Dead Water (21 page)

‘…sweet spot, so quaint and
unspoilt.
Sure I shall like it. One feels the
tug
of earth and sea. The “pub” (!) is
really
genuine and goes back to smuggling days. Kept by a
gentleman.
Major B. I take my noggin “of an evening” in the taproom and listen to the wonderful “burr” in the talk of the fisherfolk. All v. friendly…Major B. kept looking at me. I know your sort, sez I. Nothing to object to,
really.
Just an awareness. The wife is rather peculiar: I am not altogether taken. A
man’s
woman in every sense of the word, I’m afraid. He doesn’t pay her v. much attention.’

Alleyn read on for a minute or two. ‘It would take a day to get through it,’ he said. ‘This is her first visit to the Island. Two years ago.’

‘Interesting?’

‘Excruciating. Where’s that list of dates?’

Fox put it on the desk.

Alleyn turned the pages of the diary. References to Major B., later K., though veiled in unbelievable euphemisms, became more and more explicit. In this respect alone, Alleyn thought, the gallant Major had a lot to answer for. He turned back to the entry for the day after Wally’s cure. It was ecstatic.

‘I have always,’ wrote Miss Cost, ‘believed in fairies. The old magic of water and the spoken rune! The Green Lady! He
saw
her, this little lad
saw
her and obeyed her behest. Something
led
me to this Island.’ She ran on in this vein for the whole of the entry. Alleyn read it with a sensation of exasperated compassion. The entry itself was nothing to his purpose. But across it, heavily inked, Miss Cost on some later occasion had put down an enormous mark of interrogation and, beside this, had added a note: ‘30th Sept. 8.45.’

This was the second of the two underlined dates on the paper. He turned it up in the diary.

‘I am shocked and horrified and
sickened
by what I have seen this evening. My hand shakes. I can hardly bring myself to write it down.
I knew,
from the moment I first set eyes on her, that she was unworthy of him. One
always
knows. Shall not tell K. It would serve him right if I did. All these months and he never guessed. But I won’t tell him. Not yet. Not unless – But I must
write
it. Only so can I rid myself of the horror. I was sitting on the hill below the Spring, thinking so happily of all my plans and so glad I have settled for the shop and ordered my lovely Green Ladies. I was
feeling
the magic of the water. (Blessed, blessed water.
No
asthma, now, for
four
weeks.) And then I heard them. Behind the boulder, laughing. I shrank down in the bracken. And then
she
came out from behind the boulder in her green dress and stood above the pool. She raised her arms. I could hear the man laughing still but I couldn’t see him. I
knew. I knew.
The wicked desecration of it! But I won’t believe it. I’ll put it out of my mind forever. She was mocking – pretending. I
won’t
think anything else. She went back to him. I waited. And then, suddenly, I couldn’t bear it any longer. I came back here…’

Alleyn, looking increasingly grim, went over the entries for the whole list; throughout two summers, Miss Cost had hunted her
evening quarry with obsessive devotion and had recorded the fruits of the chase as if in some antic game-book – time, place and circumstances. On each occasion that she spied upon her victims, she had found the enclosure padlocked and had taken up a point of vantage on the hillside. At no stage did she give the names of the lovers but their identity was inescapable. ‘Mrs Barrimore and Dr Maine,’ Alleyn said. ‘To hell with this case!’

‘Awkward,’ observed Fox.

‘My dear old Fox, it’s dynamite. And it fits,’ Alleyn said, staring disconsolately at his colleague. ‘The devil of it is, it fits.’

He began to read the entries for the past month. Dr Maine, Miss Cost weirdly concluded, was not to blame. He was a victim, caught in the toils, unable to free himself and therefore unable to follow his nobler inclination towards Miss Cost herself. Interlarded with furious attacks upon Miss Emily and covert allusions to the anonymous messages, were notes on the Festival, a savage comment on Miss Emily’s visit to the shop and a distracted reference to the attack of asthma that followed it. ‘The dark forces of evil that emanate from this woman’ were held responsible. There followed a number of cryptic asides: –

(‘Trehern agrees. It’s
right. I know
it’s right.’)

