Ngaio Marsh - Singing in the Shrouds

“M-m-m,” Dale rumbled understandingly, still looking at Brigid. “ I see.” He screwed his face into a whimsical grimace. “You know, Brigid, I’ve got an idea we’ve just about had that old topic. After all, it’s not the prettiest one in the world, is it? What do you think? Um?”

Pink with embarrassment, Brigid said coldly, “I feel sure you’re right.”

“Good girl,” Aubyn Dale said and patted her shoulder.

Tim muttered that it was tea-time and withdrew Brigid firmly to the starboard side. It was a relief to him to be angry.

“My God, what a frightful fellow,” he fulminated. “That egregious nice-chappery! That ineffable decency! That indescribably phony good-will!”

“Never mind,” Brigid said. “I daresay he has to keep in practice. And, after all, little as I relish admitting it, he was in fact right. I suppose I have been letting my imagination run away with me.”

Tim stood over her, put his head on one side and achieved a quite creditable imitation of Aubyn Dale. “Good girl,” he said unctuously and patted her shoulder.

Brigid made a satisfactory response to this sally and seemed to be a good deal cheered. “Of course,” she said, “I didn’t really think we’d shipped a murderer; it was just one of those things.” She looked up into Tim’s face.

“Brigid!” he said, and took her hands in his.

“No, don’t,” she said quickly. “Don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Pay no attention. Let’s go and talk to Mr. Chips.”

They found Mr. Merryman in full cry. He had discovered Brigid’s book, The Elizabethans, which she had left on her deck-chair, and seemed to be giving a lecture on it. It was by an authoritative writer, but one, evidently, with whom Mr. Merryman found himself in passionate disagreement. It appeared that Alleyn, Father Jourdain and Miss Abbott had all been drawn into the discussion while Mr. McAngus and Mr. Cuddy looked on, the former with admiration and the latter with his characteristic air of uninformed disparagement.

Brigid and Tim sat on the deck and were accepted by Mr. Merryman as if they had come late for class but with valid excuses. Alleyn glanced at them and found time to hope that theirs, by some happy accident, was not merely a shipboard attraction. After all, he thought, he himself had fallen irrevocably in love during a voyage from the Antipodes. He turned his attention back to the matter in hand.

“I honestly don’t understand,” Father Jourdain was saying, “how you can put The Duchess of Malfi before Hamlet or Macbeth .”

“Or why,” Miss Abbott barked, “you should think Othello so much better than any of them.”

Mr. Merryman groped in his waistcoat pocket for a sodamint and remarked insufferably that really it was impossible to discuss criteria of taste where the rudiments of taste were demonstrably absent. He treated his restive audience to a comprehensive de-gumming of Hamlet and Macbeth. Hamlet, he said, was an inconsistent, deficient and redundant réchauffé of some absurd German melodrama.

It was not surprising, Mr. Merryman said, that Hamlet was unable to make up his mind since his creator had himself been the victim of a still greater blight of indecision. Macbeth was merely a muddle-headed blunderer. Strip away the language and what remained? A tediously ignorant expression of defeatism. “ ‘What’s the good of anyfink? Wy, nuffink,’ ” Mr. Merryman quoted in pedantic cockney and tossed his sodamint into his mouth.

“I don’t know anything about Shakespeare—” Mr. Cuddy began and was at once talked down.

“It is at least something,” Mr. Merryman said, “that you acknowledge your misfortune.”

“All the same,” Alleyn objected, “there is the language.”

“I am not aware,” Mr. Merryman countered, “that I have suggested that the fellow had no vocabulary.” He went on to praise the classic structure of Othello, the inevitability of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and astounding, the admirable directness of Titus Andronicus . As an afterthought he conceded that the final scene of Lear was “respectable.”

Mr. McAngus, who had several times made plaintive little noises, now struck in with unexpected emphasis.

“To me,” he said, “ Othello is almost spoilt by that bit near the end when Desdemona revives and speaks and then, you know, after all, dies. A woman who has been properly strangled would not be able to do that. It is quite ridiculous.”

“What’s the medical opinion?” Alleyn asked him.

“Pathological verisimilitude,” Mr. Merryman interjected with more than a touch of Pooh-Bah, “is irrelevant. One accepts the convention. It is artistically proper that she should be strangled and speak again. Therefore, she speaks.”

“All the same,” Alleyn said, “let’s have the expert’s opinion.” He looked at Tim.

“I wouldn’t say it was utterly impossible,” Tim said. “Of course, her physical condition can’t be reproduced by an actress and would be unacceptable if it could. I should think it’s just possible that he might not have killed her instantly and that she might momentarily revive and attempt to speak.”

“But, Doctor,” Mr. McAngus objected diffidently, “I did say properly. Properly strangled, you know.”

“Doesn’t the text, ” Miss Abbott pointed out, “say she was smothered?”

“The text!” Mr. Merryman exclaimed and spread out his hands. “What text, pray? Which text?” and launched himself into a general animadversion of Shakespearian editorship. This he followed up with an extremely dogmatic pronouncement upon the presentation of the plays. The only tolerable method, he said, was that followed by the Elizabethans themselves. The bare boards. The boy-players. It appeared that Mr. Merryman himself produced the plays in this manner at his school. He treated them to a lecture upon speechcraft, costume, and make-up. His manner was so insufferably cocksure that it robbed his discourse of any interest it might have had for his extremely mixed audience. Mr. McAngus’s eyes became glazed. Father Jourdain was resigned and Miss Abbott impatient. Brigid looked at the deck and Tim looked at Brigid. Alleyn, conscious of all this, still managed to preserve the semblance of respectful attention.

He was conscious also of Mr. Cuddy, who had the air of a man balked of his legitimate prey. It was evident throughout the discussion that he had some observation to make. He now raised his voice unmelodiously and made it.

“Isn’t it funny,” Mr. Cuddy asked generally, “how the conversation seems to get round to the subject of ladies being throttled? Mrs. Cuddy was remarking on the same thing. Quite a coincidence, she was saying.”

Mr. Merryman opened his mouth, shut it, and reopened it when Brigid cried out with some violence, “I think it’s perfectly beastly. I hate it!”

Tim put his hand over hers. “Well, I’m sorry,” Brigid said, “but it is beastly. It doesn’t matter how Desdemona died. Othello isn’t a clinical example. Shakespeare wasn’t some scruffy existentialist, it’s a tragedy of simplicity and — and greatness of heart being destroyed by a common smarty-smarty little placefinder. Well, anyway,” Brigid mumbled, turning very pink, “that’s what I think and I suppose one can try and say what one thinks, can’t one?”

“I should damn well suppose one can,” Alleyn said warmly, “and how right you are, what’s more.”

Brigid threw him a grateful look.

Mr. Cuddy smiled and smiled. “I’m sure,” he said, “I didn’t mean to upset anyone.”