Singing in the Shrouds (20 page)

Mr. Cuddy said loudly, “Yes. I did.”

“Well?”

“Well, it was what he was singing. You know. The chune,” said Mr. Cuddy.

“What was it?”

He turned his head and looked at Aubyn Dale. Like automata the others repeated this movement. Dale got slowly to his feet.

“You couldn’t fail to pick it. It’s an old favourite. ‘Pack Up Your Troubles.’ After all,” Cuddy said, grinning mirthlessly at Aubyn Dale, “it
is
your theme song, Mr. Dale, isn’t it?”

There was no outcry from any of the onlookers, not even from Aubyn Dale himself. He merely stared at Cuddy as if at some unidentifiable monster. He then turned slowly, looked at Alleyn and wetted his lips.

“You can’t pay any attention to this,” he said with difficulty, running his words together. “It’s pure fantasy. I went to my cabin, didn’t go out on deck.” He passed his hand across his eyes. “I don’t know that I can prove it. I — can’t think of anything. But it’s true, all the same. Must be some way of proving it. Because it’s true.”

Alleyn said, “Shall we tackle that one a bit later? Mr. Cuddy hasn’t finished his statement. I should like to know, Mr. Cuddy, what you did next. At once, without evasions, if you please. What did you do?”

Cuddy gave his wife one of his sidelong glances, and then slid his gaze over to Alleyn. “I haven’t got anything to conceal,” he said. “I went up and I thought — I mean it seemed kind of quiet. I mean — you don’t want to get fanciful, Eth — I got the idea I’d see if she was O.K. So I — so I went into that place and she didn’t move. So I put out my hand in the dark. And she didn’t move and I touched
her
hand. She had gloves on. When I touched it, it sort of slid sideways like it wasn’t anything belonging to anybody and I heard it thump on the deck. And I thought, she’s fainted. So, in the dark, I felt around and I touched her face and — and — then I knew and — Gawd, Eth, it was ghastly!”

“Never mind, Fred.”

“I don’t know what I did. I got out of it. I suppose I ran round the side. I wasn’t myself. Next thing I knew I was in the doorway there and — well, I come over faint and I passed out. That’s all. I never did anything else, I swear I didn’t. Gawd’s my judge, I didn’t.”

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him for a moment and said: “That, then, is an account of the discovery by the man who made it. So far, of course, there’s no way of checking, but in the meantime we shall use it as a working hypothesis. Now. Mr. McAngus.”

Mr. McAngus sat in a corner. The skirts of his dressing-gown, an unsuitably heavy one, were pulled tight over his legs and clenched between his knees. His arms were crossed over his chest and his hands buried in his armpits. He seemed to be trying to protect himself from anything anybody might feel inclined to say to him. He gazed dolorously at Alleyn as the likeliest source of assault.

“Mr. McAngus,” Alleyn began, “when did you leave this room?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You were still here when I left. That was after Mrs. Dillington-Blick had gone. Did you leave before or after Mr. and Mrs. Cuddy?” He added, “I would rather Mr. McAngus was not prompted.” Several of Mr. McAngus’s fellow passengers who had opened their mouths shut them again.

Mr. McAngus did not embark on his usual round of periphrases. He blinked twice at Alleyn and said, “I am too upset to remember. If I tried I should only muddle myself and you. A dreadful tragedy has happened; I cannot begin to think of anything else.”

Alleyn, his hands in his coat pockets, said dryly, “Perhaps, after all, a little help is called for. May we go back to a complaint you made to Captain Bannerman before you went to bed. You said, I think, that somebody had been taking the hyacinths that Mrs. Dillington-Blick gave you.”

“Oh,
yes
. Two. I noticed the second had gone this morning. I was
very
much distressed. And now, of course, even more so.”

“The hyacinths are growing, aren’t they, in a basket which I think is underneath your porthole?”

“I keep them there for the fresh air.”

“Have you any idea who was responsible?”

Mr. McAngus drew down his upper lip. “I am very much averse,” he said, “to making unwarranted accusations, but I confess I
have
wondered about the steward. He is always admiring them. Or, then again, he might have knocked one off by accident. But he denies it, you see. He denies it.”

“What colour was it?”

“White, a handsome spike. I believe the name is Virgin Queen.”

Alleyn withdrew his hand from his pocket, extended and opened it. His handkerchief was folded about an irregular object. He laid it on the table and opened it. A white hyacinth, scarcely wilted, was disclosed.

