Death at the Bar

by Ngaio Marsh

  Decima took a cigarette from Parish and looked round the taproom.

  ‘Has the dart game begun?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re waiting for you, my angel,’ said Parish. ‘What have you been doing with yourself all this time?’

  ‘Washing. I’ve attended a poison party. I hope you didn’t spill prussic acid about the garage, you two Pomeroys.’

  ‘You’re not ‘feared, too, are you Miss Dessy?’ asked Abel. ‘A fine, bold, learned, female like you.’

  Decima laughed.

  ‘A revolting picture,’ she said. ‘What do you think Will?’

  She leant across the bar and looked beyond Abel into the Public. Will’s back was towards her. He turned and faced Decima. His eyes devoured her, but he said nothing. Decima raised her tankard and drank to him. He returned the gesture clumsily, and Cubitt saw Watchman’s eyebrows go up.

  ‘Well,’ said Decima suddenly, ‘what have you all been talking about? You’re very silent now, I must say.’

  Before any of the others could reply, Watchman said: ‘We’ve been arguing, my dear.’

  ‘Arguing?’ She still looked at Will. Watchman drained his tankard, moved up to the bar, and sat on the stool next hers.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Until Miss Darragh came in we did nothing else.’

  ‘And why should I stop you?’ asked Miss Darragh. She slipped neatly off her high stool and toddled into the ingle-nook. ‘I’ve a passion for argument. What was it about, now? Art? Politics? Love?’

  ‘It was about politics,’ said Watchman, still looking at Decima. ‘The State, the People, and—private enterprise.’

  ‘You?’ Decima said. ‘But you’re hopeless. When our way of things comes round, you’ll be one of our major problems.’

  ‘Really? Won’t you need any barristers?’

  ‘I wish I could say no,’ said Decima.

  Watchman laughed.

  ‘At least,’ he said, ‘I may hold a watching brief for you.’

  She didn’t answer and he insisted: ‘Mayn’t I?’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense,’ said Decima.

  ‘Well,’ said Parish suddenly, ‘how about a Round-the-Clock contest to enliven the proceedings?’

  ‘Why not, indeed?’ murmured Cubitt.

  ‘Will you play?’ Watchman asked Decima.

  ‘Of course. Let’s all play. Coming, Will?’

  But Will Pomeroy jerked his head towards the public taproom where two or three new-comers noisily demanded drinks.

  ‘Will you play, Miss Darragh?’ asked Decima.

  ‘I will not, thank you my dear. I’ve no eye at all for sport. When I was a child, didn’t I half-blind me brother Terence with an apple intended to strike me brother Brian? I’d do you some mischief were I to try. Moreover, I’m too fat. I’ll sit and watch the fun.’

  Cubitt, Parish and Decima Moore stood in front of the dart-board. Watchman walked into the ingle-nook. From the moment when Will Pomeroy had taken up cudgels for him against Watchman, Legge had faded out. He had taken his drink, his pipe, and his thoughts, whatever they might be, into the public bar.

  Presently a burst of applause broke out, and Will Pomeroy shouted that Legge was a wizard and invited Decima and Cubitt to look at what he had done. The others followed, peered into the public bar. A colossal red-faced man stood with his hand against the public dartboard. His fingers were spread out, and in the gaps between darts were embedded, with others outside the thumb and the little finger.

  ‘Look at that!’ cried Will. ‘Look at it!’

  ‘Ah,’ said Watchman. ‘So Mr Legge has found another victim. A great many people seem to have faith in Mr Legge.’

  There was a sudden silence. Watchman leant over the private bar and raised his voice.

  ‘We are going to have a match,’ he said. ‘Three-a-side. Mr Legge, will you join us?’

  Legge took his pipe out of his mouth and said, ‘What’s the game?’

  ‘Darts. Round-the-Clock.’

  ‘Round-the-Clock?’

  ‘Yes. Haven’t you played that version?’

  ‘A long time ago. I’ve forgotten—’

  ‘You have to get one dart in each segment in numerical sequence, ending on a double,’ explained Cubitt.

  ‘In fact,’ said Watchman very pleasantly, ‘you might call it “Doing Time.” Haven’t you ever done time, Mr Legge?’

