Ngaio Marsh - Singing in the Shrouds

Tim said rapidly, “No, really. I mustn’t bore you and at any rate one has no business to go by superficial impressions. It’s just that on the face of it she’s a textbook example of the woman without sexual attraction who hasn’t succeeded in finding a satisfactory adjustment.”

Alleyn looked up from his clasped hands. “From your point of view isn’t that also true of the sort of homicide we’re concerned with?”

“Invariably, I should say. These cases almost always point back to some childish tragedy in which the old gang — fear, frustration and jealousy — have been predominant. This is true of most psychological abnormalities. For instance, as a psychotherapist I would, if I got the chance, try to discover why hyacinths make Mr. Cuddy feel ill and I’d expect to find the answer in some incident that may have been thrust completely into his subconscious and that superficially may seem to have no direct reference to hyacinths. And with Aubyn Dale, I’d be interested to hunt down the basic reason for his love of practical jokes. While if Mr. Merryman were my patient, I’d try and find a reason for his chronic irritability.”

“Dyspepsia no good?” Alleyn asked. “He’s forever taking sodamints.”

“All dyspeptics are not irritable woman-haters. I’d expect to find that his indigestion is associated with some very long-standing psychic disturbance.”

“Such as his nurse having snatched away his favourite rattle and given it to his papa?”

“You might not be as far out as you may think you are, at that.”

“What about Dale and McAngus?”

“Oh,” Tim said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Dale hadn’t achieved, on the whole, a fairly successful sublimation with his ghastly telly-therapy. He’s an exhibitionist who thinks he’s made good. That’s why his two public blunders upset his applecart and gave him his ‘nervous breakdown.’ ”

“I didn’t know he’d had one,” said Father Jourdain.

“He says he has. It’s a term psychotherapists don’t accept. As for McAngus, he really is interesting; all that timidity and absent-mindedness and losing his way in his own stories — very characteristic.”

“Of what?” Alleyn asked.

“Of an all-too-familiar type. Completely inhibited. Riddled with anxieties and frustrations. And of course he’s quite unconscious of their origins. His giving Mrs. D-B that damn doll was very suggestive. He’s a bachelor.”

“Oh, dear!” Father Jourdain murmured and at once added, “Pay no attention to me. Do go on.”

“Then,” Alleyn said, “the psychiatrist’s position in respect of these crimes is that they have all developed out of some profound emotional disturbance that the criminal is quite unaware of and is unable to control?”

“That’s it.”

“And does it follow that he may, at the conscious level, loathe what he does, try desperately hard to fight down the compulsion, and be filled with horror each time he fails?”

“Very likely.”

“Indeed, yes,” Father Jourdain said with great emphasis. “Indeed, indeed!”

Alleyn turned to him. “Then you agree with Makepiece?”

Father Jourdain passed a white hand over his dark luxuriant hair. “I’m sure,” he said, “that Makepiece has described the secondary cause and its subsequent results very learnedly and accurately.”

“The secondary cause!” Tim exclaimed.

“Yes. The repressed fear, or frustration or whatever it was — I’m afraid,” said Father Jourdain with a faint smile, “I haven’t mastered the terminology. But I’m sure you’re right about all that; indeed you know it all as a man of science. But you see I would look upon that early tragedy and its subsequent manifestations as the — well, as the modus operandi of an infinitely more terrible agent.”

“I don’t follow,” Tim said. “A more terrible agent?”

“Yes. The devil.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I believe that this poor soul is possessed of a devil.”

Tim, to Alleyn’s amusement, actually blushed scarlet as if Father Jourdain had committed some frightful social solecism.

“I see,” Father Jourdain observed, “that I have embarrassed you.”

Tim mumbled something about everybody being entitled to his opinion.

Alleyn said, “I’m afraid I’m rather stuck for a remark, too. Forgive me, but you do mean, quite literally, exactly what you’ve just said? Yes, I’see you do.”

“Quite literally. It is a case of possession. I’ve seen too many to be mistaken.”

There was a long pause during which, Alleyn reminded himself that there were a great number of not unintelligent people in the world who managed, with some satisfaction to themselves, to believe in devils. At last he said, “I must say, in that case, I very much wish you could exorcise it.”

With perfect seriousness Father Jourdain replied that there were certain difficulties. “I shall, of course, continue to pray for him,” he said.

Tim shuffled his feet, lit a cigarette, and with an air of striking out rather wildly for some kind of raft, asked Alleyn for the police view of this kind of murder. “After all,” he said, “you must be said to be experts.”

“Not at all,” Alleyn rejoined. “Very far from it. Our job, God save the mark, is first to protect society and then as a corollary to catch the criminal. These sorts of criminals are often our worst headache. They have no occupational habits. They resemble each other only in their desire to kill for gratification. In everyday life they may be anything; there are no outward signs. We generally get them but by no means always. The thing one looks for, of course, is a departure from routine. If there’s no known routine, if your man is a solitary creature as Jack the Ripper was, your chances lessen considerably.” Alleyn paused and then added in a changed voice: “But as to why, fundamentally, he is what he is — we are dumb. Perhaps if we knew we’d find our job intolerable.”

Father Jourdain said, “You are, after all, a compassionate man, I see.”

Alleyn found this remark embarrassing and inappropriate. He said quickly, “It doesn’t arise. An investigating officer examining the bodies of strangled girls who have died on a crescendo of terror and physical agony is not predisposed to feel compassion for the strangler. It’s not easy to remember that he may have suffered a complementary agony of the mind. In many cases he hasn’t done anything of the sort. He’s too far gone.”

“Isn’t it a question,” Tim asked, “of whether something might have been done about him before his obsession reached its climax?”

“Of course it is,” Alleyn agreed, very readily. “That’s where you chaps come in.”

Tim stood up. “It’s three o’clock. I’m due for a game of deck golf,” he said. “What’s the form? Watchful diligence?”

“That’s it.”

Father Jourdain also rose. “I’m going to do a crossword with Miss Abbott. She’s got the new Penguin. Mr. Merryman is Ximenes standard.”

“I’m a Times man myself,” Alleyn said.

“There’s one thing about the afternoons,” Father Jourdain sighed, “the ladies do tend to retire to their cabins.”

“For the sake of argument only,” Tim asked gloomily, “suppose Cuddy was your man. Do you think he’d be at all liable to strangle Mrs. Cuddy?”

“By thunder,” Alleyn said, “if I were in his boots, I would. Come on.”

In the afternoons there were not very many shady places on deck and a good deal of quiet manoeuvring went on among the passengers to secure them. Claims were staked. Mr. Merryman left his air cushion and his Panama on the nicest of the deck-chairs. The Cuddys did a certain amount of edging in and shoving aside when nobody else was about. Mr. McAngus laid his plaid along one of the wooden seats, but as nobody else cared for the seats this procedure aroused no enmity.