by Ngaio Marsh
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 fishknife.
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 was afterwards 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-pie, 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-fogyishly, 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 cardcase. 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, O.K. by me. Things aren’t always what they seem. O.K. 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 good-bye 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 secondhand 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 good-bye 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.
Nicola had a ridiculously overdev
eloped capacity for feeling sorry. She was sorry now for Mr. Period, because he had been upset and had made a silly of himself; and for Miss Cartell, because she was boisterous and vulnerable and besotted with her terrible Moppett who treated her like dirt. She was sorry for Mr. Cartell, because he had been balanced on a sort of tightrope of irritability. He had been angry with his guests when they let him down, and angry with Mr. Period out of loyalty to his own sister.
Even Nicola was unable to feel sorry for either Moppett or Leonard.
She ordered herself back to work and was soon immersed in the niceties of polite behaviour. Every now and then she remembered Andrew Bantling and wondered what the row with his stepfather had been about. She hoped she would meet him on the train, though she supposed Lady Bantling would insist on his staying for the party.
She had worked solidly for about half an hour when her employer came in. He was still pale, but he smiled at her, and tiptoed with playful caution to his desk.
“Pay no attention to me,” he whispered. “I’m going to write another little note.”
He sat at his desk and applied himself to this task. Presently he began dismally to hum an erratic version of Leonard Leiss’s song: If you mean what I think you mean, O.K. by me. He made a petulant little sound. “Now, why in the world,” he cried, “should that distressingly vulgar catch come into my head? Nicola, my dear, what a perfectly dreadful young man! That you should be let in for that sort of party! Really!”
Nicola reassured him. By-and-by he sighed, so heavily that she couldn’t help glancing at him. He had folded his letter and addressed an envelope and now sat with his head on his hand. “Better wait a bit,” he muttered. “Cool down.”
Nicola stopped typing and looked out of the window. Riding up the drive on a bicycle was a large policeman.
He dismounted, propped his machine against a tree trunk and removed his trouser clips. He then approached the house.
“There’s a policeman outside.”
“What? Oh, really? Noakes, I suppose. Splendid fellow, old Noakes. I wonder what he wants. Tickets for a concert, I misdoubt me.”
Alfred came in. “Sergeant Noakes, sir, would like to see you.”
“What’s it all about, Alfred?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, sir. He says it’s important.”
“All right. Show him in, if I must.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The impressive things about Sergeant Noakes were his size and his mildness. He was big, even for a policeman, and he was mild beyond belief. When Mr. Period made him known to Nicola, he said: “Good afternoon, Miss,” in a loud but paddy voice and added that he hoped she would excuse them for a few minutes. Nicola took this as a polite dismissal and was about to conform, when Mr. Period said that he wouldn’t dream of it. She must go on typing and not let them bore her. Please. He insisted.
Poor Nicola, fully aware of Sergeant Noakes’s wishes to the contrary, sat down again and banged away at her machine. She couldn’t help hearing Mr. Period’s airy and inaccurate assurance that she was entirely in his confidence.
“Well,” Sergeant Noakes said, “sir…in that case…”
“Sit down, Noakes.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ve dropped in to ask if you can help me in a small matter that has cropped up.”
“Ah, yes? More social activities, Noakes?”
“Not exactly, this time, sir. More of a routine item, really. I wonder if you’d mind telling me if a certain name is known to you.” He lowered his voice.
“Leiss!” Mr. Period shrilly ejaculated. “Did you say Leonard Leiss?”
“That was the name, yes.”
“I encountered him for the first time this morning.”
“Ah,” said Sergeant Noakes warmly. “That makes everything much easier, sir. Thank you. For the first time…So you are not at all familiar with Mr. Leiss?”
“Familiar!”
“Quite so, sir. And Mr. Cartell?”
“Nor is Mr. Cartell. Until this morning Mr. Leiss was a complete stranger to both of us. He may be said to be one still.”
“Perhaps I could see Mr. Cartell?”
“Look here, Noakes, what the deuce are you talking about? — Nicola, my dear, pray stop typing, will you be so good? But don’t go.”
Nicola stopped.
“Well, sir,” Sergeant Noakes said. “The facts are as follows. George Copper happened to mention to me, about half an hour ago, that he’s selling a Scorpion sports model to a young gentleman called Leonard Leiss and he stated, further, that the customer had given your name and Mr. Cartell’s and Miss Cartell’s as references.”
“Good God!”
