Death At The Bar

Chapter XV Love Interest

i

Alleyn had expected that Decima would hedge, rage, or possibly pretend to misunderstand him. Her sudden capitulation took him by surprise and he was obliged to make an embarrassingly quick decision. He plumped for comparative frankness.

“We expect,” he said, “a report on his fingerprints. When that comes through, we shall have official confirmation of a record that we suspected from the first and of which we are now certain.”

“And you immediately put two and two together and make an absurdity.”

“What sort of absurdity?”

“You will say that because he didn’t come forward and announce ‘I’m a man with a police record,’ he’s a murderer. Can’t you see how he felt? Have you the faintest notion what it’s like for a man who’s been in prison to try to get back, to try to earn a miserable pittance? Have you ever thought about it at all or wondered for two seconds what becomes of the people you send to jail? To their minds? I know you look after their bodies with the most intolerable solicitude. You are there always. Every employer is warned. There is no escape. It would be better, upon my honour, I believe it would be better, to hang them outright than — than to tear their wings off and let them go crawling out into the sun.”

“That’s a horrible analogy,” said Alleyn, “and a false one.”

“It’s a true analogy. Can’t you see why Legge was so frightened? He’s only just stopped having to report. Only now has he got his thin freedom. He thought, poor wretch, that we wouldn’t keep him on if we knew he’d been to jail. Leave him alone! Leave him alone!”

“How long have you known this about him?” asked Alleyn.

She stood up abruptly, her palm against her forehead as though her head ached.

“Oh, for some time.”

“He confided in you? When?”

“When he got the job,” said Decima flatly. Alleyn did not believe her, but he said politely —

“That was very straightforward, wasn’t it?” And as she did not answer he added: “Do you know why he went to prison?”

“No. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me. He’s wiped it out, God knows, poor thing. Don’t tell me.”

Alleyn reflected, with a certain amount of amusement, that it was as well she didn’t want to know what Legge’s offence had been. Some image of this thought may have appeared in his face. He saw Decima look sharply at him and he said hurriedly: “All this is by the way. What I really want to ask you is whether, on the morning you encountered Mr. Watchman by the furze-bush, you were alone with him all the time.”

He saw that now she was frightened for herself. Her eyes widened, and she turned extremely pale.

“Yes. At least — I—no. Not at the end. I rather think Norman Cubitt and Sebastian Parish came up.”

“You rather think?”

“They did come up. I remember now. They did.”

“And yet,” said Alleyn, “when I asked them if they saw Watchman that morning, they said definitely that they did not.”

“They must have forgotten.”

“Please! You can’t think I’ll believe that. They must have been over every word that was spoken by Watchman during the last hours of his life. They have told me as much. Why, they must have walked back to the inn with him. How could they forget?”

Decima said: “They didn’t forget.”

“No?”

“It was for me. They are being little gents.”

Alleyn waited.

“Well,” she said, “I won’t have it. I won’t have their chivalry. If you must know, they surprised their friend in a spirited attempt upon my modesty. I wasn’t pleased and I was telling him precisely what I thought of him. I suppose they were afraid you would transfer your attentions from Bob Legge to me.”

“Possibly,” agreed Alleyn. “They seem to think I am a sort of investigating chameleon.”

“I imagine,” said Decima in a high voice, “that because I didn’t relish Mr. Watchman’s embraces and told him so it doesn’t follow that I set to work and murdered him.”

“It’s not a strikingly good working hypothesis. I’m sorry to labour this point but we’ve no sense of decency in the force. Had he shown signs of these tricks before?”

The clear pallor of Decima’s face was again flooded with red. Alleyn thought: “Good Lord, she’s an attractive creature, I wonder what the devil she’s like.” He saw, with discomfort, that she could not look at him. Fox made an uneasy noise in his throat and stared over the downs. Alleyn waited. At last Decima raised her eyes.

“He was like that,” she murmured.

Alleyn now saw a sort of furtiveness in Decima. She was no longer tense, her pose had changed and she offered him no challenge,

“I suppose he couldn’t help it,” she said, and then with a strange look from Alleyn to Fox, she added: “It’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. You needn’t think ill of him. I was all right.”

In half a minute she had changed. The educational amenities, provided by that superior mother, had fallen away from her. She had turned into a rustic beauty, conscious of her power of provocation. The rumoured engagement to Will Pomeroy no longer seemed ridiculous. And as if she had followed Alleyn’s thought, she said: “I’d be very glad if you wouldn’t say anything of this to Will Pomeroy. He knows nothing about it. He wouldn’t understand.”

“I’ll sheer off it if it can be done. It was not the first time you’d had difficulty with Watchman?”

