Singing in the Shrouds ra-20

by Ngaio Marsh

  Well, tonight, Merryman being present, there was automatically a row. Without exception he’s the most pugnacious, quarrelsome, arrogant chap I’ve ever met. It seemed that Cuddy had got The Thing He Loves, and was snuffling away at it in the corner of the lounge. Merryman spotted the book and at once said that he himself was already reading it. Cuddy said he’d taken the book from the shelves and that they were free for all. Neither would give in. Finally McAngus announced that he had a copy of The Trial of Neil Cream and actually succeeded in placating Merryman with an offer to lend it to him. It appears that Merryman is one of the fanatics who believe the story of Cream’s unfinished confession. So peace was in a sense restored though once again we were treated to an interminable discussion on what Cuddy will call sex monstrosity. Dale was full of all kinds of second-hand theories. McAngus joined in with a sort of terrified relish. Makepiece talked from the psychiatric angle and Jourdain from the religious one. Merryman contradicted everybody. Of course, I’m all for these discussions. They give one an unexampled chance to listen to the man one may be going to arrest, propounding the sort of crime with which he will ultimately be charged.

  The reactions go like this:

  McAngus does a great deal of tut-tuttering, protests that the subject is too horrid to dwell upon but is nevertheless quite unable to go away while it’s under discussion. He gets all the facts wrong, confuses names and dates so persistently that you’d think it was deliberate, and is slapped back perpetually by Merryman.

  Cuddy is utterly absorbed. He goes over the details and incessantly harks back to Jack the Ripper, describing all the ritualistic horrors and speculating about their possible significance.

  Merryman, of course, is overbearing, didactic, and argumentative. He’s got a much better brain than any of the others, is conversant with the cases, never muddles the known facts and never loses a chance of blackguarding the police. In his opinion they won’t catch their man and he obviously glories in the notion (“Hah-hah, did he but know,” sneered Hawkshaw, the detective).

  Dale, like McAngus, puts up a great show of abhorrence but professes an interest in what he calls the “psychology of sadistic homicide.” He talks like a signed article in one of the less responsible of our dailies and also, of course, like a thoroughly nice chap on television. “Poor wretch!” is his cry. “Poor, poor girls, poor everybody. Sad! Sad!”

  Meanwhile, being in merry pin, he has had enough misguided energy to sew up Mr. Merryman’s pyjamas and put a dummy woman made from one of the D-B’s tremendous nightgowns in Mr. McAngus’s bed, and has thus by virtue of these hilarious pranks graduated as a potential victim himself. Merryman’s reaction was to go straight to the captain and McAngus’s to behave as if he was a typical example from Freud’s casebook.

  Well, there they are, these four precious favorites in the homicide handicap. I’ve told you that I fancy one in particular, and in the classic tradition, my dearest, having laid bare the facts, I leave you to your deduction; always bearing in mind that the captain and his mates may be right and there ain’t no flaming murderer on board.

  Good-night, darling. Don’t miss our next instalment of this absorbing serial.

  Alleyn put his letter away, doodled absently on his blotting paper for a few minutes, and then thought he’d stretch his legs before turning in.

  He went down to the deck below and found it deserted. Having walked six times round it and had a word with the wireless officer, who sat lonely as a cloud in his cubbyhole on the starboard side, Alleyn thought he would call it a day. He passed Father Jourdain’s cabin door on his way through the passengers’ quarters and as he did so the handle turned and the door was opened a crack. He heard Father Jourdain’s voice.

  “But, of course. You must come to me whenever you want to. It’s what I’m for, you know.”

  A woman’s voice answered harshly and indistinguishably.

  “I think,” said Father Jourdain, “you should dismiss all that from your mind and stick to your duties. Perform your penance, come to Mass tomorrow, make the special intention I have suggested. Go along, now, and say your prayers. Bless you, my child. Good-night.”

  Alleyn moved quickly down the passage and had reached the stairs before Miss Abbott had time to see him.

