you might ask them, Harold, while you’re about it,’ Mr Period quite shouted after him, ‘what they did with my cigarette-case.’
‘What?’ the retreating voice asked.
‘Lady Barsington’s card case. Cigarettes.’
There was a shocked pause. Mr Cartell returned, half in and half out of an overcoat, and a tweed hat cocked over one eye.
‘What do you mean, P.P.? Surely you don’t suggest …’
‘God knows! But ask them. Ask!’
IV
Desirée, Lady Bantling (ex-Cartell, factually Dodds), sat smiling to herself in her drawing-room. She smoked incessantly and listened to Moppett Ralston and Leonard Leiss and it would have been impossible for anyone to say what she thought of them. Her ravaged face, with its extravagant make-up, and her mop of orange hair made a flagrant statement against the green background of her chair. She was possibly not unamused.
Moppett was explaining how interested Leonard was in art and what a lot he knew about the great portrait painters.
‘So I do hope,’ Moppett was saying, ‘you don’t think it too boring and bold of us to ask if we may look. Leonard said you would, but I said we’d risk it and if we might just see the pictures and creep away again –?’
‘Yes, do,’ Desirée said. ‘They’re all Bantling ancestors. Gentlemen in skin-tight breeches, and ladies with high foreheads and smashing bosoms. Andrew could tell you all about them, but he seems to have disappeared. I’m afraid I’ve got to help poor Bimbo make up pieces of poetry for a treasure hunt and in any case I don’t know anything about them. I want my pictures to be modern and gay and, if possible, rude.’
‘And of course, you’re so right, Lady Bantling,’ Leonard said eagerly. He leant forward with his head on one side sending little waves of hair-oil towards her. Desirée watched him and accepted everything he said without comment. When he had talked himself to an ingratiating standstill, she remarked that, after all, she didn’t really think she was all that interested in painting.
‘Andrew has done a portrait of me which I do quite fancy,’ she said. ‘I look like the third witch in Macbeth before she gave up trying to make the best of herself. Hallo, my darling, how’s your Muse?’
Bimbo had come in. He threw an extremely cold glance at Leonard.
‘My Muse,’ he said, ‘is bitching on me. You must help me, Desirée; there ought to be at least seven clues and it’s more amusing if they rhyme.’
‘Can we help?’ Moppett suggested. ‘Leonard’s quite good at really improper ones. What are they for?’
‘A treasure hunt,’ he said, without looking at her.
‘Treasure hunts are my vintage,’ Desirée said. ‘I thought it might be fun to revive them. So we’re having one tonight.’
Moppett and Leonard cried out excitedly. ‘But I’m utterly sold on them,’ Moppett said. ‘They’re quite the gayest way of having parties. How exactly are you working it?’ she asked Bimbo. He said shortly that they were doing it the usual way.
Desirée stood up. ‘Bimbo’s planting a bottle of champagne somewhere and the leading-up clues will be dotted about the landscape. If you don’t mind just going on your picture crawl under your own steam we’d better begin racking our brains for rhymes. Please do look wherever you like.’ She held out her hand to Moppett. ‘I’m sorry not to be more hospitable, but we are, as you see, in a taking-on. Goodbye.’ She looked at Leonard. ‘Goodbye.’
‘My God!’ Bimbo said. ‘The food from Magnums! It’ll be at the station.’
Moppett and Leonard stopped short and looked passionately concerned.
‘Can’t you pick it up,’ Desirée asked, ‘when you lay your trail of clues?’
‘I can’t start before we’ve done the clues, can I?’
‘They’re too busy to send anyone from the kitchen and they want the stuff. Madly. We’d better get the Bloodbath to collect it.’
‘Look!’ Moppett and Leonard said together and then gaily laughed at each other. ‘“Two minds with butter –”’ Moppett quoted. ‘But please – please do let us collect the things from Magnums. We’d adore to.’
Desirée said: ‘Jolly kind, but the Bloodbath will do it.’
Bimbo much more emphatically added: ‘Thank you, but we wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘But why not!’ Moppett protested. ‘Leonard’s longing to drive that thing out there, aren’t you, sweetie?’
‘Of course. And, as a matter of fact,’ Leonard said, ‘I happen to know the Bloodbath – if that’s George Copper’s crate – is out of commission. It won’t take us any time.’
‘Do let us or we’ll think,’ Moppett urged engagingly, ‘that we really are being hideously in the way. Please.’
‘Well –’ Desirée said, not looking at her husband, ‘if you really don’t mind, it would, I must say, be the very thing.’
‘Andrew!’ Bimbo ejaculated. ‘He’ll do it. Where is he?’
‘He’s gone. Do you know, darling, I’m afraid we’d better accept the kind offer.’
‘Of course!’ Moppett cried. ‘Come on, Face! Is there anything else to be picked up, while we’re about it?’
Desirée said, with a faint twist in her voice: ‘You think of everything, don’t you. I’ll talk to the kitchen.’
When she had gone, Bimbo said: ‘Isn’t that the Scorpion Copper had in his garage?’
‘The identical job,’ Leonard agreed, man-to-man. ‘Not a bad little heap by and large, and the price is okay. Like to have a look at her, Mr Dodds? I’d appreciate your opinion.’
Bimbo, with an air of mingled distaste and curiosity, intimated that he would and the two men left Moppett in the drawing-room. Standing back from the French window, she watched them at the car; Leonard talking, Bimbo with his hands in his pockets. ‘Trying,’ thought Moppett, ‘not to be interested, but he is interested. He’s a car man. He’s married her for his Bentley and his drinks and the grandeur and fun. She’s old. She can’t have all that much of what it takes. Or, by any chance, can she?’
A kind of contempt possessed her; a contempt for Desirée and Bimbo and anybody who was not like herself and Leonard. ‘Living dangerously,’ she thought, ‘that’s us.’ She wondered if it would be advisable to ask Leonard not to say ‘appreciated’, ‘okay’, ‘pardon me’, and ‘appro’. She herself didn’t mind how he talked: she even enjoyed their rows when he would turn foul-mouthed, adder-like, and brutal. Still, if they were to crash the county – ‘They’ll have to ask us,’ she thought, ‘after this. They can’t not. We’ve been clever as clever.’
She continued to peer slantwise through the window.
When Desirée returned, Moppett was looking with respect at a picture above the fireplace.
Desirée said there would be a parcel at the grocer’s in Little Codling. ‘Your quickest way to the station is to turn right, outside the gates,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t be more obliged to you.’
She went out with Moppett to the car and when it had shot out of sight down the avenue, linked her arm in her husband’s.
‘Shockers,’ she said, ‘aren’t they?’
‘Honestly, darling, I can’t think what you’re about.’