Death at the Bar Read online

  ‘She won’t be up-along this morning.’

  ‘What’s that, sonny?’ called old Abel from the private taproom. ‘Be the gentlemen looking for Miss Dessy? She’s on her way over by this time for Saturday marketing.’

  Will moved his shoulders impatiently.

  ‘You know everyone’s business, Father,’ he muttered.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Pomeroy,’ called Alleyn. ‘We’ll meet her on the way, perhaps.’

  ‘‘Less she do drive over in old car,’ said Abel, coming to the door. ‘But most times her walks.’

  He looked apprehensively at Will and turned back into the bar.

  ‘We’ll risk it,’ said Alleyn. ‘Back to lunch, Mr Pomeroy.’

  ‘Thank ‘ee, sir.’

  Alleyn and Fox walked up to the tunnel mouth. When they reached it Alleyn glanced back at the Plume of Feathers. Will stood in the doorway looking after them. As Alleyn turned, Will moved back into the pub.

  ‘He will now telephone Cary Edge in case Miss Moore has not left yet,’ observed Alleyn. ‘No matter. She’ll have been expecting us to arrive sooner or later. Come on.’

  They entered the tunnel.

  ‘Curious, Fox, isn’t it?’ said Alleyn, and his voice rang hollow against the rock walls. ‘Ottercombe must have been able to shut itself up completely on the landward side. I bet some brisk smuggling went forward in the old days. Look out, it’s slippery. Miss Moore must be an intrepid driver if she motors through here in all weathers.’

  They came out into the sunshine. The highway, a dusty streak, ran from the tunnel. On each side the downs rolled along the coast in a haze of warmth, dappled by racing cloud shadows. Farther inland were the hills and sunken lanes, the prettiness of Devon; here was a sweep of country where Englishmen for centuries had looked coastwards, while ships sailed across their dreams and their thoughts were enlarged beyond the seaward horizon.

  ‘Turn to the right,’ said Alleyn.

  They climbed the bank and rounded a furze bush in a sunken hollow.

  ‘Good spot for a bit of courting,’ said Fox, looking at the flattened grass.

  ‘Yes, you old devil. You may invite that remarkably buxom lady who brought our breakfast to stroll up here after hours.’

  ‘Mrs Ives?’

  ‘Yes. You’ll have to get in early, it’s a popular spot. Look at those cigarette butts, squalid little beasts. Hallo!’

  He stooped and picked up two of them.

  ‘The cigarette butt,’ he said, ‘has been derided by our detective novelists. It has lost caste and now ranks with the Chinese and datura. No self-respecting demi-highbrow will use it. That’s because old Conan Doyle knew his job and got in first. But you and I Br’er Fox, sweating hacks that we are, are not so superior. This cigarette was a Dahabieh, an expensive Egyptian. Harper said they found some Egyptian cigarettes in Watchman’s pockets. Not many Dahabiehsmokers in Ottercombe, I imagine. Parish and Cubitt smoke Virginians. This one has lipstick on it. Orange-brown.’

  ‘Not Miss Darragh,’ said Fox.

  ‘No, Fox. Nor yet Mrs Ives. Let’s have a peer. There’s been rain since the Dahabiehs were smoked. Look at those heelmarks. Woman’s heels. Driven into the bank.’

  ‘She must have been sitting down,’ said Fox. ‘Or lying. Bit of a struggle seemingly. What had the gentleman been up to?’

  ‘What indeed? What did Miss Darragh mean by her “look further and look nearer home”? We’ve no case for a jury yet, Fox. We mustn’t close down on a theory. Can you find any masculine prints? Yes. Here’s one. Not a very good one.’

  ‘Watchman’s?’

  ‘We may have to find out. May be nothing in it. Wait a bit, though. I’m going back to the pub.’

  Alleyn disappeared over the ridge and was away for some minutes. He returned with two stones, a bit of an old box, and a case.

  ‘Better,’ he said, ‘in your favourite phrase, Br’er Fox, to be sure than sorry.’

  He opened the case. It contained a rubber cup, a large flask of water, some plaster-of-Paris, and a spray-pump. Alleyn sprayed the footprints with shellac, and collected twigs from under the furze bushes, while Fox mixed plaster. They took casts of the four clearest prints, reinforcing the plaster with the twigs and adding salt to the mixture. Alleyn removed the casts when they had set, covered the footprints with the box, weighted it with stones, and dragged branches of the furze bush down over the whole. The casts he wrapped up and hid.