“Now, sir, in the Service there’s a regular system by which all stations are kept informed about the activities of persons known to be operating in a manner contrary to the law, or if not contrary within the meaning of the Act, yet in a suspicious and questionable manner. You might describe them,” Sergeant Noakes said with a flash of imagery, “as ripening fruit. Just about ready for the picking.”
“Noakes, what in heaven’s name — Well. Go on.”
“The name of Leonard Sydney Leiss appears on the most recent list. Two previous convictions. Obtaining goods under fake pretenses. The portry-parly coincides. It’s a confidential matter, Mr. Period, but seeing that the young man gave your name with such assurance and seeing he was very warmly backed up by the young lady, who is Miss Constance Cartell’s adopted niece, I thought I would come and mention it quietly. Particularly, sir, as there’s a complication.”
Mr. Period stared dismally at him. “Complication?” lie said.
“Well, sir, yes. You see, for some time Leiss has been working in collusion with a young female who — I’m very sorry, I’m sure, sir — but the description of this young female does tally rather closely with the general appearance of Miss Cartell’s aforesaid adopted niece.”
There was a long silence. Then Mr. Period said: “This is all rather dreadful.”
“I take it, sir, you gave the young man no authority to use your name?”
“Merciful Heavens — NO.”
“Then perhaps we may just have a little chat with Mr. Cartell?”
Mr. Period rang the bell.
Mr. Cartell behaved quite differently from Mr. Period. He contracted into the shell of what Nicola supposed to be his professional manner as a solicitor. He looked pinched. Two isolated spots of colour appeared on his cheekbones. Nicola thought he was very angry indeed.
“I am much obliged to you, Sergeant,” he said at last, “for bringing this affair to my attention. You have acted very properly.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Very properly. If I may suggest a course of action it will be this. I shall inform my sister of the undesirability of having any further communication with this person, and she will see that his acquaintance with Miss Mary Ralston is terminated. Copper, of course, must be advised at once and he may then, if he thinks it proper, decline any further negotiations.”
Sergeant Noakes opened his mouth, but Mr. Cartell raised a finger and he shut it again.
“I need not add,” Mr. Cartell said crisply, “that no undertaking of any kind whatever was given by Mr. Period or by myself. Permission was not asked, and would certainly have been declined, for the use of our names. It might be as well, might it not, if I were to telephone Copper at once and suggest that he rids himself of Leiss and the other car, which he left, I understand, to be repaired at the garage. I shall then insist that Miss Ralston, who I imagine is there, returns at once…What’s the matter, Noakes?”
“The matter,” Sergeant Noakes said warmly, “is this, sir. George Copper can’t be told not to make the sale and Miss Ralston can’t be brought back to be warned.”
“My dear Noakes, why not?”
“Because George Copper has been fool enough to let young Leiss get away with it. And he has got away with it. With the sports car, sir, and the young lady inside it. And where they’ve gone
, sir, is, to use the expression, nobody’s business.”
Who can form an objective view of events with which, however lightly, he has been personally involved? Not Nicola. When, after the climax, she tried to sort out her impressions of these events she found that in every detail they were coloured by her own preferences and sympathies.
At the moment, for instance, she was concerned to notice that, while Mr. Period had suffered a shrewd blow to his passionate snobbery, Mr. Cartell’s reaction was more disingenuous and resourceful. And while Mr. Period was fretful, Mr. Cartell, she thought, was nipped with bitter anger.
He made a complicated noise in his throat and then said sharply: “They must be traced, of course. Has Copper actually transacted the sale? Change of ownership and so on?”
“He’s accepted Mr. Leiss’s car, which is a souped-up old bag of a job, George reckons, in part payment. He’s let Mr. Leiss try out the Scorpion on the understanding that, if he likes it, the deal’s on.”
“Then they will return to the garage?”
“They ought to,” Sergeant Noakes said with some emphasis. “The point is, sir, will they? Likely enough, he’ll drive straight back to London. He may sell the car before he’s paid for it and trust to his connection here to get him out of the red if things become awkward. He’s played that caper before, and he may play it again.”
Mr. Cartell said: “May I, P.P.?” and reached for the telephone.
“If it’s all the same with you, gentlemen, I think I’ll make the call,” Sergeant Noakes said unexpectedly.
Mr. Cartell said: “As you wish,” and moved away from the desk.
Mr. Period began feeling, in an agitated way, in his pockets. He said fretfully: “What have I done with my cigarettes?”
Nicola said: “I think the case was left in the dining-room. I’ll fetch it.”
As she hurried out she heard the telephone ring.