Singing in the Shrouds ra-20

by Ngaio Marsh

  “I shall go and change,” sighed Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

  “But not into the Spanish dress?”

  “I’m afraid not. Sorry to disappoint you.” She held out her luxurious little hands and Alleyn dutifully hauled her up. “It’s too sad,” he said, “to think we are never to see it.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t be absolutely sure of that,” she said and giggled again. “I may change my mind and get inspired all over again.”

  “To dance by the light of the moon?”

  She stood quite still for a few seconds and then gave him her most ravishing smile. “You never know, do you?” said Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

  Alleyn watched her stroll along the deck and go through the doors into the lounge.

  “…and I expect you will agree,” he wrote to his wife that evening, “that in a subsidiary sort of way, this was a thoroughly disquieting bit of information.” >

  Steaming down the west coast of Africa, Cape Farewell ran into the sort of weather that is apt to sap the resources of people who are not accustomed to it. The air through which she moved was of the land — enervated and loaded with vague impurities. A thin greyness that resembled dust rather than cloud obscured the sun but scarcely modified its potency. Mr. Merryman got a “touch” of it and looked as if he was running a temperature but refused to do anything about it. Dysentery broke out among the crew and also afflicted Mr. Cuddy, who endlessly consulted Tim and, with unattractive candour, anybody else who would listen to him.

  Aubyn Dale drank a little more and began to look it and so, to Alleyn’s concern, did Captain Bannerman. The captain was a heavy, steady drinker, who grew less and less tractable as his potations increased. He now resented any attempt Alleyn might make to discuss the case in hand and angrily reiterated his statement that there were no homicidal lunatics on board his ship. He became morose, unapproachable, and entirely pigheaded.

  Mr. McAngus on the other hand grew increasingly loquacious and continually lost himself in a maze of non sequiturs. “He suffers,” Tim said, “from verbal dysentery.”

  “With Mr. McAngus,” Alleyn remarked, “the condition appears to be endemic. We mustn’t blame the tropics.”

  “They seem to have exacerbated it, however,” observed Father Jourdain wearily. “Did you know that he had a row with Merryman last night?”

  “What about?” Alleyn asked.

  “Those filthy medicated cigarettes he smokes. Merryman says the smell makes him feel sick.”

  “He’s got something there,” Tim said. “God knows what muck they’re made of.”

  “They stink like a wet haystack.”

  “Ah, well,” Alleyn said, “to our tasks, gentlemen. To our unwelcome tasks.”

  Since their failure with the captain they had agreed among themselves upon a plan of campaign. As soon as night fell each of them was to “mark” one of the women passengers. Tim said flatly that he would take Brigid and that arrangement was generally allowed to be only fair. Father Jourdain said he thought perhaps Alleyn had better have Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “She alarms me,” he remarked. “I have a feeling that she thinks I’m a wolf in priest’s clothing. If I begin following her about after dark she will be sure of it.”

  Tim grinned at Alleyn, “She’s got her eye on you. It’d be quite a thing if you cut the Telly King out.”

  “Don’t confuse me,” Alleyn said dryly, and turned to Father Jourdain. “You can handle the double, then,” he said. “Mrs. Cuddy never leaves Cuddy for a second and—” He paused.

  “And poor Miss Abbott is not, you feel, in any great danger.”

  “What do you suppose is the matter with her?” Alleyn asked and remembered what he had heard her saying as she left Father Jourdain on Saturday night. The priest’s eyes were expressionless. “We are not really concerned,” he said, “with Miss Abbott’s unhappiness, I think.”

  “Oh,” Alleyn said, “it’s a sort of reflex action for me to wonder why people behave as they do. When we had the discussion about alibis, her distress over the Aubyn Dale programme of the night of January the fifteenth was illuminating, I thought.”

  “I thought it damn puzzling,” said Tim. “D’you know, I actually found myself wondering, I can’t think why, if she was the victim and not the viewer that night.”

  “I think she was the viewer.”

  Father Jourdain looked sharply at Alleyn and then walked over to the porthole and stared out.

