Ngaio Marsh - Clutch of Constables

Pollock made his standard remark. “Isn’t it marvellous?” and gave his little sneering laugh.

“Thank you,” Alleyn said. “That’s very useful.”

Pollock now took action. He got up from the table, lounged across the saloon and stood with his hands in his pockets and his head on one side, quite close to Natouche.

“Ere,” he said. “You! ‘Doctor’. What’s the big idea?”

“I don’t understand you. I’m sorry.”

You don’t? I think you do. I see you talking to the ton-up combo and I never took the impression they was slinging off at you. I think that’s just your story like you lot always trot out: ‘Oh, dear, aren’t they all insultin’ to us noble martyrs’. I took a different impression. I took the impression you knew them two before. See?”

“You are mistaken.”

Alleyn said: “Did anyone else get such an impression?”

Hewson said: “Yeah, I guess I did. Yeah, sure I did.”

“Mr Lazenby?”

“I’m very loath to jump to conclusions. I’m not prepared to say positively. I must confess—”

“Well?”

“We were some way away, Superintendent, on the wapentake slope. I don’t think an impression at that distance has much value. But—well, yes I thought—vaguely, you know—that perhaps the Doctor had found some friends. Only a vague idea.”

“Mr Bard? What about you?”

Caley Bard drove his fingers through his hair and swore under his breath. He then said “I agree that any impression one may have taken at that remove is absolutely valueless. We could hear nothing that was said. Dr Natouche’s explanation fits as well as any other.”

“If he never seen them before how’s he remember all this stuff about jaws and pimples?” Pollock demanded. “After half a minute! Not likely!”

“But I fancy,” Alleyn said, “that in common with all the rest of you, Dr Natouche had ample opportunity to observe them at Norminster on the morning you embarked.”

“Here!” Pollock shouted. “What price this for a theory? What price him and them knocked it up between them? What price they did the clobbering and he handled the suitcase? Now then!”

He stared in front of him, sneering vaingloriously and contriving at the same time to look frightened. Natouche’s face was closed like a wall.

“I thought,” Caley said to Pollock, “you’d settled to keep your mouth shut until you got a solicitor. Why the devil can’t you follow your own advice and belt up?”

“Here, ’ere, ’ere!”

Fox returned with young Tom who, tousled with sleep and naked to the waist, looked very young indeed and rather frightened.

“Sorry to knock you up like this, Tom,” Alleyn said. “Mr Fox will have told you what it’s all about.”

Tom nodded.

“We just want to know if you can tell us anything about the ton-up couple. Friends of yours?”

Tom showed the whites of his eyes and said not to say friends exactly. He shifted his feet, curled his toes, looked everywhere but at Alleyn and answered in monosyllables. The passengers listened avidly. Alleyn wondered if he was wise to conduct this one-sided interview in front of them and thought that on the whole, it would probably pay off. He extracted, by slow degrees, that Tom had hobnobbed with the ton-up pair some time ago in a coffee-bar in Norminster. When? He couldn’t say exactly. Some time back. Early in the cruising season? Yes. Early on. He hadn’t seen them again until this cruise. Names? He wouldn’t know the surnames. The chap got called Pluggy and his girlfriend was Glenys. Did they live in the district? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t say where they lived.

This was heavy going. Caley sighed and took up his book. Dr Natouche had the air of politely attending a function that did not interest him. Pollock bit his nails. Lazenby assumed a tolerant smile and Hewson stared at Tom with glazed intensity.

Alleyn said: “Did they talk to you first or did you make up to them? In the coffee-bar?”

“They did,” Tom mumbled. “They wanted to know about places.”

“What sort of places?”

“Along The River. Back of The River.”

“Just any old places?”

No. It appeared, not quite that. They were interested in the second-hand trade. They wanted to know where there were junk shops or yards or used-parts dumps. Yes, he’d told them about Jo Bagg.

The passengers shifted their feet.

By a tortuous process something like a coherent story began to emerge. Alleyn thought he recognised the symptoms. The ton-ups had been adventurous figures to young Tom. They had a buccaneering air about them. They were cool. They were with it. They had flattered him. Troy had noticed when the Zodiac sailed, something furtive in their exchange of signals. Alleyn asked Tom abruptly what his parents thought of the acquaintanceship. He flushed scarlet and muttered indistinguishably. They had, it seemed, not approved. The Skipper’s attitude to ton-ups was evidently regrettably square. Alleyn gathered that he had asked Tom if he hadn’t got something better to do than hang round the moorings with a couple of freaks.

“Did they ever ask you to talk about any of the passengers?”

Tom was silent,

“This is important, Tom,” Alleyn said. “You know what’s happened, don’t you? You know why we’re here?”

He nodded.

“You wouldn’t want to see someone wrongfully accused, would you?”

He shook his head.

“Did they talk about any of the passengers?”

Tom’s dark eyes slewed round until they looked at Dr Natouche and then at the floor.

“Did they talk about Dr Natouche?”

He nodded again.

“What did they say?”

“They They said to—give him a message.”

“What message? Come along. As far as you can remember it, in their own words: what message?”

Tom, looking as if he was about to cry, blurted out. “They said to tell him from them he could—”

“Could what?”

A stream of obscenity quoted in the broken voice of an adolescent boy, jetted into the quiet decency of the little saloon.

“You asked,” Tom said miserably. “You asked. I can’t help it. It’s what they said. They don’t like—they don’t like—” He jerked his head at Natouche.

“Very well,” Alleyn said. “We’ll leave it at that.” He turned to Natouche. “I take it,” he said, “the message was not delivered?”

“No.”

“I should bloody well hope not,” said Caley Bard.

“Did they talk about any of the other passengers?” Alleyn pursued.

At Norminster they had asked, it appeared, about Troy. Only, Tom said, twisting himself about in a quite astonishing manner, only who she was and when she booked her passage.

“Did you know the answer?”

He knew she’d booked a cancellation that morning. He didn’t know then—Here Tom boggled and shuffled and was finally induced to say he didn’t know until later that she was the celebrated painter or who her husband was.

“And Miss Rickerby-Carrick — did they talk about her?”

Only, Tom mumbled, to say she was some balmy old tart.

“When did you last see them?”

This provoked another unhappy reaction. The dark, uncertain face whitened, the lips opened and moved but no sound came from them. Tom looked as if for tuppence he’d bolt.

Caley said: “This is getting a bit tough, Alleyn, isn’t it?” and Pollock at once began to talk about police methods. “This is nothing,” he said. “Nothing to what goes on in the cells. Don’t you answer ’im, kid. Don’t give ’im the satisfaction. They can’t make you. Don’t put yourself in wrong.”

Tom turned aside, ducked his head into the crook of his arms and gave way to ungainly tears. There were sounds of indignation from the passengers.