Singing in the Shrouds (19 page)

“Just one gulp of fresh air,” she said rather breathlessly. She slipped her arm through his and quite deliberately leaned against him.

“Help me negotiate that frightful ladder, will you? I want to go down to the lower deck.”

He glanced back at the lounge. There they all were, lit up like a distant peep show.

“Why the lower deck?”

“I don’t know. A whim.” She giggled. “Nobody will find me for one thing.”

The companion ladder was close to where they stood. She led him towards it, turned and gave him her hands.

“I’ll go backwards. You follow.”

He was obliged to do so. When they reached the promenade deck she took his arm again.

“Let’s see if there are ghost fires tonight.”

She looked over the side still holding him.

Alleyn said, “You’re much too dangerous a person for me, you know.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I do indeed. Right out of my class. I’m a dull dog.”

“I don’t find you so.”

“How enchanting of you,” Alleyn said. “I must tell my wife. That’ll larn her.”

“Is she very attractive?”

Suddenly, in place of the plushy, the abundant, the superbly tended charms now set before him, Alleyn saw his wife’s head with its clearly defined planes, its delicate bone and short, not very tidy hair.

He said, “I must leave you, I’m afraid. I’ve got work to do.”

“Work? What sort of work, for heaven’s sake?”

“Business letters. Reports.”

“I don’t believe you. In mid-ocean!”

“It’s true.”

“Look! There
are
ghost fires.”

“And I don’t think you’d better stay down here by yourself. Come along. I’ll see you to your cabin.”

He put his hand over hers. “Come along,” he repeated. She stared at him, her lips parted.

“All right!” she agreed suddenly. “Let’s.”

They returned by the inside stairway and he took her to her door.

“You’re rather nice,” she whispered.

“Lock your door, won’t you?”

“Oh, good
heavens
!” said Mrs. Dillington-Blick and bounced into her cabin. He heard her shoot her bolt and he returned quickly to the lounge.

Only Father Jourdain, Tim and Captain Bannerman were there. Miss Abbott came in by the double doors as Alleyn arrived. Tim furtively signalled “thumbs up,” and Father Jourdain said “Everybody seems to be going to bed early tonight.”

“It’s not all that early,” Captain Bannerman rejoined, staring resentfully at Miss Abbott.

She stopped dead in the middle of the room and with her eyes downcast seemed to take in the measure of her own unwantedness.

“Good-night,” she said grudgingly and went out.

Father Jourdain followed her to the landing. “By the way,” Alleyn heard him say, “I got that word in the Ximenes. It’s ‘holocaust.’ ”

“How brilliant!” she said. “That should be a great help/’

“I think so. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

Father Jourdain came back: “ ‘Safely stowed,’ ” he quoted and smiled at Alleyn.

Alleyn asked sharply, “Where’s everybody else?”

“It’s O.K.,” Tim rejoined. “The women are all in their cabins; at least I suppose you’ve accounted for the D-B, haven’t you?”

“And the men?”

“Does it matter? Cuddy went off with his wife and McAngus, very properly, by himself. Merryman toddled off some time after that.”

“And Dale?”

“He left after the Cuddys,” Tim said.

“I think,” Father Jourdain observed, “that someone must have gone out on deck?”

“Why?”

“Only because I thought I heard someone singing.” His voice faded and his face blanched. “But there’s nothing in that!” Father Jourdain ejaculated. “We can’t panic every time somebody sings.”

“I can!” Alleyn said grimly.

“With the women all in their cabins? Why?”

Captain Bannerman interjected, loudly scoffing, “You may well ask why! Because Mr. Ah-leen’s got a bee in his bonnet. That’s why!”

“What had McAngus got to say to you?” Alleyn asked him.

The captain glowered at him. “He reckons someone’s been interfering with his hyacinths.”

“Interfering?”

“Pinching them.”

“Damnation!” Alleyn said and turned to go out.

Before he could do so, however, he was arrested by the sound of thudding feet.

It came from the deck outside and was accompanied by torturous breathing. For a moment the brilliant square cast by the light in the lounge was empty. Then into it ran an outlandish figure, half-naked, wet, ugly, gasping.

It was Cuddy. When he saw Alleyn he fetched up short, grinning abominably. Water ran from his hair into his open mouth.

