Singing in the Shrouds

CHAPTER 10 Aftermath

The passengers sat at one end of the lounge behind shut doors and drawn blinds. Out of force of habit each had gone to his or her accustomed place and the scene thus was given a distorted semblance of normality. Only Mr. Merryman was absent. And, of course, Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

Alleyn himself had visited the unattached men in their cabins. Mr. Merryman had been peacefully and very soundly asleep, his face blank and rosy, his lips parted and his hair ruffled in a cockscomb. Alleyn decided for the moment to leave him undisturbed. Shutting the door quietly, he crossed the passage. Mr. McAngus in vivid pyjamas had been doing something with a small brush to his hair, which was parted in the middle and hung in dark elf locks over his ears. He had hastily slammed down the lid of an open box on his dressing-table and turned his back on it. Aubyn Dale, fully dressed, was in his sitting-room. He had a drink in his hand and apparently he had been standing close to his door, which was not quite shut. His manner was extraordinary — at once defiant, terrified, and expectant. It was obvious also that he was extremely drunk. Alleyn looked at him for a moment and then said, “What have you been up to?”

“I? Have a drink, dear boy? No? What d’you mean, up to?” He swallowed the remains of his drink and poured out another.

“Where have you been since you left the lounge?”

“What the devil’s that got to do with you?” He lurched towards Alleyn and peered into his face. “Who the bloody hell,” he asked indistinctly, “do you think you are?”

Alleyn took him in the regulation grip. “Come along,” he said, “and find out.”

He marched Dale into the lounge and deposited him in the nearest chair.

Tim Makepiece had fetched Brigid and Mrs. Cuddy. Mr. Cuddy, recovered from his faint, had been allowed to change into pyjamas and dressing-gown, and looked ghastly.

Captain Bannerman, lowering and on the defensive, stood beside Alleyn.

He said, “Something’s happened tonight that I never thought to see in my ship and a course of action has to be set to deal with it.”

He jerked his head at Alleyn. “This gentleman will give the details. He’s a Scotland Yard man and his name’s A’leen not Broderick and he’s got my authority to proceed.”

Nobody questioned or exclaimed at this announcement It was merely accorded a general look of worried bewilderment. The captain nodded morosely at Alleyn and then sat down and folded his arms.

Alleyn said, “Thank you, sir.” He was filled with anger against Captain Bannerman, an anger not unmixed with compassion and no more tolerable for that. At least half the passengers were scarcely less irritating. They were irresponsible, they were helpless, two of them were profoundly silly, and one of them was a murderer. He took himself sharply to task and began to talk to them.

He said, “I shan’t, at the moment, elaborate or explain the statement you’ve just heard. You will, if you please, accept it. I’m a police officer. A murder has been committed and one of the passengers of this ship, almost certainly, is responsible.”

Mr. Cuddy’s smile, an incredible phenomenon, was stamped across his face like a postmark. His lips moved. He said with a kind of terrified and incredulous jocosity, “Oh, go on!” His fellow passengers looked appalled, but Mrs. Cuddy dreadfully and incredibly tossed her head and said, “Mrs. Blick, isn’t it? I suppose it’s a remark I shouldn’t pass, but I must say that with that type of behaviour—”

“No!” Father Jourdain interposed very strongly. “You must stop. Be quiet, Mrs. Cuddy!”

“Well, I must say!” she gasped and turned to her husband. “It is Mrs. Blick, Fred, isn’t it?”

“Yes, dear.”

Alleyn said, “It will become quite apparent before we’ve gone very much further who it is. The victim was found a few minutes ago by Mr. Cuddy. I am going to take statements from most of you. I’m sorry I can’t confine the whole business to the men only and I hope to do so before long. Possibly it’s less distressing for the ladies, who are obviously not under suspicion, to hear the preliminary examination than it would be for them to be kept completely in the dark.”

He glanced at Brigid, white and quiet, sitting by Tim and looking very young in a cotton dressing-gown and with her hair tied back. Tim, when he fetched her from her cabin, had said, “Biddy, something rather bad has happened to somebody in the ship. It’s going to shock you, my dear.”

She had answered, “You’re using the doctor’s voice that means somebody has died.” And after looking into his face for a moment: “Tim—? Tim, can it be the thing I’ve been afraid of? Is it that?”

He told her that it was and that he was not able just then to say anything more. “I’ve promised not,” he had said. “But don’t be frightened. It’s not as bad as you’ll think at first. You’ll know all about it in a few minutes and — I’m here, Biddy.”

So he had taken her to join the others and she sat beside him, watching and listening to Alleyn.

