Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 8: Death at the Dolphin, Hand in Glove, Dead Water. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ with her hands on her knees staring dolefully at him. Her left thumb was decorated with dirty, bloodstained cotton-wool and stamp-paper. She had evidently been crying.

      ‘It’s pretty ghastly,’ she said. ‘Poor old Boysie! I can’t take it in. He was a bit of an old maid but a brother’s a brother. We didn’t see eye-to-eye over a lot of things, but still.’

      Alleyn was visited by the fleeting wish that he could run into somebody who at least pretended to have liked Mr Cartell.

      ‘When,’ he asked her, ‘did you last see him?’

      ‘I don’t know. Yes, I do. Last evening. He came over here with that ghastly bitch. It upset Li-chi. They’re very highly strung animals, pekes. He’s still nervous. Eat up, my poppet,’ said Miss Cartell to the Pekinese. ‘Lovely livvy!’

      She poked her finger temptingly in the raw liver.

      ‘Eat up,’ she said and wiped her finger on the Pekinese. Alleyn noticed that her hand was unsteady.

      ‘Was it just a casual, friendly visit?’ he asked.

      Miss Cartell’s rather prominent blue eyes, slightly bloodshot, seemed to film over.

      ‘He was taking the bitch for a walk,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Brought it into the house, like a fool, and of course, Li became hysterical and bit me, poor little chap. I’ve fixed it up with girth-gall stuff,’ she added, ‘it smells a bit, but it’s good.’

      ‘Did Mr Cartell meet anybody else during his call, do you remember?’

      With a manner that was at once furtive and anxious she said: ‘Not that I know. I mean, I didn’t see anything.’ She might have been a great elderly schoolgirl caught on the hop. ‘He was here when I came in,’ she added. ‘I don’t know who he’d seen.’

      ‘Miss Cartell,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m anxious to find out if your brother had any enemies. I expect that sounds rather melodramatic, but I’m afraid it’s unavoidable. Is there, do you know, anyone who had cause, for any reason, however trivial, to dislike or fear him?’

      She waited much too long before she said: ‘No one in particular,’ and then after a pause: ‘he wasn’t awfully popular, I suppose. I mean he didn’t make friends with people all that easily.’ She reached down her blunt ill-kept hand to the Pekinese and fondled it. ‘He was a dry old stick,’ she said. ‘You know. Typical solicitor: I used to tell him he had ink instead of blood in his veins.’

      She broke into one of her ungainly laughs and blew her nose on a man’s handkerchief.

      ‘There was a luncheon party,’ Alleyn said, ‘wasn’t there? Yesterday, at Mr Pyke Period’s house?’

      Instead of answering him she suddenly blurted out: ‘But I thought it was an accident! The way they told me. It sounded like an accident.’

      ‘Who told you?’

      ‘P.P.,’ she said. ‘Alfred told him and he told me. He made it sound like an accident.’

      ‘The odds against,’ Alleyn said, ‘are considerable.’

      ‘Why?’

      Everything about her was dull; her face, her manner, her voice. He wondered if she was really attending to him.

      ‘Because,’ he said, ‘accident would imply at least two lots of people behaving independently like dangerous hoodlums at the same spot with different objectives.’

      ‘I don’t follow that,’ said Miss Cartell.

      ‘Never mind, just tell me about the luncheon party. There were you and your adopted niece and Miss Nicola Maitland-Mayne and Mr Leonard Leiss. And, of course, your brother and Mr Period. Is that right?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘What did you talk about?’

      Nicola had given him a pretty full account of the luncheon party. Miss Cartell was much less explicit. She described the Pixie incident with one or two dismal hoots of retrospective laughter and she dwelt, disjointedly, upon Mr Period’s references to blue blood and polite behaviour. She was clearly very ill at ease.

      ‘He’s got a bee in his bonnet over that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘My brother ragged him about it and he got jolly ratty. You could see. Can’t take a joke.’

      ‘What sort of joke?’ Alleyn ventured.

      ‘Well – I dunno. Some story about a baptismal register in a vestry. I didn’t listen.’

      Alleyn asked her about the cigarette-case and she at once exhibited all the classic signs of a clumsy and unaccustomed liar. She changed colour, avoided his glance and again fondled the unenthusiastic Pekinese.

      ‘I didn’t notice anything about that,’ she said. ‘He’d got the case. I didn’t know he’d lost it. He’s an old fusspot anyway.’ The colour started out in blotches on her flattish cheeks. ‘He probably lost it himself,’ she said. ‘Muddling about.’

      Alleyn said: ‘Miss Cartell, I’m sorry to badger you when you’ve had such a shock, but I’m sure you want to get this wretched business cleared up, don’t you?’

      ‘Don’t know,’ she countered. ‘Not if it’s going to lead to a lot of unpleasantness. Won’t bring poor old Boysie back, will it?’

      Alleyn disregarded this. ‘Your adopted niece and a friend of hers, called Mr Leiss, were at the luncheon, weren’t they?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said, staring at him. She seemed to be in two minds whether to go on. Then she said: ‘You don’t want to pay any attention to what P.P. says about them. He’s out of touch with the young. Expects them to behave like his generation; and a lot of pie-faced little humbugs they were, if you like.’

      ‘Was there some talk of Mr Leiss buying a car?’

      She bent over the dog. ‘That’s enough,’ she said to it. ‘You’ve had enough.’ And then to Alleyn: ‘It all petered out. He didn’t buy it.’

      The door opened and her Austrian maid came in with a letter.

      ‘From Mr Period, please,’ she said. ‘The man left it.’

      Miss Cartell seemed unwilling to take the letter. The maid put it on the desk at her elbow.

      ‘All right, Trudi,’ Miss Cartell mumbled. ‘Thank you,’ and the maid went out.

      ‘Pay no attention to me,’ Alleyn said.

      ‘It’ll wait.’

      ‘Don’t you think, perhaps, you should look at it?’

      She opened the letter unhandily and as she read it turned white to the lips.

      ‘What is it?’ he asked, ‘Miss Cartell, what’s the matter?’

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