Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

“Good as gold,” he said. “We’ll get casts. You’ve done well, both of you.”

They said “Thank you, sir” in unison, and glanced at each other. Alleyn asked if they could raise another tarpaulin for the area and Pomeroy said he’d go down to Fisherman’s Bay and borrow one.

They returned with him as far as the enclosure and found Fox in an argument with James Trehern, who was wearing an oilskin coat and looked like a lifeboat hero who had run off the rails. His face was scarlet and his manner both cringing and truculent

“I left my launch in charge of my mate,” he was saying, “to come up yurr and get a fair answer to a fair question, which is what the hell’s going on in these parts? I got my good name to stand by, mister, and my good name’s being called in question. Now.”

Fox, who had his notebook in his palm, said: “We’ll just get this good name and your address, if you please, and then find out what seems to be the trouble.”

“Well, Mr. Trehern,” Alleyn said, “what is the trouble?”

Pomeroy gave Trehern a disfavouring look and set off down the road. Trehern pulled at the peak of his cap and adopted a whining tone. “Not to say, sir,” he said to Alleyn, “as how I’m out to interfere with the deadly powers of the law. Us be lawful chaps in this locality and never a breath of anything to the contrary has blowed in our direction. Deny that if you’ve got the face to, Bill Carey,” he added, turning to that officer.

“Address yourself,” Carey said stuffily, “to them that’s axing you. Shall I return to my point, sir?”

“Yes, do, thank you Carey,” Alleyn said and received a salute followed by a smart turn. Carey tramped off along the path.

“Now,” Alleyn said to Trehern. “Give Inspector Fox your name and address and we’ll hear what you’ve got to say.”

He complied with an ill grace. “I’ve no call to be took down in writing,” he said.

“I thought you were lodging a complaint, didn’t you, Mr. Fox?”

“So I understood, sir. Are you?” Fox asked Trehern, and looked placidly at him over the top of his spectacles. “We may as well know, one way or the other, while we’re about it.”

“Just for the record,” Alleyn agreed.

“Not to say a complaint,” Trehern temporized. “Don’t put words into my mouth, souls. No call for that.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Fox rejoined. “Take your time.”

After an uneasy silence, Trehern broke into a long, disjointed plaint. People, he said, were talking. Wally, he implied, had been taken aside and seduced with ice cream. Anybody would tell them that what the poor little lad said was not to be relied upon, since he was as innocent as a babe unborn and was only out to please all the sundry, such being his guileless nature. They let him ramble on disconsolately until he ran out of material. Fox took notes throughout.

Alleyn said: “Mr. Trehern, we meant to call on you this evening but you’ve anticipated us. We want to search your house and have a warrant to do so. If it suits you we’ll come down with you, now.”

Trehern ran the tip of his tongue round his mouth and looked frightened. “What’s that for?” he demanded. “What’s wrong with my property? I bean’t got nothing but what’s lawful and right and free for all to see.”

“In that case you can have no objection.”

“It’s a matter of principle, see?”

“Quite so.”

Trehern was staring through the wire enclosure at the spring, where Bailey and Thompson had begun to pack up their gear.

“Yurr!” he said. “What’s that! What be they chaps doing up there? Be they looking fur footprints?”

“Yes.”

“They won’t find our Wal’s then! They won’t find his’n. Doan’t ’ee tell me they will, mister. I know better.”

“He was there yesterday.”

“Not up to thikky shelf, he warn’t. Not up to the top neither.”

“How do you know it matters where he may have been? Do you know how Miss Cost was killed?”

Trehern gaped at him.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “do you feel inclined to tell us, Mr. Trehern?”

He said confusedly that everyone was talking about stones being thrown.

“Ah,” Alleyn said. “You’re thinking of the night you encouraged Wally to throw stones at Miss Pride, aren’t you ?”

Trehern actually ducked his head as if he himself was some sort of target. “What’s the lad been telling you?” he demanded. “He’s silly. He’ll say anything.”

Alleyn said. “We’ll leave it for the moment and go down to the house.”

He called through the gate for Bailey and Thompson to follow, and led the way down. Trehern looked at Alleyn’s back and opened and shut his hands.

“Will you move along, Mr. Trehern?” Fox invited him. “After you.”

Trehern walked between them down to his cottage.

There were no visitors. The nets were blown half off the fence. The hollyhocks along the front path bent and sprang back in the wind. And the sign rattled.

Trehern stopped inside the gate. “I want to see thik. I want to see the writing.”

Alleyn showed him the warrant. He examined it with a great show of caution and then turned to the door.

Alleyn said: “One moment.”

“Well? What, then?”

“It will save a great deal of time and trouble if you will let us see the thing we’re most interested in. Where have you put the clothesline?”

“I don’t have to do nothing,” he said, showing the whites of his eyes. “You can’t force me.”

“Certainly not. It’s your choice.” He looked at Fox. “Will you take the outhouses? We can go round this way.”

He led the way round to the back yard.

Fox said pleasantly: “This’ll be the shed where you keep all your gear, won’t it? I’ll just take a look round, if you please.”

It was crammed with a litter of old nets, broken oars, sacking, boxes, tools and a stack of empty gin bottles. Alleyn glanced in and then left it to Fox.

There was a hen coop at the far end of the yard with a rubbish heap nearby that looked as if it had been recently disturbed.

“Give me that fork, would you, Fox?” he said and walked down the path with it. Trehern started to follow him and then stood motionless. The first of the rain drove hard on their backs.

The clothesline had been neatly coiled and buried under the rubbish. Alleyn uncovered it in a matter of seconds.

“Shall we get under shelter?” he said and walked back past Trehern to the shed. He wondered, for a moment, if Trehern would strike out at him, but Wally’s father fumbled with his oilskin coat and stayed where he was.

“All right, Fox,” Alleyn said. “First time, lucky. Here we are.”

He gave Fox the coil and took from his pocket the piece of trip wire from Coombe’s office. They held the ends together. “That’s it,” said Fox.

Alleyn looked at Trehern. “Will you come here for a moment?” hç asked.

He thought Trehern was going to refuse. He stood there with his head lowered and gave no sign. Then he came slowly forward, having been lashed, now, by the rain — a black shining figure.

“I am not going to arrest you at this juncture,” Alleyn said, “but I think it right to warn you that you are in a serious position. It is quite certain that the wire which on Friday was stretched across the way up to the shelf above the spring had been cut from this line. Photography and accurate measurements of the strands will prove it. Is there anything you want to say?”

Trehern’s jaw worked convulsively as if he were chewing gum. He made a hoarse indeterminate sound in his throat — like a nervous dog, Alleyn thought.

At last he said: “Whosumdever done them tricks was having no more than a bit of fun. Boy-fashion. No harm in it.”