  ‘You never know,’ he said. ‘Let’s move on.’

  They mounted the rise and away on the headland saw Cubitt, a manikin, moving to and fro before his easel.

  ‘We’ll have to join the infamous company of gapers,’ said Alleyn. ‘Look, he’s seen us. How eloquent of distaste that movement was! There’s Parish beyond. He’s doing a big thing. I believe I’ve heard Troy speak of Norman Cubitt’s work. Let’s walk along the cliffs, shall we?’

  They struck out to the right and hadn’t gone many yards before they came to a downward slope where the turf was trampled. Alleyn stooped and examined it.

  ‘Camp-stool,’ he muttered. ‘And here’s an empty tube. Watercolour. The Darragh spoor, I imagine. An eventful stretch of country, this. I wonder if she was here on that Friday. You can’t see the other place from here, Fox. You might hear voices, though.’

  ‘If they were raised a bit.’

  ‘Yes. Angry voices. Well, on we go.’

  As they drew nearer Cubitt continued to paint, but Parish kept turning his head to look at them. When they came within earshot, Cubitt shouted at them over his shoulder.

  ‘I hope to God you haven’t come here to ask questions. I’m busy.’

  ‘All right,’ said Alleyn. ‘We’ll wait.’

  He walked beyond them, out of sight of the picture. Fox followed him. Alleyn lay on the lip of the headland. Beneath them, the sea boomed and thudded against a rosy cliff. Wreaths of seaweed endlessly wove suave patterns about Coombe Rock. A flight of gulls mewed and circled in and out of the sunlight.

  ‘What a hullabaloo and a pother,’ said Alleyn. ‘How many thousands of times before they come adrift, do these strands of seaweed slither out and swirl and loop and return? Their gestures are so beautiful that it is difficult to realize they are meaningless. They only show us the significance of the water’s movements but for themselves they are helpless. And the sea is helpless too, and the winds it obeys, and the wider laws that rule the winds, themselves ruled by passive rulers. Dear me, Fox, what a collection of ordered inanities. Rather like police investigations. I can’t look over any more, I’ve no head for heights.’

  ‘Here comes Mr Cubitt, sir,’ said Fox.

  Alleyn rolled over and saw Cubitt, a vast figure against the sky.

  ‘We’re resting now,’ said Cubitt. ‘Sorry to choke you off, but I was on a tricky bit.’

  ‘We are extremely sorry to bother you,’ said Alleyn. ‘I know it is beyond a painter’s endurance to be interrupted at a critical moment.’

  Cubitt dropped down on the grass beside him.

  ‘I’m trying to keep a wet skin of paint all over the canvas,’ he said. ‘You have to work at concert pitch for that!’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Alleyn exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean you paint right through that surface in three hours?’

  ‘It keeps wet for two days. I’ve got a new brand of slow-drying colours. Even so, it’s a bit of an effort.’

  ‘I should think so, on a thing that size.’

  Parish appeared on the brow of the hill.

  ‘Aren’t you coming to see my portrait?’ he cried.

  Cubitt glanced at Alleyn and said, ‘Do, if you’d like to.’

  ‘I should, enormously.’

  They walked back to the easel.

  The figure had come up darkly against the formalized sky. Though the treatment was one of extreme simplification, there was no feeling of emptiness. The portrait was at once rich and austere. There was no bravura in Cubitt’s painting. It seemed that he had pondered each b
rushmark gravely and deeply, and had then laid it down on a single impulse and left it so.

  ‘Lord, it’s good,’ said Alleyn. ‘It’s grand, isn’t it?’

  Parish stood with his head on one side and said, ‘Do you like it?’ But Cubitt said, ‘Do you paint, Alleyn?’

  ‘No, not I. My wife does.’

  ‘Does she exhibit at all?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alleyn. ‘Her name is Troy.’

  ‘O God!’ said Cubitt. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ said Alleyn humbly.

  ‘To my mind,’ answered Cubitt, ‘the best we’ve got.’

  ‘Do you think it’s like me?’ asked Parish. ‘I tell Norman he hasn’t quite got my eyes. Judging by my photographs, you know. Not that I don’t like it. I think it’s marvellous, old boy, you know that.’

