Singing in the Shrouds

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  Alleyn said: ‘It will become quite apparent before we’ve gone very much further who it is. The victim was found a few minutes ago by Mr Cuddy. I am going to take statements from most of you. I’m sorry I can’t confine the whole business to the men only and I hope to do so before long. Possibly it’s less distressing for the ladies, who are obviously not under suspicion, to hear the preliminary examination than it would be for them to be kept completely in the dark.’

  He glanced at Jemima, white and quiet, sitting by Tim and looking very young in a cotton dressing-gown and with her hair tied back. Tim had fetched her from her cabin. He had said: ‘Jem: Something rather bad has happened to somebody in the ship. It’s going to shock you, my dear.’

  She had answered: ‘You’re using the doctor’s voice that means somebody has died.’ And after looking into his face for a moment, ‘Tim—? Tim, can it be the thing I’ve been afraid of? Is it that?’

  He told her that it was and that he was not able just then to say anything more. ‘I’ve promised not,’ he had said. ‘But don’t be frightened. It’s not as bad as you’ll think at first. You’ll know all about it in a few minutes and—I’m here, Jem.’

  So he had taken her to join the others and she sat beside him, watching and listening to Alleyn.

  He turned to her now. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘Miss Carmichael will tell me at once when she went to her cabin.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘It was just after you left. I went straight to bed.’

  ‘I saw her to her door,’ Tim said, ‘and heard her lock it. It was still locked when I returned just now.’

  ‘Did you hear or see anything that seemed out of the way?’ Alleyn asked her.

  ‘I heard—I heard voices in here and—somebody laughed and then screamed, and there were other voices shouting. Nothing else.’

  ‘Would you like to go back to your cabin now? You may if you’d rather.’

  She looked at Tim. ‘I think I’d rather be here.’

  ‘Then stay. Miss Abbott, I remember that you came in here from outside, on your way to your cabin. Where had you been?’

  ‘I walked once round the deck,’ she said, ‘and then I leant over the rails on the, I think, starboard side. Then I came in for a few minutes.’

  ‘Did you meet or see or hear anyone?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Was there anything at all, however slight, that you noticed?’

  ‘I think not. Except—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When I’d passed the verandah and turned, I thought I smelt cigarette smoke. Turkish. But there was nobody about.’

  ‘Thank you. When you left here I think Father Jourdain walked to your door with you?’

  ‘Yes. He saw me go in, I suppose. Didn’t you, Father?’

  ‘I did,’ said Father Jourdain. ‘And I heard you lock it. It’s the same story, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes, and I’d rather stay here, too,’ said Miss Abbott.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Father Jourdain asked. ‘It’s not going to be very pleasant, you know. I can’t help feeling, Alleyn, that the ladies—’

  ‘It would be much less pleasant for the ladies,’ Miss Abbott said grimly, ‘to swelter in their cabins in a state of terrified ignorance.’ Alleyn gave her an appreciative look.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Now, Mrs Cuddy, if you please. Your cabin faces forward and to the starboard side and is next to Mr McAngus’s. You and your husband went to it together. Is that right?’ Mrs Cuddy who, unlike her husband, never smiled, turned her customary fixed stare upon Alleyn. ‘I don’t see that it matters,’ she said, ‘but I retired with Mr Cuddy, didn’t I, dear?’

  ‘That’s right, dear.’

  ‘And went to bed?’

  ‘I did,’ she said in an affronted voice.

  ‘But your husband evidently did not go to bed?’

  Mrs Cuddy said after a pause and with some constraint: ‘He fancied a dip.’

  ‘That’s right. I fancied it. The prickly heat was troubling me.’

  ‘I told you,’ Mrs Cuddy said without looking at him, ‘it’s unwholesome in the night air and now see what’s happened. Fainting. I wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t caught an internal chill and with the trouble you’ve been having—’

  Alleyn said: ‘So you changed into bathing trunks?’

  ‘I don’t usually go in fully dressed,’ Mr Cuddy rejoined. His wife laughed shortly and they both looked triumphant.

  ‘Which way did you go to the pool?’

  ‘Downstairs, from here, and along the lower deck.’

  ‘On the starboard side?’

  ‘I don’t know what they call it,’ Mr Cuddy said contemptuously. ‘Same side as our cabin.’

