Singing in the Shrouds (7 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)
“
Your
silver wedding,” Alleyn said, and smiled at Mrs. Cuddy. “You’re not going to tell us you’ve been married twenty-five years!”
“Twenty-five years and eleven days to be exact. Haven’t we, dear?”
“That’s correct, dear.”
“He’s turning colour,” Mrs. Cuddy said, exhibiting her husband with an air of triumph. “Come on, love. Walky-walky.”
Mr. Cuddy seemed unable to look away from Mrs. Dillington-Blick. He said, “I don’t notice the perfume too heavy. It isn’t affecting me.”
“That’s what
you
say,” his wife replied, ominously bluff. “You come into the fresh air, my man.” She took his arm and turned him towards the glass doors that gave on to the deck. She opened them. Cold salt air poured into the heated room, and the sound of the sea and of the ship’s engines. The Cuddys went out. Mr. Cuddy shut the doors and could be seen looking back into the room. His wife removed him and they walked away, their grey hair lifting in the wind.
“They’ll die of cold!” Brigid exclaimed. “No coats or hats.”.
“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick lamented and appealed in turn to the men. “And I expect it’s all my fault.” They murmured severally.
Mr. McAngus, who had peeped into the passage, confided, “It’s all right. They’ve come in by the side door and I
think
they’ve gone to their cabin.” He sniffed timidly at the flowers, gave a small apologetic laugh and made a little bobbing movement to and from Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “
I
think we’re all most awfully lucky,” he ventured. He then went out into the passage, putting on his hat as he did so.
“That poor creature dyes its hair,” Mr. Merryman observed calmly.
“Oh, come!” Father Jourdain protested and gave Alleyn a helpless look. “I seem,” he said under his breath, “to be saying nothing but ‘Oh, come,’ A maddening observation.”
Mrs. Dillington-Blick blossomed at Mr. Merryman: “Aren’t you
naughty
!” She laughed and appealed to Aubyn Dale: “
Not
true.
Is
it?”
“I honestly can’t see, you know, that if he does dye his hair, it’s anybody’s business but his,” Dale said, and gave Mr. Merryman his celebrated smile. “Can you?” he said.
“I entirely agree with you,” Mr. Merryman rejoined, grinning like a monkey. “I must apologize. In point of fact I abominate the public elucidation of private foibles.”
Dale turned pale and said nothing.
“Let us talk about flowers instead,” Mr. Merryman suggested and beamed through his spectacles upon the company.
Mrs. Dillington-Blick at once began to do so. She was supported, unexpectedly, by Miss Abbott. Evidently they were both experienced gardeners. Dale listened with a stationary smile. Alleyn saw him order himself a second double brandy.
“I suppose,” Alleyn remarked generally, “everybody has a favourite flower.”
Mrs. Dillington-Blick moved into a position from which she could see him. “Hullo, you!” she exclaimed jollily. “But of course they have. Mine’s magnolias.”
“What are yours?” Tim Makepiece asked Brigid.
“Distressingly obvious — roses.”
“Lilies,” Father Jourdain smiled, “which may also be obvious.”
“Easter?” Miss Abbott barked.
“Exactly.”
“What about you?” Alleyn asked Tim.
“The hop,” he said cheerfully.
Alleyn grinned. “There you are. It’s all a matter of association. Mine’s lilac and throws back to a pleasant childhood memory. But if beer happened to make you sick or my nanny, whom I detested, had worn lilac in her nankeen bosom or Father Jourdain associated lilies with death, we’d have all hated the sight and smell of these respective flowers.”
Mr. Merryman looked with pity at him. “Not,” he said, “a remarkably felicitous exposition of a somewhat elementary proposition, but, as far as it goes, unexceptionable.”
Alleyn bowed. “Have you, sir,” he asked, “a preference?”
“None, none. The topic, I confess, does not excite me.”