  ‘Seb,’ said Cubitt, ‘your price is above rubies. So long as you consider it a pretty mockery of nature, I am content.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Parish, ‘I’m delighted with it, Norman, really. It’s only a suggestion about the eyes.’

  ‘How long have you been at it?’ asked Alleyn.

  ‘This is the sixth day. I had two mornings before the catastrophe. We shelved it for a bit after that.’

  ‘Naturally,’ added Parish solemnly. ‘We didn’t feel like it.’

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Cubitt dryly.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Alleyn, ‘did you ever pass Mr Watchman on your way to or from this place?’

  Cubitt had laid a streak of blue across his palette with the knife. His fingers opened and the knife fell into the paint. Parish’s jaw dropped. He looked quickly at Cubitt as if asking him a question.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Cubitt. ‘He was only here one day. He died the night after he got here.’

  ‘That was the Friday,’ said Alleyn. ‘Did you work here on the Friday morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, was Mr Watchman with you?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Cubitt quickly, ‘he was still in bed when we left.’

  ‘Did you see him on the way home?’

  ‘I don’t think we did,’ said Parish.

  ‘In a little hollow this side of a furze bush and just above the main road.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Parish.

  ‘No,’ said Cubitt, a little too loudly. ‘We didn’t. Why?’

  ‘He was there some time,’ said Alleyn vaguely.

  Cubitt said, ‘Look here, do you mind if I get going again? The sun doesn’t stand still in the heavens.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Alleyn quickly.

  Parish took up the pose. Cubitt looked at him and filled a brush with the colour he had mixed. He raised the brush and held it poised. Alleyn saw that his hand trembled.

  ‘It’s no good,’ said Cubitt abruptly, ‘we’ve missed it. The sun’s too far round.’

  ‘But it’s not ten yet,’ objected Parish.

  ‘Can’t help it,’ said Cubitt and put down his palette.

  ‘For pity’s sake,’ said Alleyn, ‘don’t go wrong with it now.’

  ‘I’ll knock off, I think.’

  ‘We’ve been a hell of a nuisance. I’m sorry.’

  ‘My dear chap,’ said Parish, ‘you’re nothing to the modest Violet. It’s a wonder she hasn’t appeared. She puts up her easel about five yards behind Norman’s and brazenly copies every stroke he makes.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as that, Seb.’

  ‘Well, personally,’ said Parish, ‘I’ve had quite as much as I want of me brother Terence and me brother Brian and me unfortunate cousin poor Bryonie.’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Alleyn.

  ‘She has a cousin who is a noble lord and got jugged for something.’

  ‘Bryonie,’ said Alleyn. ‘He was her cousin, was he?’

  ‘So it seems. Do you remember the case?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ said Alleyn. ‘Vaguely. Was Miss Darragh anywhere about on that same morning?’

  ‘She was over there,’ said Parish. ‘Back in the direction you’ve come from. She must have stayed there for hours. She came in, drenched to the skin and looking like the wrath of heaven, late in the afternoon.’

  ‘An enthusiast,’ murmured Alleyn. ‘Ah, well, we mustn’t hang round you any longer. We’re bound for Cary Edge Farm.’

  Something in the look Cubitt gave him reminded Alleyn of Will Pomeroy.

  Parish said, ‘To call on the fair Decima? You’ll be getting into trouble with Will Pomeroy.’

  ‘Seb,’ said Cubitt, ‘pray don’t be kittenish. Miss Moore is out on Saturday mornings, Alleyn.’

  ‘So Will Pomeroy told us, but we hoped to meet her on her way to Ottercombe. Good luck to the work. Come along, Fox.’

  II

  A few yards beyond the headland they struck a rough track that led inland and over the downs.

  ‘This will take us there, I expect,’ said Alleyn. ‘Fox, those gentlemen lied about Watchman and the furze bush.’

  ‘I thought so, sir. Mr Cubitt made a poor fist of it.’

  ‘Yes. He’s not a good liar. He’s a damn‘ good painter. I must ask Troy about him.’

  Alleyn stopped and thumped the point of his stick on the ground.

  ‘What the devil,’ he asked, ‘is this about Lord Bryonie?’

  ‘He’s the man that was mixed up in the Montague Thringle case.’

