Ngaio Marsh - Death At The Bar

“What? Oh — yes, I have the keys.”

“Nick Harper!” said Abel, “with his fanciful blown-up fidgeting ways. Reckon the man laces his boots with red tape. This way, if you please, gentlemen, and watch yourselves for the step. ‘Dally-buttons, Nick,’ I said to him, ‘you’ve aimed your camera, and blowed thicky childish li’l squirter over every inch of my private tap, you’ve lain on your belly and scraped the muck off the floor. What do ’ee want?’ I said. ‘Do ’ee fancy the corpse will hant the place and write murderer’s name in the dust?’ I axed him. This is the door, sir.”

Alleyn produced his bunch of keys and opened the door.

The private tap had been locked up, by Oates, a fortnight ago, and reopened by Harper and his assistants only for purposes of investigation. The shutter over the bar-counter had been drawn down and locked. The window shutters also were fastened. The place was in complete darkness.

Abel switched on the light.

It was a travesty of the private tap that Alleyn saw. The comfort and orderliness of its habitual aspect were quite gone. It had suffered such a change as might overtake a wholesome wench, turned drab in a fortnight. Dust covered the tables, settles, and stools. The butt ends of cigarettes strewed the floor, tobacco ash lay everywhere in small patches and trails. The open hearth was littered with ashes of the fire that had warmed Watchman on the night he died. Five empty tumblers were stained with the dregs of Courvoisier ’87, two with the dregs of the ginger-beer. Of the eighth glass, such powdered fragments as had escaped Harper’s brush crunched jarringly underfoot. The room smelt indescribably stale and second-rate.

“It do gall me uncommon,” said Abel, “for my private tap-room to display itself in thicky shocking state.”

“Never mind, Mr. Pomeroy,” said Alleyn, “we’re used to it, you know.”

He stood just inside the door, with Fox at his shoulder. Abel watched them anxiously, but it is doubtful if he remarked the difference in their attitudes. Fox’s eyes, light grey in colour, brightened and sharpened as he looked about the room. But Alleyn might have been a guest in the house, and with no more interest than politeness might allow his gaze shifted casually from one dust-covered surface to another.

After a few minutes, however, he could have given a neat drawing, and nice attention to detail, of the private tap-room. He noticed the relative positions of the dart board, the bar, and the settle. He paid attention to the position of the lights, and remarked that the spot, chalked on the floor by Oates, where Legge had stood when he threw the darts, was immediately under a strong lamp. He saw that there was a light switch inside the door and another by the mantelpiece. He walked over to the corner cupboard.

“Nick Harper,” said Abel, “took away that-theer cursed pison bottle. He took away bits of broken glass and brandy bottle and iodine bottle. He took away the new darts, all six on ’em. All Nick Harper left behind is dirt and smell. Help yourself to either of ’em.”

“Don’t go just yet,” said Alleyn. “We want your help, Mr. Pomeroy, if you’ll give it to us.”

“Ready and willing,” Abel said, with emphasis. “I’m ready and willing to do all I can. By my way of thinking you two gentlemen are here to clear my name, and I be mortal set on that scheme.”

“Right. Now will you tell me, as well as you can remember, where everybody stood at the moment when you poured out the second round of brandies. Can you remember? Try to call up the picture of this room as it was a fortnight ago to-night.”

“I can call all it to mind right enough,” said Abel, slowly. “I been calling to mind every night and a mighty number of times every night, since that ghassly moment. I was behind bar—”

“Let’s have those shutters away,” said Alleyn.

Fox unlocked the shutters and rolled them up. The private tap, proper, was discovered. A glass door, connecting the two bars, was locked, and through it Alleyn could see into the Public. Will Pomeroy was serving three fishermen. His shoulder was pressed against the glass door. He must have turned his head when he heard the sound of the shutters. He looked at Alleyn through his eyelashes, and then turned away.

Alleyn examined the counter in the private tap. It was stained with dregs, fourteen days old. Abel pointed to a lighter ring.

“Thurr’s where brandy bottle stood,” he said. “ ’Ess fay, thurr’s where she was, sure enough.”

“Yes. Now, where were the people? You say you stood behind the bar?”

“ ’Ess, and young Will was in corner ’twixt bar and dart board. Rest of ’em had just finished Round-the-Clock. Bob Legge had won. They used the old darts, and when he ran home, he put ’em back in that thurr wooden rack by board. Yurr they be. Nick Harper come over generous,” said Abel, with irony, “and left us they old darts. He collared the new ’uns.”

“Ah, yes,” said Alleyn hurriedly. “What about the rest of the party?”

“I’m telling you, sir. Chap Legge’d won the bout. Mr. Watchman says, ‘By God it’s criminal, Legge. Men have been jailed for less,’ he says, in his joking way. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘us’ll have t’other half,’ he says, ‘and then, be George, if I don’t let ’ee have a go at my hand.’ He says it joking, sir; but to my mind, Mr. Watchman knew summat about Legge, and to my mind, Legge didn’t like it.”

Abel glanced through the glass door at Will, but Will’s back was turned. The three customers gaped shamelessly at Alleyn and Fox.

“Well, now,” Abel went on, lowering his voice, “Legge paid no ’tention to Mr. Watchman, ’cept to say casual-like: ‘I’ll do it all right, but don’t try it if you feel nervous,’ which wurr very wittiest manner of speech the man could think of to egg on Mr. Watchman, to set his fancy, hellbent, on doing it. ’Ess, Legge egged the man on, did Legge. That’s while he was putting away old darts. Then he moved off, tantalizing, to t’other end of room. T’other ladies and gentlemen was round bar, ’cepting Miss Darragh, who was setting with her writing in inglenook. Thurr’s her glass on t’old settle, sir. Stone ginger, she had. Miss Dessy, that’s Miss Moore, sir, she was setting on the bar, in the corner yurr, swinging her legs. That’ll be her glass on the ledge thurr. Stone ginger. The three gentlemen, they wurr alongside bar. Mr. Cubitt next Miss Dessy, then Mr. Watchman and then Mr. Parish. I ’member that, clear as daylight, along of Miss Darragh making a joke about ’em. ‘Three graces,’ she called ’em, being a fanciful kind of middle-aged lady.”

“That leaves Mr. George Nark.”

“So it does then, the silly old parrot. ’Ess. George Nark wurr setting down by table inside of door, laying down the law, as is the foolish habit of the man. Well now, I poured out the second tot beginning with Mr. Cubitt. Then Mr. Watchman and then Mr. Parish. Then George Nark brings his glass over, with his tongue hanging out, and insults t’murdered gentleman by axing for soda in this masterpiece of a tipple, having nigh-on suffercated hisself with first tot, golloping it down ferocious. No sooner does he swallow second tot that he’s proper blind tipsy. ’Ess, so soused as a herring, wurr old George Nark. Lastly, sir, Mr. Watchman gets Legge’s glass from mantelshelf and axes me to pour out the second tot.”

“Leaving his own glass on the bar between Mr. Parish and Mr. Cubitt?”

“ ’Ess. Legge wurr going to wait till after he’d done his trick. Us knows what wurr in the evil thoughts of the man. He wanted to keep his eye in so’s he could stick Mr. Watchman with thicky murderous dart.”

“Mr. Pomeroy,” said Alleyn, “I must warn you against making statements of that sort. You might land yourself in a very pretty patch of trouble, you know. What happened next? Did you pour out Mr. Legge’s brandy for him?”