Death at the Bar (5 page)

“You—” said Watchman.

She scrambled to her feet and stood looking down at him.

“I wish to God,” she said savagely, “that you’d never come back.”

There was a moment’s silence.

Watchman, too, had got to his feet. They looked into each other’s eyes; and then, with a gesture that, for all its violence and swiftness, suggested the movement of an automaton, he took her by the shoulders and kissed her. When he had released her they moved apart stiffly, with no eloquence in either of their faces or figures.

Decima said: “You’d better get out of there. If you stay here it’ll be the worse for you. I could kill you. Get out.”

They heard the thud of footsteps on turf and Cubitt and Sebastian Parish came over the brow of the hillock.

i

Watchman, Cubitt and Parish lunched together in the taproom. Miss Darragh did not appear. Cubitt and Parish had last seen her sucking her brush and gazing with complacency at an abominable sketch. She was still at work when they came up with Watchman and Decima. At lunch, Watchman was at some pains to tell the others how he and Decima Moore met by accident, and how they had fallen to quarrelling about the Coombe Left Movement.

They accepted his recital with, on Parish’s part, rather too eager alacrity. Lunch, on the whole, was an uncomfortable affair. Something had gone wrong with the relationship of the three men. Norman Cubitt, who was acutely perceptive in such matters, felt that the party had divided into two, with Parish and himself on one side of an intangible barrier, and Watchman on the other. Cubitt had no wish to side, however vaguely, with Parish against Watchman. He began to make overtures, but they sounded unlikely and only served to emphasize his own discomfort. Watchman answered with the courtesy of an acquaintance. By the time they had reached the cheese, complete silence had overcome them.

They did not linger for their usual postprandial smoke. Cubitt said he wanted to get down to the jetty for his afternoon sketch, Parish said he was going to sleep. Watchman, murmuring something about writing a letter, disappeared upstairs.

They did not see each other again until the evening when they met in the private tap-room for their usual cocktail. The fishing boats had come in, and at first the bar was fairly full. The three friends joined in local conversation and were not thrown upon their own resources until the evening meal which they took together in the inglenook. The last drinker went out saying that there was a storm hanging about, and that the air was unnaturally heavy. On his departure complete silence fell upon the three men. Parish made one or two half-hearted attempts to break it but it was no good, they had nothing to say to each other. They finished their meal and Watchman began to fill his pipe.

“What’s that?” said Parish suddenly. “Listen!”

“High tide,” said Watchman, “it’s the surf breaking on Coombe Rock.”

“No, it’s not. Listen.”

And into the silence came a vague gigantic rumour.

“Isn’t it thunder?” asked Parish.

The others listened for a moment but made no answer.

“What a climate!” added Parish.

The village outside the inn seemed very quiet. The evening air was sultry. No breath of wind stirred the curtains at the open windows. When, in a minute or two, somebody walked round the building, the footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. Another and more imperative muttering broke the quiet.

Cubitt said nervously: “It’s as if a giant, miles away on Dartmoor, was shaking an iron tray.”

“That’s exactly how they work thunder in the business,” volunteered Parish.

“
The business
,” Watchman said with violent irritation. “What business? Is there only one business?”

“What the hell’s gone wrong with you?” asked Parish.

“Nothing. The atmosphere,” said Watchman.

“I hate thunder-storms,” said Cubitt quickly. “They make me feel as if all my nerves were on the surface. A loathsome feeling.”

“I rather like them,” said Watchman.

“And that’s the end of
that
conversation,” said Parish with a glance at Cubitt.

Watchman got up and moved into the window. Mrs. Ives came in with a tray.

“Storm coming up?” Parish suggested.

“ ’Ess, sir. Very black outside,” said Mrs. Ives.

The next roll of thunder lasted twice as long as the others and ended in a violent tympanic rattle. Mrs. Ives cleared the table and went away. Cubitt moved into the inglenook and leant his elbows on the mantelpiece. The room had grown darker. A flight of gulls, making for the sea, passed clamorously over the village. Watchman pulled back the curtains and leant over the window-sill. Heavy drops of rain had begun to fall. They hit the cobblestones of the inn yard with loud slaps.

“Here comes the rain,” said Parish unnecessarily.

Old Abel Pomeroy came into the Public from the far door. He began to shut the windows and called through into the Private:

“We’m in for a black storm, souls.”

A glint of lightning flickered in the yard outside. Parish stood up, scraping his chair-legs on the floor.

“They say,” said Parish, “that if you count the seconds between the flash and the thunder it gives you the distance—”

A peal of thunder rolled up a steep crescendo.

