Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online Page B

The
Zodiac
sailed towards evening through clear waters, low fields and occasional groups of trees.
    Troy began to draw the Signs of the
Zodiac
, placing them in a ring and giving them a wonderfully strange character. Mrs Tretheway’s rhyme could go in the middle and later on there would be washes of colour.
    She was vaguely aware of a sudden burst of conversation in the saloon. After a time a shadow fell across her hand and there was Caley Bard again. Troy didn’t look up. He moved to the opposite side and stood with his back towards her, leaning on the taffrail.
    “I’m afraid,” he said presently, “that they’ve rumbled you. Lazenby spotted the photograph in this morning’s paper. I wouldn’t have told them.”
    “I believe you.”
    “The Rickerby-Carrick is stimulated, I fear.”
    “Hell.”
    “And the Hewsons are gratified because they’ve read an article about you in
Life
magazine so they know you’re O.K. and famous. They just can’t think how they missed recognising you.”
    “Too bad.”
    “Pollock, surprisingly, seemed to be not unaware of your great distinction. Lazenby himself says you are regarded in Australia as being the equal of Drysdale and Dobell.”
    “Nice of him.”
    “There’s this about it: you’ll be able to do what you are doing now, without everybody exclaiming and breathing down your neck. Or I hope you will.”
    “I won’t be doing anything that matters,” Troy mumbled.
    “How extraordinary!” he said lightly.
    “What?”
    “That you should be so shy about your work. You!”
    “Well, I can’t help it. Do pipe down like a good chap.”
    She heard him chuckle and drag a deck chair into position. Presently she smelt his pipe. “Evidently,” she thought, “they haven’t spotted the Andropulos bit in the paper.” She considered this for a moment and then added: “Or have they?”
    The River now described a series of loops so extreme, and so close together that the landscape seemed to turn about the
Zodiac
like a diorama. Wapentake church spire advanced and retreated and set to partners with a taller spire in the market town of Tollardwark which they approached with the utmost slyness, now leaving it astern and now coming round a bend and making straight for it. The water darkened with the changing sky. Along its banks and in its backwaters and eddies the creatures that belonged to The River began to come out on their evening business: water-rats, voles, toads and leaping fish as well as the insects: dragon-flies in particular. Once, looking up from her drawing, Troy caught sight of a pair of ears against the sky and thought: “There goes Wat, the hare.” A company of ducks in close formation paddled past the
Zodiac
. Where trees stood along the banks the air pulsated with high, formless, reiterative bird-chattering.
    Troy thought: “Cleopatra on the River Cydnus wasn’t given more things to hear and look at.”
    At intervals she stopped drawing in order to observe, but the Signs of the
Zodiac
grew under her hand. She amused herself by mentally allotting one to each of her fellow-passengers. The Hewsons, of course, belonged to the Heavenly Twins and Mr Pollock, because his club foot affected his gait, would be the Crab. Miss Rickerby-Carrick might be assigned to Taurus because she ran like a Bull at every Gate, but almost certainly, thought Troy, Virgo was entirely appropriate. So she gave a pair of bovine horns to the rampaging motor-cyclist. Because of a certain sting in the tail of many of his observations, she decided upon Scorpio for Caley Bard. And Mr Lazenby? Well: he seemed to be extremely ill-sighted, his dark spectacles gave him a blind look like Justice, and Justice carries Scales. Libra for him. As for Dr Natouche, he must be a splendour in the firmament: Sagittarius the Archer with open shoulders and stretched bow. She began to draw The Archer in his image. Mrs Tretheway didn’t seem to fit anywhere except perhaps, as they had a sexy connotation,