Singing in the Shrouds Page 17

  ‘Yes,’ Alleyn said and he also rose. ‘It’s February the fourteenth. Goodnight, Captain Bannerman.’

  He had a brief session with Father Jourdain and Tim. The latter was in a rage. ‘That bloody Old Man,’ he kept saying. ‘Did you ever know such a bloody Old Man!’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’ll just have to go on under our own steam. The suggestion, by the way, to keep Miss Carmichael in bed for twenty-four hours has its points.’

  Tim said grandly that he’d consider it. Father Jourdain asked if they were to do anything about the other women. Could they not emphasize that as Jemima had had an unpleasant experience it might be as well if the ladies were particularly careful not to wander about the deck at night without an escort.

  Alleyn said: ‘We’ve done that already. But think a minute. Suppose one of them chose the wrong escort.’

  ‘You know, it’s an extraordinary thing,’ Father Jourdain said after a moment, ‘but I keep forgetting it’s one of us. I almost believe in the legend of the unsavoury deck-hand.’

  ‘I think it might be a good idea if you suggest a four of bridge or canasta. Mrs Dillington-Blick plays both, doesn’t she? Get Mrs Cuddy and Miss Abbott to come in. Or if Dale and the other men all play you might get two fours going. Makepiece will look after Miss Carmichael.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’ Tim asked.

  ‘I?’ Alleyn asked. ‘Look on. Look round. Just look. Of course they may refuse to play. In which case we’ll have to use our wits, Heaven help us, and improvise. In the meantime, you probably both want to go to bed.’

  ‘And you, no doubt,’ said Father Jourdain.

  ‘Oh,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m an owl by habit. See you in the morning. Goodnight.’

  He was indeed trained to put up with long stretches of sleeplessness and faced the rest of the short night with equanimity. He changed into slacks, a dark shirt and rope-soled shoes and then began a systematic beat. Into the deserted lounge. Out on to the well-deck, past the little verandah where the two chaise-longues stood deserted. Round the hatch, and then to the cabin quarters and their two covered decks.

  The portholes were all open. He listened outside each of them. The first, facing aft and to the starboard side, was Mr Merryman’s. It appeared to be in darkness but after a moment he saw that a blue point glowed somewhere inside. It was the little nightlight above the bed. Alleyn stood near the porthole and was just able to make out Mr Merryman’s tousled head on the pillow. Next came the doorway into the passage bisecting the cabin-quarters and then further along on the starboard side was Mr McAngus who could be heard whistling in his sleep. The Cuddys, in the adjoining, the last on the starboard side, snored antiphonally. He turned left and moved along the forward face of the block, past Miss Abbott’s dark and silent cabin and then on to Father Jourdain’s. His light still shone and as the porthole was uncovered Alleyn thought he would have a word with him.

  He looked in. Father Jourdain was on his knees before a crucifix, his joined hands pressed edgeways to his lips. Alleyn turned away and walked on to the ‘suite’. Dale’s light was still in his sitting-room. Alleyn stood a little to one side of the forward porthole. The curtain across it fluttered and blew out. He caught a brief glimpse of Dale in brilliant pyjamas with a glass in his hand. He turned left past Jemima’s porthole with its carefully-drawn curtain and then moved aft to Mrs Dillington-Blick’s cabin. Her light too was still on. He paused with his back to the bulkhead and close to her porthole and became aware of a rhythmic slapping noise and a faint whiff of some aromatic scent. ‘She’s coping with her neckline,’ he thought.

  He moved on past the darkened lounge. He had completed his round and was back at Mr Merryman’s cabin.

  He approached the iron ladder leading to the forward well-deck and climbed down it. When he had reached the bottom he waited for a moment in the shadow of the centrecastle. On his left was the door through which the figure in the Spanish dress had come on Friday night. It led into a narrow passage by the chief steward’s quar ters. Above him towered the centrecastle. He knew if he walked out into the moonlight, the second officer, keeping his watch far above on the bridge, would see him. He did walk out. His shadow, black as ink, splayed across the deck and up the hatch coaming.

  On the fo’c’sle two bells sounded. Alleyn watched the seaman who had rung them come down and cross the deck towards him.

  ‘Goodnight,’ he said.

  ‘Goodnight, sir,’ the man replied and sounded surprised.

  Alleyn said: ‘I thought I’d go up into the bows and see if I could find a cap-full of cool air.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. A bit fresher up there.’

