Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online

think Dr Natouche would enjoy special efforts. Really, I don’t.”
    “
You
seem to get on with him like a house on fire,” Miss Rickerby-Carrick pointed out discontentedly.
    “Do I? Well, I find him an interesting man.”
    “There you are, you see!” she cried, proclaiming some completely inscrutable triumph, and a longish silence ensued. They heard the motor-cycle start up and cross the bridge and listened to the diminishment of sound as it made off in the direction of Norminster.
    One by one the other passengers straggled up the field. Mr Pollock behind the rest, swinging his built-up boot. The Hewsons were all set-about with cameras while Caley Bard had a box slung from his shoulder and carried a lepidopterist’s net.
    So
that
, Troy thought, was what it was. When everybody was assembled the Hewsons took photographs of the wapentake by itself and with their fellow-travellers sitting self-consciously round it. Mr Lazenby compared it without, Troy felt, perceptible validity, to an aboriginal place of assembly in the Australian out-back. Mr Pollock read his brochure and then stared with a faint look of disgust at the original.
    Caley Bard joined Troy. “So this is where you lit off to,” he murmured. “I got bailed up by that extraordinary lady. She wants to get up a let’s-be-sweet-to-Natouche movement.”
    “I know. What did you say?”
    “I said that as far as I am concerned, I consider I’m as sweet to Natouche as he can readily stomach. Now, tell me all about the wapentake. I’m allergic to leaflets and I’ve forgotten what the Skipper said. Speak up, do.”
    Troy did not bother to react to this piece of cheek. She said: “So you’re a lepidopterist?”
    “That’s right. An amateur. Do you find it a sinister hobby? It has rather a sinister reputation, I fear. There was that terrifying film and then didn’t somebody in
The Hound of the Baskervilles
flit about Dartmoor with a deceiving net and killing-bottle?”
    “There’s Nabokov on the credit side.”
    “True. But
you
don’t fancy it, all the same,” he said. “That I can see, very clearly.”
    “I like them better alive and on the wing. Did you notice those two motor-cyclists? They seem to be haunting us.”
    “Friends of young Tom, it appears. They come from Tollardwark where we stay tonight. Did you know it’s pronounced Toll’ark? It will take us an hour or more to get there by water but by road it’s only a short walk from Ramsdyke. There’s confusion for you!”
    “I wouldn’t want to walk: I’ve settled into the River—time—space—dimension.”
    “Yes, I suppose it would be rather spoiling to break out of it. Hallo, that’ll be for us.” The
Zodiac
had given three short hoots. They returned hurriedly and found her waiting downstream from the lock.
    There was a weir at Ramsdyke, standing off on their port side. Below the green slide of the fall, the whole surface of the river was smothered in foam: foam in islands and in pinnacles, iridescent foam that twinkled and glinted in the late afternoon sunlight, that shredded away from its own crests, floated like gossamer and broke into nothing.
    “Oh!” cried Miss Rickerby-Carrick in ecstasy. “
Isn’t
it lovely! Oh,
do
look! Look, look,
look
!” she insisted, first to one and then to another of her fellow-passengers. “Who would have thought our quiet old river could froth up and behave like a fairytale? Like a dream isn’t it?
Isn’t it
?”
    “More like washing-day I’m afraid, Miss Rickerby-Carrick,” said Mrs Tretheway looking over the half-door. “It’s detergent. There’s a factory beyond those trees. Tea is ready in the saloon,” she added.
    “Oh,
no
!” Miss Rickerby-Carrick lamented. A flying wisp of detergent settled on her nose. “Oh,
dear
!” she said crossly and went down to the saloon, followed by the others.
    “How true it is,” Caley Bard remarked, “that beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.” He spoke to Troy but Dr Natouche, who was