Читать книгу Hand in Glove - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 10

Mr Pyke Period made much of Nicola. He took her round, introducing her to Mr Cartell and all over again to ‘Lady Bantling’ and Mr Dodds; to Miss Connie Cartell and, with a certain lack of enthusiasm, to the adopted niece, Mary or Moppett, and her friend, Mr Leonard Leiss.

Miss Cartell shouted: ‘Been hearing all about you, ha, ha!’

Mr Cartell said: ‘Afraid I disturbed you just now. Looking for P.P. So sorry.’

Moppett said: ‘Hallo. I suppose you do shorthand? I tried but my squiggles looked like rude drawings. So I gave up.’ Young Mr Leiss stared damply at Nicola and then shook hands: also damply. He was pallid and had large eyes, a full mouth and small chin. The sleeves of his violently checked jacket displayed an exotic amount of shirt-cuff and link. He smelt very strongly of hair oil. Apart from these features it would have been hard to say why he seemed untrustworthy.

Mr Cartell was probably by nature a dry and pedantic man. At the moment he was evidently much put out. Not surprising, Nicola thought, when one looked at the company: his step-son, with whom, presumably, he had just had a flaring row, his divorced wife and her husband, his noisy sister, her ‘niece’ whom he obviously disliked, and Mr Leiss. He dodged about, fussily attending to drinks.

‘May Leonard fix mine, Uncle Hal?’ Moppett asked. ‘He knows my kind of wallop.’

Mr Period, overhearing her, momentarily closed his eyes and Mr Cartell saw him do it.

Miss Cartell shouted uneasily: ‘The things these girls say, nowadays! Honestly!’ and burst into her braying laugh. Nicola could see that she adored Moppett. Leonard adroitly mixed two treble Martinis.

Andrew had brought Nicola her tomato juice. He stayed beside her. They didn’t say very much but she found herself glad of his company.

Meanwhile, Mr Period, who it appeared, had recently had a birthday, was given a present by Lady Bantling. It was a large brass paper-weight in the form of a fish rampant. He seemed to Nicola to be disproportionately enchanted with this trophy and presently she discovered why.

‘Dearest Desirée,’ he exclaimed. ‘How wonderfully clever of you: my crest, you know! The form, the attitude, everything! Connie! Look! Hal, do look.’

The paper-weight was passed from hand to hand and Andrew was finally sent to put it on Mr Period’s desk.

When he returned Moppett bore down upon him. ‘Andrew!’ she said. ‘You must tell Leonard about painting. He knows quantities of potent dealers. Actually, he might be jolly useful to you. Come and talk to him.’

‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know what to say, Moppett.’

‘I’ll tell you. Hi, Leonard! We want to talk to you.’

Leonard advanced with drinks. ‘All right. All right,’ he said. ‘What about?’

‘Which train are you going back by?’ Andrew asked Nicola.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When do you stop typing?’

‘Four o’clock, I think.’

‘There’s a good train at twenty past. I’ll pick you up. May I?’

His mother had joined them. ‘We really ought to be going,’ she said, smiling amiably at Nicola. ‘Lunch is early today, Andrew, on account we’re having a grand party tonight. You’re staying for it, by the way.’

‘I don’t think I can.’

‘I’m sure you can if you set your mind to it. We need you badly. I’d have warned you, but we only decided last night. It’s an April Fool party: that makes the excuse. Bimbo’s scarcely left the telephone since dawn.’

‘We ought to go, darling,’ said Bimbo over her shoulder.

‘I know. Let’s. Goodbye.’ She held out her hand to Nicola. ‘Are you coming lots of times to type for P.P.?’

‘I think, fairly often.’

‘Make him bring you to Baynesholme. We’re off, Harold. Thank you for our nice drinks. Goodbye, P.P. Don’t forget you’re dining, will you?’

‘How could I?’

‘Not possibly.’

‘It was – I wondered, dearest Desirée, if you’d perhaps rather –? Still – I suppose –’

‘My poorest sweet, what are you talking about,’ said Lady Bantling and kissed him. She looked vaguely at Moppett and Leonard. ‘Goodbye. Come along, boys.’

Andrew muttered to Nicola: ‘I’ll ring you up about the train.’ He said goodbye, cordially to Mr Period and very coldly to his step-father.

Moppett said: ‘I had something fairly important to ask you, you gorgeous Guardee, you.’

‘How awful never to know what it was,’ Andrew replied and with Bimbo, followed his mother out of the room.