“—the distance away in fifths of a mile,” ended Parish.

“Do shut up, Seb,” implored Watchman, not too unkindly.

“Damn it all,” said Parish, “I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with you. Do you, Norman?”

Abel Pomeroy came through the bar into the tap-room.

“Be colder soon I reckon,” he said. “If you’d like a fire, gentlemen—”

“We’ll light it, Abel, if we want it,” said Cubitt.

“Good enough, sir.” Abel looked from Cubitt and Parish to Watchman who still leant over the window-sill.

“She’ll come bouncing and teeming through that window, Mr. Watchman, once she do break out. Proper deluge she’ll be.”

“All right, Abel. I’ll look after the window.”

A livid whiteness flickered outside. Cubitt and Parish had a momentary picture of Watchman in silhouette against a background of inn yard and houses. A second later the thunder broke in two outrageous claps. Then, in a mounting roar, the rain came down.

“Yurr she comes,” said Abel.

He switched on the light and crossed to the door into the passage.

“Reckon Mr. Legge’ll bide to-night, after all,” said Abel.

Watchman spun round.

“Is Mr. Legge going away?” he asked.

“He’m called away on business, sir, to Illington. But that lil’ car of his leaks like a lobster-pot. Reckon the man’d better wait till to-morrow. I must look to the gutters or us’ll have the rain coming in through upstairs ceilings.”

He went out.

The evening was now filled with the sound of rain and thunder. Watchman shut the window and came into the room. His head was wet.

He said: “It’s much colder. We might have that fire.”

Cubitt lit the fire and they watched the first flames rise uncertainly among the driftwood.

“The rain’s coming down the chimney,” said Parish. “Hullo! Who’s this?”

The tap-room door opened slowly. There, on the threshold, stood the Honourable Violet Darragh, dripping like a soused hen. Her cotton dress was gummed to her person with such precision that it might as well have melted. Her curls were flattened into streaks, and from the brim of her hat poured little rivers that rushed together at the base of her neck, and, taking the way of least resistance, streamed centrally to her waist where they deployed and ran divergently to the floor. With one hand she held a canvas hold-all, with the other a piece of paper that still bore streaks of cobalt-blue and veridian across its pulpy surface. She might have been an illustration from one of the more Rabelaisian pages of
La Vie Parisienne
.

“My dear Miss Darragh!” ejaculated Watchman.

“Ah, look at me!” said Miss Darragh. “What a pickle I’m in, and me picture ruined. I was determined to finish it and I stayed on till the thunder and lightning drove me away in terror of me life, and when I emerged from the tunnel didn’t it break over me like the entire contents of the ocean? Well, I’ll go up now, and change, for I must look a terrible old sight.”

She glanced down at herself, gasped, cast a comical glance at the three men, and bolted.

Will Pomeroy and two companions entered the Public from the street door. They wore oil-skin hats and coats, and their boots squelched on the floorboards. Will went into the bar and served out drinks. Parish leant over the private bar and gave them good-evening.

“You seem to have caught it in the neck,” he observed.

“That’s right, Mr. Parish,” said Will. “She’s a proper masterpiece. The surface water’ll be pouring through the tunnel if she keeps going at this gait. Here you are, chaps, I’m going to change.”

He went through the Private into the house, leaving a wet trail behind him. They heard him at the telephone in the passage. He had left the door open and his voice carried above the sound of the storm.

“That you, Dessy? Dessy, this storm’s a terror. You’d better not drive that old car over to-night. Tunnel’ll be a running stream. It’s not safe.”

Watchman began to whistle under his breath. Abel returned and took Will’s place in the bar.

“I’d walk over, myself,” Will was saying, “only I can’t leave Father single-handed. We’ll have a crowd in, likely, with this weather.”

“I’m going to have a drink,” said Watchman suddenly.

“Walk?” said Will. “You’re not scared of lightning, then? Good enough, and nobody better pleased than I am. I’ll lend you a sweater and — Dessy, you’d better warn them you’ll likely stay the night. Why not? So I do, then, and you’ll find it out, my dear. I’ll come a fetch along the way to meet you.”

The receiver clicked. Will stuck his head round the door.

“Dessy’s walking over, Dad. I’ll go through the tunnel to meet her. Have you seen Bob Legge?”

“He said he’d be up to Illington to-night, sonny.”

“He’ll never make it. Has he left?”

“In his room, yet, I fancy.”

“I’ll see,” said Will. “I’ve told Dessy she’d better stay the night.”

“Very welcome, I’m sure. Ask Mrs. Ives to make a room ready.”

