by Ngaio Marsh
To Troy, it appeared that Mr Pollock, in common, she thought, with every other male in the Zodiac, was extremely conscious of Mrs Tretheway’s allure. That was not surprising. What did surprise was Mrs Tretheway’s fairly evident response to Mr Pollock’s offering of homage. Evidently, she found him attractive but not apparently to an extent that might cause the Skipper any concern since Troy heard them all planning to meet at a pub in Longminster. They were going to have a bit of an evening, they agreed.
Troy herself was in something of a predicament. She could not, without making a ridiculous issue of it, refuse either to lunch or dine with Caley Bard in Longminster and indeed she had no particular desire to refuse since she enjoyed his company and took his cock-eyed and purely verbal advances with the liberal pinch of salt that she felt sure he expected. So she agreed to dine with him but said she had appointments during the earlier part of the day.
Somehow or another, she must yet again visit a police station and commune with Superintendent Bonney whose personality, according to Superintendent Tillottson, she would find so very congenial. She could not help but feel that the legend of the lost fur had begun to wear thin but she supposed, unless some likelier device occurred to her, that she must continue to employ it. She told Caley Bard she’d have to make a final inquiry as they’d promised to let the Longminster police know if the wretched fur turned up and she also hinted at visits to the curator of the local gallery and a picture-dealer of some importance.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll accept your feeble excuses for the day and look forward to dinner. After all you are famous and allowances must be made.’
‘They are not feeble excuses,’ Troy shouted. Afterwards she determined at least to call on the curator and thus partially salve her conscience. She had arrived at this stage of muddled thinking when Dr Natouche approached her with an extremely formal invitation.
‘You have almost certainly made your own arrangements for today,’ he said. ‘In case you have not I must explain that I have invited a friend and his wife to luncheon at the Longminster Arms. He is Sir Leslie Fergus, a bio-chemist of some distinction, now dedicated to research. We were fellow-students. I would, of course, be delighted if by any fortunate chance you were able to come.’
Troy saw that, unlike Caley Bard who had cheerfully cornered and heckled her, Dr Natouche was scrupulous to leave her the easiest possible means of escape. She said at once that she would be delighted to lunch at the Longminster Arms.
‘I am so pleased,’ said Dr Natouche with his little bow and withdrew.
‘Well!’ ejaculated Caley who had unblushingly listened to this exchange. ‘You are a sly-boots!’
‘I don’t know why you should say that.’
‘You wouldn’t lunch with me.’
‘I’m dining with you,’ Troy said crossly.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m being a bore and unfunny. I won’t do it again. Thank you for dining. I hope it’ll be fun and I hope your luncheon is fabulous.’
She now began to have misgivings about Caley Bard’s dead set at her.
‘At my age,’ Troy thought, ‘this sort of thing can well become ridiculous. Am I in for a tricky party, I wonder.’
The day, however, turned out to be a success.
They reached Longminster at 10.30. Mr Lazenby and Mr Pollock were going straight to the Minster itself and from there planned to follow the itinerary set out in the Zodiac’s leaflet. The Hewsons, who had intended to join them were thrown into a state of ferment when the Skipper happened to remark that it would be half-day closing in Tollardwark on the return journey. They would arrive there at noon.
Miss Hewson broke out in lamentation. The junk shops where she was persuaded she would find the most exciting and delectable bargains! Shut! Now wasn’t that just crazy planning on somebody’s part? To spend the afternoon in a closed town? In vain did the Tretheways explain that the object of the stay was a visit by special bus to a historic Abbey six miles out of Tollardwark. The Hewsons said in unison that they’d seen enough abbeys to last them the rest of their lives. What they desired was a lovely long shop-crawl. Why Miss Hewson had seen four of the cutest little old shops—one in particular—she appealed to Troy to witness how excited she had been.
They went on and on until at last Caley Bard, in exasperation, suggested that as it was only a few miles by road back to Tollardwark they might like to spend the day there. Mrs Tretheway said there were buses and the road was a very attractive one, actually passing the Abbey. The Skipper said there were good car-hire services, as witness the one that had rung through with Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s message.
