Singing in the Shrouds (14 page)
Read Singing in the Shrouds Online
Authors: Ngaio Marsh
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #det_classic, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural, #Police, #England, #Traditional British, #Alleyn; Roderick (Fictitious character)
“No, don’t,” she said quickly. “Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Pay no attention. Let’s go and talk to Mr. Chips.”
They found Mr. Merryman in full cry. He had discovered Brigid’s book,
The Elizabethans,
which she had left on her deck-chair, and seemed to be giving a lecture on it. It was by an authoritative writer, but one, evidently, with whom Mr. Merryman found himself in passionate disagreement. It appeared that Alleyn, Father Jourdain and Miss Abbott had all been drawn into the discussion while Mr. McAngus and Mr. Cuddy looked on, the former with admiration and the latter with his characteristic air of uninformed disparagement.
Brigid and Tim sat on the deck and were accepted by Mr. Merryman as if they had come late for class but with valid excuses. Alleyn glanced at them and found time to hope that theirs, by some happy accident, was not merely a shipboard attraction. After all, he thought, he himself had fallen irrevocably in love during a voyage from the Antipodes. He turned his attention back to the matter in hand.
“I honestly
don’t
understand,” Father Jourdain was saying, “how you can put
The Duchess of Malfi
before
Hamlet
or
Macbeth
.”
“Or why,” Miss Abbott barked, “you should think
Othello
so much better than any of them.”
Mr. Merryman groped in his waistcoat pocket for a sodamint and remarked insufferably that really it was impossible to discuss criteria of taste where the rudiments of taste were demonstrably absent. He treated his restive audience to a comprehensive de-gumming of
Hamlet
and
Macbeth. Hamlet,
he said, was an inconsistent, deficient and redundant
réchauffé
of some absurd German melodrama.
It was not surprising, Mr. Merryman said, that Hamlet was unable to make up his mind since his creator had himself been the victim of a still greater blight of indecision. Macbeth was merely a muddle-headed blunderer. Strip away the language and what remained? A tediously ignorant expression of defeatism. “ ‘What’s the good of anyfink? Wy, nuffink,’ ” Mr. Merryman quoted in pedantic cockney and tossed his sodamint into his mouth.
“I don’t know anything about Shakespeare—” Mr. Cuddy began and was at once talked down.
“It is at least something,” Mr. Merryman said, “that you acknowledge your misfortune.”
“All the same,” Alleyn objected, “there is the language.”
“I am not aware,” Mr. Merryman countered, “that I have suggested that the fellow had no vocabulary.” He went on to praise the classic structure of
Othello,
the inevitability of Webster’s
The Duchess of Malfi,
and astounding, the admirable directness of
Titus Andronicus
. As an afterthought he conceded that the final scene of
Lear
was “respectable.”
Mr. McAngus, who had several times made plaintive little noises, now struck in with unexpected emphasis.
“To me,” he said, “
Othello
is almost spoilt by that bit near the end when Desdemona revives and speaks and then, you know, after all, dies. A woman who has been properly strangled would
not
be able to do that. It is quite ridiculous.”
“What’s the medical opinion?” Alleyn asked him.
“Pathological verisimilitude,” Mr. Merryman interjected with more than a touch of Pooh-Bah, “is irrelevant. One accepts the convention. It is artistically proper that she should be strangled and speak again. Therefore, she speaks.”
“All the same,” Alleyn said, “let’s have the expert’s opinion.” He looked at Tim.
“I wouldn’t say it was utterly impossible,” Tim said. “Of course, her physical condition can’t be reproduced by an actress and would be unacceptable if it could. I should think it’s just possible that he might not have killed her instantly and that she might momentarily revive and attempt to speak.”
“But, Doctor,” Mr. McAngus objected diffidently, “I
did
say properly. Properly strangled, you know.”
“Doesn’t the
text,
” Miss Abbott pointed out, “say she was smothered?”
“The text!” Mr. Merryman exclaimed and spread out his hands. “What text, pray? Which text?” and launched himself into a general animadversion of Shakespearian editorship. This he followed up with an extremely dogmatic pronouncement upon the presentation of the plays. The only tolerable method, he said, was that followed by the Elizabethans themselves. The bare boards. The boy-players. It appeared that Mr. Merryman himself produced the plays in this manner at his school. He treated them to a lecture upon speechcraft, costume, and make-up. His manner was so insufferably cocksure that it robbed his discourse of any interest it might have had for his extremely mixed audience. Mr. McAngus’s eyes became glazed. Father Jourdain was resigned and Miss Abbott impatient. Brigid looked at the deck and Tim looked at Brigid. Alleyn, conscious of all this, still managed to preserve the semblance of respectful attention.
He was conscious also of Mr. Cuddy, who had the air of a man balked of his legitimate prey. It was evident throughout the discussion that he had some observation to make. He now raised his voice unmelodiously and made it.
“Isn’t it funny,” Mr. Cuddy asked generally, “how the conversation seems to get round to the subject of ladies being throttled? Mrs. Cuddy was remarking on the same thing. Quite a coincidence, she was saying.”
Mr. Merryman opened his mouth, shut it, and reopened it when Brigid cried out with some violence, “I think it’s perfectly beastly. I hate it!”
Tim put his hand over hers. “Well, I’m sorry,” Brigid said, “but it
is
beastly. It doesn’t matter
how
Desdemona died.
Othello
isn’t a clinical example. Shakespeare wasn’t some scruffy existentialist, it’s a tragedy of simplicity and — and greatness of heart being destroyed by a common smarty-smarty little placefinder. Well, anyway,” Brigid mumbled, turning very pink, “that’s what I think and I suppose one can try and say what one thinks, can’t one?”
“I should damn well suppose one can,” Alleyn said warmly, “and how right you are, what’s more.”
Brigid threw him a grateful look.
Mr. Cuddy smiled and smiled. “I’m sure,” he said, “I didn’t mean to upset anyone.”
“Well, you have,” Miss Abbott snapped, “and now you know it, don’t you?”
“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Cuddy.
Father Jourdain stood up. “It’s tea-time,” ‘he said. “Shall we go in? And shall we decide,” he smiled at Brigid, “to take the advice of the youngest and wisest among us and keep off this not very delectable subject? I propose that we do.”
Everybody except Mr. Cuddy made affirmative noises and they went in to tea.
But the curious thing is
[Alleyn wrote to his wife that evening,]
that however much they may or may not try to avoid the subject of murder, it still crops up. I don’t want to go precious about it, but really one might suppose that the presence of this expert on board generates a sort of effluvia. They are unaware of it and yet it infects them. Tonight, for instance, after the women had gone to bed, which to my great relief was early, the men got cracking again. Cuddy, Jourdain, and Merryman are all avid readers of crime fiction and of the sort of book that calls itself
Classic Cases of Detection.
As it happens there are two or three of that kind in the ship’s little library, among them
The Wainwrights
in the admirable Notable Trials series, a very fanciful number on the Yard, and an affair called
The Thing He Loves.
The latter title derives from “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” of course, and I give you one guess as to the subject matter
.
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.
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 herself. 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.
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.”