He turned to her now. “Perhaps,” he said, “Miss Carmichael will tell me at once when she went to her cabin.”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “It was just after you left. I went straight to bed.”

“I saw her to her door,” Tim said, “and heard her lock it. It was still locked when I returned just now.”

“Did you hear or see anything that seemed out of the way?” Alleyn asked her.

“I heard — I heard voices in here and-somebody laughed and then screamed, and there were other voices shouting. Nothing else.”

“Would you like to go back to your cabin now? You may if you’d rather.”

She looked at Tim. “I think I’d rather be here.”

“Then stay. Miss Abbott, I remember that you came in here from outside, on your way to your cabin. Where had you been?”

“I walked once round the deck,” she said, “and then I leaned over the rails on the, I think, starboard side — Then I came in for a few minutes.”

“Did you meet or see or hear anyone?”

“Nobody.”

“Was there anything at all, however slight, that you noticed?”

“I think not. Except—”

“Yes.”

“When I’d passed the verandah and turned, I thought I smelt cigarette smoke. Turkish. But there was nobody about.”

“Thank you. When you left here I think Father Jourdain walked to your door with you?”

“Yes. He saw me go in, I suppose. Didn’t you, Father?”

“I did,” said Father Jourdain. “And I heard you lock it. It’s the same story, I imagine.”

“Yes, and I’d rather stay here, too,” said Miss Abbott.

“Are you sure?” Father Jourdain asked. “It’s not going to be very pleasant, you know. I can’t help feeling, Alleyn, that the ladies—”

“It would be much less pleasant for the ladies,” Miss Abbott said grimly, “to swelter in their cabins in a state of terrified ignorance.” Alleyn gave her an appreciative look.

“Very well,” he said. “Now, Mrs. Cuddy, if you please. Your cabin faces forward and to the starboard side and is next to Mr. McAngus’s. You and your husband went to it together. Is that right?” Mrs. Cuddy, who, unlike her husband, never smiled, turned her customary fixed stare upon Alleyn. “I don’t see that it matters,” she said, “but I retired with Mr. Cuddy, didn’t I, dear?”

“That’s right, dear.”

“And went to bed?”

“I did,” she said in an affronted voice.

“But your husband evidently did not go to bed?”

Mrs. Cuddy said after a pause and with some constraint, “He fancied a dip.”

“That’s right. I fancied it. The prickly heat was troubling me.”

“I told you,” Mrs. Cuddy said without looking at him, “it’s unwholesome in the night air and now see what’s happened. Fainting. I wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t caught an internal chill and with the trouble you’ve been having—”

Alleyn said, “So you changed into bathing trunks?”

“I don’t usually go in fully dressed,” Mr. Cuddy rejoined. His wife laughed shortly and they both looked triumphant.

“Which way did you go to the pool?”

“Downstairs, from here, and along the lower deck.”

“On the starboard side?”

“I don’t know what they call it,” Mr. Cuddy said contemptuously. “Same side as our cabin.”

“Did you see anything of Miss Abbott?”

“I did not,” Mr. Cuddy said and managed to suggest that there might be something fishy about it.

Miss Abbott raised her hand.

“Yes, Miss Abbott?”

“I’m sorry, but I do remember now that I noticed someone was in the pool. That was when I walked round the deck. It’s a good way off and down below; I didn’t see who it was. I’d forgotten.”

“Never mind. Mr. Cuddy, did you go straight into the pool?”

“It’s what I was there for, isn’t it?”

“You must have come out almost at once.”

There was a long pause. Mr. Cuddy said, “That’s right. Just a cooler and out.”

“Please tell me exactly what happened next.”

He ran the tip of his tongue round his lips. “I want to know where I stand. I’ve had a shock. I don’t want to go letting myself in for unpleasantness.”

“Mr. Cuddy’s very sensitive.”

“There’s been things said here that I don’t fancy. I know what the police are like. I’m not going to talk regardless. Pretending you was a cousin of the company’s!”

Alleyn said, “Did you commit this crime?”

“There you are! Asking me a thing like that.”

Mrs. Cuddy said, “The idea!”

“Because if you didn’t you’ll do well to speak frankly and truthfully.”

“I’ve got nothing to conceal.”

“Very well, then,” Alleyn said patiently, “don’t behave as if you had. You found the body. After a fashion you reported your discovery. Now, I want the details. I suppose you’ve heard of the usual warning. If I was thinking of charging you I’d be obliged to give it.”

“Don’t be a fool, man,” Captain Bannerman suddenly roared out. “Behave yourself and speak up.”

