Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh Page A

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 motor-cycle 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 lepidopterise. 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