Death at the Bar

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Ten o’clock.’

  ‘At ten o’clock or thereabouts. You met him by accident. You think he was asleep. You had a political argument in which the Coombe Left Movement was not mentioned.’

  ‘I didn’t say so, you know.’

  ‘Would you mind saying so or saying not so? Just for my notes?’ asked Alleyn, with such a quaint air of diffidence that Decima suddenly smiled at him.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘we did argue about the society, though it’s nothing to do with the case.’

  ‘If you knew the numbers of these books that I’ve filled with notes that have nothing whatever to do with the case you’d feel sorry for me,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘We’ll manage things better when we run the police,’ said Decima.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Alleyn gravely. ‘Was your argument amicable?’

  ‘Fairly,’ said Decima.

  ‘Did you mention Mr Legge?’

  Decima said, ‘Before we go any further there’s something I’d like to tell you.’

  Alleyn looked up quickly. She was frowning. She stared out over the downs, her thin fingers were clasped together.

  ‘You’d better leave Robert Legge alone,’ said Decima. ‘If Watchman was murdered it wasn’t by Legge.’

  ‘How do you know that, Miss Moore?’

  ‘I watched him. He hadn’t a chance. The others will have told you that. Will, Norman Cubitt, Miss Darragh. We’ve compared notes. We’re all positive.’

  ‘You don’t include Mr Parish?’

  ‘He’s a fool,’ said Decima.

  ‘And Mr Abel Pomeroy?’

  She blushed unexpectedly and beautifully.

  ‘Mr Pomeroy’s not a fool but he’s violently prejudiced against Bob Legge. He’s a ferocious Tory. He thinks we—he thinks Will and I are too much under Bob’s influence. He hasn’t got a single reasonable argument against Bob. He simply would rather it was Bob than anyone else and has hypnotized himself into believing he’s right. It’s childishly obvious. Surely you must see that. He’s an example in elementary psychology.’

  Alleyn raised an eyebrow. She glared at him.

  ‘I’m not disputing it,’ said Alleyn mildly.

  ‘Well, then—’

  ‘The camp seems to be divided into pro-Leggites and anti-Leggites. The funny thing about the pro-Leggites is this: they protest his innocence and, I am sure, believe in it. You’d think they’d welcome our investigations. You’d think they’d say, “Come on, then, look into his record, find out all you like about him. He’s a decent citizen and an innocent man. He’ll stand up to any amount of investigation.” They don’t. They take the line of resenting the mildest form of question about Legge. Why’s that, do you suppose? Why do you warn us off Mr Legge?’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘But you do,’ insisted Alleyn gently.

  Decima turned her head and stared searchingly at him.

  ‘You don’t look a brute,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘I’m glad of that.’

  ‘I mean you don’t look a complete robot. I suppose, having once committed yourself to a machine, you have to tick over in the appointed manner.’

  ‘Always providing someone doesn’t throw a spanner in the works.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Decima. ‘Bob Legge had an appointment in Illington that evening. He was just going; he would have gone if Will hadn’t persuaded him not to. Will told him he’d be a fool to drive through the tunnel with the surface water pouring through it.’

  She was watching Alleyn and she said quickly, ‘Ah! You didn’t know that?’

  Alleyn said nothing.

  ‘Ask Will. Ask the man he was to meet in Illington.’

  ‘The local police have done that,’ said Alleyn. ‘We won’t question the appointment. We only know Mr Legge didn’t keep it.’

  ‘He couldn’t. You can’t drive through that tunnel when there’s a stream of surface water pouring down it.’

  ‘I should hate to try,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘We’re not making much of an outcry over Mr Legge’s failure to appear. It was you, wasn’t it, who raised the question?’

  ‘I was only going to point out that Bob didn’t know there would be a thunderstorm, did he?’

  ‘Unless the pricking of his thumbs or something—’

  ‘If this was murder I suppose it was premeditated. You won’t deny that?’

  ‘No. I don’t deny that.’

  ‘Well, then! Suppose he was the murderer. He didn’t know it would rain. It would have looked pretty fishy for him to put off his appointment for no reason at all.’