“I think it’s a
heavenly
topic,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick cried. “But then I adore finding out about People and their preferences.” She turned to Dale and at once his smile reprinted itself. “Tell me your taste in flowers,” she said, “and I’ll tell you your type in ladies. Come clean, now. Your favorite flower? Or shall I guess?”
“Agapanthas?” Mr. Merryman loudly suggested. Dale clapped his glass down on the bar and walked out of the room.
“Now,
look
here, Mr. Merryman!” Father Jourdain said and rose to his feet.
Mr. Merryman opened his eyes very wide and pursed his lips. “What’s up?” he asked.
“You know perfectly well what’s up. You’re an extremely naughty little man and although it’s none of my business I think fit to tell you so.”
Far from disconcerting Mr. Merryman, this more or less public rebuke appeared to afford him enjoyment. He clapped his hands lightly, slapped them on his knees and broke into elfish laughter.
“If you’ll take my advice,” Father Jourdain continued, “you will apologize to Mr. Dale.”
Mr. Merryman rose, bowed, and observed in an extremely highfalutin manner, “
Consilia firmiora sunt de divinis locis
.”
The priest turned red.
Alleyn, who didn’t see why Mr. Merryman should be allowed to make a corner in pedantry, racked his own brains for a suitable tag. “
Consilium inveniunt multi sed docti explicant,
however,” he said.
“Dear me!” Mr. Merryman observed. “How often one has cause to remark that a platitude sounds none the better for being uttered in an antique tongue. I shall now address myself to my postprandial nap.”
He trotted towards the door, paused for a moment to stare at Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s pearls, and then went out.
“For pity’s sake!” she ejaculated. “What is all this! What’s happening? What’s the matter with Aubyn Dale? Why agapanthas?”
“Can it be possible,” Tim Makepiece said, “that you don’t know about Lady Agatha’s umbilicus globular and the hyacinths on the turdy stable?” and he retold the story of Aubyn Dale’s misfortunes.
“How frightful!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick exclaimed, laughing until she cried. “How too tragically frightful! And how
naughty
of Mr. Merryman.”
Tim Makepiece said, “We don’t ’alf look like being a happy family. What will Mr. Chip’s form be, one asks oneself, when he enters the Torrid Zone?”
“He may look like Mr. Chips,” Alleyn remarked. “He behaves like Thersites.”
Brigid said, “I call it the rock bottom of him. You could see Aubyn Dale minded most dreadfully. He went as white as his teeth. What could have possessed Mr. Chips?”
“Schoolmaster,” Miss Abbott said, scarcely glancing up from her book. “They often turn sour at his age. It’s the life.”
She had been quiet for so long they had forgotten her. “That’s right,” she continued, “isn’t it, Father?”
“It may possibly, I suppose, be a reason. It’s certainly not an excuse.”
“I think,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick lamented, “I’d better throw my lovely hyacinths overboard, don’t you?” She appealed to Father Jourdain. “Wouldn’t it be best? It’s not only poor Mr. Dale.”
“No,” Brigid agreed. “Mr. Cuddy, we must remember, comes over queer at the sight of them.”
“Mr. Cuddy,” Miss Abbott observed, “came over queer but not, in my opinion, at the sight of the hyacinths.” She lowered her book and looked steadily at Mrs. Dillington-Blick.
“My dear!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick rejoined and began to laugh again.
“Well!” Father Jourdain said with the air of a man who refuses to recognize his nose before his face. “I think I shall see what it’s like on deck.”
Mrs. Dillington-Blick stood between him and the double doors and he was quite close to her. She beamed up at him. His back was turned to Alleyn. He was still for a moment and then she moved aside and he went out. There was a brief silence.
Mrs. Dillington-Blick turned to Brigid.
“My dear!” she confided. “I’ve
got
that man. He’s a reformed rake.”
Mr. McAngus re-entered from the passage still wearing his hat. He smiled diffidently at his five fellow passengers.
“All settling down?” he ventured, evidently under a nervous compulsion to make some general remark.
