Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

“Lovers’ quarrel,” Alleyn thought. “Damned awkward in a boat. He won’t get anywhere, I daresay.”

“You won’t get anywhere,” Jenny was saying in a grand voice, “by sulking.”

“I am not sulking.”

“Then you’re giving a superb imitation of it. As the day’s been such a failure why don’t we pull in and bring it to an inglorious conclusion?”

“All right,” he said but made no effort to do so.

“Patrick.”

“What?”

“Couldn’t you just mention what’s upset your applecart? It’d be better than huffing and puffing behind a thundercloud.”

“You’re not so marvellously forthcoming yourself.”

“Well, what am I meant to do? Crash down on my knees in the bilge-water and apologize for I don’t know what?”

“You do know what.”

“Oh, Lord !” Jenny pushed her fingers through her dazzling hair, looked at him and began to giggle. “Isn’t this silly?” she said.

The shadow of a grin lurked about Patrick’s mouth and was suppressed. “Extremely silly,” he said. “I apologize for being a figure of fun.”

“Look,” Jenny said. “Which is it? Me going off with Mr. Alleyn to see Wally? Me being late for our date? Or me going to Dunlowman with Miss Emily tomorrow? Or the lot? Come on.”

“You’re at perfect liberty to take stewed tea and filthy cream buns with anybody you like for as long as you like. It was evidently all very private and confidential and far be me from it — I mean it from me — to muscle in where I’m not wanted.”

“But I told you. He asked me not to talk about it.”

Patrick inclined, huffily. “So I understand,” he said.

“Patrick: I’m sorry, but I do find that I respect Mr. Alleyn. I’m anti a lot of things that I suppose you might say he seems to stand for, although I’m not so sure, even, of that. He strikes me as being — well — far from reactionary,” said young Jenny.

“I’m sure he’s a paragon of enlightenment.”

She wondered how it would go if she said: “Let’s face it, you’re jealous,” and very wisely decided against any such gambit. She looked at Patrick: at his shock of black hair, at his arms and the split in his open shirt where the sunburn stopped, and at his intelligent, pigheaded face. She thought: He’s a stranger and yet he’s very familiar. She leaned forward and put her hand on his bony knee.

“Don’t be unhappy,” she said. “What is it?”

“Good God!” he said. “Can you put it out of your mind so easily? It’s Miss Cost, with her skull cracked. It’s Miss Cost, face down in our wonderful spring. It’s your pin-up detective, inching his way into our lives. Do you suppose I enjoy the prospect of—” He stopped short. “I happen,” he said, “to be rather attached to my mother.”

Jenny said quickly: “Patrick — yes, of course you are. But—”

“You must know damned well what I mean.”

“All right. But surely it’s beside the point. Mr. Alleyn can’t think—”

“Can’t he?” His eyes slid away from her. “She was a poisonous woman,” he said.

A silence fell between them and suddenly Jenny shivered unexpectedly, as if some invisible hand had shaken her.

“What’s the matter?” he said irritably. “Are you cold?”

He looked at her miserably and doubtfully.

Jenny thought: I don’t know him. I’m lost…And at once was caught up in a wave of compassion.

“Don’t let’s go on snarling,” she said. “Let’s go home and sort ourselves out. It’s clouded over and I’m getting rather cold.”

He said: “I don’t blame you for wanting to get away from this mess. What a party to have let you in for! It’s better you should go to Dunlowman.”

“Now, that ,” said Jenny, “is really unfair and you know it, darling.”

He glowered at her. “You don’t say that as a rule. Everyone says ‘darling,’ but you don’t.”

“That’s right. I’m saying it now for a change. Darling.”

He covered her hand with his. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I am really sorry. Darling Jenny.”

From his bedroom window Alleyn watched and thought: He’ll lose his oar.

It slipped through the rowlock. Patrick became active with the other oar. The dinghy bobbed and turned about. They both reached dangerously overboard. Through the open window Alleyn faintly caught the sound of their laughter.

“That’s done the trick,” he thought. The telephone rang and he answered it.

“Fox, here, sir,” said a familiar, placid voice. “Speaking from Portcarrow station.”

“You sound like the breath of spring.”

“I didn’t quite catch what you said.”

“It doesn’t matter. Have you brought my homicide kit?”

“Yes.”

“Then come, Birdie, come.”

Mr. Fox replaced the receiver and said to Superintendent Coombe and the Yard party: “We’re to go over. He’s worried.”

“He sounded as if he was acting the goat or something,” said Coombe.

“That’s right,” said Fox. “Worried. Come on, you chaps.”

Detective Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, carrying kits and suitcases, accompanied him to the launch. Coombe showed them the way, saw them off and returned to his office.

Alleyn saw them from his window, picked up his raincoat and went down the steps to meet them. They had attracted a considerable amount of attention.

“Quite a picturesque spot,” said Mr. Fox. “Popular, too, by the looks of it. What’s the story, Mr. Alleyn?”

“I’ll tell you on the way, Br’er Fox.”

Alleyn gave a likely-looking boy five shillings to take the suitcases up to the hotel. Numbers of small boys had collected and were shaping up to accompany them. “Move along,” said Mr. Fox majestically. “Shove along, now. Right away. Clear out of it.”

They backed off.

“You’m Yard men, bean’t you, mister?” said the largest of the boys.

“That’s right,” Alleyn said. “Push off or we’ll be after you.”

They broke into peals of derisive but gratified laughter and scattered. One of them started a sort of chant, but the others told him to shut up.

Alleyn took his own kit from Fox and suggested that they all walk round the arm of Fisherman’s Bay and up by Wally’s route to the enclosure. On the way he gave them a résumé of the case.

“Complicated,” Mr. Fox remarked when Alleyn had finished. “Quite a puzzle.”

“And that’s throwing roses at it.”

“Which do you favour, Mr. Alleyn? Mistaken identity or dead on the target?”

“I don’t want to influence you — not that I flatter myself I can — at the outset. The popular theory with Coombe is the first. To support it this wretched boy says he saw Miss Pride arrive, leave and return. She, herself, saw him . Down on the road we’re coming to in a minute. So did Dr. Mayne. Now the second figure, of course, must have been Miss Cost, not Miss Pride. But between the departure of Miss Pride and the arrival of Miss Cost, Barrimore went to the gates and chucked away the notice. Who replaced it? The murderer? Presumably. And when did Wally let himself into the enclosure? If he did? It must have been before Miss Cost appeared, or she would have seen him. So we’ve got to suppose that for some reason Wally did go in and did hide behind the boulder, after Miss Pride had left — avoiding Barrimore, who didn’t see him. I don’t like it. It may be remotely possible, but I don’t like it. And I’m certain he wouldn’t replace the notice. He hasn’t got the gumption. Anyway the timetable barely allows of all this.”

“He’d hardly mistake the deceased for Miss Pride, silly-and-all as he may be, if he got anything like a fair look at her.”