“I’m ill. I’ve had a shock.”

“My dear Cuddy,” Father Jourdain said, “I’m sure we all realize that you’ve had a shock. Why not get your story over and free yourself of responsibility?”

“That’s right, dear. Tell them and get it over. It’s all they deserve,” said Mrs. Cuddy mysteriously.

“Come along,” Alleyn said. “You left the pool and you started back. Presumably you didn’t return by the lower deck but by one of the two companion-ladders up to this deck. Which one?”

“Left hand.”

“Port side,” the captain muttered irritably.

“That would bring you to within a few feet of the verandah and a little to one side of it. Now, Mr. Cuddy, do go on like a sensible man and tell me what followed.”

But Mr. Cuddy was reluctant and evasive. He reiterated that he had had a shock, wasn’t sure if he could exactly recall the sequence of events and knew better than to let himself in for a grilling.

His was the sort of behaviour that is a commonplace in the experience of any investigating officer, but in this instance, Alleyn was persuaded, it arose from a specific cause. He thought that Mr. Cuddy hedged, not because he mistrusted the police on general grounds but because there was something he urgently wished to conceal. It became increasingly obvious that Mrs. Cuddy, too, was prickly with misgivings.

“All right,” Alleyn said. “You are on the ladder. You climb up it and your head is above the level of the upper deck. To your right, quite close and facing you, is the verandah. Can you see into the verandah?”

Mr. Cuddy shook his head.

“Not at all?”

He shook his head.

“It was in darkness? Right. You stay there for some time. Long enough to leave quite a large wet patch on the steps. It was still there some minutes later when I looked at them. I think you actually may have sat down on a higher step, which would bring your head below the level of the upper deck. Did you do this?”

A strange and unlovely look had crept into Mr. Cuddy’s face, a look at once furtive and — the word flashed up in Alleyn’s thoughts — salacious.

“I do hope,” Alleyn went on, “that you will tell me if this is in fact what happened. Surely there can be no reason why you shouldn’t.”

“Go on, Fred,” Mrs. Cuddy urged. “They’ll only get thinking things.”

“Exactly,” Alleyn agreed and she looked furious.

“All right, then,” Mr. Cuddy said angrily. “I did. Now!”

“Why? Was it because of something you saw? No? Or heard?”

“Heard’s more like it,” he said and actually, after a fashion, began to smile again.

“Voices?”

“Sort of.”

“What the hell,” Captain Bannerman broke out, “do you mean, sort of! You heard someone talking or you didn’t.”

“Not to say talking.”

“Well, what were they doing. Singing?” Captain Bannerman demanded and then looked horrified.

“That,” said Mr. Cuddy, “came later.”

There was a deadly little silence.

Alleyn said, “The first time was it one voice? Or two?”

“Sounded to me like one. Sounded to me—” he looked sidelong at his wife—“like hers. You know. Mrs. Blick.” He squeezed his hands together and added, “I thought at the time it was, well — just a bit of fun.”

Mrs. Cuddy said, “Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”

“Steady, Ethel.”

Father Jourdain made a small sound of distress. Brigid thought, “This is the worst thing yet,” and couldn’t look at the Cuddys. But Miss Abbott watched them with hatred and Mr. McAngus, who had not uttered a word since he was summoned, murmured, “Must we! Oh, must we!”

“I so agree,” Aubyn Dale began with an alcoholic travesty of his noblest manner. “Indeed, indeed, must we?”

Alleyn lifted a hand and said, “The answer, I’m afraid, is that indeed, indeed, we must. Without interruption, if possible.” He waited for a moment and then turned again to Cuddy. “So you sat on the steps and listened. For how long?”

“I don’t know how long. Until I heard the other thing.”

“The singing?”

He nodded. “It sort of faded out. In the distance. So I knew he’d gone.”

“Did you form any idea,” Alleyn asked him, “who it was?”

They had all sat quietly enough until now. But at this moment, as if all their small unnoticeable movements had been disciplined under some imperative stricture, an excessive stillness fell upon them.

Mr. Cuddy said loudly, “Yes. I did.”

“Well?”

“Well, it was what he was singing. You know. The chune,” said Mr. Cuddy.

“What was it?”

He turned his head and looked at Aubyn Dale. Like automata the others repeated this movement. Dale got slowly to his feet.

“You couldn’t fail to pick it. It’s an old favourite. ‘Pack Up Your Troubles.’ After all,” Cuddy said, grinning mirthlessly at Aubyn Dale, “it is your theme song, Mr. Dale, isn’t it?”

