Singing in the Shrouds

CHAPTER 4 Hyacinths

Having watched Alleyn mount the companionway, Brigid Carmichael returned to her desolate little verandah aft of the centrecastle and to her book.

She had gone through the morning in a kind of trance, no longer inclined to cry or to think much of her broken engagement and the scenes that had attended it or even of her own unhappiness. It was as if the fact of departure had removed her to a spiritual distance quite out of scale with the night’s journey down the estuary and along the Channel. She had walked until she was tired, tasted salt on her lips, read a little, heard gulls making their B.B.C. atmospheric noises, and watched them fly mysteriously in and out of the fog. Now in the sunshine she fell into a half-doze.

When she opened her eyes it was to find that Doctor Timothy Makepiece stood not far off, leaning over the rail with his back towards her. He had, it struck her, a pleasant nape to his neck; his brown hair grew tidily into it. He was whistling softly to himself. Brigid, still in a strange state of inertia, idly watched him. Perhaps he sensed this for he turned and smiled at her.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Not sea-sick or anything?”

“Not at all. Only ridiculously sleepy.”

“I expect that is the sea. They tell me it does have that effect on some people. Did you see the pilot go off and the arrival of the dark and handsome stranger?”

“Yes, I did. Had he missed the ship last night, do you suppose?”

“I’ve no idea. Are you going for drinks with Aubyn Dale before lunch?”

“Not I.”

“I hoped you were. Haven’t you met him yet?” He didn’t seem to expect an answer to this question but wandered over and looked sideways at Brigid’s book.

“Elizabethan verse?” he said. “So you don’t despise anthologies. Which is your favourite — Bard apart?”

“Well — Michael Drayton, perhaps, if he wrote ‘Since There’s No Help.’ ”

“I’ll back the Bard for that little number every time.” He picked up the book, opened it at random and began to chuckle as he read aloud.

“Isn’t that a thing, now? Leering Cupid! They really were wonderful. Do you — but no,” Tim Makepiece said, interrupting himself, “I’m doing the thing I said to myself I wouldn’t do.”

“What was that?” Brigid asked, not with any great show of interest.

“Why, forcing my attentions on you, to be sure.”

“What an Edwardian expression.”

“None the worse for that.”

“Shouldn’t you be going to your party?”

“I expect so,” he agreed moodily. “I don’t really like alcohol in the middle of the day and am far from being one of Mr. Aubyn Dale’s fans.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve yet to meet a man who is.”

“All jealous of him, I daresay,” Brigid said idly.

“You may be right. And a very sound reason for disliking him. It’s the greatest mistake to think that jealousy is necessarily at fault. On the contrary, it may very well sharpen the perception.”

“It didn’t sharpen Othello’s.”

“But it did. It was his interpretation of what he saw that was at fault. He saw, with an immensely sharpened perception.”

“I don’t agree.”

“Because you don’t want to.”

“Now, look here—” Brigid said, for the first time giving him her full attention.

“He saw Cassio doing his sophisticated young Venetian act over Desdemona’s hand. He saw him at it again after he’d blotted his copy-book. He was pathologically aware of every gallantry that Cassio showed his wife.”

“Well,” Brigid said, “if you’re pathologically aware of every attention Aubyn Dale shows his however-many-they-may-be female fans, I must say I’m sorry for you.”

“All right, smartie,” Tim said amiably, “you win.”

“After all, it’s the interpretation that matters.”

“There’s great virtue in perception alone. Pure scientific observation that is content to set down observed fact after observed fact—”

“Followed by pure scientific interpretation that adds them all up and makes a nonsense.”

“Why should you say that?” he asked gently. “It’s you that’s making a nonsense.”

“Well, I must say!”

“To revert to Aubyn Dale. What about his big thing on TV? Advertising women’s bathing clothes—Pack Up Your Troubles. In other words, ‘Come to me, everybody that’s got a bellyache, and I’ll put you before my public and pay you for it.’ If I were a religious man I’d call it blasphemy.”

“I don’t say I like what he does—”

“Still, he does make an ass of himself good and proper, on occasions. Witness the famous Molton Medbury Midsummer Muckup.”

“I never heard exactly what happened.”

