Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 7: Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent. Ngaio Marsh

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       CHAPTER 6

       Copse Forge

      Ralph had big hands. When they closed like twin shells over Camilla’s, her own felt imprisoned and fluttery like birds.

      She looked at his eyes and hair, which were black, at his face, which was lean and at his ears, which were protuberant and, at that moment, scarlet. ‘I am in love with Ralph,’ thought Camilla.

      She said: ‘Hallo, you. I thought we’d agreed not to meet again. After last Sunday.’

      ‘Thing of the past,’ Ralph said grandly.

      ‘You promised your father.’

      ‘I’ve told him I consider myself free. Under the circs.’

      ‘Ralph,’ Camilla said, ‘you mustn’t cash in on murder.’

      ‘Is that a very kind thing to say?’

      ‘Perhaps it’s not. I don’t mean I’m not glad to see you – but – well, you know.’

      ‘Look,’ he said, ‘there are one or two things I’ve got to know. Important things. I’ve got to know them, Camilla. The first is: are you terribly upset about last night? Well, of course you are, but so much upset, I mean, that one just mustn’t bother you about anything. Or are you – oh, God, Camilla, I’ve never so much as kissed you and I do love you so much.’

      ‘Do you? No, never mind. About your first question: I just don’t know how I feel about Grandfather and that’s a fact. As far as it’s a personal thing – well, I scarcely even knew him ten days ago. But, since I got here, we’ve seen quite a lot of each other and – this is what you may find hard to believe – we kind of clicked, Grandfather and I.’

      Ralph said on an odd inflexion: ‘You certainly did that,’ and then looked as if he wished he hadn’t.

      Camilla, frowning with concentration, unconsciously laced her fingers through his.

      ‘You, of course,’ she said, ‘just think of him as a bucolic character. The Old Guiser. Wonderful old boy in his way. Not many left. Didn’t have much truck with soap and water. Half me felt like that about him: the Campion half. Smelly old cup of tea, it thought. But then I’d see my mother look out of his eyes.’

      ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I know.’

      ‘Do you? You can’t quite know, dear Ralph. You’re all of a piece: half Mardian, half Stayne. I’m an alloy.’

      ‘You’re a terrible old inverted snob,’ he said fondly, but she paid no attention to this.

      ‘But as for sorrow – personal grief,’ she was saying, ‘no. No. Not exactly that. It doesn’t arise. It’s the awful grotesquerie that’s so nightmarish. It’s like something out of Webster or Marlowe: horror-plus. It gives one the horrors to think of it.’

      ‘So you know what happened. Exactly, I mean?’

      She made a movement of her head indicating the landlord. ‘He saw. He told us: Trixie and me.’

      She felt a stillness in his hands: almost as if he would draw them away, but he didn’t do that. ‘The whole thing!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s so outlandish and sickening and ghastly. The way he was dressed and everything. And then one feels such pity.’

      ‘He couldn’t have known anything about it.’

      ‘Are you sure? How can you tell?’

      ‘Dr Otterly says so.’

      ‘And then – worst of all, unthinkably worst – the – what it was – the crime. You see, I can’t use the word.’

      ‘Yes,’ Ralph said. ‘There’s that.’

      Camilla looked at him with panic in her eyes. ‘The boys!’ she said. ‘They couldn’t. Any of them. Could they?’ He didn’t answer, and she cried out: ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking about Ernie and – what he’s like. You’re remembering what I told you about the dog. And what you said happened with his sword? Aren’t you?’

      ‘All right,’ Ralph said. ‘I am. No, darling. Wait a bit. Suppose, just suppose it is that. It would be quite dreadful and Ernie would have to go through a very bad time and probably spend several years in a criminal lunatic asylum. But there’d be no question of anything worse than that happening to him. It’s perfectly obvious, if you’ll excuse me, darling, that old Ernie’s only about fifteen and fourpence in the pound.’

      ‘Well, I dare say it is,’ Camilla said, looking very white. ‘But to do that!’

      ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m going on to my next question. Please, answer it.’

      ‘I can guess –’

      ‘All right. Wait a bit. I’ve told you I love you. You said you were not sure how you felt and wanted to get away and think about it. Fair enough. I respected that and I’d have held off and not waited for you on Sunday if it hadn’t been for seeing you in church and – well, you know.’

      ‘Yes, well, we disposed of that, didn’t we?’

      ‘You were marvellously understanding. I thought everything was going my way. But then you started up this business. Antediluvian hooey! Because you’re what you choose to call an “alloy” you say it wouldn’t do for us to marry. Did you, by any chance, come down here to see your mother’s people with the idea of facing up to that side of it?’

      ‘Yes,’ Camilla said, ‘I did.’

      ‘You wanted to glower out of the smithy at the county riding by.’

      ‘In effect. Though it’s not the most attractive way of putting it.’

      ‘Do you love me, blast you?’

      ‘Yes,’ Camilla said wildly. ‘I do. So shut up.’

      ‘Not bloody likely! Camilla, how marvellous! How frightfully, frightfully nice of you to love me. I can’t get over it,’ said Ralph who, from emotion and rapture, had also turned white.

      ‘But I stick to my point,’ she said. ‘What’s your great-aunt going to say? What’s your father going to think? Ralph, can you look me in the eye and tell me they wouldn’t mind?’

      ‘If I look you in the eye I shall kiss you.’

      ‘Ah! You see? You can’t. And now – now when this has happened! There’ll be the most ghastly publicity, won’t there? What about that? What sort of fiancée СКАЧАТЬ