  The man passed him and disappeared into shadow. Alleyn climbed up to the fo’c’sle and stood in the bows. For a moment or two he faced the emptiness of the night. Beneath him, in a pother of phosphorescence, the waters were divided. ‘There is nothing more lonely in the world,’ he thought, ‘than a ship at sea.’

  He turned and looked at the ship, purposeful and throbbing with her own life. Up on the bridge he could see the second officer. He waved with a broad gesture of his arm and after a moment the second officer replied slightly, perhaps ironically.

  Alleyn returned to the lower deck. As he climbed down the ladder, a door beneath him, leading into the seamen’s quarters in the fo’c’sle, opened and somebody came out. Alleyn looked down over his shoulder. The newcomer, barefooted and clad only in pyjama trousers, moved out, seemed to sense that he was observed and stopped short.

  It was Dennis. When he saw Alleyn he made as if to return.

  Alleyn said: ‘You keep late hours, steward.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Broderick. You quite startled me. Yes, don’t I? I’ve been playing poker with the boys,’ Dennis explained. ‘Fancy you being up there, sir, at this time of night.’

  Alleyn completed his descent. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘It’s the heat, I suppose.’

  Dennis giggled. ‘I know. Isn’t it terrific!’

  He edged away slightly.

  ‘What’s it like in your part of the world?’ Alleyn asked. ‘Where are your quarters?’

  ‘I’m in the glory-hole, sir. Down below. It’s frightful.’

  ‘All the same, I fancy it’s healthier indoors.’

  Dennis said nothing.

  ‘You want to be careful what you wear in the tropics. Particularly at night.’

  Dennis looked at his plump torso and smirked.

  Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: ‘Well, I shall take my own advice and go back to bed. Goodnight to you.’

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Dennis pertly.

  Alleyn climbed up to the bridge deck. When he got there he looked back. Dennis still stood where he had left him but after a moment turned away and went back into the fo’c’sle.

  At intervals, through the rest of the night, Alleyn walked round his beat but he met nobody. When the dawn came up he went to bed and slept until Dennis, pallid, glistening and silent, brought in his morning tea.

  II

  That day was the hottest the passengers had experienced. For Alleyn it began with a radioed report in code from Inspector Fox who was still sweating away with his checks on alibis. Apart from routine confirmations of Mr McAngus’s appendicular adventure and Aubyn Dale’s departure for America, nothing new had come to hand. The Yard, Fox intimated, would await instructions which meant, Alleyn sourly and unfairly reflected, that if he made an arrest before Cape Town, somebody would be flown over with a spare pair of handcuffs or something. He made his way, disgruntled, to continue observation on the passengers.

  They were all on the lower deck. Jemima, who was still rather white, had flatly refused to stay in bed and spent most of the day in or near the bathing-pool where an awning had been erected and deck-chairs set out. Here she was joined by Tim and at intervals by one or two of the others. Only Miss Abbott, Mr McAngus and Mrs Cuddy refrained from bathing, but they too sat under the awning and loo
ked on.

  At noon Mrs Dillington-Blick took to the water and the appearance was in the nature of a star turn. She wore a sort of bathing-negligee which Aubyn Dale, who escorted her, called a ‘bewilderment of nonsense’. It was all compact of crisp cotton frills and black ribbons and under it Mrs Dillington-Blick was encased in her Jolyon Swimsuit which belonged to a group advertised as being ‘for the Queenly Woman’. She had high-heeled thonged sandals on her feet and had to be supported down the companion-ladder by Aubyn Dale who carried her towel and sunshade. At this juncture only Jemima, Tim, Alleyn and Mr Cuddy were bathing. The others were assembled under the awning and provided an audience for Mrs Dillington-Blick. She laughed a great deal and made deprecatory moues. ‘My dears!’ she said. ‘Look at me!’

  ‘You know,’ Jemima said to Tim, ‘I really do admire her. She actually cashes in on her size. I call that brilliant.’

  ‘It’s fascinating,’ Tim agreed. ‘Do look! She’s standing there like a piece of baroque, waiting to be unveiled.’