“Well?” Alleyn demanded. “What is it?”

Cuddy gestured meaninglessly. His arm quivered like a branch.

“What is it? Speak up! Quickly.”

Cuddy lunged forward. His wet hands closed like clamps on AHeyn’s arms.

“Mrs. Dillington-Blick,” he stuttered and the syllables dribbled out with the water from his mouth. He nodded two or three times, came close to Alleyn and then threw back his head and broke into sobbing laughter.

“The verandah?”

“What the bloody hell are you talking about?” the captain shouted.

Cuddy nodded and nodded.

Alleyn said, “Captain Bannerman, will you come with me, if you please? And Dr. Makepiece.” He struck up Cuddy’s wet arms and thrust him aside. He started off down the deck with them both at his heels.

They had gone only a few paces when a fresh rumpus broke out behind them. Cuddy’s hysterical laughter had mounted to a scream.

Father Jourdain shouted, “Dr. Makepiece! Come back!”

There was a soft thud and silence.

Captain Bannerman said, “Wait a bit. He’s fainted.”

“Let him faint.”

“But—”

“All right.
All right
.”

He strode on down the deck. There was a light in the deck-head over the verandah. Alleyn switched it on.

The Spanish dress was spread out wide, falling in black cascades on both sides of the chaise longue. Its wearer lay back, luxuriously, each gloved hand trailing on the deck. The head was impossibly twisted over the left shoulder. The face was covered down to the tip of the nose by part of the mantilla which had been dragged down like a blind. The exposed area was livid and patched almost to the colour of the mole at the corner of the mouth. The tongue protruded, the plump throat already was discoloured. Artificial pearls from a broken necklace lay scattered across the décolletage, into which had been thrust a white hyacinth.

“All right,” Alleyn said without turning. “It’s too late, of course, but you’d better see if there’s anything you can do.”

Tim had come up with Captain Bannerman behind him. Alleyn stood aside. “Only Dr. Makepiece, please,” he said. “I want as little traffic as possible.”

Tim stooped over the body.

In a moment he had straightened up.

“But, look here!” he said. “It’s not — it’s — it’s—”

“Exactly. But our immediate concern is with the chances of recovery. Are there any?”

“None.”

“Sure?”

“None.”

“Very well. Now, this is what we do—”

Captain Bannerman and Tim Makepiece stood side by side exactly where Alleyn had placed them. The light in the deck-head shone down on the area round the chaise longue. It was dappled with irregular wet patches, most of which had been made by large naked feet.

Alleyn found that they were overlaid by his own prints and Tim’s and by others which he examined closely.

“Espadrilles,” he said, “size nine.”

The wearer had approached the chaise longue, stood beside it, turned and made off round the starboard side.

“Running,” Alleyn said, following the damp prints. “Running the deck, then stopping as he got into the light, then turning and stopping by the hatch and then carrying on round the centrecastle to the port side. Not much doubt about that one.”

He turned back towards the verandah, pausing by a tall locker near its starboard corner. He shone his torch behind this. “Cigarette ash and a butt.”

He collected the butt and found it was monogrammed and Turkish.

“How many can you get?” he muttered, showing it to Tim, and returned to the verandah, from where he pursued the trace of the wet naked feet. Their owner had come to the port side companion-ladder from the lower deck and the swimming pool. On the fifth step from the top there was a large wet patch.

He returned to Captain Bannerman.

“In this atmosphere,” he said, “I can’t afford to wait. I’m going to take photographs. After that we’ll have to seal off the verandah. I suggest, sir, that you give orders to that effect.”

Captain Bannerman stood lowering at him. “This sort of thing,” he said at last, “couldn’t have been anticipated. It’s against common sense.”

“On the contrary,” Alleyn rejoined, “it’s precisely what was to be expected.”

