Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

Mrs. Barrimore and Jenny went out.

Patrick, who was now very white, said: “I think it will be much better if we help Mr. Alleyn as far as we’re able. He wants to get on with his work, I’m sure. The facts will have to become known sooner or later. We’ll do no good by adopting delaying tactics.”

Major Barrimore contemplated his stepson with an unattractive smile. “Charming!” he said. “Now, I know exactly how I should behave, don’t I?” He appeared to undergo a change of mood and illustrated it by executing a wide gesture and then burying his face in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said and his voice was muffled. “Give me a moment.”

Patrick turned his back and walked over to the window. The Major looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and his expression dolorous. “Bad show,” he said. “Apologize. Not myself. Truth of the matter is, I got a bit plastered last night and this has hit me rather hard.” He stood up and made a great business of straightening his shoulders and blowing his nose. “As you were,” he said bravely. “Take my orders from you. What’s the drill?”

“Really, there isn’t any at the moment,” Alleyn said cheerfully. “If you can persuade your guests not to collect round the enclosure or use the path to it we’ll be very grateful. As soon as possible we’ll get the approaches cordoned off and that will settle the matter, won’t it? And now, if you’ll excuse me—”

He was about to go when Major Barrimore said: “Quite so. Talk to the troops, what? Well — sooner the better.” He put his hand on Alleyn’s arm. “Sorry, old boy,” he said gruffly. “Sure you understand.”

He frowned, came to attention and marched out.

“Not true,” Patrick said to the window. “Just not true.”

Alleyn said “Never mind,” and left him.

When he re-entered the main building he found Major Barrimore the centre of a group of guests who showed every sign of disgruntlement tempered with avid curiosity. He was in tremendous form. “Now, I know you’re going to be perfectly splendid about this,” he was saying. “It’s an awful disappointment to all of us and it calls for that good old British spirit of tolerance and understanding. Take it on the chin and look as if you liked it, what? And you can take it from me…”

He was still in full cry as Alleyn walked up the stairs and went to call on Miss Emily.

She was, of course, dressed for travel. Her luggage, as he saw through the open door, was ready. She was wearing her toque.

He told her what had happened. Miss Emily’s sallow complexion whitened. She looked very fixedly at him and did not interrupt

“Rodrigue,” she said when he had finished. “This is my doing. I am responsible.”

“Now, my dearest Miss Emily—”

“No. Please. Let me look squarely at the catastrophe. This foolish woman has been mistaken for me. There is no doubt in my mind at all. It declares itself. If I had obeyed the intention and not the mere letter of the undertaking I gave you, this would not have occurred.”

“You went to the spring this morning with your notice?”

“Yes. I had, if you recollect, promised you not to leave my apartment again last night, and to breakfast in my apartment this morning. A loophole presented itself.”

In spite of Miss Emily’s distress there was more than a hint of low cunning in the sidelong glance she gave him. “I went out,” she said. “I placed my manifesto. I returned. I took my petit déjeuner in my room.”

“When did you go out?”

“At half past seven.”

“It was raining?”

“Heavily.”

“Did you meet anybody? Or see anybody?”

“I met nobody,” said Miss Emily. “I saw that wretched child. Walter Trehern. He was on the roadway that leads from the cottages up to the spring. It has, I believe, been called—” she closed her eyes—“ ‘Wally’s Way.’ He was halfway up the hill.”

“Did he see you?”

“He did. He uttered some sort of gibberish, gave an uncouth cry and waved his arms.”

“Did he see you leave?”

“I think not. When I had affixed my manifesto and faced about, he had already disappeared. Possibly he was hiding.”

“And you didn’t, of course, see Miss Cost”

“No.”

“You didn’t see her umbrella on your ledge above the pool? As you were tying up your notice?”

“Certainly not. I looked in that direction. It was not there.”

“And that would be at about twenty to eight. It wouldn’t, I think, take you more than ten minutes to walk there, from the pub?”

“No. It was five minutes to eight when I re-entered the hotel.”

“Did you drop the notice, face down in the mud?”

“Certainly not. Why?”

“It’s no matter. Miss Emily: please try to remember if you saw anybody at all on the village side of the causeway, or indeed anywhere. Any activity round the jetty, for instance, or on the bay or near the cottages? Then, or at any time during your expedition?”

“Certainly not.”

“And on your return journey?”

“The rain was driving in from the direction of the village. My umbrella was therefore inclined to meet it.”

“Yes. I see.”

A silence fell between them. Alleyn walked over to the window. It looked down on a small garden at the back of the old pub. As he stood there, absently staring, someone came into the garden from below. It was Mrs. Barrimore. She had a shallow basket over her arm and carried a pair of secateurs. She walked over to a clump of Michaelmas daisies and began to cut them, but her movement was so uncoordinated and wild that the flowers fell to the ground. She made as if to retrieve them, dropped her secateurs and then the basket. Her hands went to her face and for a time she crouched there, quite motionless. She then rose and walked aimlessly and hurriedly about the paths, turning and returning as if the garden were a prison yard. Her fingers twisted together. They might have been encumbered with rings of which she tried fruitlessly to rid them.

“That,” said Miss Emily’s voice, “is a very unhappy creature.”

She had joined Alleyn without attracting his notice.

“Why?” he asked. “What’s the matter with her?”

“No doubt her animal of a husband ill-treats her.”

“She’s a beautiful woman,” Alleyn said. He found himself quoting from — surely? — an inappropriate source, “ ’Look what she does now. See how she rubs her hands!’ ” and Miss Emily replied at once: “ ’It is an accustomed action with her to seem thus washing her hands.”

“Good Heavens!” Alleyn exclaimed. “What do we think we’re talking about?”

Margaret Barrimore raised her head and instinctively they both drew back. Alleyn walked away from the window and then, with a glance at Miss Emily, turned back to it.

“She has controlled herself,” said Miss Emily. “She is gathering her flowers. She is a woman of character, that one.”

In a short time Mrs. Barrimore had filled her basket and returned to the house.

“Was she very friendly,” he asked, “with Miss Cost?”

“No. I believe, on the contrary, there was a certain animosity. On Cost’s part. Not, as far as I could see, upon Mrs. Barrimore’s. Cost,” said Miss Emily, “was, I judged, a spiteful woman. It is a not unusual phenomenon among spinsters of Cost’s years and class. I am glad to say I was not conscious, at her age, of any such emotion. My sister Fanny, in her extravagant fashion, used to say I was devoid of the mating instinct. It may have been so.”

“Were you never in love, Miss Emily?”

“That,” said Miss Emily, “is an entirely different matter.”

“Is it?”

“In any case it is neither here nor there. What do you wish me to do, Rodrigue? Am I to remain in this place?” She examined him. “I think you are disturbed upon this point,” she said.