Watching Desirée go, Nicola thought: ‘Moppett would probably like to acquire that manner, but she never will. She hasn’t got the style.’

Mr Period in a fluster, extended his hands. ‘Desirée can’t know!’ he exclaimed. ‘Neither can he or Andrew! How extraordinary!’

‘Know what?’ asked Miss Cartell.

‘About Ormsbury. Her brother. It was in the paper.’

‘If Desirée is giving one of her parties,’ said Mr Cartell, ‘she is not likely to put it off for her brother’s demise. She hasn’t heard of him since he went out to the antipodes, where I understand he’s been drinking like a fish for the last twenty years.’

‘Really, Hal!’ Mr Period exclaimed.

Moppett and Leonard Leiss giggled and retired into a corner with their drinks.

Miss Cartell was launched on an account of some local activity, ‘– so I said to the rector: “We all know damn’ well what that means,” and he said like lightning: “We may know but we don’t let on.” He’s got quite a respectable sense of humour, that man.’

‘Pause for laugh,’ Moppett said very offensively.

Miss Cartell, who had in fact thrown back her head to laugh, blushed painfully and looked at her ward with such an air of baffled vulnerability, that Nicola, who had been thinking how patronizing and arrogant she was, felt sorry for her and furious with Moppett.

So, evidently, did Mr Period. ‘My dear Mary,’ he said. ‘That was not the prettiest of remarks.’

‘Quite so. Precisely,’ Mr Cartell agreed. ‘You should exercise more discipline, Connie.’

Leonard said: ‘The only way with Moppett is to beat her like a carpet.’

‘Care to try?’ she asked him.

Alfred announced luncheon.

It was the most uncomfortable meal Nicola had ever eaten. The entire party was at cross purposes. Everybody appeared to be up to something indefinable.

Miss Cartell had bought a new car. Leonard spoke of it with languid approval. Moppett said they had seen a Scorpion for sale in George Copper’s garage. Leonard spoke incomprehensibly of its merits.

‘Matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’d quite like to buy it. Trade in my own heap with him, of course.’ He leant back in his chair and whistled quietly through his teeth.

‘Shall we look at it again?’ Moppett suggested, grandly.

‘No harm in looking, is there?’

Nicola suddenly thought: ‘That was a pre-planned bit of dialogue.’

Alfred came in with an envelope which he placed before Mr Period.

‘What’s this?’ Mr Period asked pettishly. He peered through his eye-glass.

‘From the rectory, sir. The person suggested it was immediate.’

‘I do so dislike interruptions at luncheon,’ Mr Period complained. ‘’Scuse, everybody?’ he added playfully.

His guests made acquiescent noises. He read what appeared to be a very short letter and changed colour.

‘No answer,’ he said to Alfred. ‘Or rather – say I’ll call personally upon the rector.’

Alfred withdrew. Mr Period, after a fidgety interval and many glances at Mr Cartell, said: ‘I’m very sorry, Hal, but I’m afraid your Pixie has created a parochial crise.’

Mr Cartell said: ‘Oh, dear. What?’

‘At the moment she, with some half dozen other – ah – boon companions, is rioting in the vicar’s seed beds. There is a Mother’s Union luncheon in progress, but none of them has succeeded in catching her. It couldn’t be more awkward.’

Nicola had an uproarious vision of mothers thundering fruitlessly among rectorial flower-beds. Miss Cartell broke into one of her formidable gusts of laughter.

‘You always were hopeless with dogs, Boysie,’ she shouted. ‘Why you keep that ghastly bitch!’

‘She’s extremely well bred, Connie. I’ve been advised to enter her for the parish dog show.’

‘My God, who by? The rector?’ Miss Cartell asked with a bellow of laughter.

‘I have been advised,’ Mr Cartell repeated stuffily.

‘We’ll have to have a freak class.’

‘Are you entering your Pekinese?’

‘They’re very keen I should, so I might as well, I suppose. Hardly fair to the others but she’d be a draw, of course.’

‘For people that like lap-dogs, no doubt.’

Mr Period intervened: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to do something about it, Hal,’ he said. ‘Nobody else can control her.’

‘Alfred can.’

‘Alfred is otherwise engaged.’

‘She’s on heat, of course.’

‘Really, Connie!’

Mr Cartell, pink in the face, rose disconsolately but at that moment there appeared in the garden, a dishevelled clergyman dragging the over-excited Pixie by her collar. They were watched sardonically by a group of workmen.

Mr Cartell hurried from the room and reappeared beyond the windows with Alfred.

