Singing in the Shrouds ra-20

by Ngaio Marsh

  During breakfast Tim kept trying to catch Alleyn’s eye and got but little response for his pains. He was waiting in the passage when Alleyn came out and said with artificial heartiness, “I’ve found those books I was telling you about. Would you like to come along to my room, or shall I bring them up to yours?”

  “Bring them,” Alleyn said, “to mine.”

  He went straight upstairs. In five minutes there was a knock on the door and Tim came in, burdened with unwanted textbooks. “I’ve got something I think I ought to tell you,” he said.

  “Brigid Carmichael wonders if the Flower Murderer is on board and Aubyn Dale knows she does.”

  “How the hell did you find out!” Tim ejaculated.

  “She told me.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I’m rather wondering why you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t get a chance before dinner. I was going to after dinner, but you were boxed up with the D-B and Dale in the lounge and later on — well—”

  “You were discussing Elizabethan literature on the verandah?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Very well. At what stage did you inform Miss Carmichael of my name?”

  “Damn it, it’s not as bad as you think. Look-did she tell you that too?”

  “She merely called it out before the whole lot of them as we came down to breakfast.”

  “She thinks it’s your Christian name — Allan.”

  “Why?”

  Tim told him. “I really am ashamed of myself,” he said. “It just slipped out. I wouldn’t have believed I could be such a bloody fool.”

  “Nor would I. I suppose it comes of all this poodle-faking nonsense. Calling oneself by a false name! Next door to wearing false whiskers, I’ve always thought, but sometimes it can’t be avoided.”

  “She’s not a notion who you are, of course.”

  “That, at least, is something. And, by the way, she’ll be telling you about an incident that occurred last night. I think you’ll agree that it’s serious. I’ve suggested the mythical sneak-thief as the culprit. You’d better take the same line.”

  “But what’s happened?”

  “A Peeping Tom’s happened. She’ll tell you. She may also tell you how Mrs. Dillington-Blick goes fey among the derricks by moonlight.”

  “What!”

  “I’m going to see the captain. Father Jourdain’s joining me there; you’d better come too, I think. You might as well know about it.”

  “Of course. If I’m not confined to outer darkness.”

  “Oh,” Alleyn said, “we’ll give you another chance.”

  Tim said, “I’m sorry about my gaffe, Alleyn.”

  “The name is Broderick.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She’s a nice child. None of my business but I hope you’re not making a nonsense. She’s had one bad knock and she’d better not be dealt another.”

  “She seems,” Tim observed, “to confide in you a damn sight more freely than in me.”

  “Advanced years carry their own compensation.”

  “For me, this is it.”

  “Certain?”

  “Absolutely. I wish I was as certain about her.”

  “Well — look after her.”

  “I’ve every intention of doing so,” Tim said, and on that note they found Father Jourdain and went to visit Captain Bannerman.

  It was not an easy interview.

  Alleyn would have recognized Captain Bannerman for an obstinate man even if he had not been told as much by members of the Cape Line Company before he left. “He’s a pig-headed old b.,” one of these officials had remarked. “And if you get up against him he’ll make things very uncomfortable for you. He drinks pretty hard and is reported to be bloody-minded in his cups. Keep on the right side of him and he’ll be O.K.”

  So far, Alleyn thought, he had managed to follow this suggestion, but when he described the episode of the moonlit figure seen by Brigid on Friday night, he knew he was in for trouble. He gave his own interpretation of this story and he suggested that steps should be taken to ensure that there was no repetition. He met with a flat refusal. He then went on to tell them of the man outside Brigid’s porthole. The captain said at once that he would detail the officer of the watch, who would take appropriate steps to ensure that this episode was not repeated. He added that it was of no particular significance and that very often people behaved oddly in the tropics — an observation that Alleyn was getting a little tired of hearing. He attempted to suggest a more serious interpretation and met with blank incredulity.