“He was obviously plastered. He went round televising the Molton Medbury flower show with old Lady Agatha Panthing. You could see he was plastered before he spoke and when he did speak he said the first prize in the competition went to Lady Agatha’s umbilicus globular. He meant,” Timothy explained, “Agapanthus umbellatus globosus. I suppose it shattered him because after that a sort of rot set in and at intervals he broke into a recrudescence of spoonerisms. It went on for weeks. Only the other day he was going all springlike over a display of hyacinths and said that in arranging them all you really needed was a ‘turdy stable.’ ”

“Oh, no! Poor chap. How too shaming for him!”

“So he shaved off his fetching little imperial and I expect he’s taking a long sea voyage to forget. He’s in pretty poor shape, I fancy.”

“Do you? What sort of poor shape?”

“Oh, neurosis,” Timothy said shortly, “of some sort. I should think.”

The xylophonic gong began its inconsequent chiming on the bridge-house.

“Good Lord, that’s for eating!” Timothy exclaimed.

“What will you say to your host?”

“I’ll say I had an urgent case among the greasers. But I’d better just show up. Sorry to have been such a bore. Good-bye, now,” said Tim attempting a brogue.

He walked rapidly away.

To her astonishment and slightly to her resentment Brigid found that she was ravenously hungry.

The Cape Company is a cargo line. The fact that six of its ships afford accommodation for nine passengers each does not in any way modify the essential function of the company. It merely postulates that in the case of these six ships there shall be certain accommodation. There will also be a chief steward without any second string, a bar-and-passengers steward and an anomalous offsider who may be discovered by the passengers polishing the taps in their cabins at unexpected moments. The business of housing, feeding, and within appropriate limits, entertaining the nine passengers is determined by the head office and then becomes part of the captain’s many concerns.

On the whole, Captain Bannerman preferred to carry no passengers, and always regarded them as potential troublemakers. When, however, somebody of Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s calibre appeared in his ship, his reaction corresponded punctually with that of ninety per cent of all other males whom she encountered. He gave orders that she should be placed at his table (which luckily was all right anyway because she carried V.I.P. letters), and until Alleyn’s arrival, had looked forward to the voyage with the liveliest anticipation of pleasurable interludes. He was, he considered, a young man for his age.

Aubyn Dale he also took at his table because Dale was famous and Captain Bannerman felt that in a way he would be flattering Mrs. Dillington-Blick by presenting her with a number one personality. Now he decided, obscurely and resentfully, that Alleyn also would be an impressive addition to the table. The rest of the seating he left to his chief steward, who gave the Cuddys and Mr. Donald McAngus to the first mate, whom he disliked; Brigid Carmichael and Dr. Makepiece to the second mate and the wireless officer, of whom he approved; and Miss Abbott, Father Jourdain and Mr. Merryman to the chief engineer, towards whom his attitude was neutral.

This, the first luncheon on board, was also the first occasion at which the senior ship’s officers, with the exception of those on duty, were present. At a long table in a corner sat a number of young men presenting several aspects of adolescence and all looking a trifle sheepish. These were the electrical and engineering junior officers and the cadets.

Alleyn arrived first at the table and was carefully installed by the captain’s steward. The Cuddys, already seated hard by, settled down to a good long stare and so, more guardedly, did Mr. McAngus. Mrs. Cuddy’s burning curiosity manifested itself in a dead-pan glare which was directed intermittently at the objects of her interest. Its mechanics might be said to resemble those of a lighthouse whose different frequencies make its signals recognizable far out at sea.

Mr. Cuddy, on the contrary, kept observation under cover of an absent-minded smile, while Mr. McAngus quietly rolled his eyes in the direction of his objective and was careful not to turn his head.

Miss Abbott, at the chief engineer’s table, gave Alleyn one sharp look and no more. Mr. Merryman rumpled his hair, opened his eyes very wide and then fastened with the fiercest concentration upon the menu. Father Jourdain glanced in a civilized manner at Alleyn and turned with a pleasant smile to his companions.

At this juncture Mrs. Dillington-Blick made her entrance, rosy with achievement, buzzing with femininity, and followed by the captain, Aubyn Dale, and Timothy Makepiece.

The captain introduced Alleyn—” Mr. Broderick, who joined us today—”

The men made appropriate wary noises at each other. Mrs. Dillington-Blick, who might have been thought to be already in full flower, awarded herself a sort of bonus in effulgence. Everything about her blossomed madly. “Fun!” she seemed to be saying. “This is what I’m really good at. We’re all going to like this.”