The Hewsons went into a huffy conference from which they emerged with their chagrin somewhat abated. They settled on a car. They would spend half the day in Tollardwark and half in Longminster. One could see, Troy thought, the timeless charm of the waterways evaporating in the Hewsons’ esteem. They departed, mollified and asking each other if it didn’t seem kind of dopey to spend two days getting from one historic burg to another when you could take them both in between breakfast and dinner with time left over for shopping.
Caley Bard announced that he was going to have his hair cut and then go to the museum where the lepidoptera were said to be above average. Dr Natouche told Troy that he would expect her at one o’clock and the two men walked off together.
Troy changed into a linen suit, consulted Mr Tillottson’s map and found her way to the Longminster central police station and Superintendent Bonney.
Afterwards she was unable to make up her mind whether or not she had been surprised to find Mr Tillottson there.
He explained that he happened to be in Longminster on a routine call. He did not suggest that he had timed his visit to coincide with Troy’s. He merely shook hands again with his customary geniality and introduced her to Superintendent Bonney.
Mr Bonney was another large man but in his case seniority would have seemed to have run to bone rather than flesh. His bones were enormous. They were excessive behind his ears, under and above his eyes and at his wrists. His jaws were cadaverous and when he smiled, even his gums were knobbly. Troy would not have fallen in with Mr Tillottson’s description of his colleague as a lovely chap.
They were both very pleasant. Troy’s first question was as to her husband’s return. Was there any chance, did they think, that it might be earlier because if so—
They said, almost in unison, that Alleyn had rung through last evening: that he would have liked to talk to her this morning but would have missed his connection to New York. And that he hoped he might be home early next week but that depended upon a final conference. He sent his love, they said, beaming at her, and if she was still uneasy she was to abandon ship. ‘Perhaps a telegram from a sick friend—’ Mr Tillottson here suggested and Troy felt a strong inclination to laugh in his face and ask him if it should be signed ‘Mavis’.
She told them about Miss Rickerby-Carrick.
They listened with great attention saying: ‘Yerse. Yerse.’ and ‘Is that a fact?’ and ‘Fancy that, now.’ When she had finished Mr Bonney glanced at his desk pad where he had jotted down a note or two.
‘The Longminster Car Hire and Taxi Service, eh?’ he said. ‘Now, which would that be, I wonder, Bert? There’s Ackroyd’s and there’s Rutherford’s.’
‘We might make a wee check, Bob,’ Mr Tillottson ventured.
‘Yerse,’ Mr Bonney agreed. ‘We might at that.’
He made his calls while Troy, at their request, waited.
‘Ackroyd’s Car Hire Service? Just a little item about a telephone call. Eighty-thirty or thereabouts to Crossdyke Lockhouse. Message from a fare phoned by you to the Lock for Tretheway, Skipper, M.V. Zodiac. Could you check for us? Much obliged.’ A pause while Mr Bonney stared without interest at Mr Tillottson and Mr Tillottson stared without interest at nothing in particular.
‘I see. No note of it? Much obliged. Just before you go: Fare from Crossdyke Lock, picked up sometime during the
night. Lady. Yerse. Well, any trips to Crossdyke? Could you check?’ Another pause. ‘Much obliged. Ta,’ said Mr Bonney and replaced the receiver.
He repeated this conversation almost word for word on three more calls.
In each instance, it seemed, a blank.
‘No trips to Crossdyke,’ said Mr Bonney, ‘between 6.45 last evening and 11 a.m. today.’
‘Well, well,’ said Mr Tillottson, ‘that’s quite interesting, Bob, isn’t it?’
All Troy’s apprehensions that with the lightened atmosphere of the morning had retired to an uneasy hinterland now returned in force.
‘But that means whoever rang gave a false identity,’ she said.
Mr Tillottson said it looked a wee bit like that but they’d have to check with the lock-keeper at Crossdyke. He might have mistaken the message. It might have been, he suggested, Miss Rickerby-Carrick herself saying she was hiring a car.
‘That’s true!’ Troy agreed.