  As for the Dillington-Blick episode, the captain said he would take no action either to investigate it or prevent a repetition. He treated them to a lecture on the diminishing powers of a ship’s master at sea and grew quite hot on the subject. There were limitations. There were unions. Even passengers nowadays had their rights, he added regretfully. What had occurred was in no way an infringement of any of the regulations, he didn’t propose to do anything about it and he must request Alleyn to follow suit. And that, he said finally, was flat.

  He stood with his hands in his jacket pockets and glared through his porthole at the horizon. Even the back of his neck looked mulish. The other three men exchanged glances.

  “The chap’s not aboard my ship,” the captain loudly announced without turning his head. “I know that as well as I know you are. I’ve been master under the Cape Company’s charter for twenty years and I know as soon as I look at him whether a chap’ll blow up for trouble at sea. I had a murderer shipped fireman aboard me, once. Soon as I clapped eyes on him I knew he was no good. Never failed yet. And I’ve been observing this lot. Observing them closely. There’s not a murdering look on one of their faces, not a sign of it.” He turned slowly and advanced upon Alleyn. His own face, lobster-red, wore an expression of childish complacency. “You’re on a wild goose chase,” he said blowing out gusts of whisky. Then with quite astonishing violence he drew his mottled hirsute fist from his pocket and crashed it down on his desk. “That sort of thing,” said Captain Bannerman, “doesn’t happen in my ship!”

  “May I say just this?” Alleyn ventured. “I wouldn’t come to you with the suggestion unless I thought it most urgently necessary. You may, indeed, be perfectly right. Our man may not, after all, be aboard. But suppose, sir, that in the teeth of all you feel about it, he is in this ship.” Alleyn pointed to the captain’s desk calendar. “Sunday the tenth of February,” he said. “If he’s here we’ve got four days before his supposed deadline. Shouldn’t we take every possible step to prevent him going into action? I know very well that what I’ve suggested sounds farfetched, cockeyed, and altogether preposterous. It’s a precautionary measure against a threat that may not exist. But isn’t it better—” He looked at that unyielding front and very nearly threw up his hands. “Isn’t it better, in fact, to be sure than sorry?” said Alleyn in despair. Father Jourdain and Tim murmured agreement but the captain shouted them down.

  “Ah! So it is and it’s a remark I often pass myself. But in this case it doesn’t apply. What you’ve suggested is dead against my principles as master and I won’t have it. I don’t believe it’s necessary and I won’t have it.”

  Father Jourdain said, “If I might just say one word—”

  “You may spare yourself the trouble, I’m set.”

  Alleyn said, “Very good, sir, I hope you’re right. Of course we’ll respect your wishes.”

  “I won’t have that lady put-about by any interference or — or criticism.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting—”

  “It’d look like criticism,” the captain mumbled cryptically and added, “A touch of high spirits never did anyone any harm.”

  This comment, from Alleyn’s point of view, was such a masterpiece of meiosis that he could find no answer to it.

  He said, “Thank you, sir,” in what he hoped was the regulation manner and made for the door. The others followed him.

  “Here!” Captain B
annerman ejaculated and they stopped. “Have a drink,” said the captain.

  “Not for me at the moment, thank you very much,” said Alleyn.

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I generally hold off till the sun’s over the yardarm if that’s the right way of putting it.”

  “You don’t take overmuch then, I’ve noticed.”

  “Well,” Alleyn said apologetically, “I’m by the way of being on duty.”

  “Ah! And nothing to show for it when it’s all washed up. Not that I don’t appreciate the general idea. You’re following orders, I daresay, like all the rest of us, never mind if it’s a waste of time and the public’s money.”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “Well — what about you two gentlemen?”

  “No thank you, sir,” said Tim.

  “Nor I, thank you very much,” said Father Jourdain.

  “No offense, is there?”

  They hurriedly assured him there was none, waited for a moment and then went to the door. The last glimpse they had of the captain was of a square, slightly wooden figure making for the corner cupboard where he kept his liquor.

  The rest of Sunday passed by quietly enough. It was the hottest day the passengers had experienced and they were all subdued. Mrs. Dillington-Blick wore white and so did Aubyn Dale. They lay on their chaise longues in the verandah and smiled languidly at passers-by. Sometimes they were observed to have their hands limply engaged; occasionally Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s rich laughter would be heard.

