by Ngaio Marsh
‘Very well. What do you want to say?’
‘Don’t you rush me now, mister. What I got to say is a mortal serious matter and I need to take my time.’
‘Nobody’s rushing you.’
‘No, nor they better not,’ he said. His manner was half truculent, half cringing. ‘It concerns this yurr half-hour in time what was the matter which you flung in my teeth. So fur so good. Now. This yurr lady,’ he ducked his head at Miss Emily, ‘tells you she seen my lil’ chap in the road round about twenty to eight on this yurr fatal morning. Right?’
‘Certainly,’ said Miss Pride.
‘Much obliged. And I says, so she might of then, for all I know to the contrariwise me being asleep in my bed. And I says I uprose at five past eight. Correct?’
‘That’s what you said, yes.’
‘And God’s truth if I never speak another word. And my lil’ chap was then to home in my house. Right. Now then. Furthermore to that, you says the doctor saw him at that same blessed time, twenty to eight, which statement agrees with the lady.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes. And you says, don’t rush me, you says the doctor was in his launch at that mortal moment.’
Alleyn glanced at Maine: ‘Agreed?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I saw Wally from the launch.’
Trehern moved over to Dr Maine. ‘That’s a bloody lie, Doctor,’ he said.’ Axcusing the expression. I face you out with it, man to man. I seen you, Doctor, clear as I see you now, moving out in thicky launch of yourn at five to ten bloody minutes past eight and by God, I reckon you’m not telling lies for the fun of it. I reckon as how you got half an hour on your conscience, Doctor Maine, and if the law doesn’t face you out with it I’m the chap to do the law’s job for it.’
‘I have already discussed the point with Superintendent Alleyn,’ Maine said, looking at Trehern with profound distaste. ‘Your story is quite unsupported.’
‘Is it?’ Trehern said. ‘Is it, then? That’s where you’re dead wrong. You mind me. And you t’other ladies and gents and you, mister.’ He turned back to Alleyn. ‘After you shifted off this evening, I took to thinking. And I remembered. I remembered our young Wal come up when I was looking out of my winder and I remembered he said in his por simple fashion: “Thick’s doctor’s launch, be’ant she?” You ax him, mister. You face him up with it and he’ll tell you.’
‘No doubt!’ said Maine. He looked at Alleyn. ‘I imagine you accept my statement,’ he said.
‘I haven’t said so,’ Alleyn replied. ‘I didn’t say so at the time, if you remember.’
‘By God, Alleyn!’ he said angrily and controlled himself. ‘This fellow’s as shifty as they come. You must see it. And the boy! Of what value is the boy’s statement if you get one from him. He’s probably been thrashed into learning what he’s got to say.’
‘I never raised a hand – ’ Trehern began but Alleyn stopped him.
‘I was coming to this point,’ he said, ‘when we were interrupted. It may as well be brought out by this means as any other. There are factors, apart from those I’ve already discussed, of which Trehern knows nothing. They may be said to support his story.’ He glanced at Miss Emily. ‘I shall put them to you presently but I assure you they are cogent. In the meantime, Dr Maine, if you have any independent support for your own version of your movements, you might like to say what it is. I must warn you – ’
‘Stop.’
Margaret Barrimore had moved out into the room. Her hands writhed together, as they had done when he saw her in the garden, but she had an air of authority and was, he thought, in command of herself.
She said: ‘Please don’t go on, Mr Alleyn. There’s something that I see I must tell you.’
‘Margaret!’ Dr Maine said sharply.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No. Don’t try to stop me. If you do I shall insist on seeing Mr Alleyn alone. But I’d rather say it here. In front of you all. After all, everybody knows now, don’t they? We needn’t pretend any more. Let me go on.’
‘Go on, Mrs Barrimore,’ Alleyn said.
‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘He didn’t leave the bay in his launch at half past seven or whenever it was. He came to the hotel to see me. I said I had breakfast alone. I wasn’t alone. He was there. Miss Cost had told him she was going to expose – everything. She told him when they met outside the church so he came to see me and ask me to go away with him. He wanted us to make a clean break before it all came out. He asked me to meet him in the village tonight. We were to go to London and then abroad. It was all very hurried. Only a few minutes. We heard somebody coming. I asked him to let me think, to give me a breathing space. So he went away. I suppose he went back to the bay.’
