Hand in Glove

CHAPTER THREE Aftermath to a Party

Andrew put Nicola’s overcoat on the seat and sat opposite to her.

“The best thing about this train,” he said, “is that it’s nearly always empty. So you’re returning to the fold tomorrow, are you?”

Nicola said Mr. Period had asked her to do so, and that was why she had left her typewriter behind.

“But you’re not returning to Little Codling tomorrow,” Andrew said, with the air of taking a plunge, “you’re returning tonight. At 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:

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 mama’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. I have a car of sorts and we’ll dine somewhere and then we’ll drive down to Bayneshelme.”

“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,” but bad or not he had to go on with it. 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 stepfather, Mr. Cartell.

“It was a snorter,” Andrew said thoughtfully. “He treated the whole thing as if it were a sort of adolescent whim. I’d brought down all the figures of 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 phony. 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 C.I.D. 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 bone. 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.

“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 ejaculated. “What ever’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 Noakes.”

“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 they see me. At least he doesn’t — Mr. C. He was saying he’d forgotten in the heat of the moment at Baynesholme to ask young Leiss and that Moppett about where they’d left the cigarette case, and Mr. Period was saying the young lady, Miss Maitland-Mayne, saw it on the sill. And I was asked to say if it was there when I cleared and I said no. And I added that someone had opened the window.”

“Who?”

“Ah! You may well ask. So Mr. Cartell says, in a great taking-on, that the chaps doing the sewage in Green Lane must have taken it and my gentleman says they’re very decent chaps and he can’t believe it. ‘Very well, then,’ says Mr. C, very sharp and quite the lawyer, ‘perhaps Alfred would care to reconsider his statement.’ And the way he said it was sufficient! After that suggestion, Mrs. M., I don’t mind telling you it’s him or me. Both of us this residence will not accommodate.”

“What did our gentleman say?”

“Ah! What would you expect? Came out very quiet and firm on my behalf. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that Alfred has given us a perfectly clear picture and that there is no need to ask him to repeat it. Thank you, Alfred. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’ So, of course, I said: ‘Thank you, sir,’ with what I trust was the proper emphasis, and withdrew. But you can take it from me, there’s serious trouble and deep feeling in more than one direction. Something was said at luncheon that was very ill-received by our gentleman. Said by Mr. C. Speculation,” added Alfred, who had grown calmer and reverted to his normal habit of speech, “speculation is unprofitable. Events will clarify.”

“Why Noakes, though?” she pondered.

“Ah! And I happened to ascertain from the chaps in the lane that Noakes brought Mr. C. back in George Copper’s Bloodbath and George himself turned up in that Scorpion he’s got in his garage. And what’s more, the rural mail van gave those two a lift back. They’ve been invited to the Big House party tonight. They’re dining and staying with Miss Cartell. They were very pleased with themselves, the mail van said, but cagey in their manner.”

The kitchen door was ajar and Mr. Cartell’s voice sounded clearly from the hall.

“Very well,” he was saying. “If that should prove to be the case I shall know how to act and I can assure you, P.P., that I shall act with the utmost rigour. I trust that you are satisfied.”

The front door slammed.

“Mercy on us!” Mrs. Mitchell apostrophized. “Now what?” And added precipitately: “My bedroom window!”

She bolted from the kitchen and Alfred heard her thundering up the back stairs.

Presently she returned, flushed and fully informed.

“Across the Green,” she reported, “to Miss Cartell’s.”

“And you may depend upon it, Mrs. M.,” Alfred said, “that the objective is Miss Moppett.”

Moppett had changed into the evening dress she kept in her bedroom at Miss Cartell’s house. It was geranium red, very décolleté and flagrantly becoming to her. She lay back in her chair, admiring her arms and glancing up from under her eyebrows at Mr. Cartell.

“Auntie Con’s at a Hunt Club committee do of sorts,” she said. “She’ll be in presently. Leonard’s collecting his dinner jacket off the bus.”

