Singing in the Shrouds (11 page)

Alleyn strolled along the deck and looked down into the after-hatch, yawning black, and at the dramatically lit figures that worked it. The. rattle of the winch, the occasional voices and the pulse of the engines made a not unattractive accompaniment to the gigantic fishing operation. He had watched and listened for some minutes before he became aware of another and most unexpected sound. Quite close at hand was someone singing in Latin; an austere, strangely measured and sexless chant:

Alleyn moved across the after end of the deck. In the little verandah, just visible in reflected light, sat Miss Abbott, singing. She stopped at once when she saw him. She had under her hands what appeared to be many sheets of paper; perhaps an immensely long letter.

“That was lovely,” Alleyn said, “I wish you hadn’t stopped. It was extraordinarily — what? — tranquil?”

She said, more it seemed to herself than to him, “Yes. Tranquil and devout. It’s music designed against devils.”

“What were you singing?”

She roused herself suddenly and became defensive. It seemed incredible that her speaking voice could be so harsh.

“A Vatican plainsong,” she said.

“What a fool I was to blunder in and stop you. Would it be — seventh century?”

“Six-fifty-five. Printed from manuscript in the
Liber Gradualis,
eighteen-eighty-three,” she barked and got up.

Alleyn said, “Don’t move. I’ll take myself off.”

“I’m going anyway.” She walked straight past him. Her eyes were dark with excitement. She strode along the deck to the lighted area where the others were congregated, sat in a deck-chair a little apart from them and began to read her letter.

After a minute or two Alleyn also returned and joined Mr. McAngus. “That was a charming gesture of yours this evening,” he said.

Mr. McAngus made a little tittering sound, “I was so lucky!” he said. “Such a happy coincidence, wasn’t it? And the resemblance, you know, is complete. I
promised
I’d find something and
there
it was. So very appropriate, I felt.” He hesitated for a moment and added rather wistfully. “I was invited to join their party, but of course I thought better to decline. She seemed quite delighted. At the doll, I mean. The doll delighted her.”

“I’m sure it did.”

“Yes,” Mr. McAngus said. “Yes.” His voice had trailed away into a murmur. He was no longer aware of Alleyn but looked past him and down towards the wharf.

It was now twenty past one. A taxi had come along the wharf. Out of it got Brigid Carmichael and Tim Makepiece, talking busily and obviously on the best possible terms with each other and the world at large. They came up the gangway smiling all over their faces. “Oh!” Brigid exclaimed to Alleyn. “Isn’t Las Palmas heaven? We
have
had such fun.”

But it was not at Brigid that Mr. McAngus stared so fixedly. An open car had followed the taxi and in it were Mrs. Dillington-Blick, the captain, and Aubyn Dale. They too were gay but with a more ponderable gaiety than Tim’s and Brigid’s. The men’s faces were darkish and their voices heavy. Mrs. Dillington-Blick still looked marvellous. Her smile, if not exactly irrepressible, was full of meaning, and if her eyes no longer actually sparkled they were still extremely expressive and the tiny pockets underneath them scarcely noticeable. The men helped her up the gangway. The captain went first. He carried the doll and held Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s elbow while Aubyn Dale put his hands on her waist and made a great business of assisting her from the rear. There were jokes and a lot of suppressed laughter.

When they arrived on deck the captain went up to the bridge and Mrs. Dillington-Blick held court. Mr. McAngus was made much of, Father Jourdain appealed to, and Alleyn given a great many sidelong glances. The doll was exhibited and the Cuddys came out to see it. Mrs. Cuddy said she supposed the dolls were produced with sweated labour, but Mr. Cuddy stared at Mrs. Dillington-Blick and said, with an odd inflection, that there were some things that couldn’t be copied. Alleyn was made to walk with the doll and Mrs. Dillington-Blick went behind, imitating its action, jerking her head and squeaking, “Ma-ma!”

Miss Abbott put down her letter and stared at Mrs. Dillington-Blick with a kind of hungry amazement.

“Mr. Merryman!” cried Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “Wake up! Let me introduce my twin sister Donna Esmeralda.”

Mr. Merryman removed his hat, gazed at the doll with distaste and then at its owner.

“The resemblance,” he said, “is too striking to arouse any emotion but one of profound misgiving.”