She walked over to Maine and put her hand on his arm. ‘I couldn’t let you go on,’ she said. ‘It’s all the same now. It doesn’t matter, Bob. It doesn’t matter. We’ll be together.’
‘Margaret, my dear,’ said Dr Maine.
There was a long silence. Fox cleared his throat.
Alleyn turned to Trehern.
‘And what have you to say to that?’ he asked.
Trehern was gaping at Mrs Barrimore. He seemed to be lost in some kind of trance.
‘I’ll be going,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll be getting back along.’ He turned and made for the door. Fox stepped in front of it.
Barrimore had got to his feet. His face, bedabbled with blood, was an appalling sight.
‘Then it’s true,’ he said very quietly. ‘She told me. She stood there, grinning and jibbering. She said she’d make me a public laughing stock. And when I said she could go to hell she – d’you know what she did? – she spat at me. And I – I –’
His voice was obliterated by a renewed onslaught of the gale: heavier than any that had preceded it. A confused rumpus broke out. Some metal object, a dustbin perhaps, racketed past the house and vanished in a diminishing series of irregular clashes, as if it bumped down the steps. There was a second monstrous buffet. Somebody, Margaret Barrimore, Alleyn thought, cried out, and at the same moment the lights failed altogether.
The dark was absolute and the noise intense. Alleyn was struck violently on the shoulder and cannoned into something solid and damp: Fox. As he recovered, he was hit again and putting out his hand, felt the edge of the door.
He yelled to Fox: ‘Come on!’ and snatching at the door, dived into the passage. There, too, it was completely dark. But less noisy. He thought he could make out the thud of running feet on carpet. Fox was behind him. A flashlight danced on a wall. ‘Give it me,’ Alleyn said. He grabbed it and it displayed for an instant the face of Sergeant Bailey. ‘Out of my way,’ he said. ‘Come on, you two. Fox – get Coombe.’
He ran to the stairhead and flashed his torch downwards. For a split second it caught the top of a head. He went downstairs in a controlled plunge, using the torch, and arrived in the entrance hall as the front door crashed. His flashlight discovered, momentarily, the startled face of the night porter who said: ‘Here, what’s the matter?’ and disappeared, open-mouthed.
The door was still swinging. He caught it and was once more engulfed in the storm.
It was raining again, heavily. The force of the gale was such that he leant against it and drove his way towards the steps in combat with it. Two other lights, Bailey’s and Thompson’s, he supposed, dodged eccentrically across the slanting downpour. He lost them when he reached the steps and found the iron rail. But there was yet another lancet of broken light beneath him. As Alleyn went down after it, he was conscious only of noise and idiot violence. He slipped, fell and recovered. At one moment, he was hurled against the rail.
‘These bloody steps,’ he thought. ‘These bloody steps.’ When he reached the bottom flight he saw his quarry, a dark, foreshortened, anonymous figure, veer through the dull light from Miss Cost’s shop window. ‘Pender’s got a candle or a torch,’ Alleyn thought.
The other’s torch was still going: a thin erratic blade. ‘Towards the jetty,�
� Alleyn thought. ‘He’s making for the jetty.’ And down there were the riding lights of the hotel launch, jauncing in the dark.
Here at last, the end of the steps. Now he was in seawater, sometimes over his feet. The roar of the channel was all-obliterating. The gale flattened his lips and filled his eyes with tears. When he made the jetty, he had to double-up and grope with his left hand, keeping the right, with Fox’s torch still alive, held out in front: he was whipped by the sea.
He had gained ground. The other was moving on again, doubled up, like Alleyn himself, and still using a torch. There were no more than thirty feet between them. The riding-lights danced near at hand and shuddered when the launch banged against the jetty.
The figure was poised: it waited for the right moment. A torchlight swung through the rain and Alleyn found himself squinting into the direct beam. He ducked and moved on, half-dazzled but aware that the launch rose and the figure leapt to meet it. Alleyn struggled forward, took his chance, and jumped.
