Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 9: Clutch of Constables, When in Rome, Tied Up in Tinsel. Ngaio Marsh

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      ‘Fair enough,’ Troy said pacifically.

      He gave her a shamefaced grin and said oh well he supposed he’d better do something about the nightlife of Crossdyke. As he was evidently first going below Troy asked him to keep the drawing for the time being.

      He paused at the companion-way for Miss Rickerby-Carrick. She erupted with monotonous precipitancy through the half-door, saw Mr Pollock who had the Zodiac drawing open in his hands, looked at it as if it was a bomb and hurried on to Troy.

      ‘Do let’s go,’ she said. ‘Do come on.’

      They took their long strides from the gunwale to the bank, a simple exercise inevitably made complex by Miss Rickerby-Carrick, who, when she had recovered herself, seized Troy’s arm and began to gabble.

      ‘At once. I’ll tell you at once before anyone can stop me. It’s about – about –’ She drove her free hand through her dishevelled hair and began distractedly to whisper and stammer quite incomprehensibly.

      ‘ – about last evening – And – And – Oh God! – And –’

      ‘About what?’

      ‘And – wait – And –’

      But it was not to be. She had taken a deep breath, screwed up her eyes and opened her mouth, almost as if she were about to sneeze, when they were hailed from the rear.

      ‘Hi! Wait a bit! What are you two up to?’

      It was Mr Lazenby. He leapt nimbly ashore and came alongside Troy. ‘We can’t have these exclusive ladies’ excursions,’ he said roguishly. ‘You’ll have to put up with a mere man as far as the village.’

      Troy looked up at him and he shook a playful finger at her. ‘He’s rescued me,’ she thought and with what she herself felt to be a perverse change of mood suddenly wanted to hear Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s confidences. ‘Perhaps,’ Troy thought, ‘she’ll tell us both.’

      But she didn’t. By means of sundry hard-fingered squeezes and tweaks she conveyed her chagrin. At the same time Mr Lazenby went through much the same routine with Troy’s left arm and she began to feel like Alice between the Queens.

      She produced, once more, her story of the lost fur and said she was going to inquire at the local police station.

      ‘I suppose,’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick observed, ‘they make great efforts for you. Because – I mean – your husband – and everything.’

      ‘Ah!’ Mr Lazenby archly mocked. ‘How right you are! Police protection every inch of the way. Big drama. You heard her say yesterday, Miss Rickerby-Carrick. The landscape’s swarming with Constables.’

      The hand within Troy’s right arm began to tremble. ‘She meant the painter,’ whispered Miss Rickerby-Carrick.

      ‘That’s only her cunning. She’s sly as you make ’em, you may depend upon it. We’re none of us safe.’

      The fingers on Troy’s right arm became more agitated while those on her left gave it a brief conspiratorial squeeze. ‘Arms,’ Troy thought. ‘Last night Dr Natouche and tonight, these two, and I’m not the sort to link arms.’ But she was aware that while these contacts were merely irksome, last night’s had both disturbed and reassured her.

      She freed herself as casually as she could and talking disjointedly they walked into the village where they were overtaken by Caley Bard, complete with butterfly net and collector’s box. All desire for the Rickerby-Carrick disclosures had left Troy. She scarcely listened to madly divergent spurts of information: ‘… my friend, Mavis … you would love her … such a brilliant brain … art … science … butterflies even, Mr Bard … though not for me – Lamborine – … my friend, Mavis … Highlands … how I wish she was here … Mavis …’

      The undisciplined voice gushed and dwindled, gabbled and halted. Troy had an almost overwhelming urge to be alone with her headache.

      They came up with the cottage police station. A small car and a motorcycle stood outside.

      ‘Shall we wait for you?’ Bard asked. ‘Or not?’

      ‘Not, please, I may be quite a time. They’ll probably want to telephone about it. As a matter of fact,’ Troy said, ‘I believe when I’ve finished here I’ll just go back to the Zodiac. For some reason I’ve got a bit of a headache.’

      It was an understatement. Her headache was ripening. She was subject to occasional abrupt onsets of migraine and even now a thing like a starburst pulsed in one corner of her field of vision and her temples had begun to throb.

      ‘You poor darling,’ cried Miss Rickerby-Carrick. ‘Shall I come back with you. Would you like a sleeping-pill? Miss Hewson’s got some. She’s given me two for tonight. Shall I wait for you? Yes?’

      ‘But of course we’ll wait,’ Mr Lazenby fluted.

      Caley Bard said that he was sure Troy would rather be left to herself and proposed that he and Mr Lazenby and Miss Rickerby-Carrick should explore the village together and then he would teach them how to lepidopterize. Troy felt this was a truly noble action.

      ‘Don’t let those bobbies worry you,’ he said. ‘Take care of yourself, do. Hope you recover your morsel of mink.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Troy said and tried to convey her sense of obligation without alerting Miss Rickerby-Carrick whose mouth was stretched in an anxious grin. She parted with them and went into the police station where at once time slipped a cog and she was back in last evening for there was Superintendent Tillottson blandly remarking that he had just popped over from Toll’ark in case there had been any developments. She told him (speaking against the beat of her headache and with the sick dazzle in her vision making nonsense of his face) about Mr Lazenby and the page from the diary and about the odd behaviour of Mr Pollock and Miss Rickerby-Carrick. And again, on describing them, these items shrank into insignificance.

      Mr Tillottson with his hands in his pockets, sitting easily on the corner of the local Sergeant’s desk said with great geniality that there didn’t seem to be much in any of that lot did there, and she agreed, longing to be rid of the whole thing and in bed.

      ‘Yerse,’ Mr Tillottson said. ‘So that’s the story.’ And he added with the air of making conversation: ‘And this chap Lazenby had his hair all over his right eye like a hippy? Funny idea in a clergyman. But it was wet, of course.’

      ‘Over his left eye,’ Troy corrected as a sharp stab of pain shot through her own.

      ‘His left eye, was it?’ said Mr Tillottson casually. ‘Yes. Fancy. And you never got a look at it. The eye I mean?’

      ‘Well, no. He turned his back when he put on his dark spectacles.’

      ‘P’raps he’s got some kind of disfigurement,’ Mr Tillottson airily speculated. ‘You never know, do you? Jim Tretheway’s a very pleasant kind of chap, isn’t he? And his wife’s smashing, don’t you think, Mrs Alleyn? Very nice couple the Tretheways.’

      ‘Very,’ Troy agreed and stood up to a lurching spasm of migraine.

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