There was no outcry from any of the onlookers, not even from Aubyn Dale himself. He merely stared at Cuddy as if at some unidentifiable monster. He then turned slowly, looked at Alleyn and wetted his lips.

“You can’t pay any attention to this,” he said with difficulty, running his words together. “It’s pure fantasy. I went to my cabin, didn’t go out on deck.” He passed his hand across his eyes. “I don’t know that I can prove it. I — can’t think of anything. But it’s true, all the same. Must be some way of proving it. Because it’s true.”

Alleyn said, “Shall we tackle that one a bit later? Mr. Cuddy hasn’t finished his statement. I should like to know, Mr. Cuddy, what you did next. At once, without evasions, if you please. What did you do?”

Cuddy gave his wife one of his sidelong glances, and then slid his gaze over to Alleyn. “I haven’t got anything to conceal,” he said. “I went up and I thought — I mean it seemed kind of quiet. I mean — you don’t want to get fanciful, Eth — I got the idea I’d see if she was O.K. So I — so I went into that place and she didn’t move. So I put out my hand in the dark. And she didn’t move and I touched her hand. She had gloves on. When I touched it, it sort of slid sideways like it wasn’t anything belonging to anybody and I heard it thump on the deck. And I thought, she’s fainted. So, in the dark, I felt around and I touched her face and — and — then I knew and — Gawd, Eth, it was ghastly!”

“Never mind, Fred.”

“I don’t know what I did. I got out of it. I suppose I ran round the side. I wasn’t myself. Next thing I knew I was in the doorway there and — well, I come over faint and I passed out. That’s all. I never did anything else, I swear I didn’t. Gawd’s my judge, I didn’t.”

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at him for a moment and said: “That, then, is an account of the discovery by the man who made it. So far, of course, there’s no way of checking, but in the meantime we shall use it as a working hypothesis. Now. Mr. McAngus.”

Mr. McAngus sat in a corner. The skirts of his dressing-gown, an unsuitably heavy one, were pulled tight over his legs and clenched between his knees. His arms were crossed over his chest and his hands buried in his armpits. He seemed to be trying to protect himself from anything anybody might feel inclined to say to him. He gazed dolorously at Alleyn as the likeliest source of assault.

“Mr. McAngus,” Alleyn began, “when did you leave this room?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You were still here when I left. That was after Mrs. Dillington-Blick had gone. Did you leave before or after Mr. and Mrs. Cuddy?” He added, “I would rather Mr. McAngus was not prompted.” Several of Mr. McAngus’s fellow passengers who had opened their mouths shut them again.

Mr. McAngus did not embark on his usual round of periphrases. He blinked twice at Alleyn and said, “I am too upset to remember. If I tried I should only muddle myself and you. A dreadful tragedy has happened; I cannot begin to think of anything else.”

Alleyn, his hands in his coat pockets, said dryly, “Perhaps, after all, a little help is called for. May we go back to a complaint you made to Captain Bannerman before you went to bed. You said, I think, that somebody had been taking the hyacinths that Mrs. Dillington-Blick gave you.”

“Oh, yes. Two. I noticed the second had gone this morning. I was very much distressed. And now, of course, even more so.”

“The hyacinths are growing, aren’t they, in a basket which I think is underneath your porthole?”

“I keep them there for the fresh air.”

“Have you any idea who was responsible?”

Mr. McAngus drew down his upper lip. “I am very much averse,” he said, “to making unwarranted accusations, but I confess I have wondered about the steward. He is always admiring them. Or, then again, he might have knocked one off by accident. But he denies it, you see. He denies it.”

“What colour was it?”

“White, a handsome spike. I believe the name is Virgin Queen.”

Alleyn withdrew his hand from his pocket, extended and opened it. His handkerchief was folded about an irregular object. He laid it on the table and opened it. A white hyacinth, scarcely wilted, was disclosed.

Mr. McAngus gave a stifled cry, Brigid felt Tim’s hand close on hers. She saw again in an instantaneous muddle the mangled doll, the paragraphs in the newspapers, and the basket of hyacinths that Dennis had brought in on their first morning at sea. She heard Miss Abbott say, “I beg you not to speak, Mrs. Cuddy,” and Mrs. Cuddy’s inevitable cry of “Hyacinths! Fred!” And then she saw Mr. McAngus rise, holding his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger.

“Is that it?” Alleyn asked.

Mr. McAngus moved slowly to the table and stopped.

“Don’t touch it, if you please.”

“It — it looks like it.”

Mrs. Cuddy said shrilly, “Wherever did you find it?”