The passengers sat at one end of the lounge behind shut doors and drawn blinds. Out of force of habit each had gone to his or her accustomed place and the scene thus was given a distorted semblance of normality. Only Mr. Merryman was absent. And, of course, Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

Alleyn himself had visited the unattached men in their cabins. Mr. Merryman had been peacefully and very soundly asleep, his face blank and rosy, his lips parted and his hair ruffled in a cockscomb. Alleyn decided for the moment to leave him undisturbed. Shutting the door quietly, he crossed the passage. Mr. McAngus in vivid pyjamas had been doing something with a small brush to his hair, which was parted in the middle and hung in dark elf locks over his ears. He had hastily slammed down the lid of an open box on his dressing-table and turned his back on it. Aubyn Dale, fully dressed, was in his sitting-room. He had a drink in his hand and apparently he had been standing close to his door, which was not quite shut. His manner was extraordinary — at once defiant, terrified, and expectant. It was obvious also that he was extremely drunk. Alleyn looked at him for a moment and then said, “What have you been up to?”

“I? Have a drink, dear boy? No? What d’you mean, up to?” He swallowed the remains of his drink and poured out another.

“Where have you been since you left the lounge?”

“What the devil’s that got to do with you?” He lurched towards Alleyn and peered into his face. “Who the bloody hell,” he asked indistinctly, “do you think you are?”

Alleyn took him in the regulation grip. “Come along,” he said, “and find out.”

He marched Dale into the lounge and deposited him in the nearest chair.

Tim Makepiece had fetched Brigid and Mrs. Cuddy. Mr. Cuddy, recovered from his faint, had been allowed to change into pyjamas and dressing-gown, and looked ghastly.

Captain Bannerman, lowering and on the defensive, stood beside Alleyn.

He said, “Something’s happened tonight that I never thought to see in my ship and a course of action has to be set to deal with it.”

He jerked his head at Alleyn. “This gentleman will give the details. He’s a Scotland Yard man and his name’s A’leen not Broderick and he’s got my authority to proceed.”

Nobody questioned or exclaimed at this announcement It was merely accorded a general look of worried bewilderment. The captain nodded morosely at Alleyn and then sat down and folded his arms.

Alleyn said, “Thank you, sir.” He was filled with anger against Captain Bannerman, an anger not unmixed with compassion and no more tolerable for that. At least half the passengers were scarcely less irritating. They were irresponsible, they were helpless, two of them were profoundly silly, and one of them was a murderer. He took himself sharply to task and began to talk to them.

He said, “I shan’t, at the moment, elaborate or explain the statement you’ve just heard. You will, if you please, accept it. I’m a police officer. A murder has been committed and one of the passengers of this ship, almost certainly, is responsible.”

Mr. Cuddy’s smile, an incredible phenomenon, was stamped across his face like a postmark. His lips moved. He said with a kind of terrified and incredulous jocosity, “Oh, go on!” His fellow passengers looked appalled, but Mrs. Cuddy dreadfully and incredibly tossed her head and said, “Mrs. Blick, isn’t it? I suppose it’s a remark I shouldn’t pass, but I must say that with that type of behaviour—”

“No!” Father Jourdain interposed very strongly. “You must stop. Be quiet, Mrs. Cuddy!”

“Well, I must say!” she gasped and turned to her husband. “It
is
Mrs. Blick, Fred, isn’t it?”

“Yes, dear.”

Alleyn said, “It will become quite apparent before we’ve gone very much further who it is. The victim was found a few minutes ago by Mr. Cuddy. I am going to take statements from most of you. I’m sorry I can’t confine the whole business to the men only and I hope to do so before long. Possibly it’s less distressing for the ladies, who are obviously not under suspicion, to hear the preliminary examination than it would be for them to be kept completely in the dark.”

He glanced at Brigid, white and quiet, sitting by Tim and looking very young in a cotton dressing-gown and with her hair tied back. Tim, when he fetched her from her cabin, had said, “Biddy, something rather bad has happened to somebody in the ship. It’s going to shock you, my dear.”

She had answered, “You’re using the doctor’s voice that means somebody has died.” And after looking into his face for a moment: “Tim—?
Tim,
can it be the thing I’ve been afraid of? Is it that?”

He told her that it was and that he was not able just then to say anything more. “I’ve promised not,” he had said. “But don’t be frightened. It’s not as bad as you’ll think at first. You’ll know all about it in a few minutes and — I’m here, Biddy.”

So he had taken her to join the others and she sat beside him, watching and listening to Alleyn.

He turned to her now. “Perhaps,” he said, “Miss Carmichael will tell me at once when she went to her cabin.”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “It was just after you left. I went straight to bed.”

