Death at the Bar

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘On his conscience!’ said Abel angrily. ‘What the devil do you mean? Why doan’t ‘ee say straight out I’m a murderer?’

  ‘Because you’re not, Abel. Murder’s one thing and negligence is another. Manslaughter is the term for your crime. If proper care had been took, as I told the chief inspector—though, mind you, I’m not a chap to teach a man his own business—’

  ‘What sort of a chap did you say you wasn’t?’

  Miss Darragh intervened.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said, ‘we all must hope for the end of this terrible affair. Whether ‘twas accident, or whether ‘twas something else, it’s been a dreadful strain and an anxiety for us all.’

  ‘So it has then, Miss,’ agreed Abel. He looked at Legge who had turned his back and was engaged, with the assistance of a twisted handkerchief, on an unattractive exploration of his left ear. ‘Sooner they catch the murderer the happier all of us’ll be.’

  Parish caught Abel’s eyes and he too looked at Legge.

  ‘I can’t believe,’ said Parish, ‘that a crime like this can go unpunished. I shall not rest content until I know my cousin is avenged.’

  ‘Ah now, Mr Parish,’ said Miss Darragh, ‘you must not let this tragedy make the bitter man of you. Sure, you’re talking like the Count of Monte Cristo if ‘twas he was the character I call to mind.’

  ‘Do I sound bitter?’ asked Parish in his beautiful voice. ‘Perhaps I do. Perhaps I am.’

  A shadow of something that might have been a twinkle flitted across Miss Darragh’s face.

  ‘A little too bitter,’ she said, and it was impossible to tell whether or not she spoke ironically.

  On the floor above them there was a sudden commotion. A man’s voice spoke urgently. They heard a scuffle of feet and then someone ran along the upstairs passage.

  ‘What’s wrong with the sleuths?’ asked Parish.

  No one answered. Miss Darragh took up her knitting. Mr Nark picked his teeth. Parish finished his beer.

  ‘We all want to see the man caught,’ said Legge suddenly. He spoke in his usual querulous, muffled voice. He looked ill and he seemed extremely nervous. Miss Darragh glanced at him and said soothingly:

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Their behaviour,’ said Legge, ‘is abominable. Abominable! I intend writing a letter to the Commissioner of Scotland Yard. It is disgraceful.’

  Parish planted his feet apart, put his head on one side, and looked at Legge with the expression he used in films of the Bulldog Drummond type. His voice drawled slightly.

  ‘Feelin’ nervous, Legge?’ he asked. ‘Now isn’t that a pity.’

  ‘Nervous! I am not nervous, Mr Parish. What do you mean by—’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said old Abel.

  There was a brief silence broken by an urgent clatter of footsteps on the stairs.

  The door into the private tap swung open. Alleyn stood on the threshold. When Miss Darragh saw his face she uttered a sharp cry that was echoed, oddly, by Parish.

  Alleyn said:

  ‘Nobody is to move from this room. Understand? What’s Dr Shaw’s telephone number?’

  Abel said, ‘Illington 579, sir.’

  Alleyn kicked the door wide open and moved to the wall telephone just outside. He dialled a number and came into the doorway with the receiver at his ear.

  ‘You understand,’ he said, ‘none of you is to move. Where’s Cubitt?’

  ‘He’s gone out,’ said Parish. ‘What’s the matter, Mr Alleyn, for God’s sake.’

  Alleyn was speaking into the receiver.

  ‘Dr Shaw? At once, please, it’s the police.’ He eyed them all as he waited.

  ‘There has been an accident,’ he said. ‘Where’s that decanter of sherry?’

  ‘Here, sir,’ said Abel.

  ‘Take it by the end of the neck, lock it in the cupboard behind you, and bring the key to me. That you, Shaw? Alleyn. Come at once. Same trouble as last time. I’ve given an emetic. It’s worked, but he’s half-collapsed. I’ll do artificial respiration. For God’s sake be quick.’

  He clicked the receiver and took the key Abel brought him. He dialled another number and spoke to Abel as he dialled it.

  ‘Lock the shutters and all the doors. Both bars. Bring the keys here. Illington Police Station? Oates? Inspector Alleyn. I want Mr Harper and yourself at once at the Plume of Feathers. Jump to it.’

  He hung up the receiver. Abel was clattering round the public bar. Alleyn slammed the shutters in the private bar.