  ‘No,’ said Legge, ‘But I’ll take you on. I’ll be there in a minute.’

  ‘Right. And if you beat me at this I’m damned if tomorrow night I don’t let you take a pot at my hand.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Legge. ‘I’ll remember.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Further Advance by Watchman

  ‘The chief fault in Luke,’ said Sebastian Parish, ‘is that he is quite incapable of letting well alone.’

  Norman Cubitt tilted his hat over his eyes, peered from Parish to his canvas, and began to scuffle among his tubes of paint. He uttered a short grunt.

  ‘More than that,’ added Parish, ‘he glories in making bad a good deal worse. Do you mind my talking, old boy?’

  ‘No. Turn the head a little to the right. Too much. That’s right. I won’t keep you much longer. Just while the sun’s on the left side of the face. The shoulders are coming too far round again.’

  ‘You talk like a doctor about my members—“the” head, “the” face, “the” shoulders.’

  ‘You’re a vain fellow, Seb. Now, hold it like that, do. Yes, there’s something persistently impish in Luke. He jabs at people. What was he up to last night with Will Pomeroy and Legge?’

  ‘Damned if I know. Funny business, wasn’t it? Do you think he’s jealous of Will?’

  ‘Jealous?’ repeated Cubitt. With his palette-knife he laid an unctuous stroke of blue beside the margin of the painted head. ‘Why, jealous?’

  ‘Well—because of Decima.’

  ‘Oh nonsense! And yet I don’t know. He’s not your cousin for nothing, Seb. Luke’s got his share of the family vanity.’

  ‘I don’t know why you say I’m vain, damn you. I don’t think I’m vain at all. Do you know I get an average of twelve drivelling letters a day from females in front? And do they mean a thing to me?’

  ‘You’d be bitterly disappointed if there was a falling off. Don’t move your shoulders. But you may be right about Luke.’

  ‘I’d like to know,’ said Parish, ‘just how much last year’s little flirtation with Decima added up to.’

  ‘Would you? I don’t think it’s relevant.’

  ‘Well,’ said Parish, ‘she’s an attractive wench. More “It” to the square inch than most of them. It’s hard to say why. She’s got looks, of course, but not the looks that usually get over that way. Not the voluptuous type. Her—’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Cubitt violently and added: ‘I’m going to paint your mouth.’

  His own was set in an unusually tight line. He worked for a time in silence, stood back, and said abruptly:

  ‘I don’t really think Will Pomeroy was his objective. He was getting at Legge, and why the devil he should pick on a man he’d never seen in his life until last night is more than I can tell.’

  ‘I thought he seemed to be sort of probing. Trying to corner Legge in some way.’

  Cubitt paused with his knife over the canvas.

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s perfectly true. I thought so too. Trick of the trade perhaps. Counsels curiosity. Almost one expected him to put his foot on the seat of a chair and rest his elbow on his knee. Now I come to think of it, I believe he did hitch his coat up by the lapels.’

  ‘Characteristic,’ pronounced Parish seriously. He himself had used these touches several times in trial scenes.

  Cubitt smiled. ‘But he sounded definitely malicious,’ he added.

  ‘He’s not malicious,’ said Parish uncomfortably.

  ‘Oh yes, he is,’ said Cubitt coolly. ‘It’s one of his more interesting qualities. He can be very malicious.’
>
  ‘He can be very generous too.’

  ‘I’m sure he can. I like Luke, you know. He interests me enormously.’

  ‘Apparently, he likes you,’ said Parish. ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Hallo!’ Cubitt walked back from his canvas and stood squinting at it. ‘You said that with a wealth of meaning, Seb. What’s in the air? You can rest a minute if you like.’

  Parish moved off the boulder where he had been sitting, stretched himself elaborately, and joined Cubitt. He gazed solemnly at his own portrait. It was a large canvas. The figure in the dull red sweater was three-quarter life-size. It was presented as a dark form against the lighter background which was the sea and sky. The sky appeared as a series of paling arches, the sea as a simple plane broken by formalized waves. A glint of sunlight had found the cheek and jawbone on the right side of the face.