Mr. Cuddy said, “Never mind, Eth,” but Mrs. Cuddy’s deductive capacity was under a hard drive. She stared, entranced, at the hyacinth. Everyone knew what she was about to say, no one was able to forestall it.

“My Gawd!” said Mrs. Cuddy. “You never found it on the corpse! My Gawd, Fred, it’s the Flower Murderer’s done it. He’s on the ship, Fred, and we can’t get orf!”

Miss Abbott raised her large hands and brought them down heavily on her knees. “We’ve been asked to keep quiet,” she cried out. “Can’t you, for pity’s sake, hold your tongue!”

“Gently, my child,” Father Jourdain murmured.

“I’m not feeling gentle.”

Alleyn said, “It will be obvious to all of you before long that this crime has been committed by the so-called Flower Murderer. At the moment, however, that’s a matter which need not concern us. Now, Mr McAngus. You left this room immediately after Mr. and Mrs. Cuddy. Did you go straight to your cabin?”

After a great deal of painstaking elucidation it was at last collected from Mr. McAngus that he had strayed out through the double doors of the lounge to the deck, had walked round the passengers’ block to the port side, had gazed into the heavens for a few addled minutes, and had re-entered by the door into the interior passageway and thus arrived at his own quarters. “My thoughts,” he said, “were occupied by the film. I found it very moving. Not, perhaps, what one would have expected but nevertheless exceedingly disturbing.”

As he had not been seen by anybody else after he had left the lounge, his statement could only be set down for what it was worth and left to simmer.

Alleyn turned to Aubyn Dale.

Dale was slumped in his chair. He presented a sort of travesty of the splendid figure they had grown accustomed to. His white dinner-jacket was unbuttoned. His tie was crooked, his rope-soled shoes were unlatched, his hair was disordered and his eyes were imperfectly focussed. His face was deadly pale.

Alleyn said, “Now, Mr. Dale, are you capable of giving me an account of yourself?”

Dale crossed his legs and with some difficulty joined the tips of his fingers. It was a sketch of his customary position before the cameras.

“Captain Bannerman,” he said, “I think you realize I’m ver’ close friend of the general manager of y’r company. He’s going to hear juss how I’ve been treated in this ship and he’s not going to be pleased about it.”

Captain Bannerman said, “You won’t get anywhere that road, Mr. Dale. Not with me nor with anyone else.”

Dale threw up his hands in an unco-ordinated gesture. “All right. On y’own head!”

Alleyn crossed the room and stood over him. “You’re drunk,” he said, “and I’d very much rather you were sober. I’m going to ask you a question that may have a direct bearing on a charge of murder. This is not a threat, it is a statement of fact. In your own interest you’d better pull yourself together if you can and answer me. Can you do that?”

Dale said, “I know I’m plastered. It’s not fair. Doc, I’m plastered, aren’t I?”

Alleyn looked at Tim. “Can you do anything?”

“I can give him something, yes. It’ll take a little time.”

“I don’t want anything,” Dale said. He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, held them there for some seconds and then shook his head sharply. “I’ll be O.K.,” he muttered and actually did seem to have taken some sort of hold over himself. “Go on,” he added with an air of heroic fortitude. “I can take it.”

“Very well. After you left this room tonight you went out on deck. You went to the verandah. You stood beside the chaise longue where the body was found. What were you doing there?”

Dale’s face softened as if it had been struck. He said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you deny that you were there?”

“Refuse to answer.”

Alleyn glanced at Tim, who went out.

“If you’re capable of thinking,” Alleyn said, “you must know where that attitude will take you. I’ll give you a minute.”

“Tell you, I refuse.”

Dale looked from one of his fellow passengers to the other — the Cuddy’s, Brigid, Miss Abbott, Father Jourdain, Mr. McAngus — and he found no comfort anywhere.

“You’ll be saying presently,” he said with a sort of laugh, “that I had something to do with it.”

“I’m saying now that I’ve found indisputable evidence that you stood beside the body. In your own interest don’t you think you’d be well advised to tell me why you didn’t at once report what you saw?”

“Suppose I deny it?”

“In your boots,” Alleyn said dryly, “I wouldn’t.” He pointed to Dale’s rope-soled shoes. “They’re still damp,” he said.

Dale drew his feet back as if he’d scorched them.

“Well, Mr. Dale?”

“I–I didn’t know — I didn’t know there was anything the matter. I didn’t know he — I mean she — was dead.”

“Really? Did you not say anything? Did you just stand there meekly and then run away?”

He didn’t answer.