  Dale performed this ceremony. Alleyn, who was perched on the edge of the pool near the steps that led down into it, watched the reaction. It would have been untrue to say that anybody gasped when Mrs Dillington-Blick relinquished her bathing-robe. Rather, a kind of trance overtook her fellow-passengers. Mr Cuddy, who had been frisking in the waters, grasped the rim of the pool and grinned horridly through his wet fringe. Mr Merryman, who wore an old-fashioned gown and an equally old-fashioned bathing-dress and whose hair had gone into a damp fuzz like a baby’s, stared over his spectacles, as startled as Mr Pickwick in the Maiden Lady’s four-poster. Mr McAngus, who had been dozing, opened his eyes and his mouth at the same time and turned dark red in the face. On the bridge, Captain Bannerman was transfixed. Two deckhands stood idle for several seconds round a can of red lead and then selfconsciously fell to work with their heads together.

  Mrs Cuddy tried to catch somebody’s eye but, failing to do so, stared in amazement at her infatuated husband.

  Miss Abbott looked up from the letter she was writing, blinked twice and looked down again.

  Father Jourdain, who had been reading, made a slight movement with his right hand. Alleyn told himself it was absurd to suppose that Father Jourdain had been visited by an impulse to cross himself.

  Jemima broke the silence. She called out: ‘Jolly good! Come in: it’s Heaven.’

  Mrs Dillington-Blick put on a bathing cap, removed her sandals, precariously climbed the ladder up to the rim of the pool, avoided looking at Mr Cuddy and held out her hands to Alleyn.

  ‘Launch me,’ she invited winningly and at the same moment lost her balance and fell like an avalanche into the brimming pool. The water she displaced surged over the edges. Alleyn, Mr Cuddy, Jemima and Tim bobbed about like flotsam and jetsam. Aubyn Dale was drenched. Mrs Dillington-Blick surfaced, gasping and astounded, and struck out for the nearest handhold.

  ‘Ruby!’ Aubyn Dale cried anxiously, as he dashed the sea-water from his face, ‘what have you done?’

  For the first time in the voyage Mr Merryman burst into peals of ungovernable laughter.

  This incident had a serio-comic sequel. While Mrs Dillington-Blick floated in a corner of the pool, clinging to the edges, Mr Cuddy swam slyly alongside and with a quick grab pulled her under. There was a struggle from which she emerged furious and half-suffocated. Her face was streaked with mascara, her nose was running and her bathing cap was askew. She was a terrible sight. Alleyn helped her up the submerged steps. Dale received her on the far side and got her down to deck level.

  ‘That horrible man!’ she choked out. ‘That horrible man!’

  Mr McAngus also hurried to her side while Mr Cuddy leered over the rim of the pool.

  A ridiculous and rather alarming scene ensued. Mr McAngus, in an unrecognizably shrill voice, apostrophized Mr Cuddy: ‘You’re an unmitigated bounder, sir,’ he screamed and actually shook his fist in Mr Cuddy’s wet face.

  ‘I must say, Cuddy!’ Dale said, all restraint and seemly indignation, ‘you’ve got an extraordinary idea of humour.’

  Mr Cuddy still leered and blinked. Mrs Cuddy from her deck-chair, cried anxiously: ‘Dear! You’re forgetting yourself.’

  ‘You’re an ape, sir!’ Mr McAngus added and he and Dale simultaneously placed an arm round Mrs Dillington-Blick.

  ‘I’ll look after her,’ said Dale coldly.

  ‘Let me help you,’ said Mr McAngus. ‘Come and sit down.’

  ‘Leave her alone. Ruby, darling—’

  ‘Oh, shut up, both of you!’ said Mrs Dillington-Blick. She snatched up her robe and made off: a mountain of defaced femininity.

  Mr Merryman continued to laugh, the other gentlemen separated and Mr Cuddy swam quietly about the pool by himself.

  It was the only incident of note in an otherwise torpid day. After luncheon all the passengers went to their respective cabins and Alleyn allowed himself a couple of hours’ sleep. He woke, as he had arranged with himself to wake, at four o’clock and went down to tea. Everybody was limp and disinclined to talk. Dale, Mr McAngus and Mr Cuddy had evidently decided to calm down. Mr Merryman’s venture into the pool had brought on his ‘touch of the sun’ again. He looked feverish and anxious and actually didn’t seem to have the energy to argue with anyone. Jemima came over to him. She very prettily knelt by his chair, and begged him to let her find Tim and ask him to prescribe. ‘Or at least take some aspirin,’ she said. ‘I’ll get some for you. Will you?’ She put her hand on his but he drew it away quickly.

  ‘I think I may have a slight infection,’ he said in explanation and positively added: ‘But thank you, my dear.’

