Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

Alleyn, looking increasingly grim, went over the entries for the whole list. Throughout two summers, Miss Cost had hunted her evening quarry with obsessive devotion, and had recorded the fruits of the chase as if in some antic game book: time, place and circumstance. On each occasion that she spied upon her victims, she had found the enclosure padlocked but had taken up a point of vantage on the hillside. At no stage did she give the names of the lovers, but their identity was inescapable.

“Mrs. Barrimore and Dr. Mayne,” Alleyn said. “To hell with this case!”

“Awkward!” observed Fox.

“My dear old Fox, it’s dynamite. And it fits,” Alleyn said, staring disconsolately at his colleague. “The devil of it is, it fits.”

He began to read the entries for the past month. Dr. Mayne, Miss Cost weirdly concluded, was not to blame. He was a victim, caught in the toils, unable to free himself and therefore unable to follow his nobler inclination towards Miss Cost herself. Interlarded with furious attacks upon Miss Emily and covert allusions to the anonymous messages were notes on the Festival, a savage comment on Miss Emily’s visit to the shop, and a distracted reference to the attack of asthma that followed it. “The dark forces of evil that emanate from this woman” were held responsible. There followed a number of cryptic asides. (“Trehern agrees. It’s right . I know it’s right!”).

“ It is the Cause, it is the Cause, my soul ,” Alleyn muttered, disconsolately. “The old, phony argument.”

Fox, who had been reading over his shoulder, said: “It’d be a peculiar thing if she’d worked Trehern up to doing the job, and then got herself mistaken for the intended victim!”

“It sounds very neat, Br’er Fox, but in point of fact, it’s lousy with loose ends. I can’t take it. Just let’s go through the other statements, now.”

They did this and Fox sighed over the result. “I suppose so,” he said — and added, “I like things to be neat, and they so seldom are.”

“You’re a concealed classicist,” Alleyn said. “We’d better go back to this ghastly diary. Read on.”

They had arrived at the final week: Rehearsals for the Festival. Animadversions upon Miss Emily. The incident of the Green Lady on Miss Emily’s desk.

He did it. K. I’m certain. And I’m glad , glad. She , no doubt, suspects me . I refused to go. She finds she can’t order me about. To sit in that room with her and the two she has ruined! Never .

Alleyn turned a page and there, facing them, was the last entry Miss Cost was to make in her journal.

“Yesterday evening,” Alleyn said. “After the debacle at the spring.”

The thunderstorm, he was not surprised to find, was treated as a judgment. Nemesis, in the person of one of Miss Cost’s ambiguous deities, had decided to touch up the unbelievers with six of the cosmic best. Among these offenders Miss Emily was clearly included, but it emerged that she was not the principal object of Miss Cost’s spleen. “Laugh at your peril,” she ominously wrote, “at the Great Ones.” And, as if stung by this observation, she continued, in a splutter of disjointed venom, to threaten some unnamed persons. “At last!” she wrote…

After the agony of months, the cruelty and, now, the final insult, at last I shall speak. I shall face both of them with the facts. I shall tell her what was between us. And I shall show that other one how I know. He — both — all of them — shall suffer. I’ll drag their names through the papers. Now. Tonight. I am determined. It is the end.

“And so it was,” Fox said, looking up over his spectacles. “Poor thing. Very sad, really, these cases. Do you see your way through all this, Mr. Alleyn?”

“I think I do, Br’er Fox. I’m afraid I do. And I’ll tell you why.”

He had scarcely begun, when Bailey, moving rather more quickly than he was wont, came through from the shop.

“Someone for you, sir. A Miss Williams. She says it’s urgent.” Alleyn went to the telephone.

Jenny sounded as if it were very urgent indeed.

“Mr. Alleyn? Thank God! Please come up here, quickly. Please do. Miss Emily’s rooms. I can’t say anything else.” Alleyn heard a muffled ejaculation. A man shouted distantly and a woman screamed. There was a faint but unmistakable crash of broken glass. “Please come!” said Jenny.

“At once,” Alleyn said. And to Fox: “Leave Pender on the board, and you others follow as quick as you can. Boy-and-Lobster, Room 35 to the right of the stairhead on the first flight.”

Before they had time to answer he was out of the shop and had plunged, head down, into the storm outside.

It was not raining now, but the night was filled with so vast an uproar that there was no room for any perception but that of noise: the clamour of wind and irregular thud and crash of a monstrous tide. It broke over the foreshore and made hissing assaults on the foot of the steps. Alleyn went up them at a sort of a shambling run, bent double and feeling his way with his hands. When he reached the last flight and came into range of the hotel windows, his heart pounded like a ram and his throat was dry. He beat across the platform and went in by the main entrance. The night porter was reading behind his desk. He looked up in astonishment at Alleyn, who had not waited to put on his mackintosh.

“Did you get caught, sir?”

“I took shelter,” Alleyn said. “Good night.”

He made for the stairs and, when he was out of sight, waited for a moment or two to recover his wind. Then he went up to the second floor.

The passage had the vacant look of all hotel corridors at night. A radio blared invisibly. When he moved forward he realized the noise was coming from Miss Emily’s room. A brass band was playing “Colonel Bogey.”

He knocked on the door. After a moment or two it was opened by Jenny Williams.

It was as if a tableau had been organized for his benefit; as if he had been sent out of the room while the figures arranged themselves to their best effect. Miss Emily stood on the hearthrug, very pale and grand. Margaret Barrimore, with her hands to her mouth, was behind the door, on his left. The three men had pride of place: Major Barrimore stood centre, with his legs straddled and blood running from his nose into his gaping mouth. Dr. Mayne faced him and frowned at a cut across the knuckles of his own well-kept doctor’s hand. Patrick, dishevelled, stood between them, like a referee who has just stopped a fight. The radio bellowed remorselessly. There was a scatter of broken glass in the fireplace.

They all turned their heads and looked at Alleyn. They might have been asking him to guess the word of their charade.

“Can we switch that thing off?” he asked.

Jenny did so. The silence was deafening.

“I did it to drown the shouting,” she said.

“Miss Emily,” Alleyn said, “will you sit down?” She did so.

“It might be as well,” he suggested, “if everyone did.”

Dr. Mayne made an impatient noise and walked over to the window. Barrimore sucked his moustache, tasted blood and got out his handkerchief. He was swaying on his feet. Alleyn pushed a chair under him and he collapsed on it. His eyes were out-of-focus and he reeked of whisky. Mrs. Barrimore moved towards Dr. Mayne. Jenny sat down on an arm of Miss Emily’s chair, and Patrick on the edge of the table.

“And now,” Alleyn said, “what has happened?”

For a second or two nobody spoke; then Jenny said: “I asked you to come, so I suppose I’d better explain.”

“You better hold your tongue,” Barrimore mumbled through his bloodied handkerchief.