  ‘Did you see anything of Miss Abbott?’

  ‘I did not,’ Mr Cuddy said and managed to suggest that there might be something fishy about it.

  Miss Abbott raised her hand.

  ‘Yes, Miss Abbott?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I do remember now that I noticed someone was in the pool. That was when I walked round the deck. It’s a good way off and down below: I didn’t see who it was. I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Never mind. Mr Cuddy, did you go straight into the pool?’

  ‘It’s what I was there for, isn’t it?’

  ‘You must have come out almost at once.’

  There was a long pause. Mr Cuddy said: ‘That’s right. Just a cooler and out.’

  ‘Please tell me exactly what happened next.’

  He ran the tip of his tongue round his lips. ‘I want to know where I stand. I’ve had a shock. I don’t want to go letting myself in for unpleasantness.’

  ‘Mr Cuddy’s very sensitive.’

  ‘There’s been things said here that I don’t fancy. I know what the police are like. I’m not going to talk regardless. Pretending you was a cousin of the Company’s!’

  Alleyn said: ‘Did you commit this crime?’

  ‘There you are! Asking me a thing like that.’

  Mrs Cuddy said: ‘The idea!’

  ‘Because if you didn’t you’ll do well to speak frankly and truthfully.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to conceal.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ Alleyn said patiently, ‘don’t behave as if you had. You found the body. After a fashion you reported your discovery. Now, I want the details. I suppose you’ve heard of the usual warning. If I was thinking of charging you I’d be obliged to give it.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, man,’ Captain Bannerman suddenly roared out. ‘Behave yourself and speak up.’

  ‘I’m ill. I’ve had a shock.’

  ‘My dear Cuddy,’ Father Jourdain said, ‘I’m sure we all realize that you’ve had a shock. Why not get your story over and free yourself of responsibility?’

  ‘That’s right, dear. Tell them and get it over. It’s all they deserve,’ said Mrs Cuddy mysteriously.

  ‘Come along,’ Alleyn said. ‘You left the pool and you started back. Presumably you didn’t return by the lower deck but by one of the two companion-ladders up to this deck. Which one?’

  ‘Left hand.’

  ‘Port side,’ the Captain muttered irritably.

  ‘That would bring you to within a few feet of the verandah and a little to one side of it. Now, Mr Cuddy, do go on like a sensible man and tell me what followed.’

  But Mr Cuddy was reluctant and evasive. He reiterated that he had had a shock, wasn’t sure if he could exactly recall the sequence of events and knew better than to let himself in for a grilling. His was the sort of behaviour that is a commonplace in the experience of any investigating officer but in this instance, Alleyn was persuaded, it arose from a specific cause. He thought that Mr Cuddy hedged, not because he mistrusted the police on general grounds but because there was something he urgently wished to conceal. It became increasingly obvious that Mrs Cuddy, too, was prickly with misgivings.

  ‘All right,’ Alleyn said. ‘You are on the ladder
. You climb up it and your head is above the level of the upper deck. To your right, quite close and facing you, is the verandah. Can you see into the verandah?’

  Mr Cuddy shook his head.

  ‘Not at all?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It was in darkness? Right, you stay there for some time. Long enough to leave quite a large wet patch on the steps. It was still there some minutes later when I looked at them. I think you actually may have sat down on a higher step which would bring your head below the level of the upper deck. Did you do this?’

  A strange and unlovely look had crept into Mr Cuddy’s face, a look at once furtive and—the word flashed up in Alleyn’s thoughts—salacious.

  ‘I do hope,’ Alleyn went on, ‘that you will tell me if this is in fact what happened. Surely there can be no reason why you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Go on, Fred,’ Mrs Cuddy urged. ‘They’ll only get thinking things.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Alleyn agreed and she looked furious.

  ‘All right, then,’ Mr Cuddy said angrily. ‘I did. Now!’

  ‘Why? Was it because of something you saw? No? Or heard?’

  ‘Heard’s more like it,’ he said and actually, after a fashion, began to smile again.

  ‘Voices?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What the hell,’ Captain Bannerman broke out, ‘do you mean, sort of! You heard someone talking or you didn’t.’

  ‘Not to say talking.’