  ‘If any one opens these shutters or tries to leave this room,’ he said, ‘there will be an arrest on a charge of attempted murder. Bring those others through here.’

  ‘But, look here—’ said Parish.

  ‘Quiet!’ said Alleyn and was obeyed. Abel shepherded a couple of astonished fishermen into the private bar. Will Pomeroy followed. Abel slammed down the bar shutter and locked it. He came to Alleyn and gave him the keys. Alleyn pushed him outside, slammed the door and locked it.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘come up here.’

  He ran up the stairs, taking three at a stride. Abel followed, panting. The door of Alleyn’s room was open. Fox sat on the bed with the wash-hand basin at his feet. His face was curiously strained and anxious. When he saw Alleyn he tried to speak, but something had gone wrong with his mouth. He kept shutting his jaw with a sharp involuntary movement and his voice was thick. He jerked his hand at the bowl.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Alleyn. ‘Can you do yet another heave, old thing?’

  Fox jerked his head sideways and suddenly pitched forward. Alleyn caught him. ‘Move that basin,’ he ordered. ‘I want to get him on the floor.’

  Abel moved the basin and together he and Alleyn lowered Fox. Alleyn had wrenched open Fox’s collar and tie. He now loosened his clothes. Somewhere in the background of his conscious thoughts was an impression that it was strange to be doing these things to Fox whom he knew so well. He began the movements of resuscitation, working hard and rhythmically. Abel quietly cleared an area round Fox.

  ‘When you’m tiring, sir,’ said Abel, ‘I’ll take a turn.’

  But Alleyn scarcely knew he had a body of his own. His body and breath, precariously and dubiously, belonged to Fox. His thoughts were visited by hurrying pictures. He saw a figure that shoved and sweated and set the wheels of a great vehicle in motion. A figure turned and turned again at a crank handle. He was aware, at moments most vividly, of his own glass of untouched sherry on the dressing-table. Fox’s arms were heavy and stiff. Presently his eyes opened. The pupils had widened almost to the rim of the iris, the eyes had no expression. Alleyn’s own eyes were half-blinded with sweat. Suddenly the body on the floor heaved.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Abel, stooping to the basin, ‘he’m going to vomit again.’

  Alleyn turned Fox on his side. Fox neatly and prolifically made use of the basin.

  ‘Brandy,’ said Alleyn. ‘In a bag in the wardrobe.’

  He watched Abel fetch the flask. Alleyn unscrewed the top, smelt at the contents, and took a mouthful. He squatted on his haunches with the brandy in his mouth. The brandy was all right. He swallowed it, poured some into the cap of the flask, and gave it to Fox.

  Downstairs the telephone was pealing.

  ‘Go and answer it,’ said Alleyn.

  Abel went out.

  ‘Fox,’ said Alleyn. ‘Fox, my dear old thing.’

  Fox’s lips moved. Alleyn took his handkerchief and wiped that large

  face carefully.

  ‘Very inconvenient,’ said a voice inside Fox. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You b—old b—,’ said Alleyn softly.

  CHAPTER 18

  Mr Legge Commits a Misdemeanour

  ‘I’m better,’ said Fox presently. ‘I’d like to sit up.’

  Alleyn propped him against the bed.

  A car pulled outside and in a moment Alleyn heard a clatter of steps and the sound of voices. Abel came in.

  ‘Yurr be doctor,’ Abel said
, ‘and Nick Harper with police. And colonel’s on telephone roaring like proper grampus.’

  ‘O Lord!’ Alleyn ejaculated. ‘Abel, tell him what’s happened. He’ll probably want to come over here. Apologize for me. Where’s the doctor?’

  ‘Here,’ said Dr Shaw, and walked in. ‘What’s the trouble? Hallo!’

  He went to Fox.

  ‘I’m better, doctor,’ said Fox. ‘I’ve vomited.’

  Dr Shaw took his pulse, looked at his eyes, and nodded.

  ‘You’ll do,’ he said, ‘but we’ll make a job of it. Come into the bathroom. You’d better keep that matter in the basin, Alleyn.’

  He opened his bag, took out a tube, and jerked his head at Fox.

  ‘Here!’ said Fox resentfully, eyeing the tube.

  ‘How did it happen?’ asked Dr Shaw.

  Harper came in.

  ‘I’ve left Oates and another man downstairs,’ said Harper. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Fox drank a glass of sherry,’ said Alleyn. ‘There’s the glass. We’ll detain all the crowd downstairs. You too, Mr Pomeroy. Go down and join them.’

