Death at the Bar (18 page)

“Not having his brains, his memory, or his library I can’t tell you,” said Dr. Shaw.

iii

Alleyn, Fox, and Harper went to the police station. Here they had a long reiterative conversation. They compared Alleyn’s casts with the shoes Watchman wore on the day of his death, and found that they tallied exactly. They went over the case step by step. Alleyn expounded, the others listened. They laid their collection of oddments on Harper’s table; the brandy-bottle, the broken glass, the iodine bottle, the stained newspaper, the small china vessel from the rat-hole, and the bottle of Scheele’s acid. Harper gave Alleyn a stoppered bottle.

“Ah,” said Alleyn, “that’s the stuff out of the rat-hole jar? I want you to get it analyzed. Perhaps Dr. Mordant would do it. No, I suppose that would be too unofficial. It had better go to London.”

“You think our murderer got the stuff from the garage?” asked Harper.

“I do.”

“But the thing was full.”

“Because it was full,” said Alleyn.

“You reckon that was water,” asked Harper slowly.

“Yes, Nick.”

“I see,” said Harper.

“The poison-party,” said Alleyn, “was attended by Abel, who put the prussic acid in the china pot and stopped the hole; by Will, by Miss Moore, by Legge, who only looked in for a moment, and by a couple of fishermen who were on their way to the public bar and who don’t come into the picture. Subsequently Abel warned everybody in the place about what he had done, so that the actual attendance at the poison-party may not give us our answer. On the other hand it is possible that one of them lagged behind and pinched the poison. They all profess to have forgotten in what order they left. Now prussic acid in Mr. Noggins’ fifty-per-cent solution is a highly volatile liquid. Judging by the stench, its fumes have accounted for at least one rat, so probably it was not removed immediately. On the other hand, it seems it would evaporate considerably in something under an hour. I’m not sure on this point. We’ll experiment. The experts say, in their report, under an hour. Very good. My contention is that the murderer must have nipped into the garage, within an hour after Abel left it, and taken the poison, which would be kept in a tightly corked bottle until it was needed.”

“But how the hell would he get it? The jar had Abel’s prints. It hadn’t been touched.”

“Do you remember—”

“By God!” shouted Harper. “Don’t tell me! I’ve got it.”

He broke into a stream of oaths through which his enlightenment struggled for expression.

“That’s it,” said Alleyn. “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

“Looks like it!” ejaculated Harper. “It blasted well shrieks of it. I’m a hell of a detective I am! Look at me! I missed the point about that evaporation business! Took Abel in to look at the pot and he said it was just the amount he’d poured in. Well, the damn thing was full. I never thought it might be water. I took photographs and sealed the place up just as it was. I
did
pour off this stuff and keep it. I’ll say that for myself. I made sure the poison had come out of the bottle in the cupboard. Blast it!”

“Abel’s prints,” Alleyn said, “were still on the key of the cupboard and on the knob. You can’t open the door without turning the key and the knob. Dr. Shaw saw that, when he looked at the cupboard and waited until it had been tested for prints. If anyone else had been to the cupboard they would either have left their own prints, used gloves and smeared Abel’s prints, or else wiped them off entirely. Nobody could have been to the cupboard.”

“I knew that, but all the same… Well, I suppose I thought they might have got at the bottle while — oh hell!”

“Anybody might have missed it, Mr. Harper,” said Fox. “I didn’t pick it till Mr. Alleyn pointed it out.”

“And I was lucky,” said Alleyn. “I’d read Taylor on the cyanides, during our trip down.”

“Well,” said Harper, “the coroner and Dr. Shaw missed the point. Oates gave evidence of discovery of the stuff in the rat-hole. Old Pomeroy deposed it was the same amount he’d poured in. Nobody said anything about evaporation.”

“Oates,” Alleyn pointed out, “saw the first night with Dr. Shaw — before they knew the exact nature of the poison. Not much more than twenty-six hours after it was put there.”

“He might have just dipped the dart in the stuff,” said Harper. “I did think of that. But now—”

“Now we know the dart must have been doctored a very short time before Oates sealed it up. You see where we’re heading?”

“Yes,” said Harper unwillingly. “I see, all right. But suppose Legge had the stuff on him and put it on the dart just before he threw it—”

“He didn’t,” said Alleyn. “Believe me, he didn’t. He’s a clumsy man. He fumbles. His hands are coarse and his fingers are thick. To get cyanide on that dart with seven pairs of eyes watching him, he’d need the skill and the hands of a conjurer. Even Abel Pomeroy who thinks, or wants to think, Legge did the job, can’t offer an idea of how he did it. Parish, who has thrown Legge in my teeth every time I’ve seen him, hasn’t an argument to offer. And on the other side we’ve got Will, Miss Moore, Miss Darragh and Cubitt all ready to swear, with, I believe, perfect truth, that Legge, as he stood there under the light, had no chance of anointing the fourth, or any other dart.”

“But we can’t explain the poison in any other way.”

“Oh yes,” said Alleyn, “I think we can. This is our case.”
iv

Five o’clock had struck and they were still at the police station. Alleyn had gone over every word of his report with Harper. He had described each interview and had sorted the scraps of evidence into two groups, the relevant and the irrelevant. He had poured prussic acid solution into Abel’s little jar and, to reproduce rat-hole conditions, had placed it in a closed drawer. At the end of forty-six minutes half had evaporated.

