Dead Water ra-23

by Ngaio Marsh

  “I’m very sorry, sir. It bean’t none of my doing. I kept it close as a trap. But the ambulance was seen, and the stretcher party, and there you are. I said I supposed it was somebody took ill at the cottages, but there was Sergeant Pender, sir, and us — I mean, they — be all wondering why it’s a police matter.”

  Alleyn said ambiguously that he understood. “It’d be a good idea,” he suggested, “if you put up a notice that the spring will be closed today.”

  “The Major’ll have to be axed about that, sir.”

  “Very well. Where is he?”

  “He’ll be in the old house, sir. He bean’t showed up round hereabouts.”

  “I’ll find him. Would you ring Miss Pride’s rooms and say I hope to call on her within the next half-hour? Mr. Alleyn.”

  He went out and in again by the old pub door. There was nobody to be seen, but he heard voices in what he thought was probably the former bar-parlour and tapped on the door. It was opened by Patrick Ferrier.

  “Hullo. Good morning, sir,” said Patrick and then: “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Alleyn said. “Very wrong. May I see your stepfather?”

  “Well — yes, of course. Will you come in?”

  They were all seated in the parlour — Mrs. Barrimore, Jenny Williams and the Major, who looked very much the worse for wear but assumed a convincing enough air of authority and asked Alleyn what he could do for him.

  Alleyn told them in a few words what had happened. Margaret Barrimore turned white and said nothing. Jenny and Patrick exclaimed together: “Miss Cost! Not Miss Cost!”

  Major Barrimore said incredulously: “Hit on the head and drowned? Hit with what?”

  “A piece of rock, we think. From above.”

  “You mean it was an accident? Brought down by the rains, what?”

  “I think not.”

  “Mr. Alleyn means she was murdered, Keith,” said his wife. It was the first time she had spoken.

  “Be damned to that!” said the Major furiously. “Murdered! Old Cost! Why?”

  Patrick gave a sharp exclamation.

  “Well!” his stepfather barked at him. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Did you say, sir, that she was under an umbrella?”

  “Yes,” Alleyn said and thought: This is going to be everybody’s big inspiration.

  He listened to Patrick as he presented the theory of mistaken identity.

  Jenny said: “Does Miss Pride know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “It’ll be a shock for her,” said Jenny. “When will you tell her?”

  “As soon as I’ve left you.” He looked round at them. “As a matter of form,” he said. “I must ask you all where you were between half past seven and nine this morning. You will understand, won’t you—”

  “That it’s purely a matter of routine,” Patrick said, “Sorry. I couldn’t help it. Yes, we do understand.”

  Mrs. Barrimore, Jenny and Patrick had got up and bathed, in turn, round eight o’clock. Mrs. Barrimore did not breakfast in the public dining-room but had toast and coffee by herself in the old kitchen which had been converted into a kitchen-dining-room. Jenny had breakfasted at about nine and Patrick a few minutes later. After breakfast they had gone out of doors for a few minutes, surveyed the weather and decided to stay in and do a crossword together. Major Barrimore, it appeared, slept in and didn’t get up until half past nine. He had two cups of coffee but no breakfast.

  All these movements would have to be checked; but at the moment there was more immediate business. Alleyn asked Major Barrimore to put up a notice that the spring was closed.

  He at once objected. Did Alleyn realize that there were people from all over the country — from overseas, even — who had come with the express purpose of visiting the spring? Did he realize that it was out of the question coolly to send them about their business — some of them, he’d have Alleyn know, in damned bad shape?

  Alleyn said that the spring could probably be reopened in two days’ time.

  “Two days, my dear fellah, two days! You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got one draft going out tonight and a new detachment coming in tomorrow. Where the hell d’you suppose I’m going to put them? Hey?”

  Alleyn said it was no doubt extremely inconvenient

  “Inconvenient! It’s outrageous.”

  “So,” Alleyn suggested, “is murder.”

