Читать книгу Tied Up In Tinsel - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 13

When Hilary was shown the paper, which was as soon as the men came into the drawing-room, he turned very quiet. For what seemed a long time he stood with it in his hands, frowning at it and saying nothing. Mr Smith walked over to him, glanced at the paper and gave out a soft, protracted whistle. Colonel Forrester looked inquiringly from Hilary to his wife who shook her head at him. He then turned away to admire the tree and the kissing-bough.

‘Well, boy,’ said Mrs Forrester. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘I don’t know. Not, I think, what I am expected to make of it. Aunt Bed.’

‘Whatever anybody makes of it,’ Cressida pointed out, ‘it’s not the nicest kind of thing to find in one’s bedroom.’

Hilary broke into a strange apologia: tender, oblique, guarded. It was a horrid, silly thing to have happened, he told Cressida and she mustn’t let it trouble her. It wasn’t worth a second thought. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘up the chimney with it, vulgar little beast,’ and threw it on the fire. It blackened, its preposterous legend turned white and started out in momentary prominence, it was reduced to a wraith of itself and flew out of sight. ‘Gone! Gone! Gone!’ chanted Hilary rather wildly and spread his arms.

‘I don’t think you ought to have done that,’ Cressida said, ‘I think we ought to have kept it.’

‘That’s right,’ Mr Smith chimed in. ‘For dabs,’ he added.

This familiar departmental word startled Troy. Mr Smith grinned at her. ‘That’s correct,’ he said. ‘Innit? What your good man calls routine, that is. Dabs. You oughter kep’ it, ’Illy.’

‘I think, Uncle Bert, I must be allowed to manage this ridiculous little incident in my own way.’

‘Hullo-ullo-ullo!’

‘I’m quite sure, Cressida darling, it’s merely an idiot-joke on somebody’s part. How I detest practical jokes!’ Hilary hurried on with an unconvincing return to his usual manner. He turned to Troy. ‘Don’t you?’

‘When they’re as unfunny as this. If this is one.’

‘Which I don’t for a moment believe,’ Cressida said. ‘Joke! It’s a deliberate insult. Or worse.’ She appealed to Mrs Forrester. ‘Isn’t it?’ she demanded.

‘I haven’t the remotest idea what it may be. What do you say to all this, Fred? I said what –’

She broke off. Her husband had gone to the far end of the room and was pacing out the distance from the french windows to the tree.

‘Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen – fifteen feet exactly,’ he was saying. ‘I shall have to walk fifteen feet. Who’s going to shut the french window after me? These things need to be worked out.’

‘Honestly, Hilly darling, I do not think it can be all shrugged off, you know, like a fun thing. When you yourself have said Nigel always refers to his victim as a sinful lady. It seems to me to be perfectly obvious he’s set his sights at me and I find it terrifying. You know, terrifying.’

‘But,’ Hilary said, ‘it isn’t. I promise you, my lovely child, it’s not at all terrifying. The circumstances are entirely different –’

‘I should hope so, considering she was a tart.’

‘– and of course I shall get to the bottom of it. It’s too preposterous. I shall put it before –’

‘You can’t put it before anybody. You’ve burnt it.’

‘Nigel is completely recovered.’

‘’Ere,’ Mr Smith said. ‘What say one of that lot’s got it in for ’im? What say it’s been done to discredit ’im? Planted? Spiteful, like?’

‘But they get on very well together.’

‘Not with the colonel’s chap. Not with Moult they don’t. No love lost there, I’ll take a fiver on it. I seen the way they look at ’im. And ’im at them.’

‘Nonsense, Smith,’ said Mrs Forrester. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Moult’s been with us for twenty years.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Oh Lord!’ Cressida said loudly and dropped into an armchair.

‘– and who’s going to read out the names?’ the colonel speculated. ‘I can’t wear my specs. They’d look silly.’

‘Fred!’

‘What, B?’

‘Come over here, I said come over here.’

‘Why? I’m working things out.’

‘You’re over-exciting yourself. Come here. It’s about Moult. I said it’s –’

The colonel, for him almost crossly, said: ‘You’ve interrupted my train of thought, B. What about Moult?’

As if in response to a heavily contrived cue and a shove from off-stage, the door opened and in came Moult himself, carrying a salver.

‘Beg pardon, sir,’ Moult said to Hilary, ‘but I thought perhaps this might be urgent, sir. For the colonel, sir.’

‘What is it, Moult?’ the colonel asked quite testily.

Moult advanced the salver in his employer’s direction. Upon it lay an envelope addressed in capitals: ’COL FORRESTER.’

‘It was on the floor of your room, sir. By the door, sir. I thought it might be urgent,’ said Moult.