Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

He had got as far as the door when Dr. Mayne said: “There is one thing you perhaps ought to know about Elspeth Cost.”

“Yes?”

“She lived in a world of fantasy. Again, with women of her temperament, condition and age, it’s a not unusual state of affairs, but with her its manifestations were extreme.”

“Was she, in consequence, a liar?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “It follows on the condition. You may say she couldn’t help it.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Alleyn said.

“It may not arise.”

“You never know. Good night, then, Mayne.”

When they were outside and the hotel doors had shut behind them, they were engulfed in a world of turbulence: a complex uproar into which they moved, leaning forward, with their heads down. They slipped on concrete steps, bumped into each other and then hung on by an iron rail and moved down crabwise towards the sea. Below them, riding lights on the hotel launch tipped, rose, sank and shuddered. A single street lamp near the jetty was struck across by continuous diagonals of rain. On the far side, black masses heaved and broke against the front, obscured and revealed dimly lit windows and flung their crests high above the glittering terrace. As the three men came to the foot of the steps they were stung and lashed by driven spume.

Miss Cost’s shop window glowed faintly beyond the rain. When they reached it they had to bang on the door and yell at Pender before he heard them above the general clamour. It opened a crack. “Easy on, souls,” Pender shouted, “or she’ll blow in.” He admitted them, one by one, with his shoulder to the door.

The interior fug had become enriched by a paraffin heater that reeked in Miss Cissy Pollock’s corner, and by Pender, who breathed out pickled onions. Miss Pollock, herself a little bleary-eyed now, but ever-smiling, still presided at the switchboard.

“Wicked night,” Pender observed, bolting the door.

“You must be pretty well fed up, both of you,” Alleyn said.

“No, sir, no. We be tolerably clever, thank you. Cissy showed me how her switchboard works. A simple enough matter to the male intelligence, it turned out to be, and I took a turn at it while she had a nap. She come back like a lion refreshed and I followed her example. Matter of fact, sir, I was still dozing when you hammered at the door, warn’t I, Ciss? She can’t hear with they contraptions on her head. A simple pattern of a female, she is, sir, as you’ll find out for yourself if you see fit to interrogate her, but rather pleased than otherwise to remain.” He beamed upon Miss Pollock, who giggled.

Fox gravely contemplated Sergeant Pender. He was a stickler for procedure.

Alleyn introduced Pender to his colleagues. They took off their coats and hats and he laid down a plan of action. They were to make a systematic examination of the premises.

“We’re not looking for anything specific,” he said. “I’d like to find out how she stood, financially. Correspondence, if any. It would be lovely if she kept a diary and if there’s a dump of old newspapers, they’ll have to be gone over carefully. Look for any cuts. Bailey, you’d better pick up a decent set of prints if you can find them. Cash box — tooth glass — she had false teeth — take your pick. Thompson, will you handle the shelves in here? You might work the back premises and the bedroom, Fox. I’ll start on the parlour.”

He approached Cissy Pollock, who removed her headphones and simpered.

“You must have known Miss Cost very well,” he began. “How long have you been here with her, Miss Pollock?”

A matter of a year and up, it appeared. Ever since the shop was made a post office. Miss Cost had sold her former establishment at Dunlowman and had converted a cottage into the premises as they now stood. She had arranged for a wholesale firm to provide the Green Ladies, which she herself painted, and for a regional printer to reproduce the rhyme-sheets. Cissy talked quite readily of these activities, and Miss Cost emerged from her narrative as an experienced businesswoman. “She were proper sharp,” Cissy said appreciatively. When Alleyn spoke of yesterday’s Festival she relapsed briefly into giggles but this seemed to be a token manifestation, obligatory upon the star performer. Miss Cost had inaugurated a Drama Circle of which the Festival had been the first fruit, and Cissy herself the leading light. He edged cautiously towards the less public aspects of Miss Cost’s life and character. Had she many close friends? None that Cissy knew of though she did send Christmas cards. She hardly got any herself, outside local ones.

“So you were her best friend, then?”

“Aw, well…” said Cissy, and shuffled her feet.

“What about gentleman friends?”

This produced a renewed attack of giggles. After a great deal of trouble he elicted the now familiar story of advance and frustration. Miss Cost had warned Cissy repeatedly of the gentlemen and had evidently dropped a good many dark hints about improper overtures made to herself. Cissy was not pretty and was no longer very young. He thought that, between them, they had probably indulged in continuous fantasy and the idea rather appalled him. On Major Barrimore’s name being introduced in a roundabout fashion, she became uncomfortable and said, under pressure, that Miss Cost was proper set against him, and that he’d treated her bad. She would say nothing more under this heading. She remembered Miss Cost’s visit to the hospital. It appeared that she had tried the spring for her moles but without success. Alleyn ventured to ask if Miss Cost liked Dr. Mayne. Cissy with a sudden burst of candour, said she fair worshipped him.

“Ah!” said Sergeant Pender, who had listened to all this with the liveliest attention. “So she did then, and hunted the poor chap merciless, didn’t she, Ciss?”

“Aw, you do be awful, George Pender,” said Cissy, with spirit.

“Couldn’t help herself, no doubt, and not to be blamed for it,” he conceded.

Alleyn again asked Cissy if Miss Cost had any close women friends. Mrs. Carstairs? Or Mrs. Barrimore, for instance?

Cissy made a prim face that was also, in some indefinable way, furtive. “She weren’t terrible struck on Mrs. Barrimore,” she said. “She didn’t hold with her.” “Oh? Why was that, do you suppose?” “She reckoned she were sly,” said Cissy and was not to be drawn any further.

“Did Miss Cost keep a diary, do you know?” Alleyn asked, and as Cissy looked blank, he added: “A book. A record of day-to-day happenings?”

Cissy said Miss Cost was always writing in a book of an evening but kept it away careful-like, she didn’t know where. Asked if she had noticed any change in Miss Cost’s behaviour over the last three weeks, Cissy gaped at Alleyn for a second or two and then said Miss Cost had been kind of funny.

“In what way, funny?”

“Laughing,” said Cissy. “She took fits to laugh, suddenlike. I never see nothing to make her.”

“As if she was — what? Amused? Excited?”

“Axcited. Powerful pleased, too. Sly-like.”

“Did you happen to notice if she sent any letters to London?”

Miss Cost had on several occasions put her own letters in the mailbag but Cissy hadn’t got a look at them. Evidently, Alleyn decided, Miss Cost’s manner had intrigued her assistant. It was on these occasions that Miss Cost laughed.

At this juncture, Cissy was required at the switchboard. Alleyn asked Pender to follow him into the back room. He shut the door and said he thought the time had come for Miss Pollock to return to her home. She lived on the Island, it appeared, in one of the Fisherman’s Bay cottages. Alleyn suggested that Pender had better see her to her door as the storm was so bad. Bailey and Thompson could be shown how to work the switchboard during his absence.