Singing in the Shrouds

by Ngaio Marsh

  She had been quiet for so long they had forgotten her. ‘That’s right,’ she continued, ‘isn’t it, Father?’

  ‘It may possibly, I suppose, be a reason. It’s certainly not an excuse.’

  ‘I think,’ Mrs Dillington-Blick lamented, ‘I’d better throw my lovely hyacinths overboard, don’t you?’ She appealed to Father Jourdain. ‘Wouldn’t it be best? It’s not only poor Mr Dale.’

  ‘No,’ Jemima agreed. ‘Mr Cuddy, we must remember, comes over queer at the sight of them.’

  ‘Mr Cuddy,’ Miss Abbott observed, ‘came over queer but not, in my opinion, at the sight of the hyacinths.’ She lowered her book and looked steadily at Mrs Dillington-Blick.

  ‘My dear!’ Mrs Dillington-Blick rejoined and began to laugh again.

  ‘Well!’ Father Jourdain said with the air of a man who refuses to recognize his nose before his face. ‘I think I shall see what it’s like on deck.’

  Mrs Dillington-Blick stood between him and the double doors and he was quite close to her. She beamed up at him. His back was turned to Alleyn. He was still for a moment and then she moved aside and he went out. There was a brief silence.

  Mrs Dillington-Blick turned to Jemima.

  ‘My dear!’ she confided. ‘I’ve got that man. He’s a reformed rake.’

  Mr McAngus re-entered from the passage still wearing his hat. He smiled diffidently at his five fellow passengers.

  ‘All settling down?’ he ventured, evidently under a nervous compulsion to make some general remark.

  ‘Like birds in their little nest,’ Alleyn agreed cheerfully.

  ‘Isn’t it delicious,’ Mr McAngus said, heartened by this response, ‘to think that from now on it’s going to get warmer and warmer and warmer?’

  ‘Absolutely enchanting.’

  Mr McAngus made the little chassé with which they were all to become familiar, before the basket of hyacinths.

  ‘Quite intoxicating,’ he said. ‘They are my favourite flowers.’

  ‘Are they!’ cried Mrs Dillington-Blick. ‘Then do please, please have them. Please do. Dennis will take them to your room. Mr McAngus, I should adore you to have them.’

  He gazed at her in what seemed to be a flutter of bewildered astonishment. ‘I?’ Mr McAngus said. ‘But why? I beg your pardon, but it’s so very kind, and positively I can’t believe you mean it.’

  ‘But I do, indeed. Please have them.’

  Mr McAngus hesitated and stammered. ‘I’m quite overcome. Of course I should be delighted.’ He gave a little giggle and tilted his head over to one side. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘this is the first occasion, the very first, on which a lady has ever, of her own free will, offered me her flowers? And my favourites, too. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.’

  Alleyn saw that Mrs Dillington-Blick was touched by this speech. She smiled kindly and unprovocatively at him and Jemima laughed gently.

  ‘I’ll carry them myself,’ Mr McAngus said. ‘Of course I will. I shall put them on my little table and they’ll be reflected in my looking-glass.’

  ‘Lucky man!’ Alleyn said lightly.

  ‘Indeed, yes. May I, really?’ he asked. Mrs Dillington-Blick nodded gaily and he advanced to the table and grasped the enormous basket with his reddish bony hands. He was an extremely thin man and, Alleyn thought, very much older than his strange nutbrown hair would suggest.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Alleyn offered.

  ‘No, no! I’m really very strong, you know. Wiry.’

  He lifted the basket and staggered on bent legs with it to the door. Here he turned, a strange figure, his felt hat tilted over his nose, blinking above a welter of quivering hyacinths.

  ‘I shall think of something to give you,’ he promised Mrs Dillington-Blick, ‘after Las Palmas. There must be a reciprocal gesture.’

  He went groggily away.

  ‘He may dye his hair a screaming magenta if he chooses,’ Mrs Dillington-Blick said. ‘He’s a sweetie-pie.’

  From behind her covered book Miss Abbott remarked in that not very musical voice: ‘Meanwhile we await his reciprocal gesture. After Las Palmas.’

  CHAPTER 5

  Before Las Palmas

  Alleyn sat in the pilot’s cabin looking at his file of the case in question. Captain Bannerman was on the bridge outside. At regular intervals he marched past Alleyn’s porthole. The weather, as Mr McAngus had predicted, was getting warmer and in two days Cape Farewell would sight Las Palmas. She steamed now through a heavy swell. A tendency to yawn, doze and swap panaceas against seasickness had broken out among the passengers.