“I saw her to her door,” Tim said, “and heard her lock it. It was still locked when I returned just now.”

“Did you hear or see anything that seemed out of the way?” Alleyn asked her.

“I heard — I heard voices in here and-somebody laughed and then screamed, and there were other voices shouting. Nothing else.”

“Would you like to go back to your cabin now? You may if you’d rather.”

She looked at Tim. “I think I’d rather be here.”

“Then stay. Miss Abbott, I remember that you came in here from outside, on your way to your cabin. Where had you been?”

“I walked once round the deck,” she said, “and then I leaned over the rails on the, I think, starboard side — Then I came in for a few minutes.”

“Did you meet or see or hear anyone?”

“Nobody.”

“Was there anything at all, however slight, that you noticed?”

“I think not. Except—”

“Yes.”

“When I’d passed the verandah and turned, I thought I smelt cigarette smoke. Turkish. But there was nobody about.”

“Thank you. When you left here I think Father Jourdain walked to your door with you?”

“Yes. He saw me go in, I suppose. Didn’t you, Father?”

“I did,” said Father Jourdain. “And I heard you lock it. It’s the same story, I imagine.”

“Yes, and I’d rather stay here, too,” said Miss Abbott.

“Are you sure?” Father Jourdain asked. “It’s not going to be very pleasant, you know. I can’t help feeling, Alleyn, that the ladies—”

“It would be much less pleasant for the ladies,” Miss Abbott said grimly, “to swelter in their cabins in a state of terrified ignorance.” Alleyn gave her an appreciative look.

“Very well,” he said. “Now, Mrs. Cuddy, if you please. Your cabin faces forward and to the starboard side and is next to Mr. McAngus’s. You and your husband went to it together. Is that right?” Mrs. Cuddy, who, unlike her husband, never smiled, turned her customary fixed stare upon Alleyn. “I don’t see that it matters,” she said, “but I retired with Mr. Cuddy, didn’t I, dear?”

“That’s right, dear.”

“And went to bed?”

“I did,” she said in an affronted voice.

“But your husband evidently did not go to bed?”

Mrs. Cuddy said after a pause and with some constraint, “He fancied a dip.”

“That’s right. I fancied it. The prickly heat was troubling me.”

“I told you,” Mrs. Cuddy said without looking at him, “it’s unwholesome in the night air and now see what’s happened. Fainting. I wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t caught an internal chill and with the trouble you’ve been having—”

Alleyn said, “So you changed into bathing trunks?”

“I don’t usually go in fully dressed,” Mr. Cuddy rejoined. His wife laughed shortly and they both looked triumphant.

“Which way did you go to the pool?”

“Downstairs, from here, and along the lower deck.”

“On the starboard side?”

“I don’t know what they call it,” Mr. Cuddy said contemptuously. “Same side as our cabin.”

“Did you see anything of Miss Abbott?”

“I did not,” Mr. Cuddy said and managed to suggest that there might be something fishy about it.

Miss Abbott raised her hand.

“Yes, Miss Abbott?”

“I’m sorry, but I do remember now that I noticed someone was in the pool. That was when I walked round the deck. It’s a good way off and down below; I didn’t see who it was. I’d forgotten.”

“Never mind. Mr. Cuddy, did you go straight into the pool?”

“It’s what I was there for, isn’t it?”

“You must have come out almost at once.”

There was a long pause. Mr. Cuddy said, “That’s right. Just a cooler and out.”

“Please tell me exactly what happened next.”

He ran the tip of his tongue round his lips. “I want to know where I stand. I’ve had a shock. I don’t want to go letting myself in for unpleasantness.”

“Mr. Cuddy’s very sensitive.”

“There’s been things said here that I don’t fancy. I know what the police are like. I’m not going to talk regardless. Pretending you was a cousin of the company’s!”

Alleyn said, “Did you commit this crime?”

“There you are! Asking me a thing like that.”

Mrs. Cuddy said, “The idea!”

“Because if you didn’t you’ll do well to speak frankly and truthfully.”

“I’ve got nothing to conceal.”

“Very well, then,” Alleyn said patiently, “don’t behave as if you had. You found the body. After a fashion you reported your discovery. Now, I want the details. I suppose you’ve heard of the usual warning. If I was thinking of charging you I’d be obliged to give it.”

