Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

“I hardly dare ask you for a room.”

“You can have the whole xxxx pub. Bring the whole xxxx Yard.”

Alleyn offered what words of comfort he could muster. Major Barrimore received them with a moody sneer, but presently became calmer. “I’m not blaming you,” he said. “You’re doing your duty. Fine service, the police. Always said so. Thought of it myself when I left my regiment. Took on this damned poodlefaking instead. Well, there you are.”

He booked Alleyn in, and even accepted, with gloomy resignation, the news that Miss Emily would like to delay her departure for another night.

As Alleyn was about to go he said: “Could you sell me a good cigar? I’ve left mine behind and I can’t make do with a pipe.”

“Certainly. What do you smoke?”

“Las Casas, if you have them.”

“No can do. At least — Well, as a matter of fact, I do get them in for myself, old boy. I’m a bit short. Look here — let you have three, if you like. Show there’s no ill feeling, but not a word to the troops. If you want more, these things are smokeable.”

Alleyn said: “Very nice of you but I’m not going to cut you short. Let me have one Las Casas and I’ll take a box of these others.”

He bought the cigars.

The Major had moved to the flap end of the counter. Alleyn dropped his change and picked it up. The boots, he thought, looked very much as if they’d fit. They were wet round the welts and flecked with mud.

He took his leave of the Major.

When he got outside the hotel he compared the cigar band with the one he had picked up and found them to be identical.

Coombe was waiting for him. Alleyn said: “We’d better get the path cordoned off as soon as possible. Where’s Pender?”

“At the spring. Your chaps are on their way. Just made the one good train. They should be here by five. I’ve laid on cars at Dunlowman. And I’ve raised another couple of men. They’re to report here. What’s the idea, cordoning the top path?”

“It’s that outcrop,” Alleyn said and told him about the Major’s cigars. “Of course,” he said, “there may be a guest who smokes his own Las Casas and who went out in a downpour at the crack of dawn to hide behind a rock, but it doesn’t seem likely. We may have to take casts and get hold of his boots.”

“The Major! I see !”

“It may well turn out to be just one of those damn’ fool things. He says he got up late.”

“It’d fit. In a way, it’d fit.”

“At this stage,” Alleyn said. “Nothing fits. We collect. That’s all.”

“Well, I know that,” Coombe said quickly. He had just been warned against the axiomatic sin of forming a theory too soon. “Here are these chaps, now,” he said.

Two policemen were approaching the jetty.

Alleyn said: “Look, Coombe. I think our next step had better be the boy. Dr. Mayne saw him and so did Miss Pride. Could you set your men to patrol the path and then join me at Trehern’s cottage?”

“There may be a mob of visitors there. It’s a big attraction.”

“Hell! Hold on. Wait a bit, would you?”

Alleyn had seen Jenny Williams coming out of the old pubroom. She wore an orange-coloured bathing dress and a short white coat and looked as if she had twice her fair share of sunshine.

He joined her. “It’s all fixed with Miss Emily,” she said. “I’m a lady’s companion as from tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Patrick and I are thinking of a bathe.”

“I don’t know what we’d have done without you. And loath as I am to put anything between you and the English Channel, I have got another favour to ask.”

“Now, what is all this?”

“You know young Trehern, don’t you? You taught him? Do you get on well with him?”

“He didn’t remember me at first. I think he does now. They’ve done their best to turn him into a horror but — yes — I can’t help having a — I suppose it’s a sort of compassion,” said Jenny.

“I expect it is,” Alleyn agreed. He told her he was going to see Wally and that he’d heard she understood the boy and got more response from him than most people. Would she come down to the cottage and help with the interview?

Jenny looked very straight at him and said: “Not if it means you want me to get Wally to say something that may harm him.”

Alleyn said: “I don’t know what he will say. I don’t in the least know whether he is in any way involved in Miss Cost’s death. Suppose he was. Suppose he killed her, believing her to be Miss Emily. Would you want him to be left alone to attack the next old lady who happened to annoy him? Think.”

She asked him, as Miss Emily had asked him, what would be done with Wally if he was found to be guilty. He gave her the same answer: nothing very dreadful. Wally might be sent to an appropriate institution. It would be a matter for authorized psychiatrists. “And they do have successes in these days, you know. On the other hand, Wally may have nothing whatever to do with the case. But I must find out. Murder,” Alleyn said abruptly, “is always abominable. It’s hideous and outlandish. Even when the impulse is understandable and the motive overpowering, it is still a terrible, unique offense. As the law stands, its method of dealing with homicides is, as I think, open to the gravest criticism. But for all that, the destruction of a human being remains what it is: the last outrage.”

He was to wonder, after the case had ended, why on earth he had spoken as he did.

Jenny stared out, looking at nothing. “You must be an unusual kind of cop,” she said. And then: “O.K. I’ll tell Patrick and put on a skirt. I won’t be long.”

The extra constables had arrived and were being briefed by Coombe. They were to patrol the path and stop people climbing about the hills above the enclosure. One of them would be stationed near the outcrop.

Jenny reappeared wearing a white skirt over her bathing dress.

“Patrick,” she said, “is in a slight sulk. I asked him to pick me up at the cottage.”

“My fault, of course. I’m sorry.”

“He’ll get over it,” she said cheerfully.

They went down the hotel steps. Jenny moved ahead. She walked very quickly past Miss Cost’s shop, not looking at it. A group of visitors stared in at the window. The door was open and there were customers inside.

Coombe said: “The girl that helps is carrying on.”

“Yes. All right. Has she been told not to destroy anything — papers — rubbish— anything?”

“Well, yes. I mean, I said: Just serve the customers and attend to the telephone calls. It’s a substation for the Island. One of the last in the country.”

“I think the shop would be better shut, Coombe. We can’t assume anything at this stage. We’ll have to go through her papers. I suppose the calls can’t be operated through the central station?”

“Not a chance.”

“Who is this assistant?”

“Cissy Pollock. She was that green girl affair in the show. Pretty dim type, is Cissy.”

“Friendly with Miss Cost?”

“Thick as thieves, both being hell-bent on the Festival.”

“Look. Could you wait until the shop clears and then lock up? We’ll have to put somebody on the board or simply tell the subscribers that the Island service is out of order.”

“The Major’ll go mad. Couldn’t we shut the shop and leave Cissy on the switchboard?”

“I honestly don’t think we should. It’s probably a completely barren precaution, but at this stage—”

“ ‘We must not,’ ” Coombe said, “ ‘allow ourselves to form a hard-and-fast theory to the prejudice of routine investigation.’ I know. But I wouldn’t mind taking a bet on it that Miss Cost’s got nothing to do with this case.”