Dead Water Page 14

‘O, dear!’ she said. ‘Will it? I – I don’t think –’

  ‘Never mind, dear,’ said her husband.

  Alleyn asked if anybody from the Island had been at the first service. Nobody, it appeared. There were several at the nine o’clock.

  ‘The Barrimores, for instance?’

  No, not the Barrimores.

  There was a silence through which the non-attendance of the Barrimores was somehow established as a normal state-of-affairs.

  ‘Although,’ Mrs Carstairs said, in extenuation of a criticism that no one had voiced, ‘Margaret used to come quite regularly at one time, Adrian. Before Wally’s Warts, you remember?’

  ‘Not that there’s any connection, Dulcie.’

  ‘Of course not, dear. And Patrick and nice Jenny Williams have been to evensong, we must remember.’

  ‘So we must,’ her husband agreed.

  ‘Poor things. They’ll all be terribly upset no doubt,’ Mrs Carstairs said to Alleyn. ‘Such a shock for everyone.’

  Alleyn said carefully: ‘Appalling. And apart from everything else a great worry for Barrimore, one imagines. After all, it won’t do his business any good, this sort of catastrophe.’

  They looked uncomfortable and faintly shocked. ‘Well – ’ they both said and stopped short.

  ‘At least,’ Alleyn said casually, ‘I suppose The Boy-and-Lobster is his affair, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s the property of the estate,’ Coombe said. ‘Miss Pride’s the landlord. But I have heard they put everything they’d got into it.’

  ‘She did,’ Mrs Carstairs said firmly. ‘It was Margaret Barrimore’s money, wasn’t it, Adrian?’

  ‘My dear, I don’t know. In any case –’

  ‘Yes, dear. Of course,’ said Mrs Carstairs, turning pink. She glanced distractedly at the knees of her linen dress. ‘O, look!’ she said. ‘Now, I shall have to change. It was that henbane that did it. What a disgrace I am. Sunday and everything.’

  ‘You melt into your background, my dear,’ the Rector observed. ‘Like a wood-nymph,’ he added, with an air of recklessness.

  ‘Adrian, you are awful,’ said Mrs Carstairs automatically. It was clear that he was in love with her.

  Alleyn said: ‘So there would be a gap of about an hour and a quarter between the first and second services?’

  ‘This morning, yes,’ said the Rector. ‘Because of the rain, you see, and the small attendance at seven.’

  ‘How do you manage?’ Alleyn asked Mrs Carstairs. ‘Breakfast must be quite a problem.’

  ‘Oh, there’s usually time to boil an egg before nine. This morning, as you see, we had over an hour. At least,’ she corrected herself. ‘You didn’t, did you, dear? Adrian had to make a visit: poor old Mr Thomas,’ she said to Coombe. ‘Going, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So you were alone after all. When did you hear of the tragedy, Mrs Carstairs?’

  ‘Before matins. Half past ten. Several people had seen the – well, the ambulance and the stretcher, you know. And Adrian met Sergeant Pender and – and there it was.’

  ‘Is it true?’ the Rector asked abruptly. ‘Was it – deliberate? Pender said – I mean?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘How very dreadful,’ he said. ‘How appallingly dreadful.’

  ‘I know,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘A woman, it appears, with no enemies. It’s incomprehensible.’

  Coombe cleared his throat. The Carstairses glanced at each other quickly and as quickly looked away.

  ‘Unless, I suppose,’ Alleyn said, ‘you count Miss Pride?’

  ‘There, I’m afraid,’ the Rector said, and Alleyn wondered if he’d caught an overtone of relief, ‘there, it was all on Miss Cost’s side, poor soul.’

  ‘You might say,’ his wife added, ‘that Miss Pride had the whip-hand.’

  ‘Dulcie!’

  ‘Well, Adrian, you know what I mean.’

  ‘It’s quite beside the point,’ said the Rector with authority.

  A telephone rang in the house. He excused himself and went indoors.

  ‘There was nothing, I suppose, in her day-to-day life to make people dislike her,’ Alleyn said. ‘She seems, as far as I can make out, to have been a perfectly harmless obsessive.’