  ‘Move along, Abel,’ said Harper.

  ‘I yurrd, I yurrd,’ grunted Abel irritably, and went out.

  ‘You’d better go down with them, Nick,’ said Alleyn. ‘Tell Oates to watch our man like a lynx. Abel will show you a decanter. Bring it up here. Here’s the key. Use my gloves. You’d better search them. You won’t find anything but you’d better do it. Leave Miss Darragh for the moment.’

  Harper went out.

  ‘Did you take any sherry, Alleyn?’ asked Dr Shaw sharply.

  ‘I? No.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Perfectly. Why?’

  ‘You look a bit dicky.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Mr Alleyn has just saved my life for me,’ whispered Fox.

  ‘You come along,’ said Dr Shaw, and led him out.

  Alleyn took an envelope from his pocket and put it over the glass from which Fox had drunk. He weighted the envelope with the saucer from his wash-hand stand. He got his bag and took out an empty bottle and a funnel. He smelt the sherry in his own glass and then poured it into the bottle, stoppered it, and wrote on the label. He was annoyed to find that his hands shook. His heart thumped intolerably. He grimaced and took another mouthful of brandy.

  Harper came back.

  ‘Oates and my other chap are searching them,’ said Harper. ‘They made no objections.’

  ‘They wouldn’t. Sit down, Nick,’ said Alleyn, ‘and listen. Put Fox’s sick out of the way first, for the Lord’s sake. Give it to Shaw. I’ve got palsy or something.’

  Harper performed this office and sat down.

  ‘Yesterday evening,’ said Alleyn, ‘Abel Pomeroy opened a bottle of a very sound sherry. Fox and I had a glass each. At a quarter to one today Abel decanted the sherry. He, Fox and I had a glass each after it was decanted. George Nark was in the bar. Later on, Miss Darragh, Legge, Parish, Cubitt, and Will Pomeroy came in and we talked about the sherry. They all knew it was for our private use. Some forty minutes ago, Abel poured out two glasses. Fox drank his and within half a minute he was taken very ill. The symptoms were those of cyanide poisoning. I’ll swear Abel didn’t put anything in the glasses. There’s Fox’s glass. We’ll do our stuff with what’s left. I’ve covered it but we’d better get the dregs into an airtight bottle. You’ll find one in my bag there. There’s a funnel on the dressing-table. D’you mind doing it? Clean the funnel out first. I used it for the stuff in my glass.’

  Harper did this.

  ‘It’s a bad blunder,’ he said. ‘What good would it do him? Suppose you’d both been killed? I mean, it’s foolish. Is it panic or spite or both?’

  ‘Neither, I imagine. I see it as a last attempt to bolster up the accident theory. The idea is that in the same mysterious way as cyanide got on the dart so it got into the decanter. The decanter, you see, was brought out from the corner cupboard. Mrs Ives had washed it in about two dozen changes of boiling water. I don’t think anybody but Nark and Abel were aware of this. We were no doubt supposed to think the decanter was tainted by being in the cupboard.’

  Superintendent Harper uttered a vulgar and incredulous word.

  ‘I know,’ agreed Alleyn. ‘Of course it was. But if Fox and (or) I had popped off, you’d have had a devil of a job proving it was murder. Oh, it’s a blunder, all right. It shows us two things. The murderer must have kept a bit of cyanide up his sleeve and he must have visited the private bar after Abel decanted the sherry at a quarter to one this afternoon. We will now search their rooms. We won’t find anything, but we’d better do it. I’ll just see how Fox is getting on.’

  Fox, white and shaken, was sitting on the edge of the bath. Dr Shaw was washing his hands.

  ‘He’ll do all right now,’ said Dr Shaw. ‘Better go to bed and take it easy.’

  ‘I’m damned if I do,’ said Fox. ‘Excuse me, sir, but I’m damned if I do.’

  Alleyn took him by the elbow.

  ‘Blast your eyes,’ he said, ‘you’ll do as you’re told. Come on.’

  Fox consented with a bad grace to lying on his bed. Alleyn and Harper searched the rooms.

  II

  At first Harper said that the rooms, in all essentials, were as he had found them on the day after Watchman’s death. In Cubitt’s they found an overwhelming smell of studio and the painting gear that had engendered it. There were bottles of turpentine and oil, half-finished works, Cubitt’s paint-box, and boxes of unopened tubes. Alleyn smelt the bottles and shook his head.