Mr. McAngus gave a stifled cry, Brigid felt Tim’s hand close on hers. She saw again in an instantaneous muddle the mangled doll, the paragraphs in the newspapers, and the basket of hyacinths that Dennis had brought in on their first morning at sea. She heard Miss Abbott say, “I
beg
you not to speak, Mrs. Cuddy,” and Mrs. Cuddy’s inevitable cry of “Hyacinths! Fred!” And then she saw Mr. McAngus rise, holding his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger.

“Is that it?” Alleyn asked.

Mr. McAngus moved slowly to the table and stopped.

“Don’t touch it, if you please.”

“It — it looks like it.”

Mrs. Cuddy said shrilly, “Wherever did you find it?”

Mr. Cuddy said, “Never mind, Eth,” but Mrs. Cuddy’s deductive capacity was under a hard drive. She stared, entranced, at the hyacinth. Everyone knew what she was about to say, no one was able to forestall it.

“My Gawd!” said Mrs. Cuddy. “You never found it on the corpse! My Gawd, Fred, it’s the Flower Murderer’s done it. He’s on the ship, Fred, and we can’t get orf!”

Miss Abbott raised her large hands and brought them down heavily on her knees. “We’ve been asked to keep quiet,” she cried out. “Can’t you, for pity’s sake, hold your tongue!”

“Gently, my child,” Father Jourdain murmured.

“I’m not feeling gentle.”

Alleyn said, “It will be obvious to all of you before long that this crime has been committed by the so-called Flower Murderer. At the moment, however, that’s a matter which need not concern us. Now, Mr McAngus. You left this room immediately after Mr. and Mrs. Cuddy. Did you go straight to your cabin?”

After a great deal of painstaking elucidation it was at last collected from Mr. McAngus that he had strayed out through the double doors of the lounge to the deck, had walked round the passengers’ block to the port side, had gazed into the heavens for a few addled minutes, and had re-entered by the door into the interior passageway and thus arrived at his own quarters. “My thoughts,” he said, “were occupied by the film. I found it
very
moving. Not, perhaps, what one would have expected but nevertheless
exceedingly
disturbing.”

As he had not been seen by anybody else after he had left the lounge, his statement could only be set down for what it was worth and left to simmer.

Alleyn turned to Aubyn Dale.

Dale was slumped in his chair. He presented a sort of travesty of the splendid figure they had grown accustomed to. His white dinner-jacket was unbuttoned. His tie was crooked, his rope-soled shoes were unlatched, his hair was disordered and his eyes were imperfectly focussed. His face was deadly pale.

Alleyn said, “Now, Mr. Dale, are you capable of giving me an account of yourself?”

Dale crossed his legs and with some difficulty joined the tips of his fingers. It was a sketch of his customary position before the cameras.

“Captain Bannerman,” he said, “I think you realize I’m ver’ close friend of the general manager of y’r company. He’s going to hear juss how I’ve been treated in this ship and he’s
not
going to be pleased about it.”

Captain Bannerman said, “You won’t get anywhere that road, Mr. Dale. Not with me nor with anyone else.”

Dale threw up his hands in an unco-ordinated gesture. “
All
right. On y’own head!”

Alleyn crossed the room and stood over him. “You’re drunk,” he said, “and I’d very much rather you were sober. I’m going to ask you a question that may have a direct bearing on a charge of murder. This is not a threat, it is a statement of fact. In your own interest you’d better pull yourself together if you can and answer me. Can you do that?”

Dale said, “I know I’m plastered. It’s not fair. Doc, I’m plastered, aren’t I?”

Alleyn looked at Tim. “Can you do anything?”

“I can give him something, yes. It’ll take a little time.”

“I don’t want anything,” Dale said. He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, held them there for some seconds and then shook his head sharply. “I’ll be O.K.,” he muttered and actually did seem to have taken some sort of hold over himself. “Go on,” he added with an air of heroic fortitude. “I can take it.”

“Very well. After you left this room tonight you went out on deck. You went to the verandah. You stood beside the chaise longue where the body was found. What were you doing there?”

Dale’s face softened as if it had been struck. He said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you deny that you were there?”

“Refuse to answer.”

Alleyn glanced at Tim, who went out.

“If you’re capable of thinking,” Alleyn said, “you must know where that attitude will take you. I’ll give you a minute.”

“Tell you, I refuse.”

Dale looked from one of his fellow passengers to the other — the Cuddy’s, Brigid, Miss Abbott, Father Jourdain, Mr. McAngus — and he found no comfort anywhere.