“I am glad,” Mr. Cartell said, giving her one look and thereafter keeping his gaze on his own folded hands, “of the opportunity to speak to you in. private. I will be obliged if, as far as my sister is concerned, you treat our conversation as confidential. There is no need, at this juncture, to cause her unnecessary distress.”

“Dear me,” she murmured, “you terrify me, Uncle Hal.”

“I will also be obliged if the assumption of a relationship which does not exist is discontinued.”

“Anything you say,” she agreed after a pause, “Mr. Cartell.”

“I have two matters to put before you. The first is this. The young man, Leonard Leiss, with whom you appear to have formed a close friendship, is known to the police. If he persists in his present habits it will only be a matter of time before he is in serious trouble, and, if you continue in your association with him, you will undoubtedly become involved. To a criminal extent. I would prefer, naturally, to think you were unaware of his proclivities, but I must say that I am unable to do so.”

“I certainly am unaware of anything of the sort and I don’t believe a word of it.”

“That,” Mr. Cartell said, “is nonsense.”

“I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid it’s you that’s talking nonsense. All this to-do because poor Leonard wants to buy a car and I simply mention to Copper that Auntie Con — I hope you don’t mind if I go on calling her that — knows him and that you and P.P. might give him the O.K. It was only a matter of form, anyway. Of course, if we’d thought you wouldn’t like it we wouldn’t have dreamt of doing it. I’m jolly sorry we did, and Leonard is, too.”

Mr. Cartell raised his eyes and looked at her. For a moment she boggled, but only for a moment. “And I must say,” she said boldly, “we both take a pretty poor view of your coming to Baynesholme and creating a scene. Not that it made any difference with Lady Bantling. She’s asked us both for tonight in spite of whatever nonsense she may have been told about us,” Moppett announced and laughed rather shrilly.

He waited for a moment and then said: “It would be idle to discuss this matter any further. I shall turn to my second point and put it very bluntly. What did you do with Mr. Period’s cigarette case?”

Moppett recrossed her legs and waited much too long before she said: “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Precisely what I have said. You and Leiss examined it after luncheon. What did you do with it?”

“How dare you—” Moppett began. “How dare you—” and Leonard came Into the room.

When he saw Mr. Cartell he fetched up short. “Pardon me,” he said elegantly. “Am I interrupting something?”

Moppett extended her arm towards him. “Darling,” she said. “I’m being badgered. Can you cope?”

He took her hand and sat on the arm of her chair. “What goes on?” he asked. He was normally a white-faced young man — this characteristic at the moment was particularly noticeable.

“To be perfectly honest,” Moppett began, “I haven’t a clue. But it appears that we’re meant to know where poor old P.P. puts his museum pieces.”

“Mr. Period’s cigarette case has disappeared,” Mr. Cartell said, addressing Leonard exclusively. “You and Miss Ralston were the last persons known to handle it. You may care to make a statement as to what you did with it.”

Leonard said: “Disappeared! By Jove, that’s too bad, isn’t it?” His pale fingers closed tightly over Moppett’s. “Of course we must help, if we can. Yes, now — Yes. I do remember. I left it on the window ledge in the dining-room. You remember, sweetie, don’t you?”

“Perfectly.”

“Was the window open or shut?”

“Oh,” Leonard said easily, “open. Yes. Open.”

“Did you open it, Mr. Leiss?”

“Me? What would I do that for? It was open.”

“It was shut,” Mr. Cartell said, “during luncheon.”

“Then I suppose the butler-chap — what’s-’is-name — must have opened it.”

“No.”

“That,” Leonard remarked, smiling, “is what he says.”

“It is what I say.”