  Tim and Brigid spent most of the day in or near a canvas bathing pool that had been built on the after well-deck. They were watched closely by the Cuddys, who had set themselves up in a place of vantage at the shady end of the promenade deck, just under the verandah. Late in the afternoon Mr. Cuddy himself took to the water clad in a rather grisly little pair of puce-coloured drawers. He developed a vein of aquatic playfulness that soon drove Brigid out of the pool and Tim into a state of extreme irritation.

  Mr. Merryman sat in his usual place and devoted himself to Neil Cream, and when that category of horrors had reached its appointed end, to the revolting fate that met an assortment of ladies who graced the pages of The Thing He Loves. From time to time he commented unfavourably on the literary style of this work and also on the police methods it described. As Alleyn was the nearest target he found himself at the receiving end of these strictures. Inevitably, Mr. Merryman was moved to enlarge once again on the flower murders. Alleyn had the fun of hearing himself described as “some plodding Dogberry drest in a little brief authority. One Alleyn,” Mr. Merryman snorted, “whose photograph was reproduced in the evening newssheets — a countenance of abysmal foolishness, I thought.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, shocking, I assure you,” said Mr. Merryman with immense relish. “I imagine, if the unknown criminal saw it, he must have been greatly consoled. I should have been, I promise you.”

  “Do you believe, then,” Alleyn asked, “that there is after all an ‘art to find the mind’s construction in the face’?”

  Mr. Merryman shot an almost approving glance at him. “Source?” he demanded sharply. “And context?”

  “Macbeth, one, four. Duncan on Cawdor,” Alleyn replied, feeling like Alice in Wonderland.

  “Very well. You know your way about that essentially second-rate melodrama, I perceive. Yes,” Mr. Merryman went on with pedagogic condescension, “unquestionably, there are certain facial evidences which serve as pointers to the informed observer. I will undertake for example to distinguish at first sight a bright boy among a multitude of dullards, and believe me,” Mr. Merryman added dryly, “the opportunity does not often present itself.”

  Alleyn asked him if he would extend this theory to include a general classification. Did Mr. Merryman, for instance, consider that there was such a thing as a criminal type of face? “I’ve read somewhere, I fancy, that the police say there isn’t,” he ventured. Mr. Merryman rejoined tartly that for once the police had achieved a glimpse of the obvious. “If you ask me whether there are facial types indicative of brutality and low intelligence I must answer yes. But the sort of person we have been considering”—he held up his book—” need not be exhibited in the countenance. The fact that he is possessed by his own particular devil is not written across his face that all who run may read.”

  “That’s an expression that Father Jourdain used in the same context,” Alleyn said. “He considers this man must be possessed of a devil.”

  “Indeed?” Mr. Merryman remarked. “That is of course the accepted view of the Church. Does he postulate the cloven hoof and toasting-fork?”

  “I have no idea.”

  A shadow fell across the deck and there was Miss Abbott.

  “I believe,” she said, “in a personal devil. Firmly.”

  She stood above them, her back to the setting sun, her face dark and miserable. Alleyn began to get up from his deck-chair, but she stopped him with a brusque movement of her hand. She jerked herself up on the hatch, where she sat bolt upright, her large feet in tennis shoes dangling awkwardly.

  “How else,” she demanded, “can you explain the cruelities? God permits the devil to torment us for His own inscrutable purposes.”

  “Dear me!” observed Mr. Merryman, quite mildly for him. “We find ourselves in a positive hive of orthodoxy, do we not?”

  “You’re a churchman,” Miss Abbott said, “aren’t you? You came to Mass. Why do you laugh at the devil?”

  Mr. Merryman contemplated her over his spectacles and after a long pause said, “My dear Miss Abbott, if you can persuade me of his existence I assure you I shall not treat the Evil One as a laughing matter. Far from it.”