‘What sort of a voice, now, would she have, Mrs Alleyn?’
‘She’s got a heavy cold and she sounds excitable. She gabbles and she talks in italics.’
‘She wouldn’t be what you’d call at all eccentric?’
‘She would. Very eccentric.’
Mr Tillottson said ah, well, now, there you were, weren’t you? Mr Bonney asked what age Miss Rickerby-Carrick might be and when Troy hazarded, ‘fortyish’, began to look complacent. Troy mentioned Mavis of Birmingham now in the Highlands and when they asked Mavis who, and where in the Highlands was obliged to say she’d forgotten. This made her feel foolish and remember some of her husband’s strictures upon purveyors of information received.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘to be so perfectly hopeless.’
They soothed her. Why should she remember these trifles? They would, said Mr Tillottson, have a wee chin-wag with the lock-keeper at Crossdyke just to get confirmation of the telephone call. They would ring the telephone department and they would make further inquiries to find out just how Miss Rickerby-Carrick got herself removed in the dead of night. If possible they would discover her destination.
Their manner strongly suggested that Troy’s uneasiness rather than official concern was the motive for these inquiries.
‘They think I’ve got a bee in my bonnet,’ she told herself. ‘If I wasn’t Rory’s wife they wouldn’t be bothered with me.’
She took what she felt had now become her routine leave of Superintendents in North Country police stations and, once more reassured by Mr Tillottson, prepared to enjoy herself in Longminster.
II
She spent the rest of the morning looking at the gallery and the Minster and wandering about the city which was as beautiful as its reputation.
At noon she began to ask her way to the Longminster Arms. After a diversion into an artist-colourman’s shop where she found a very nice old frame of the right size for her Signs of the Zodiac, she arrived at half past twelve. Troy was one of those people who can never manage to be unpunctual and was often obliged to go for quite extensive walks round blocks in order to be decently late or at least not indecently early.
However, she didn’t mind being early for her luncheon with Dr Natouche and his friends. She tidied up and found her way into a pleasant drawing-room where there were lots of magazines.
In one of them she at once became absorbed. It printed a long extract from a book written some years ago by a white American who had had his skin pigmentation changed by what, it appeared, was a dangerous but entirely effective process. For some months this man had lived as one of themselves among the Negroes of the Deep South. The author did not divulge the nature of this transformation process and Troy found herself wondering if Dr Natouche would be able to tell what it was. Could she ask him? Remembering their conversation in the wapentake, she thought she could.
She was still pondering over this and had turned again to the article when she became aware of a presence and found that Dr Natouche stood beside her, quite close, with his gaze on the printed page.
Her diaphragm contracted with a jolt and the magazine crackled in her hands.
‘I am so very sorry,’ he said. ‘I startled you. It was stupid of me. The carpet is thick and you were absorbed.’
He sat down opposite to her and with a look of great concern said: ‘I have been unforgivably clumsy.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ Troy rejoined. ‘I don’t know why I should be so jumpy. But as you say, I was absorbed. Have you read this thing, Dr Natouche?’
He had lifted his finger to a waiter who approached with a perfectly blank face.
‘We shall not wait for the Ferguses,’ Dr Natouche said. ‘You must be given a restorative. Brandy? And soda? Dry Ginger? Yes? Two, if you please and may I see the wine list?’
His manner was grand enough to wipe the blank look off any waiter’s face.
When the man had gone Dr Natouche said: ‘But I have not answered your question. Yes, I have read this book. It was a courageous action.’
‘I wondered if you would know exactly what was done to him. The process, I mean.’
‘Your colour is returning,’ he said after a moment. ‘And so, of course, did his. It was not a permanent change. No, I do not know what was done. Sir Leslie might have an idea, it is more in his line than mine. We must ask him.’
‘I would have thought—’
‘Yes?’ he said, when she stopped short.
‘You said, when we were at the wapentake, that you didn’t think I could say anything to—I don’t remember the exact phrase—’
‘To hurt or offend me? Something like that was it? It is true.’