‘ “It is the Cause, it is the Cause, my soul”,’ Alleyn muttered, disconsolatedly. ‘The old, phoney argument.’

Fox, who had been reading over his shoulder, said: ‘It’d be a peculiar thing if she’d worked Trehern up to doing the job and then got herself mistaken for the intended victim.’

‘It sounds very neat, Br’er Fox, but in point of fact, it’s lousy with loose ends. I can’t take it. Just let’s go through the other statements now.’

They did this and Fox sighed over the result. ‘I suppose so,’ he said and added, ‘I like things to be neat and they so seldom are.’

‘You’re a concealed classicist,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’d better go back to this ghastly diary. Read on.’

They had arrived at the final week. Rehearsals for the Festival. Animadversions upon Miss Emily. The incident of the Green Lady on Miss Emily’s desk. ‘He did it. K. I’m certain. And I’m
glad,
glad.
She
no doubt, suspects
me.
I refused to go. She finds she can’t order
me
about. To sit in that room with
her
and the two she has ruined!
Never.’

Alleyn turned a page and there, facing them, was the last entry Miss Cost was to make in her journal.

‘Yesterday evening,’ Alleyn said. ‘After the debacle at the Spring.’

The thunderstorm, he was not surprised to find, was treated as a judgment. Nemesis, in the person of one of Miss Cost’s ambiguous deities, had decided to touch-up the unbelievers with six of the cosmic best. Among these offenders Miss Emily was clearly included but it emerged that she was not the principal object of Miss Cost’s spleen. ‘Laugh at your peril,’ she ominously wrote, ‘at the Great Ones.’ And, as if stung by this observation she continued, in a splutter of disjointed venom, to threaten some unnamed persons. ‘At last,’ she wrote. ‘After the agony of months, the cruelty and now, the final insult,
at last
I shall speak. I shall face both of them with the facts. I shall tell
her
what was between us. And I shall show that other one how I know. He – both – all of them shall suffer. I’ll drag their names through the papers. Now. Tonight. I am determined. It is the end.’

‘And so it was,’ Fox said, looking up over his spectacles. ‘Poor thing. Very sad, really, these cases. Do you see your way through all this, Mr Alleyn?’

‘I think I do, Br’er Fox. I’m afraid I do. And I’ll tell you why.’

He had scarcely begun, when Bailey, moving rather more quickly than he was wont, came through from the shop.

‘Someone for you, sir. A Miss Williams. She says it’s urgent.’

Alleyn went to the telephone.

Jenny sounded as if it was very urgent indeed.

‘Mr Alleyn? Thank God! Please come up here, quickly. Please do. Miss Emily’s rooms. I can’t say anything else.’ Alleyn heard a muffled ejaculation. A man shouted distantly and a woman screamed. There was the faint but unmistakable crash of broken glass…‘Please come,’ said Jenny.

‘At once,’ Alleyn said. And to Fox: ‘Leave Pender on the board and you others follow as quick as you can. Room 35 to the right of the stairhead on the first floor.’

Before they had time to answer he was out of the shop and had plunged, head down, into the storm outside.

It was not raining now but the night was filled with so vast an uproar that there was no room for any perception but that of noise: the clamour of wind and irregular thud and crash of a monstrous tide. It broke over the foreshore and made hissing assaults on the foot of the steps. Alleyn went up them at a sort of shambling run, bent double and feeling his way with his hands. When he reached the last flight and came into range of the hotel windows, his heart pounded like a ram and his throat was dry. He beat across the platform and went in by the main entrance. The night porter was reading behind his desk. He looked up in astonishment at Alleyn who had not waited to put on his mackintosh.

‘Did you get caught, sir?’

‘I took shelter,’ Alleyn said. ‘Good night.’

He made for the stairs and when he was out of sight, waited for a moment or two to recover his wind. Then he went up to the first floor.

The passage had the vacant look of all hotel corridors at night. A wireless blared invisibly. When he moved forward he realized the noise was coming from Miss Emily’s room. A brass band was playing ‘Colonel Bogey.’

He knocked on the door and was not answered. He opened it and went in.

