Singing in the Shrouds (7 page)

“
Your
silver wedding,” Alleyn said, and smiled at Mrs. Cuddy. “You’re not going to tell us you’ve been married twenty-five years!”

“Twenty-five years and eleven days to be exact. Haven’t we, dear?”

“That’s correct, dear.”

“He’s turning colour,” Mrs. Cuddy said, exhibiting her husband with an air of triumph. “Come on, love. Walky-walky.”

Mr. Cuddy seemed unable to look away from Mrs. Dillington-Blick. He said, “I don’t notice the perfume too heavy. It isn’t affecting me.”

“That’s what
you
say,” his wife replied, ominously bluff. “You come into the fresh air, my man.” She took his arm and turned him towards the glass doors that gave on to the deck. She opened them. Cold salt air poured into the heated room, and the sound of the sea and of the ship’s engines. The Cuddys went out. Mr. Cuddy shut the doors and could be seen looking back into the room. His wife removed him and they walked away, their grey hair lifting in the wind.

“They’ll die of cold!” Brigid exclaimed. “No coats or hats.”.

“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick lamented and appealed in turn to the men. “And I expect it’s all my fault.” They murmured severally.

Mr. McAngus, who had peeped into the passage, confided, “It’s all right. They’ve come in by the side door and I
think
they’ve gone to their cabin.” He sniffed timidly at the flowers, gave a small apologetic laugh and made a little bobbing movement to and from Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “
I
think we’re all most awfully lucky,” he ventured. He then went out into the passage, putting on his hat as he did so.

“That poor creature dyes its hair,” Mr. Merryman observed calmly.

“Oh, come!” Father Jourdain protested and gave Alleyn a helpless look. “I seem,” he said under his breath, “to be saying nothing but ‘Oh, come,’ A maddening observation.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick blossomed at Mr. Merryman: “Aren’t you
naughty
!” She laughed and appealed to Aubyn Dale: “
Not
true.
Is
it?”

“I honestly can’t see, you know, that if he does dye his hair, it’s anybody’s business but his,” Dale said, and gave Mr. Merryman his celebrated smile. “Can you?” he said.

“I entirely agree with you,” Mr. Merryman rejoined, grinning like a monkey. “I must apologize. In point of fact I abominate the public elucidation of private foibles.”

Dale turned pale and said nothing.

“Let us talk about flowers instead,” Mr. Merryman suggested and beamed through his spectacles upon the company.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick at once began to do so. She was supported, unexpectedly, by Miss Abbott. Evidently they were both experienced gardeners. Dale listened with a stationary smile. Alleyn saw him order himself a second double brandy.

“I suppose,” Alleyn remarked generally, “everybody has a favourite flower.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick moved into a position from which she could see him. “Hullo, you!” she exclaimed jollily. “But of course they have. Mine’s magnolias.”

“What are yours?” Tim Makepiece asked Brigid.

“Distressingly obvious — roses.”

“Lilies,” Father Jourdain smiled, “which may also be obvious.”

“Easter?” Miss Abbott barked.

“Exactly.”

“What about you?” Alleyn asked Tim.

“The hop,” he said cheerfully.

Alleyn grinned. “There you are. It’s all a matter of association. Mine’s lilac and throws back to a pleasant childhood memory. But if beer happened to make you sick or my nanny, whom I detested, had worn lilac in her nankeen bosom or Father Jourdain associated lilies with death, we’d have all hated the sight and smell of these respective flowers.”

Mr. Merryman looked with pity at him. “Not,” he said, “a remarkably felicitous exposition of a somewhat elementary proposition, but, as far as it goes, unexceptionable.”

Alleyn bowed. “Have you, sir,” he asked, “a preference?”

“None, none. The topic, I confess, does not excite me.”

“I think it’s a
heavenly
topic,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick cried. “But then I adore finding out about People and their preferences.” She turned to Dale and at once his smile reprinted itself. “Tell me your taste in flowers,” she said, “and I’ll tell you your type in ladies. Come clean, now. Your favorite flower? Or shall I guess?”

“Agapanthas?” Mr. Merryman loudly suggested. Dale clapped his glass down on the bar and walked out of the room.

“Now,
look
here, Mr. Merryman!” Father Jourdain said and rose to his feet.

Mr. Merryman opened his eyes very wide and pursed his lips. “What’s up?” he asked.

“You know perfectly well what’s up. You’re an extremely naughty little man and although it’s none of my business I think fit to tell you so.”

Far from disconcerting Mr. Merryman, this more or less public rebuke appeared to afford him enjoyment. He clapped his hands lightly, slapped them on his knees and broke into elfish laughter.

