Singing in the Shrouds Read online

  Father Jourdain said: ‘You are, after all, a compassionate man, I see.’

  Alleyn found this remark embarrassing and inappropriate. He said quickly: ‘It doesn’t arise. An investigating officer examining the bodies of strangled girls who have died on a crescendo of terror and physical agony is not predisposed to feel compassion for the strangler. It’s not easy to remember that he may have suffered a complementary agony of the mind. In many cases he hasn’t done anything of the sort. He’s too far gone.’

  ‘Isn’t it a question,’ Tim asked, ‘of whether something might have been done about him before his obsession reached its climax?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Alleyn agreed, very readily, ‘that’s where you chaps come in.’

  Tim stood up. ‘It’s three o’clock. I’m due for a game of deck golf,’ he said. ‘What’s the form? Watchful diligence?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  Father Jourdain also rose. ‘I’m going to do a crossword with Miss Abbott. She’s got the new Penguin. Mr Merryman is Ximenes standard.’

  ‘I’m a Times man myself,’ Alleyn said.

  ‘There’s one thing about the afternoons,’ Father Jourdain sighed, ‘the ladies do tend to retire to their cabins.’

  ‘For the sake of argument only,’ Tim asked gloomily, ‘suppose Cuddy was your man. Do you think he’d be at all liable to strangle Mrs Cuddy?’

  ‘By thunder,’ Alleyn said, ‘if I were in his boots, I would. Come on.’

  In the afternoons there were not very many shady places on deck and a good deal of quiet manoeuvring went on among the passengers to secure them. Claims were staked. Mr Merryman left his air cushion and his Panama on the nicest of the deck-chairs. The Cuddys did a certain amount of edging in and shoving aside when nobody else was about. Mr McAngus laid his plaid along one of the wooden seats, but as nobody else cared for the seats this procedure aroused no enmity. Aubyn Dale and Mrs Dillington-Blick used their own luxurious chaise-longues with rubber-foam appointments and had set them up in the little verandah which they pretty well filled. Although they were never occupied till after tea nobody liked to use them in the meantime.

  So while Tim, Jemima and two of the junior officers played deck golf, Miss Abbott and five men were grouped in a shady area cast by the centrecastle between the doors into the lounge and the amidships hatch. Mr Cuddy slept noisily with a Reader’s Digest over his face. Mr McAngus dozed, Mr Merryman and Alleyn read, Father Jourdain and Miss Abbott laboured at their crossword. It was a tranquil-looking scene. Desultory sentences and little spurts of observation drifted about with the inconsequence of a conversational poem by Verlaine.

  Above their heads Captain Bannerman took his afternoon walk on the bridge, solacing the monotony with pleasurable glances at Jemima, who looked enchanting in jeans and a scarlet shirt. As he had predicted, she was evidently a howling success with his junior officers. And with his medical officer, too, reflected the Captain. Sensible perhaps of his regard, Jemima looked up and gaily waved to him. In addition to being attractive she was also what he called a thoroughly nice, unspoiled little lady; just a sweet young girl, he thought. Dimly conscious, perhaps, of some not altogether appropriate train of thought aroused by this reflection, the Captain decided to think instead of Mrs Dillington-Blick; a mental exercise that came very easy to him.

  Jemima took a long swipe at her opponent’s disc, scuppered her own, shouted ‘Damn!’ and burst out laughing. The junior officers who had tried very hard to let her win now polished off the game in an expert manner and regretfully returned to duty.

  Jemima said: ‘Oh, Tim, I am sorry! You must get another partner.’

  ‘Are you sick of me?’ Tim rejoined. ‘What shall we do now? Would you like to have a singles?’

  ‘Not very much, thank you. I need the support of a kind and forbearing person like yourself. Perhaps some of the others would play. Mr McAngus for instance. His game is about on a par with mine.’

  ‘Mr McAngus is mercifully dozing and you know jolly well you’re talking nonsense.’

  ‘Well, who?’ Jemima nervously pushed her hair back and said: ‘Perhaps it’s too hot after all. Don’t let’s play.’ She looked at the little group in the shade of the centrecastle. Mr Merryman had come out of his book and was talking to Alleyn in an admonitory fashion, shaking his finger and evidently speaking with some heat.

  ‘Mr Chips is at it again,’ Tim said. ‘Poor Alleyn!’