“Don’t be a fool, man,” Captain Bannerman suddenly roared out. “Behave yourself and speak up.”

“I’m ill. I’ve had a shock.”

“My dear Cuddy,” Father Jourdain said, “I’m sure we all realize that you’ve had a shock. Why not get your story over and free yourself of responsibility?”

“That’s right, dear. Tell them and get it over. It’s all they deserve,” said Mrs. Cuddy mysteriously.

“Come along,” Alleyn said. “You left the pool and you started back. Presumably you didn’t return by the lower deck but by one of the two companion-ladders up to this deck. Which one?”

“Left hand.”

“Port side,” the captain muttered irritably.

“That would bring you to within a few feet of the verandah and a little to one side of it. Now, Mr. Cuddy, do go on like a sensible man and tell me what followed.”

But Mr. Cuddy was reluctant and evasive. He reiterated that he had had a shock, wasn’t sure if he could exactly recall the sequence of events and knew better than to let himself in for a grilling.

His was the sort of behaviour that is a commonplace in the experience of any investigating officer, but in this instance, Alleyn was persuaded, it arose from a specific cause. He thought that Mr. Cuddy hedged, not because he mistrusted the police on general grounds but because there was something he urgently wished to conceal. It became increasingly obvious that Mrs. Cuddy, too, was prickly with misgivings.

“All right,” Alleyn said. “You are on the ladder. You climb up it and your head is above the level of the upper deck. To your right, quite close and facing you, is the verandah. Can you see into the verandah?”

Mr. Cuddy shook his head.

“Not at all?”

He shook his head.

“It was in darkness? Right. You stay there for some time. Long enough to leave quite a large wet patch on the steps. It was still there some minutes later when I looked at them. I think you actually may have sat down on a higher step, which would bring your head below the level of the upper deck. Did you do this?”

A strange and unlovely look had crept into Mr. Cuddy’s face, a look at once furtive and — the word flashed up in Alleyn’s thoughts — salacious.

“I do hope,” Alleyn went on, “that you will tell me if this is in fact what happened. Surely there can be no reason why you shouldn’t.”

“Go on, Fred,” Mrs. Cuddy urged. “They’ll only get thinking things.”

“Exactly,” Alleyn agreed and she looked furious.

“All right, then,” Mr. Cuddy said angrily. “I did. Now!”

“Why? Was it because of something you saw? No? Or heard?”

“Heard’s more like it,” he said and actually, after a fashion, began to smile again.

“Voices?”

“Sort of.”

“What the hell,” Captain Bannerman broke out, “do you mean, sort of! You heard someone talking or you didn’t.”

“Not to say talking.”

“Well, what
were
they doing. Singing?” Captain Bannerman demanded and then looked horrified.

“That,” said Mr. Cuddy, “came later.”

There was a deadly little silence.

Alleyn said, “The first time was it one voice? Or two?”

“Sounded to me like one. Sounded to me—” he looked sidelong at his wife—“like hers. You know. Mrs. Blick.” He squeezed his hands together and added, “I thought at the time it was, well — just a bit of fun.”

Mrs. Cuddy said, “Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”

“Steady, Ethel.”

Father Jourdain made a small sound of distress. Brigid thought, “This is the worst thing yet,” and couldn’t look at the Cuddys. But Miss Abbott watched them with hatred and Mr. McAngus, who had not uttered a word since he was summoned, murmured, “Must we! Oh, must we!”

“I
so
agree,” Aubyn Dale began with an alcoholic travesty of his noblest manner. “Indeed,
indeed,
must we?”

Alleyn lifted a hand and said, “The answer, I’m afraid, is that indeed, indeed, we must. Without interruption, if possible.” He waited for a moment and then turned again to Cuddy. “So you sat on the steps and listened. For how long?”

“I don’t know how long. Until I heard the other thing.”

“The singing?”

He nodded. “It sort of faded out. In the distance. So I knew he’d gone.”

“Did you form any idea,” Alleyn asked him, “who it was?”

They had all sat quietly enough until now. But at this moment, as if all their small unnoticeable movements had been disciplined under some imperative stricture, an excessive stillness fell upon them.