“If you’ll take my advice,” Father Jourdain continued, “you will apologize to Mr. Dale.”

Mr. Merryman rose, bowed, and observed in an extremely highfalutin manner, “
Consilia firmiora sunt de divinis locis
.”

The priest turned red.

Alleyn, who didn’t see why Mr. Merryman should be allowed to make a corner in pedantry, racked his own brains for a suitable tag. “
Consilium inveniunt multi sed docti explicant,
however,” he said.

“Dear me!” Mr. Merryman observed. “How often one has cause to remark that a platitude sounds none the better for being uttered in an antique tongue. I shall now address myself to my postprandial nap.”

He trotted towards the door, paused for a moment to stare at Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s pearls, and then went out.

“For pity’s sake!” she ejaculated. “What is all this! What’s happening? What’s the matter with Aubyn Dale? Why agapanthas?”

“Can it be possible,” Tim Makepiece said, “that you don’t know about Lady Agatha’s umbilicus globular and the hyacinths on the turdy stable?” and he retold the story of Aubyn Dale’s misfortunes.

“How frightful!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick exclaimed, laughing until she cried. “How too tragically frightful! And how
naughty
of Mr. Merryman.”

Tim Makepiece said, “We don’t ’alf look like being a happy family. What will Mr. Chip’s form be, one asks oneself, when he enters the Torrid Zone?”

“He may look like Mr. Chips,” Alleyn remarked. “He behaves like Thersites.”

Brigid said, “I call it the rock bottom of him. You could see Aubyn Dale minded most dreadfully. He went as white as his teeth. What could have possessed Mr. Chips?”

“Schoolmaster,” Miss Abbott said, scarcely glancing up from her book. “They often turn sour at his age. It’s the life.”

She had been quiet for so long they had forgotten her. “That’s right,” she continued, “isn’t it, Father?”

“It may possibly, I suppose, be a reason. It’s certainly not an excuse.”

“I think,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick lamented, “I’d better throw my lovely hyacinths overboard, don’t you?” She appealed to Father Jourdain. “Wouldn’t it be best? It’s not only poor Mr. Dale.”

“No,” Brigid agreed. “Mr. Cuddy, we must remember, comes over queer at the sight of them.”

“Mr. Cuddy,” Miss Abbott observed, “came over queer but not, in my opinion, at the sight of the hyacinths.” She lowered her book and looked steadily at Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

“My dear!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick rejoined and began to laugh again.

“Well!” Father Jourdain said with the air of a man who refuses to recognize his nose before his face. “I think I shall see what it’s like on deck.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick stood between him and the double doors and he was quite close to her. She beamed up at him. His back was turned to Alleyn. He was still for a moment and then she moved aside and he went out. There was a brief silence.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick turned to Brigid.

“My dear!” she confided. “I’ve
got
that man. He’s a reformed rake.”

Mr. McAngus re-entered from the passage still wearing his hat. He smiled diffidently at his five fellow passengers.

“All settling down?” he ventured, evidently under a nervous compulsion to make some general remark.

“Like birds in their little nest,” Alleyn agreed cheerfully.

“Isn’t it delicious,” Mr. McAngus said, heartened by this response, “to think that from now on it’s going to get warmer and warmer and warmer?”

“Absolutely enchanting.”

Mr. McAngus made the little chassé with which they were all to become familiar, before the basket of hyacinths.

“Quite intoxicating,” he said. “They are my favourite flowers.”

“Are they!” cried Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “Then do please,
please
have them. Please do. Dennis will take them to your room. Mr. McAngus, I should adore you to have them.”

He gazed at her in what seemed to be a flutter of bewildered astonishment. “I?” Mr. McAngus said. “But why? I beg your pardon, but it’s so very kind, and positively I can’t believe you mean it.”

“But I do, indeed. Please have them.”

Mr. McAngus hesitated and stammered. “I’m quite overcome. Of course I should be delighted.” He gave a little giggle and tilted his head over to one side. “Do you know,” he said, “this is the first occasion, the
very
first, on which a lady has ever, of her own free will, offered me her flowers? And my favourites, too. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.”

Alleyn saw that Mrs. Dillington-Blick was touched by this speech. She smiled kindly and unprovocatively at him and Brigid laughed gently.

“I’ll carry them myself,” Mr. McAngus said. “Of course I will. I shall put them on my little table and they’ll be reflected in my looking-glass.”

“Lucky man!” Alleyn said lightly.

