Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

“Yes.”

“Yes. And you says — don’t rush me — you says the Doctor was in his launch at that mortal moment.”

Alleyn glanced at Mayne. “Agreed?” he asked.

“Yes. I saw Wally from the launch.”

Trehern moved over to Dr. Mayne. “That’s a bloody lie, Doctor,” he said. “Axcusing the expression. I face you out with it, man to man. I seen you, Doctor, clear as I see you now, moving out in thikky launch of yourn at five to ten bloody minutes past eight, and, by God, I reckon you’re not telling lies for the fun of it. I reckon as how you got half an hour on your conscience, Dr. Mayne, and if the law doesn’t face you out with it I’m the chap to do the law’s job for it.”

“I have already discussed the point with Superintendent Alleyn,” Mayne said, looking at Trehern with profound distaste. “Your story is quite unsupported.”

“Is it?” Trehern said. “Is it, then? That’s where you’re dead wrong. You mind me. And you t’other ladies and gents, and you, mister.” He turned back to Alleyn. “After you shifted off this evening, I took to thinking. And I remembered. I remembered our young Wal come up when I was looking out of my winder, and I remembered he said in his por simple fashion: ‘Thik’s Doctor’s launch, bean’t she?’ You ax him, mister. You face him up with it and he’ll tell you.”

“No doubt!” said Mayne. He looked at Alleyn. “I imagine you accept my statement,” he said.

“I haven’t said so,” Alleyn replied. “I didn’t say so at the time, if you remember.”

“By God, Alleyn!” he said angrily, and controlled himself. “This fellow’s as shifty as they come. You must see it. And the boy! Of what value is the boy’s statement — if you get one from him? He’s probably been thrashed into learning what he’s got to say.”

“I never raised a hand—” Trehern began but Alleyn stopped him.

“I was coming to this point,” he said, “when we were interrupted. It may as well be brought out by this means as any other. There are factors, apart from those I’ve already discussed, of which Trehern knows nothing. They may be said to support his story.” He glanced at Miss Emily. “I shall put them to you presently, but I assure you they are cogent. In the meantime, Dr. Mayne, if you have any independent support for your own version of your movements, you might like to say what it is. I must warn you—”

“ Stop .”

Margaret Barrimore had moved out into the room. Her hands writhed together, as they had done when he saw her in the garden, but she had an air of authority and was, he thought, in command of herself.

She said: “Please don’t go on, Mr. Alleyn. There’s something that I see I must tell you.”

“Margaret!” Dr. Mayne said sharply.

“No,” she said. “No. Don’t try to stop me. If you do, I shall insist on seeing Mr. Alleyn alone. But I’d rather say it here, in front of you all. After all, everybody knows, now, don’t they? We needn’t pretend any more. Let me go on.”

“Go on, Mrs. Barrimore,” Alleyn said.

“It’s true,” she said. “He didn’t leave the bay in his launch at half past seven or whenever it was. He came to the hotel to see me. I said I had breakfast alone. I wasn’t alone. He was there. Miss Cost had told him she was going to expose — everything…She told him when they met outside the church, so he came to see me and ask me to go away with him. He wanted us to make a clean break before it all came out. He asked me to meet him in the village tonight. We were to go to London and then abroad. It was all very hurried. Only a few minutes. We heard somebody coming. I asked him to let me think, to give me breathing space. So he went away. I suppose he went back to the bay.”

She walked over to Mayne and put her hand on his arm. “I couldn’t let you go on,” she said. “It’s all the same, now. It doesn’t matter, Bob. It doesn’t matter. We’ll be together.”

“Margaret, my dear,” said Dr. Mayne.

There was a long silence. Fox cleared his throat.

Alleyn turned to Trehern.

“And what have you to say to that?” he asked.

Trehern was gaping at Mrs. Barrimore. He seemed to be lost in some kind of trance.

“I’ll be going,” he said at last. “I’ll be getting back-along.” He turned and made for the door. Fox stepped in front of it.

Barrimore had got to his feet. His face, bedabbled with blood, was an appalling sight.

“Then it’s true,” he said very quietly. “She told me. She stood there grinning and jibbering. She said she’d make me a public laughingstock. And when I said she could go to hell, she — d’you know what she did? — she spat at me. And I–I—”

His voice was obliterated by a renewed onslaught of the gale: heavier than any that had preceded it. A confused rumpus broke out. Some metal object, a dustbin perhaps, racketted past the house and vanished in a diminishing series of irregular clashes, as if it bumped down the steps. There was a second monstrous buffet. Somebody — Margaret Barrimore, Alleyn thought — cried out, and at the same moment the lights failed altogether.

The dark was absolute and the noise, intense. Alleyn was struck violently on the shoulder and cannoned into something solid and damp: Fox. As he recovered, he was hit again and, putting out his hand, felt the edge of the door.

He yelled to Fox: “Come on!” and, snatching at the door, dived into the passage. There, too, it was completely dark. But less noisy. He thought he could make out the thud of running feet on carpet. Fox was behind him.

A flashlight danced on a wall. “Give it me,” Alleyn said. He grabbed it, and it displayed for an instant the face of Sergeant Bailey.

“Missed him!” Bailey said. “I missed him.”

“Out of my way,” Alleyn said. “Come on, you two. Fox — get Coombe.”

He ran to the stairhead and flashed his light downwards. For a split second it caught the top of a head. He went downstairs in a controlled plunge, using the torch, and arrived in the entrance hall as the front door crashed. His flashlight discovered, momentarily, the startled face of the night porter, who said: “Here, what’s the matter!” and disappeared, open-mouthed.

The door was still swinging. Alleyn caught it and was once more engulfed in the storm.

It was raining again, heavily. The force of the gale was such that he leaned against it and drove his way towards the steps in combat with it. Two other lights — Bailey’s and Thompson’s, he supposed — dodged eccentrically across the slanting downpour. He lost them when he reached the steps and found the iron rail. But there was yet another lancet of broken light beneath him. As Alleyn went down after it, he was conscious only of noise and idiot violence. He slipped, fell — and recovered. At one moment, he was hurled against the rail.

“These bloody steps,” he thought. “These bloody steps.”

When he reached the bottom flight he saw his quarry, a dark, foreshortened, anonymous figure, veer through the dull light from Miss Cost’s shop window. “Pender’s got a candle or a torch,” Alleyn thought.

The other’s torch was still going: a thin erratic blade. “Towards the jetty,” Alleyn thought. “He’s making for the jetty.” And down there were the riding lights of the hotel launch, jouncing in the dark.

Here, at last, the end of the steps…Now he was in seawater, sometimes over his feet. The roar of the channel was all-obliterating. The gale flattened his lips and filled his eyes with tears. When he made the jetty, he had to double up and grope with his left hand, keeping the right, with Fox’s torch still alive, held out in front: he was whipped by the sea.

He had gained ground. The other was moving on again, doubled up like Alleyn himself, and still using a torch. There was no more than thirty feet between them. The riding lights danced near at hand and shuddered when the launch banged against the jetty.