‘It’s too much,’ Mr Period said. ‘Forgive me!’ He too, left the room and joined the group in the garden.

Leonard and Moppett, making extremely uninhibited conversation, went to the window and stood there, clinging to each other in an ecstasy of enjoyment. They were observed by Mr Period and Mr Cartell. There followed a brief scene in which the rector, his Christian forbearance clearly exercised to its limit, received the apologies of both gentlemen, patted Mr Period, but not Mr Cartell, on the shoulder and took his leave. Alfred lugged Pixie, who squatted back on her haunches in protest, out of sight and the two gentlemen returned very evidently in high dudgeon with each other. Leonard and Moppett made little or no attempt to control their amusement.

‘Well,’ Mr Period said with desperate savoir-faire, ‘what were we talking about?’

Moppett spluttered noisily. Connie Cartell said: ‘You’ll have to get rid of that mongrel, you know, Hal.’ Her brother glared at her. ‘You can’t,’ Connie added, ‘make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

‘I entirely agree,’ Mr Cartell said, very nastily indeed, ‘and have often said as much, I believe, to you.’

There was quite a dreadful silence, broken at last by Mr Period.

‘Strange,’ he observed, ‘how, even in the animal kingdom, breeding makes itself felt.’ And he was off, in a very big way, on his favourite topic. Inspired, perhaps, by what he would have called Pixie’s lack of form, he went to immoderate lengths in praising this quality. He said, more than once, that he knew the barriers had been down for twenty years but nevertheless … On and on he went, all through the curry and well into the apple flan. He became, Nicola had regretfully to admit, more than a little ridiculous.

It was clear that Mr Cartell thought so. He himself grew more and more restive. Nicola guessed that he was fretted by divided loyalties and even more by the behaviour of Leonard Leiss who, having finished his lunch, continued to lean back in his chair and whistle softly through his teeth. Moppett asked him sardonically, how the chorus went. He raised his eyebrows and said: ‘Oh, pardon me. I just can’t seem to get that little number out of my system,’ and smiled generally upon the table.

‘Evidently,’ said Mr Cartell.

Mr Period said he felt sure that he himself made far too much of the niceties of civilized behaviour and told them how his father had once caused him to leave the dining-room for using his fish-knife. Mr Cartell listened with mounting distaste.

Presently he wiped his lips, leant back in his chair and said: ‘My dear P.P., that sort of thing is no doubt very well in its way, but surely one can make a little too much of it?’

‘I happen to feel rather strongly about such matters,’ Mr Period said with a small deprecating smile at Nicola.

Miss Cartell, who had been watching her adopted niece with anxious devotion, suddenly shouted: ‘I always say that when people start fussing about family and all that, it’s because they’re a bit hairy round the heels themselves, ha, ha!’

She seemed to be completely unaware of the implications of her remark or its effect upon Mr Period.

‘Well, really, Connie!’ he said. ‘I must say!’

‘What’s wrong?’

Mr Cartell gave a dry little laugh. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘“when Adam delved” you know.’

‘“Dolve”, I fancy, not “delved”,’ Mr Period corrected rather smugly. ‘Oh, yes. The much-quoted Mr Ball who afterwards was hanged for his pains, wasn’t he? “Who was then the gentleman?” The answer is, of course, “nobody”. It takes several generations to evolve the genuine article, don’t you agree?’

‘I’ve known it to be effected in less than no time,’ Mr Cartell said dryly. ‘It’s quite extraordinary to what lengths some people will go. I heard on unimpeachable authority of a man who forged his name in a parish register in order to establish descent from some ancient family or another.’

Miss Cartell laughed uproariously.

Mr Period dropped his fork into his pudding.

Leonard asked with interest: ‘Was there any money in it?’

Moppett said: ‘How was he found out? Tell us more.’

Mr Cartell said, ‘There has never been a public exposure. And there’s really no more to tell.’

Conversation then became desultory. Leonard muttered something to Moppett, who said: ‘Would anybody mind if we were excused? Leonard’s car is having something done to its guts and the chap in the garage seemed to be quite madly moronic. We were to see him again at two o’clock.’

‘If you mean Copper,’ Mr Period observed, ‘I’ve always understood him to be a thoroughly dependable fellow.’

‘He’s a sort of half-pi, broken-down gent or something, isn’t he?’ Leonard asked casually.

‘Jolly good man, George Copper,’ Miss Cartell said.

‘Certainly,’ Mr Period faintly agreed. He was exceedingly pale.

