Ngaio Marsh - Singing in the Shrouds

Alleyn glanced with amusement at Mr. Merryman and thought what bad luck it was for him that he was unable to give visual expression to his spleen. For all the world he looked like an indignant baby.

“If you will believe me,” he continued angrily whispering, “a frightful process known as ‘talking it over’ now intervenes. The subject discloses to That Person, and to however many thousands of listening observers there may be, some intimate predicament of her (it is, I repeat, usually a woman) private life. He then propounds a solution, is thanked, applauded, preens himself, and is presented with a fresh sacrifice. Now! What do you think of that !” whispered Mr. Merryman.

“I think it all sounds very embarrassing,” Alleyn said.

Father Jourdain made a comically despairing face at him. “Let’s talk about something else,” he suggested. “You were saying, Mr. Merryman, that the psychopathic murderer—”

“You heard of course,” Mr. Merryman remorselessly interjected, “what an exhibition he made of himself at a later assignment. ‘Lady Agatha’s umbilicus globular,’ ” he quoted, and broke into à shrill laugh.

“You know,” Father Jourdain remarked, “I’m on holiday and honestly don’t want to start throwing my priestly weight about.” Before Mr. Merryman could reply he raised his voice a little and added, “To go back, as somebody, was it Humpty Dumpty? said, to the last conversation but one, I’m immensely interested in what you were saying about criminals of the Heath type. What was the book you recommended? By an American psychiatrist, I think you said.”

Mr. Merryman muttered huffily, “I don’t recollect.”

Alleyn asked, “Not, by any chance, The Show of Violence, by Frederic Wertham?”

Father Jourdain turned to him with unconcealed relief. “Ah!” he said. “You’re an addict, too, and a learned one, evidently.”

“Not I. The merest amateur. Why, by the way, is everybody so fascinated by crimes of violence?” He looked at Father Jourdain. “What do you think, sir?”

Father Jourdain hesitated and Mr. Merryman cut in.

“I am persuaded,” he said, “that people read about murder as an alternative to committing it.”

“A safety valve?” Alleyn suggested.

“A conversion. The so-called antisocial urge is fed into a socially acceptable channel; we thus commit our crimes of violence at a safe remove. We are all,” Mr. Merryman said tranquilly folding his hands over his stomach, “savages at heart.” He seemed to have recovered his good humour.

“Do you agree?” Alleyn asked Father Jourdain.

“I fancy,” he rejoined, “that Mr. Merryman is talking about something I call original sin. If he is, I do of course agree.”

An accidental silence had fallen on the little assembly. Into this silence with raised voice, as a stone into a pool, Alleyn dropped his next remark.

“Take, for instance, this strangler — the man who ‘says it with’—what are they? Roses? What, do you suppose, is behind all that?”

The silence continued for perhaps five seconds.

Miss Abbott said, “Not roses. Hyacinths. Flowers of several kinds.”

She had lifted her gaze from her book and fixed it on Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “Hot-house flowers,” she said. “It being winter. The first time it was snowdrops, I believe.”

“And the second,” Mr. Merryman said, “hyacinths.”

Aubyn Dale cleared his throat.

“Ah, yes!” Alleyn said. “I remember now. Hyacinths.”

“Isn’t it awful?” Mrs. Cuddly gloated.

“Shocking,” Mr. Cuddy agreed. “Hyacinths! Fancy!”

Mr. McAngus said gently, “Poor things.”

Mr. Merryman with the falsely innocent air of a child that knows it’s being naughty asked loudly, “Hasn’t there been something on television about these flowers? Something rather ludicrous? Of what can I be thinking?”

Everybody avoided looking at Aubyn Dale, but not even Father Jourdain found anything to say.

It was at this juncture that Dennis staggered into the room with a vast basket of flowers which he set down on the central table.

“Hyacinths!” Mrs. Cuddy shrilly pointed out. “What a coincidence!”

It was one of those naïve arrangements which can give nothing but pleasure to the person who receives them unless, of course, that person is allergic to scented flowers. The hyacinths were rooted and blooming in a mossy bed. They trembled slightly with the motion of the ship, shook out their incongruous fragrance and filled the smoking-room with reminiscences of the more expensive kinds of shops, restaurants, and women.

Dennis fell back a pace to admire them.

“Thank you, Dennis,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said.

“It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Dillington-Blick,” he rejoined. “Aren’t they gorgeous?”

He retired behind the bar. The passengers stared at the growing flowers and the flowers, quivering, laid upon them a further burden of sweetness.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick explained hurriedly, “There isn’t room for all one’s flowers in one’s cabin. I thought we’d enjoy them together.”

Alleyn said, “But what a charming gesture.” And was barely supported by a dilatory murmur.

Brigid agreed quickly, “Isn’t it? Thank you so much, they’re quite lovely.”

Tim Makepiece murmured, “What nice manners you’ve got, Grandmama.”

“I do hope,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said, “that nobody finds the scent too much. Me, I simply wallow in it.”

She turned to Aubyn Dale. He rejoined, “But of course. You’re so wonderfully exotic.” Mr. Merryman snorted.

Mrs. Cuddy said loudly, “I’m afraid we’re going to be spoil-sports. Mr. Cuddy can’t stay in the same room with flowers that have a heavy perfume. He’s allergic to them.”

“Oh, I am so sorry,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick cried. “Then, of course, they must go.” She waved her hands helplessly.

“I’m sure there’s no need for that,” Mrs. Cuddy announced. “We don’t want to make things uncomfortable. We were going to take a turn on deck anyway. Weren’t we, dear?”

Alleyn asked, “Do you suffer from hay fever, Mr. Cuddy?”

Mrs. Cuddy answered for her husband. “Not exactly hay fever, is it, dear? He just comes over queer.”

“Extraordinary,” Alleyn murmured.

“Well, it’s quite awkward sometimes.”

“At weddings and funerals, for instance, it must be.”

“Well, on our silver wedding some of the gentlemen from Mr. Cuddy’s lodge brought us a gorgeous mixed booky of hot-house flowers and he had to say how much he appreciated it and all the time he was feeling peculiar and when they’d gone he said, ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but it’s me or the booky,’ and we live opposite a hospital so he took them across and had to go for a long walk afterwards to get over it, didn’t you, dear?”

“ Your silver wedding,” Alleyn said, and smiled at Mrs. Cuddy. “You’re not going to tell us you’ve been married twenty-five years!”

“Twenty-five years and eleven days to be exact. Haven’t we, dear?”

“That’s correct, dear.”

“He’s turning colour,” Mrs. Cuddy said, exhibiting her husband with an air of triumph. “Come on, love. Walky-walky.”

Mr. Cuddy seemed unable to look away from Mrs. Dillington-Blick. He said, “I don’t notice the perfume too heavy. It isn’t affecting me.”

“That’s what you say,” his wife replied, ominously bluff. “You come into the fresh air, my man.” She took his arm and turned him towards the glass doors that gave on to the deck. She opened them. Cold salt air poured into the heated room, and the sound of the sea and of the ship’s engines. The Cuddys went out. Mr. Cuddy shut the doors and could be seen looking back into the room. His wife removed him and they walked away, their grey hair lifting in the wind.