  ‘January 15th. 13 Hop Lane. Paddington,’ Alleyn read. ‘Beryl Cohen. Jewess. Cheapjack. Part-time prostitute. Showy. Handsome. About 26. 5 feet 6 inches. Full figure. Red (dyed) hair. Black skirt. Red jersey. Artificial necklace (green glass). Found January 16th: 10.5 a.m. by fellow lodger. Estimated time of death: between 10 and 11 p.m. previous night. On floor, face upward. Broken necklace. Flowers (snowdrops) on face and breast. Cause: manual strangulation but necklace probably first. Lodger states she heard visitor leave about 10.45. Singing. Jewel Song, Faust. High-pitched male voice.’

  A detailed description of the room followed. He skipped it and read on.

  ‘January 25th. Alleyway off Ladysmith Crescent, Fulham. Marguerite Slatters, of 36A Stackhouse Street, Fulham, London. Floral worker. Respectable. Quiet. 37. 5 feet 8 inches. Slight. Homely. Dark brown hair. Sallow complexion. Brown dress. Artificial pearls and teeth. Brown beret, gloves and shoes. Returning home from St Barnabas’ Parish Church. Found 11.55 by Stanley Walker, chauffeur. Estimated time of death between 9 and 12 p.m. By doorstep of empty garage. Face upward. Broken necklace. Torn dress. Manual strangulation. Flowers (hyacinths) on face and breast. Had no flowers when last seen alive. Alfred Bates, nightwatchman in warehouse next door, says he heard a light voice singing “Honeysuckle and the Bee.” Thinks the time was about 10.45.’

  Alleyn sighed and looked up. Captain Bannerman bobbed past the porthole. The ship was heaved upward and forward, the horizon tilted, rose and sank.

  ‘February 1st. Passageway between sheds, Cape Company’s No. 2 wharf Royal Albert Dock. Coralie Kraus of 16 Steep Lane, Hampstead. Assistant at Green Thumb, Knightsbridge. 18. Naturalized Austrian. Lively. Well-conducted, 5 feet 43/4 inches. Fair hair. Pale complexion. Black dress, gloves and shoes. No hat. Pink artificial jewellery. (Earrings, bracelet, necklace, clips.) Taking box of hyacinths to Mrs Dillington-Blick, passenger, Cape Farewell. Found 11.48 p.m. by PC Martin Moir. Body warm. Death estimated between 11.15 and 11.48 p.m. Face upwards. Stocking torn. Jewellery broken. Ears torn. Manual strangulation. Fragment of embarkation notice for S.S. Cape Farewell in right hand. Flowers (hyacinths) on face and breast. Seaman (on duty. Cape Farewell gangway) mentioned hearing high male voice singing. Very foggy conditions. All passengers went ashore (ref. above seaman) except Mr Donald McAngus who arrived last.’

  Alleyn shook his head, pulled towards him a half-finished letter to his wife and after a moment, continued it.

  ‘—so instead of drearily milling over these grisly, meagre and infuriating bits of information-received I offer them, my darling, to you: together with any developments that may, as Fox says in his more esoteric flights of fancy, accrue. There they are, then, and for the first time you will have the fun, God help you, of following a case as it develops from the casebook. The form, I suppose, is to ask oneself what these three wretched young women had in common and the answer is: very nearly damn’ all unless you feel inclined to pay any attention to the fact that in common with ninety per cent of their fellow females, they all wore false jewellery. Otherwise they couldn’t physically, racially or morally be less like each other. On the other hand they all met their death in exactly the same fashion and each was left with her broken necklace and ghastly little floral tribute. By the way, I imagine I’ve spotted one point of resemblance which didn’t at first jump to the eye. Wonder if you have?

  ‘As for the fragment of em
barkation notice in Miss Kraus’s right hand, that’s all I’ve got to justify my taking this pleasure cruise and if it was blowing about the wharf and she merely happened to clutch it in her death throes, it’ll be another case of public money wasted. The Captain, egged on by me, got the steward (a queer little job called Dennis) to collect the embarkation notices as if it was the usual procedure. With this result:

  Mrs Dillington-Blick. Has lost it.

  Mr and Mrs Cuddy. Joint one. Names written in. Just possible he could have fiddled in ‘Mr and’ when he found he’d lost his own. Room for fiddle. Can check office procedure.

  Mr Merryman. Had it in waistcoat pocket and now accuses steward of pinching it (!).

  Father Jourdain. Chucked it overboard.

  Mr McAngus. Can’t find it but says he’s sure he kept it. Frantic search—fruitless.

  Dr Makepiece. Wasn’t given one.