  ‘It would. I wonder why he didn’t tell me this himself.’

  ‘Because he’s so worried that he’s at the end of his tether. Because you got hold of him last night and deliberately played on his nerves until he couldn’t think. Because—’

  ‘Hallo!’ said Alleyn. ‘You’ve seen him this morning, have you?’

  If Decima was disconcerted she didn’t show it. She blazed at Alleyn:

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen him, and I scarcely recognized him. He’s a mass of overwrought nerves. His condition’s pathological. The next thing will be a confession of a crime he didn’t commit.’

  ‘How about the crime he did commit?’ asked Alleyn. ‘It would be more sensible.’

  And that did shake her. She caught her breath in a little gasping sigh. Her fingers went to her lips. She looked very young and very guilty.

  ‘So you knew all the time,’ said Decima.

  CHAPTER 15

  Love Interest

  Alleyn had expected that Decima would hedge, rage, or possibly pretend to misunderstand him. Her sudden capitulation took him by surprise and he was obliged to make an embarrassingly quick decision. He plumped for comparative frankness.

  ‘We expect,’ he said, ‘a report on his fingerprints. When that comes through we shall have official confirmation of a record that we suspected from the first and of which we are now certain.’

  ‘And you immediately put two and two together and make an absurdity.’

  ‘What sort of absurdity?’

  ‘You will say that because he didn’t come forward and announce “I’m a man with a police record”, he’s a murderer. Can’t you see how he felt? Have you the faintest notion what it’s like for a man who’s been in prison to try to get back, to try to earn a miserable pittance? Have you ever thought about it at all or wondered for two seconds what becomes of the people you send to gaol? To their minds? I know you look after their bodies with the most intolerable solicitude. You are there always. Every employer is warned. There is no escape. It would be better, upon my honour, I believe it would be better, to hang them outright than—than to tear their wings off and let them go crawling out into the sun.’

  ‘That’s a horrible analogy,’ said Alleyn, ‘and a false one.’

  ‘It’s a true analogy. Can’t you see why Legge was so frightened? He’s only just stopped having to report. Only now has he got his thin freedom. He thought, poor wretch, that we wouldn’t keep him on if we knew he’d been to gaol. Leave him alone! Leave him alone!’

  ‘How long have you known this about him?’ asked Alleyn.

  She stood up abruptly, her palm against her forehead as though her head ached.

  ‘Oh, for some time.’

  ‘He confided in you? When?’

  ‘When he got the job,’ said Decima flatly.

  Alleyn did not believe this, but he said politely, ‘That was very straightforward, wasn’t it?’ And as she did not answer he added, ‘Do you know why he went to prison?’

  ‘No. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me. He’s wiped it out, God knows, poor thing. Don’t tell me.’

  Alleyn reflected, with a certain amount of amusement, that it was as well she didn’t want to know what Legge’s offence had been. Some image of this thought may have appeared in his face. He saw Decima look sharply at him and he said hurriedly: ‘All this is by the way. What I really want to ask you is whether,
on the morning you encountered Mr Watchman by the furze bush, you were alone with him all the time.’

  He saw that now she was frightened for herself. Her eyes widened, and she turned extremely pale.

  ‘Yes. At least—I—no. Not at the end. I rather think Norman Cubitt and Sebastian Parish came up.’

  ‘You rather think?’

  ‘They did come up. I remember now. They did.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Alleyn, ‘when I asked them if they saw Watchman that morning, they said definitely that they did not.’

  ‘They must have forgotten.’

  ‘Please! You can’t think I’ll believe that. They must have been over every word that was spoken by Watchman during the last hours of his life. They have told me as much. Why, they must have walked back to the inn with him. How could they forget?’

  Decima said, ‘They didn’t forget.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It was for me. They are being little gents.’

  Alleyn waited.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I won’t have it. I won’t have their chivalry. If you must know, they surprised their friend in a spirited attempt upon my modesty. I wasn’t pleased and I was telling him precisely what I thought of him. I suppose they were afraid you would transfer your attentions from Bob Legge to me.’

