incontinently jumped up and left the room.
‘Extraordinary little creature,’ he muttered. ‘It must belong to the Chubbs.’
And when Mrs Chubb returned from below he called her in and showed it to her. ‘Is this yours, Mrs Chubb?’ he asked.
She had a technique of not replying immediately to anything that was said to her and she used it now. He held the thing out to her but she didn’t take it.
‘The cat brought it in,’ explained Mr Whipplestone, who always introduced a tone of indifference in mentioning Lucy Lockett to the Chubbs. ‘Do you know where it came from?’
‘I think – it must be – I think it’s Mr Sheridan’s, sir,’ Mrs Chubb said at last. ‘One of his ornaments, like. The cat gets through his back window, sir, when it’s open for airing. Like when I done it just now. But I never noticed.’
‘Does she? Dear me! Most reprehensible! You might put it back, Mrs Chubb, could you? Too awkward if he should miss it!’
Mrs Chubb’s fingers closed over it. Mr Whipplestone looking up at her, saw with surprise that her apple-pink cheeks had blanched. He thought of asking her if she was unwell but her colour began to reappear unevenly.
‘All right, Mrs Chubb?’ he asked.
She seemed to hover on the brink of some reply. Her lips moved and she brushed them with her fingers. At last she said: ‘I haven’t liked to ask, sir, but I hope we give satisfaction, Chubb and me.’
‘Indeed you do,’ he said warmly. ‘Everything goes very smoothly.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said and went out. He thought: ‘That wasn’t what she was about to say.’
He heard her go upstairs and thought: ‘I wish she’d return that damn’d object.’ But almost immediately she came back.