“I suggest that you had come into the verandah from the starboard side — the side opposite to that used by Mr. Cuddy. I also suggest that you had been hiding by the end of the locker near the verandah corner.”

Unexpectedly Dale behaved in a manner that was incongruously, almost embarrassingly theatrical. He crossed his wrists, palms outward, before his face and then made a violent gesture of dismissal. “No!” he protested. “You don’t understand. You frighten me. No!”

The door opened and Tim Makepiece returned. He stood, keeping it open and looking at Alleyn.

Alleyn nodded and Tim, turning his head to the passage, also nodded.

A familiar scent drifted into the stifled room. There was a tap of high heels in the passage. Through the door, dressed in a wonderful negligée, came Mrs. Dillington-Blick.

Mrs. Cuddy made a noise that was not loud but strangulated. Her husband and McAngus got to their feet, the latter looking as if he had seen a phantom and the former as if he was going to faint again. But if, in fact, they were about to say or do anything more they were forestalled. Brigid gave a shout of astonishment and relief and gratitude. She ran across the room and took Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s hands in hers and kissed her. She was half crying, half laughing. “It wasn’t you!” she stammered. “You’re all right. I’m so glad. I’m so terribly glad.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick gazed at her in amazement.

“You don’t even know what’s happened, do you?” Brigid went on. “Something quite dreadful but—”

She stopped short. Tim had come to her and put his arm round her. “Wait a moment, my darling,” he said and she turned to him. “Wait a moment,” he repeated and drew her away.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick looked in bewilderment at Aubyn Dale.

“What’s all the fuss?” she asked. “Have they found out?”

He floundered across the room and seized Mrs. Dillington-Blick by the arms, shaking and threatening her.

“Ruby, don’t speak!” he said. “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell them. Don’t you dare!”

“Has everybody gone mad?” asked Mrs. Dillington-Blick. She wrenched herself out of Dale’s grip. “Don’t!” she said and pushed away the hand that he actually tried to lay across her mouth. “What’s happened? Have they found out?” And after a moment, with a change of voice: “Where’s Dennis?”

“Dennis,” Alleyn said, “has been murdered.”

It was, apparently, Mr. Cuddy who was most disturbed by the news of Dennis’s death but his was an inarticulate agitation. He merely stopped smiling, opened his mouth, developed a slight tremor of the hands and continued to gape incredulously at Mrs. Dillington-Blick. His wife, always predictable, put her hand over his and was heard to say that someone was trying to be funny. Mr. McAngus kept repeating, “Thank God. I thank God!” in an unnatural voice. Miss Abbott said loudly, “Why have we been misled! An abominable trick!” while Aubyn Dale crumpled back into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick herself, Alleyn thought, was bewildered and frightened. She looked once at Aubyn Dale and away again, quickly. She turned helplessly towards Captain Bannerman, who went to her and patted her shoulder.

“Never you fret,” he said and glared uneasily at Alleyn. “You ought to have had it broken to you decently, not sprung on you without a word of warning. Never mind. No need to upset yourself.”

She turned from him to Alleyn and held out her hands. “You make me nervous,” she said. “It’s not true, is it? Why are you behaving like this? You’re angry, aren’t you? Why have you brought me here?”

“If you’ll sit down,” he said, “I’ll tell you.” She tried to take his hands. “No, just sit down, please, and listen.”

Father Jourdain went to her. “Come along,” he said and led her to a chair.

“He’s a plain-clothes detective, Mrs. Blick,” Mrs. Cuddy announced with a kind of angry triumph. “We’ve all been spied upon and made mock of and put in danger of our lives and now there’s a murderer loose in the ship and he says it’s one of us. In my opinion—”

“Mrs. Cuddy,” Alleyn said, “I must ask you for the moment to be quiet.”

Mr. Cuddy, automatically and for the last time on the voyage, said, “Steady, Ethel.”

“Indeed,” Alleyn went on, “I must ask you all to be quiet and to listen carefully. You will understand that a state of emergency exists and that I have the authority to deal with it. The steward, Dennis, has been killed in the manner you have all discussed so often. He was clad in the Spanish dress Mrs. Dillington-Blick bought in Las Palmas and the inference is that he was killed in mistake for her. He was lying in the chair in the unlit verandah. The upper part of his face was veiled and it was much too dark to see the mole at the corner of his mouth. In the hearing of all of the men in this room Mrs. Dillington-Blick had said she was going to the verandah. She did go there. I met her there and went with her to the lower deck and from thence to her cabin door. She was wearing a black lace dress, not unlike the Spanish one. I returned here and almost immediately Mr. Cuddy arrived announcing that he had discovered her and that she was dead. Apparently he had been deceived by the dress. Dr. Makepiece examined the body and says death had occurred no more than a few minutes before he did so. For reasons which I shall give you when we have time for them, there can be no question of his having been murdered by some member of the ship’s complement. His death is the fourth in the series that you have so often discussed and one of the passengers is, in my opinion, undoubtedly responsible for all of them. For the moment you’ll have to accept that.”