  ‘Possibly,’ agreed Alleyn. ‘They seem to think I am a sort of investigating chameleon.’

  ‘I imagine,’ said Decima in a high voice, ‘that because I didn’t relish Mr Watchman’s embraces and told him so, it doesn’t follow that I set to work and murdered him.’

  ‘It’s not a strikingly good working hypothesis. I’m sorry to labour this point but we’ve no sense of decency in the force. Had he shown signs of these tricks before?’

  The clear pallor of Decima’s face was again flooded with red. Alleyn thought, ‘Good Lord, she’s an attractive creature. I wonder what the devil she’s like.’ He saw, with discomfort, that she could not look at him. Fox made an uneasy noise in his throat and stared over the downs. Alleyn waited. At last Decima raised her eyes.

  ‘He was like that,’ she murmured.

  Alleyn now saw a sort of furtiveness in Decima. She was no longer tense, her pose had changed and she offered him no challenge.

  ‘I suppose he couldn’t help it,’ she said, and then with a strange look from Alleyn to Fox she added, ‘It’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. You needn’t think ill of him. I was all right.’

  In half a minute she had changed. The educational amenities provided by that superior mother had fallen away from her. She had turned into a rustic beauty, conscious of her power of provocation. The rumoured engagement to Will Pomeroy no longer seemed ridiculous. And, as if she had followed Alleyn’s thought, she said, ‘I’d be very glad if you wouldn’t say anything of this to Will Pomeroy. He knows nothing about it. He wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I’ll sheer off it if it can be done. It was not the first time you’d had difficulty with Watchman?’

  She paused and then said, ‘We hadn’t actually—come to blows before.’

  ‘Blows? Literally?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  She stood up. Alleyn thought she mustered her self-assurance. When she spoke again it was in a different key, ironically and with composure.

  ‘Luke,’ she said, ‘was amorous by habit. No doubt it was not the first time he’d miscalculated. He wasn’t in the least disconcerted. He—wasn’t in the least in love with me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s merely a squalid little incident which I had rather hoped to forget. It was, I suppose, very magnificent of Seb and Norman to lie about it, but the gesture was too big for the theme.’

  ‘Now she’s being grand at me,’ thought Alleyn. ‘We are back in St Margaret’s Hall.’

  He said: ‘And Watchman had never made himself objectionable before that morning?’

  ‘I did not usually find him particularly objectionable.’

  ‘I intended,’ said Alleyn, ‘to ask you if he had ever made love to you before?’

  ‘I have told you he wasn’t in the least in love with me.’

  ‘I’m unlucky in my choice of words, I see. Had he ever kissed you, Miss Moore?’

  ‘This is very tedious,’ said Decima. ‘I have tried to explain that my acquaintance with Luke Watchman was of no interest or significance to either of us, or, if you will believe me, to you.’

  ‘Then why,’ asked Alleyn mildly, ‘don’t you give me an answer and have done with it?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Decima breathlessly. ‘You can have your answer. I meant nothing to him and he meant less to me. Until last Friday he’d never been anything but the vaguest acquaintance.’ She turned on Fox. ‘Write it down. You’ll get no other answer. Write it down.’

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ said Fox civilly. ‘I don’t think I’ve missed anything. I’ve got it down.’

  II

  ‘Well, have you finished?’ demanded Decima, who had succeeded in working herself up into a satisfactory temper. ‘Is there anything else you want to know? Do you want a list in alphabetical order of my encounters with any other little Luke Watchmans who have come my way?’

  ‘No,’ said Alleyn. ‘No. We limit our impertinences to the police code. Our other questions are, I hope, less offensive. They concern the brandy you gave Mr Watchman, the glass into which you poured it, and the bottle from which it came.’

  ‘All right. What about them?’

  ‘May we have your account of that particular phase of the business?’

  ‘I told Oates and I told the coroner. Someone suggested brandy. I looked round and saw Luke’s glass on the table, between the settle where he lay and the dart-board. There wasn’t any brandy left in it. I saw the bottle on the bar. I was very quick about it. I got it and poured some into the glass. I did not put anything but brandy in the glass. I can’t prove I didn’t, but I didn’t.’