  ‘Marvellous, old boy,’ said Parish. ‘Marvellous!’

  Cubitt, who disliked being called ‘old boy,’ grunted.

  ‘Did you say you’d show it in this year’s Academy?’ asked Parish.

  ‘I didn’t, Seb, but I will. I’ll stifle my æsthetic conscience, prostitute my undoubted genius, and send your portrait to join the annual assembly of cadavers. Do you prefer “Portrait of an Actor”, “Sebastian Parish, Esq”! or simply “Sebastian Parish”?’

  ‘I think I would like my name,’ said Parish seriously. ‘Not, I mean, that everybody wouldn’t know—’

  ‘Thank you. But I see your point. Your press agent would agree. What were you going to say about Luke? His generosity, you know, and his apparently liking me so much?’

  ‘I don’t think I ought to tell you, really.’

  ‘But of course, you are going to tell me.’

  ‘He didn’t actually say it was in confidence,’ said Parish.

  Cubitt waited with a slight smile.

  ‘You’d be amazed if you knew,’ continued Parish.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, rather. At least I imagine you would be. I was. I never expected anything of the sort, and after all I am his nearest relation. His next-of-kin.’

  Cubitt turned and looked at him in real astonishment.

  ‘Are you by any chance,’ he asked, ‘talking about Luke’s will?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘My dear, good Seb—’

  ‘All right, all right. I suppose I did give it away. You may as well hear the whole thing. Luke told me the other day that he was leaving his money between us.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘I know. I happened to look him up after the show one evening, and found him browsing over an official-looking document. I said something, chaffingly you know, about it, and he said: “Well, Seb, you’ll find it out some day, so you may as well know now.” And then he told me.’

  ‘Extraordinarily nice of him,’ said Cubitt uncomfortably, and he added: ‘Damn! I wish you hadn’t told me.’

  ‘Why on earth?’

  ‘I don’t know. I enjoy discussing Luke and now I’ll feel he’s sort of sacrosanct. Oh well, he’ll probably outlive both of us.’

  ‘He’s a good bit older than I am,’ said Parish. ‘Not, I mean, that I don’t hope with all my heart he will. I mean—as far as I’m concerned—’

  ‘Don’t labour it, Seb,’ said Cubitt kindly. ‘I should think Luke will certainly survive me. He’s strong as a horse and I’m not. You’ll probably come in for the packet.’

  ‘I hate talking about it like that.’

  Parish knocked his pipe out on a stone. Cubitt noticed that he was rather red in the face.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he muttered, ‘it’s rather awkward.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well I’m plaguilly hard up at the moment and I’d been wondering—’

  ‘If Luke would come to the rescue?’ Parish was silent.

  ‘And in the light of this revelation,’ Cubitt added, ‘you don’t quite like to ask. Poor Seb! But what the devil do you do with your money? You ought to be rolling. You’re always in work. This play you’re in now is a record run, isn’t it, and your salary must be superb.’

  ‘That’s all jolly fine, old man, but you don’t know what it’s like in the business. My expenses are simply ghastly.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why, because you’ve got to keep up a standard. Look at my house. It’s ruinous, but I’ve got to be able to ask the people that count to a place they’ll accept and, if possible, remember. You’ve got to look prosperous in this game, and you’ve got to entertain. My agent’s fees are hellish. My clubs cost the earth. And like a blasted fool I backed a show that flopped for thousands last May.’

  ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘The management are friends of mine. It looked all right.’

  ‘You give money away, Seb, don’t you? I mean literally. To out-of-luck actors? Old-timers and so on?’

  ‘I may. Always think “there but for the grace of God!” It’s such a damn’ chancy business.’

  ‘Yes. No more chancy than painting, my lad.’

  ‘You don’t have to show so well if you’re an artist. People expect you to live in a peculiar way.’

  Cubitt looked at him, but said nothing.

  Parish went on defensively: ‘I’m sorry, but you know what I mean. People expect painters to be Bohemians and all that.’

  ‘There was a time,’ said Cubitt, ‘when actors were content to be Bohemians, whatever that may mean. I never know. As far as I am concerned it means going without things you want.’