  “I’ve no proof of where you get your authority and I’ll have you know I won’t act without it. I refuse point-blank,” shouted the Major. “And categorically,” he added as if that clinched the matter.

  “The authority,” Alleyn said, “is Scotland Yard and I’m very sorry, but you really can’t refuse, you know. Either you decide to frame an announcement in your own words and get it out at once or I shall be obliged to issue a police notice. In any case, that will be done at the spring itself. It would be better, as I’m sure you must agree, if intending visitors were stopped here rather than at the gates.”

  “Of course it would,” said Patrick impatiently.

  “Yes, Keith. Please,” said Mrs. Barrimore.

  “When I want your suggestions, Margaret, I’ll ask for them.”

  Patrick looked at his stepfather with disgust. He said to Alleyn: “With respect, sir, I suggest that my mother and Jenny leave us to settle this point.”

  Mrs. Barrimore at once rose.

  “May we?” she asked. Jenny said: “Yes, please, may we?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Alleyn, and to Patrick, “Let the court be cleared of ladies, by all means, Mr. Ferrier.”

  Patrick gave him a look and turned pink. All the same, Alleyn thought, there was an air of authority about him. The wig was beginning to sprout and would probably become this young man rather well.

  “Here. Wait a bit,” said the Major. He spread his hands. “All right. All right,” he said. “Have it your own way.” He turned on his wife. “You’re supposed to be good at this sort of rot, Margaret. Get out a notice and make it tactful. Say that owing to an accident in the area — no, my God, that sounds bloody awful. Owing to unforeseen circumstances — I don’t know. I don’t know. Say what you like. Talk to them. But get it done.” Alleyn could cheerfully have knocked him down.

  Mrs. Barrimore and Jenny went out.

  Patrick, who was now very white, said: “I think it will be much better if we help Mr. Alleyn as far as we’re able. He wants to get on with his work, I’m sure. The facts will have to become known sooner or later. We’ll do no good by adopting delaying tactics.”

  Major Barrimore contemplated his stepson with an unattractive smile. “Charming!” he said. “Now, I know exactly how I should behave, don’t I?” He appeared to undergo a change of mood and illustrated it by executing a wide gesture and then burying his face in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said and his voice was muffled. “Give me a moment.”

  Patrick turned his back and walked over to the window. The Major looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and his expression dolorous. “Bad show,” he said. “Apologize. Not myself. Truth of the matter is, I got a bit plastered last night and this has hit me rather hard.” He stood up and made a great business of straightening his shoulders and blowing his nose. “As you were,” he said bravely. “Take my orders from you. What’s the drill?”

  “Really, there isn’t any at the moment,” Alleyn said cheerfully. “If you can persuade your guests not to collect round the enclosure or use the path to it we’ll be very grateful. As soon as possible we’ll get the approaches cordoned off and that will settle the matter, won’t it? And now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  He was about to go when Major Barrimore said: “Quite so. Talk to the troops, what? Well — sooner the better.” He put his hand on Alleyn’s arm. “Sorry, old boy,” he said gruffly. “Sure you understand.”

  He frowned, came to attention and marched out.

  “Not true,” Patrick said to the window. “Just not true.” />
  Alleyn said “Never mind,” and left him.

  When he re-entered the main building he found Major Barrimore the centre of a group of guests who showed every sign of disgruntlement tempered with avid curiosity. He was in tremendous form. “Now, I know you’re going to be perfectly splendid about this,” he was saying. “It’s an awful disappointment to all of us and it calls for that good old British spirit of tolerance and understanding. Take it on the chin and look as if you liked it, what? And you can take it from me…”

  He was still in full cry as Alleyn walked up the stairs and went to call on Miss Emily.

  She was, of course, dressed for travel. Her luggage, as he saw through the open door, was ready. She was wearing her toque.

  He told her what had happened. Miss Emily’s sallow complexion whitened. She looked very fixedly at him and did not interrupt

  “Rodrigue,” she said when he had finished. “This is my doing. I am responsible.”