She bathed Alleyn in her personality. Her eyes shone, her lips were moist, but small hands fluttered at the ends of her Rubensesque arms. “But I watched you!” she cried. “I watched you with my heart in my mouth! Coming on board! Nipping up that frightful thing! Do tell me. Is it as terrifying as it looks or am I being silly?”

“It’s plain murder,” Alleyn said, “and you’re not being silly at all. I was all of a tremble.”

Mrs. Dillington-Blick cascaded with laughter. She raised and lowered her eyebrows at Alleyn and flapped her hands at the captain. “There now!” she cried. “Just what I supposed. How you dared! If it was a choice of feeding the little fishes or crawling up that ladder I swear I’d pop thankfully into the shark’s maw. And don’t you look so superior,” she chided Captain Bannerman.

This was exactly how he had hoped she would talk. A fine woman who enjoyed a bit of chaff. And troubled though he was, he swelled a little in his uniform.

“We’ll have you shinning down it like an old hand,” he teased, “when you go ashore at Las Palmas.”

Aubyn Dale looked quizzically at Alleyn, who gave him the shadow of a wink. Mrs. Dillington-Blick was away to a magnificent start. Three men, one a celebrity, two good-looking, and all teasing her. Las Palmas? Did they mean…? Would she have to…? Ah no! She didn’t believe them.

A number of rococo images chased each other improperly through Alleyn’s imagination. “Don’t give it another thought,” he advised. “You’ll make the grade. I understand that if the sea’s at all choppy they rig a safety net down below. Same as trapeze artists have when they lose their nerve

“I won’t listen.”

“It’s the form, though, I promise you,” Alleyn said. “Isn’t it, sir?”

“Certainly.”

“Not true! Mr. Dale, they’re being beastly to me!”

Dale said, “I’m on your side.” It was a phrase with which he often reassured timid subjects on television. He was already talking to Mrs. Dillington-Blick as if they were lifelong friends and yet with that touch of deference that lent such distinction to his programmes and filled Alleyn, together with eighty per cent of his male viewers, with a vague desire to kick him.

There was a great deal of laughter at the captain’s table. Mrs. Cuddy was moved to stare at it so fixedly that at one moment she completely missed her mouth.

A kind of restlessness was engendered in the passengers, a sense of being done out of something, and in two of the women, of resentment. Miss Abbott felt angry with Mrs. Dillington-Blick because she was being silly over three men. Mrs. Cuddy felt angry with her because three men were being silly over her and also because of a certain expression that had crept into Mr. Cuddy’s wide smile. Brigid Carmichael wondered how Mrs. Dillington-Blick could be bothered and then took herself to task for being a humbug; the new passenger, she thought, was quite enough to make any girl do her stuff. She found that Dr. Makepiece was looking at her and to her great annoyance she blushed. For the rest of luncheon she made polite conversation with the second mate, who was Welsh and bashful, and with the wireless officer, who wore that wild and lonely air common to his species.

After luncheon Alleyn went to see his quarters. The pilot’s cabin had a door and porthole opening on to the bridge. He could look down on the bows of the ship, thrust arrow-like into the sea, and at the sickle-shaped and watery world beyond. Under other circumstances, he thought, he would have enjoyed his trip. He unpacked his suitcases, winked at a photograph of his wife, went below, and carried out a brief inspection of the passengers’ quarters. These were at the same level as the drawing-room and gave on a passage that went through from port to starboard. The doors were all shut with the exception of that opening into the cabin aft of the passage on the port side. This was open and the cabin beyond resembled an overcrowded flower shop. Here Dennis was discovered, sucking his thumb and lost in contemplation. Alleyn knew that Dennis, of whom this was his first glimpse, might very well become a person of importance. He paused by the door.

“Afternoon,” he said. “Are you the steward for the pilot’s cabin?”

Evidently Dennis had heard about Alleyn. He hurried to the door, smiled winsomely and said, “Not generally, but I’m going to have the pleasure of looking after you, Mr. Broderick.”

Alleyn tipped him five pounds. Dennis said, “Oh, you shouldn’t, sir, really,” and pocketed the note. He indicated the flowers and said, “I just can’t make up my mind, sir. Mrs. Dillington-Blick said I was to take some into the dining-room and lounge and as soon as I’ve finished in the bar I’m going to, but I don’t know which to choose. Such an umberance-der-riches! What would you say for the lounge, sir? The décor’s dirty pink.”