  “As for the victim—” Alleyn went on, “the woman, do you remember, who told Dale she didn’t like to announce her engagement because it would upset her great friend? — ” He broke off and Tim said, “You’re not going to suggest that Miss Abbott was the great friend?”

  “At least it would explain her reactions to the programme.”

  After a short silence Tim said idly, “What does she do? Has she a job, do you know?”

  Without turning his head Father Jourdain said, “She works for a firm of music publishers. She is quite an authority on early church music, particularly the Gregorian chants.”

  Tim said involuntarily, “I imagine, with that voice, she doesn’t sing them herself.”

  “On the contrary,” Alleyn rejoined, “she does. Very pleasantly. I heard her on the night we sailed from Las Palmas.”

  “She has a most unusual voice,” Father Jourdain said. “If she were a man it would be a counter tenor. She represented her firm at a conference on church music three weeks ago in Paris. I went over for it and saw her there. She was evidently a person of importance.”

  “Was she indeed?” Alleyn murmured and then, briskly: “Well, as you say, we are not immediately concerned with Miss Abbott. The sun’s going down. It’s time we went on duty.”

  On the evenings of the eleventh and twelfth, according to plan, Alleyn devoted himself exclusively to Mrs. Dillington-Blick. This manoeuvre brought about the evident chagrin of Aubyn Dale, the amusement of Tim, the surprise of Brigid, and the greedy observance of Mrs. Cuddy. Mrs. Dillington-Blick was herself delighted. “My dear!” she wrote to her friend. “I’ve nobbled the Gorgeous Brute!! My dear, too gratifying! Nothing, to coin a phrase, tangible. As yet! But marked attention! And with the tropical moon being what it is, I feel something rather nice may eventuate. In the meantime, I promise you, I’ve only to wander off after dinner to my so suitable little verandah and he’s after me in a flash. A.D., my dear, rapidly becoming pea green, which is always so gratifying. Aren’t I hopeless — but what fun!!!”

  On the night of the thirteenth, when they were all having coffee, Aubyn Dale suddenly decided to give a supper-party in his private sitting-room. It was equipped with a phonograph on which he proposed to play some of his own records.

  “Everybody invited,” he said largely, waving his brandy glass. “I won’t take no for an answer.” And indeed it would have been difficult under the circumstances for anybody to attempt to refuse, though Mr. Merryman and Tim looked as if they would have liked to do so.

  The “suite” turned out to be quite a grand affair. There were a great many signed photographs of Aubyn Dale’s poppet and of several celebrities and one of Aubyn Dale himself, bowing before the grandest celebrity of all. There was a pigskin writing-case and a pigskin record-carrier. There were actually some monogrammed Turkish cigarettes, a present, Dale explained with boyish ruefulness, from a potentate who was one of his most ardent fans. And almost at once there was a great deal to drink. Mr. McAngus was given a trick glass that poured his drink over his chin and was not quite as amused as the captain, the Cuddys, and Mrs. Dillington-Blick, though he took it quite quietly. Aubyn Dale apologized with the air of a chidden child and did several very accurate imitations of his fellow celebrities in television. Then they listened to four records, including one of Dale himself doing an Empire Day talk on how to be broadminded though British, in which he laid a good deal of stress on the national trait of being able to laugh at ourselves.

  “How proud we are of it, too,” Tim muttered crossly to Brigid.
<
br />   After the fourth record most of the guests began to be overtaken by the drowsiness of the tropics. Miss Abbott was the first to excuse herself and everybody else except Mrs. Dillington-Blick and the captain followed her lead. Brigid had developed a headache in the overcrowded room and was glad to get out into the fresh air. She and Tim sat on the starboard side under Mr. McAngus’s porthole. There was a small ship’s lamp in the deckhead above them.

  “Only five minutes,” Brigid said. “I’m for bed after that. My head’s behaving like a piano accordion.”

  “Have you got any aspirins?”

  “I can’t be bothered hunting them out.”