“So I will, then,” said Will and disappeared.

“Walking over!” said Abel. “A matter of two miles it is, from yurr to Cary Edge. Wonderful what love’ll do, gentlemen, ’bain’t it?”

“Amazing,” said Watchman. “Is nobody else going to drink?”

ii

By eight o’clock the public tap was full and the private nearly so. Decima Moore and Will had looked in, but at the moment were closeted, upstairs with Mr. Legge who had apparently decided not to go to Illington. Miss Darragh came down in dry clothes with her curls rubbed up, and sat writing letters by the fire.

Two of Abel’s regular cronies had come in: Dick Oates, the Ottercombe policeman, and Arthur Gill, the grocer. A little later they were joined by Mr. George Nark, an elderly bachelor-farmer whose political views chimed with those of the Left Movement and who was therefore a favourite of Will Pomeroy’s. Mr. Nark had been a great reader of the liberal literature of his youth, and had never got over the surprise and excitement that he had experienced, thirty years ago, on reading Winwood Reade, H. G. Wells, and the
Evolution of Man
. The information that he had derived from these and other serious works had, with the passage of time, become transmuted into simplified forms which, though they would have astonished the authors, completely satisfied Mr. Nark.

The rain still came down in torrents and Mr. Nark reported that Coombe tunnel was a running stream.

“It’s a crying shame,” he said, gathering the attention of the Private. “Bin going on for hundreds of years and no need for it. We can be flooded out three times a year and capitalistic government only laughs at us. Science would have druv a Class-A high road into the Coombe if somebody had axed it. But does a capitalistic government ax the advice of Science? Not it. It’s afraid to. And why? Because Science knows too much for it.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Gill.

“That’s capitalism for you,” continued Mr. Nark. “Blind-stupid, and arrogant. Patching up where it should pitch-in and start afresh. What can you expect, my sonnies, from a parcel of wage-slavers and pampered aristocrats that don’t know the smell of a day’s work? So long as they’ve got their luxuries for themselves—”

He stopped and looked at Miss Darragh.

“Axing your pardon, Miss,” said Mr. Nark. “In the heat of my discourse I got carried off my feet with the powerful rush of ideas and forgot your presence. This’ll be all gall and wormwood to you, doubtless.”

“Not at all, Mr. Nark,” said Miss Darragh cheerfully. “I’m myself a poor woman and I’ve moods when I’m consumed with jealousy for anybody who’s got a lot of money.”

This was not precisely the answer Mr. Nark, who was a prosperous farmer, desired.

“It’s the Government,” he said, “that does every manjack of us out of our scientific rights.”

“As far as that goes,” said P. C. Oates, “I reckon one government’s as scientific as the other. Look at sewage, for instance.”

“Why?” demanded Mr. Nark, “should we look at sewage? What’s sewage got to do with it? We’re all animals.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Gill, “so we are, then.”

“Do you know, Dick Oates,” continued Mr. Nark, “that you’ve got a rudimentary tail?”

“And if I have,
which
I don’t admit—”

“Ask Mr. Cubitt, then. He’s an artist and no doubt, has studied the skeleton of man in its present stage of evolution. The name escapes me for the moment but we’ve all got it. Isn’t that correct, sir?”

“Yes, yes,” said Norman Cubitt hurriedly. “Quite right, Mr. Nark.”

“There you are,” said Mr. Nark. “Apes, every man-jack of us, and our arms have only grown shorter through us knocking off the habit of hanging from limbs of trees.”

“What about our tongues?” asked Mr. Oates.

“Never mind about that,” answered Mr. Nark warmly. “Do you know that an unborn child’s got gills like a fish?”

“That doesn’t make it a monkey, however.”

“It goes to show, though.”

“What?”

“You want to educate yourself. In a proper government the State ’ud educate the police so’s they understood these deep matters for themselves. They know all about that in Russia. Scientific necessity, that’s what it is.”

“I don’t see how knowing I’ve got a bit of a tail and once had a pair of gills is going to get me any nearer to a sergeant’s stripe,” reasoned Mr. Oates. “What I’d like is a case. You know how it happens in these crime stories, chap,” he continued, looking round the company. “I read a good many of them and it’s always the same thing. The keen young P.C. happens to be on the spot when there’s a homicide. His Super has to call in the Yard and before you know where you are the P.C.’s working with one of the Big Four and getting praised for his witty deductions. All I can say is, I wished it happened like that in the Illington and Ottercombe Riding. Well, I’d best go round the beat, I reckon. Down the Steps and up again is about all this drowned hole’ll see of me to-night. I’ll look in again, chaps.”