Alleyn was so long answering that Dennis gave a little giggle. “Isn’t it diffy!” he sympathized.

Alleyn pointed a long finger. “That,” he said. “I should certainly make it that one,” and went on his way to the passengers’ lounge.

It was a modest combination of bar, smoking-room, and card-room and in it the passengers were assembled for coffee. Already by the curious mechanism of human attraction and repulsion they had begun to sort themselves into groups. Mr. McAngus, having found himself alongside the Cuddys at luncheon, was re-appropriated by them both and seemed to be not altogether at ease in their company, perhaps because Mrs. Cuddy stared so very fixedly at his hair, which, Alleyn noticed, was of an unexpected shade of nut brown with no parting and a good deal of overhang at the back. He drew a packet of herbal cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, explaining that he suffered from asthma. They began to chat more cosily about diseases. Mr. McAngus confided that he was but recently recovered from an operation and Mr. Cuddy returned this lead with a lively account of a suspected duodenal ulcer.

Father Jourdain and Mr. Merryman had discovered a common taste in crime fiction and smiled quite excitedly at each other over their coffee cups. Of all the men among the passengers, Alleyn thought, Father Jourdain had the most arresting appearance. He wondered what procession of events had led this man to become an Anglo-Catholic celibate priest. There was intelligence and liveliness in the face whose pallor, induced no doubt by the habit of his life, emphasized rather than concealed the opulence of the mouth and watchfulness of the dark eyes. His short white hands were muscular and his hair thick and glossy. He was infinitely more vivid than his companion, whose baby-faced petulance, Alleyn felt, was probably the outward wall of the conventional house master. He caught himself up. “Conventional?” Was Mr. Merryman the too-familiar pedant who cultivates the eccentric to compensate himself for the deadly boredom of scholastic routine? A don manqué? Alleyn took himself mildy to task for indulgence in idle speculation and looked elsewhere.

Dr. Timothy Makepiece stood over Brigid Carmichael with the slightly mulish air of a young Englishman in the early stages of an attraction. Alleyn noted the formidable lines of Dr. Makepiece’s jaw and mouth, and being at the moment interested in hands, the unusual length of the fingers.

Miss Abbott sat by herself on a settee against the wall. She was reading. The hands that held her neatly covered book were large and muscular. Her face, he reflected, would have been not unhandsome if it had been only slightly less inflexible and if there had not been the suggestion of — what was it — harshness? — about the jaw.

As for Aubyn Dale, there he was, with Mrs. Dillington-Blick, who had set herself up with him hard by the little bar. When she saw Alleyn she beckoned gaily to him. She was busy establishing a coterie. As Alleyn joined them Aubyn Dale laid a large, beautifully tended hand over hers and burst into a peal of all-too-infectious laughter. “What a perfectly marvelous person you are!” he cried boyishly and appealed to Alleyn. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

Alleyn agreed fervently and offered them liqueurs.

“You take the words out of my mouth, dear boy,” Dale exclaimed.

“I oughtn’t to!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick protested. “I’m on an inquisitorial diet!” She awarded her opulence a downward glance and Alleyn an upward one. She raised her eyebrows. “My dear!” she cried. “You can see for yourself. I oughtn’t.”

“But you’re going to,” he rejoined and the drinks were served by the ubiquitous Dennis, who had appeared behind the bar. Mrs. Dillington-Blick, with a meaning look at Dale, said that if she put on another ounce she would never get into her Jolyon swimsuit and they began to talk about his famous session on commercial television. It appeared that when he visited America and did a specially sponsored half-hour, he had been supported by a great mass of superb models all wearing Jolyon swimsuits. His hands eloquently sketched their curves. He leaned towards Mrs. Dillington-Blick and whispered. Alleyn noticed the slight puffiness under his eyes and the blurring weight of flesh beneath the inconsiderable jaw which formerly his beard had hidden. “Is this the face,” Alleyn asked himself, “that launched a thousand hips?” and wondered why.

“You haven’t forgotten the flowers?” Mrs. Dillington-Blick asked Dennis and he assured her that he hadn’t.