He. waited. Aubyn Dale raised his head and suddenly demanded, “Where’s Merryman?”

There were exclamations from the Cuddys.

“That’s right!” Mr. Cuddy said. “Where is he! All this humbugging the rest of us about. Insinuations here and questions there! And Mr. Know-all Merryman mustn’t be troubled, I suppose!”

“Personally,” Mrs. Cuddy added, “I wouldn’t trust him. I’ve always said there was something. Haven’t I, dear?”

“Mr. Merryman,” Alleyn said, “is asleep in bed. He’s been very unwell and I decided to leave him there until we actually needed him as, of course, we shall. I have not forgotten him.”

“He was well enough to go to the pictures,” Mrs. Cuddy pointed out. “I think the whole thing looks very funny. Very funny indeed.”

Brigid suddenly found herself exclaiming indignantly, “Why do you say it looks ‘funny’? Mr. Merryman has already pointed out what a maddeningly incorrect expression it is and he is ill and he only came to the pictures because he’s naughty and obstinate and I think he’s a poppet and certainly not a murderer and I’m sorry to interrupt but I do.”

Alleyn said, almost as Father Jourdain might have said, “All right, my child. All right,” and Tim put his arm round Brigid.

“It will be obvious to you all,” Alleyn went on exactly as if there had been no interruption, “that I must find out why the steward was there and why he was dressed in this manner. It is here that you, Mrs. Dillington-Blick, can help us.”

“Ruby!” Dale whispered, but she was not looking at him.

“It was only a joke,” she said. “We did it for a joke. How could we possibly know—?”

“We? You mean you and Mr. Dale, don’t you?”

“And Dennis. Yes. It’s no good, Aubyn. I can’t not say.”

“Did you give Dennis the dress?”

“Yes.”

“After Las Palmas?”

“Yes. He’d been awfully obliging and he said — you know what an odd little creature he was — he admired it awfully and I, I told you, I took against it after the doll business. So I gave it to him. He said he wanted to dress up for a joke at some sort of birthday party the stewards were having.”

“On Friday night?”

“Yes. He wanted me not to say anything. That was why, when you asked me about the dress, I didn’t tell you. I wondered if you knew. Did you?”

Alleyn was careful not to look at Captain Bannerman. “It doesn’t arise at the moment,” he said.

The captain made an indeterminate rumbling noise that culminated in utterance.

“Yes, it does!” he roared. “Fair’s fair and little though I may fancy the idea, I’m not a man to shirk my responsibilities.” He jerked his head at Alleyn. “The superintendent,” he said, “came to me and told me somebody had been seen fooling about the forrard well-deck in that damned dress. He said he hadn’t seen it himself and whoever did see it reckoned it was Mrs. Dillington-Blick. And why not, I thought? Her dress, and why wouldn’t she be wearing it? He asked me to make enquiries and stop a repetition. I didn’t see my way to interfering and I wouldn’t give my consent to him doing it on his own. All my time as master, I’ve observed a certain attitude towards my passengers. I didn’t see fit to change it. I was wrong. I didn’t believe I’d shipped a murderer. Wrong again. Dead wrong. I don’t want it overlooked or made light of. I was wrong.”

Alleyn said, “That’s a very generous statement,” and thought it best to carry on. “I had not seen the figure in the Spanish dress,” he said. “I had been told it was Mrs. Dillington-Blick and there was no reason that anybody would accept to suppose it wasn’t. I merely had a notion, unsupported by evidence, that the behaviour as reported was uncharacteristic.”

Brigid said, “It was I who told about it. Mr. Alleyn asked me if I was sure it was Mrs. Dillington-Blick and I said I was.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick said, “Dennis told me what he’d done. He said he’d always wanted to be a dancer.” She looked at Alleyn. “When you asked me if I would wear the dress to dance by the light of the moon, I thought you’d seen him and mistaken him for me. I didn’t tell you. I pretended it was me, because—” her face crumpled and she began to cry—“because we were planning the joke.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “there it was. And now I shall tell you what I think happened. I think, Mr. Dale, that with your fondness for practical jokes, you suggested that it would be amusing to get the steward to dress up tonight and go to the verandah and that you arranged with Mrs. Dillington-Blick to let it be understood that she herself was going to be there. Is that right?”