It was as if a tableau had been organized for his benefit; as if he had been sent out of the room while the figures arranged themselves to their best effect. Miss Emily stood on the hearthrug very pale and

grand, with Jenny in support. Margaret Barrimore, with her hands to her mouth, was inside the door on his left. He had narrowly missed striking her with it when he came in. The three men had pride of place. Major Barrimore stood centre with his legs straddled and blood running from his nose into his gaping mouth. Dr Maine faced him and frowned at a cut across the knuckles of his own well-kept doctor’s hand. Patrick, dishevelled, stood between them, like a referee who had just stopped a fight. The wireless bellowed remorselessly. There was a scatter of broken glass in the fireplace.

They all turned their heads and looked at Alleyn. They might have been asking him to guess the word of their charade.

‘Can we switch that thing off?’ he asked.

Jenny did so. The silence was deafening.

‘I did it to drown the shouting,’ she said.

‘Miss Emily,’ Alleyn said. ‘Will you sit down?’ She did so.

‘It might be as well,’ he suggested, ‘if everyone did.’

Dr Maine made an impatient noise and walked over to the window. Barrimore sucked his moustache, tasted blood and got out his handkerchief. He was swaying on his feet. Alleyn pushed a chair under him and he collapsed on it. His eyes were out of focus and he reeked of whisky. Mrs Barrimore moved towards Dr Maine. Jenny sat on an arm of Miss Emily’s chair and Patrick on the edge of the table.

‘And now,’ Alleyn said, ‘what has happened?’

For a second or two nobody spoke and then Jenny said: ‘I asked you to come so I suppose I’d better explain.’

‘You better hold your tongue,’ Barrimore mumbled through his bloodied handkerchief.

‘That’ll do,’ said Patrick dangerously.

Alleyn said to Jenny, ‘Will you, then?’

‘If I can. All right. I’d come in to say good night to Miss Emily. Patrick was waiting for me downstairs, I think. Weren’t you?’

He nodded.

‘Miss Emily and I were talking. I was just going to say good night when – when Mrs Barrimore came in.’

‘Jenny – no! No!’ Margaret Barrimore whispered.

‘Don’t stop her,’ Miss Emily said quietly, ‘it’s better not to. I am sure of it.’

‘Patrick?’ Jenny appealed to him.

He hesitated, stared at his mother and then said, ‘You’d better go on, I think. Just the facts, Jenny.’

‘Very well. Mrs Barrimore was distressed and – I think – frightened. She didn’t say why. She looked ill. She asked if she could stay with us for a little while and Miss Emily said yes. We didn’t talk very much. Nothing that could matter.’

Margaret Barrimore said rapidly: ‘Miss Pride was extremely kind. I wasn’t feeling well. I haven’t been well lately. I had a giddy turn: I was near her room. That’s why I went in.’

Dr Maine said: ‘As Mrs Barrimore’s doctor I must insist that she’s not troubled by any questioning. It’s true that she is unwell.’ He jerked a chair forward and touched her arm. ‘Sit down, Margaret,’ he said gently and she obeyed him.

‘ “As Mrs Barrimore’s doctor”,’
her husband quoted and gave a whinnying laugh. ‘That’s wonderful! That’s a superb remark.’

‘Will you go on, please?’

‘OK. Yes. Well, that lasted quite a long time – just the three of us here. And then Dr Maine came in to see Miss Pride. He examined the cut on her neck and he told us it would probably be too rough for us to cross the channel tomorrow. He and Mrs Barrimore were saying good night when Major Barrimore came in.’

So far Jenny had spoken very steadily but she faltered now, and looked at Miss Emily. ‘It’s – it’s then that – that things began to happen. I –’

Miss Emily with perfect composure, said: ‘In effect, my dear Roderique, there was a scene. Major Barrimore made certain accusations. Dr Maine intervened. A climax was reached and blows were exchanged. I suggested, aside to Jenny, that she solicit your aid. The fracas continued. A glass was broken. Mrs Barrimore screamed and Mr Patrick arrived upon the scene. He was unsuccessful and, after a renewal of belligerency, Major Barrimore fell to the floor. The actual fighting came to a stop but the noise was considerable. It was at this juncture that the wireless was introduced. You entered shortly afterwards.’

