Ngaio Marsh - Singing in the Shrouds

“They’ll die of cold!” Brigid exclaimed. “No coats or hats.”.

“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick lamented and appealed in turn to the men. “And I expect it’s all my fault.” They murmured severally.

Mr. McAngus, who had peeped into the passage, confided, “It’s all right. They’ve come in by the side door and I think they’ve gone to their cabin.” He sniffed timidly at the flowers, gave a small apologetic laugh and made a little bobbing movement to and from Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “ I think we’re all most awfully lucky,” he ventured. He then went out into the passage, putting on his hat as he did so.

“That poor creature dyes its hair,” Mr. Merryman observed calmly.

“Oh, come!” Father Jourdain protested and gave Alleyn a helpless look. “I seem,” he said under his breath, “to be saying nothing but ‘Oh, come,’ A maddening observation.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick blossomed at Mr. Merryman: “Aren’t you naughty !” She laughed and appealed to Aubyn Dale: “ Not true. Is it?”

“I honestly can’t see, you know, that if he does dye his hair, it’s anybody’s business but his,” Dale said, and gave Mr. Merryman his celebrated smile. “Can you?” he said.

“I entirely agree with you,” Mr. Merryman rejoined, grinning like a monkey. “I must apologize. In point of fact I abominate the public elucidation of private foibles.”

Dale turned pale and said nothing.

“Let us talk about flowers instead,” Mr. Merryman suggested and beamed through his spectacles upon the company.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick at once began to do so. She was supported, unexpectedly, by Miss Abbott. Evidently they were both experienced gardeners. Dale listened with a stationary smile. Alleyn saw him order himself a second double brandy.

“I suppose,” Alleyn remarked generally, “everybody has a favourite flower.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick moved into a position from which she could see him. “Hullo, you!” she exclaimed jollily. “But of course they have. Mine’s magnolias.”

“What are yours?” Tim Makepiece asked Brigid.

“Distressingly obvious — roses.”

“Lilies,” Father Jourdain smiled, “which may also be obvious.”

“Easter?” Miss Abbott barked.

“Exactly.”

“What about you?” Alleyn asked Tim.

“The hop,” he said cheerfully.

Alleyn grinned. “There you are. It’s all a matter of association. Mine’s lilac and throws back to a pleasant childhood memory. But if beer happened to make you sick or my nanny, whom I detested, had worn lilac in her nankeen bosom or Father Jourdain associated lilies with death, we’d have all hated the sight and smell of these respective flowers.”

Mr. Merryman looked with pity at him. “Not,” he said, “a remarkably felicitous exposition of a somewhat elementary proposition, but, as far as it goes, unexceptionable.”

Alleyn bowed. “Have you, sir,” he asked, “a preference?”

“None, none. The topic, I confess, does not excite me.”

“I think it’s a heavenly topic,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick cried. “But then I adore finding out about People and their preferences.” She turned to Dale and at once his smile reprinted itself. “Tell me your taste in flowers,” she said, “and I’ll tell you your type in ladies. Come clean, now. Your favorite flower? Or shall I guess?”

“Agapanthas?” Mr. Merryman loudly suggested. Dale clapped his glass down on the bar and walked out of the room.

“Now, look here, Mr. Merryman!” Father Jourdain said and rose to his feet.

Mr. Merryman opened his eyes very wide and pursed his lips. “What’s up?” he asked.

“You know perfectly well what’s up. You’re an extremely naughty little man and although it’s none of my business I think fit to tell you so.”

Far from disconcerting Mr. Merryman, this more or less public rebuke appeared to afford him enjoyment. He clapped his hands lightly, slapped them on his knees and broke into elfish laughter.

“If you’ll take my advice,” Father Jourdain continued, “you will apologize to Mr. Dale.”

Mr. Merryman rose, bowed, and observed in an extremely highfalutin manner, “ Consilia firmiora sunt de divinis locis .”

The priest turned red.

Alleyn, who didn’t see why Mr. Merryman should be allowed to make a corner in pedantry, racked his own brains for a suitable tag. “ Consilium inveniunt multi sed docti explicant, however,” he said.

“Dear me!” Mr. Merryman observed. “How often one has cause to remark that a platitude sounds none the better for being uttered in an antique tongue. I shall now address myself to my postprandial nap.”

He trotted towards the door, paused for a moment to stare at Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s pearls, and then went out.

“For pity’s sake!” she ejaculated. “What is all this! What’s happening? What’s the matter with Aubyn Dale? Why agapanthas?”

“Can it be possible,” Tim Makepiece said, “that you don’t know about Lady Agatha’s umbilicus globular and the hyacinths on the turdy stable?” and he retold the story of Aubyn Dale’s misfortunes.

“How frightful!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick exclaimed, laughing until she cried. “How too tragically frightful! And how naughty of Mr. Merryman.”

Tim Makepiece said, “We don’t ’alf look like being a happy family. What will Mr. Chip’s form be, one asks oneself, when he enters the Torrid Zone?”

“He may look like Mr. Chips,” Alleyn remarked. “He behaves like Thersites.”

Brigid said, “I call it the rock bottom of him. You could see Aubyn Dale minded most dreadfully. He went as white as his teeth. What could have possessed Mr. Chips?”

“Schoolmaster,” Miss Abbott said, scarcely glancing up from her book. “They often turn sour at his age. It’s the life.”

She had been quiet for so long they had forgotten her. “That’s right,” she continued, “isn’t it, Father?”

“It may possibly, I suppose, be a reason. It’s certainly not an excuse.”

“I think,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick lamented, “I’d better throw my lovely hyacinths overboard, don’t you?” She appealed to Father Jourdain. “Wouldn’t it be best? It’s not only poor Mr. Dale.”

“No,” Brigid agreed. “Mr. Cuddy, we must remember, comes over queer at the sight of them.”

“Mr. Cuddy,” Miss Abbott observed, “came over queer but not, in my opinion, at the sight of the hyacinths.” She lowered her book and looked steadily at Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

“My dear!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick rejoined and began to laugh again.

“Well!” Father Jourdain said with the air of a man who refuses to recognize his nose before his face. “I think I shall see what it’s like on deck.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick stood between him and the double doors and he was quite close to her. She beamed up at him. His back was turned to Alleyn. He was still for a moment and then she moved aside and he went out. There was a brief silence.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick turned to Brigid.

“My dear!” she confided. “I’ve got that man. He’s a reformed rake.”

Mr. McAngus re-entered from the passage still wearing his hat. He smiled diffidently at his five fellow passengers.

“All settling down?” he ventured, evidently under a nervous compulsion to make some general remark.

“Like birds in their little nest,” Alleyn agreed cheerfully.

“Isn’t it delicious,” Mr. McAngus said, heartened by this response, “to think that from now on it’s going to get warmer and warmer and warmer?”

“Absolutely enchanting.”

Mr. McAngus made the little chassé with which they were all to become familiar, before the basket of hyacinths.