  ‘You’re terribly hot.’ She went away and returned with the aspirin and water. He consented to take three tablets and said he would lie down for a little while. When he went out they all noticed that he was quite shaky.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Cuddy said, ‘I’m sure I hope it’s nothing catching.’

  ‘It’s not very considerate,’ Mrs Cuddy said, ‘to sit round with everybody if it is. How are you feeling, dear?’

  ‘Good, thanks, dear. My little trouble,’ Mr Cuddy said to everybody, ‘has cleared up nicely. I’m a box of birds. I really quite enjoy the heat: something a bit intoxicating about the tropics, to my way of thinking.’

  He himself was not urgently intoxicating. His shirt had unlovely dark areas about it, the insides of his knees were raddled with prickly heat and his enormous hands left wet patches on everything they touched. ‘I’m a very free perspirer,’ he said proudly, ‘and that’s a healthy sign, I’m told.’

  This observation met with a kind of awed silence broken by Mr McAngus.

  ‘Has everybody seen?’ he asked, turning his back on Mr Cuddy. ‘There’s going to be a film tonight. They’ve just put up a notice. On the boat deck, it’s going to be.’

  There was a stir of languid interest. Father Jourdain muttered to Alleyn: ‘That disposes of our canasta party.’

  ‘How lovely!’ Mrs Dillington-Blick said. ‘Where do we sit?’

  ‘I think,’ Mr McAngus fluted, at once tripping up to her, ‘that we all sit on deck-chairs on the top of the hatch. Such a good idea! You must lie on your chaise-longue, you know. You’ll look quite wonderful,’ he added with his timid little laugh. ‘Like Cleopatra in her barge with all her slaves round her. Pagan, almost.’

  ‘My dear!’

  ‘What’s the film?’ Dale asked.

  ‘Othello. With that large American actor.’

  ‘Oh, God!’

  ‘Mr Merryman will be pleased,’ said Jemima. ‘It’s his favourite. If he improves, of course.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think he ought to come,’ Mrs Cuddy at once objected. ‘He should consider other people.’

  ‘It’ll be in the open air,’ Miss Abbott countered, ‘and there’s no need, I imagine, for you to sit next to Mr Merryman.’

  Mrs Cuddy smiled meaningly at her husband.

  Jemima said: ‘But how exciting! Orson Welles
and everything! I couldn’t be better pleased.’

  ‘We’d rather have a nice musical,’ said Mrs Cuddy. ‘But then we’re not arty, are we, dear?’

  Mr Cuddy said nothing. He was looking at Mrs Dillington-Blick.

  III

  The film version of Othello began to wind up its remarkable course. Mr Merryman could be heard softly invoking the retribution of the gods upon the head of Mr Orson Welles.

  In the front row Captain Bannerman sighed windily, Mrs Dillington-Blick’s jaw quivered and Dale periodically muttered: ‘Oh, no!’ Alleyn, who was flabbergasted by the film, was able to give it only a fraction of his attention.

  Behind the Captain’s party sat the rest of the passengers, while a number of ship’s officers were grouped together at one side. Dennis and his fellow-stewards watched from the back.

  The sea was perfectly calm, stars glittered with explosive brilliance. The cinema screen, an incongruous accident with a sterile life of its own, glowed and gestured in the surrounding darkness.

  Put out the light, and then put out the light.

  If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

  I can again thy former light restore,

  Should I repent me—

  Jemima caught her breath and Tim reached for her hand. They were moved by a single impulse and by one thought: that it was superbly right for them to listen together to this music.

  —I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.

  ‘Promethean heat,’ Father Jourdain murmured appreciatively.

  The final movement emerged not entirely obscured by the treatment that had been accorded it. A huge face loomed out of the screen.

  Kill me tomorrow; let me live tonight—

  —But half an hour!

  Being done, there is no pause.

  But while I say one prayer!

  It is too late.

  A white cloth closed like a shroud about Desdemona’s face and tightened horridly.

  The screen was no longer there. At their moment of climax Othello and Desdemona were gone and their audience was in darkness. The pulse of the ship’s engines emerged and the chief engineer’s voice saying that a fuse had blown somewhere. Matches were struck. There was a group of men round the projector. Alleyn produced his torch, slipped out of his seat which was at the end of the row, and walked slowly along the hatch. None of the passengers had stirred but there was a certain amount of movement among the stewards, some of whom, including Dennis, had already left.