“Then I’m afraid I don’t much fancy the way you say it.” Leonard produced a silver case from his pocket, offered it to Moppett, helped himself, and with great deliberation lit both cigarettes. He snapped the case shut, smiled at Mr. Cartell and returned it to his pocket. He inhaled deeply, breathed out the vapour and fanned it with his hand. He wore an emerald ring on his signet finger. “How about the sewer men in the lane?” he asked. “Anything in that?”

“They could not open the window from outside.”

“Perhaps it was opened for them.”

Mr. Cartell stood up. “Mr. Leiss,” he said, “I consider myself responsible to Mr. Period for any visitors who, however unwelcome, come to his house under my aegis. Unless his case is returned within the next twelve hours, I shall call in the police.”

“You’re quite an expert at that, aren’t you?” Leonard remarked. He looked at the tip of his cigarette. “One other thing,” he said. “I resent the way you’re handling this, Mr. Cartell, and I know exactly what I can do about it.”

Mr. Cartell observed him with a sort of astonished disgust. He addressed himself to Moppett. “There’s no point,” he said, “in pursuing this conversation.”

A door banged, footsteps were heard in the hall together with an outbreak of yapping and long-drawn-out whines. A loud, uninhibited voice shouted: “Geddown! Geddown, you brute.” There followed a canine yelp and a renewed outbreak of yapping.

“Quiet, Li. Quiet, sweetie. Who the hell let this blasted mongrel in! Trudi!”

“I have changed my mind,” Mr. Cartell said. “I shall speak to my sister.”

He went out and found her, clasping a frenzied Pekingese to her bosom, kicking Pixie and shouting at her Austrian house-parlourmaid.

“My God, Boysie,” she said when she saw her brother, “are you dotty, bringing that thing in here? Take it out. Take it out!”

The Pekingese turned in her arms and bit her thumb.

Mr. Cartell said, with dignity: “Come along, old girl, you’re not wanted.” He withdrew Pixie to the garden, tied her to the gatepost, and returned to the hall, where he found his sister stanching her wound. The Pekingese had been removed.

“I am sorry, Constance. I apologize. Had I imagined—”

“Oh, come off it,” Miss Cartell rejoined. “You’re hopeless with animals. Let’s leave it at that. If you want to see me, come in here while I get some stuff on my thumb.”

He followed her into her “den”: a small room, crowded with photographs that she had long ago ceased to look at, with the possible exception of those that recorded the progress of Moppett from infancy to her present dubious effulgence.

Miss Cartell rummaged in a drawer and found some cotton wool, which she applied to her thumb with stamp paper and a heavy coating of some black and evil-smelling unguent.

“What is that revolting stuff?” asked her brother, taking out his handkerchief.

“I use it on my mare for girth-gall.”

“Really, Connie!”

“Really what? Now then, Boysie,” she said, “what’s up? I can see you’re in one of your moods. Let’s have a drink and hear all about it.”

“I don’t want a drink, Connie.”

“Why not? I do,” she shouted, with her inevitable gust of laughter, and opened a little cupboard. “I’ve been having a go at the Hunt Club,” she added and embarked on a vigorous exposé of a kennel maid. Mr. Cartell suffered her to thrust a whisky-and-soda into his hand and listened to her with something like despair.

In the end he managed to get her to attend to him. He saw the expected and familiar look of obstinacy come into her face.

“I can’t put it too strongly, Connie,” he said. “The fellow’s a bad lot, and, unless you put your foot down, the girl’s going to be involved in serious trouble.”

But it was no use. She said, readily enough, that she would tackle Moppett, but almost at once she began to defend her — and before long they had both lost their tempers and had become a middle-aged brother and sister furiously at odds.

“The trouble with you, Boysie, is that you’ve grown so damned selfish. I don’t wonder Désirée got rid of you. All you think of is your own comfort. You’ve worked yourself up into a stink because you’re dead-scared P.P. will turn you out.”

“That’s an insufferable construction to put on it. Naturally, I don’t relish the thought—”

“There you are, you see.”

“Nonsense, Constance! Will you realize that you are entertaining a young man with a criminal record?”