  Mrs Carstairs began to pick up her scattered belongings, rather as if she was giving herself time to consider. When she straightened up, with her arms full, she was quite red in the face.

  ‘She wasn’t always perfectly kind,’ she said.

  ‘Ah! Which of us is?’

  ‘Yes, I know. You’re quite right. Of course,’ she agreed in a hurry.

  ‘Did she make mischief?’ he asked lightly.

  ‘She tried. My husband – Naturally, we paid no attention. My husband feels very strongly about that sort of thing. He calls it a cardinal sin. He preaches very strongly against. Always,’ Mrs Carstairs looked squarely at Alleyn. ‘I’m offending, myself, to tell you this. I can’t think what came over me. You must have a – have a talent for catching people off guard.’

  He said wryly: ‘You make my job sound very unappetizing. Mrs Carstairs, I won’t bother you much longer. One more question and we’re off. Have you any idea who played those ugly tricks on Miss Pride? If you have, I do hope you will tell me.’

  She seemed, he thought, to be relieved. She said at once: ‘I’ve always considered she was behind them. Miss Cost.’

  ‘Behind them? You thought she encouraged someone else to take the active part?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wally Trehern?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And was that what you were thinking of when you said Miss Cost was not always kind?’

  ‘O no!’ she ejaculated and stopped short. ‘Please don’t ask me any more questions, Mr Alleyn. I shall not answer them, if you do.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. He thanked her and went away, followed, uncomfortably, by Coombe.

  They lunched at the village pub. The whole place was alive with trippers. The sun glared down, the air was degraded by transistors and the ground by litter. Groups of sightseers in holiday garments crowded the foreshore, eating, drinking and pointing out the Island to each other. The tide was full. The hotel launch and a number of dinghies plied to and fro and their occupants stared up at the enclosure. It was obvious that the murder of Miss Cost was now common knowledge.

  The enclosure itself was not fully visible from the village, being masked by an arm of Fisherman’s Bay, but two constables could be seen on the upper pathway. Visitors returning from the Island told each other and anybody that cared to listen, that you couldn’t get anywhere near the Spring. ‘There’s nothing to see,’ they said. ‘The coppers have got it locked up. You wouldn’t know.’

  When they had eaten a flaccid lunch they called on the nearest JP and picked up a search-warrant for Wally’s Cottage. They went on to the station where Alleyn collected a short piece of the trip-wire. It was agreed that he would return to The Boy-and-Lobster. Coombe was to remain at the station, relieving his one spare constable, until the Yard men arrived. He would then telephone Alleyn at The Boy-and-Lobster. Pender would remain on duty at Miss Cost’s shop.

  Coombe said: ‘It’s an unusual business, this. You finding the body and then this gap before your chaps come in.’

  ‘I hope you’ll still be on tap, but I do realize it’s taking more time than you can spare.’

  ‘Well, you know how it is.’ He waited for a moment and then said: ‘I appreciate your reluctance to form a theory too soon. I mean, it’s what we all know. You can’t. But as I’m pulling out I can’t help saying it looks a sure thing to me. Here’s this dopey kid as good as letting on he pitched in with the stones. There’s more than a hint that his old man was behind it and a damn’ good indication that he set the trip-wire. The kid says Miss Pride came back and there’s every likelihood he mistook Miss Cost for her. I reckon he’d let himself into the enclosure and was up by the boulder. He looked down and saw the umbrella below and let fly at it. I mean:
well, it hangs together, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Who do you think planted the figurine in Miss Pride’s sitting-room and sent her the anonymous message and rang her up?’

  ‘Well, she reckons Miss Cost.’

  ‘So Miss Cost’s death was the end product of the whole series? Laid on, you might say, by herself?’

  ‘In a sense. Yes.’

  ‘Has it struck you at all,’ Alleyn asked, ‘that there’s one feature of the whole story about which nobody seems to show the slightest curiosity?’

  ‘I can’t say it has.’

  Alleyn took from his pocket the figurine that he had wrapped in paper and in his handkerchief. He opened it up and, holding it very gingerly, stood it on Coombe’s desk. The single word, Death, gummed to a sheet of paper, was still fixed in position.