‘Oh,’ Leonard said, stretching his arms easily, ‘I think I can manage Mr George Copper quite successfully.’ He glanced round the table. ‘Smoking allowed?’ he asked.

Miss Cartell swallowed her last fragment of cheese and her brother looked furious. Mr Period murmured: ‘Since you are leaving us, why not?’

Leonard groped in his pockets. ‘I’ve left mine in the car,’ he said to Moppett. ‘Hand over, Sexy, will you?’

Mr Period said: ‘Please,’ and offered his gold case. ‘These are Turks,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry if you don’t like them. Old-fogishly, I can’t get used to the others.’

‘Makes a change,’ Leonard said obligingly. He took a cigarette, looked at the case and remarked: ‘That’s nice.’ It was extraordinary how off-key his lightest observations could sound.

‘Do let me see,’ Moppett asked and took the case.

‘It was left me,’ Mr Period said, ‘by dear old Lady Barsington. An eighteenth-century card case. The jewelled clasp is said to be unique. There’s an inscription, but it’s very faint. If you take it to the light –’

Moppett took it to the window and Leonard joined her there. He began to hum and then to sketch in the words of his little number: ‘“If you mean what I think you mean, it’s okay by me. Things aren’t always what they seem. Okay by me.”’ Moppett gaily joined in.

Alfred came in to say that Mr Period was wanted on the telephone and he bustled out, after a pointedly formal apology.

Leonard strolled back to the table. He had evidently decided that some conventional apology was called for. ‘So sorry to break up the party,’ he said winningly. ‘But if it’s all the same I think we’d better toddle.’

‘By all means. Please,’ said Mr Cartell.

‘What P.P. and Uncle Hal will think of your manners, you two!’ Miss Cartell said and laughed uneasily.

They got up. Moppett said goodbye to Mr Cartell quite civilly and was suddenly effusive in her thanks. Leonard followed her lead, but with an air of finding it only just worth while to do so.

‘Be seeing you, ducks,’ Moppett said in Cockney to Miss Cartell and they went out.

There followed a rather deadly little silence.

Mr Cartell addressed himself to his sister. ‘My dear Connie,’ he said, ‘I should be failing in my duty if I didn’t tell you I consider that young man to be an unspeakable bounder.’

Mr Period returned.

‘Shall we have our coffee in the drawing-room?’ he asked in the doorway.

Nicola would have dearly liked to excuse herself and go back to the study, but Mr Period took her gently by the arm and led her to the drawing-room. His fingers, she noticed, were trembling. ‘I want,’ he said, ‘to show you a newly acquired treasure.’

Piloting her into a far corner, he unfolded a brown-paper parcel. It turned out to be a landscape in water-colour: the distant view of a manor house.

‘It’s charming,’ Nicola said.

‘Thought to be an unsigned Cotman, but the real interest for me is that it’s my great-grandfather’s house at Ribblethorpe. Destroyed, alas, by fire. I came across it in a second-hand shop. Wasn’t that fun for me?’

Alfred took round the coffee tray. Nicola pretended she couldn’t hear Mr Cartell and his sister arguing. As soon as Alfred had gone, Miss Cartell tackled her brother.

‘I think you’re jolly prejudiced, Boysie,’ she said. ‘It’s the way they all talk nowadays. Moppett tells me he’s brilliantly clever. Something in the City.’

‘Too clever by half if you ask me. And what in the City?’

‘I don’t know exactly what. He’s got rather a tragic sort of background, Moppett says. The father was killed in Bangkok and the mother’s artistic.’

‘You’re a donkey, Connie. If I were you I should put a stop to the friendship. None of my business, of course. I am not,’ Mr Cartell continued with some emphasis, ‘Mary’s uncle, despite the courtesy title she is good enough to bestow upon me.’

‘You don’t understand her.’

‘I make no attempt to do so,’ he replied in a fluster.

Nicola murmured: ‘I think I ought to get back to my job.’ She said goodbye to Miss Cartell.

‘Typin’, are you?’ asked Miss Cartell. ‘P.P. tells me you’re Basil Maitland-Mayne’s gel. Used to know your father. Hunted with him.’

‘We all knew Basil,’ Mr Period said with an attempt at geniality.

‘I didn’t,’ Mr Cartell said crossly.

They glared at each other.

‘You’re very smart all of a sudden, P.P.,’ Miss Cartell remarked. ‘Private Secretary! You’ll be telling us next that you’re going to write a book.’ She laughed uproariously. Nicola returned to the study.