“Moppett has told me all about him. She’s taken him in hand, and he’s going as straight as a die.”

“You’ve made yourself responsible for Mary, you appear to be quite besotted on her — and yet you can allow her to form a criminal association—”

“There’s nothing like that about it. She’s sorry for him.”

“She’ll be sorry for herself before long.”

“Why?”

“This cigarette case—”

“P.P.’ll find it somewhere. You’ve no right—”

“I have every right,” Mr. Cartell cried, now quite beside himself with chagrin. “And I tell you this, Connie. The girl is a bad girl. If you’ve any authority over her, you’d better use it. But in my opinion your sensible course would be to let her be brought to book and pay the consequences. She’s got a record, Connie. You’ll be well rid of her. And I promise you that unless this wretched cigarette case is returned before tomorrow, I shall call in the police.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I shall. And the upshot, no doubt, will be jail for the pair of them.”

“You miserable little pipsqueak, Boysie!”

“Very well,” Mr. Cartell said and rose. “That’s my final word, Connie. Good evening to you.”

He strode from the hall into the garden, where he fell over his dog. With some commotion they effected an exit — and returned, presumably, to Mr. Period’s house across the Green.

Désirée wore black for her April Fool’s party. On any other woman of her age it would have been a disastrous dress, but, by virtue of a sort of inward effrontery, she got away with it. Her neck, her bosom and that dismal little region known, unprettily, as the armpit were all so many statements of betrayal, but she triumphed over them and not so much took them in her own stride as she obliged other people to take them in theirs. With her incredible hair brushed up into a kind of bonfire, her carefree makeup, her eyeglass, and her general air of raffishness, she belonged, as Mr. Period mildly reflected, to Toulouse-Lautrec rather than to any contemporary background.

They had dined. The party had assembled, made a great deal of noise and gone off in pairs by car to follow up the clues. Bimbo was driving round the terrain to keep observation, rescue any couple that had become unintentionally lost and whip in the deliberate stragglers.

Everyone was to be in by midnight. Supper was set out in the ballroom, and in the meantime Désirée and Mr. Period sat over a fire in her boudoir enjoying coffee and brandy. It was, Mr. Period noticed, Dé-sirée’s third brandy, but she carried her drink with astonishing bravura. He nursed his own modest potion and cozily lamented his fate.

“Désirée, my dear,” he was saying, “I really don’t know what it is about you, but you have so got the gift of drawing one out. Here am I letting my back hair down in the naughtiest way, and about poor old Hal, which is not at all the done thing, considering.”

“Why not?” she said, propping her feet in their preposterously high heels above the fireplace. Mr. Period, as she noticed with amusement, gazed tactfully at the flames. “Why not? I found Harold plain hell to live with, and I don’t know why you should fare any better. Except that you’re nicer than me and have probably got more patience.”

“It’s the little things. Every morning to tap on one’s door and say, ‘Bath’s empty. For what it’s worth.’ Every day to clear his throat before he opens his Telegraph, and say he may as well know the worst. And his dog, Désirée! The noise,” Mr. Period exclaimed, unconsciously plagiarizing, “and the smell! And the destruction!”

“One of those mixed-up dogs that try to marry one’s foot, I’ve noticed.”

Mr. Period gave a little cough and murmured, “Exactly. Moreover, every night, at one o’clock precisely, he takes it out of doors and it sets up the most hideous barking until, and indeed for some time after, he shuts it up. There have been complaints from all over the village. And now,” he added, throwing up his hands, “this afternoon! This afternoon was too much.”

“But do tell me, P.P., what happened? With Moppett and her flash friend and the car? I’ve heard Harold’s version, of course, but I’m having my own private war with him and was too angry to pay all that much attention.”

Mr. Period told her the whole story.

