Ngaio Marsh - Singing in the Shrouds

Mr. McAngus wore a hyacinth in his buttonhole. Tim Makepiece was obviously enjoying himself and Brigid had an air of being astonished at her own gaiety. Mr. Merryman positively blossomed or, at any rate, sprouted a little under the influence of impeccably chosen wines and surprisingly good food, while Miss Abbott relaxed and barked quite jovially across the table at Mr. Cuddy. The two officers rapidly eased off their guarded good manners.

The Cuddys were the tricky ones. Mrs. Cuddy looked as if she wasn’t going to give herself away if she knew it and Mr. Cuddy’s smile suggested that he enjoyed secret information about something slightly discreditable to everyone else. They exchanged looks occasionally.

However, as the Montrachet was followed by Perrier-Jouet in a lordly magnum, even the Cuddys shed some of their caginess. Mrs. Cuddy, having assured Alleyn that they never touched anything but a drop of port wine on anniversaries, was persuaded to modify her austerity and did so with abandon. Mr. Cuddy cautiously sipped and asked sharp questions about the wine, pointing out with tedious iteration that it was all above his head, he being a very simple-living person and not used to posh meals. Alleyn was unable to like Mr. Cuddy very much.

Nevertheless, it was he who provided a means of introducing the topic that Alleyn had planned to exploit. There were no flowers on the table. They had been replaced by large bowls of fruit and shaded lamps, in deference, Alleyn pointed out, to Mr. Cuddy’s idiosyncrasy. It was an easy step from here to the Flower Murderer. “Flowers,” Alleyn suggested, “must have exactly the opposite effect on him to the one they have on you, Mr. Cuddy. A morbid attraction. Wouldn’t you say so, Makepiece?”

“It might be so,” Tim agreed cheerfully. “From the standpoint of clinical psychiatry there is probably an unconscious association—”

He was young enough and had drunk enough good wine to enjoy airing his shop and, it seemed, essentially modest enough to pull himself up after a sentence or two. “But really very little is known about these cases,” he said apologetically. “I’m probably talking through my hat.”

But he had served Alleyn’s purpose, and the talk was now concentrated on the Flower Murderer. Theories were advanced. Famous cases were quoted. Arguments abounded. Everybody seemed to light up pleasurably on the subject of the death by strangulation of Beryl Cohen and Marguerite Slatters. Even Mr. Merryman became animated and launched a full-scale attack on the methods of the police, who, he said, had obviously made a complete hash of their investigation. He was about to embroider his theme when the captain withdrew his right hand from under the tablecloth without looking at Mrs. Dillington-Blick, raised his glass of champagne and proposed Alleyn’s health. Mrs. Cuddy shrilly and unexpectedly shouted “Speech, speech!” and was supported by the captain, Aubyn Dale, the officers and her husband. Father Jourdain murmured, “By all means, speech.” Mr. Merryman looked sardonic and the others, politely apprehensive, tapped the table.

Alleyn stood up. His great height, and the circumstance of his face being lit from below like an actor’s in the days of footlights, may have given point to the silence that fell upon the room. The stewards had retired into the shadows, there was a distant rattle of crockery. The anonymous throb of the ship’s progress re-established itself.

“It’s very nice of you,” Alleyn said, “but I’m no hand at all at speeches and would make a perfect ass of myself if I tried, particularly in this distinguished company — The Church! Television! Learning! No, no. I shall just thank you all for making this, I hope I may say, such a good party and sit down.” He made as if to do so when to everybody’s amazement, and judging by his extraordinary expression, his own as well, Mr. Cuddy suddenly roared out in the voice of a tone-deaf bull, “For — or—”

The sound he made was so destitute of anything remotely resembling any air that for a moment everybody was at a loss to know what ailed him. Indeed it was not until he had got as far as “jolly good fellow,” that his intention became clear and an attempt was made by Mrs. Cuddy, the captain and the officers to support him. Father Jourdain then good-humouredly struck in, but even his pleasant tenor could make little headway against the deafening atonalities of Mr. Cuddy’s ground swell. The tribute ended in confusion and a deadly little silence.

Alleyn hastened to fill it. He said, “Thank you very much,” and caught Mr. Merryman’s eye.

“You were saying,” he prompted, “that the police have made a hash of their investigations. In what respect, exactly?”

“In every possible respect, my dear sir. What have they done? No doubt they have followed the procedure they bring to bear upon other cases which they imagine are in the same category. This procedure having failed they are at a loss. I have long suspected that our wonderful police methods so monotonously extolled by a too-complacent public are in reality cumbersome, inflexible, and utterly without imaginative direction. The murderer has not obliged them by distributing pawn tickets, driving licences or visiting cards about the scenes of his activities and they are left therefore gaping.”

“Personally,” Alleyn said, “I can’t imagine how they even begin to tackle their job. I mean, what do they do?”

“You may well ask!” cried Mr. Merryman, now pleasurably uplifted. “No doubt they search the ground for something they call, I understand, occupational dust, in the besotted hope that their man is a bricklayer, knife-grinder, or flour-miller. Finding none, they accost numbers of blameless individuals who have been seen in the vicinity and weeks after the event ask them to produce alibis. Alibis!” Mr. Merryman exclaimed and threw up his hands.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick, opening her eyes very wide, said, “What would you do, Mr. Merryman, if you were the police?”

There was a fractional pause, after which Mr. Merryman said with hauteur that as he was not in fact a detective the question was without interest.

The captain said, “What’s wrong with alibis? If a chap’s got an alibi he’s out of it, isn’t he? So far so good.”

“Alibis,” Mr. Merryman said grandly, “are in the same category as statistics; in the last analysis they prove nothing.”

“Oh, come now!” Father Jourdain protested. “If I’m saying compline in Kensington with the rest of my community at the time a crime is committed in Bermondsey, I’m surely incapable of having committed it.”

Mr. Merryman had begun to look very put out and Alleyn came to his rescue.

“Surely,” he said, “a great many people don’t even remember exactly what they were doing on a specific evening at a specific time. I’m jolly certain I don’t.”

“Suppose, for instance, now — just for the sake of argument,” Captain Bannerman said, and was perhaps a trifle too careful not to look at Alleyn, “that all of us had to produce an alibi for one of these crimes. By gum, I wonder if we could do it. I wonder.”

Father Jourdain, who had been looking very steadily at Alleyn, said, “One might try.”

“One might,” Alleyn rejoined. “One might even have a bet on it. What do you say, Mr. Merryman?”

“Normally,” Mr. Merryman declared, “I am not a betting man. However, dissipat Evius curas edaces . I would be prepared to wager some trifling sum upon the issue.”

“Would you?” Alleyn asked. “Really? All right, then. Propose your bet, sir.”

Mr. Merryman thought for a moment. “Coom on, now,” urged the captain.

“Very well. Five shillings that the majority here will be unable to produce, on the spot, an acceptable alibi for any given date.”