“As soon as I’ve a spare sec I’ll pop away and fetch them,” he promised and smiled archly at Alleyn. “They’re all chosen and ready.”

As Aubyn Dale’s conversation with Mrs. Dillington-Blick tended to get more and more confidential Alleyn felt himself at liberty to move away. At the far end of the lounge Mr. Merryman was talking excitedly to Father Jourdain, who had begun to look uncomfortable. He caught Alleyn’s eye and nodded pleasantly. Alleyn dodged round the Cuddys and Mr. McAngus and bypassed Miss Abbott. There was a settee near the far end, but as he made for it Father Jourdain said, “Do come and join us. These chairs are much more comfortable and we’d like to introduce ourselves.”

Alleyn said, “I should be delighted,” and introductions were made. Mr. Merryman looked sharply at him over the tops of his spectacles and said, “How do you do, sir.” He added astonishingly, “I perceived that you were effecting an escape from what was no doubt an excruciating situation.”

“I?” Alleyn said. “I don’t quite—”

“The sight,” Mr. Merryman continued in none too quiet a voice, “of yonder popinjay ruffling his dubious plumage at the bar is singularly distasteful to me and no doubt intolerable to you.”

“Oh, come, now!” Father Jourdain protested.

Alleyn said, “He’s not as bad as that, is he?”

“You know who he is, of course.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Yes, yes,” said Father Jourdain. “We know. Ssh!”

“Have you witnessed his weekly exhibitions of indecent exposure on the television?”

“I’m not much of a viewer,” Alleyn said.

“Ah! You show your good judgment. As an underpaid pedagogue it has been my hideous lot to sit on Tuesday evenings among upper-middle-class adolescents of low intelligence, ‘looking in’ (loathsome phrase) at this man’s antics. Let me tell you what he does, sir. He advertises women’s bathing clothes and to this end he incites — arrogant presumption — he incites members of the public to bring their troubles to him! And the fools do! Conceive!” Mr. Merryman invited. “Picture to yourself! A dupe is discovered, his back (or much more often hers) to the camera. Out of focus, unrecognizable, therefore. Facing this person and us, remorselessly illuminated, enthroned and elevated in blasphemous (you will appreciate that in clerical company I use the adjective advisedly) in blasphemous supremacy is or was the countenance you see before you, but garnished with a hirsute growth which lent it a wholly spurious distinction.”

Alleyn glanced with amusement at Mr. Merryman and thought what bad luck it was for him that he was unable to give visual expression to his spleen. For all the world he looked like an indignant baby.

“If you will believe me,” he continued angrily whispering, “a frightful process known as ‘talking it over’ now intervenes. The subject discloses to That Person, and to however many thousands of listening observers there may be, some intimate predicament of her (it is, I repeat, usually a woman) private life. He then propounds a solution, is thanked, applauded, preens himself, and is presented with a fresh sacrifice. Now! What do you think of that!” whispered Mr. Merryman.

“I think it all sounds very embarrassing,” Alleyn said.

Father Jourdain made a comically despairing face at him. “Let’s talk about something else,” he suggested. “You were saying, Mr. Merryman, that the psychopathic murderer—”

“You heard of course,” Mr. Merryman remorselessly interjected, “what an exhibition he made of himself at a later assignment. ‘Lady Agatha’s umbilicus globular,’ ” he quoted, and broke into à shrill laugh.

“You know,” Father Jourdain remarked, “I’m on holiday and honestly don’t want to start throwing my priestly weight about.” Before Mr. Merryman could reply he raised his voice a little and added, “To go back, as somebody, was it Humpty Dumpty? said, to the last conversation but one, I’m immensely interested in what you were saying about criminals of the Heath type. What was the book you recommended? By an American psychiatrist, I think you said.”

Mr. Merryman muttered huffily, “I don’t recollect.”

Alleyn asked, “Not, by any chance, The Show of Violence, by Frederic Wertham?”

Father Jourdain turned to him with unconcealed relief. “Ah!” he said. “You’re an addict, too, and a learned one, evidently.”

“Not I. The merest amateur. Why, by the way, is everybody so fascinated by crimes of violence?” He looked at Father Jourdain. “What do you think, sir?”

Father Jourdain hesitated and Mr. Merryman cut in.

“I am persuaded,” he said, “that people read about murder as an alternative to committing it.”