“And I do feel, darling Désirée, that you should be warned. It’s plain to be seen that this frightful person, the Leiss, is an out-and-out bad ’un. And indeed, for your ear alone, we most strongly suspect—” Mr. Period looked about him as if the boudoir concealed microphones and began to whisper the story of the cigarette case.

“Oh, no!” Désirée said with relish. “Actually a burglar! And is Moppett his con-girl, do you suppose?”

“I fear, only too probably. And, my dear, here you are, in the kindness of your heart, asking them to your wonderful party.”

“It wasn’t kindness. It was to spite Harold. He won’t give Andy his money. I can’t tell you how livid it makes me.”

She looked rather fixedly at Mr. Period. “You’re a trustee, P.P. Have you discussed it with Hal, or with Andrew?”

Mr. Period said uncomfortably: “Not really discussed it, my dear.”

“Don’t tell me you disapprove, too!”

“No, no, no!” he said in a hurry. “Not disapprove exactly. It’s just — leaving the Brigade and so on. For that rather outré world. Art…the Chelsea set…Not that Andrew…But there! ’Nuff said.”

“We’re not going to quarrel over it, I hope?”

“My dear. Quarrel!”

“Well,” she said, suddenly giving Mr. Period a kiss. “Let’s talk about something more amusing.”

They embarked on a long gossip and Mr. Period eased up. He was enjoying himself immensely, but he did not wish to stay until the return of the treasure hunters. He looked at his watch, found it was eleven o’clock, and asked if he might telephone for the Bloodbath.

“No need,” Désirée said, “my car’s outside. I’d love to take you. Don’t fuss, P.P., I’d really like to. I can have a cast around the village and see how the hunt’s going. By the way, one of Bimbo’s clues leads to your sewage excavation. It says: All your trouble and all your pain will only land you down the drain. He’s not very good at poetry, poor sweet, but I thought that one of his neater efforts. Come on, darling. I can see you’re in a fever lest Slick Len and his moll should get back with the first prize before you make your getaway.”

They went out to her car. Mr. Period was a little apprehensive because of the amount of liqueur brandy Désirée had consumed, but she drove with perfect expertise and all the way to Little Codling they talked about Mr. Cartell. Presently they turned into Green Lane. A red lantern marked the end of the open ditch. They passed an elderly sports car, parked in the rough grass on the opposite side.

“Andy,” said his mother, giving a long hoot on her horn. “He’s going to fall in love with your secretary, I can see.”

“Already!” ejaculated Mr. Period.

“Going to. Heavily, I fancy. I took to the girl rather.”

“Charming! A really nice gel. I’m delighted with her.”

“P.P.,” Désirée said, as they drew near the house, “there’s something extra Harold’s done to inflame you, isn’t there?”

There was a silence.

“Don’t tell me if you’d rather not, of course.”

“It’s very painful to me. Something he said. One shouldn’t,” Mr. Period added in a constrained and unnatural voice, “let such things upset one, but — No, dearest Désirée, I shan’t bore you with it. It was nothing. I prefer to forget it.”

“Fair enough,” she said and pulled up.

Mr. Period did not immediately get out of the car. He made another little speech of thanks for his entertainment and then, with many hesitations and apologetic noises, hinted obscurely at bereavement.

“I haven’t said anything, my dear,” he murmured, “because I felt you preferred not. But I wouldn’t like you to think — But never mind, I only wanted you to know…” He waved his hands and was silent.

“Do you mean about Ormsbury?” she said in her direct way. Mr. Period made a small confirmatory sound. “You didn’t say anything,” he added. “So, of course—”

“There are some sorrows,” Désirée said and it was impossible to catch any overtones in her voice, “that go too deep for words.”

Mr. Period gave a little groan of sympathy, kissed her hand, and left her.

He went in by the side gate. She watched him, by the light of her headlamps, pick his way in a gingerly fashion over the planks that had been laid across the ditch. He was safely inside his house and Désirée was about to drive away when she caught sight of a figure in an upper window. She stopped her engine and got out of the car.