  ‘Well, what were they doing. Singing?’ Captain Bannerman demanded and then looked horrified.

  ‘That,’ said Mr Cuddy, ‘came later.’

  There was a deadly little silence.

  Alleyn said: ‘The first time was it one voice? Or two?’

  ‘Sounded to me like one. Sounded to me—’ He looked sidelong at his wife, ‘like hers. You know. Mrs Blick.’ He squeezed his hands together and added: ‘I thought at the time it was, well—just a bit of fun.’

  Mrs Cuddy said: ‘Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.’

  ‘Steady, Ethel.’

  Father Jourdain made a small sound of distress. Jemima thought: ‘This is the worst thing yet,’ and couldn’t look at the Cuddys. But Miss Abbott watched them with hatred and Mr McAngus, who had not uttered a word since he was summoned, murmured: ‘Must we! Oh, must we!’

  ‘I so agree,’ Aubyn Dale began with an alcoholic travesty of his noblest manner. ‘Indeed, indeed must we?’

  Alleyn lifted a hand and said, ‘The answer, I’m afraid, is that indeed, indeed, we must. Without interruption, if possible.’ He waited for a moment and then turned again to Cuddy. ‘So you sat on the steps and listened. For how long?’

  ‘I don’t know how long. Until I heard the other thing.’

  ‘The singing?’

  He nodded. ‘It sort of faded out. In the distance. So I knew he’d gone.’

  ‘Did you form any idea,’ Alleyn asked him, ‘who it was?’

  They had all sat quietly enough until now. But at this moment, as if all their small unnoticeable movements had been disciplined under some imperative stricture, an excessive stillness fell upon them.

  Mr Cuddy said loudly: ‘Yes. I did.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, it was what he was singing. You know. The chune,’ said Mr Cuddy.

  ‘What was it?’

  He turned his head and looked at Aubyn Dale. Like automata the others repeated this movement. Dale got slowly to his feet.

  ‘You couldn’t fail to pick it. It’s an old favourite. “Pack Up Your Troubles”. After all,’ Cuddy said grinning mirthlessly at Aubyn Dale, ‘it is your theme song, Mr Dale, isn’t it?’

  II

  There was no outcry from any of the onlookers: not even from Aubyn Dale himself. He merely stared at Cuddy as if at some unidentifiable monster. He then turned slowly, looked at Alleyn and wetted his lips.

  ‘You can’t pay any attention to this,’ he said with difficulty, running his words together. ‘It’s pure fantasy. I went to my cabin—didn’t go out on deck.’ He passed his hand across his eyes. ‘I don’t know that I can prove it. I—can’t think of anything. But it’s true, all the same. Must be some way of proving it. Because it’s true.’

  Alleyn said: ‘Shall we tackle that one a bit later? Mr Cuddy hasn’t finished his statement. I should like to know, Mr Cuddy, what you did next. At once, without evasions, if you please. What did you do?’ Cuddy gave his wife one of his sidelong glances, and then slid his gaze over to Alleyn. ‘I haven’t got anything to conceal,’ he said. ‘I went up and I thought—I mean it seemed kind of quiet. I mean—you don’t want to get fanciful, Eth—I got the idea I’d see if she was OK. So I—so I went into that place and she didn’t move. So I put out my hand in the dark. And she didn’t move and I touched her hand. She had gloves on. When I touched it, it sort of slid sideways like it wasn’t anything belonging to anybody and I heard it thump on the deck. And I thought she’s fainted. So, in the dark, I felt around and I touched her face and—and—then I knew and—Gawd, Eth, it was ghastly!’

  ‘Never mind, Fred.’

  ‘I don’t know what I did. I got out of it. I suppose I ran round the side. I wasn’t myself. Next thing I knew I was in the doorway there and—well, I come over faint and I passed out. That’s all. I never did anything else, I swear I didn’t. Gawd’s my judge, I didn’t.’

  Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him for a moment and said: ‘That, then, is an account of the discovery by the man who made it. So far, of course, there’s no way of checking, but in the meantime we shall use it as a working hypothesis. Now. Mr McAngus.’

