Hand in Glove. Ngaio Marsh
stood up. ‘Bimbo’s planting a bottle of champagne somewhere and the leading-up clues will be dotted about the landscape. If you don’t mind just going on your picture crawl under your own steam we’d better begin racking our brains for rhymes. Please do look wherever you like.’ She held out her hand to Moppett. ‘I’m sorry not to be more hospitable, but we are, as you see, in a taking-on. Goodbye.’ She looked at Leonard. ‘Goodbye.’
‘My God!’ Bimbo said. ‘The food from Magnums! It’ll be at the station.’
Moppett and Leonard stopped short and looked passionately concerned.
‘Can’t you pick it up,’ Desirée asked, ‘when you lay your trail of clues?’
‘I can’t start before we’ve done the clues, can I?’
‘They’re too busy to send anyone from the kitchen and they want the stuff. Madly. We’d better get the Bloodbath to collect it.’
‘Look!’ Moppett and Leonard said together and then gaily laughed at each other. ‘“Two minds with butter –”’ Moppett quoted. ‘But please – please do let us collect the things from Magnums. We’d adore to.’
Desirée said: ‘Jolly kind, but the Bloodbath will do it.’
Bimbo much more emphatically added: ‘Thank you, but we wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘But why not!’ Moppett protested. ‘Leonard’s longing to drive that thing out there, aren’t you, sweetie?’
‘Of course. And, as a matter of fact,’ Leonard said, ‘I happen to know the Bloodbath – if that’s George Copper’s crate – is out of commission. It won’t take us any time.’
‘Do let us or we’ll think,’ Moppett urged engagingly, ‘that we really are being hideously in the way. Please.’
‘Well –’ Desirée said, not looking at her husband, ‘if you really don’t mind, it would, I must say, be the very thing.’
‘Andrew!’ Bimbo ejaculated. ‘He’ll do it. Where is he?’
‘He’s gone. Do you know, darling, I’m afraid we’d better accept the kind offer.’
‘Of course!’ Moppett cried. ‘Come on, Face! Is there anything else to be picked up, while we’re about it?’
Desirée said, with a faint twist in her voice: ‘You think of everything, don’t you. I’ll talk to the kitchen.’
When she had gone, Bimbo said: ‘Isn’t that the Scorpion Copper had in his garage?’
‘The identical job,’ Leonard agreed, man-to-man. ‘Not a bad little heap by and large, and the price is okay. Like to have a look at her, Mr Dodds? I’d appreciate your opinion.’
Bimbo, with an air of mingled distaste and curiosity, intimated that he would and the two men left Moppett in the drawing-room. Standing back from the French window, she watched them at the car; Leonard talking, Bimbo with his hands in his pockets. ‘Trying,’ thought Moppett, ‘not to be interested, but he is interested. He’s a car man. He’s married her for his Bentley and his drinks and the grandeur and fun. She’s old. She can’t have all that much of what it takes. Or, by any chance, can she?’
A kind of contempt possessed her; a contempt for Desirée and Bimbo and anybody who was not like herself and Leonard. ‘Living dangerously,’ she thought, ‘that’s us.’ She wondered if it would be advisable to ask Leonard not to say ‘appreciated’, ‘okay’, ‘pardon me’, and ‘appro’. She herself didn’t mind how he talked: she even enjoyed their rows when he would turn foul-mouthed, adder-like, and brutal. Still, if they were to crash the county – ‘They’ll have to ask us,’ she thought, ‘after this. They can’t not. We’ve been clever as clever.’
She continued to peer slantwise through the window.
When Desirée returned, Moppett was looking with respect at a picture above the fireplace.
Desirée said there would be a parcel at the grocer’s in Little Codling. ‘Your quickest way to the station is to turn right, outside the gates,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t be more obliged to you.’
She went out with Moppett to the car and when it had shot out of sight down the avenue, linked her arm in her husband’s.
‘Shockers,’ she said, ‘aren’t they?’
‘Honestly, darling, I can’t think what you’re about.’
‘Can’t you?’
‘None of my business, of course,’ he muttered. She looked at him with amusement.
‘Don’t you like them?’ she asked.
‘Like them!’
‘I find myself quite amused by them,’ she said and added indifferently, ‘they do know what they want, at least.’
‘It was perfectly obvious, from the moment they crashed their way in, that they were hell-bent on getting asked for tonight.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you going to pretend not to notice their hints?’
‘Oh,’ she said with a faint chuckle, ‘I don’t think so. I expect I’ll ask them.’
Bimbo said: ‘Of course I never interfere.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘And how wise of you, isn’t it?’ He drew away from her. ‘You don’t usually sulk, either.’
‘You let people impose on you.’
‘Not,’ she said gently, ‘without realizing it,’ and he reddened.
‘That young man,’ he said, ‘is a monster. Did you smell
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