By midnight the winning pair had presented themselves with their prize, a magnum of champagne. They were, inevitably, Moppett and Leonard, all smiles, but with a curious tendency to avoid looking at each other. Leonard was effulgent in the matter of cuff links and lapels and his tie was large and plum-coloured. Bimbo looked upon him with loathing, gave them both drinks and put a jazz record on the machine. Leonard with ineffable grace extended his hands towards Désirée. “May we?” he said and in a moment was dancing with her. He was a superb dancer. “Much too good,” she said afterwards. “Like the really expensive gigolos used to be. He smells like them too: it quite took me back. I adored it.”

Bimbo, sulking, was then obliged to dance with Moppett, who made businesslike passes at him. These exercises were interrupted by the arrival in straggling pairs of the rest of the treasure hunters, Nicola and Andrew being the last to come in — both looking radiantly pleased with themselves.

Désirée had a talent for parties. Sometimes they began presentably and ended outrageously, sometimes they were presentable almost all the time and sometimes they began, continued and ended outrageously. It was for the last sort that she had gained her notoriety. This one was, at the moment, both gay and decorous, possibly because Andrew had unexpectedly said he hoped it would be.

They were all dancing, and the time was a quarter past one, when a rumpus broke out on the drive. Bimbo was changing records, so the noise established itself readily: it was that of a multiple dogfight.

Growls, yaps, full-blooded barking and strangulated cries of anguish mounted in a ragged crescendo.

Désirée said: “A rival show, it seems”—and then: “Bimbo! Ours! They must have got out!”

Bimbo swore, pulled back curtains and went through French windows to the terrace, followed by Andrew, Désirée and most of the men.

Nicola found herself on the terrace in a group composed of all the other ladies and Leonard.

The combat was joined among parked cars at the head of the drive and was illuminated by lights from the house. All was confusion. Some six or seven contestants bit at each other in a central engagement, others rolled together under cars. One very large, isolated dog sat on its haunches howling dispassionately, and one could be discerned bolting down the drive screaming its classic cry of “pen-and-ink.”

Bimbo, Andrew and an advance guard went down into the arena and at first added greatly to the confusion. They shouted, swore, grabbed and kicked. Désirée suddenly joined them, was momentarily hidden, but emerged carrying an outraged poodle by the scruff of its neck. Servants ran out, offering hunting crops and umbrellas. Expressions of human as well as canine anguish were now perceptible. Andrew detached himself, dragging two frenzied Aberdeens by their collars. They were Baynesholme dogs and were thrust with the poodle into a cloakroom, where they got up a halfhearted row on their own account.

Bimbo now appeared carrying an air-gun. He waved the other men aside and presented his weapon at the central mêlée. There was a mild explosion, followed by cries of distress, and suddenly the arena had emptied and the night was plangent with the laments of rapidly retreating dogs.

Only one remained. Exhausted, gratified, infamous and complacent, her tongue lolling out of one side of her mouth, and her lead trailing from her collar, sat a boxer bitch: Mr. Cartell’s Pixie, the Helen of the engagement. When Bimbo approached her she gathered herself together and bit him.

The next morning Connie Cartell woke slowly from a heavy sleep. She experienced that not unusual sensation, during half-consciousness, in which the threat of something unpleasant anticipates the recollection of the thing itself. She lay, blinking and yawning for a second or two. She heard her Austrian maid stump along the passage and knock on a door.

Damn! Connie thought. I forgot to tell her not to disturb either of them.

Then the full realization of all the horrors of the preceding evening came upon her.

She was not an imaginative woman, but it hadn’t taken much imagination, after her brother’s visit, to envisage what would happen to Moppett if Mr. Period’s cigarette case was not discovered. Connie had tried to tackle Moppett, and, as usual, had got nowhere at all. Moppett had merely remarked that P.P. and Mr. Cartell had dirty minds. When Connie had broached the topic of Leonard Leiss and his reputation, Moppett had reminded her of Leonard’s unhappy background and of how she, Moppett, was pledged to redeem him. She had assured Connie, with tears in her eyes and a great many caresses, that Leonard was indeed on the upward path.