  Aubyn Dale. Thinks his sweetie took it. Doesn’t know why.

  Miss Abbott. Put it in wastepaper basket. (Gone.)

  Miss Carmichael. Has got.

  So that’s not much cop. No torn embarkation notice.

  ‘I’ve told you about getting the D-B’s hyacinths planted in the lounge. Dazzling reactions from Dale and Cuddy. Pity it was both. Explanation for Dale’s megrim (spoonerism on TV) very persuasive. Note Cuddy’s wedding anniversary date. Am I or am I not playing fair? Darling Troy, how very much, by the way, I love you.

  ‘On a sea voyage, you may remember, human relationships undergo a speeding-up process. People get to know each other after a fashion very quickly, and often develop a kind of intimacy. They lose their normal sense of responsibility and become suspended, like the ship, between two worlds. They succumb to infatuations. Mr Cuddy is succumbing to an infatuation for Mrs D-B and so, in a vague rarified way, is Mr McAngus. The Captain belongs to the well-known nautical group “middle-aged sea-dog”. High blood-pressure. Probably soaks in the tropics. Amorous. (Do you remember your theory about men of a certain age?) Has also set his course for Mrs D-B. Makepiece has got his eye on Jemima Carmichael and so have all the junior officers. She’s a nice child with some sort of chip on her shoulder. The D-B is a tidy armful and knows it. Mrs Cuddy is a network of subfusc complications and Miss Abbott is unlikely on the face of it, to release the safety catch in even the most determined sex-monster. But I suppose I shouldn’t generalize. She shaves.

  ‘As for the men: I’ve told you enough about our Mr Merryman to indicate what a cup-of-tea he is. It may help to fill in the picture if I add that he is the product of St Chads, Cantor, and Caius, looks a bit like Mr Pickwick and much more like Mr Chips and resembles neither in character. He’s retired from teaching but displays every possible pedagogic eccentricity from keeping refuse in his waistcoat pocket to laying down the law in and out of season. He despises policemen, seems to have made a sort of corner in acerbity and will, I bet you, cause a real row before the journey’s over.

  ‘Aubyn Dale: Education, undivulged. ? Non-U. So like himself on TV that one catches oneself supposing him to be two-dimensional. His line is being a thoroughly nice chap and he drinks about three times as much as is good for him. For all I know, he may be a thoroughly nice chap. He has a distressing predilection for practical jokes and has made a lifelong enemy of Merryman by causing the steward to serve him with a plastic fried egg at breakfast.

  ‘Jourdain: Lancing and BNC. On a normal voyage would be a pleasant companion. To me, the most interesting of the men but then I always want to find out at what point in an intelligent priest’s progress PC Faith begins to direct the traffic. I’ll swear in this one there’s still a smack of the jay-walker.

  ‘Cuddy: Methodist School. Draper. Not very delicious. Inquisitive. Conceited. A bit mean. Might be a case for a psychiatrist.

  ‘Makepiece: Felsted, New College and St Thomas’s. Is a psychiatrist. The Orthodox BMA class. Also MD. Wants to specialize in criminal psychiatry. Gives the impression of being a sound chap.

  ‘McAngus: Scottish High School. Philatelist. Amiable eunuch: but I don’t mean literally; a much-too-facile label. May, for all one knows, be a seething mass of “thing”. Also very inquisitive. Gets in a tizzy over details. Dyes, as you will have gathered, his hair.

  ‘Well, my dear love, there you are. The night before Las Palmas, with the connivance of Captain Bannerman, who is only joining in because he hopes I’ll look silly, I am giving a little party. You have just read the list of guests. It’s by way of being an experiment and may well turn out to be an unproductive bore. But what the hell, after all, am I to do? My instructions are not to dive in, boots and all, declare myself and hold a routine investigation, but to poke and peer and peep about and try to find out if any of these men has not got an alibi for one of the three vital occasions. My instructions are also to prevent any further activities, and not antagonize the Master who already turns purple with incredulity and rage at the mere suggestion of our man being aboard his ship. On the face of it the D-B and Miss C. look the likeliest candidates for strangulation, but you never know. Mrs Cuddy may have a je ne sais quoi which has escaped me but I fancy that as a potential victim Miss Abbott is definitely out. However that may be, you can picture me, as we approach the tropics, muscling in on any cosy little party à deux that breaks out in the more secluded corners of the boat deck and thus becoming in my own right a likely candidate for throttling. (Not really, so don’t agitate yourself.) Because the ladies must be protected. At Las Palmas there should be further reports from headquarters, following Fox’s investigations at the Home end. One can only hope they’ll cast a little beam. At the moment there’s not a twinkle but—’

  There was a tap at the door and, on Alleyn’s call, the wireless cadet, a wan youth, came in with a radiogram.

