Ngaio Marsh - Death At The Bar

“Yes.”

“There’s a tough masterpiece of a job. Took me a year and more, that did. Yes, I’ve tackled most branches of science. Now the last two years I’ve turned my eyes in the direction of crime. Trials of famous criminals, lives of murderers, feats of detection, all the whole biling of ’em. Can’t get enough of ’em. I’m like that. Whole hog or nothing. Reckon I’ve sucked it dry.”

Mr. Nark emptied his pint-pot and, perhaps as an illustrative gesture, sucked his moustache. He looked at Alleyn out of the corners of his eyes.

“This is a very pretty little case now,” he said. “I don’t say there’s much in it, but it’s quite a pretty bit of an affair in its way. You’ll be counting on knocking it off in a day or two, I suppose?”

“I don’t know about that, Mr. Nark.”

“I was a witness.”

“At the inquest? I thought—”

“Not at the inquest,” interrupted Mr. Nark in a great hurry. “No. Superintendent Nicholas Gawd-Almighty Harper had the running of the inquest. I was a witness to the event. More than that I’ve made a study of the affair and I’ve drew my own deductions. I don’t suppose they’d interest you. But I’ve drew ’em.”

Alleyn reflected that it was extremely unlikely that Mr. Nark’s deductions would be either intelligible or interesting, but he made an agreeable noise and invited him to have another drink. Mr. Nark accepted and drew it for himself.

“Ah,” he said. “I reckon I know as much as anybody about this affair, There’s criminal carelessness done on purpose, and there’s criminal carelessness done by accident. There’s motives here and there’s motives there, each of ’em making t’other look like a fool, and all of ’em making the biggest fool of Nicholas Harper. Yes. Us chaps takes our lives in our hands when we calls in at Feathers for a pint. Abel knows it. Abel be too mortal deathly proud to own up.”

“Carelessness, you said? How did it come about?”

If Mr. Nark’s theory of how cyanide got on the dart was ever understood by him, he had no gift for imparting it to others. He became incoherent, and defensively mysterious. He dropped hints and when pressed to explain them, took fright and dived into obscurities. He uttered generalizations of bewildering stupidity, assumed an air of huffiness, floundered into deep water, and remained there, blowing like a grampus. Alleyn was about to leave him in this plight when, perhaps as a last desperate bid for official approval, Mr. Nark made a singular statement.

“The Garden of Eden,” he said, “as any eddicated chap knows, is bunk. You can’t tell me there’s any harm in apples. I grow ’em. Us started off as a drop of jelly. We’ve come on gradual ever since, working our way up through slime and scales and tails to what we are. We had to have a female to do the job. Us knows that. Biological necessity. But she’s been a poisonous snare and a curse to us, as even the ignorant author of Genesis had spotted and noted down, in his foolish fashion, under cover of a lot of clap-trap. She’s wuzz than a serpent on her own, and she’s mostly always at the back of our troubles. Searchy la fem as the French detectives say, and you ought to bear in mind. This ghastly affair started a year ago and there’s three alive now that knows it. There was four.”

Alleyn realized, with a sinking heart, that he would have to pay attention to Mr. Nark. He saw in Mr. Nark a desire for fame struggling with an excessive natural timidity. Mr. Nark hungered for the admiring attention of the experts. He also dreaded the law, to which he seemed to accord the veneration and alarm of a neophyte before the altar of some trick and fickle deity. Alleyn decided that he must attempt to speak to him in his own language.

He said: “That’s very interesting, Mr. Nark. Strange, isn’t it, Fox? Mr. Nark has evidently,”—He fumbled for the magic word, — “evidently made the same deductions as we have, from the evidence in hand.”

Fox gave his superior a bewildered and disgusted glance. Alleyn said rather loudly: “See what I mean, Fox?”

Fox saw. “Very striking, sir,” he said. “We’ll have to get you into the force, Mr. Nark.”

Mr. Nark buttoned his coat.

“What’ll you take, gentlemen?” he asked.

But it was heavy going. To get any sense out of him Alleyn had to flatter, hint, and cajole. A direct suggestion threw him into a fever of incoherence, at a hint of doubt he became huffy and mysterious. As she seemed to be the only woman in the case, Alleyn attempted to crystallize on Decima.

“Miss Moore,” he said at last, “is naturally very much upset by Mr. Watchman’s death.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Nark. “Is she? She may be. P’raps! I don’t know anything about women. She may be. Huh!”

Alleyn achieved a knowing laugh in which Fox joined.

“You look below the surface, I see,” said Alleyn.

“I base my deductions on fact. Take an example,” said Mr. Nark. His third drink, a Treble Extra, had begun to have a mellowing effect. His native burr returned to his usually careful utterance and he smiled knowingly. “Take an example. I don’t say it’s true to natur’. It’s an illustration. A parrible. Ef I takes a stroll up-along Apple Lane of a warm night and hears a courting couple t’other side of hedge in old Jim Moore’s orchard, I draws my own conclusions, doan’t I?”

“No doubt.”

“Ess. And ef ,” said Mr. Nark, “ ef I do bide thurr, not with idea of eavesdropping but only to reflect and ponder in my deep bitter manner, on the wiles of females in gineral, and ef I yurrs a female voice I axpects to yurr, and a maskeline voice I doan’t axpects to yurr, and ef ” continued Mr. Nark fighting his way to the end of his sentence, “I says ‘Hullo!’ to myself and passes on a step, and ef I meet the owner of the maskeline voice I did axpect to yurr, standing sly and silent in hedge… what do I say? Wait a bit. Doan’t tell me. I’ll tell you. I says, ‘Durn it!’ I says, ‘Thurr’ll be bloodshed along of this-yurr if us doan’t looks out!’ And ef I bides a twelvemonth or more and nothing happens, and then something does happen, bloody and murderous, what do I say then?”

Mr. Nark raised his hand as a signal that this question also was rhetorical, and paused for so long that Fox clenched both his fists and Alleyn had time to light a cigarette.

“I sez,” said Mr. Nark loudly, “not a damn thing.”

“What!” ejaculated Alleyn.

“Not a damn thing. But I thinks like a furnace.”

“What do you think, Mr. Nark?” asked Alleyn with difficulty.

“I thinks ’tis better to yold my tongue ef I want to keep breath in my body. And I yolds it. ’Ess fay, I be mum and I stays mum.”

Mr. Nark brought off a mysterious gesture with his right forefinger, leered knowingly at Alleyn, and tacked rapidly towards the door. Once there, he turned to deliver his last word.

“Doan’t you go calling my words ‘statements,’ ” he said. “They’re a n’allegory, and a n’allegory’s got nothing to do with the law. You doan’t trip me up thicky-fashion. I know natur of an oath. Searchy la fem .”

i

After they had lunched Alleyn brought his report up-to-date, and Fox, sitting solemnly at the parlour table, typed it in duplicate. Alleyn had a brief interview with Abel Pomeroy and returned with three tumblers. One of these he smashed to splinters with the poker, keeping the pieces together, and emptying them into a tin. The other two he wrapped up and placed, with a copy of his report, in his case. He also spent some time throwing down darts and finding that they stuck in the floor. These employments at an end, they drove to Illington. The day had turned gloomy, heavy rain was falling, and the road was slimy.