Ngaio Marsh - Death At The Bar

“Move along, Abel,” said Harper.

“I yurrd, I yurrd,” grunted Abel irritably, and went out.

“You’d better go down with them, Nick,” said Alleyn. “Tell Oates to watch our man like a lynx. Abel will show you a decanter. Bring it up here. Here’s the key! Use my gloves. You’d better search them. You won’t find anything but you’d better do it. Leave Miss Darragh for the moment.”

Harper went out.

“Did you take any sherry, Alleyn?” asked Dr. Shaw sharply.

“I? No.”

“Sure?”

“Perfectly. Why?”

“You look a bit dicky.”

“I’m all right.”

“Mr. Alleyn has just saved my life for me,” whispered Fox.

“You come along,” said Dr. Shaw, and led him out.

Alleyn took an envelope from his pocket and put it over the glass from which Fox had drunk. He weighted the envelope with a saucer from his wash-hand stand. He got his bag and took out an empty bottle and a funnel. He smelt the sherry in his own glass and then poured it into the bottle, stoppered it, and wrote on the label. He was annoyed to find that his hands shook. His heart thumped intolerably. He grimaced and took another mouthful of brandy.

Harper came back.

“Oates and my other chap are searching them,” said Harper. “They made no objections.”

“They wouldn’t. Sit down, Nick,” said Alleyn, “and listen. Put Fox’s sick out of the way first, for the Lord’s sake. Give it to Shaw. I’ve got palsy or something.”

Harper performed this office and sat down.

“Yesterday evening,” said Alleyn, “Abel Pomeroy opened a bottle of a very sound sherry. Fox and I had a glass each. At a quarter to one to-day Abel decanted the sherry. He, Fox and I had a glass each after it was decanted. George Nark was in the bar. Later on, Miss Darragh, Legge, Parish, Cubitt, and Will Pomeroy came in and we talked about the sherry. They all knew it was for our private use. Some forty minutes ago, Abel poured out two glasses. Fox drank his and within half a minute he was taken very ill. The symptoms were those of cyanide poisoning. I’ll swear Abel didn’t put anything in the glasses. There’s Fox’s glass. We’ll do our stuff with what’s left. I’ve covered it but we’d better get the dregs into an air-tight bottle. You’ll find one in my bag there. There’s a funnel on the dressing-table. D’you mind doing it? Clean the funnel out first. I used it for the stuff in my glass.”

Harper did this.

“It’s a bad blunder,” he said. “What good would it do him? Suppose you’d both been killed? I mean, it’s foolish. Is it panic or spite or both?”

“Neither, I imagine. I see it as a last attempt to bolster up the accident theory. The idea is that in the same mysterious way as cyanide got on the dart so it got into the decanter. The decanter, you see, was brought out from the corner cupboard. Mrs. Ives had washed it in about two dozen changes of boiling water. I don’t think anybody but Nark and Abel were aware of this. We were no doubt supposed to think the decanter was tainted by being in the cupboard.”

Superintendent Harper uttered a vulgar and incredulous word.

“I know,” agreed Alleyn. “Of course it is. But if Fox and — or — I had popped off, you’d have had a devil of a job proving it was murder. Oh, it’s a blunder, all right. It shows us two things. The murderer must have kept a bit of cyanide up his sleeve and he must have visited the private bar after Abel decanted the sherry at a quarter to one this afternoon. We will now search their rooms. We won’t find anything, but we’d better do it. I’ll just see how Fox is getting on.”

Fox, white and shaken, was sitting on the edge of the bath. Dr. Shaw was washing his hands.

“He’ll do all right now,” said Dr. Shaw. “Better go to bed and take it easy.”

“I’m damned if I do,” said Fox. “Excuse me, sir, but I’m damned if I do.”

Alleyn took him by the elbow.

“Blast your eyes,” he said, “you’ll do as you’re told. Come on.”

Fox consented, with a bad grace, to lying on his bed. Alleyn and Harper searched the rooms.

ii

At first Harper said that the rooms, in all essentials, were as he had found them on the day after Watchman’s death. In Cubitt’s they found an overwhelming smell of studio and the painting gear that had engendered it. There were bottles of turpentine and oil, half-finished works, Cubitt’s paint-box, and boxes of unopened tubes. Alleyn smelt the bottles and shook his head.

“We needn’t take them,” he said, “their stink is a lawful stink. You can’t put turpentine or oil into vintage sherry and get away with it.”

“What about prussic acid? It smells strong enough.”

“Of almonds. A nutty flavour. Do you remember the account of the murder of Rasputin?”

“Can’t say I do,” said Harper.

“Youssoupoff put cyanide in the wine. Rasputin drank several glasses, apparently with impunity.”

“But—”

“The theory is that the sugar in the wine took the punch out of the poison. That may account for Fox’s escape. No doubt the sherry had a fine old nutty aroma. By God, I’ll get this expert!”

“What are we looking for?”

“For anything that could have held the stuff he put in the decanter. Oh, he’ll have got rid of it somehow, of course. But you never know.”

They went into the bathroom. In a cupboard above the hand basin they found Abel’s second first-aid outfit. Alleyn asked Harper if there had been a bottle of iodine there on the day after the murder. Harper said no. He had checked the contents of the cupboard. They separated and took the rest of the rooms between them, Alleyn going to Legge’s and Parish’s, Harper to the others. Alleyn took a small empty bottle from Parish’s room. It had held pills and smelt of nothing at all. In Legge’s dressing-table he found a phial half-full of a thick pinkish fluid that smelt of antiseptic. Mr. Legge’s ear lotion… He kept it and searched all the drawers and pockets but found nothing else of interest. Abel’s room was neat and spotless, Will’s untidy and full of books. The wearisome and exciting business went on. Down below, in the private bar, Oates and his mate kept company with the patrons of the Plume of Feathers. They were very quiet. Occasionally Alleyn heard the voices of Parish and of Mr. Nark. Ottercombe clock struck ten, sweetly and slowly. There was a moment of complete quiet broken by a violent eruption of noise down in the bar. Alleyn and Harper met in the passage.

“Somebody cutting up rough,” said Harper.

A falsetto voice screamed out an oath. A table was overturned and there followed a great clatter of boots. Harper ran downstairs and Alleyn followed. Inside the private bar they found Legge, mouthing and gibbering, between Oates and a second uniformed constable.

“What’s all this?” asked Harper.

“Misdemeanour, sir,” said Tates, whose nose was bleeding freely. “Assault and battery.”

“I don’t care what it is,” screamed Legge. “I can’t stand any more of this—”

“Shut up, you silly chap,” admonished Oates. “He tried to make a breakaway, sir. Sitting there as quiet as you please, and all of a sudden makes a blind rush for the door and when we intercepts him he wades in and assaults and batters the pair of us. Won’t give over, sir. You’re under arrest, Robert Legge, and it is my duty to warn you that you needn’t say anything, but what you do say may be used in evidence. Stop that.”

“Persecuted,” whispered Legge. “Persecuted, spied upon, driven and badgered and maddened. I know what it means. Let me go. Damn you, let me go!”

He kicked Oates on the shin. Oates swore and twisted Legge’s arm behind his back. Legge screamed and went limp.