He had landed aft, among the passengers’ benches; had fallen across one of them and struck his head on another. He hung there, while the launch bucketed under him and then he fell between the benches and lay on the heaving deck, fighting for breath and helpless. His torch had gone and he was in the dark. There must have been a brief rent in the night sky because a company of stars careened across his vision, wheeled and returned. The deck tilted again and he saw the hotel windows, glowing. They curtsied and tipped. ‘The power’s on,’ he thought, and a sudden deadly sinking blotted everything out. When he opened his eyes he thought with astonishment: ‘I was out.’ Then he heard the engine and felt the judder of a propeller racing above water. He laid hold of a bench and dragged himself to his knees. He could see his opponent, faintly haloed by light from the wheelhouse, back towards him, wrestling with the wheel itself. A great sea broke over them. The windows along Portcarrow front lurched up and dived out of sight again.
Alleyn began to crawl down the gangway between rows of fixed seats, clinging to them as he went. His feet slithered. He fell sideways and propping himself up, managed to drag off his shoes and socks. His head cleared and ached excruciatingly. The launch was now in midchannel, taking the seas full on her beam and rolling monstrously. He thought ‘she’ll never make it,’ and tried to remember where the lifebelts should be.
Did that other, fighting there with the wheel, know he was aboard? How had the launch been cast off? Were the mooring-lines freed from their cleats and was she now without them? Or had they been loosed from the bollards while he was unconscious? What should he do? ‘Keep observation!’ he thought sourly. An exquisite jab of pain shot through his eyeballs.
The launch keeled over and took in a solid weight of sea. He thought: ‘Well, this is it,’ and was engulfed. The iron legs of the bench bit into his hands. He hung on, almost vertical, and felt the water drag at him like an octopus. It was disgusting. The deck kicked. They wallowed for a suspended moment and then, shuddering, recovered and rose. The first thing he saw was the back of the helmsman. Something rolled against his chest: he unclenched his left hand and felt for it. The torch.
Street lamps along the front came alive and seemed dramatically near at hand. At the same time the engine was cut. He struggled to his feet and moved forward. He was close now, to the figure at the wheel. There was the jetty. Their course had shifted and the launch pitched violently. His left hand knocked against the back of a seat and a beam of light shot out from the torch and found the figure at the wheel. It turned.
Maine and Alleyn looked into each other’s faces.
Maine lurched out of the wheelhouse. The launch lifted prodigiously, tilted, and dived, nose down. Alleyn was blinded by a deluge of salt water. When he could see again, Maine was on the port gunwale. For a fraction of time he was poised, a gigantic figure against the shore lights. Then he flexed his knees and leapt overboard.
The launch went about and crashed into the jetty. The last thing he heard was somebody yelling high above him.
II
He was climbing down innumerable flights of stairs. They were impossibly steep – perpendicular – but he had to go down. They tipped and he fell outwards and looked into an abyss laced with flashlights. He lost his hold, dropped into nothing, and was on the stairs again, climbing, climbing. Somebody was making comfortable noises. He looked into a face.
‘Fox,’ he said, with immense satisfaction.
‘There now!’ said Inspector Fox.
Alleyn went to sleep.
When he woke, it was to find Troy nearby. Her hand was against his face. ‘So there you are,’ he said.
‘Hallo,’ said Troy and kissed him.
The wall beyond her was dappled with sunshine and looked familiar. He puzzled over it for a time and because he wanted to lay his face closer to her hand, turned his head and was stabbed through the temples.
‘Don’t move,’ Troy said. ‘You’ve taken an awful bash.’
‘I see.’
‘You’ve been concussed and all.’
‘How long?’
‘About thirty-four hours.’
‘This is Coombe’s cottage.’
‘That’s right, but you’re meant not to talk.’
‘Ridiculous,’ he said and dozed off again.
Troy slid her hand carefully from under his bristled jaw and crept out of the room.
Superintendent Coombe was in his parlour with Sir James Curtis and Fox. ‘He woke again,’ Troy said to Curtis, ‘just for a moment.’
‘Say anything?’
‘Yes. He’s – ’ her voice trembled. ‘He’s all right.’
