Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 10: Last Ditch, Black As He’s Painted, Grave Mistake. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ Chubb, Lucy accepted as a source of food and accordingly performed the obligatory ritual of brushing round her ankles. Chubb, she completely ignored.

      She spent a good deal of time in the tub garden at the back of the house making wild balletic passes at imaginary butterflies.

      At 9.30 one morning, a week after his dinner with the Alleyns, Mr Whipplestone sat in his drawing-room doing The Times crossword. Chubb was out shopping and Mrs Chubb, having finished her housework, was ‘doing for’ Mr Sheridan in the basement. Mr Sheridan, who was something in the City, Mr Whipplestone gathered, was never at home on weekday mornings. At 11 o’clock Mrs Chubb would return to see about Mr Whipplestone’s luncheon. The arrangement worked admirably.

      Held up over a particularly cryptic clue, Mr Whipplestone’s attention was caught by a singular noise, a kind of stifled complaint as if Lucy was mewing with her mouth full. This proved to be the case. She entered the room backwards with sunken head, approached crab-wise and dropped something heavy on his foot. She then sat back and gazed at him with her head on one side and made the inquiring trill that he found particularly fetching.

      ‘What on earth have you got there?’ he asked.

      He picked it up. It was a ceramic no bigger than a medallion but it was heavy and must have grievously taxed her delicate little jaws. A pottery fish, painted white on one side and biting its own tail. It was pierced by a hole at the top.

      ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked severely.

      Lucy lifted a paw, lay down, looked archly at him from under her arm and then incontinently jumped up and left the room.

      ‘Extraordinary little creature,’ he muttered. ‘It must belong to the Chubbs.’

      And when Mrs Chubb returned from below he called her in and showed it to her. ‘Is this yours, Mrs Chubb?’ he asked.

      She had a technique of not replying immediately to anything that was said to her and she used it now. He held the thing out to her but she didn’t take it.

      ‘The cat brought it in,’ explained Mr Whipplestone, who always introduced a tone of indifference in mentioning Lucy Lockett to the Chubbs. ‘Do you know where it came from?’

      ‘I think – it must be – I think it’s Mr Sheridan’s, sir,’ Mrs Chubb said at last. ‘One of his ornaments, like. The cat gets through his back window, sir, when it’s open for airing. Like when I done it just now. But I never noticed.’

      ‘Does she? Dear me! Most reprehensible! You might put it back, Mrs Chubb, could you? Too awkward if he should miss it!’

      Mrs Chubb’s fingers closed over it. Mr Whipplestone looking up at her, saw with surprise that her apple-pink cheeks had blanched. He thought of asking her if she was unwell but her colour began to reappear unevenly.

      ‘All right, Mrs Chubb?’ he asked.

      She seemed to hover on the brink of some reply. Her lips moved and she brushed them with her fingers. At last she said: ‘I haven’t liked to ask, sir, but I hope we give satisfaction, Chubb and me.’

      ‘Indeed you do,’ he said warmly. ‘Everything goes very smoothly.’

      ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said and went out. He thought: ‘That wasn’t what she was about to say.’

      He heard her go upstairs and thought: ‘I wish she’d return that damn’d object.’ But almost immediately she came back.

      He went through to the dining-room window and watched her descend the outside steps into the back garden and disappear into Mr Sheridan’s flat. Within seconds he heard the door slam and saw her return.

      A white pottery fish. Like a medallion. He really must not get into the habit of thinking things had happened before or been heard of or seen before. There were scientific explanations, he believed, for such experiences. One lobe of one’s brain working a billionth of a second before the other or something to do with Time Spirals. He wouldn’t know. But of course, in the case of the Sanskrit person it was all perfectly straightforward: he had in the past seen the name written up. He had merely forgotten.

      Lucy made one of her excitable entrances. She tore into the room as if the devil was after her, stopped short with her ears laid back and affected to see Mr Whipplestone for the first time: ‘Heavens! You!’

      ‘Come here,’ he said sharply.

      She pretended not to hear him, strolled absently nearer and suddenly leapt into his lap and began to knead.

      ‘You are not,’ he said, checking this painful exercise, ‘to sneak into other people’s flats and steal pottery fish.’

      And there for the moment the matter rested.

      Until five days later when, on a very warm evening, she once more stole the medallion and dumped it at her owner’s feet.

      Mr Whipplestone scarcely knew whether he was exasperated or diverted by this repeated misdemeanour. He admonished his cat, who seemed merely to be thinking of something else. He wondered if he could again leave it to Mrs Chubb to restore the object to its rightful place in the morning and then told himself that really this wouldn’t do.

      He turned the medallion over in his hand. There was some sort of inscription fired on the reverse side: a wavy X. There was a hole at the top through which, no doubt, a cord could be passed. It was a common little object, entirely without distinction. A keepsake of some sort, he supposed.

      Mr Sheridan was at home. Light from his open kitchen window illuminated the back regions and streaked through gaps in his sitting-room curtains.

      ‘You’re an unconscionable nuisance,’ Mr Whipplestone said to Lucy Lockett.

      He put the medallion in his jacket pocket, let himself out at his front door, took some six paces along the pavement and passed through the iron gate and down the short flight of steps to Mr Sheridan’s door. Lucy, anticipating an evening stroll, was too quick for him. She shot over his feet, and down the steps and hid behind a dwarfed yew tree.

      He rang the door bell.

      It was answered by Mr Sheridan. The light in his little entrance lobby was behind him so that his face was in shadow. He had left the door into his sitting-room open and Mr Whipplestone saw that he had company. Two armchairs in view had their backs towards him but the tops of their occupants’ heads showed above them.

      ‘I do apologize,’ said Mr Whipplestone, ‘not only for disturbing you but for –’ he dipped into his pocket and then held out the medallion – ‘this,’ he said.

      Mr Sheridan’s behaviour oddly repeated that of Mrs Chubb. He stook stock still. Perhaps no more than a couple of seconds passed in absolute silence but it seemed much longer before he said:

      ‘I don’t understand. Are you –?’

      ‘I must explain,’ Mr Whipplestone said: and did.

      While he was explaining the occupant of one of the chairs turned and looked over the back. He could see only the top of the head, the forehead and the eyes but there was no mistaking Mrs Montfort. Their eyes met and she ducked out of sight.

      Sheridan СКАЧАТЬ