  CHAPTER 8

  Sunday the Thirteenth

  The next day being Sunday, Father Jourdain with the captain’s permission celebrated Holy Communion in the lounge at seven o’clock. The service was attended among the passengers by Miss Abbott, Brigid, Mr. McAngus, and rather surprisingly, Mr. Merryman. The third officer, the wireless officer, two of the cadets, and Dennis represented the ship’s complement. Alleyn, at the back of the room, listened, watched, and not for the first time felt his own lack of acceptance to be tinged with a faint regret.

  When the service was over the little group of passengers went out on deck and presently were joined by Father Jourdain, wearing, as he had promised, his “decent black cassock.” He looked remarkably handsome in it with the light breeze lifting his glossy hair. Miss Abbott, standing, characteristically, a little apart from the others, watched him, Alleyn noticed, with a look of stubborn deference. There was a Sunday morning air about the scene. Even Mr. Merryman was quiet and thoughtful, while Mr. McAngus, who, with Miss Abbott, had carried out the details of Anglo-Catholic observance like an old hand, was quite giddy and uplifted. He congratulated Brigid on her looks and did his little chassé before her with his head on one side. Mr. McAngus’s russet-brown hair had grown, of course, even longer at the back, and something unfortunate seemed to have happened round the brow and temples. But as he always wore his felt hat out-of-doors and quite often in the lounge, this was not particularly noticeable.

  Brigid responded gaily to his blameless compliments and turned to Alleyn.

  “I didn’t expect to see you about so early,” she said.

  “And why not?”

  “You were up late! Pacing round the deck. Wrapped in thought!” teased Brigid.

  “That’s all very fine,” Alleyn rejoined. “But what, I might ask, were you up to yourself? From what angle of vantage did you keep all this observation?”

  Brigid blushed. “Oh,” she said with a great air of casualness, “I was sitting in the verandah along there. We didn’t like to call out as you passed, you looked so solemn and absorbed.” She turned an even brighter pink, glanced at the others, who were gathered round Father Jourdain, and added quickly, “Tim Makepiece and I were talking about Elizabethan literature.”

  “You were not talking very loudly about it,” Alleyn observed mildly.

  “Well—” Brigid looked into his face. “I’m not having a ship-board flirtation with Tim. At least — at least, I don’t think I am.”

  “Not a flirtation?” Alleyn repeated and smiled at her.

  “And not anything else. Oh, golly!” Brigid said impulsively. “I’m in such a muddle.”

  “Do you want to talk about your muddle?”

  Brigid put her arm through his. “I’ve arrived at the age,” Alleyn reflected, “when charming young ladies take my arm.” They walked down the deck together.

  “How long,” Brigid asked, “have we been at sea? And, crikey!” she added. “What an appropriate phrase that is!”

  “Six days.”

  “There you are! Six days! The whole thing’s ridiculous. How can anybody possibly know how they feel in six days? It’s out of this world.”

  Alleyn remarked that he had known how he felt in one day. “Shorter even than that,” he added. “At once.”

  “Really? And stuck to it?”

  “Like a limpet. She took much longer, though.”

  “But—? Did you?”

  “We are very happily married, thank you.”

  “How lovely,” Brigid sighed.

  “However,” he added hurriedly, “don’t let me raise a finger to urge you into an ill-considered undertaking.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything about that,” she rejoined
with feeling. “I’ve made that sort of ass of myself in quite a big way, once already.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, indeed. The night we sailed should have been my wedding night, only he chucked me three days before. I’ve done a bolt from all the brouhaha, leaving my wretched parents to cope. Very poor show, as you don’t need to tell me,” said Brigid in a high uneven voice.

  “I expect your parents were delighted to get rid of you. Much easier for them, I daresay, if you weren’t about, throwing vapours.”

  They had reached the end of the well-deck and stood, looking aft, near the little verandah. Brigid remarked indistinctly that going to church always made her feel rather light-headed and talkative and she expected that was why she was being so communicative.

  “Perhaps the warm weather has something to do with it, as well,” Alleyn suggested.