Aubyn Dale had sobered up considerably. Something of his old air of conventional decency had reappeared. He exhibited all the troubled concern of a good chap who is overwhelmed with self-reproach.

“Of course,” he said, “I’ll never forgive myself for this. It’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life. But how could I know? How could I know! We — I mean, I–I take the whole responsibility—” he threw a glance, perhaps slightly reproachful, at Mrs. Dillington-Blick— “I just thought it would be rather amusing to do it. The idea was that this poor little devil should—” he hesitated and stole a look at Mr. McAngus and Mr. Cuddy— “well, should go to the verandah, as you say, and if anybody turned up he was just to sort of string them along a bit. I mean, putting it like that in cold blood after what’s happened, it may sound rather poor but—”

He stopped and waved his hands.

Miss Abbott broke her self-imposed silence. She said, “It sounds common, cheap, and detestable.”

“I resent that, Miss Abbott.”

“You can resent it till you’re purple in the face but the fact remains. To plot with the steward! To make a vulgar practical joke out of what may have been the wretched little creature’s tragedy — his own private, inexorable weakness — his devil!”

“My child!” Father Jourdain said. “You must stop.” But she pointed wildly and clumsily at Cuddy. “To trick that man! To use his idiotic, hopeless infatuation! And the other—”

“No, no. Please!” Mr. McAngus cried out. “It doesn’t matter. Please!”

Miss Abbott looked at him with what might have been a kind of compassion and turned on Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “And you,” she said, “with your beauty and fascination, with everything that unhappy women long for, to lend yourself to such a thing! To give him your lovely dress, to allow him to so much as touch it! What were you thinking of!” She ground her heavy hands together. “Beauty is sacred!” she said. “It is sacred in its own right; you have committed sacrilege.”

“Katherine, you must come away. As your priest, I insist. You will do yourself irreparable harm. Come with me.”

For the first time she seemed to hear him. The familiar look of mulish withdrawal returned and she got up.

“Alleyn?” Father Jourdain asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Come along,” he said, and Miss Abbott let him take her away.

“That woman’s upset me,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said, angrily sobbing. “I don’t feel at all well. I feel awful.”

“Ruby, darling!”

“No! No, Aubyn, don’t paw me. We shouldn’t have done it. You shouldn’t have started it. I feel ghastly.”

Captain Bannennan squared his shoulders and approached her. “Nor you!” she said, and, perhaps for the first time in her adult life, she appealed to someone of her own sex. “Brigid!” she said. “Tell me I needn’t feel like this. It’s not fair. I’m hating it.”

Brigid went to her. “I can tell you, you needn’t,” she said, “but we all know you do and that’s much better than not minding at all. At least—” she appealed to Alleyn— “isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.”

Mr. McAngus, tying himself up in a sort of agonized knot of sympathy, said, “You mustn’t think about it. You mustn’t reproach yourself. You are goodness itself. Oh, don’t!”

Mrs. Cuddy sniffed piercingly.

“It’s this awful heat,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick moaned. “One can’t think.” She had, in fact, gone very white. “I–I feel faint.”

Alleyn opened the double doors. “I was going to suggest,” he said, “that we let a little air in.” Brigid put her arm round Mrs. Dillington-Blick and Tim went over to her. “Can you manage?” he asked. “Come outside.”

They helped her through the doors. Alleyn moved Mr. Merryman’s chair so that its back was turned to the lounge and Mrs. Dillington-Blick sank out of sight. “Will you stay here?” Alleyn asked. “When you feel more like it I should be glad of another word with you. I’ll ask Dr. Makepiece to come and see how you are. Perhaps, Miss Carmichael, you’d stay with Mrs. Dillington-Blick. Would you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“All right?” Tim asked her.

“Perfectly.”

Alleyn had a further word with Tim and then the two men went back into the room.

Alleyn said, “I’m afraid I must press on. I shall need all the men, but if you, Mrs. Cuddy, would rather go to your cabin, you may.”

“I prefer to stay with Mr. Cuddy, thank you.”

Mr. Cuddy moistened his lips and said, “Look, Eth, you toddle off. It’s not suitable for ladies.”

“I wouldn’t fancy being there by myself.”

“You’ll be O.K., dear.”

“What about you, though?”

He didn’t look at her. “I’ll be O.K.,” he said.

She was staring at him, expressionless as always. It was odd to see that her eyes were masked in tears.

“Oh, Fred,” Mrs. Cuddy said, “why did you do it?”