  ‘We needn’t take them,’ he said, ‘their stink is a lawful stink. You can’t put turpentine or oil into vintage sherry and get away with it.’

  ‘What about prussic acid? It smells strong enough.’

  ‘Of almonds. A nutty flavour. Do you remember the account of the murder of Rasputin?’

  ‘Can’t say I do,’ said Harper.

  ‘Youssoupoff put cyanide in the wine. Rasputin drank several glasses, apparently with impunity.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘The theory is that the sugar in the wine took the punch out of the poison. That may account for Fox’s escape. No doubt the sherry had a fine old nutty aroma. By God, I’ll get this expert.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘For anything that could have held the stuff he put in the decanter. Oh, he’ll have got rid of it somehow, of course. But you never know.’

  They went into the bathroom. In a cupboard above the hand-basin they found Abel’s second first-aid outfit. Alleyn asked Harper if there had been a bottle of iodine there on the day after the murder. Harper said no. He had checked the contents of the cupboard. They separated and took the rest of the rooms between them, Alleyn going to Legge’s and Parish’s, Harper to the others. Alleyn took a small empty bottle from Parish’s room. It had held pills and smelt of nothing at all. On Legge’s dressing-table he found a phial half-full of a thick pinkish fluid that smelt of antiseptic. Mr Legge’s ear lotion. He kept it and searched all the drawers and pockets but found nothing else of interest. Abel’s room was neat and spotless, Will’s untidy and full of books. The wearisome and exacting business went on. Down below, in the private bar, Oates and his mate kept company with the patrons of the Plume of Feathers. They were very quiet. Occasionally Alleyn heard the voices of Parish and of Mr Nark. Ottercombe clock struck ten, sweetly and slowly. There was a moment of complete quiet broken by a violent eruption of noise down in the bar. Alleyn and Harper met in the passage.

  ‘Somebody cutting up rough,’ said Harper.

  A falsetto voice screamed out an oath. A table was overturned and there followed a great clatter of boots. Harper ran downstairs and Alleyn followed. Inside the private bar they found Legge, mouthing and gibbering, between Oates and a second uniformed constable.

  ‘What’s all this?’ asked Harper.

  ‘Misdemeanour, sir,’ said Oates whose nose was bleeding freely. ‘Assault and
battery.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is,’ screamed Legge. ‘I can’t stand any more of this—’

  ‘Shut up, you silly chap,’ admonished Oates. ‘He tried to make a breakaway, sir. Sitting there as quiet as you please, and all of a sudden makes a blind rush for the door and when we intercepts him he wades in and assaults and batters the pair of us. Won’t give over, sir. You’re under arrest, Robert Legge, and it is my duty to warn you that you needn’t say anything, but what you do say may be used in evidence. Stop that.’

  ‘Persecuted,’ whispered Legge. ‘Persecuted, spied upon, driven and badgered and maddened. I know what it means. Let me go. Damn you, let me go!’

  He kicked Oates on the shin. Oates swore and twisted Legge’s arm behind his back. Legge screamed and went limp.

  ‘You’ll have to be locked up,’ said Harper sadly. ‘Now, are you going to behave or have we got to put the bracelets on you? Be a sensible chap.’

  ‘I’ll resist,’ said Legge, ‘till you kill me.’

  ‘Oh, take him away,’ said Harper. ‘Put him in a room, upstairs, both of you.’

  Legge, struggling and gasping horridly, was taken out.

  ‘Ah, it’s at his wits’ end he is, poor wretch,’ said Miss Darragh.

  Cubitt said, ‘Look here, this is ghastly. If he’s not guilty why the hell—?’

  Parish said, ‘Not guilty! I must say that for an innocent man his behaviour is pretty fantastic’

  Will Pomeroy crossed the room and confronted Alleyn and Harper.

  ‘Why’s he arrested?’ demanded Will.

  ‘Assaulting a constable and interfering with the police in the execution of their duty,’ said Harper.

  ‘My God, he was drove to it! If this is justice the sooner there’s a revolution in the country the better. It’s enough to send the man mad, the way you’ve been pestering him. Haven’t you the sense to see the state he’s got into? Damme if I’m not nigh-ready to take on the lot of you myself. Let that man go.’

  ‘That’ll do, Will,’ said Harper.

  ‘“That’ll do!” The official answer for every blasted blunder in the force. Bob Legge’s my comrade—’