Ngaio Marsh - Singing in the Shrouds

“Afternoon,” he said. “Are you the steward for the pilot’s cabin?”

Evidently Dennis had heard about Alleyn. He hurried to the door, smiled winsomely and said, “Not generally, but I’m going to have the pleasure of looking after you, Mr. Broderick.”

Alleyn tipped him five pounds. Dennis said, “Oh, you shouldn’t, sir, really,” and pocketed the note. He indicated the flowers and said, “I just can’t make up my mind, sir. Mrs. Dillington-Blick said I was to take some into the dining-room and lounge and as soon as I’ve finished in the bar I’m going to, but I don’t know which to choose. Such an umberance-der-riches! What would you say for the lounge, sir? The décor’s dirty pink .”

Alleyn was so long answering that Dennis gave a little giggle. “Isn’t it diffy !” he sympathized.

Alleyn pointed a long finger. “That,” he said. “I should certainly make it that one,” and went on his way to the passengers’ lounge.

It was a modest combination of bar, smoking-room, and card-room and in it the passengers were assembled for coffee. Already by the curious mechanism of human attraction and repulsion they had begun to sort themselves into groups. Mr. McAngus, having found himself alongside the Cuddys at luncheon, was re-appropriated by them both and seemed to be not altogether at ease in their company, perhaps because Mrs. Cuddy stared so very fixedly at his hair, which, Alleyn noticed, was of an unexpected shade of nut brown with no parting and a good deal of overhang at the back. He drew a packet of herbal cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, explaining that he suffered from asthma. They began to chat more cosily about diseases. Mr. McAngus confided that he was but recently recovered from an operation and Mr. Cuddy returned this lead with a lively account of a suspected duodenal ulcer.

Father Jourdain and Mr. Merryman had discovered a common taste in crime fiction and smiled quite excitedly at each other over their coffee cups. Of all the men among the passengers, Alleyn thought, Father Jourdain had the most arresting appearance. He wondered what procession of events had led this man to become an Anglo-Catholic celibate priest. There was intelligence and liveliness in the face whose pallor, induced no doubt by the habit of his life, emphasized rather than concealed the opulence of the mouth and watchfulness of the dark eyes. His short white hands were muscular and his hair thick and glossy. He was infinitely more vivid than his companion, whose baby-faced petulance, Alleyn felt, was probably the outward wall of the conventional house master. He caught himself up. “Conventional?” Was Mr. Merryman the too-familiar pedant who cultivates the eccentric to compensate himself for the deadly boredom of scholastic routine? A don manqué ? Alleyn took himself mildy to task for indulgence in idle speculation and looked elsewhere.

Dr. Timothy Makepiece stood over Brigid Carmichael with the slightly mulish air of a young Englishman in the early stages of an attraction. Alleyn noted the formidable lines of Dr. Makepiece’s jaw and mouth, and being at the moment interested in hands, the unusual length of the fingers.

Miss Abbott sat by herself on a settee against the wall. She was reading. The hands that held her neatly covered book were large and muscular. Her face, he reflected, would have been not unhandsome if it had been only slightly less inflexible and if there had not been the suggestion of — what was it — harshness? — about the jaw.

As for Aubyn Dale, there he was, with Mrs. Dillington-Blick, who had set herself up with him hard by the little bar. When she saw Alleyn she beckoned gaily to him. She was busy establishing a coterie. As Alleyn joined them Aubyn Dale laid a large, beautifully tended hand over hers and burst into a peal of all-too-infectious laughter. “What a perfectly marvelous person you are!” he cried boyishly and appealed to Alleyn. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

Alleyn agreed fervently and offered them liqueurs.

“You take the words out of my mouth, dear boy,” Dale exclaimed.

“I oughtn’t to!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick protested. “I’m on an inquisitorial diet!” She awarded her opulence a downward glance and Alleyn an upward one. She raised her eyebrows. “My dear!” she cried. “You can see for yourself. I oughtn’t.”

“But you’re going to,” he rejoined and the drinks were served by the ubiquitous Dennis, who had appeared behind the bar. Mrs. Dillington-Blick, with a meaning look at Dale, said that if she put on another ounce she would never get into her Jolyon swimsuit and they began to talk about his famous session on commercial television. It appeared that when he visited America and did a specially sponsored half-hour, he had been supported by a great mass of superb models all wearing Jolyon swimsuits. His hands eloquently sketched their curves. He leaned towards Mrs. Dillington-Blick and whispered. Alleyn noticed the slight puffiness under his eyes and the blurring weight of flesh beneath the inconsiderable jaw which formerly his beard had hidden. “Is this the face,” Alleyn asked himself, “that launched a thousand hips?” and wondered why.

“You haven’t forgotten the flowers?” Mrs. Dillington-Blick asked Dennis and he assured her that he hadn’t.

“As soon as I’ve a spare sec I’ll pop away and fetch them,” he promised and smiled archly at Alleyn. “They’re all chosen and ready.”

As Aubyn Dale’s conversation with Mrs. Dillington-Blick tended to get more and more confidential Alleyn felt himself at liberty to move away. At the far end of the lounge Mr. Merryman was talking excitedly to Father Jourdain, who had begun to look uncomfortable. He caught Alleyn’s eye and nodded pleasantly. Alleyn dodged round the Cuddys and Mr. McAngus and bypassed Miss Abbott. There was a settee near the far end, but as he made for it Father Jourdain said, “Do come and join us. These chairs are much more comfortable and we’d like to introduce ourselves.”

Alleyn said, “I should be delighted,” and introductions were made. Mr. Merryman looked sharply at him over the tops of his spectacles and said, “How do you do, sir.” He added astonishingly, “I perceived that you were effecting an escape from what was no doubt an excruciating situation.”

“I?” Alleyn said. “I don’t quite—”

“The sight,” Mr. Merryman continued in none too quiet a voice, “of yonder popinjay ruffling his dubious plumage at the bar is singularly distasteful to me and no doubt intolerable to you.”

“Oh, come, now!” Father Jourdain protested.

Alleyn said, “He’s not as bad as that, is he?”

“You know who he is, of course.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Yes, yes,” said Father Jourdain. “We know. Ssh!”

“Have you witnessed his weekly exhibitions of indecent exposure on the television?”

“I’m not much of a viewer,” Alleyn said.

“Ah! You show your good judgment. As an underpaid pedagogue it has been my hideous lot to sit on Tuesday evenings among upper-middle-class adolescents of low intelligence, ‘looking in’ (loathsome phrase) at this man’s antics. Let me tell you what he does, sir. He advertises women’s bathing clothes and to this end he incites — arrogant presumption — he incites members of the public to bring their troubles to him! And the fools do! Conceive!” Mr. Merryman invited. “Picture to yourself! A dupe is discovered, his back (or much more often hers) to the camera. Out of focus, unrecognizable, therefore. Facing this person and us, remorselessly illuminated, enthroned and elevated in blasphemous (you will appreciate that in clerical company I use the adjective advisedly) in blasphemous supremacy is or was the countenance you see before you, but garnished with a hirsute growth which lent it a wholly spurious distinction.”