  “I’ll get you something. Don’t move, will you?” Tim said, noting that the light from Mr. McAngus’s porthole and from the ship’s lamp fell across her chair. He could hear Mr. McAngus humming to himself in a reedy falsetto as he prepared for bed. “You will stay put,” Tim said, “won’t you?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? I don’t feel at all like shinning up the rigging or going for a strapping walk. Couldn’t we have that overhead light off? Not,” Brigid said hurriedly, “in order to create a romantic gloom, I ssure you, Tim. It shines in one’s eyes, rather; that’s all.”

  “The switch is down at the other end. I’ll turn it off when I come back,” he said. “I shan’t be half a tick.”

  When he had gone, Brigid lay back and shut her eyes. She listened to the ship’s engines and to the sound of the sea and to Mr. McAngus’s droning. This stopped after a moment and through her closed lids she was aware of a lessening of light. “He’s turning his lamp off,” she thought gratefully, “and has tucked his poor dithering old self up in his virtuous couch.” She opened her eyes and saw the dim light in the deckhead above her.

  The next moment, it, too, went out.

  “That’s Tim coming back,” she thought. “He has been quick.”

  She was now in almost complete darkness. A faint breeze lifted her hair. She heard no footfall but she was conscious that someone had approached from behind her.

  “Tim?” she said.

  Hands come down on her shoulders. She gave a little cry: “Oh, don’t! You made me jump.”

  The hands shifted towards her neck and she felt her chain of pearls move and twist and break. She snatched at the hands and they were not Tim’s.

  “No—” she cried out. “No! Tim!”

  There was a rapid thud of retreating feet. Brigid struggled out of her chair and ran down the dark tunnel of the covered deck into someone’s arms.

  “It’s all right,” Alleyn said. “You’re all right. It’s me.”

  A few seconds later, Tim Makepiece came back.

  Alleyn still held Brigid in his arms. She quivered and stammered and clutched at him like a frightened child.

  “What the hell—” Tim began but Alleyn stopped him.

  “Did you turn out the deckhead lights?”

  “No. Biddy, darling—”

  “Did you meet anyone?”

  “No. Biddy—!”

  “All right. Take over, will you? She’ll tell you when she’s got her second wind.”

  He disengaged her arms. “You’re in clover,” he said. “Here’s your medical adviser.”

  She bolted into Tim’s arms and Alleyn ran down the deck.

  He switched on the overhead lights and followed round the centrecastle. He looked up and down companionways, along hatch combings, behind piles of folded chairs and into recesses. He knew, as he hunted, he was too late. He found nothing but the old blankness of a ship’s decks at night. On the excuse that he had lost his pocketbook with his passport and letters of credit, he aroused all the men, including Mr. Cuddy. Dale was still dressed and in his sitting-room. The others were in pyjamas and varying degress of ill temper. He told Father Jourdain, briefly, what had happened and arranged that they would go, with Tim, to the captain.

  Then he returned to Brigid’s chair. Her pearls were scattered on the deck and in the loose seat. He collected them and thought at first that otherwise he had drawn a blank. But at the last he found, clinging to the back of the chair, discoloured and crushed, a scrap of something which, when he took it to the light, declared itself plainly enough. It was a tiny fragment of a flower petal.

  It still retained, very faintly, the scent of hyacinth.

  CHAPTER 9

  Monday the Fourteenth

  “Now,” Alleyn demanded, standing over Captain Bannerman. “Now do you believe this murderer’s on board? Do you?”

  But as he said it he knew he was up against the unassailable opponent: the elderly man who has made up his mind and is temperamentally incapable of admitting he has made it up the wrong way.

  “I’ll be damned if I do,” said Captain Bannerman.

  “I am appalled to hear you say so.”

  The captain swallowed the end of his drink and clapped the glass down on the table. He looked from Alleyn to Father Jourdain, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “You’ve got this blasted notion into your heads and every footling little thing that takes place you make out is something to do with it. What takes place? Little Miss Brigid is sitting all alone in her deck-chair. Some chap comes up and puts his hands on her shoulders. Playful, like. And what’s unnatural in that? By gum, I wouldn’t blame—” He pulled himself up, turned a darker shade of brick red and continued, “On your own statement, she’s got ideas into her head about these murders. Natural enough, I daresay, seeing how the lot of you can’t let the matter alone but never stop talking about it. She’s startled, like, and jumps up and runs away. Again — natural enough. But you come blustering up here and try to tell me she was nigh-on murdered. You won’t get anywhere with me, that road. Someone’s got to hang on to his common sense in this ship and, by gum, that’s going to be the master.”

