The company placed an open car at the disposal of Captain Bannerman and in it he put Mrs. Dillington-Blick, looking like a piece of Turkish delight. They drove about Las Palmas, stopping at shops where the driver had a profitable understanding with the proprietor. Mrs. Dillington-Blick bought herself a black lace near-mantilla with a good deal of metal in it, a comb to support it, some Portuguese jewellery, and a fan. Captain Bannerman bought her a lot of artificial magnolias because they didn’t see any real ones. He felt proud because all the Las Palmanians obviously admired her very much indeed. They came to a shop where a wonderful dress was displayed, a full Spanish dress made of black lace and caught up to display a foam of scarlet petticoats underneath. The driver kissed his fingers over and over again and intimated that if Mrs. Dillington-Blick were to put it on she would look like the queen of heaven. Mrs. Dillington-Blick examined it with her head on one side.
“Do you know,” she said, “allowing for a little Latin exaggeration, I’m inclined to agree with him.”
Tim Makepiece and Brigid came along the street and joined them. Brigid said, “Do try it on. You’d look absolutely marvelous. Do. For fun.”
“Shall I? Come in with me, then. Make me keep my head.”
The captain said he would go to his agents’ offices, where he had business to do, and return in twenty minutes. Tim, who very much wanted to buy some roses for Brigid, also said he’d come back. Greatly excited, the two ladies entered the shop.
The stifling afternoon wore into evening. Dusk was rapidly succeeded by night, palm trees rattled in an enervated breeze, and at nine o’clock by arrangement, Captain Bannerman and Mrs. Dillington-Blick were to meet Aubyn Dale at the grandest hotel in Las Palmas for dinner.
Mrs. Dillington-Blick had been driven back to the ship, where she changed into the wonderful Spanish dress, which of course she had bought. She was excitedly assisted by Brigid. “What did I tell you!” Brigid shouted triumphantly. “You ought to be sitting in a box looking at a play by Lope de Vega with smashing caballeros all round you. It’s a riot.” Mrs. Dillington-Blick, who had never heard of Lope de Vega, half smiled, opened her eyes very wide, turned and turned again to watch the effect in her looking-glass and said, “Not bad. Really, it’s not bad,” and pinned one of the captain’s artificial magnolias in her décolletage. She gave Brigid the brilliant look of a woman who knows she is successful.
“All the same,” she murmured, “I can’t help rather wishing it was the G.B. who was taking me out.”
“The G.B.?”
“My dear, the Gorgeous Brute. Glamorous Broderick, if you like. I dropped hints like thunderbolts but no luck, alas.”
“Never mind,” Brigid said, “you’ll have a terrific success, anyway. I promise you.”
She ran off to effect her own change. It was when she fastened one of Tim Makepiece’s red roses in her dress that it suddenly occurred to Brigid she hadn’t thought of her troubles for at least six hours. After all, it was rather fun to be dining out in a foreign city on a strange island with a pleasant young man.
It all turned out superbly, an enchanted evening suspended like a dream between the strange intervals of a sea voyage. The streets they drove through and the food they ate, the music they danced to, the flowers, the extremely romantic lighting and the exotic people were all, Brigid told Tim, “out of this world.” They sat at their table on the edge of the dance floor, talked very fast about the things that interested them, and were delighted to find how much they liked each other.
At half-past nine Mrs. Dillington-Blick arrived with the captain and Aubyn Dale. She really was, as Brigid pointed out to Tim, sensational. Everybody looked at her. A kind of religious gravity impregnated the deportment of the head waiter. Opulence and observance enveloped her like an expensive scent. She was terrific.
“I admire her,” Brigid said, “enormously. Don’t you?”
Brigid’s chin rested in the palm of her hand. Her forearm, much less opulent than Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s, shone in the candlelight and her eyes were bright.
Tim said, “She’s the most suffocatingly feminine job I’ve ever seen, I think. An all-time low in inhibitions and an all-time high in what it takes. If, of course, that happens to be your line of country. It’s not mine.”
Brigid found this answer satisfactory. “I like her,” she said. “She’s warm and uncomplicated.”
“She’s all of that. Hullo! Look who’s here!”
Alleyn came in with Father Jourdain. They were shown to a table at some distance from Tim’s and Brigid’s.
“ ‘Distinguished visitors’!” Brigid said, gaily waving to them.
“They are rather grand-looking, aren’t they? I must say I like Broderick. Nice chap, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I do,” Brigid said emphatically. “What about Father Jourdain?”
“I wouldn’t know. Interesting face; not typically clerical.”
“Is there a typically clerical face or are you thinking of comic curates at the Players Theatre Club?”
“No,” said Tim slowly. “I’m not. But look at the mouth and the eyes. He’s a celibate, isn’t he? I bet it’s been a bit of a hurdle.”
“Suppose,” Brigid said, “you wanted advice very badly and had to go to one of those two. Which would it be?”
“Oh, Broderick. Every time. Do you by any chance want advice?”
“No.”
“If you did, I’d take it very kindly if you came to me.”
“Thank you,” said Brigid. “I’ll bear it in mind.”
“Good. Let’s trip a measure.”
“Nice young couple,” said Father Jourdain as they danced past him and he added, “I do hope you’re right in what you say.”
“About—?”
“About alibis.”
The band crashed and was silent. The floor cleared and two spotlights introduced a pair of tango dancers, very fierce, like game birds. They strutted and stalked, clattered their castanets, and frowned ineffably at each other. “What an angry woo,” Tim said.
When they had finished they moved among the tables followed by their spotlight.
“Oh, no!” Father Jourdain exclaimed. “Not another doll!”
It was an enormous and extraordinarily realistic one, carried by the woman dancer. Evidently it was for sale. She flashed brilliant smiles and proudly showed it off, while her escort stood moodily by. “Señores y señoras,” announced a voice over the loud-speaker and added, they thought, something about having the honour to present “La Esmeralda,” which was evidently the name of the doll.
“Curious!” Alleyn remarked.
“What?”
“It’s dressed exactly like Mrs. D-B.”
And so it was — in a flounced black lace dress and a mantilla. It even had a green necklace and earrings and lace gloves, and its fingers were clamped round the handle of an open fan. It was a woman-doll with a bold, handsome face and a flashing smile like the dancer’s. It looked terrifyingly expensive. Alleyn watched with some amusement as it approached the table where Mrs. Dillington-Blick sat with the captain and Aubyn Dale.
The dancers had of course noticed the resemblance and so had the headwaiter. They all smiled and ejaculated and admired as the doll waddled beguilingly towards Mrs. Dillington-Blick.
“Poor old Bannerman,” Alleyn said, “he’s sunk, I fear. Unless Dale—”