  ‘Yes, I know. He got six months. He was Thringle’s cat’s-paw. By George, Fox, d’you know what?’

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘Luke Watchman defended Bryonie. I’ll swear he did.’

  ‘I wouldn’t remember.’

  ‘Yes, you would. You must. By gum, Fox, we’ll look up that case. Watchman defended Bryonie, and Bryonie was Miss Darragh’s cousin. Rum. Monstrous rum.’

  ‘Sort of fetched her into the picture by another route.’

  ‘It does. Well, come on. We’ve lots of little worries. I wonder if Miss Moore uses orange-brown lipstick. I tell you what, Fox, I think Cubitt is catched with Miss Moore.’

  ‘In love with her?’

  ‘Deeply, I should say. Did you notice, last night, how his manner changed when he talked about her? The same thing happened just now. He doesn’t like our going to Cary Edge. Nor did Will Pomeroy. I wonder what she’s like.’

  He saw what Decima was like in thirty seconds. She came swinging over the hilltop. She wore a rust-coloured jumper and a blue skirt. Her hair was ruffled, her eyes were bright, and her lips were orange-brown. When she saw the two men she halted for a second and then came on towards them.

  Alleyn took off his hat and waited for her.

  ‘Miss Moore?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She stopped, but her pose suggested that it would be only for a moment.

  ‘We hoped that we might meet if we were too late to find you at home,’ said Alleyn. ‘I wonder if you can give us a minute or two. We’re police officers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind—?’

  ‘You’d better come back to the farm,’ said Decima. ‘It’s over the next hill.’

  ‘That will be a great bore for you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I can go into the Coombe later in the morning.’,

  ‘We shan’t keep you long. There’s no need to turn back.’

  Decima seemed to hesitate.

  ‘All right,’ she said at last. She walked over to a rock at the edge of the track and sat on it. Alleyn and Fox followed her.

  She looked at them with the kind of assurance that is given to women who are unusually lovely and sometimes to women who are emphatically plain. She was without self-consciousness. Nobody had told Alleyn that Decima was beautiful and he was a little surprised. ‘It’s impossible,’ he thought, ‘that she can be in love with young Pomeroy.’

  ‘I suppose it’s about Luke Watchman,’ said Decima.

  ‘Yes, it is. We’ve been sent down to see if we can tidy up a bit.’
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  ‘Does that mean they think it was murder?’ asked Decima steadily, ‘or don’t you answer that sort of question?’

  ‘We don’t,’ rejoined Alleyn, smiling, ‘answer that sort of question.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Decima.

  ‘We are trying,’ continued Alleyn, ‘to trace Mr Watchman’s movements from the time he got here until the time of the accident.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Part of the tidying-up process.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s all pretty plain sailing except for Friday morning.’

  Alleyn saw her head turn so that for a second she looked towards Ottercombe Tunnel. It was only for a second and she faced him again.

  ‘He went out,’ said Alleyn, ‘soon after breakfast. Mr Pomeroy saw him enter the tunnel. That was about ten minutes before you left Ottercombe. Did you see Mr Watchman on your way home?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I saw him.’

  ‘Where, please.’

  ‘Just outside the top of the tunnel by some furze bushes. I think he was asleep.’

  ‘Did he wake as you passed him?’

  She clasped her thin hands round her knees.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said.

  ‘Did you stop, Miss Moore?’

  ‘For a minute or two, yes.’

  ‘Do you mind telling us what you talked about?’

  ‘Nothing that could help you. We—we argued about theories.’

  ‘Theories?’

  ‘Oh, politics. We disagreed violently over politics. I’m a red rebel, as I suppose you’ve heard. It rather annoyed him. We only spoke for a moment.’

  ‘I suppose it was apropos of the Coombe Left Movement?’ murmured Alleyn.

  ‘Do you?’ asked Decima.

  Alleyn looked apologetic. ‘I thought it might be,’ he said, ‘because of your interest in the movement. I mean it would have been a sort of natural ingredient of a political argument, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Would it?’ asked Decima.

  ‘You’re quite right to snub me,’ said Alleyn ruefully. ‘I’m jumping to conclusions and that’s a very bad fault in our job. Isn’t it, Fox?’

  ‘Shocking, sir,’ said Fox.

  Alleyn pulled out his notebook.

  ‘I’ll just get this right, if I may. You met Mr Watchman at about what time?’