Ngaio Marsh - Singing in the Shrouds

“Do we?” said the captain woodenly.

“Yes. He went for a walk after leaving his silver-wedding bouquet at a hospital.”

“My God!” Tim said softly.

“On the other hand an enquiry would mean that my man is fully warned and at the cost of whatever anguish to himself goes to earth until the end of the voyage. So I don’t make an arrest and at the other side of the world more girls are killed by strangulation. (B) We can warn the women privately and I give you two guesses as to what sort of privacy we might hope to preserve after warning Mrs. Cuddy. (C) We can take such of your senior officers as you think fit into our confidence, form ourselves into a sort of vigilance committee, and try by observation and undercover enquiry to get more information before taking action.”

“Which is the only course I’m prepared to sanction,” said Captain Bannerman. “And that’s flat.”

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him. “Then it’s just as well,” he said, “that at the moment it appears to be the only one that’s at all practicable.”

“That makes four suspects to watch,” Tim said after a pause.

“Four?” Alleyn said. “Everybody says four. You may all be right, of course. I’m almost inclined to reduce the field, tentatively, you know, very tentatively. It seems to me that at least one of your four is in the clear.”

They stared at him. “Are we to know which?” Father Jourdain asked.

Alleyn told him.

“Dear me!” he said. “How excessively stupid of me. But of course.”

“And then, for two of the others,” Alleyn said apologetically, “there are certain indications; nothing like certainties, you might object, and yet I’m inclined to accept them as working hypotheses.”

“But look here!” Tim said. “That would mean—”

He was interrupted by Captain Bannennan. “Do you mean to sit there,” he roared out, “and tell us you think you know who done — damnation! Who did it?”

“I’m not sure. Not nearly sure enough, but I fancy so.”

After a long pause Father Jourdain said, “Well — again, are we to know which? And why?”

Alleyn waited for a moment. He glanced at the captain’s face, scarlet with incredulity, and then at the other two; dubious, perhaps a little resentful.

“I think perhaps better not,” he said.

When at last he went to bed, Alleyn was unable to sleep. He listened to the comfortable pulse of the ship’s progress and seemed to hear beyond it a thin whistle of a voice lamenting a broken doll. If he closed his eyes it was to find Captain Bannerman’s face, blown with obstinacy, stupid and intractable, and Esmeralda, smirking over her shoulder. And even as he told himself that this must be the beginning of a dream, he was awake again. He searched for some exercise to discipline his thoughts and remembered Miss Abbott’s plainsong chant. Suppose Mr. Merryman had ordered him to put it into English verse?

Dismiss the dreams that sore affright,

Phantasmagoria of the night .

Confound our carnal enemy —

Let not our flesh corrupted be .

“No! No ! NO!” Mr. Merryman shouted, coming very close and handing him an embarkation notice. “You have completely misinterpreted the poem. My compliments to the captain and request him to lay on six of the best.”

Mr. Merryman then opened his mouth very wide, turned into Mr. Cuddy and jumped overboard. Alleyn began to climb a rope ladder with Mrs. Dillington-Blick on his back and thus burdened, at last fell heavily to sleep.

The passengers always met for coffee in the lounge at eleven o’clock. On the morning after Las Palmas this ceremony marked the first appearance of Mrs. Dillington-Blick and Aubyn Dale, neither of whom had come down for breakfast. It was a day with an enervating faint wind and the coffee was iced.

Alleyn had chosen this moment to present Mrs. Dillington-Blick with the disjecta membra of Esmeralda. She had already sent Dennis to find the doll and was as fretful as a good-natured woman can be when he came back empty-handed. Alleyn told her that at a late hour he and Father Jourdain had discovered Esmeralda lying on the deck. He then indicated the newspaper parcel that he had laid out on the end of the table.

He did this at the moment when the men of the party and Miss Abbott were gathered round the coffee. Mrs. Cuddy, Mrs. Dillington-Blick, and Brigid always allowed themselves the little ceremony of being waited upon by the gentlemen. Miss Abbott consistently lined herself up in the queue and none of the men had the temerity to question this procedure.

With the connivance of Father Jourdain and Tim Makepiece, Alleyn unveiled Esmeralda at the moment when Aubyn Dale, Mr. Merryman, Mr. Cuddy and Mr. McAngus were hard by the table.

“Here she is,” he said, “and I’m afraid she presents rather a sorry sight.”

He flicked the newspaper away in one jerk. Mrs. Dillington-Blick cried out sharply.

Esmeralda was lying on her back with her head twisted over her shoulder and the beads and dead hyacinth in position.

After its owner’s one ejaculation the doll’s exposure was followed by a dead silence and then by a violent oath from Mr. Merryman.

Almost simultaneously Miss Abbott ejaculated, “Don’t!”

Her iced coffee had tilted and the contents had fallen over Mr. Merryman’s hands.

Miss Abbott moistened her lips and said, “You must have jolted my arm, Mr. Merryman.”

“My dear madam, I did nothing of the sort!” he contradicted and angrily flipped his hands. Particles of iced coffee flew in all directions. One alighted on Mr. Cuddy’s nose. He seemed to be quite unaware of it. Half smiling, he stared at Esmeralda and with lightly clasped fingers revolved his thumbs slowly round each other.

Aubyn Dale said loudly, “Why have you done this! It looks disgusting.” He reached out and with a quick movement brushed the dead hyacinth off the doll. The beads fell away with a clatter and rolled about the table. Dale straightened the flashily smiling head.

Mr. McAngus murmured gently, “She looks quite herself again, doesn’t she? Perhaps she can be mended.”

“I don’t understand all this,” Dale said angrily to Alleyn. “Why did you do it?”

“Do what, exactly?”

“Lay it out like that. Like — like—”

Mrs. Cuddy said with relish, “Like one of those poor girls. Flowers and beads and everything; giving us all such a turn.”

“The doll,” Alleyn said, “is exactly as Father Jourdain and I found it, hyacinth and all. I’m sorry if it’s upset anyone.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick had come to the table. It was the first time, Alleyn thought, that he had seen her without so much as a flicker of a smile on her face. “Was it like that?” she asked. “Why? What happened?”

Dale said, “Don’t worry, darling Ruby. Somebody must have trodden on it and broken the beads and — and the neck.”

“I trod on it,” Father Jourdain said. “I’m most awfully sorry, Mrs. Dillington-Blick, but it was lying on the deck in pitch-dark shadow.”

“There you are!” Dale exclaimed. He caught Alleyn’s eye and recovered something of his professional bonhomie. “Sorry, old boy. I didn’t mean to throw a temperament. You gathered the doll up just as it was. No offense, I hope?”

“None in the wide world,” Alleyn rejoined politely.

Mrs. Cuddy said, “Yes, but all the same it’s funny about the flower, isn’t it, dear?”

“That’s right, dear. Funny.”

“Being a hyacinth and all. Such a coincidence.”

“That’s right,” smiled Mr. Cuddy. “Funny.”

Mr. Merryman, who was still fretfully drying his hands on his handkerchief, suddenly cried out in anguish.