She paused and then said: “We hadn’t actually— come to blows before.”

“Blows? Literally?”

“I’m afraid so.”

She stood up. Alleyn thought she mustered her self-assurance. When she spoke again it was in a different key, ironically and with composure.

“Luke,” she said, “was amorous by habit. No doubt it was not the first time he’d miscalculated. He wasn’t in the least disconcerted. He — wasn’t in the least in love with me.”

“No?”

“It’s merely a squalid little incident which I had rather hoped to forget. It was, I suppose, very magnificent of Seb and Norman to lie about it, but the gesture was too big for the theme.”

“Now she’s being grand at me,” thought Alleyn. “We are back in St. Margaret’s Hall.”

He said: “And Watchman had never made himself objectionable before that morning?”

“I did not usually find him particularly objectionable.”

“I intended,” said Alleyn, “to ask you if he had ever made love to you before?”

“I have told you he wasn’t in the least in love with me.”

“I’m unlucky in my choice of words, I see. Had he ever kissed you, Miss Moore?”

“This is very tedious,” said Decima. “I have tried to explain that my acquaintance with Luke Watchman was of no interest or significance to either of us, or, if you will believe me, to you.”

“Then why,” asked Alleyn mildly, “don’t you give me an answer and have done with it?”

“Very well,” said Decima breathlessly. “You can have your answer. I meant nothing to him and he meant less to me. Until last Friday he’d never been anything but the vaguest acquaintance.” She turned on Fox. “Write it down. You’ll get no other answer. Write it down.”

“Thank you, Miss,” said Fox civilly, “I don’t think I’ve missed anything. I’ve got it down.”

ii

“Well, have you finished?” demanded Decima, who had succeeded in working herself up into a satisfactory temper. “Is there anything else you want to know? Do you want a list in alphabetical order of my encounters with any other little Luke Watchmans who have come my way?”

“No,” said Alleyn. “No. We limit our impertinences to the police code. Our other questions are, I hope, less offensive. They concern the brandy you gave Mr. Watchman, the glass into which you poured it, and the bottle from which it came.”

“All right. What about them?”

“May we have your account of that particular phase of the business?”

“I told Oates and I told the coroner. Someone suggested brandy. I looked round and saw Luke’s glass on the table, between the settle where he lay and the dart board. There wasn’t any brandy left in it. I saw the bottle on the bar. I was very quick about it. I got it and poured some into the glass. I didn’t put anything but brandy in the glass. I can’t prove I didn’t, but I didn’t.”

“But perhaps we can prove it. Was anyone near the table? Did anyone watch you pour the brandy?”

“Oh God!” said Decima wearily. “How should I know? Sebastian Parish was nearest to the table. He may have noticed. I don’t know. I took the glass to Luke. I waited for a moment, while Abel Pomeroy put iodine on Luke’s finger, and then I managed to pour a little brandy between his lips. It wasn’t much. I don’t think he even swallowed it, but I suppose you won’t believe that.”

“Miss Moore,” said Alleyn suddenly, “I can’t tell you how pathetically anxious we are to accept the things people tell us.” He hesitated and then said: “You see, we spend most of our working life asking questions. Can you, for your part, believe that we get a kind of sixth sense and sometimes feel very certain indeed that a witness is speaking the truth, or, as the case may be, is lying? We’re not allowed to recognize our sixth sense, and when it points a crow’s flight towards the truth we may not follow it. We must cut it dead and follow the dreary back streets of collected evidence. But if they lead us anywhere at all it is almost always to the same spot.”

“Eminently satisfactory,” said Decima. “Everything for the best in the best of all possible police forces.”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant. Was it after you had given him the brandy that Mr. Watchman uttered the single word ‘poisoned’?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get the impression that he spoke of the brandy?”

“No. I don’t know if your sixth sense will tell you I’m lying, but it seemed to me he tried to take the brandy, and perhaps did swallow a little, and that it was when he found he couldn’t drink that he said— that one word. He said it between his clenched teeth. I had never seen such a look of terror and despair. Then he jerked his hand. Miss Darragh was going to bandage it. Just at that moment the lights went out.”

“For how long were they out?”

“Nobody knows. It’s impossible to tell. I can’t. It seemed an age. Somebody clicked the switch. I remember that. To see if it had been turned off accidentally, I suppose. It was a nightmare. The rain sounded like drums. There was broken glass everywhere — crunch, crunch, squeak. And his voice. Not like a human voice, like a cat, mewing. And his heels, drumming on the settle. And everybody shouting in the dark.”

Decima spoke rapidly and twisted her fingers together.