“You’ll be saying presently,” he said with a sort of laugh, “that I had something to do with it.”

“I’m saying now that I’ve found indisputable evidence that you stood beside the body. In your own interest don’t you think you’d be well advised to tell me why you didn’t at once report what you saw?”

“Suppose I deny it?”

“In your boots,” Alleyn said dryly, “I wouldn’t.” He pointed to Dale’s rope-soled shoes. “They’re still damp,” he said.

Dale drew his feet back as if he’d scorched them.

“Well, Mr. Dale?”

“I–I didn’t know — I didn’t know there was anything the matter. I didn’t know he — I mean she — was dead.”

“Really? Did you not say anything? Did you just stand there meekly and then run away?”

He didn’t answer.

“I suggest that you had come into the verandah from the starboard side — the side opposite to that used by Mr. Cuddy. I also suggest that you had been hiding by the end of the locker near the verandah corner.”

Unexpectedly Dale behaved in a manner that was incongruously, almost embarrassingly theatrical. He crossed his wrists, palms outward, before his face and then made a violent gesture of dismissal. “No!” he protested. “You don’t understand. You frighten me. No!”

The door opened and Tim Makepiece returned. He stood, keeping it open and looking at Alleyn.

Alleyn nodded and Tim, turning his head to the passage, also nodded.

A familiar scent drifted into the stifled room. There was a tap of high heels in the passage. Through the door, dressed in a wonderful negligée, came Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

Mrs. Cuddy made a noise that was not loud but strangulated. Her husband and McAngus got to their feet, the latter looking as if he had seen a phantom and the former as if he was going to faint again. But if, in fact, they were about to say or do anything more they were forestalled. Brigid gave a shout of astonishment and relief and gratitude. She ran across the room and took Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s hands in hers and kissed her. She was half crying, half laughing. “It wasn’t you!” she stammered. “You’re all right. I’m so glad. I’m so terribly glad.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick gazed at her in amazement.

“You don’t even know what’s happened, do you?” Brigid went on. “Something quite dreadful but—”

She stopped short. Tim had come to her and put his arm round her. “Wait a moment, my darling,” he said and she turned to him. “Wait a moment,” he repeated and drew her away.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick looked in bewilderment at Aubyn Dale.

“What’s all the fuss?” she asked. “Have they found out?”

He floundered across the room and seized Mrs. Dillington-Blick by the arms, shaking and threatening her.

“Ruby, don’t speak!” he said. “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell them. Don’t you dare!”

“Has everybody gone mad?” asked Mrs. Dillington-Blick. She wrenched herself out of Dale’s grip. “Don’t!” she said and pushed away the hand that he actually tried to lay across her mouth. “What’s happened?
Have
they found out?” And after a moment, with a change of voice: “Where’s Dennis?”

“Dennis,” Alleyn said, “has been murdered.”

It was, apparently, Mr. Cuddy who was most disturbed by the news of Dennis’s death but his was an inarticulate agitation. He merely stopped smiling, opened his mouth, developed a slight tremor of the hands and continued to gape incredulously at Mrs. Dillington-Blick. His wife, always predictable, put her hand over his and was heard to say that someone was trying to be funny. Mr. McAngus kept repeating, “Thank God. I thank God!” in an unnatural voice. Miss Abbott said loudly, “Why have we been misled! An abominable trick!” while Aubyn Dale crumpled back into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick herself, Alleyn thought, was bewildered and frightened. She looked once at Aubyn Dale and away again, quickly. She turned helplessly towards Captain Bannerman, who went to her and patted her shoulder.

“Never you fret,” he said and glared uneasily at Alleyn. “You ought to have had it broken to you decently, not sprung on you without a word of warning. Never mind. No need to upset yourself.”

She turned from him to Alleyn and held out her hands. “You make me nervous,” she said. “It’s not true, is it? Why are you behaving like this? You’re angry, aren’t you? Why have you brought me here?”

“If you’ll sit down,” he said, “I’ll tell you.” She tried to take his hands. “No, just sit down, please, and listen.”

Father Jourdain went to her. “Come along,” he said and led her to a chair.

“He’s a plain-clothes detective, Mrs. Blick,” Mrs. Cuddy announced with a kind of angry triumph. “We’ve all been spied upon and made mock of and put in danger of our lives and now there’s a murderer loose in the ship and he says it’s one of us. In my opinion—”