  ‘Nobody,’ Alleyn said, ‘as far as I can gather, has ever asked themselves who was the original Green Lady.’

  III

  ‘That piece of paper,’ Alleyn said, ‘is not the kind used for the original messages. It’s the same make as this other piece which is a bit of The Boy-and-Lobster letter paper. The word ‘Death’ is not in a type that is used in your local rag. I can’t be sure but I think it’s from a London sporting paper called The Racing Supplement. The printer’s ink, as you see, is a bluish black and the type’s distinctive. Was Miss Cost a racing fan?’

  ‘Her?’ Coombe said. ‘Don’t be funny.’

  ‘The Major is. He takes The Racing Supplement.’

  ‘Does he, by gum!’

  ‘Yes. Have you got a dabs-kit handy?’

  ‘Nothing very flash, but, yes: we’ve got the doings.’

  Alleyn produced his box of cigars. He opened this up.

  ‘There ought to be good impressions inside the lid. Bailey can give it the full works, if necessary, but we’ll take a fly at it, shall we?’

  Coombe got out his insufflator and a lens. They developed a good set of prints on the lid and turned to the paper impaled over the figurine’s head.

  After a minute or two Alleyn gave a satisfied grunt.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘The index and thumb prints are as good as you’d ask. I think I’ll call on the gallant Major.’

  He left Coombe still poring lovingly over the exhibits, walked down to his car, collected his suitcases and crossed by the hotel launch to the Island. Trehern was in charge. His manner unattractively combined truculence with servility.

  It was now two o’clock.

  The Major, it presently transpired, was in the habit of taking a siesta.

  ‘He got used to it in India,’ Mrs Barrimore said. ‘People do.’

  Alleyn had run into her at the door of the old pub. She was perfectly composed and remote in her manner: a beautiful woman who could not, he thought, ever be completely unaware of the effect she made. It was inescapable. She must, over and over again, have seen it reflected in the eyes of men who looked at, and at once recognized, her. She was immensely attractive.

  He said: ‘Perhaps, in the meantime, I may have a word with you?’

  ‘Very well. In the parlour, if you like. The children are out, just now.’

  ‘The children?’

  ‘Jenny and Patrick. I should have said “the young” I expect. Will you come in.’

  He could hardly recognize the woman he had seen in her garden, veering this way and that like a rudderless ship and unable to control her hands. She sat perfectly still and allowed him to look at her while she kept her own gaze on her quietly, interlaced fingers.

  He supposed she must have had a hand in the transformation of the old bar-parlour into a private living-room: if so she could have taken little interest in the process. Apart from the introduction of a few unexceptionable easy-chairs, one or two photographs, a noncommittal assembly of books and a vase of the flowers she had so mishandled in the garden, it must be much as it was two years ago: an impersonal room.

  Alleyn began by following the beaten paths of routine investigation. He tried to establish some corroboration of her alibi, though he did not give it this name, for the period covered by Miss Emily’s visit to the enclosure up to the probable time of Miss Cost’s death. There was none to be had. Nobody had visited the kitchen-dining-room while she drank her coffee and ate her toast. The servants were all busy in the main building. Jenny and Patrick had breakfasted in the public dining-room, her husband was presumably asleep. Alleyn gathered that they occupied separate rooms. She had no idea how long this solitary meal had lasted. When it was over she had attended to one or two jobs, interviewed the kitchen staff and then gone up to her room and changed from a housecoat to a day dress. When she came downstairs again she had found the young people in the parlour. Alleyn had arrived soon afterwards.

  ‘And for the rest of the morning,’ he asked casually, ‘did you go out at all?’

  ‘No farther than the garden,’ she said after a fractional pause. ‘I went into the garden for a time.’

  ‘To cut flowers?’ he suggested, looking at those in the room.

  She lifted her eyes to his for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘to cut flowers. I do the flowers on Sunday as a rule: it takes quite a time. Jenny helped me,’ she added as an afterthought.

  ‘In the garden?’

  Again the brief look at him, this time perhaps, fractionally less controlled. ‘No. Not in the garden. In the house. Afterwards.’