“Ma-ma!” squeaked Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

Dennis trotted out on deck, plumply smiling, and approached her. “A night-lettergram for
you,
Mrs. Dillington-Blick. It came after you’d gone
ashore
. I’ve been looking out for you. Oh, mercy!” he added, eyeing the doll. “Isn’t she
twee
!”

Mr. Merryman contemplated Dennis with something like horror and replaced his hat over his nose.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick gave a sharp ejaculation and fluttered her open night-lettergram.

“My dears!” she shouted. “You’ll never credit this! How too frightful and murky! My dears!”

“Darling!” Aubyn Dale exclaimed. “What?”

“It’s from a man, a friend of mine. You’ll
never
believe it. Listen!

Her fellow passengers were so excited by Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s news that they scarcely noticed their ship’s sailing.
Cape Farewell
separated herself from Las Palmas with an almost imperceptible gesture and moved away into the dark, taking up the rhythm of her voyage, while Mrs. Dillington-Blick held the stage.

They all gathered round her and Mr. Cuddy managed to get close enough to look sideways at the night-lettergram. Mr. Merryman, with an affectation of stretching his legs, strolled nearer, his head thrown back at an angle that enabled him to stare superciliously from under his hat brim at Mrs. Dillington-Blick. Even Miss Abbott leaned forward in her chair, grasping her crumpled letter, her large hands dangling between her knees. Captain Bannerman, who had come down from the bridge, looked much too knowing for Alleyn’s peace of mind, and repeatedly attempted to catch his eye. Alleyn avoided him, plunged into the melee and was himself loud in ejaculation and comment. There was much speculation as to where and when the girl who brought the flowers could have been murdered. Out of the general conversation Mrs. Cuddy’s voice rose shrilly, “And it was hyacinths again, too. Fancy! What a coincidence!”

“My dear madam,” Dr. Makepiece testily pointed out, “the flowers are in season. No doubt the shops are full of them. There is no esoteric significance in the circumstance.”

“Mr. Cuddy never fancied them,” said Mrs. Cuddy. “Did you, dear?”

Mr. Merryman raised his hands in a gesture of despair, turned his back on her and ran slap into Mr. McAngus. There was a clash of spectacles and a loud oath from Mr. Merryman. The two gentlemen began to behave like simultaneous comedians. They stooped, crashed heads, cried out in anguish and rose clutching each other’s spectacles, hats. The hyacinth Mr. McAngus had been wearing had changed hands.

“I am so very sorry,” said Mr. McAngus, holding his head. “I hope you’re not hurt.”

“I am hurt. That is my hat, sir, and those are my glasses. Broken.”

“I do trust you have a second pair.”

“The existence of a second pair does not reduce the value of the first, which is, I see at a glance, irrevocably shattered,” said Mr. Merryman. He flung down Mr. McAngus’s hyacinth and returned to his chair.

The others still crowded about Mrs. Dillington-Blick. As they all stood there, so close together that the smell of wine on their breath mingled with Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s heavy scent, there was, Alleyn thought, a classic touch, a kind of ghastly neatness in the situation if indeed one of them was the murderer they all so eagerly discussed.

Presently Brigid and Tim moved away and then Father Jourdain walked aft and leaned on the rails. Mrs. Cuddy announced that she was going to bed and took Mr. Cuddy’s arm. The whole thing, she said, had given her quite a turn. Her husband seemed reluctant to follow her, but on Mrs. Dillington-Blick and Aubyn Dale going indoors the whole party broke up and disappeared severally through doors or into shadows.

Captain Bannerman came up to Alleyn. “How about that one?” he said. “Upsets your little game a bit, doesn’t it?” and loudly belched. “Pardon me,” he added. “It’s the fancy muck we had for dinner.”

“Eight of them don’t know where it happened and they don’t know exactly when,” Alleyn pointed out. “The ninth knows everything anyway. It doesn’t matter all that much.”

“It matters damn all seeing the whole idea’s an error.” The captain made a wide gesture. “Well — look at them. I ask you. Look at the way they behave and everything.”

“How do you expect him to behave? Go about in a black sombrero making loud animal noises? Heath had very nice manners. Still, you may be right. By the way, Father Jourdain and Makepiece seem to be in the clear. And you, sir. I thought you’d like to know. The Yard’s been checking alibis.”