“It’s funny,” she said, “I either can’t talk about it at all, or I can’t stop talking about it. Once you start, you go on and on. It’s rather queer. I suppose he was in great pain. I suppose it was torture. As bad as the rack, or disembowelling. I’ve got a terror of physical pain. I’d recant anything first.”

“Not,” said Alleyn, “your political views?”

“No,” agreed Decima, “not those. I’d contrive to commit suicide or something. Perhaps it was not pain that made him cry like that, and drum with his heels. Perhaps it was only reflex-something. Nerves.”

“I think,” said Alleyn, “that your own nerves have had a pretty shrewd jolt.”

“What do you know about nerves?” demanded Decima with surprising venom. “Nerves! These things are a commonplace to you. Luke Watchman’s death-throes are so much data. You expect me to give you a neat statement about them. Describe, in my own words, the way he clenched his teeth and drew back his lips.”

“No,” said Alleyn. “I haven’t asked you about those things. I have asked you two questions of major importance. One was about your former relationship with Watchman and the other about the brandy you gave him before he died.”

“I’ve answered you. If that’s all you want to know you’ve got it. I can’t stand any more of this. Let me—”

The voice stopped as if someone had switched it off.

She looked beyond Alleyn and Fox to the brow of the hillock. Her eyes were dilated.

Alleyn turned. Norman Cubitt stood against the sky.

“Norman!” cried Decima.

He said: “Wait a bit, Decima,” and strode down towards her. He stood and looked at her and then lightly picked up her hands.

“What’s up?” asked Cubitt.

“I can’t stand it, Norman.”

Without looking at Alleyn or Fox, he said: “You don’t have to talk to these two precious experts if it bothers you. Tell ’em to go to hell.” And then he turned her round and over her shoulder grinned, not very pleasantly, at Alleyn.

“I’ve made a fool of myself,” whispered Decima.

She was looking at Cubitt as though she saw him for the first time. He said: “What the devil are you badgering her for?”

“Just,” said Alleyn, “out of sheer wanton brutality.”

“It’s all right,” said Decima. “He didn’t badger, really. He’s only doing his loathsome job.”

Her eyes were brilliant with tears, her lips not quite closed, and still she looked with a sort of amazement into Cubitt’s face.

“Oh, Norman!” she said, “I’ve been so inconsistent and fluttery and feminine. Me!”

“You,” said Cubitt.

“In a moment,” thought Alleyn, “he’ll kiss her.” And he said: “Thank you so much, Miss Moore. I’m extremely sorry to have distressed you. I hope we shan’t have to bother you again.”

“Look here, Alleyn,” said Cubitt, “if you do want to see Miss Moore again I insist on being present, and that’s flat.”

Before Alleyn could answer this remarkable stipulation Decima said: “But my dear man, I’m afraid you can’t insist on that. You’re not my husband, you know.”

“That can be attended to,” said Cubitt. “Will you marry me?”

“Fox,” said Alleyn, “what are you staring at? Come back to Ottercombe.”

iii

“Well, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox when they were out of earshot, “we see some funny things in our line of business, don’t we? What a peculiar moment, now, for him to pick on for a proposal. Do you suppose he’s been courting her for a fair while, or did he spring it on her sudden?”

“Suddenish, I fancy, Fox. Her eyes were wet and that, I suppose, went to his head. I must say she’s a very lovely creature. Didn’t you think so?”

“A very striking young lady,” agreed Fox. “But I thought the Super said she was keeping company with young Pomeroy?”

“He did.”

“She’s a bit on the classy side for him, you’d think.”

“You would, Fox.”

“Well, now, I wonder what she’ll do. Throw him over and take Mr. Cubitt? She looked to me to be rather inclined that way.”

“I wish she’d told the truth about Watchman,” said Alleyn.

“Think there’d been something between them, sir? Relations? Intimacy?”

“Oh Lord, I rather think so. It’s not a very pleasant thought.”

“Bit of a femme fatale,” said Fox carefully. “But there you are. They laugh at what we used to call respectability, don’t they? Modern women—”

Alleyn interrupted him.

“I know, Fox, I know. She is very sane and intellectual and modern, but I don’t mind betting there’s a strong dram of rustic propriety that pops up when she least expects it. I think she’s ashamed of the Watchman episode, whatever it was, and furious with herself for being ashamed. What’s more, I don’t believe she knew, until today, that Legge was an old lag. All guesswork. Let’s forget it. We’ll have an early lunch and call on Dr. Shaw. I want to ask him about the wound in the finger. Come on.”

