Ngaio Marsh - Dead Water

The figure was poised: it waited for the right moment. A torchlight swung through the rain and Alleyn found himself squinting into the direct beam. He ducked and moved on, half-dazzled, but aware that the launch rose and the figure leaped to meet it. Alleyn struggled forward, took his chance, and jumped.

He had landed aft, among the passengers’ benches; had fallen across one of them and struck his head on another. He hung there, while the launch bucketted under him, and then he fell between the benches and lay on the heaving deck, fighting for breath and helpless. His torch had gone and he was in the dark. There must have been a brief rent in the night sky, because a company of stars careened across his vision, wheeled and returned. The deck tilted again and he saw the hotel windows, glowing. They curtsied and tipped. The power’s on, he thought — and a sudden deadly sinking blotted everything out. When he opened his eyes he thought with astonishment: I was out. Then he heard the engine and felt the judder of a propeller racing above water. He laid hold of a bench and dragged himself to his knees. He could see his opponent, faintly haloed by light from the wheelhouse, back towards him, wrestling with the wheel itself. A great sea broke over them. The windows along Portcarrow front lurched up and dived out of sight again.

Alleyn began to crawl down the gangway between rows of fixed seats, clinging to them as he went. His feet slithered. He fell sideways and, propping himself up, managed to drag off his shoes and socks. His head cleared and ached excruciatingly. The launch was now in mid-channel, taking the seas full on her beam and rolling monstrously. He thought, She’ll never make it, and tried to remember where the life belts should be.

Did that other, fighting there with the wheel, know Alleyn was aboard? How had the launch been cast off? Were the mooring-lines freed from their cleats, and was she now without them? Or had they been loosed from the bollards while he was unconscious? What should he do? Keep observation! he thought sourly. An exquisite jab of pain shot through his eyeballs.

The launch keeled over and took in a solid weight of sea. He thought, Well, this is it, and was engulfed. The iron legs of the bench bit into his hands. He hung on, almost vertical, and felt the water drag at him like an octopus. It was disgusting. The deck kicked. They wallowed for a suspended moment and then, shuddering, recovered and rose. The first thing he saw was the back of the helmsman. Something rolled against his chest: he unclenched his left hand and felt for it. The torch.

Street lamps along the front came alive and seemed dramatically near-at-hand. At the same time the engine was cut. He struggled to his feet and moved forward. He was close, now, to the figure at the wheel. There was the jetty. Their course had shifted, and the launch pitched violently. His left hand knocked against the back of a seat and a beam of light shot out from the torch and found the figure at the wheel. It turned.

Mayne and Alleyn looked into the other’s face.

Mayne lurched out of the wheelhouse. The launch lifted prodigiously, tilted, and dived, nose down. Alleyn was blinded by a deluge of sea water. When he could see again, Mayne was on the port gunwale. For a fraction of time he was poised, a gigantic figure against the shore lights. Then he flexed his knees and leaped overboard.

The launch went about and crashed into the jetty. The last thing Alleyn heard was somebody yelling high above him.

He was climbing down innumerable flights of stairs. They were impossibly steep — perpendicular — but he had to go down. They tipped and he fell outwards and looked into an abyss laced with flashlights. He lost his hold, dropped into nothing, and was on the stairs again, climbing, climbing. Somebody was making comfortable noises. He looked into a face.

“Fox,” he said, with immense satisfaction.

“There, now!” said Inspector Fox.

Alleyn went to sleep.

When he woke, it was to find Troy nearby. Her hand was against his face. “So, there you are,” he said.

“Hullo,” said Troy, and kissed him.

The wall beyond her was dappled with sunshine and looked familiar. He puzzled over it for a time, and, because he wanted to lie with his face closer to her hand, turned his head and was stabbed through the temples.

“Don’t move,” Troy said, “You’ve taken an awful bash.”

“I see.”

“You’ve been concussed and all.”

“How long?”

“About thirty-four hours.”

“This is Coombe’s cottage?”

“That’s right, but you’re meant not to talk.”

“Ridiculous,” he said and dozed off again.

Troy slid her hand carefully from under his bristled jaw and crept out of the room.

Superintendent Coombe was in his parlour with Sir James Curtis and Fox. “He woke again,” Troy said to Curtis, “just for a moment.”

“Say anything?”

“Yes. He’s…” Her voice trembled. “He’s all right.”

“Of course, he’s all right. I’ll take a look at him.”

She returned with him to the bedroom and stood by the window while Curtis stooped over his patient. It was a brilliant morning. The channel was dappled with sequins. The tide was low and three people were walking over the causeway: an elderly woman, a young man and a girl. Five boats ducked and bobbed in Fisherman’s Bay. The hotel launch was still jammed in the understructure of the jetty and looked inconsequent and unreal, suspended above its natural element. A complete write-off, it was thought.

“You’re doing fine,” Curtis said.

“Where’s Troy?”

“Here, darling.”

“Good. What happened?”

“You were knocked out,” Curtis said. “Coombe and two other chaps managed to fish you up.”

“Coombe?”

“Fox rang him from the hotel as soon as you’d set off on your wild-goose chase. They were on the jetty.”

“Oh, yes. Yelling. Where’s Fox?”

“You’d better keep quiet for a bit, Rory. Everything’s all right. Plenty of time.”

“I want to see Fox, Curtis.”

“Very well, but only for one moment.”

Troy fetched him.

“This is more like it, now,” Fox said.

“Have you found him?”

“We have, yes. Yesterday evening, at low tide.”

“Where?”

“About four miles along the coast.”

“It was deliberate, Fox.”

“So I understand. Coombe saw it.”

“Yes. Well now, that’s quite enough,” said Curtis.

Fox stepped back.

“Wait a minute,” Alleyn said. “Anything on him? Fox? Anything on him?”

“All right. Tell him.”

“Yes, Mr. Alleyn, there was. Very sodden. Pulp almost, but you can make it out. The top copy of that list, and the photograph.”

“Ah!” Alleyn said. “She gave them to him. I thought as much.”

He caught his breath and then closed his eyes. “That’s right,” Curtis said. “You go to sleep again.”

“My sister, Fanny Winterbottom,” said Miss Emily, two days later, “once remarked with characteristic extravagance (nay, on occasion, vulgarity) that, wherever I went, I kicked up as much dust as a dancing dervish. The observation was inspired more by fortuitous alliteration than by any degree of accuracy. If, however, she were alive today, she would doubtless consider herself justified. I have made disastrous mischief in Portcarrow.”

“My dear Miss Emily, aren’t you, yourself, falling into Mrs. Winterbottom’s weakness for exaggeration? Miss Cost’s murder had nothing to do with your decision on the future of the spring.”

“But it had ,” said Miss Emily, smacking her gloved hand on the arm of Superintendent Coombe’s rustic seat. “Let us have logic. If I had not persisted with my decision, her nervous system, to say nothing of her emotions (at all times unstable) would not have been exacerbated to such a degree that she would have behaved as she did.”