  He experienced the sensation of his blood running down into his boots. He thought complicatedly of a number of things at once. Perhaps his predominant emotion was one of incredulity: surely he, Tim Makepiece, a responsible man, a man of science, a psychiatrist, could not have slipped into so feeble, so imbecile an error. Would he have to confess to Alleyn? How could he recover himself with Jemima? Her voice recalled him.

  ‘What did you say?’ she asked.

  ‘ “Poor Broderick.” ’

  ‘Is he called Allan? You’ve got down to Christian names pretty smartly. Very chummy of you.’

  Tim said after a pause: ‘I don’t to his face. I like him.’

  ‘So do I. Awfully. We agreed about it before.’ Jemima shook her head impatiently. ‘At any rate,’ she said, ‘he’s not the guilty one. I’m sure of that.’

  Tim stood very still and after a moment wetted his lips.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘The guilty one?’

  ‘Are you all right, Tim?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘You look peculiar.’

  ‘It’s the heat. Come back here, do.’

  He took her arm and led her to the little verandah, pushed her down on the sumptuous footrest belonging to Mrs Dillington-Blick’s chaise-longue and himself sat at the end of Aubyn Dale’s. ‘What guilty one?’ he repeated.

  Jemima stared at him. ‘There’s no need, really, to take it so massively,’ she said. ‘You may not feel like I do about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The business with the D-B’s doll. It seems to me such a beastly thing to have done and I don’t care what anyone says, it was done on purpose. Just treading on it wouldn’t have produced that result. And then, putting the flower on its chest: a scurvy trick, I call it.’

  Tim stooped down and made a lengthy business of tying his shoelace. When he straightened up Jemima said: ‘You are all right, aren’t you? You keep changing colour like a chameleon.’

  ‘Which am I now?’

  ‘Fiery red.’

  ‘I’ve been stooping over. I agree with you about the doll. It was a silly unbecoming sort of thing to do. Perhaps it was a drunken sailor.’

  ‘There weren’t any drunken sailors about. Do you know who I think it was?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr Cuddy.’

  ‘Do you, Jem?’ Tim said. ‘Why?’

  ‘He kept smiling and smiling all the time that Mr Broderick was showing the doll.’

  ‘He’s got a chronic grin. It never leaves his face.’

  ‘All the same—’ Jemima looked quickly at Tim and away again. ‘In my opinion,’ she muttered, ‘he’s a DOM.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A dirty old man. I don’t mind telling you, I’d simply hate to find myself alone on the boatdeck with him after dark.’

  Tim hastily said that she’d better make sure she never did. ‘Take me with you for safety’s sake,’ he said. ‘I’m eminently trustworthy.’

  Jemima grinned at him absent-mindedly. She seemed to be in two minds about what she should say next.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing, really. It’s just—I don’t know—it’s ever since Dennis brought Mrs D-B’s hyacinths into the lounge on the second day out. We don’t seem to be able to get rid of those awful murders. Everybody talking about them. That alibi discussion the night before Las Palmas and Miss Abbott breaking down. Not that her trouble had anything to do with it, poor thing. And then the awful business of the girl that brought Mrs D-B’s flowers being a
victim and now the doll being left like that. You’ll think I’m completely dotty,’ Jemima said, ‘but it’s sort of got me down a bit. Do you know, just now I caught myself thinking: “Wouldn’t it be awful if the flower murderer was on board.” ’

  Tim had put out a warning hand but a man’s shadow had already fallen across the deck and across Jemima.

  ‘Dear child!’ said Aubyn Dale, ‘what a pathologically morbid little notion!’

  III

  Tim and Jemima got up. Tim said automatically: ‘I’m afraid we’ve been trespassing on your footrests,’ and hoped this would account for any embarrassment they might have displayed.

  ‘My dear old boy!’ Dale cried, ‘do use the whole tatty works! Whenever you like, as far as I’m concerned. And I’m sure Madame would be enchanted.’

  He had an armful of cushions and rugs which he began to arrange on the chaise-longues. ‘Madame tends to emerge for a nice cuppa,’ he explained. He punched a cushion with all the aplomb of the manservant in Charley’s Aunt and flung it into position. ‘There now!’ he said. He straightened up, pulled a pipe out of his pocket, gripped it mannishly between his teeth, contrived to tower over Jemima and became avuncular.

