Singing in the Shrouds

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Ah?’ Mr Merryman ejaculated pointing at him as if he’d held his hand up. ‘Explain yourself. Filmed? Recorded?’

  ‘Yes. But, of course I may be—’

  But Mr Merryman pounced gleefully on Aubyn Dale. ‘What do you say, sir? Was the session recorded?’

  Dale collected everybody else’s attention as if he invited them to enjoy Mr Merryman with him. He opened his arms and enlarged his smile and he patted Mr McAngus on the head.

  ‘Clever boy,’ he said. ‘And I thought I’d got away with it. I couldn’t resist pulling your leg, Mr Merryman: you will forgive me won’t you?’

  Mr Merryman did not reply. He merely stared very fixedly at Aubyn Dale and, as Jemima muttered to Tim, may have been restraining himself from saying he would see him in his study after prep.

  Dale added to this impression by saying with uneasy boyishness, ‘I swear, by the way, I was just about to come clean. Naturally.’

  ‘Then,’ Alleyn said, ‘it was not a live transmission?’

  ‘Not that one. Usually is but I was meant to be on my way to the States so we filmed it.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Mr Merryman said. ‘And were you on your way to the United States, sir?’

  ‘Actually, no. One of those things. There was a nonsense made over dates. I flew three days later. Damn’ nuisance. It meant I didn’t get back till the day before we sailed.’

  ‘And your alibi?’ Mr Merryman continued ominously.

  ‘Well—ah—well—don’t look at me, padre. I spent the evening with my popsey. Don’t ask me to elaborate, will you? No names, no pack-drill.’

  ‘And no alibi,’ said Mr Merryman neatly.

  There was a moment’s uneasy suspense during which nobody looked at anybody else and then Mr McAngus unexpectedly surfaced. ‘I remember it all quite perfectly,’ he announced. ‘It was the evening before my first hint of trouble and I did watch television!’

  ‘Programme?’ Mr Merryman snapped. Mr McAngus smiled timidly at Aubyn Dale. ‘Oh,’ he tittered, ‘I’m no end of a fan, you know.’

  It turned out that he had, in fact, watched ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’. When asked if he could remember it, he said at once: ‘Very clearly.’ Alleyn saw Miss Abbott close her eyes momentarily as if she felt giddy. ‘There was a lady,’ Mr McAngus continued, ‘asking, I recollect, whether she ought to get married.’

  ‘There almost always is,’ Dale groaned and made a face of comic despair.

  ‘But this was very complicated because, poor thing, she felt she would be deserting her great friend and her great friend didn’t know about it and would be dreadfully upset. There!’ Mr McAngus cried. ‘I’ve remembered! If only one could be sure which evening. The twenty-fifth, I ask myself? I mean the fifteenth, of course.’

  Dale said: ‘I couldn’t tell you which programme but, ah, poor darling: I remember her. I think I helped her. I hope I did!’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Captain Bannerman suggested, ‘Miss Abbott remembers now you’ve mentioned it. That’d fix your alibi for you.’

  ‘Do you, Miss Abbott?’ Mr McAngus asked anxiously.

  Everybody looked at Miss Abbott and it was at once apparent to everybody but Mr McAngus that she was greatly upset. Her lips trembled. She covered them with her hand in a rather dreadful parody of cogitation. She shook her head and her eyes overflowed.

  ‘No?’ Mr McAngus said wistfully oblivious and shortsightedly, blinking, ‘Do try, Miss Abbott. She was a dark, rather heavy lady. I mean, of course, that was the impression one had. Because one doesn’t see the face and the back of the head is rather out of focus, isn’t it, Mr Dale? But she kept saying (and I think they must distort the voice a little, too) that she knew her friend would be dreadfully hurt because apart from herself, she had so few to care for her.’ He made a little bob at Aubyn Dale. ‘You were wonderful,’ he said, ‘so tactful. About loneliness. I’m sure, if you saw it, Miss Abbott, you must remember. Mr Dale made such practical and helpful suggestions. I don’t remember exactly what they were but—’

  Miss Abbott rounded on him and cried out with shocking violence, ‘For God’s sake stop talking. “Helpful suggestions”! What “suggestions” can help in that kind of hell!’ She looked round at them all with an expression of evident despair. ‘For some of us,’ she said, ‘there’s no escape. We are our own slaves. No escape or release.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Mr Merryman said sharply. ‘There is always an escape and a release. It is a matter of courage and resolution.’