  Mr McAngus sat in a corner. The skirts of his dressing-gown, an unsuitably heavy one, were pulled tight over his legs and clenched between his knees. His arms were crossed over his chest and his hands buried in his armpits. He seemed to be trying to protect himself from anything anybody might feel inclined to say to him. He gazed dolorously at Alleyn as the likeliest source of assault.

  ‘Mr McAngus,’ Alleyn began, ‘when did you leave this room?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You were still here when I left. That was after Mrs Dillington-Blick had gone. Did you leave before or after Mr and Mrs Cuddy?’ He added: ‘I would rather Mr McAngus was not prompted.’ Several of Mr McAngus’s fellow passengers who had opened their mouths, shut them again.

  Mr McAngus did not embark on his usual round of periphrases. He blinked twice at Alleyn and said: ‘I am too upset to remember. If I tried I should only muddle myself and you. A dreadful tragedy has happened: I cannot begin to think of anything else.’

  Alleyn, his hands in his coat pockets, said drily: ‘Perhaps, after all, a little help is called for. May we go back to a complaint you made to Captain Bannerman before you went to bed. You said, I think, that somebody had been taking the hyacinths that Mrs Dillington-Blick gave you.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Two. I noticed the second had gone this morning. I was very much distressed. And now—of course—even more so.’

  ‘The hyacinths are growing, aren’t they, in a basket which I think is underneath your porthole?’

  ‘I keep them there for the fresh air.’

  ‘Have you any idea who was responsible?’

  Mr McAngus drew down his upper lip. ‘I am very much averse,’ he said, ‘to making unwarranted accusations but I confess I have wondered about the steward. He is always admiring them. Or, then again he might have knocked one off by accident. But he denies it, you see. He denies it.’

  ‘What colour was it?’

  ‘White, a handsome spike. I believe the name is Virgin Queen.’

  Alleyn withdrew his hand from his pocket, extended and opened it. His handkerchief was folded about an irregular object. He laid it on the table and opened it. A white hyacinth, scarcely wilted, was disclosed.

  Mr McAngus gave a stifled cry, Jemima felt Tim’s hand close on hers. She saw again in an instantaneous muddle, the mangled doll, the paragraphs in the newspapers and the basket
of hyacinths that Dennis had brought in on—their first morning at sea. She heard Miss Abbott say: ‘I beg you not to speak, Mrs Cuddy,’ and Mrs Cuddy’s inevitable cry of: ‘Hyacinths! Fred!’ And then she saw Mr McAngus rise, holding his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Is that it?’ Alleyn asked.

  Mr McAngus moved slowly to the table and stopped.

  ‘Don’t touch it, if you please.’

  ‘It—it looks like it.’

  Mrs Cuddy shrilly ejaculated: ‘Wherever did you find it?’

  Mr Cuddy said: ‘Never mind, Eth,’ but Mrs Cuddy’s deductive capacity was under a hard drive. She stared, entranced, at the hyacinth. Everyone knew what she was about to say, no one was able to forestall it.

  ‘My Gawd!’ said Mrs Cuddy, ‘you never found it on the corpse! My Gawd, Fred, it’s the Flower Killer’s done it. He’s on the ship, Fred, and we can’t get orf!’

  Miss Abbott raised her large hands and brought them down heavily on her knees. ‘We’ve been asked to keep quiet,’ she cried out. ‘Can’t you, for pity’s sake, hold your tongue!’

  ‘Gently, my child,’ Father Jourdain murmured.

  ‘I’m not feeling gentle.’

  Alleyn said: ‘It will be obvious to all of you before long that this crime has been committed by the so-called Flower Murderer. At the moment, however, that’s a matter which need not concern us. Now, Mr McAngus. You left this room, immediately after Mr and Mrs Cuddy. Did you go straight to your cabin?’

  After a great deal of painstaking elucidation it was at last collected from Mr McAngus that he had strayed out through the double doors of the lounge to the deck, had walked round the passengers’ block to the port side, had gazed into the heavens for a few addled minutes and had re-entered by the door into the interior passageway and thus arrived at his own quarters. ‘My thoughts,’ he said, ‘were occupied by the film. I found it very moving. Not, perhaps, what one would have expected but nevertheless exceedingly disturbing.’

  As he had not been seen by anybody else after he had left the lounge, his statement could only be set down for what it was worth and left to simmer.

  Alleyn turned to Aubyn Dale.