  Father Jourdain said, “But it’s not the one incident, it’s the whole sequence, as Alleyn has shown us only too clearly. An embarkation paper in the hand of the girl on the wharf. The incident of the doll. The fact that singing was heard. The Peeping Tom at Miss Carmichael’s porthole. Now this. What man among us, knowing these crimes are in all our minds, would play such a trick on her?”

  “And what man among you would murder her — tell me that!”

  Tim had been sitting with his head between his hands. He now looked up and said, “Sir, even if you do think there’s nothing in it, surely there can be no harm in taking every possible precaution—?”

  “What the hell have you all been doing if you haven’t been taking precautions? Haven’t I said just that, all along? Didn’t I”—he pointed his stubby finger at Alleyn—“get them all jabbering about alibis because you asked me to? Haven’t I found out for you that the whole boiling went ashore the night we sailed, never mind if my own deckhand thought I was balmy? Haven’t I given out there’s an undesirable character in my ship’s company, which there isn’t, and ordered the ladies to lock their doors? What the suffering cats more could I have done? Tell me that!”

  Alleyn said instantly, “You could, you know, do something to ensure that there’s no more wandering about deserted decks at night in Spanish dresses.”

  “I’ve told you. I won’t have any interference with the rights of the individual in my ship.”

  “Will you let me say something unofficially about it?”

  “No.”

  “Will you consider a complete showdown? Will you tell the passengers who I am and why I’m here? It’ll mean no arrest, of course,” Alleyn said, “but with the kind of threat that I believe hangs over this ship I’m prepared to admit defeat. Will you do this?”

  “No.”

  “You realize that tomorrow is the night when, according to the considered opinion of experts, this man may be expected to go into action again?”

  “He’s not aboard my ship.”

  “And that Miss Carmichael,” Father Jourdain intervened, “naturally will speak of her fears to the other ladies.”

  Tim said, “No.”

&n
bsp; “No?”

  “No,” Alleyn said. “She’s not going to talk about it. She agrees that it might lead to a panic. She’s a courageous child.”

  “She’s been given a shock,” Tim said angrily to the captain, “that may very easily have extremely serious results. I can’t allow—”

  “Dr. Makepiece, you’ll be good enough to recollect you have signed on as a member of my ship’s company.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  The captain stared resentfully about him, made a petulant ejaculation and roared out, “Damn it, you can tell her to stay in bed all day tomorrow and the next day too, can’t you? Suffering from shock? All right. That gets her out of the way, doesn’t it? Where is she now?”

  “I’ve given her a Nembutal. She’s asleep in bed. The door’s locked and I’ve got the key.”

  “Well, keep it and let her stay there. The steward can take her meals. Unless you think he’s the sex monster,” said the captain with an angry laugh.

  “Not in the sense you mean,” Alleyn said.

  “That’s enough of that!” the captain shouted.

  “Where,” Father Jourdain asked wearily, “is Mrs. Dillington-Blick?”

  “In bed,” the captain said at once, and added in a hurry, “She left Dale’s suite when I did. I saw her to her cabin.”

  “They do lock their doors, don’t they?”

  “She did,” said the captain morosely.

  Father Jourdain got up. “If I may be excused,” he said. “It’s very late. Past midnight.”

  “Yes,” Alleyn said and he also rose. “It’s February the fourteenth. Good-night, Captain Bannerman.”

  He had a brief session with Father Jourdain and Tim. The latter was in a rage. “That bloody old man,” he kept saying. “Did you ever know such a bloody old man!”

  “All right, all right,” Alleyn said. “We’ll just have to go on under our own steam. The suggestion, by the way, to keep Miss Carmichael in bed for twenty-four hours has its points.”