“A safety valve?” Alleyn suggested.

“A conversion. The so-called antisocial urge is fed into a socially acceptable channel; we thus commit our crimes of violence at a safe remove. We are all,” Mr. Merryman said tranquilly folding his hands over his stomach, “savages at heart.” He seemed to have recovered his good humour.

“Do you agree?” Alleyn asked Father Jourdain.

“I fancy,” he rejoined, “that Mr. Merryman is talking about something I call original sin. If he is, I do of course agree.”

An accidental silence had fallen on the little assembly. Into this silence with raised voice, as a stone into a pool, Alleyn dropped his next remark.

“Take, for instance, this strangler — the man who ‘says it with’—what are they? Roses? What, do you suppose, is behind all that?”

The silence continued for perhaps five seconds.

Miss Abbott said, “Not roses. Hyacinths. Flowers of several kinds.”

She had lifted her gaze from her book and fixed it on Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “Hot-house flowers,” she said. “It being winter. The first time it was snowdrops, I believe.”

“And the second,” Mr. Merryman said, “hyacinths.”

Aubyn Dale cleared his throat.

“Ah, yes!” Alleyn said. “I remember now. Hyacinths.”

“Isn’t it awful?” Mrs. Cuddly gloated.

“Shocking,” Mr. Cuddy agreed. “Hyacinths! Fancy!”

Mr. McAngus said gently, “Poor things.”

Mr. Merryman with the falsely innocent air of a child that knows it’s being naughty asked loudly, “Hasn’t there been something on television about these flowers? Something rather ludicrous? Of what can I be thinking?”

Everybody avoided looking at Aubyn Dale, but not even Father Jourdain found anything to say.

It was at this juncture that Dennis staggered into the room with a vast basket of flowers which he set down on the central table.

“Hyacinths!” Mrs. Cuddy shrilly pointed out. “What a coincidence!”

It was one of those naïve arrangements which can give nothing but pleasure to the person who receives them unless, of course, that person is allergic to scented flowers. The hyacinths were rooted and blooming in a mossy bed. They trembled slightly with the motion of the ship, shook out their incongruous fragrance and filled the smoking-room with reminiscences of the more expensive kinds of shops, restaurants, and women.

Dennis fell back a pace to admire them.

“Thank you, Dennis,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said.

“It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Dillington-Blick,” he rejoined. “Aren’t they gorgeous?”

He retired behind the bar. The passengers stared at the growing flowers and the flowers, quivering, laid upon them a further burden of sweetness.

Mrs. Dillington-Blick explained hurriedly, “There isn’t room for all one’s flowers in one’s cabin. I thought we’d enjoy them together.”

Alleyn said, “But what a charming gesture.” And was barely supported by a dilatory murmur.

Brigid agreed quickly, “Isn’t it? Thank you so much, they’re quite lovely.”

Tim Makepiece murmured, “What nice manners you’ve got, Grandmama.”

“I do hope,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said, “that nobody finds the scent too much. Me, I simply wallow in it.”

She turned to Aubyn Dale. He rejoined, “But of course. You’re so wonderfully exotic.” Mr. Merryman snorted.

Mrs. Cuddy said loudly, “I’m afraid we’re going to be spoil-sports. Mr. Cuddy can’t stay in the same room with flowers that have a heavy perfume. He’s allergic to them.”

“Oh, I am so sorry,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick cried. “Then, of course, they must go.” She waved her hands helplessly.

“I’m sure there’s no need for that,” Mrs. Cuddy announced. “We don’t want to make things uncomfortable. We were going to take a turn on deck anyway. Weren’t we, dear?”

Alleyn asked, “Do you suffer from hay fever, Mr. Cuddy?”

Mrs. Cuddy answered for her husband. “Not exactly hay fever, is it, dear? He just comes over queer.”

“Extraordinary,” Alleyn murmured.

“Well, it’s quite awkward sometimes.”

“At weddings and funerals, for instance, it must be.”

“Well, on our silver wedding some of the gentlemen from Mr. Cuddy’s lodge brought us a gorgeous mixed booky of hot-house flowers and he had to say how much he appreciated it and all the time he was feeling peculiar and when they’d gone he said, ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but it’s me or the booky,’ and we live opposite a hospital so he took them across and had to go for a long walk afterwards to get over it, didn’t you, dear?”

“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.”