  ‘So you were alone in the garden?’

  She said quickly with the slight hesitation he had noticed before in her speech: ‘Yes. Alone. Why d-do you keep on about the garden? What interest can it have for you? It was after – afterwards. Long afterwards.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Did the news distress you very much, Mrs Barrimore?’

  The full, unbridled mouth so much at variance with the rest of her face, moved as if to speak, but, as in a badly-synchronized sound-film, her voice failed. Then she said: ‘Naturally. It’s a terrible thing to have happened, isn’t it?’

  ‘You were fond of Miss Cost?’

  Something in her look reminded him, fantastically, of the strange veiling of a bird’s eyes. Hers were heavy-lidded and she had closed them for a second. ‘Not particularly,’ she said. ‘We had nothing –’ She stopped, unaccountably.

  ‘Nothing in common?’

  She nodded. Her hands moved but she looked at them and refolded them in her lap.

  ‘Had she made enemies?’

  ‘I don’t know of any,’ she said at once as if she had anticipated the question. ‘I know very little about her.’

  Alleyn asked her if she subscribed to the theory of mistaken identity and she said that she did. She was emphatic about this and seemed relieved when he spoke of it. She was, she said, forced to think that it might have been Wally.

  ‘Excited, originally, by Miss Cost herself?’

  ‘I think it’s possible. She was – It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Inclined to be vindictive?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Alleyn said, ‘that in these cases one can’t always avoid speaking ill of the dead. I did rather gather from something in Mrs Carstairs’ manner – ’

  ‘Dulcie Carstairs!’ she exclaimed, spontaneously and with animation. ‘She never says anything unkind about anybody.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t. It was just that – well, I thought she was rather desperately determined not to do so in this case.’

  She gave him a faint smile. It transfigured her face.

  ‘Dear Dulcie,’ she murmured.

  ‘She and the Rector are horrified, of course. They struck me as being such a completely unworldly pair, those two.’

  ‘Did they? You were right. They are.’

  ‘I mean – not only about Miss Cost but about the whole business of the Spring being more or less discredited by the present owner. The events of the last two years must have made a great difference to them, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Enormous.’

  ‘Were t
hey very hard up before?’

  ‘O yes. It was a dreadfully poor parish. The stipend was the least that’s given, I believe, and they’d no private means. We were all so sorry about it. Their clothes! She’s nice-looking but she needs careful dressing,’ said Mrs Barrimore with all the unconscious arrogance of a woman who would look lovely in a sack. ‘Of course everyone did what they could. I don’t think she ever bought anything for herself.’

  ‘She looked quite nice this morning, I thought.’

  ‘Did she?’ For the first time, Margaret Barrimore spoke as if there was some kind of rapprochement between them. ‘I thought men never noticed women’s clothes,’ she said.

  ‘Do you bet me I can’t tell you what you wore yesterday at the Spring?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘A white linen dress with a square neck and a leather belt. Brown Italian shoes with large buckles. Brown suede gloves. A wide stringcoloured straw hat with a brown velvet ribbon. A brown leather bag. No jewellery.’

  ‘You win,’ said Mrs Barrimore. ‘You don’t look like the sort of man who notices but I suppose it’s part of your training and I shouldn’t feel flattered. Or should I?’

  ‘I would like you to feel flattered. And now I’m going to ruin my success by telling you that Mrs Carstairs, too, wore a linen dress, this morning.’ He described it. She listened to this talk about clothes as if it was a serious matter.

  ‘White?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Green.’

  ‘O yes. That one.’

  ‘Was it originally yours?’

  ‘If it’s the one I think it is, yes.’

  ‘When did you give it to her?’

  ‘I don’t in the least remember.’

  ‘Well: as long as two years ago?’

  ‘Really, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘But I don’t remember. One doesn’t remember. I’ve given her odd things from time to time. You make me feel as if I’m parading – as if I’m making a lot of it. As if it was charity. Or patronage. It was nothing. Women do those sorts of things.’

  ‘I wouldn’t press it if I didn’t think it might be relevant.’

  ‘How can it be of the slightest interest?’

  ‘A green dress? If she had it two years ago? Think.’