  “I’m no good,” she said impatiently. “Talk to Father Jourdain. He’s full of knowledge and wisdom and will meet you on your own ground. I suppose you think it very uncouth of me to butt in and shove my faith down your throats, but when—” She set her dark jaw and went on with a kind of obstinacy, “When I hear people laugh at the devil it raises him in me. I know him.”

  The others found nothing to say to her. She passed her hand heavily across her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t usually throw my weight about like this. It must be the heat.”

  Aubyn Dale came along the deck, spectacular in sharkskin shorts, crimson pullover, and a pair of exotic espadrilles he had bought in Las Palmas. He wore enormous sunglasses and his hair was handsomely ruffled.

  “I’m going to have a dip,” he said. “Just time before dinner and the water’s absolutely superb. Madame won’t hear of it, though. Any takers here?”

  Mr. Merryman merely stared at him. Alleyn said he’d think about it. Miss Abbott got down from the hatch and walked away. Dale looked after her and wagged his head. “Poor soul!” he said. “I couldn’t be sorrier for her. Honestly, life’s hell for some women, isn’t it?”

  He looked at the other two men. Mr. Merryman ostentatiously picked up his book and Alleyn made a non-committal noise. “I see a lot of that sort of thing,” Dale went on, “in my fantastic job. The Lonely Legion, I call them. Only to myself, of course.”

  “Quite,” Alleyn murmured.

  “Well, let’s face it. What the hell is there for them to do — looking like that? Religion? Exploring Central Africa? Or — ask yourself. I dunno,” said Dale, whimsically philosophical. “One of those things.”

  He pulled out his pipe, shook his head over it, said, “Ah, well!” and meeting perhaps with less response than he had expected, walked off, trolling a stylish catch.

  Mr. Merryman said something quite unprintable into his book and Alleyn went in search of Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

  He found her, still reclining on the verandah and fanning herself, enormous but delectable. Alleyn caught himself wondering what Henry Moore would have made of her. She welcomed him with enthusiasm and a helpless flapping gesture to show how hot she was. But her white dress was uncreased. A lace handkerchief protruded crisply from her déco
lletage and her hair was perfectly in order.

  “You look as cool as a cucumber,” Alleyn said and sat down on Aubyn Dale’s footrest. “What an enchanting dress.”

  She made comic eyes at him. “My dear!” she said.

  “But then all your clothes are enchanting. You dress quite beautifully, don’t you?”

  “How sweet of you to think so,” she cried delightedly.

  “Ah!” Alleyn said, leaning towards her. “You don’t know how big a compliment you’re being paid. I’m extremely critical of women’s clothes.”

  “Are you, indeed. And what do you like about mine, may I ask?”

  “I like them because they are clever enough to express the charm of their wearer,” Alleyn said with a mental reservation to tell that one to Troy.

  “Now, I do call that a perfect remark! In future I shall dress ’specially for you. There now!” promised Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

  “Will you? Then I must think about what I should like you to wear. Tonight, for instance. Shall I choose that wonderful Spanish dress you bought in Las Palmas. May I?”

  There was quite a long pause during which she looked sideways at him. “I think perhaps that’d be a little too much, don’t you?” she said at last. “Sunday night, remember.”

  “Well, then, tomorrow?”

  “Do you know,” she said, “I’ve gone off that dress. You’ll think me a frightful silly-billy, but all the rather murky business with poor sweet Mr. McAngus’s doll has sort of set me against it. Isn’t it queer?”

  “Oh!” Alleyn exclaimed with a great show of disappointment. “What a pity! And what a waste!”

  “I know. All the same, that’s how it is. I just see Esmeralda looking so like those murdered girls and all I want to do with my lovely, lovely dress is drop it overboard.”

  “You haven’t done that!”

  Mrs. Dillington-Blick gave a little giggle. “No,” she said. “I haven’t done that.”

  “Or given it away?”

  “Brigid would swim in it and I can’t quite see Miss Abbott or Mrs. Cuddy going al flamenco, can you?”

  Dale came by on his way to the bathing pool, now wearing Palm Beach trunks and looking like a piece of superb publicity for a luxury liner. “You’re a couple of slackers,” he said heartily and shinned nimbly down to the lower deck.