  ‘As for you, young woman,’ he said, cocking his head quizzically at her, ‘you’ve been letting a particularly lively imagination run away with you. What?’

  This was said with such an exact reproduction of his television manner that Tim, in spite of his own agitation, felt momentarily impelled to whistle ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’. However he said quickly: ‘It wasn’t as morbid as it sounded. Jemima and I have been having an argument about the “Alibi” bet and that led to inevitable conjectures about the flower expert.’

  ‘M-m-m,’ Dale rumbled understandingly, still looking at Jemima. ‘I see.’ He screwed his face into a whimsical grimace. ‘You know, Jemima, I’ve got an idea we’ve just about had that old topic. After all, it’s not the prettiest one in the world, is it? What do you think? Um?’

  Pink with embarrassment, Jemima said coldly: ‘I feel sure you’re right.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Aubyn Dale said and patted her shoulder.

  Tim muttered that it was tea-time and withdrew Jemima firmly to the starboard side. It was a relief to him to be angry.

  ‘My God, what a frightful fellow,’ he fulminated. ‘That egregious nice-chappery! That ineffable decency! That indescribably phoney goodwill!’

  ‘Never mind,’ Jemima said. ‘I dare say he has to keep in practice. And, after all, little as I relish admitting it, he was in fact right. I suppose I have been letting my imagination run away with me.’

  Tim stood over her, put his head on one side and achieved a quite creditable imitation of Aubyn Dale. ‘Good girl,’ he said unctuously and patted her shoulder.

  Jemima made a satisfactory response to this sally and seemed to be a good deal cheered. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I didn’t really think we’d shipped a murderer: it was just one of those things.’ She looked up into Tim’s face.

  ‘Jemima!’ he said, and took her hands in his.

  ‘No, don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. Pay no attention. Let’s go and talk to Mr Chips.’

  They found Mr Merryman in full cry. He had discovered Jemima’s book, The Elizabethans, which she had left on her deck-chair, and seemed to be giving a lecture on it. It was by an authoritative writer but one, evidently, with whom Mr Merryman found himself in passionate disagreement. It appeared that Alleyn, Father Jourdain and Miss Abbott had all been drawn into the discussion while Mr McAngus and Mr Cuddy looked on, the former with admiration and the latter with his characteristic air of uninformed disparagement.

  Jemima and Tim sat on the deck and were accepted by Mr Merryman as if they had come late for class but with valid excuses. Alleyn glanced at them and found time to hope that theirs, by some happy accident, was not merely a shipboard attraction. After all, he thought, he himself had fallen irrevocably in love during a voyage from the Antipodes. He turned his attention back to the matter in hand.

  ‘I honestly don’t understand,’ Father Jourdain was saying, ‘how you can put The Duchess of Malfi before Hamlet or Macbeth.’

  ‘Or why,’ Miss Abbott barked, ‘you should think Othello so much better than any of them.’

  Mr Merryman groped in his waistcoat pocket for a sodamint and remarked insufferably that really it was impossible to discuss criteria of taste where the rudiments of taste were demonstrably absent. He treated his restive audience to a comprehensive de-gumming of Hamlet and Macbeth. Hamlet, he said, was an inconsistent, deficient and redundant rechauffé of some absurd German melodrama: it was not surprising, Mr Merryman said, that Hamlet was unable to make up his mind since his creator had himself been the victim of a still greater blight of indecision. Macbeth was merely a muddle-headed blunderer. Strip away the language and what remained? A tediously ignorant expression of defeatism. ‘ “What’s the good of anyfink? Wy nuffink”, ’ Mr Merryman quoted in pedantic cockney and tossed his sodamint into his mouth.

  ‘I don’t know anything about Shakepeare—’ Mr Cuddy began and was at once talked down.

  ‘It is at least something,’ Mr Merryman said, ‘that you acknowledge your misfortune. May I advise you not to break your duck with Macbeth.’

  ‘All the same,’ Alleyn objected, ‘there is the language.’

  ‘I am not aware,’ Mr Merryman countered, ‘that I have suggested that the fellow had no vocabulary.’ He went on to praise the classic structure of Othello, the inevitability of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and, astoundingly, the admirable directness of Titus Andronicus. As an afterthought he conceded that the final scene of Lear was ‘respectable’.

  Mr McAngus, who had several times made plaintive little noises, now struck in with unexpected emphasis.