They returned by way of the furze-bush, collecting the casts and Alleyn’s case. As they disliked making entrances with mysterious bundles, they locked their gear in the car and went round to the front of the Feathers. But here they walked into a trap. Sitting beside Abel Pomeroy on the bench outside the front door was an extremely thin and tall man with a long face, a drooping moustache, and foolish eyes. He stared very fixedly at Fox, who recognized him as Mr. George Nark and looked the other way.

“Find your road all right, gentlemen?” asked Abel.

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Pomeroy,” said Alleyn.

“It’s a tidy stretch, sir. You’ll be proper warmed up.”

“We’re not only warm but dry,” said Alleyn.

“Ripe for a pint, I dessay, sir?”

“A glorious thought,” said Alleyn.

Mr. Nark cleared his throat. Abel threw a glance of the most intense dislike at him and led the way into the private bar.

“ ’Morning,” said Mr. Nark, before Fox could get through the door.

“Morning, Mr. Nark,” said Fox.

“Don’t know but what I wouldn’t fancy a pint myself,” said Mr. Nark firmly, and followed them into the Private.

Abel drew Alleyn’s and Fox’s drinks.

“ ’Alf-’n-’alf, Abel,” said Mr. Nark, grandly.

Somewhat ostentatiously Abel wiped out a shining pint-pot with a spotless cloth. He then drew the mild and bitter.

“Thank ’ee,” said Mr. Nark. “Glad to see you’re acting careful. Not but what, scientifically speaking, you ought to bile them pots. I don’t know what the law has to say on the point,” continued Mr. Nark, staring very hard at Alleyn. “I’d have to look it up. The law may touch on it and it may not.”

“Don’t tell us you’m hazy on the subject,” said Abel bitterly. “Us can’t believe it.”

Mr. Nark smiled in an exasperating manner and took a pull at his beer. He made a rabbit-like noise with his lips, snapping them together several times with a speculative air. He then looked dubiously into his pint-pot.

“Well,” said Abel tartly, “what’s wrong with it? You’m not p’isoned this time, I suppose?”

“I dessay it’s all right,” said Mr. Nark. “New barrel, b’ain’t it?”

Abel disregarded this enquiry. The ship’s decanter, that they had seen in the cupboard, now stood on the bar counter. It was spotlessly clean. Abel took the bottle of Amontillado from a shelf above the bar. He put a strainer in the neck of the decanter and began, carefully, to pour the sherry through it.

“What jiggery-pokery are you up to now, Abel?” enquired Mr. Nark. “Why, Gor’dang it, that thurr decanter was in the pi’son cupboard.”

Abel addressed himself exclusively to Alleyn and Fox. He explained the various methods used by Mrs. Ives to clean the decanter. He poured himself out a glass of the sherry and invited them to join him. Under the circumstances they could scarcely refuse. Mr. Nark watched them with extraordinary solicitude and remarked that they were braver men than himself.

“Axcuse me for a bit if you please, gentlemen,” said Abel elaborately, to Alleyn and Fox. “I do mind me of summat I’ve got to tell Mrs. Ives. If you’d be so good as to ring if I’m wanted.”

“Certainly, Mr. Pomeroy,” said Alleyn.

Abel left them with Mr. Nark.

“Fine morning, sir,” said Mr. Nark.

Alleyn agreed.

“Though I suppose,” continued Mr. Nark wooingly, “all weathers and climates are one to a man of your calling? Science,” continued Mr. Nark, drawing closer and closer to Alleyn, “is a powerful highhanded mistress. Now, just as a matter of curiosity, sir, would you call yourself a man of science?”

“Not I,” said Alleyn, good-naturedly. “I’m a policeman, Mr. Nark.”

“Ah! That’s my point. See? That’s my point. Now sir, with all respect, you did ought to make a power more use of the great wonders of science. I’ll give in your fingerprints. There’s an astonishing thing, now! To think us walks about unconscious-like, leaving our pores and loops all over the shop for science to pick up and have the laugh on us.”

It was a peculiarity of Mr. Nark’s conversational style that as he drew nearer to his victim he raised his voice. His face was now about twenty inches away from Alleyn’s and he roared like an infuriated auctioneer.

“I’m a reader,” shouted Mr. Nark. “I’m a reader and you might say a student. How many printed words would you say I’d absorbed in my life? At a guess, now?”

“Really,” said Alleyn. “I don’t think I could possibly—”

“Fifty-eight million!” bawled Mr. Nark. “Nigh on it. Not reckoning twice-overs. I’ve soaked up four hundred words, some of ’em as much as five syllables, mind you, every night for the last forty years. Started in at the age of fifteen. ‘Sink or swim,’ I said, ‘I’ll improve my brain to the tune of four hundred words per day till I passes out or goes blind!’ And I done it. I don’t suppose you know a piece of work called The Evvylootion of the Spices?”

“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.”