  “Now, my dearest Miss Emily—”

  “No. Please. Let me look squarely at the catastrophe. This foolish woman has been mistaken for me. There is no doubt in my mind at all. It declares itself. If I had obeyed the intention and not the mere letter of the undertaking I gave you, this would not have occurred.”

  “You went to the spring this morning with your notice?”

  “Yes. I had, if you recollect, promised you not to leave my apartment again last night, and to breakfast in my apartment this morning. A loophole presented itself.”

  In spite of Miss Emily’s distress there was more than a hint of low cunning in the sidelong glance she gave him. “I went out,” she said. “I placed my manifesto. I returned. I took my petit déjeuner in my room.”

  “When did you go out?”

  “At half past seven.”

  “It was raining?”

  “Heavily.”

  “Did you meet anybody? Or see anybody?”

  “I met nobody,” said Miss Emily. “I saw that wretched child. Walter Trehern. He was on the roadway that leads from the cottages up to the spring. It has, I believe, been called—” she closed her eyes—“ ‘Wally’s Way.’ He was halfway up the hill.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “He did. He uttered some sort of gibberish, gave an uncouth cry and waved his arms.”

  “Did he see you leave?”

  “I think not. When I had affixed my manifesto and faced about, he had already disappeared. Possibly he was hiding.”

  “And you didn’t, of course, see Miss Cost”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t see her umbrella on your ledge above the pool? As you were tying up your notice?”

  “Certainly not. I looked in that direction. It was not there.”

  “And that would be at about twenty to eight. It wouldn’t, I think, take you more than ten minutes to walk there, from the pub?”

  “No. It was five minutes to eight when I re-entered the hotel.”

  “Did you drop the notice, face down in the mud?”

  “Certainly not. Why?”

  “It’s no matter. Miss Emily: please try to remember if you saw anybody at all on the village side of the causeway, or indeed anywhere. Any activity round the jetty, for instance, or on the bay or near the cottages? Then, or at any time during your expedition?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “And on your return journey?”

  “The rain was driving in from the direction of the village. My umbrella was therefore inclined to meet it.”

  “Yes. I see.”

  A silence fell between them. Alleyn walked over to the window. It looked down on a small garden at the back of the old pub. As he stood there, absently staring, someone came into the garden from below. It was Mrs. Barrimore. She had a shallow basket over her arm and carried a pair of secateurs. She walked over to a clump of Michaelmas daisies and began to cut them, but her movement was so uncoordinated and wild that the flowers fell to the ground. She made as if to retrieve them, dropped her secateurs and then the basket. Her hands went to her face and for a time she crouched there, quite motionless. She then rose and walked aimlessly and hurriedly about the paths, turning and returning as if the garden were a prison yard. Her fingers twisted together. They might have been encumbered with rings of which she tried fruitlessly to rid them.

  “That,” said Miss Emily’s voice, “is a very unhappy creature.”

  She had joined Alleyn without attracting his notice.

  “Why?” he asked. “What’s the matter with her?”

  “No doubt her animal of a husband ill-treats her.”

  “She’s a beautiful woman,” Alleyn said. He found himself quoting from — surely? — an inappropriate source, “ ’Look what she does now. See how she rubs her hands!’ ” and Miss Emily replied at once: “ ’It is an accustomed action with her to seem thus washing her hands.”

  “Good Heavens!” Alleyn exclaimed. “What do we think we’re talking about?”

  Margaret Barrimore raised her head and instinctively they both drew back. Alleyn walked away from the window and then, with a glance at Miss Emily, turned back to it.

  “She has controlled herself,” said Miss Emily. “She is gathering her flowers. She is a woman of character, that one.”

  In a short time Mrs. Barrimore had filled her basket and returned to the house.

  “Was she very friendly,” he asked, “with Miss Cost?”