“Indeed, yes. May I, really?” he asked. Mrs. Dillington-Blick nodded gaily and he advanced to the table and grasped the enormous basket with his reddish bony hands. He was an extremely thin man and, Alleyn thought, very much older than his strange nut-brown hair would suggest.

“Let me help you,” Alleyn offered.

“No, no! I’m really very strong, you know. Wiry.”

He lifted the basket and staggered on bent legs with it to the door. Here he turned, a strange figure, his felt hat tilted over his nose, blinking above a welter of quivering hyacinths.

“
I
shall think of something to give
you
,” he promised Mrs. Dillington-Blick, “after Las Palmas. There must be a reciprocal gesture.”

He went groggily away.

“He may dye his hair a screaming magenta if he chooses,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said. “He’s a sweetie-pie.”

From behind her covered book Miss Abbott remarked in that not very musical voice, “Meanwhile we await his reciprocal gesture. After Las Palmas.”

Alleyn sat in the pilot’s cabin looking at his file of the case in question. Captain Bannerman was on the bridge outside. At regular intervals he marched past Alleyn’s porthole. The weather, as Mr. McAngus had predicted, was getting warmer and in two days
Cape Farewell
would sight Las Palmas. She steamed now through a heavy swell. A tendency to yawn, doze, and swap panaceas against seasickness had broken out among the passengers.

A detailed description of the room followed. He skipped it and read on.

Alleyn sighed and looked up. Captain Bannerman bobbed past the porthole. The ship was heaved upward and forward, the horizon tilted, rose and sank.

Alleyn shook his head, pulled towards him a half-finished letter to his wife, and after a moment continued it.

There was a tap at the door, and on Alleyn’s call, the wireless cadet, a wan youth, came in with a radiogram.

“In code, Mr. Broderick,” he said.

When he had gone Alleyn decoded the message and after an interval continued his letter.

Alleyn’s suggestion that he should give a dinner party was made, in the first instance, to Captain Bannerman. “It may be unorthodox,” Alleyn said, “but there’s just a chance that it may give us a lead about these people.”

“I can’t say I see how you work that out.”

“I hope you will, though, in a minute. And, by the bye, I’ll want your collaboration, sir, if you’ll agree to give it.”

“Me! Now then, now then, what is all this?”

“Let me explain.”

Captain Bannerman listened with an air of moody detachment. When Alleyn had finished the captain slapped his palms on his knees and said, “It’s a damn crazy notion, but if it proves once and for all that you’re on a wild goose chase, it’ll be worth the trouble. I won’t say no. Now!”

Fortified by this authority Alleyn interviewed the chief steward, who expressed astonishment. Any parties that were given aboard this ship, the chief steward explained, were traditionally cocktail parties, for which Dennis, always helpful, made very dainty little savouries and records were played over the loudspeaker.

However, before Alleyn’s vast prestige as a supposed V.I.P. and relation of the managing director, objections dissolved. Dennis became flushed with excitement, the stewards were gracious, and the chef, a Portuguese whose almost moribund interest in his art revived under a whacking great tip, was enthusiastic.

Tables were run together and decorated, wine was chosen, and at the appointed hour the nine passengers, the mate, the chief engineer, Alleyn and Tim Makepiece, having first met for drinks in the lounge, were assembled in the dining-room at a much later hour than was usually observed for dinner at sea.

Alleyn sat at one end of the table with Mrs. Cuddy on his right and Miss Abbott on his left. The captain sat at the other between Mrs. Dillington-Blick and Brigid — an arrangement that broke down his last resistance to so marked a departure from routine and fortified him against the part he had undertaken to play.

Alleyn was a good host; his professional knack of getting other people to talk, coupled with the charm to which his wife never alluded without using the adjective indecent, generated an atmosphere of festivity. He was enormously helped by Mrs. Dillington-Blick, whose genuine enthusiasm and plunging neckline were, in their separate modes, provocative of jollity. She looked so dazzling that she sounded brilliant. Father Jourdain, who sat next to her, was admirable. Aubyn Dale, resplendent in a velvet dinner jacket, coruscated with bonhomie and regaled his immediate neighbours with stories of practical jokes that he had successfully inflicted upon his chums, as he called them, in the world of admass. These anecdotes met with a gay response in Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

Mr. McAngus wore a hyacinth in his buttonhole. Tim Makepiece was obviously enjoying himself and Brigid had an air of being astonished at her own gaiety. Mr. Merryman positively blossomed or, at any rate, sprouted a little under the influence of impeccably chosen wines and surprisingly good food, while Miss Abbott relaxed and barked quite jovially across the table at Mr. Cuddy. The two officers rapidly eased off their guarded good manners.