Black As He’s Painted. Ngaio Marsh

       CHAPTER 1

       Mr Whipplestone

      The year was at the spring and the day at the morn and God may have been in his Heaven but as far as Mr Samuel Whipplestone was concerned the evidence was negligible. He was, in a dull, muddled sort of way, miserable. He had become possessed, with valedictory accompaniments, of two solid silver Georgian gravy-boats. He had taken his leave of Her Majesty’s Foreign Service in the manner to which his colleagues were accustomed. He had even prepared himself for the non-necessity of getting up at 7.30, bathing, shaving, breakfasting at 8.00 – but there is no need to prolong the Podsnappian recital. In a word he had fancied himself tuned in to retirement and now realized that he was in no such condition. He was a man without propulsion. He had no object in life. He was finished.

      By ten o’clock he found himself unable to endure the complacent familiarity of his ‘service’ flat. It was in fact at that hour being ‘serviced’, a ritual which normally he avoided and now hindered by his presence.

      He was astounded to find that for twenty years he had inhabited dull, oppressive, dark and uncomely premises. Deeply shaken by this abrupt discovery, he went out into the London spring.

      A ten-minute walk across the Park hardly raised his spirits. He avoided the great water-shed of traffic under the quadriga, saw some inappropriately attired equestrians, passed a concourse of scarlet and yellow tulips, left the Park under the expanded nostrils of Epstein’s liberated elementals and made his way into Baronsgate.

      As he entered that flowing cacophony of changing gears and revving engines, it occurred to him that he himself must now get into bottom gear and stay there, until he was parked in some subfuse lay-by to await – and here the simile became insufferable – a final to wing-off. His predicament was none the better for being commonplace. He walked for a quarter of an hour.

      From Baronsgate the western entry into the Capricorns is by an arched passage too low overhead to admit any but pedestrian traffic. It leads into Capricorn Mews and, further along at right angles to the Mews, Capricorn Place. He had passed by it over and over again and would have done so now if it hadn’t been for a small, thin cat.

      This animal flashed out from under the traffic and shot past him into the passageway. It disappeared at the far end. He heard a scream of tyres and of a living creature.

      This sort of thing upset Mr Whipplestone. He disliked this sort of thing intensely. He would have greatly preferred to remove himself as quickly as possible from the scene and put it out of his mind. What he did, however, was to hurry through the passageway into Capricorn Mews.

      The vehicle, a delivery van of sorts, was disappearing into Capricorn Place. A group of three youths outside a garage stared at the cat which lay like a blot of ink on the pavement.

      One of them walked over to it.

      ‘Had it,’ he said.

      ‘Poor pussy!’ said one of the others and they laughed objectionably.

      The first youth moved his foot as if to turn the cat over. Astonishingly and dreadfully it scrabbled with its hind legs. He exclaimed, stooped down and extended his hand.

      It was on its feet. It staggered and then bolted. Towards Mr Whipplestone who had come to a halt. He supposed it to be concussed, or driven frantic by pain or fear. In a flash it gave a great spring and was on Mr Whipplestone’s chest, clinging with its small claws and – incredibly – purring. He had been told that a dying cat will sometimes purr. It had blue eyes. The tip of its tail for about two inches was snow white but the rest of its person was perfectly black. He had no particular antipathy to cats.

      He carried an umbrella in his right hand but with his left arm he performed a startled reflex gesture. He sheltered the cat. It was shockingly thin, but warm and tremulous.

      ‘One of ’er nine lives gawn for a burton,’ said the youth. He and his friends guffawed themselves into the garage.

      ‘Drat,’ said Mr Whipplestone, who long ago had thought it amusing to use spinsterish expletives.

      With some difficulty he hooked his umbrella over his left arm and with his right hand inserted his eyeglass and then explored the cat’s person. It increased its purrs, interrupting them with a faint mew when he touched its shoulder. What was to be done with it?

      Obviously, nothing in particular. It was not badly injured, presumably it lived in the neighbourhood and one had always understood its species to have a phenomenal homing instinct. It thrust its nut-like head under Mr Whipplestone’s jacket and into his waistcoat. It palpated his chest with its paws. He had quite a business detaching it.

      He set it down on the pavement. ‘Go home,’ he said. It stared up at him and went through the motion of mewing, opening its mouth and showing its pink tongue but giving no sound. ‘No,’ he said, ‘go home!’ It was making little preparatory movements of its haunches as if it was about to spring again.

      He turned his back on it and walked quickly down Capricorn Mews. He almost ran.

      It is a quiet little street, cobbled and very secluded. It accommodates three garages, a packing agency, two dozen or so small mid-Victorian houses, a minute bistro and four shops. As he approached one of these, a flower shop, he could see reflected in its side windows Capricorn Mews with himself walking towards him. And behind him, trotting in a determined manner, the little cat. It was mewing.

      He was extremely put out and had begun to entertain a confused notion of telephoning the RSPCA when a van erupted from a garage immediately behind him. It passed him and when it had gone the cat had disappeared: frightened, Mr Whipplestone supposed, by the noise.

      Beyond the flower shop and on the opposite side of the Mews was the corner of Capricorn Place, leading off to the left. Mr Whipplestone, deeply ruffled, turned into it.

      A pleasing street: narrow, orderly, sunny, with a view, to the left, of tree-tops and the dome of the Baronsgate Basilica. Iron railings and behind them small well-kept Georgian and Victorian houses. Spring flowers in window-boxes. From somewhere or another the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

      Cleaning ladies attacked steps and door-knockers. Household ladies were abroad with shopping baskets. A man of Mr Whipplestone’s own age who reeked of the army and was of an empurpled complexion emerged from one of the houses. A perambulator with a self-important baby and an escort of a pedestrian six-year-old, a female propellant and a large dog, headed with a purposeful air towards the Park. The postman was going his rounds.

      In London there are still, however precarious their state, many little streets of the character of the Capricorns. They are upper-middle-class streets and therefore, Mr Whipplestone had been given to understand, despicable. Being of that class himself, he did not take this view. He found the Capricorns uneventful, certainly, but neither tiresomely quaint nor picturesque nor smug: pleasing rather, and possessed of a quality which he could only think of as ‘sparkling’. Ahead of him was a pub, the Sun in Splendour. It had an honest untarted-look about it and stood at the point where the Place leads into Capricorn Square: the usual railed enclosure of plane trees, grass and a bench or two, well-kept. He turned to the right down one side of it, making for Capricorn Walk.

      Moving towards him at a stately pace came a stout, superbly dressed coal-black gentleman leading a white Afghan hound with a scarlet collar and leash.

      ‘My dear Ambassador!’ Mr Whipplestone exclaimed. ‘How very pleasant!’

      ‘Mr Whipplestone!’ resonated the Ambassador for Ng’ombwana. ‘I am delighted to see you. You live in these parts?’

      ‘No, no: a morning stroll. I’m – I’m a free man now, your Excellency.’

      ‘Of course. I had heard. You will be greatly missed.’

      ‘I doubt it. Your Embassy – I had forgotten for the moment – is quite