“Like birds in their little nest,” Alleyn agreed cheerfully.
“Isn’t it delicious,” Mr. McAngus said, heartened by this response, “to think that from now on it’s going to get warmer and warmer and warmer?”
“Absolutely enchanting.”
Mr. McAngus made the little chassé with which they were all to become familiar, before the basket of hyacinths.
“Quite intoxicating,” he said. “They are my favourite flowers.”
“Are they!” cried Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “Then do please,
please
have them. Please do. Dennis will take them to your room. Mr. McAngus, I should adore you to have them.”
He gazed at her in what seemed to be a flutter of bewildered astonishment. “I?” Mr. McAngus said. “But why? I beg your pardon, but it’s so very kind, and positively I can’t believe you mean it.”
“But I do, indeed. Please have them.”
Mr. McAngus hesitated and stammered. “I’m quite overcome. Of course I should be delighted.” He gave a little giggle and tilted his head over to one side. “Do you know,” he said, “this is the first occasion, the
very
first, on which a lady has ever, of her own free will, offered me her flowers? And my favourites, too. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.”
Alleyn saw that Mrs. Dillington-Blick was touched by this speech. She smiled kindly and unprovocatively at him and Brigid laughed gently.
“I’ll carry them myself,” Mr. McAngus said. “Of course I will. I shall put them on my little table and they’ll be reflected in my looking-glass.”
“Lucky man!” Alleyn said lightly.
“Indeed, yes. May I, really?” he asked. Mrs. Dillington-Blick nodded gaily and he advanced to the table and grasped the enormous basket with his reddish bony hands. He was an extremely thin man and, Alleyn thought, very much older than his strange nut-brown hair would suggest.
“Let me help you,” Alleyn offered.
“No, no! I’m really very strong, you know. Wiry.”
He lifted the basket and staggered on bent legs with it to the door. Here he turned, a strange figure, his felt hat tilted over his nose, blinking above a welter of quivering hyacinths.
“
I
shall think of something to give
you
,” he promised Mrs. Dillington-Blick, “after Las Palmas. There must be a reciprocal gesture.”
He went groggily away.
“He may dye his hair a screaming magenta if he chooses,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said. “He’s a sweetie-pie.”
From behind her covered book Miss Abbott remarked in that not very musical voice, “Meanwhile we await his reciprocal gesture. After Las Palmas.”
Before Las Palmas
Alleyn sat in the pilot’s cabin looking at his file of the case in question. Captain Bannerman was on the bridge outside. At regular intervals he marched past Alleyn’s porthole. The weather, as Mr. McAngus had predicted, was getting warmer and in two days
Cape Farewell
would sight Las Palmas. She steamed now through a heavy swell. A tendency to yawn, doze, and swap panaceas against seasickness had broken out among the passengers.
January 15th
. 13 Hop Lane. Paddington [Alleyn read]. Beryl Cohen. Jewess. Cheapjack. Part-time prostitute. Showy. Handsome. About 26. Five feet 6 inches. Full figure. Red (dyed) hair. Black skirt. Red jersey. Artificial necklace (green glass). Found January 16th, 10:05 A.M., by fellow lodger. Estimated time of death: between 10 and 11 P.M. previous night. On floor, face upward. Broken necklace. Flowers (snowdrops) on face and breast. Cause: manual strangulation but necklace probably first. Lodger states she heard visitor leave about 10:45. Singing. “Jewel Song,”
Faust
. High-pitched male voice.
A detailed description of the room followed. He skipped it and read on.
January 25th
. Alley-way off Ladysmith Crescent, Fulham. Marguerite Slatters, of 36A Stackhouse Street, Fulham. London. Floral worker. Respectable. Quiet. Thirty-seven. Five feet 8 inches. Slight. Homely. Dark brown hair. Sallow complexion. Brown dress. Artificial pearls and teeth. Brown beret, gloves, and shoes. Returning home from St. Barnabas’ Parish Church. Found 11:55 by Stanley Walker, chauffeur. Estimated time of death between 9 and 12 P.M. By doorstep of empty garage. Face upward. Broken necklace. Torn dress. Manual strangulation. Flowers (hyacinths) on face and breast. Had no flowers when last seen alive.
