Ngaio Marsh - Singing in the Shrouds

Miss Abbott rounded on him and cried out with shocking violence, “For God’s sake stop talking. ‘Helpful suggestions’! What ‘suggestions’ can help in that kind of hell!” She looked round at them all with an expression of evident despair. “For some of us,” she said, “there’s no escape. We are our own slaves. No escape or release.”

“Nonsense!” Mr. Merryman said sharply. “There is always an escape and a release. It is a matter of courage and resolution.”

Miss Abbott gave a harsh sob. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I’m not myself. I shouldn’t have had so much champagne.” She turned away.

Father Jourdain said quickly, “You know, Mr. McAngus, I’m afraid you haven’t quite convinced us.”

“And that’s the last alibi gone overboard,” said the captain. “Mr. Merryman wins.”

He made a great business of handing over his five shillings. Alleyn, Mr. McAngus, and Aubyn Dale followed suit.

They all began to talk at once, and with the exception of the Cuddys, avoided looking at Miss Abbott. Brigid moved in front of her and screened her from the others. It was tactfully done and Alleyn was confirmed in his view that Brigid was a nice child. Mrs. Dillington-Blick joined her and automatically a group assembled round Mrs. Dillington-Blick. So between Miss Abbott and the rest of the world there was a barrier behind which she trumpeted privately into her handkerchief.

Presently she got up, now mistress of herself, thanked Alleyn for his party and left it.

The Cuddys came forward, clearly agog, eager, by allusion and then by direct reference, to speculate upon Miss Abbott’s distress. Nobody supported them. Mr. McAngus merely looked bewildered. Tim talked to Brigid and Captain Bannerman and Aubyn Dale talked to Mrs. Dillington-Blick. Mr. Merryman looked once at the Cuddys over his spectacles, rumpled his hair and said something about “ Hoc morbido cupiditatis ” in a loud voice to Alleyn and Father Jourdain. Alleyn was suddenly visited by an emotion that is unorthodox in an investigating officer; he felt a liking and warmth for these people. He respected them because they refused to gossip with the Cuddys about Miss Abbott’s unhappiness and because they had behaved with decency and compassion when she broke down. He saw Brigid and Mrs. Dillington-Blick speak together and then slip out of the room and he knew they had gone to see if they could help Miss Abbott. He was very much troubled.

Father Jourdain came up to him and said, “Shall we move over here?” He led Alleyn to the far end of the room.

“That was unfortunate,” he said.

“I’m sorry about it.”

“You couldn’t possibly know it would happen. She is a very unhappy woman. She exhales unhappiness.”

“It was the reference to that damn spiritual striptease session of Dale’s,” Alleyn said. “I suppose something in the programme had upset her.”

“Undoubtedly,” Father Jourdain smiled. “That’s a good description of it, a spiritual striptease. I suppose you’ll think I’m lugging in my cloth, but you know I really do think it’s better to leave confession to the professional.”

“Dale would call himself a professional.”

“What he does,” Father Jourdain said, with some warmth, “is vulgar, dangerous, and altogether odious. But he’s not a bad chap, of course. At least I don’t think so. Not a bad sort of chap at all.”

Alleyn said, “There’s something else you want to say to me, isn’t there?”

“There is, but I hesitate to say it. I am not sure of myself. Will you laugh at me if I tell you that, by virtue of my training perhaps, and perhaps because of some instinct, I am peculiarly sensitive to — to spiritual atmosphere?”

“I don’t know that I—”

Father Jourdain interrupted him.

“I mean that when I feel there is something really out of joint spiritually — I use this word because I’m a priest, you know — with a group of people, I’m usually right.”

“And do you feel it now?”

“Very strongly. I suspect it’s a sense of unexpressed misery,” said Father Jourdain. “But I can’t hunt it home.”

“Miss Abbott?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Even that,” Alleyn said, “is not what you want to say.”

“You’re very perceptive yourself.” Father Jourdain looked steadily at him. “When the party breaks up, will you stay behind for a moment?”

“Certainly.”

Father Jourdain said so softly that Alleyn could barely hear him, “You are Roderick Alleyn, aren’t you?”

The deserted lounge smelt of dead cigarettes and forgotten drinks. Alleyn opened the doors to the deck outside: the stars were careering in the sky; the ship’s mast swung against them; and the night sea swept thudding and hissing past her flanks.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” said Father Jourdain behind him.

Alleyn shut the doors again and they sat down.

“Let me assure you at once,” Father Jourdain said, “that I shall respect your — I suppose anonymity is not the right word. Your incognito, shall we say?”

“I’m not particularly bothered about the choice of words,” Alleyn said dryly.

“Nor need you be bothered about my recognizing you. It’s by the oddest of coincidences. Your wife may be said to have effected the introduction.”

“Really?”

“I have never met her, but I admire her painting. Some time ago I went to a one-man show of hers and was very much impressed by a small portrait. It too was anonymous, but a brother-priest, Father Copeland of Winton St. Giles, who knows you both, told me it was a portrait of her husband, who was the celebrated Inspector Alleyn. I have a very long memory for faces and the likeness was striking. I felt sure I was not mistaken.”

“Troy,” Alleyn said, “will be enormously gratified.”

“And then, that bet of Mr. Merryman’s was organized, wasn’t it?”

“Lord, lord! I do seem to have made an ass of myself.”

“No, no. Not you. You were entirely convincing. It was the captain.”

“His air of spontaneity was rather massive, perhaps.”

“Exactly.” Father Jourdain leaned forward and said, “Alleyn, why was that conversation about the Flower Murderer introduced?”

Alleyn said, “For fun. Why else?”

“So you are not going to tell me.”

“At least,” Alleyn said lightly, “I’ve got your alibi for January the fifteenth.”

“You don’t trust me, of course.”

“It doesn’t arise. As you have discovered, I am a policeman.”

“I beg you to trust me. You won’t regret it. You can check my alibi, can’t you? And the other time, the other poor child who had been to church — when was that? The twenty-fifth. Why, on the twenty-fifth I was at a conference in Paris. You can prove it at once. No doubt you’re in touch with your colleagues. Of course you can.”

“I expect it can be done.”

“Then do it. I urge you to do it. If you are here for the fantastic reason I half suspect, you will need someone you can trust.”

“It never comes amiss.”

“These women must not be left alone.” Father Jourdain had arisen and was staring through, the glass doors. “Look,” he said.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick was taking a walk on deck. As she passed the lighted windows above the engine-rooms she paused. Her earrings and necklace twinkled, the crimson scarf she had wrapped about her head fluttered in the night breeze. A man emerged from the shadow of the centrecastle and walked towards her. He took her arm. They turned away and were lost to view. He was Aubyn Dale. “You see,” Father Jourdain said. “If I’m right, that’s the sort of thing we mustn’t allow.”

Alleyn said, “To-day is the seventh of February. These crimes have occured at ten-day intervals.”