‘Does everybody agree to this?’

There was no answer.

‘I take it that you do.’

Dr Maine said: ‘Will you also take it that whatever happened has not the remotest shade of bearing upon your case? It was an entirely private matter and should remain so.’ He looked at Patrick and, with disgust, at Major Barrimore. ‘I imagine you agree,’ he said.

‘Certainly,’ Patrick said shortly.

Alleyn produced his stock comment on this argument. ‘If it turns out that there’s no connection, I assure you I shall be glad to forget it. In the meantime, I’m afraid I must make certain.’

There was a tap at the door. He answered it. Fox, Bailey and Thompson had arrived. Alleyn asked Fox to come in and the others to wait.

‘Inspector Fox,’ he said, ‘is with me on this case.’

‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ Fox said.

They observed him warily. Miss Emily said: ‘Good evening, Mr Fox. I have heard a great deal about you.’

‘Have you, ma’am?’ he rejoined. ‘Nothing to my discredit, I hope.’ And to Alleyn: ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir.’

Alleyn gave him a brief summary of the situation and returned to the matter in hand. ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to tell me what it was that triggered off this business,’ he said. ‘What were Major Barrimore’s accusations?’

Nobody answered. ‘Will you tell me, Miss Emily?’

Miss Emily said: ‘I cannot. I am sorry. I – I find myself unable to elaborate upon what I have already said.’ She looked at Alleyn in distress. ‘You must not ask me,’ she said.

‘Never mind.’ He glanced at the others. ‘Am I to know?’ he asked and, after a moment, ‘Very well. Let us make a different approach. I shall tell you instead, what we have been doing. We have, as some of you know, been at Miss Cost’s shop. We have searched the shop and the living quarters behind it. I think I should tell you that we have found Miss Cost’s diary. It is a long, exhaustive, and in many places, relevant document. It may be put in evidence.’

Margaret Barrimore gave a low cry.

‘The final entry was made last night. In it she suggests that as a result of some undefined insult she is going to make public certain matters which are not specifically set out in that part of the diary but will not, I think, be difficult to arrive at when the whole document
is reviewed. It may be that after she made this last entry, she wrote a letter to the Press. If so, it will be in the mailbag.’

‘Has it gone out yet?’ Patrick asked sharply.

‘I haven’t inquired,’ Alleyn said coolly.

‘It must be stopped.’

‘We don’t usually intercept Her Majesty’s mail.’

Barrimore said thickly: ‘You can bloody well intercept this one.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Dr Maine crisply.

‘By God, sir, I won’t take that from you. By God!’ Barrimore began, trying to get to his feet.

‘Sit down,’ Alleyn said. ‘Do you want to be taken in charge for assault? Pull yourself together.’

Barrimore sank back. He looked at his handkerchief, now drenched with blood. His face was bedabbled and his nose still ran with it. ‘Gimme ‘nother,’ he muttered.

‘A towel, perhaps,’ Miss Emily suggested. Jenny fetched one from the bathroom.

‘He’d better lie down,’ Dr Maine said impatiently.

‘I’ll be damned if I do,’ said the Major.

‘To continue,’ Alleyn said, ‘the facts that emerge from the diary and from the investigations are these. We now know the identity of the Green Lady. Miss Cost found it out for herself on 30th September of last year. She saw the impersonator repeating her initial performance for a concealed audience of one. She afterwards discovered who this other was. You will stay where you are, if you please, Major Barrimore. Miss Cost was unwilling to believe this evidence. She began, however, to spy upon the two persons involved. On 17th June of this year she took a photograph at the Spring.’

Dr Maine said: ‘I can’t allow this,’ and Patrick said: ‘No, for God’s sake!’

‘I would avoid it if I could,’ Alleyn said. ‘Mrs Barrimore, would you rather wait in the next room? Miss Williams will go with you, I’m sure.’

‘Yes, darling,’ Jenny said quickly. ‘Do.’

‘O no,’ she said. ‘Not now. Not now.’

‘It would be better,’ Patrick said.

‘It would be better, Margaret,’ Dr Maine repeated.

‘No.’