‘I was going to ask, then, if the change of pigmentation would be enough to convince people, supposing the features were still markedly European. And then I saw that your features, Dr Natouche, are not at all—’
‘Negroid?’
‘Yes. But perhaps Ethiopians—one is so ignorant.’
‘You must remember I am a half-caste. My facial structures are those of my mother, I believe.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Troy said. ‘Of course.’
The waiter brought their drinks and the wine list and menu and hard on his heels came Sir Leslie and Lady Fergus.
They were charming and the luncheon party was a success but somehow neither Troy nor her host got round to asking Sir Leslie if he could shed any light on the darkening by scientific methods of the pigmentation of the skin.
III
Troy returned to the Zodiac, rested, changed and was taken in a taxi by Caley Bard to dinner with champagne at another hotel.
‘I’m not ‘alf going it,’ she thought and wondered what her husband would have to say about these jaunts.
When they had dined she and Bard walked about Longminster and finally strolled back to The River at half past ten.
The Zodiac was berthed romantically in a bend of The River from which one could see the Long Minster itself against the stars. The lights of the old city quavered and zig-zagged with those of other craft in the black night waters. Troy and Bard could hear quiet voices in the saloon but they loitered on the deserted deck and before she could do anything about it Bard had kissed Troy.
‘You’re adorable,’ he said.
‘Ah, get along with you. Goodnight, and thank you for a nice party.’
‘Don’t go away.’
‘I think I must.’
‘Couldn’t we have a lovely, fairly delicate little affair? Please?’
‘We could not,’ said Troy.
‘I’ve fallen for you in a bloody big way. Don’t laugh at me.’
‘I’m not. But I’m not going to pursue the matter. Don’t you, either.’
‘Well, I can’t say you’ve led me on. You don’t know a garden path when you see one.’
‘I wouldn’t say as much for you.’
‘I like that! What cheek!’
‘Look,’ Troy said, ‘who’s here.’
It was the Hewsons. They had arrived on the wharf i
n a taxi and were hung about with strange parcels. Miss Hewson seemed to be in a state of exalted fatigue and her brother in a state of exhausted resignation.
‘Boy, oh boy!’ he said.
They had to be helped on board with their unwieldy freight and when this exercise had been accomplished, it seemed only decent to get them down the companion-way into the saloon. Here the other passengers were assembled and about to go to bed. They formed themselves into a sort of chain gang and by this means assembled the Hewsons’ purchases on three of the tables. Newspaper was spread on the deck.
‘We just ran crazy,’ Miss Hewson panted. ‘We just don’t know what’s with us when we get loose on an antique spree, do we, Earl?’
‘You said it, dear,’ her brother conceded.
‘Where,’ asked Mr Pollock, ‘will you put it?’ Feeling, perhaps, that his choice of words was unfortunate, he threw a frightened glance at Mr Lazenby.
‘Well! Now!’ Miss Hewson said. ‘We don’t figure we have a problem there, do we, dear? We figure if we talk pretty to the Skipper and Mrs Tretheway we might be allowed to cache it in Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s stateroom. We just kind of took a calculated risk on that one didn’t we, dear?’
‘Sure did, honey.’
‘The Tretheways,’ Pollock said, ‘have gone to bed.’
‘Looks like we’ll have to step up the calculated risk, some,’ Mr Hewson said dryly.
Mr Lazenby was peering with undisguised curiosity at their booty and so were Troy and Bard. There was an inlaid rosewood box, a newspaper parcel from which horse-brasses partly emerged, a pair of carriage-lamps and, packed piecemeal into an open beer-carton, a wag-at-the-wall Victorian clock.
Propped against the table was a really filthy roll of what appeared through encrustations of mud to be a collection of prints tied together with an ancient piece of twine.
It was over this trove that Miss Hewson seemed principally to gloat. She had found it, she explained, together with their other purchases, in the yard of the junk shop where Troy had seen them that first night in Tollardwark. Something had told Miss Hewson she would draw a rich reward if she could explore that yard and sure enough, jammed into a compartment in an Edwardian sideboard, all doubled up, as they could see if they looked, there it was.