  “No. I believe, on the contrary, there was a certain animosity. On Cost’s part. Not, as far as I could see, upon Mrs. Barrimore’s. Cost,” said Miss Emily, “was, I judged, a spiteful woman. It is a not unusual phenomenon among spinsters of Cost’s years and class. I am glad to say I was not conscious, at her age, of any such emotion. My sister Fanny, in her extravagant fashion, used to say I was devoid of the mating instinct. It may have been so.”

  “Were you never in love, Miss Emily?”

  “That,” said Miss Emily, “is an entirely different matter.”

  “Is it?”

  “In any case it is neither here nor there. What do you wish me to do, Rodrigue? Am I to remain in this place?” She examined him. “I think you are disturbed upon this point,” she said.

  Alleyn thought: She’s sharp enough to see I’m worried about her, and yet she can’t see why. Or can she?

  He said: “It’s a difficult decision. If you go back to London I’m afraid I shall be obliged to keep in touch and bother you with questions and you may have to return. There will be an inquest, of course. I don’t know if you will be called. You may be.”

  “With whom does the decision rest?”

  “Primarily, with the police.”

  “With you, then?”

  “Yes. It rests upon our report. Usually the witnesses called at an inquest are the persons who found the body — me, in this instance — together with the investigating officers, the pathologist and anyone who saw or spoke to the deceased shortly before the event. Or anyone else who the police believe can throw light on the circumstances. Do you think,” he asked, “you can do that?”

  Miss Emily looked disconcerted. It was the first time, he thought, that he had ever seen her at a loss.

  “No,” she said. “I think not.”

  “Miss Emily, do you believe that Wally Trehern came back after you had left the enclosure, saw Miss Cost under her umbrella, crept up to the boulder by a roundabout way (there’s plenty of cover) and threw down the rock, thinking he threw it on you?”

  “How could that be? How could he get in? The enclosure was locked.”

  “He may have had a disk, you know.”

  “What would be done to him?”

  “Nothing very dreadful. He would probably be sent to an institution.”

  She moved about the room with an air of indecision that reminded him, disturbingly, of Mrs. Barrimore. “I can only repeat,” she said at last, “what I know. I saw him. He cried out and then hid himself. That is all.”

  “I think we may ask you to say that a
t the inquest.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “In the meantime, perhaps we should compromise. There is, I’m told, a reasonably good hotel in the hills outside Dunlowman. If I can arrange for you to stay there will you do so? The inquest may be held in Dunlowman. It would be less of a fuss for you than returning from London.”

  “It’s inadvisable for me to remain here?”

  “Very inadvisable.”

  “So be it,” said Miss Emily. His relief was tempered by a great uneasiness. He had never known her so tractable before.

  “I’ll telephone the hotel,” he said. “And Troy, if I may,” he added with a sigh.

  “Had I taken your advice and remained in London, this would not have happened.”

  He was hunting through the telephone book. “That,” he said, “is a prime example of utterly fruitless speculation. I am surprised at you, Miss Emily.” He dialled the number. The Manor Court Hotel would have a suite vacant at five o’clock the next day. There would also be a small single room. There had been cancellations. He booked the suite. “You can go over in the morning,” he said, “and lunch there. It’s the best wè can do. Will you stay indoors today, please?”

  “I have given up this room.”

  “I don’t think there will be any difficulty.”

  “People are leaving?”

  “I daresay some will do so.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I am so troubled, my dear. I am so troubled.”

  This, more than anything else she had said, being completely out of character, moved and disturbed him. He sat her down and because she looked unsettled and alien in her travelling toque, carefully removed it. “There,” he said, “and I haven’t disturbed the coiffure. Now, you look more like my favourite old girl.”

  “That is no way to address me,” said Miss Emily. “You forget yourself.”

  He unbuttoned her gloves and drew them off. “Should I blow in them?” he asked. “Or would that be bourgeois?”

  He saw, with dismay, that she was fighting back tears.

  There was a tap at the door. Jenny Williams opened it and looked in. “Are you receiving?” she asked and then saw Alleyn. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll come back later.”