“Ta,” said the captain gloomily and began to count on his fingers. “That leaves Cuddy, Merryman, Dale and that funny old bastard what’s-’is-name.”

“McAngus.”

“That’s right. Well, I ask you! I’m turning in,” added the captain. “I’m a wee bit plastered. She’s a wonderful woman though. Good-ni’.”

“Good-night, sir.”

The captain moved away, paused and came back.

“I had a signal from the company,” he said. “They don’t want any kind of publicity and in my opinion they’re right. They reckon it’s all my eye. They don’t want the passengers upset for nothing and n’more do I. You might ’member that.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“At sea-master’s orders.”

“Sir.”

“Ver’well.” The captain made a vague gesture and climbed carefully up the companionway to the bridge.

Alleyn walked aft to where Father Jourdain, still leaning on the taffrail, his hands loosely folded, stared out into the night.

“I’ve been wondering,” Alleyn said, “if you played Horatio’s part just now.”

“I? Horatio?”

“Observing with the very comment of your soul.”

“Oh, that! If that’s to be my rôle! I did, certainly, watch the men.”

“So did I. How about it?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Unless you count Mr. Merryman keeping his hat over his face or his flying into a temper.”

“Or Mr. Cuddy’s overt excitement.”

“Or Mr. McAngus’s queer little trick of dancing backwards and forwards. No!” Father Jourdain exclaimed strongly. “No! I can’t believe it of any of them. And yet—”

“Do you still smell evil?”

“I begin to ask myself if I merely imagine it.”

“As well you may,” Alleyn agreed. “I ask myself continually if we’re building a complete fantasy round the fragment of paper clutched in that wretched girl’s hand. But then — You see, you all had your embarkation notices when you came aboard. Or so it seems. Could one of the lost ones — yours, for instance — have blown through the porthole to the dock and into her hand? No. The portholes were all shut as they always are when the ship’s tied up. Let’s take a turn, shall we?”

They walked together down the well-deck on the port side. When they reached the little verandah aft of the engine house, they stopped while Alleyn lit his pipe. The night was still very warm, but they had run into a stiff breeze and the ship was alive with it. There was a high thrumming sound in the shrouds.

“Someone singing,” Alleyn said.

“Isn’t it the wind in those ropes? Shrouds, don’t they call them? I wonder why.”

“No. Listen. It’s clearer now.”

“So it is. Someone singing.”

It was a high, rather sweet voice and seemed to come from the direction of the passengers’ quarters.

“ ‘The Broken Doll,’ ” Alleyn said.

“A strangely old-fashioned choice.”

The thin commonplace tune evaporated.

“It’s stopped now,” said Alleyn.

“Yes. Should these women be warned, then?” Father Jourdain asked as they continued their walk. “Before the deadline approaches?”

“The shipping company is all against it and so’s the captain. My bosses tell me, as far as possible, to respect their wishes. They think the women should be protected without knowing it, which is all bloody fine for them. Makepiece, by the way, seems O.K. We’ll tell him, I think. He’ll be delighted to protect Miss Carmichael.”

Like the captain, Father Jourdain said, “That leaves Dale, Merryman, Cuddy and McAngus.” But unlike the captain he added, “I suppose it’s possible. I suppose so.” He put his hand on Alleyn’s arm. “You’ll think I’m ridiculously inconsistent; it’s only that I’ve remembered—” He stopped for a moment, and his fingers closed over Alleyn’s coatsleeve.

“Yes?” Alleyn said.

“You see, I’m a priest, an Anglo-Catholic priest. I hear confessions. It’s a humbling and an astonishing duty. One never stops being dumbfounded at the unexpectedness of sin.”

Alleyn said, “I suppose in a way the same observation might apply to my job.”

They walked on in silence, rounded the end of the hatch and returned to the port side. The lights in the lounge were out and great pools of shadow lay about the deck.

“It’s an awful thing to say,” Father Jourdain observed abruptly, “but do you know, for a moment I almost found myself wishing that rather than go in such frightful uncertainty, we knew, positively, that this murderer was on board.” He turned aside to sit on the hatch. The hatch-combing cast a very deep shadow along the deck. He seemed to wade into it as if it were a ditch.