There was a brief silence. An emphatic gust of wind battered at the window. The lights flickered, dimmed and came up again.
Alleyn’s hearers were momentarily united in a new uneasiness. When he spoke again, they shifted their attention back to him with an air of confusion.

‘Miss Cost,’ he was saying, ‘kept her secret to herself. It became, I think, an obsession. It’s clear from other passages in her diary that some time before this discovery, she had conceived an antagonism for Major Barrimore. The phrases she uses suggest that it arose from the reaction commonly attributed to a woman scorned.’

Margaret Barrimore turned her head and for the first time looked at her husband. Her expression, one of profound astonishment, was reflected in her son’s face and Dr Maine’s.

‘There is no doubt, I think,’ Alleyn said. ‘That during her first visit to the Island their relationship, however brief, had been of the sort to give rise to the later reaction.’

‘Is this true?’ Dr Maine demanded of Barrimore.

He had the towel clapped to his face. Over the top of it his eyes, prominent and dazed, narrowed as if he were smiling. He said nothing.

‘Miss Cost, as I said just now, kept her knowledge to herself. Later, it appears, she transferred her attention to Doctor Maine and was unsuccessful. It’s a painful and distressing story and I shan’t dwell on it except to say that up to yesterday’s tragedy we have the picture of a neurotic who has discovered that the man upon whom her fantasy is now concentrated, is deeply attached to the wife of the man with whom she herself had a brief affair that ended in humiliation. She also knows that this wife impersonated the Green Lady in the original episode. These elements are so bound up together, that if she makes mischief, as her demon urges her to do, she will be obliged to expose the truth about the Green Lady and that would be disastrous. Add to this, the proposal to end all publicity and official recognition of the Spring and you get some idea, perhaps, of the emotional turmoil that she suffered and that declares itself in this unhappy diary.’

‘You do, indeed,’ said Miss Emily abruptly and added: ‘One has much to answer for, I perceive. I have much to answer for. Go on.’

‘In opposing the new plans for the Spring, Miss Cost may have let off a head of emotional steam. She sent anonymous messages to Miss Pride. She was drawn into the companionship of the general front made against Miss Pride’s intentions. I think there is little doubt that she conspired with Trehern and egged-on ill feeling in the
village. She had received attention. She had her Festival in hand. She was somebody. It was, I daresay, all rather exciting and gratifying. Wouldn’t you think so?’ he asked Dr Maine.

‘I’m not a psychiatrist,’ he said. ‘But, yes. You may be right.’

‘Now this was the picture,’ Alleyn went on, ‘up to the time of the Festival. But when she came to write the final entry in her diary, which was last night, something had happened: something that revived all her sense of injury and spite, something that led her to write: ‘Both – all of them – shall suffer. I’ll drag their names through the papers. Now. Tonight. I am determined. It is the end’.’

Another formidable onslaught roared down upon The Boy-and-Lobster and again the lights wavered and recovered.

‘She doesn’t say, and we can’t tell, positively, what inflamed her. I am inclined to think that it might be put down to aesthetic humiliation.’

‘What!’ Patrick ejaculated.

‘Yes. One has to remember that all the first-night agonies that beset a professional director are also visited upon the most ludicrously inefficient amateur. Miss Cost had produced a show and exposed it to an audience. However bad the show, she still had to undergo the classic ordeal. The reaction among some of the onlookers didn’t escape her notice.’

‘O dear!’ Jenny said. ‘O
dear!’

‘But this is all speculation and a policeman is not allowed to speculate, ’ Alleyn said. ‘Let us get back to hard facts, if we can. Here are some of them. Miss Cost attended early service this morning and afterwards walked to the Spring to collect a necklace. It was in her hand when we found her. We know, positively, that she encountered and spoke to three people: Mrs Carstairs and Dr Maine before church; Major Barrimore afterwards.’

‘Suppose I deny that?’ Barrimore said thickly.

‘I can’t, of course, make any threats or offer any persuasion. You might, on consideration, think it wiser, after all, to agree that you met and tell me what passed between you. Major Barrimore,’ Alleyn explained generally, ‘has already admitted that he was spying upon Miss Pride who had gone to the enclosure to put up a notice which he afterwards removed.’