  ‘But perhaps we can prove it. Was anyone near the table? Did anyone watch you pour the brandy?’

  ‘Oh, God!’ said Decima wearily, ‘how should I know? Sebastian Parish was nearest to the table. He may have noticed. I don’t know. I took the glass to Luke. I waited for a moment while Abel Pomeroy put iodine on Luke’s finger, and then I managed to pour a little brandy between his lips. It wasn’t much. I don’t think he even swallowed it, but I suppose you won’t believe that.’

  ‘Miss Moore,’ said Alleyn suddenly, ‘I can’t tell you how pathetically anxious we are to accept the things people tell us.’ He hesitated and then said, ‘You see, we spend most of our working life asking questions. Can you, for your part, believe that we get a kind of sixth sense and sometimes feel very certain indeed that a witness is speaking the truth, or, as the case may be, is lying? We’re not allowed to recognize our sixth sense, and when it points a crow’s flight towards the truth we may not follow it. We must cut it dead and follow the dreary back streets of collected evidence. But if they lead us anywhere at all it is almost always to the same spot.’

  ‘Eminently satisfactory,’ said Decima. ‘Everything for the best in the best of all possible police forces.’

  ‘That wasn’t quite what I meant. Was it after you had given him the brandy that Mr Watchman uttered the single word “poisoned”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you get the impression that he spoke of the brandy?’

  ‘No. I don’t know if your sixth sense will tell you I’m lying, but it seemed to me he tried to take the brandy, and perhaps did swallow a little, and that it was when he found he couldn’t drink that he said—that one word. He said it between his clenched teeth. I had neverseen such a look of terror and despair. Then he jerked his hand. Miss Darragh was going to bandage it. Just at that moment the lights went out.’

  ‘For how long were they out?’

  ‘Nobody knows. It’s impossible to tell. I can’t. It seemed an age. Somebody clicked the switch. I remember that. To see if it had been turned off accidentally, I suppose. It
was a nightmare. The rain sounded like drums. There was broken glass everywhere—crunch, crunch, squeak. And his voice. Not like a human voice. Like a cat mewing. And his heels, drumming on the settle. And everybody shouting in the dark.’

  Decima spoke rapidly and twisted her fingers together.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘I either can’t talk about it at all, or I can’t stop talking about it. Once you start, you go on and on. It’s rather queer. I suppose he was in great pain. I suppose it was torture. As bad as the rack, or disembowelling. I’ve got a terror of physical pain. I’d recant anything first.’

  ‘Not,’ said Alleyn, ‘your political views?’

  ‘No,’ agreed Decima, ‘not those. I’d contrive to commit suicide or something. Perhaps it was not pain that made him cry like that and drum with his heels. Perhaps it was only reflex something. Nerves.’

  ‘I think,’ said Alleyn, ‘that your own nerves have had a pretty shrewd jolt.’

  ‘What do you know about nerves?’ demanded Decima with surprising venom. ‘Nerves! These things are a commonplace to you. Luke Watchman’s death-throes are so much data. You expect me to give you a neat statement about them. Describe in my own words the way he clenched his teeth and drew back his lips.’

  ‘No,’ said Alleyn. ‘I haven’t asked you about those things. I have asked you two questions of major importance. One was about your former relationship with Watchman and the other about the brandy you gave him before he died.’

  ‘I’ve answered you. If that’s all you want to know you’ve got it. I can’t stand any more of this. Let me—’

  The voice stopped as if someone had switched it off. She looked beyond Alleyn and Fox to the brow of the hillock. Her eyes were dilated.

  Alleyn turned. Norman Cubitt stood against the sky.

  ‘Norman!’ cried Decima.

  He said, ‘Wait a bit, Decima,’ and strode down towards her. He stood and looked at her and then lightly picked up her hands.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Cubitt.

  ‘I can’t stand it, Norman.’

  Without looking at Alleyn or Fox he said, ‘You don’t have to talk to these two precious experts if it bothers you. Tell ‘em to go to hell.’ And then he turned her round and, over her shoulder, grinned, not very pleasantly, at Alleyn.