  Miss Abbott gave a harsh sob. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I’m not myself. I shouldn’t have had so much champagne.’ She turned away.

  Father Jourdain said quickly: ‘You know, Mr McAngus, I’m afraid you haven’t quite convinced us.’

  ‘And that’s the last alibi gone overboard,’ said the Captain. ‘Mr Merryman wins.’

  He made a great business of handing over his five shillings. Alleyn, Tim Makepiece and Aubyn Dale followed suit.

  They all began to talk at once and with the exception of the Cuddys avoided looking at Miss Abbott. Jemima moved in front of her and screened her from the others. It was tactfully done and Alleyn was confirmed in his view that Jemima was a nice child. Mrs Dillington-Blick joined her and automatically a group assembled round Mrs Dillington-Blick. So between Miss Abbott and the rest of the world there was a barrier behind which she trumpeted privately into her handkerchief.

  Presently she got up, now mistress of herself, thanked Alleyn for his party and left it.

  The Cuddys came forward, clearly agog, eager, by allusion and then by direct reference, to speculate upon Miss Abbott’s distress. Nobody supported them. Mr McAngus merely looked bewildered. Tim talked to Jemima and Captain Bannerman and Aubyn Dale talked to Mrs Dillington-Blick. Mr Merryman looked once at the Cuddys over his spectacles, rumpled his hair and said something about ‘Hoc morbido cupiditatis’ in a loud voice to Alleyn and Father Jourdain. Alleyn was suddenly visited by an emotion that is unorthodox in an investigating officer: he felt a liking and warmth for these people. He respected them because they refused to gossip with the Cuddys about Miss Abbott’s unhappiness and because they had behaved with decency and compassion when she broke down. He saw Jemima and Mrs Dillington-Blick speak together and then slip out of the room and he knew they had gone to see if they could help Miss Abbott. He was very much troubled.

  Father Jourdain came up to him and said: ‘Shall we move over here?’ He led Alleyn to the far end of the room.

  ‘That was unfortunate,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry about it.’

  ‘You couldn’t possibly know it would happen. She is a very unhappy woman. She exhales unhappiness.’

  ‘It was the reference to that damn’ spiritual striptease session of Dale’s,’ Alleyn said. ‘I suppose something in the programme had upset her.’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Father Jourdain smiled. ‘That’s a good description of it: a spiritual striptease. I suppose you’ll think I’m lugging in my cloth but you know I really do think it’s better to leave confession to the professional.’

  ‘Dale would call himself a professional.’

  ‘What he does,’ Father Jourdain said, with warmth, ‘is vulgar, dangerous and altogether odious. But he’s not a bad chap, of course. At least I don’t think so. Not a bad sort of chap, at all.’

  Alleyn said: ‘There’s something else you want to say to me, isn’t there?’

  ‘There is, but I hesitate to say it. I am not sure of myself. Will you laugh at me if I tell you that, by virtue of my training perhaps, and perhaps because of some instinct, I am peculiarly sensitive to—to spiritual atmospheres?’

  ‘I don’t know that I—’

  Father Jourdain interrupted him.

  ‘I mean that when I feel there is something really out-of-joint, spiritually—I use this word because I’m a priest, you know—with a group of people, I’m usually right.’

  ‘And do you feel it now?’

  ‘Very strongly. I suspect it’s a
sense of unexpressed misery,’ said Father Jourdain. ‘But I can’t hunt it home.’

  ‘Miss Abbott?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  ‘Even that,’ Alleyn said, ‘is not what you want to say.’

  ‘You’re very perceptive yourself,’ Father Jourdain looked steadily at him. ‘When the party breaks up, will you stay behind for a moment?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Father Jourdain said so softly that Alleyn could barely hear him, ‘You are Roderick Alleyn, aren’t you?’

  III

  The deserted lounge smelt of dead cigarettes and forgotten drinks. Alleyn opened the doors to the deck outside, the stars were careering in the sky: the ship’s mast swung against them and the night sea swept thudding and hissing past her flanks.

  ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,’ said Father Jourdain behind him.

  Alleyn shut the doors again and they sat down.

  ‘Let me assure you at once,’ Father Jourdain said, ‘that I shall respect your—I suppose anonymity is not the right word. Your incognito, shall we say?’