  “I daresay. One always hears that people get very unguarded in the tropics. But actually you’re to blame. I was saying to Tim the other night that if I was ever in a real jam I’d feel inclined to go bawling to you about it. He quite agreed. And here, fantastically, I am. Bawling away.”

  “I’m enormously flattered. Are you in a jam?”

  “I suppose not, really. I just need to keep my eye. And see that he keeps his. Because whatever you say, I don’t see how he can possibly know in six days.”

  Alleyn said that people saw more of each other in six days at sea than they did in as many weeks ashore but, he was careful to add, in rather less realistic circumstances. Brigid agreed. There was no doubt, she announced owlishly, that strange things happened to one at sea. Look at her, for instance, she said with enchanting egoism. She was getting all sorts of the rummiest notions into her head. After a little hesitation, and very much with the air of a child that screws itself up to confiding a groundless fear, Brigid said rapidly, “I even started thinking the Flower Murderer was on board. Imagine!”

  Among the various items of Alleyn’s training as an investigating officer, the trick of wearing an impassive face in the teeth of unexpected information was not the least useful. It stood him in good stead now.

  “I wonder,” he said, “what in the world could have put that idea in your head.”

  Brigid repeated the explanation she had already given Tun yesterday afternoon. “Of course,” she said, “he thought it as dotty as you do and so did the F.N.C.”

  “Who,” Alleyn asked, “is the F.N.C.?”

  “It’s our name for Dale. It stands for Frightfully Nice Chap only we don’t mean it frightfully nicely, I’m afraid.”

  “Nevertheless, you confided your fantasy to him, did you?”

  “He overheard me. We were ‘squatting’ on his and the D-B’s lush chairs and he came round the corner with cushions and went all avuncular.”

  “And now you’ve brought this bugaboo out into the light of day it’s evaporated?”

  Brigid swung her foot and kicked an infinitesimal object into the scruppers. “Not altogether,” she muttered.

  “No?”

  “Well, it has, really. Only last night, after I’d gone to bed, something happened. I don’t suppose it was anything much, but it got me a bit steamed up again. My cabin’s on the left-hand side of the block. The porthole faces my bed. Well, you know that blissful moment when you’re not sure whether you’re awake or asleep but kind of floating? I’d got to that stage. My eyes were shut and I was all air-borne and drifting. Then with a jerk I was wide awake and staring at that porthole.” Brigid swallowed hard. “It was moonlight outside. Before I’d shut my eyes I’d seen the moon, looking in and then swinging out of sight and leaving a procession of stars and then swinging back. Lovely! Well, when I opened my eyes and looked at the porthole — somebody outside was looking in at me.”

  Alleyn waited for a moment and then said, “You’re quite sure, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yes. There he was, blotting out the stars and the moon and filling up my porthole with his head.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “I haven’t a notion. Somebody in a hat, but I could only see the outline. And it was only for a second. I called out — it was not a startlingly original remark—‘Hullo! Who’s there?’ and at once it went down. I mean it sank in a flash. He must have ducked and then bolted. The moon came whooping back and there was I, all of a dither and thinking ‘Suppose the Flower Murderer is on board and suppose after everyone else has gone to bed, he prowls and prowls around like the hosts of Midian’—or is it Gideon, in that blissful hymn? So you see, I haven’t quite got over my nonsense, have I?”

  “Have you told Makepiece about this?”

  “I haven’t seen him. He doesn’t go to church.”

  “No, of course you haven’t. Perhaps,” Alleyn said, “it was Aubyn Dale being puckish.”

  “I must say I never thought of that. Could he hit quite such an all-time low for unfunniness, do you suppose?”

  “I would have expected him to follow it up with a dummy spider on your pillow. You do lock your door at night, don’t you? And in the daytime?”

  “Yes. There was that warning about things having been pinched. Oh, Lord!” Brigid ejaculated. “Do you suppose that’s who it was? The petty larcener? Why on earth didn’t I remember before! Hoping he could fish something out through the porthole, would you think?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Alleyn said.

  The warning gong for breakfast began to tinkle. Brigid remarked cheerfully, “Well, that’s that, anyway.”