  ‘But your pictures sell.’

  ‘On an average I sell six pictures a year. Their prices range from twenty pounds to two hundred. It usually works out at about four hundred. You earn that in as many weeks, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Oh, I’m not grumbling. I’ve got a bit of my own and I could make more, I dare say, if I took pupils or had a shot at commercial art. I’ve suited myself and it’s worked out well enough until—’

  ‘Until what?’ asked Parish.

  ‘Nothing. Let’s get on with the work, shall we? The light’s no good after about eleven.’

  Parish walked back to the rock and took up his pose. The light wind whipped his black hair from his forehead. He raised his chin and stared out over the sea. He assumed an expression of brooding dominance.

  ‘That right?’ he asked.

  ‘Pretty well. You only want a pair of tarnished epaulettes and we could call it “Elba.”’

  ‘I’ve always thought I’d like to play Napoleon.’

  ‘A fat lot you know about Napoleon.’

  Parish grinned tranquilly.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’d read him up a bit if I had to. As a matter of fact Luke looks rather like him.’

  ‘The shoulders should come round,’ said Cubitt. ‘That’s more like it. Yes, Luke is rather the type.’

  He painted for a minute or two in silence, and then Parish suddenly laughed.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Cubitt.

  ‘Here comes your girl.’

  ‘What the devil do you mean?’ demanded Cubitt angrily and looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh—I see.’

  ‘Violet,’ said Parish. ‘Who did you think it was?’

  ‘I thought you’d gone dotty. Damn the woman.’

  ‘Will she paint me too?’

  ‘Not if I know it.’

  ‘Unkind to your little Violet?’ asked Parish.

  ‘Don’t call her that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well damn it, she’s not very young and she’s—well, she may be a pest, but she’s by way of being a lady.’

  ‘Snob!’

  ‘Don’t be so dense, Seb. Can’t you see—oh Lord, she’s got all her gear. She is going to paint. Well, I’ve just about done for today.’

  ‘She’s waving.’

  Cubitt looked across the headland to where Miss Darragh, a droll figure against the sky, fluttered a large handkerchief.

  ‘
She’s put her stuff down,’ said Parish. ‘She’s going to sketch. What is there to paint, over there?’

  ‘A peep,’ said Cubitt. ‘Now, hold hard and don’t talk. There’s a shadow under the lower lip—’

  He worked with concentration for five minutes, and then put down his palette.

  ‘That’ll do for today. We’ll pack up.’

  But when he’d hitched his pack on his shoulders and stared out to sea for some seconds, he said suddenly:

  ‘All the same, Seb, I wish you hadn’t told me.’

  II

  It was understood among the three friends that each should go his own way during the weeks they spent at Ottercombe. Watchman had played with the notion of going out in the dawn with the fishing boats. He woke before it was light and heard the tramp of heavy boots on cobble-stones and the sound of voices down on Ottercombe Steps. He told himself comfortably that here was a link with the past. For hundreds of years the Coombe men had gone down to their boats before dawn. The children of Coombe had heard them stirring, their wives had fed them and seen them go, and for centuries their voices and the sound of their footsteps had roused the village for a moment in the coldest hour of the night. Watchman let the sounds die away, snuggled luxuriously down in bed, and fell asleep.

  He woke again at half-past nine and found that Parish had already breakfasted and set out for Coombe Rock.

  ‘A mortal great mammoth of a picture Mr Cubitt be at,’ said Abel Pomeroy, as Watchman finished his breakfast. ‘Paint enough to cover a wall, sir, and laid on so thick as dough. At close quarters it looks like one of they rocks covered in shell-fish, but ‘od rabbit it, my sonnies, when you fall away twenty feet or more, it’s Mr Parish so clear as glass. Looking out over the Rock he be, looking out to sea, and so natural you’d say the man was smelling the wind and thinking of his next meal. You might fancy a stroll out to the Rock, sir, and take a look at Mr Cubitt flinging his paint left and right.’

  ‘I feel lazy, Abel. Where’s Will?’

  ‘Went out along with the boats, sir.’ Abel rasped his chin, scratched his head, and re-arranged the objects on the bar.