Clutch of Constables. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ ridiculous. They had just been joined by the boy from the Zodiac when all of them were blotted out by a taxi that shot into her field of vision and halted. The framing legs moved away. The door of the taxi began to open but Troy’s attention was abstracted by a loud rap on her cabin door. She sat down hurriedly on her bunk and said: ‘Come in.’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s active face appeared round the door.

      ‘I say,’ she said. ‘Bliss! A shower and two loos! Aren’t we lucky!’

      Before Troy could reply she had withdrawn. There were sounds within the craft of new arrivals.

      ‘Thank you very much … Er – here –’ the voice was lowered to an indistinguishable murmur. A second voice said: ‘Thank you, sir.’ A door was shut. Boots tramped up the companion-way and across the deck overhead. ‘The chauffeur,’ Troy thought, ‘and Mr. J. de B. Lazenby.’ She waited for a moment listening to the movements of the other passengers. There was a further confusion of arrival and a bump of luggage. A woman’s voice said: ‘That’s correct, stooard, we do have quite a bit of photographic equipment. I guess I’ll use Number 3 as a regular stateroom and Number 6 can accommodate my brother and the overflow. OK? OK, Earl?’

      ‘Sure. Sure.’

      The cabin forward of Troy’s was No. 6. She heard sounds of the bestowal of property and a number of warnings as to its fragility, all given with evident good humour. The man’s voice said repeatedly: ‘Sure. Sure. Fine. Fine.’ There was an unsuccessful attempt to tip the boy. ‘Thanks all the same,’ Troy heard him say. He departed. There followed a silence and an ejaculation from the lady. ‘Do you look like I feel?’ and the man’s answer: ‘Forget it. We couldn’t know.’

      Troy consulted her passenger list. Mr Earl J. and Miss Sally-Lou Hewson had arrived. She stowed away her baggage and then went up to the saloon.

      They were all there except the three latest arrivals. Dr Natouche sat by himself reading a newspaper with a glass of beer to hand. Miss Rickerby-Carrick, in conversation with Mr Pollock, occupied a seat that ran round the forward end of the saloon under the windows. Mr Caley Bard who evidently had been waiting for Troy, at once reminded her that she was to have a drink with him. ‘Mrs Tretheway,’ he said, ‘mixes a superb Martini.’

      She was behind the little bar, displayed in the classic manner within a frame of bottles and glasses many of which were splintered by sunlight. She herself had a kind of local iridescence: she looked superb. Mr Pollock kept glancing at her with a half-smile on his lips and then turning away again. Miss Rickerby-Carrick gazed at her with a kind of anguished wonder. Mr Bard expressed his appreciation in what Troy was to learn was a very characteristic manner.

      ‘The Bar at the Folies Bergère may as well shut up shop,’ he said to Troy. ‘Manet would have changed his drinking habits. You, by the way, could show him where he gets off.’ And he gave Troy a little bow and a very knowing smile. ‘You ought to have a go,’ he suggested. ‘Don’t,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Please.’ He laughed and leant across the bar to pay for their drinks. Mrs Tretheway gave Troy a woman-to-woman look that included her fabulous smile.

      Even Dr Natouche lowered his paper and contemplated Mrs Tretheway with gravity for several seconds.

      At the back of the bar hung a framed legend, rather shakily typed.

      THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC

       The Hunt of the Heavenly Host begins

      With the Ram, the Bull and the Heavenly Twins.

       The Crab is followed by the Lion

      The Virgin and the Scales,

      The Scorpion, Archer and He-Goat,

       The Man that carries the Watering-pot

      And the Fish with the Glittering Tails.

      ‘Isn’t that charming?’ Mr Bard asked Troy. ‘Don’t you think so?’

      ‘The magic of the proper name,’ Troy agreed. ‘Especially those names. It always does the trick, doesn’t it?’

      Mrs Tretheway said, ‘A chap that cruised with us gave it to me. He said it was out of some kid’s book.’

      ‘It’s got the right kind of dream-sound for that,’ Troy said. She thought she would like to make a picture of the Signs and put the rhyme in the middle. Perhaps before the cruise was over –

      ‘To make it rhyme,’ Mrs Tretheway pointed out, ‘you have to say “pote”. “The Man that carries the Watering-pote”.’

      She pushed their drinks across the bar. The back of her hand brushed Mr Bard’s fingers.

      ‘You’ll join us, I hope,’ he said.

      ‘Another time, thanks all the same. I’ve got to look after your lunch. It’s cold – what do they call it – smorgasbord, for today. If everybody would help themselves when they’re ready.’

      She went over to the hatch into the cuddy. Tom, the boy, had gone below and handed up the dishes to his mother who set them out on the tables that had been pushed together and covered with a white cloth.

      ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Mrs Tretheway repeated. ‘Please help yourselves,’ and returned to the bar where she jangled a handbell.

      Without consulting Troy, Mr Bard ordered two more dry Martinis. This was not Troy’s favourite drink and in any case the first had been extremely strong.

      ‘No, really, thank you,’ she said. ‘Not for me. I’m for my lunch.’

      ‘Well,’ he said. ‘P’rhaps you’re right. We’ll postpone until dinner time. Let moderation be our cry.’

      It now occurred to Troy that Mr Bard was making a dead set at her. Gratifying though this might or might not be, it did not fit in with her plan for a five days’ anonymous dawdle along the British Inland Waterways. Mr Bard, it was evident, had twigged Troy. He had this morning visited her one-man show for the opening of which, last evening, she had come up from London. He had been cunning enough to realize that she wanted to remain unrecognized. Evidently he was disposed to torment her about this and to set up a kind of alliance on the strength of it. Mr Bard was a tease.

      There was a place beside Dr Natouche at the end of a circular seat that ran under the forward windows of the saloon. Troy helped herself to cold meat and salad and sat beside him. He half-rose and made her a little bow. ‘I hope you are pleased with the accommodation,’ he said. ‘I find it perfectly satisfactory.’

      There was an extraordinary quality in Dr Natouche, Troy suddenly decided. It was a quality that made one intensely aware of him, as if with the awareness induced by some drug: aware of his thin, charcoal wrist emerging from a white silk cuff, of the movements of his body under his clothes, of his quiet breathing, of his smell which was of wood: cedarwood or even sandalwood.

      He had neatly folded his newspaper and laid it beside his plate. Troy, glancing at it, saw herself having her hand shaken by the Personage who had opened her show. Was it possible that Dr Natouche had not recognized this photograph? ‘I really don’t know,’ she thought, ‘why I fuss about it. If I were a film star it would be something to take-on about but who cares for painters? The truth of the matter is,’ Troy СКАЧАТЬ