If Connie herself had had any experience at all of the Leiss milieu and any real inclination to cope with it, she might possibly have been able to bring a salutary point of view to bear on the situation. She might, it is not too preposterous to suppose, have been able to direct Moppett towards a different pattern of behaviour. But she had no experience and no real inclination. She only doted upon Moppett with the whole force of her unimaginative and uninformed being. She was in a foreign country, and, like many another woman of her class and kind, behaved stupidly, as a foreigner.

So she bathed and dressed and went down to breakfast in a sort of fog, and ate large quantities of eggs, bacon and kidneys indifferently presented by her Austrian maid. She was still at her breakfast when she saw Alfred, in his alpaca jacket and the cloth cap he assumed for such occasions, crossing the Green with an envelope in his hand.

In a moment he appeared before her.

“I beg pardon, Miss,” Alfred said, laying the envelope on the table, “for disturbing you, but Mr. Period asked me to deliver this. No answer is required, I understand.”

She thanked him and, when he had withdrawn, opened the letter.

Silent minutes passed. Connie read and reread the letter. Incredulity followed bewilderment, and was replaced in turn by alarm. A feeling of horrid unreality possessed her and again she read the letter.

The Austrian maid came in and found Connie still gazing at this letter.

“Trudi,” she said with an effort, I've had a shock.”

“Bitte?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going out. I won’t be long.”

And she went out. She crossed the Green and tramped up Mr. Pyke Period’s drive to his front door.

The workmen were assembled in Green Lane.

Alfred opened the front door to her.

“Alfred,” she said, “what’s happened?”

“Happened, Miss?”

“My brother. Is he—?”

“Mr. Cartell is not up yet, Miss.”

She looked at him as if he had addressed her in an incomprehensible jargon.

“He’s later than usual, Miss,” Alfred said. “Did you wish to speak to him?”

“Hull — Oh, Connie! Good morning to you.”

It was Mr. Pyke Period, as fresh as paint, but perhaps not quite as rubicund as usual. His manner was overeffusive.

Connie said: “P.P., for God’s sake what is all this? Your letter?”

Mr. Period glanced at Alfred, who withdrew. He then, after a moment’s hesitation, took Connie’s hand into both of his.

“Now, now!” he said. “You mustn’t let this upset you, my dear.”

“Are you mad?”

“Connie!” he faintly ejaculated. “What do you mean? Do you — do you know?”

“I must sit down. I don’t feel well.”

She did so. Mr. Period, his fingers to his lips, eyed her with dismay. He was about to speak when a shrill female ejaculation broke out in the direction of the servants’ quarters. It was followed by the rumble of men’s voices. Alfred reappeared, very white in the face.

“Good God!” Mr. Period said. “What now?”

Alfred, standing behind Connie Cartell, looked his employer in the eyes and said: “May I speak to you, sir?” He made a slight warning gesture and opened the library door.

“Forgive me, Connie. I won’t be a moment.”

Mr. Period went into the library followed by Alfred, who shut the door.

“Merciful heavens, Alfred, what’s the matter with you? Why do you look at me like that?”

“Mr. Cartell, sir.” Alfred moistened his lips. “I, really, I scarcely know how to put it, sir. He’s — he’s—”

“What are you trying to tell me? What’s happened?”

“There’s been an accident, sir. The men have found him. He’s—”

Alfred turned towards the library window. Through the open gate in the quickset hedge, the workmen could be seen, grouped together, stooping.

“They found him—” Alfred said — “not to put too fine a point on it, sir — in the ditch. I’m very sorry I’m sure, sir, but I’m afraid he’s dead.”