‘Of course he’s all right. I’ll take a look at him.’
She returned with him to the bedroom and stood by the window while Curtis stooped over his patient. It was a brilliant morning. The channel was dappled with sequins. The tide was low and three people walked over the causeway: an elderly woman, a young man and a girl. Five boats ducked and bobbed in Fisherman’s Bay. The hotel launch was still jammed in the understructure of the jetty and looked inconsequent and unreal, suspended above its natural element. A complete write-off, it was thought.
‘You’re doing fine,’ Curtis said.
‘Where’s Troy?’
‘Here, darling.’
‘Good. What happened?’
‘You were knocked out,’ Curtis said. ‘Coombe and two other chaps managed to fish you up.’
‘Coombe?’
‘Fox rang him from the hotel as soon as you’d set off on your wild goose chase. They were on the jetty.’
‘Oh yes. Yelling. Where’s Fox?’
‘You’d better keep quiet for a bit, Rory. Everything’s all right. Plenty of time.’
‘I want to see Fox, Curtis.’
‘Very well, but only for one moment.’
Troy fetched him.
‘This is more like it now,’ Fox said.
‘Have you found him?’
‘We have, yes. Yesterday evening, at low tide.’
‘Where?’
‘About four miles along the coast.’
‘It was deliberate, Fox.’
‘So I understand. Coombe saw it.’
‘Yes, well now, that’s quite enough,’ said Curtis.
Fox stepped back.
‘Wait a minute,’ Alleyn said. ‘Anything on him? Fox? Anything on him?’
‘All right. Tell him.’
‘Yes, Mr Alleyn, there was. Very sodden. Pulp almost, but you can make it out. The top copy of that list and the photograph.’
‘Ah!’ Alleyn said. ‘She gave them to him. I thought as much.’
He caught his breath and then closed his eyes.
‘That’s right,’ Curtis said. ‘You go to sleep again.’
III
‘My sister, Fanny Winterbottom,’ said Miss Emily, two days later, ‘once remarked with characteristic extravagance (nay, on occasion, vulgarity), that, wherever I went, I kicked up as much dust as a dancing dervish. The observation
was inspired more by fortuitous alliteration than by any degree of accuracy. If, however, she were alive to-day, she would doubtless consider herself justified. I have made disastrous mischief in Portcarrow.’
‘My dear Miss Emily, aren’t you, yourself, falling into Mrs Winterbottom’s weakness for exaggeration? Miss Cost’s murder had nothing to do with your decision on the future of the Spring.’
‘But it had,’ said Miss Emily, smacking her gloved hand on the arm of Superintendent Coombe’s rustic seat. ‘Let us have logic. If I had not persisted with my decision, her nervous system, to say nothing of her emotions (at all times unstable), would not have been exacerbated to such a degree that she would have behaved as she did.’
‘How do you know?’ Alleyn asked. ‘She might have cut up rough on some other provocation. She had her evidence. The possession of a dangerous instrument is, in itself, a danger. Even if you had never visited the Island, Miss Emily, Barrimore and Maine would still have laughed at the Festival.’
‘She would have been less disturbed by their laughter,’ said Miss Emily. She looked fixedly at Alleyn. ‘I am tiring you, no doubt,’ she said. ‘I must go. Those kind children are waiting in the motor. I merely called to say au revoir, my dear Roderique.’
‘You are not tiring me in the least and your escort can wait. I imagine they are very happy to do so. It’s no good, Miss Emily. I know you’re eaten up with curiosity.’
‘Not curiosity. A natural dislike of unexplained detail.’
‘I couldn’t sympathize more. Which details?’
‘No doubt you are always asked when you first began to suspect the criminal. When did you first begin to suspect Dr Maine?’
‘When you told me that, at about twenty to eight, you saw nobody but Wally on the road down to Fisherman’s Bay.’
‘And I should have seen Dr Maine?’
‘You should have seen him pulling out from the bay jetty in his launch. And then Trehern, quite readily, said he saw the doctor leaving in his launch about five past eight. Why should he lie about the time he left? And what, as Trehern pointed out, did he do in the half-hour that elapsed?’
