Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 8: Death at the Dolphin, Hand in Glove, Dead Water

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Ngaio Marsh

Год написания книги

2018

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‘It’s like this,’ she said. ‘The local cop’s just brought Lenny’s things back: the overcoat and dinner-suit.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes. Well, the thing is, his gloves are missing.’

Alleyn glanced at Fox.

‘I beg your pardon, Miss Ralston,’ Fox said, ‘but I saw to the parcel myself. The gloves were returned. Cream wash-leather, size seven.’

‘I don’t mean those,’ Moppett said. ‘I mean his driving gloves. They’re heavy leather ones with string backs. I ought to know. I gave them to him.’

III

‘Suppose,’ Alleyn suggested, ‘you park your car and we get this sorted out.’

‘I don’t want to go in there,’ Moppett said with a sidelong look at the mortuary. ‘That’s the dead-place, isn’t it?’

‘We’ll use the station,’ Alleyn said, and to that small yellow-wood office she was taken. The window was open. From a neighbouring garden came an insistent chatteration of bird-song and the smell of earth and violets. Fox shut a side door that led into the yard. Moppett sat down.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ she said.

Alleyn gave her a cigarette. She kept her hands in her pockets while he lit it. She then began to talk rapidly in a voice that was pitched above its natural level.

‘I can’t be long. Lennie thinks I’m dropping the car at the garage. It’s sprung a leak,’ she added unnecessarily, ‘in the waterworks. He’d be livid if he knew I was here. He’s livid, anyway, about the gloves. He swears they were in his overcoat pocket.’

Alleyn said: ‘They were not there when we collected the coat. Did he have them last night, do you know?’

‘He didn’t wear them. He wore his other ones. He’s jolly fussy about his gloves,’ said Moppett. ‘I tell him Freud would have had something to say about it. And now I suppose I’ll get the rocket.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, because of yesterday afternoon. When we were at Baynesholme. We changed cars,’ Moppett said without herself changing colour, ‘and I collected his overcoat from the car he decided not to buy. He says the gloves were in the pocket of the coat.’

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