Black As He’s Painted by Ngaio Marsh

Author:Ngaio Marsh
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780312972790
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1999-12-14T23:00:00+00:00

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VI

Afternoon in the Capricorns

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When, in response to a telephone call taken by Troy, Alleyn called on the following afternoon at No. 1, Capricorn Walk, he was received on the front steps by Lucy Lockett, the cat. She sat with a proprietory air on the top step and had a good look at him.

“I know who you are,” said Alleyn. “Good afternoon, my dear.” He extended his forefinger. Lucy rose, stretched elaborately, yawned, and advanced her whiskers to within an inch of the fingertip. Mr. Whipplestone looked out of his open bow window.

“There you are,” he said. “I won’t be a second.”

Lucy sprang adroitly from the steps to the window-sill and thence into the bosom of her master, who presently opened the front door, still carrying her.

“Come in, do, do,” he said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“What a nice house you’ve got.”

“Do you think so? I must say I like it.”

“You hadn’t far to walk last night—or this morning.”

“No. Do you know, Alleyn, when I was coming home at whatever eldrich hour, I caught myself wondering—well, almost wondering—if the whole affair could have been some sort of hallucination. Rather like that dodging-about-in-time nonsense they do in science fiction plays, as if it had happened off the normal temporal plane. The whole thing so very—ah—off-beat. Wasn’t it?”

“Was and is,” Alleyn agreed.

He found Mr. Whipplestone himself rather off-beat as he sat primly on his desk chair in his perfectly tailored suit, with his Trumper-style hair-cut, his discreet necktie, his elegant cufflinks, his eyeglass and, pounding away at his impeccable waistcoat, his little black cat.

“About Chubb,” he said anxiously. “I’m awfully bothered about Chubb. You see, I don’t know—and he hasn’t said anything—and I must say Mrs. Chubb looks too ghastly for words.”

“He hasn’t told you the black waiter attacked him?”

“He hasn’t told me anything. I felt it was not advisable for me to make any approach.”

“What’s your opinion of Chubb? What sort of impression have you formed, by and large, since the Chubbs have been looking after you?”

Mr. Whipplestone had some difficulty in expressing himself, but it emerged that from his point of view the Chubbs were as near perfection as made no difference. In fact, Mr. Whipplestone said wistfully, one had thought they no longer existed except perhaps in the employment of millionaires.

“I’ve sometimes wondered if they were too good to be true. Ominous foreboding!” he said.

“Didn’t you say Chubb seemed to have taken a scunner on blacks?”

“Well, yes. I rather fancied so. It was when I looked over this house. We were in the room upstairs and—oh, Lord, it was the poor old boy himself—the Ambassador—walked down the street. The Chubbs were near the window and saw him. It was nothing, really. They stared. My dear Alleyn, you won’t take from this any grotesque suggestion that Chubb—well, no, of course you won’t.”

“I only thought a prejudice of that sort might colour any statement he offered. He certainly made no bones about his dislike when we talked to him.”

“Not surprising when you tell me one of them had half-strangled him!”

“He told me that.

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