Alleyn sighed and looked up. Captain Bannerman bobbed past the porthole. The ship was heaved upward and forward, the horizon tilted, rose and sank.
February 4th
. Passageway between sheds, Cape Company’s No. 2 Wharf, Royal Albert Dock. Coralie Kraus of 16 Steep Lane, Hampstead. Assistant at Green Thumb, Knightsbridge. Eighteen. Naturalized Austrian. Lively. Well-conducted. Five feet, 4 3/4 inches. Fair hair. Pale complexion. Black dress, gloves, and shoes. No hat. Pink artificial jewellery. (Earrings, bracelet, necklace, clips.) Taking box of hyacinths to Mrs. Dillington-Blick, passenger,
Cape Farewell
. Found 11:48 P.M. by P. C. Martin Moir. Body warm. Death estimated between 11:15 and 11:48 P.M. Face upwards. Stocking torn. Jewellery broken. Ears torn. Manual strangulation. Fragment of embarkation notice for S.S.
Cape Farewell
in right hand. Flowers (hyacinths) on face and breast. Seaman (on duty,
Cape Farewell
gangway) mentioned hearing high male voice singing. Very foggy conditions. All passengers went ashore (ref. above seaman) except Mr. Donald McAngus, who arrived last.
Alleyn shook his head, pulled towards him a half-finished letter to his wife, and after a moment continued it.
…
so instead of drearily milling over these grisly, meagre, and infuriating bits of information received, I offer them, my darling, to you, together with any developments that may, as Fox says in his more esoteric flights of fancy, accrue. There they are, then, and for the first time you will have the fun, God help you, of following a case as it develops from the casebook. The form, I suppose, is to ask oneself what these three wretched young women had in common and the answer is: very nearly damn all, unless you feel inclined to pay any attention to the fact that in common with ninety per cent of their fellow females, they all wore false jewellery. Otherwise they couldn’t physically, racially or morally be less like each other. On the other hand they all met their death in exactly the same fashion and each was left with her broken necklace and ghastly little floral tribute. By the way, I imagine I’ve spotted one point of resemblance which didn’t at first jump to the eye. Wonder if you have
?
As for the fragment of embarkation notice in Miss Kraus’s right hand, that’s all I’ve got to justify my taking this pleasure cruise, and if it was blowing about the wharf and she merely happened to clutch it in her death throes, it’ll be another case of public money wasted. The captain, egged on by me, got the steward (a queer little job called Dennis) to collect the embarkation notices as if it was the usual procedure. With this result:
Mrs. Dillington-Blick: Has lost it.
Mr. & Mrs Cuddy: Joint one. Names written in. Just possible he could have fiddled in
“
Mr. &
”
when he found he’d lost his own. Room for fiddle. Can check office procedure
.
Mr. Merryman: Had it in waistcoat pocket and now accuses steward of pinching it (!)
Father Jourdain: Chucked it overboard
.
Mr. McAngus: Can’t find it but says he’s sure he kept it. Frantic search — fruitless
.
Dr. Makepiece: Wasn’t given one
.
Aubyn Dale: Thinks his sweetie took it. Doesn’t know why
.
Miss Abbott: Put it in wastepaper basket. (Gone.)
Miss Carmichael: Has got
.
So that’s not much cop. No torn embarkation notice
.
I’ve told you about getting the D-B’s hyacinths planted in the lounge. Dazzling reactions from Dale and Cuddy. Pity it was both. Explanation for Dale’s megrim (spoonerism on TV) very persuasive. Note Cuddy’s wedding anniversary date. Am I or am I not playing fair? Darling Troy, how very much, by the way, I love you
.