  ‘I’m not particularly bothered about the choice of words,’ Alleyn said drily.

  ‘Nor need you be bothered about my recognizing you. It’s by the oddest of coincidences. Your wife may be said to have effected the introduction.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I have never met her but I admire her painting. Some time ago I went to a one-man show of hers and was very much impressed by a small portrait. It too was anonymous, but a brother-priest, Father Copeland of Winton St Giles who knows you both, told me it was a portrait of her husband who was the celebrated Inspector Alleyn. I have a very long memory for faces and the likeness was striking. I felt sure I was not mistaken.’

  ‘Troy,’ Alleyn said, ‘will be enormously gratified.’

  ‘And then: that bet of Mr Merryman’s was organized, wasn’t it?’.

  ‘Lord, Lord! I do seem to have made an ass of myself.’

  ‘No, no. Not you. You were entirely convincing. It was the Captain.’

  ‘His air of spontaneity was rather massive, perhaps.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Father Jourdain leant forward and said: ‘Alleyn: why was that conversation about the Flower Murderer introduced?’

  Alleyn said: ‘For fun. Why else?’

  ‘So you are not going to tell me.’

  ‘At least,’ Alleyn said lightly, ‘I’ve got your alibi for January the fifteenth.’

  ‘You don’t trust me, of course.’

  ‘It doesn’t arise. As you have discovered, I am a policeman.’

  ‘I beg you to trust me. You won’t regret it. You can check my alibi, can’t you? And the other time: the other poor child who was going to church—when was that? The twenty-fifth. Why, on the twenty-fifth I was at a conference in Paris. You can prove it at once. No doubt you’re in touch with your colleagues. Of course you can.’

  ‘I expect it can be done.’

  ‘Then do it. I urge you to do it. If you are here for the fantastic reason I half-suspect, you will need someone you can trust.’

  ‘It never comes amiss.’

  ‘These women must not be left alone.’ Father Jourdain had arisen and was staring through the glass doors. ‘Look,’ he said.

  Mrs Dillington-Blick was taking a walk on deck. As she passed the lighted windows above the engine-rooms she paused. Her earrings and necklace twinkled, the crimson scarf she had wrapped about her head fluttered in the night breeze. A man emerged from the shadow of the centrecastle and walked towards her. He took her arm. They turned away and were lost to view. He was Aubyn Dale. ‘You see,’ Father Jourdain said. ‘If I’m right, that’s the sort of thing we mustn’t allow.’

  Alleyn said: ‘Today is the seventh of February. These crimes have occurred at ten-day intervals.’

  ‘But there have only been two.’

  ‘There was an attempt on January fifth. It was not publicized.’

  ‘Indeed! The fifth, the fifteenth and the twenty-fifth. Why then, ten days have already passed since the last crime. If you are right (and the interval after all may be a coincidence) the danger is acute.’

  ‘On the contrary, if there’s anything in the ten-day theory, Mrs Dillington-Blick at the moment is in no danger.’

  ‘But—’ Father Jourdain stared at him. ‘Do you mean there’s been another of these crimes? Since we sailed? Why then—?’

  ‘About half an hour before you sailed and about two hundred yards away from the ship. On the night of the fourth. He was punctual almost to the minute.’

  ‘Dear God!’ said Father Jourdain.

  ‘At the moment, of course, none of the passengers except the classic one, knows about this and unless anybody takes the trouble to cable the news to Las Palmas they won’t hear about it there.’

  ‘The fourteenth,’ Father Jourdain muttered. ‘You think we may be safe until the fourteenth.’

  ‘One simply hopes so. All the same: shall we take the air before we turn in? I think we might.’ Alleyn opened the doors. Father Jourdain moved towards them.

  ‘It occurs to me,’ he said, ‘that you may think me a busybody. It’s not that. It is, quite simply, that I have a nose for evil and a duty to prevent, if I can, the commission of sin. I am a spiritual policeman, in fact. You may feel that I’m talking professional nonsense.’

  ‘I respect the point of view,’ Alleyn said. For a moment they looked at each other. ‘And, sir, I am disposed to trust you.’

  ‘That, at least, is a step forward,’ said Father Jourdain. ‘Shall we leave it like that until you have checked my alibis?’

  ‘If you’re content to do so.’

  ‘I haven’t much choice,’ Father Jourdain observed. He added, after a moment, ‘and at any rate it does appear that we have an interval. Until February the fourteenth?’

