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

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СКАЧАТЬ should be no diminution of courteous observance,”’ she would counter, ‘“in the family circle. A brother will always rise when his sister enters the drawing-room and open the door to her when she shows her intention of quitting it.”’

      ‘“While on the sister’s part some slight acknowledgement of his action will be made: a smile or a quiet ‘thank you’ will indicate her awareness of the little attention.”’

      Almost as if he had read her thoughts, Mr Period was saying: ‘Of course, one knows all about these delicious Victorian offerings – quite wonderful. And there have been contemporaries: poor Felicité Sankie-Bond, after their crash, don’t you know. And one mustn’t overlap with dear Nancy. Very diffy. In the meantime –’

      In the meantime, it at last transpired, Nicola was to make a type-written draft of his notes and assemble them under their appropriate headings. These were: ‘The Ball-dance’, Trifles that Matter’, ‘The Small Dinner’, ‘The Partie Carrée’, ‘Addressing Our Letters & Betters’, ‘Awkwiddities’, ‘The Debutante – lunching and launching’, ‘Tips on Tipping’.

      And bulkily, in a separate compartment, ‘The Compleat Letter-Writer’.

      She was soon to learn that letter-writing was a great matter with Mr Pyke Period.

      He was, in fact, famous for his letters of condolence.

      IV

      They settled to work: Nicola at her table near the front French windows, Mr Period at his desk in the side one.

      Her job was an exacting one. Mr Period evidently jotted down his thoughts, piecemeal, as they had come to him and it was often difficult to know where a passage precisely belonged. ‘Never fold the napkin (there is no need, I feel sure, to put the unspeakable “serviette” in its place), but drop it lightly on the table.’ Nicola listed this under ‘Table Manners’, and wondered if Mr Period would find the phrase ‘refeened’, a word he often used with humorous intent.

      She looked up to find him in a trance, his pen suspended, his gaze rapt, a sheet of headed letter-paper under his hand. He caught her glance and said: ‘A few lines to my dear Desirée Bantling. Soi-disant. The Dowager, as the Press would call her. You saw Ormsbury had gone, I dare say?’

      Nicola, who had no idea whether the Dowager Lady Bantling had been deserted or bereaved, said: ‘No, I didn’t see it.’

      ‘Letters of condolence!’ Mr Period sighed with a faint hint of complacency. ‘How difficult they are!’ He began to write again, quite rapidly, with sidelong references to his note-pad.

      Upstairs a voice, clearly recognizable, shouted angrily: ‘– and all I can say, you horrible little man, is I’m bloody sorry I ever asked you.’ Someone came rapidly downstairs and crossed the hall. The front door slammed. Through her window, Nicola saw her travelling companion, scarlet in the face, stride down the drive, angrily swinging his bowler.

      ‘He’s forgotten his umbrella,’ she thought.

      ‘Oh, dear!’ Mr Period murmured. ‘An awkwiddity, I fear me. Andrew is in one of his rages. You know him, of course.’

      ‘Not till this morning.’

      ‘Andrew Bantling? My dear, he’s the son of the very Lady Bantling we were talking about. Desirée you know. Ormsbury’s sister. Bobo Bantling – Andrew’s papa – was the first of her three husbands. The senior branch. Seventh Baron. Succeeded to the peerage –’ Here followed inevitably, one of Mr Period’s classy genealogical digressions. ‘My dear Nicola,’ he went on, ‘I hope, by the way, I may so far take advantage of a family friendship?’

      ‘Please do.’

      ‘Sweet of you. Well, my dear Nicola, you will have gathered that I don’t vegetate all by myself in this house. No. I share. With an old friend who is called Harold Cartell. It’s a new arrangement and I hope it’s going to suit us both. Harold is Andrew’s step-father and guardian. He is, by the way, a retired solicitor. I don’t need to tell you about Andrew’s mum,’ Mr Period added, strangely adopting the current slang. ‘She, poor darling, is almost too famous.’

      ‘And she’s called Desirée, Lady Bantling?’

      ‘She naughtily sticks to the title in the teeth of the most surprising remarriage.’

      ‘Then she’s really Mrs Harold Cartell?’

      ‘Not now. That hardly lasted any time. No. She’s now Mrs Bimbo Dodds. Bantling. Cartell. Dodds. In that order.’

      ‘Yes, of course,’ Nicola said, remembering at last the singular fame of this lady.

      ‘Yes. ‘Nuff said,’ Mr Period observed, wanly arch, ‘under that heading. But Hal Cartell was Lord Bantling’s solicitor and executor and is the trustee for Andrew’s inheritance. I, by the way, am the other trustee and I do hope that’s not going to be diffy. Well, now,’ Mr Period went cosily on, ‘on Bantling’s death, Hal Cartell was also appointed Andrew’s guardian. Desirée at that time, was going through a rather farouche phase and Andrew narrowly escaped being made a Ward-in-Chancery. Thus it was that Hal Cartell was thrown in the widow’s path. She rather wolfed him up, don’t you know? Black always suited her. But they were too dismally incompatible. However, Harold remained, nevertheless, Andrew’s guardian and trustee for the estate. Andrew doesn’t come into it until he’s twenty-five: in six months’ time, by the way. He’s in the Brigade of Guards, as you’ll have seen, but I gather he wants to leave in order to paint, which is so unexpected. Indeed, that may be this morning’s problem. A great pity. All the Bantlings have been in the Brigade. And if he must paint, poor dear, why not as a hobby? What his father would have said – !’ Mr Period waved his hands.

      ‘But why isn’t he Lord Bantling?’

      ‘His father was a widower with one son when he married Desirée. That son of course, succeeded.’

      ‘Oh, I see,’ Nicola said politely. ‘Of course.’

      ‘You wonder why I go into all these begatteries, as I call them. Partly because they amuse me and partly because you will, I hope, be seeing quite a lot of my stodgy little household and, in so far as Hal Cartell is one of us, we – ah – we overlap. In fact,’ Mr Period went on, looking vexed, ‘we overlap at luncheon. Harold’s sister, Connie Cartell, who is our neighbour, joins us. With – ah – with a protégée, a – soi-disant niece, adopted from goodness knows where. Her name is Mary Ralston and her nickname, an inappropriate one, is Moppett. I understand that she brings a friend with her. However! To return to Desirée. Desirée and her Bimbo spend a lot of time at the dower house, Baynesholme, which is only a mile or two away from us. I believe Andrew lunches there today. His mother was to pick him up here and I do hope he hasn’t gone flouncing back to London: it would be too awkward and tiresome of him, poor boy.’

      ‘Then Mrs Dodds – I mean Lady Bantling and Mr Cartell still –?’

      ‘Oh, lord, yes! They hob-nob occasionally. Desirée never bears grudges. She’s a remarkable person. I dote on her but she is rather a law unto herself. For instance, one doesn’t know in the very least how she’ll react to the death of Ormsbury. Brother though СКАЧАТЬ