On a sea voyage, you may remember, human relationships undergo a speeding-up process. People get to know each other after a fashion very quickly, and often develop a kind of intimacy. They lose their normal sense of responsibility and become suspended, like the ship, between two worlds. They succumb to infatuations. Mr. Cuddy is succumbing to an infatuation for Mrs. D-B and so, in a vague rarefied way, is Mr. McAngus. The captain belongs to the well-known nautical group “middle-aged sea-dog.” High blood pressure. Probably soaks in the tropics. Amorous. (Do you remember your theory about men of a certain age?) Has also set his course for Mrs. D-B. Makepiece has got his eye on Brigid Carmichael and so have all the junior officers. She’s a nice child with some sort of chip on her shoulder. The D-B is a tidy armful and knows it. Mrs. Cuddy is a network of sub-fusc complications and Miss Abbott is unlikely, on the face of it, to release the safety catch in even the most determined sex monster. But I suppose I shouldn’t generalize. She shaves
.
As for the men: I’ve told you enough about our Mr. Merryman to indicate what a cup-of-tea he is. It may help to fill in the picture if I add that he is the product of St. Chad’s Cantor, and Caius, looks a bit like Mr. Pickwick and much more like Mr. Chips and resembles neither in character. He’s retired from teaching but displays every possible pedagogic eccentricity from keeping refuse in his waistcoat pocket to laying down the law in and out of season. He despises policemen, seems to have made a sort of corner in acerbity and will, I bet you, cause a real row before the journey’s over
.
AUBYN DALE:
Education, undivulged.? Non-U. So like himself on TV that one catches oneself supposing him to be two-dimensional. His line is being a thoroughly nice chap and he drinks about three times as much as is good for him. For all I know, he may be a thoroughly nice chap. He has a distressing predilection for practical jokes and has made a lifelong enemy of Merryman by causing the steward to serve him with a plastic fried egg at breakfast
.
JOURDAIN:
Lancing and B.N.C. On a normal voyage would be a pleasant companion. To me, the most interesting of the men, but then I always want to find out at what point in an intelligent priest’s progress P.C. Faith begins to direct the traffic. I’ll swear in this one there’s still a smack of the jaywalker
.
CUDDY:
Methodist school. Draper. Not very delicious. Inquisitive. Conceited. A bit mean. Might be a case for a psychiatrist
.
MAKEPIECE:
Felsted, New College, and St. Thomas’s. Is a psychiatrist. The orthodox B.M.A. class. Also M.D. Wants to specialize in criminal psychiatry. Gives the impression of being a sound chap
.
MC ANGUS:
Scottish high school. Philatelist. Amiable eunuch, but I don’t mean literally; a much-too-facile label. May, for all one knows, be a seething mass of “thing.” Also very inquisitive. Gets in a tizzy over details. Dyes, as you will have gathered, his hair
.
Well, my dear love, there you are. The night before Las Palmas, with the connivance of Captain Bannerman, who is only joining in because he hopes I’ll look silly, I am giving a little party. You have just read the list of guests. It’s by way of being an experiment and may well turn out to be an unproductive bore. But what the hell, after all, am I to do? My instructions are not to dive in, boots and all, declare myself and hold a routine investigation, but to poke and peer and peep about and try to find out if any of these men has
not
got an alibi for one of the three vital occasions. My instructions are also to prevent any further activities, and not antagonize the master, who already turns purple with incredulity and rage at the mere suggestion of our man being aboard his ship. On the face of it the D-B and Miss C. look the likeliest candidates for strangulation, but you never know. Mrs. Cuddy may have a
je ne sais quoi
which has escaped me, but I fancy that as a potential victim Miss Abbott is definitely out. However that may be, you can picture me, as we approach the tropics, muscling in on any cosy little party
à deux
that breaks out in the more secluded corners of the boat-deck and thus becoming in my own right a likely candidate for throttling. (Not really, so don’t agitate yourself.) Because the ladies must be protected. At Las Palmas there should be further reports from headquarters, following Fox’s investigations at the home end. One can only hope they’ll cast a little beam. At the moment there’s not a twinkle but
…
There was a tap at the door, and on Alleyn’s call, the wireless cadet, a wan youth, came in with a radiogram.