  ‘In code, Mr Broderick,’ he said.

  When he had gone Alleyn decoded the message and after an interval continued his letter.

  ‘Pause indicating suspense. Signal from Fox. It appears that a young lady from the hardware department in Woolworth’s called Bijou Browne, after thirty days’ disastrous hesitation, has coyly informed the Yard that she was half-strangled near Strand-on-the-Green on January 5th. The assailant offered her a bunch of hellebore (Christmas roses to you) and told her there was a spider on her neck. He started in on her rope of beads which, being poppets, broke; was interrupted by the approach of a wayfarer and bolted. It was a dark night and all she can tell Fox about her assailant is that he too was dark, spoke very nice, and wore gloves and ever such a full dark beard.’

  II

  Alleyn’s suggestion that he should give a dinner party was made, in the first instance, to Captain Bannerman.

  ‘It may be unorthodox,’ Alleyn said, ‘but there’s just a chance that it may give us a lead about these people.’

  ‘I can’t say I see how you work that out.’

  ‘I hope you will, though, in a minute. And, by the by, I’ll want your collaboration, sir, if you’ll agree to give it.’

  ‘Me! Now then, now then, what is all this?’

  ‘Let me explain.’

  Captain Bannerman listened with an air of moody detachment. When Alleyn had finished the Captain slapped his palms on his knees and said: ‘It’s a damn’ crazy notion but if it proves once and for all that you’re on a wild goose chase it’ll be worth the trouble. I won’t say no. Now!’

  Fortified by this authority Alleyn interviewed the Chief Steward, who expressed astonishment. Any parties that were given aboard this ship, the Chief Steward explained, were traditionally cocktail parties for which Dennis, always helpful, made very dainty little savouries and records were played over the loudspeaker.

  However, before Alleyn’s vast prestige as a supposed VIP and relation of the Managing Director, objections dissolved. Dennis became flushed with excitement, the stewards were gracious and the chef, a Portuguese whose almost moribund interest in his art revived under a whacking great tip, enthusiastic. Tables were run together and decorated, wine was chosen an
d at the appointed hour the eight passengers, the mate, the chief engineer, Alleyn and Tim Makepiece, having first met for drinks in the lounge, were assembled in the dining-room at a much later hour than was usually observed for dinner at sea.

  Alleyn sat at one end of the table with Mrs Cuddy on his right and Miss Abbott on his left. The Captain sat at the other between Mrs Dillington-Blick and Jemima: an arrangement that broke down his last resistance to so marked a departure from routine and fortified him against the part he had undertaken to play.

  Alleyn was a good host; his professional knack of getting other people to talk, coupled with the charm to which his wife never alluded without using the adjective indecent, generated an atmosphere of festivity. He was enormously helped by Mrs Dillington-Blick whose genuine enthusiasm and plunging neckline were, in their separate modes, provocative of jollity. She looked so dazzling that she sounded brilliant. Father Jourdain, who sat next to her, was admirable. Aubyn Dale, resplendent in a velvet dinner-jacket, coruscated with bonhomie and regaled his immediate neighbours with stories of practical jokes that he had successfully inflicted upon his chums, as he called them, in the world of admass. These anecdotes met with a gay response in Mrs Dillington-Blick.

  Mr McAngus wore a hyacinth in his buttonhole. Tim Makepiece was obviously enjoying himself and Jemima had an air of being astonished at her own gaiety. Mr Merryman positively blossomed or, at any rate, sprouted a little, under the influence of impeccably chosen wines and surprisingly good food while Miss Abbott relaxed and barked quite jovially across the table at Mr Cuddy. The two officers rapidly eased off their guarded good manners.

  The Cuddys were the tricky ones. Mrs Cuddy looked as if she wasn’t going to give herself away if she knew it and Mr Cuddy’s smile suggested that he enjoyed secret information about something slightly discreditable to everyone else. They exchanged looks occasionally.

  However as the Montrachet was followed by Pierrier Jouet in a lordly magnum, even the Cuddys shed some of their caginess. Mrs Cuddy, having assured Alleyn that they never touched anything but a drop of port wine on anniversaries, was persuaded to modify her austerity and did so with abandon. Mr Cuddy cautiously sipped and asked sharp questions about the wine, pointing out with tedious iteration that it was all above his head, he being a very simple-living person and not used to posh meals. Alleyn was unable to like Mr Cuddy very much.