Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 8: Death at the Dolphin, Hand in Glove, Dead Water. Ngaio Marsh
least, I hope so. Don’t say another word. I’ve got an invitation for you.’
He produced it and gave it to her with an anxious smile.
It was from his mother and it said: ‘Do come to my dotty party tonight. Andrew will bring you and we’ll put you up. He’ll explain all about it, but do come.’
Nicola stared at him in amazement.
‘My mum,’ he said, ‘has taken a fancy to you. So, as is no doubt abundantly obvious, have I. Now don’t go into a brouhaha and say you can’t. Just say: “Thank you, Andrew. How sweet of your mum, I’d love to.’”
‘But how can I?’
‘How?’ Andrew said grandly. ‘Anyhow. Why not?’
‘I tell you what,’ Nicola said. ‘You’ve nagged at your mum to ask me.’
‘I swear I haven’t. She nagged at me and I said I would if you would.’
‘There you are, you see.’
‘No, I don’t. And anyway, do stop carping and come. It’s definitely not one of my mamma’s more rococo parties. I wouldn’t dream of taking you to one of them, of course.’
Nicola, who remembered hearing rumours of some of Lady Bantling’s parties, felt relieved.
‘What I thought,’ Andrew continued, ‘I’ll drop you wherever you live and you can nip into your number one ceremonials and then I’ll pick up my dinner jacket and we’ll dine somewhere and then we’ll drive down to Baynesholme.’
‘What about the cocktail party you’re all dressed up for?’
‘Forget it, completely. Do come, Nicola. Will you?’
‘Thank you, Andrew. How sweet of your mum to ask me. I’d love to.’
‘Thank you, Nicola.’
For the rest of the journey Andrew talked to Nicola about himself. He said he wanted to paint more than anything else in life and that he’d been having lessons and was ‘meant to be not too bad’. He said that if he could take the Grantham Gallery over, there was a studio at the back where he could paint and manage the gallery at the same time. Then he described his unproductive and bad-tempered meeting that morning with his guardian and step-father, Mr Cartell.
‘It was a snorter,’ Andrew said thoughtfully. ‘He treated the whole thing as if it was a sort of adolescent whim. I’d brought down all the figures for the turnover and he wouldn’t look at them, damn him. I gave him the names of jolly good people who would supply an expert opinion and he wouldn’t listen. All he would say was that my father wouldn’t have wanted me to resign my commission. What the hell,’ Andrew shouted and then pulled himself up. ‘It’s not so much the practical side that infuriates me – I could, after all, I imagine, borrow the money and insure my life or whatever one does. It’s his bloody pontificating philistinism. What I believe I most resented,’ he said, ‘was having to talk about my painting. I said things that are private to me and he came back at me with the sort of remarks that made them sound phoney. Can you understand that?’
‘I think I can. And I suppose in the end you began to wonder if, after all, you were any good.’
‘You do understand, don’t you? Does everybody off-load their difficulties on you, or –? No,’ Andrew said, ‘I’d better not say that: yet. Thank you, anyway, for listening.’
‘Do you admire Agatha Troy’s painting?’
He stared at her. ‘Well, of course. Why?’
‘I know her. She’s married to Roderick Alleyn in the CID. I go there quite often. As a matter of fact I’m paying them a visit tomorrow evening.’
‘What’s she like? I know what she looks like. Lovely bones. Kind of gallant. Is she alarming?’
‘Not at all. She’s rather shy. She’s jolly good about being interested in younger people’s work,’ Nicola added. She hesitated and then said: ‘You may not care for the idea at all, but if you liked I could show her one of your things.’
He turned very red and Nicola wondered if she had offended him. He said at last, ‘Do you know, I don’t think I’d dare.’
‘So Mr Cartell really has downed you, I see.’
‘No, he hasn’t, you low-cunning girl.’
‘If you’d rather not I shan’t take umbrage. On the other hand I’ll be delighted if you say: “Thank you, Nicola. How sweet of you to ask me. I’d love to.”’
Andrew grinned and for an appreciable interval was silent.
‘You win,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll say that same small thing.’
The rest of the journey passed quickly for both of them and in London they followed the plan proposed by Andrew.
At half past eight they were in his car on their way back into Kent. The night was warm for early April, the lights sailed past and there was a young moon in the sky. Nicola knew that she was beginning to fall in love.
II
‘I tell you what, Mrs M.,’ Alfred said as he prepared to set the dinner table. ‘The weather in this household has deteriorated and the forecast is for atmospheric disturbances followed by severe storms.’
‘Go on!’ Mrs Mitchell said eagerly. ‘How?’
‘How, I don’t know. If you ask me why, I can give a pretty good guess. For ten years, Mrs M., we’ve organized ourselves quietly and comfortably in the way that suits us. Everything very nice and going by clockwork. Nothing unexpected. Settled. No upsets of any kind whatsoever. Suits us and incidentally, I may say, suits you and me. Now what? What’s the present situation? Look at today. We’ve had more upsets in this one day, Mrs M., than we’ve had to put up with in the total length of my service.’
Mrs Mitchell executed the toss of the head and upward turn of the eyes that had only one connotation.
‘Him?’ she suggested.
‘Exactly. Him,’ Alfred said. ‘Mr Harold Cartell.’
‘Good God, Mr Belt!’ Mrs Mitchell exclaimed. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’
‘The matter, Mrs M.?’
‘The way you looked! Coo! Only for a sec but my word! Talk about old-fashioned.’
‘You’d look old-fashioned yourself,’ Alfred countered, ‘if suggestions of the same nature were made to you.’
‘By ‘im?’ she prompted, unguardedly.
‘Correct. In reference to our cigarette-case. Which, as I mentioned earlier, was left by those two on the window-ledge and has disappeared. Well. As we noticed this afternoon, Mr Cartell went off in the Bloodbath with George Copper and Bert Raikes.’
‘Very peculiar, yes.’
‘Yes. All right. It now appears they went to Baynesholme.’
‘To the Big House?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well! To see her ladyship?’
‘To see them. Those two. They’d gone there, if you please. Unasked, by all accounts.’
‘Sauce!’
‘What it was all about I have not yet gathered, but will from George Copper. The point is that when I take drinks to the library just now, they’re at it hammer-and-tongs.’
‘Our two gentlemen?’
‘Who else? And so hot they don’t stop when