  Alleyn waited for a moment and then said, “Look. In view of what you’ve just told me, I’d keep your curtains over your port at night. And as there evidently is a not-too-desirable character in the ship’s complement, I don’t think, if I were you, I’d go out walking after dark by yourself. He might come along and make a bit of a nuisance of himself.”

  Brigid said, “O.K., but what a bore. And, by the way, you’d better hand on that piece of advice to Mrs. D-B. She’s the one to go out walking — or dancing, rather — by the light of the moon.” Brigid smiled reminiscently. “I do think she’s marvellous,” she said. “All that joie de vivre at her age. Superb.”

  Alleyn found time to wonder how much Mrs. Dillington-Blick would relish this tribute and also how many surprises Brigid was liable to spring on him at one sitting.

  He said, “Does she dance by the light of the moon? Who with?”

  “By herself.”

  “You don’t tell me she goes all pixy-wixy on the boat deck? Carrying that weight?”

  “On the other deck, the bottom one, nearer the sharp end. I’ve seen her. The weight doesn’t seem to matter.”

  “Do explain yourself.”

  “Well, I’m afraid you’re in for another night-piece — in point of fact the night before last. It was awfully hot; Tim and I had sat up rather late, not, I’d have you know again, for amorous dalliance but for a long muddly argument. And when I went to my cabin it was stuffy and I knew I wouldn’t sleep for thinking about the argument. So I went along to the windows that look down on the lower deck — it’s called the forrard well-deck, isn’t it? — and wondered if I could be bothered climbing down and then along and up to the bows where I rather like to go. And while I was wondering and looking down into the forrard well-deck which was full of black shadows, a door opened underneath me and a square patch of light was thrown across the deck.”

  Brigid’s face, vivid and gay with the anticipation of her narrative, clouded a little.

  “In point of fact,” she said, “for a second or two it was a trifle grisly. You see, a shadow appeared on the lighted square. And — well — it was exactly as if the doll, Esmeralda, had come to life. Mantilla, fan, wide lace skirt. Everything. I daresay it contributed to my ‘thing’ about the flower murders. Anyway it gave me quite a jolt.”

  “It would,” Alleyn agreed. “What next?”

  “Well, somebody shut the door and the light patch vanished. And I knew, of course, who it was. There she stood, all by he
rself. I was looking down on her head. And then it happened. The moon was up and just at that moment it got high enough to shine into the deck. All those lumps of covered machinery cast their inky-black shadows, but there were patches of moonshine and it was exciting to see. She ran out and flirted her fan and did little pirouettes and curtseys and even two or three of those sliding backsteps they do with castanets in The Gondoliers. I think she was holding her mantilla across her face. It was the strangest sight.”

  “Very rum, indeed. You’re sure it was the D-B?”

  “But, of course. Who else? And, do you know, I found it rather touching. Don’t you agree? She only stayed for a few moments and then ran back. The door opened and her shadow flashed across the patch of light. I heard men’s voices, laughing, and then it was all blanked out. But wasn’t it gay and surprising of Mrs. Dillington-Blick? Aren’t you astonished?” asked Brigid.

  “Flabbergasted. Although one does hear, of course, of elephant dances in the seclusion of the jungle.”

  Brigid said indignantly, “She’s as light as a feather on her pins. Fat people are, you know. They dance like fairies. Still, perhaps you’d better warn her not to on account of the petty larcener. Only please don’t say I told you about her moonlight party. In a funny sort of way I felt like an interloper.”

  “I won’t,” he promised. “And in the meantime don’t take any solitary walks yourself. Tell Makepiece about it, and see if he doesn’t agree with me.”

  “Oh,” Brigid assured him. “He’ll agree all right.”

  And a dimple appeared near the corner of her mouth.

  The group round Father Jourdain had moved nearer. Mr. McAngus called out, “Breakfast!” and Brigid said, “Coming!” She joined them, turned, crinkled her eyes at Alleyn and called out, “You have been nice. Thank you — Allan.”

  Before he could reply she had made off with the others in search of breakfast.