“In code, Mr. Broderick,” he said.
When he had gone Alleyn decoded the message and after an interval continued his letter.
Pause indicating suspense. Signal from Fox. It appears that a young lady from the Brummagem department in Woolworth’s called Bijou Browne, after thirty days’ disastrous hesitation, has coyly informed the Yard that she was half-strangled near Strand-on-the-Green on January fifth. The assailant offered her a bunch of hellebore (Christmas roses to you) and told her there was a spider on her neck. He started in on her rope of beads which, being poppets, broke; was interrupted by the approach of a wayfarer and bolted. It was a dark night and all she can tell Fox about her assailant is that he too was dark, spoke very nice, and wore gloves and ever such a full dark beard
.
Alleyn’s suggestion that he should give a dinner party was made, in the first instance, to Captain Bannerman. “It may be unorthodox,” Alleyn said, “but there’s just a chance that it may give us a lead about these people.”
“I can’t say I see how you work that out.”
“I hope you will, though, in a minute. And, by the bye, I’ll want your collaboration, sir, if you’ll agree to give it.”
“Me! Now then, now then, what is all this?”
“Let me explain.”
Captain Bannerman listened with an air of moody detachment. When Alleyn had finished the captain slapped his palms on his knees and said, “It’s a damn crazy notion, but if it proves once and for all that you’re on a wild goose chase, it’ll be worth the trouble. I won’t say no. Now!”
Fortified by this authority Alleyn interviewed the chief steward, who expressed astonishment. Any parties that were given aboard this ship, the chief steward explained, were traditionally cocktail parties, for which Dennis, always helpful, made very dainty little savouries and records were played over the loudspeaker.
However, before Alleyn’s vast prestige as a supposed V.I.P. and relation of the managing director, objections dissolved. Dennis became flushed with excitement, the stewards were gracious, and the chef, a Portuguese whose almost moribund interest in his art revived under a whacking great tip, was enthusiastic.
Tables were run together and decorated, wine was chosen, and at the appointed hour the nine passengers, the mate, the chief engineer, Alleyn and Tim Makepiece, having first met for drinks in the lounge, were assembled in the dining-room at a much later hour than was usually observed for dinner at sea.
Alleyn sat at one end of the table with Mrs. Cuddy on his right and Miss Abbott on his left. The captain sat at the other between Mrs. Dillington-Blick and Brigid — an arrangement that broke down his last resistance to so marked a departure from routine and fortified him against the part he had undertaken to play.
Alleyn was a good host; his professional knack of getting other people to talk, coupled with the charm to which his wife never alluded without using the adjective indecent, generated an atmosphere of festivity. He was enormously helped by Mrs. Dillington-Blick, whose genuine enthusiasm and plunging neckline were, in their separate modes, provocative of jollity. She looked so dazzling that she sounded brilliant. Father Jourdain, who sat next to her, was admirable. Aubyn Dale, resplendent in a velvet dinner jacket, coruscated with bonhomie and regaled his immediate neighbours with stories of practical jokes that he had successfully inflicted upon his chums, as he called them, in the world of admass. These anecdotes met with a gay response in Mrs. Dillington-Blick.
Mr. McAngus wore a hyacinth in his buttonhole. Tim Makepiece was obviously enjoying himself and Brigid had an air of being astonished at her own gaiety. Mr. Merryman positively blossomed or, at any rate, sprouted a little under the influence of impeccably chosen wines and surprisingly good food, while Miss Abbott relaxed and barked quite jovially across the table at Mr. Cuddy. The two officers rapidly eased off their guarded good manners.