  ‘Only if the time theory is correct. It may not be correct.’

  ‘I suppose—a psychiatrist—?’

  ‘Dr Makepiece, for instance. He’s one. I’m thinking of consulting him.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He had no alibi. He said so.’

  ‘They tell us,’ Alleyn said, ‘that the guilty man in a case of this sort never says he has no alibi. They say he always produces an alibi. Of some sort. Shall we go out?’

  They went out on deck. A light breeze still held but it was no longer cold. The ship, ploughing through the dark, throbbed with her own life and with small orderly noises and yet was compact of a larger quietude. As they moved along the starboard side of the welldeck a bell sounded in four groups of two.

  ‘Midnight,’ Alleyn said. Sailors passed them, quiet-footed. Mrs Dillington-Blick and Aubyn Dale appeared on the far side of the hatch, making for the passengers’ quarters. They called out good-night and disappeared.

  Father Jourdain peered at his watch. ‘And this afternoon we arrive at Las Palmas,’ he said.

  CHAPTER 6

  Broken Doll

  Las Palmas is known to tourists for its walkie-talkie dolls. They stare out of almost every shop-window, and sit in rows in the street bazaars near the wharves. They vary in size, cost and condition. Some have their garments cynically nailed to their bodies and others wear hand-sewn dresses of elaborate design. Some are bald under their bonnets, others have high Spanish wigs of real hair crowned with real lace mantillas. The most expensive of all are adorned with necklaces, bracelets and even rings and have masses of wonderful petticoats under their flowered and braided skirts. They can be as tall as a child or as short as a woman’s hand.

  Two things the dolls have in common. If you hold any one of them by the arm it may be induced to jerk its legs to and fro in a parody of walking and as it walks it also jerks its head from side to side and from within its body it ejaculates: ‘Ma-ma.’ They all squeak in the same way with voices that are shockingly like those of infants. Nearly everybody who goes to Las Palmas remembers either some little girl who would like
a walkie-talkie doll or, however misguidedly, some grown woman who might possibly be amused by one.

  The Company placed an open car at the disposal of Captain Bannerman and in it he put Mrs Dillington-Blick, looking like a piece of Turkish Delight. They drove about Las Palmas stopping at shops where the driver had a profitable understanding with the proprietor. Mrs Dillington-Blick bought herself a black lace near-mantilla with a good deal of metal in it, a comb to support it, some Portuguese jewellery and a fan. Captain Bannerman bought her a lot of artificial magnolias because they didn’t see any real ones. He felt proud because all the Las Palmanians obviously admired her very much indeed. They came to a shop where a wonderful dress was displayed, a full Spanish dress made of black lace and caught up to display a foam of petticoats, scarlet, underneath. The driver kissed his fingers over and over again and intimated that if Mrs Dillington-Blick were to put it on she would look like the Queen of Heaven. Mrs Dillington-Blick examined it with her head on one side.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘allowing for a little Latin exaggeration, I’m inclined to agree with him.’

  Tim Makepiece and Jemima came along the street and joined them. Jemima said: ‘Do try it on. You’d look absolutely marvellous. Do. For fun.’

  ‘Shall I? Come in with me, then. Make me keep my head.’

  The Captain said he would go to his agents’ offices where he had business to do and return in twenty minutes. Tim, who very much wanted to buy some roses for Jemima, also said he’d come back. Greatly excited, the two ladies entered the shop.

  The stifling afternoon wore into evening. Dusk was rapidly succeeded by night, palm trees rattled in an enervated breeze and at nine o’clock, by arrangement, Captain Bannerman and Mrs Dillington-Blick were to meet Aubyn Dale at the grandest hotel in Las Palmas for dinner.

  Mrs Dillington-Blick had been driven back to the ship where she changed into the wonderful Spanish dress which of course she had bought. She was excitedly assisted by Jemima: ‘What did I tell you?’ Jemima shouted triumphantly. ‘You ought to be sitting in a box looking at a play by Lope de Vega with smashing caballeros all round you. It’s a riot.’ Mrs Dillington-Blick, who had never heard of Lope de Vega, half-smiled, opened her eyes very wide, turned and turned again to watch the effect in her looking-glass and said: ‘Not bad. Really, it’s not bad,’ and pinned one of the Captain’s artificial magnolias in her decolletage. She gave Jemima the brilliant look of a woman who knows she is successful.