  ‘To me,’ he said, ‘Othello is almost spoilt by that bit near the end when Desdemona revives and speaks and then, you know, after all, dies. A woman who has been properly strangled would not be able to do that. It is quite ridiculous.’

  ‘What’s the medical opinion?’ Alleyn asked Tim.

  ‘Pathological verisimilitude,’ Mr Merryman interjected with more than a touch of Pooh-Bah, ‘is irrelevant. One accepts the convention. It is artistically proper that she should be strangled and speak again. Therefore, she speaks.’

  ‘All the same,’ Alleyn said, ‘let’s have the expert’s opinion.’ He looked at Tim.

  ‘I wouldn’t say it was utterly impossible,’ Tim said. ‘Of course, her physical condition can’t be reproduced by an actress and would be unacceptable if it could. I should think it’s just possible that he might not have killed her instantly and that she might momentarily revive and attempt to speak.’

  ‘But, Doctor,’ Mr McAngus objected diffidently, ‘I did say properly. Properly strangled, you know.’

  ‘Doesn’t the text,’ Miss Abbott pointed out, ‘say she was smothered?’

  ‘The text!’ Mr Merryman exclaimed and spread out his hands. ‘What text, pray? Which text?’ and launched himself into a general animadversion of Shakespearian editorship. This he followed up with an extremely dogmatic pronouncement upon the presentation of the plays. The only tolerable method, he said, was that followed by the Elizabethans themselves. The bare boards. The boy-players. It appeared that Mr Merryman himself produced the plays in this manner at his school. He treated them to a lecture upon speechcraft, costume and make-up. His manner was so insufferably cocksure that it robbed his discourse of any interest it might have had for his extremely mixed audience. Mr McAngus’s eyes became glazed. Father Jourdain was resigned and Miss Abbott impatient. Jemima looked at the deck and Tim looked at Jemima. Alleyn, conscious of all this, still managed to preserve the semblance of respectful attention.

  He was conscious also of Mr Cuddy who had the air of a man baulked of his legitimate prey. It was evident throughout the discussion that he had
some observation to make. He now raised his voice unmelodiously and made it.

  ‘Isn’t it funny,’ Mr Cuddy asked generally, ‘how the conversation seems to get round to the subject of ladies being throttled? Mrs Cuddy was remarking on the same thing. Quite a coincidence, she was saying.’

  Mr Merryman opened his mouth, shut it, and reopened it when Jemima cried out with some violence:

  ‘I think it’s perfectly beastly. I hate it!’

  Tim put his hand over hers. ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Jemima said, ‘but it is beastly. It doesn’t matter how Desdemona died. Othello isn’t a clinical example. Shakespeare wasn’t some scruffy existentialist: it’s a tragedy of simplicity and—and greatness of heart being destroyed by a common smarty-smarty little placefinder. Well anyway,’ Jemima mumbled, turning very pink, ‘that’s what I think and I suppose one can try and say what one thinks, can’t one?’

  ‘I should damn’ well suppose one can,’ Alleyn said warmly, ‘and how right you are, what’s more.’

  Jemima threw him a grateful look.

  Mr Cuddy smiled and smiled. ‘I’m sure,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to upset anyone.’

  ‘Well, you have,’ Miss Abbott snapped, ‘and now you know it, don’t you?’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Mr Cuddy.

  Father Jourdain stood up. ‘It’s tea-time,’ he said. ‘Shall we go in? And shall we decide,’ he smiled at Jemima, ‘to take the advice of the youngest and wisest among us and keep off this not very delectable subject? I propose that we do.’

  Everybody except Mr Cuddy made affirmative noises and they went in to tea.

  ‘But the curious thing is,’ Alleyn wrote to his wife that evening, ‘that however much they may or may not try to avoid the subject of murder, it still crops up. I don’t want to go previous about it, but really one might suppose that the presence of this expert on board generates a sort of effluvia. They are unaware of it and yet it infects them. Tonight, for instance, after the women had gone to bed, which to my great relief was early, the men got cracking again. Cuddy, Jourdain and Merryman are all avid readers of crime fiction and of the sort of book that calls itself “Classic Cases of Detection”. As it happens there are two or three of that kind in the ship’s little library: among them The Wainwrights in the admirable Notable Trials series, a very fanciful number on the Yard and an affair called: The Thing He Loves. The latter title derives from The Ballad of Reading Gaol, of course, and I give you one guess as to the subject matter.