“So you see,” said Alleyn, “if the liquid you found in the tin is water, as I believe it is, it looks as if the murderer must have visited the garage within forty-five minutes. Now on that night — the night on which Watchman chipped Legge and Will Pomeroy lost his temper — Legge gave an exhibition of dart-throwing which lasted only a few seconds. This took place a few minutes after Abel had set the poison in the garage. The argument followed. Legge went into the public bar, where he brought off the trick with the darts. He then returned and joined the others in a game of Round-the-Clock—”

“There you are,” interrupted Harper, “he could— sorry! Go on.”

“I know he could, Nick, but wait a bit. According to your report they all, with the exception of Miss Darragh, who had gone to bed, stayed in the private taproom until closing time. Our forty-five minutes have gone.”

“I suppose,” said Harper, “one of them might have gone out for a few minutes without being noticed.”

“Yes, and that is a point that will be urged by counsel. All we can prove here is opportunity — possibility. We can’t bring anything home. May we have the stuff you took from the rat-hole, Nick? Fox, would you get my bag? Mr. Noggins was generous with his prussic acid and there are at least three ounces of the water, if it is water. The analyst can lend us half. Let’s poach on his preserves and find out for ourselves.”

Fox opened Alleyn’s bag. From it he took two open-mouthed vessels about two inches high, two watch glasses, and a small bottle. Alleyn squinted at the bottle.

“Silver nitrate. That’s the stuff. Can you produce some warm water, Nick? Well, well I
am
exceeding my duty to be sure.”

Harper went out and returned with a jug of water and a photographic dish. Alleyn poured a little water into the dish, half-filled one of his tiny vessels with the fluid found in the rat-hole, and the other with acid from Abel’s bottle. He wetted the underside of the watch-glasses with nitrate solution and placed them over the vessels. He then stood the vessels, closed by the watch-glasses, in the warm water.

“Fox now says the Lord’s Prayer backwards,” he explained. “I emit a few oddments of ectoplasm and Hi Cockalorum the spell is wound up! Take a look at that, Nick.”

They stared at the dish. On the surface of the prussic acid a little spiral had risen. It became denser, it flocculated, and the watch-glass was no longer transparent but covered with an opaque whiteness.

“That’s cyanide, that was,” said Alleyn. “Now, look at the other. A blank, my lord. It’s water, Br’er Fox, it’s water. Now let’s pour them back into their respective bottles and don’t give me away to the analyst.”

“I suppose,” said Harper, as Alleyn tidied up, “I suppose this means we needn’t worry ourselves about the cupboard. The cupboard doesn’t come into the blasted affair.”

Alleyn held on the palm of his hand the three pieces of glass he had separated from the fragments of the broken brandy tumbler, and the small misshapen lumps he had found in the ashes of the fire.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Yes. We’re not home yet, not by a long march, but the cupboard still comes into the picture. Think.”

Harper looked from the pieces of glass to Alleyn’s face and back again.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “yes. But you’ll have the devil of a job to prove it.”

“I agree,” said Alleyn. “Nevertheless, Nick, I hope to prove it.”

i

Parish came downstairs singing “
La Donna é Mobile
.” He had a pleasant baritone voice which had been half-trained in the days when he had contemplated musical comedy. He sang stylishly and one could not believe that he sang unconsciously. He swung open the door of the private tap and entered on the last flourish of that impertinent, that complacently debonair refrain.

“Good evening sir,” said Abel from behind the bar. “ ’Tis pleasant to hear you’m back to your churruping ways again.”

Parish smiled wistfully.

“Ah, Abel,” he said with a slight sigh, “it’s not as easy as it sounds; but my cousin would have been the last man to want long faces, poor dear old fellow.”

“So he would, then,” rejoined Abel heartily, “the very last.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Nark, shaking his head. Norman Cubitt looked over the top of his tankard and raised his eyebrows. Legge moved into the inglenook where Miss Darragh sat knitting.

“What’ll you take, Mr. Parish?” asked Abel.

“A Treble Extra. I need it. Hullo, Norman old man,” said Parish with a sort of brave gaiety. “How’s the work going?”

“Nicely, thank you, Seb.” Cubitt glanced at the clock. It was a quarter past seven. “I’m thinking of starting a big canvas,” he said.

“Are you? What subject?”

“Decima,” said Cubitt. He put his tankard down on the bar. “She has very kindly said she’ll sit to me.”

“How’ll you paint her?” asked Parish.

“I thought on the downs by Cary Edge. She’s got a red sweater thing. It’ll be life-size. Full length.”

“Ah, now,” exclaimed Miss Darragh from the ingle-nook, “you’ve taken my advice in the latter end. Haven’t I been at you, now, ever since I got here, to take Miss Moore for your subject? I’ve never seen a better. Sure, the picture’ll be your masterpiece, for she’s a lovely young creature.”

“But my dear chap,” objected Parish, “we’re off in a day or two. You’ll never finish it.”

“I was going to break it gently to you, Seb. If you don’t object I think I’ll stay on for a bit.”

Parish looked slightly hurt.

“That’s just as you like, of course,” he said. “Don’t ask me to stay. The place is too full of memories.”

“Besides,” said Cubitt drily, “you start rehearsals to-day week, don’t you?”

“As a matter of fact I do.” Parish raised his arms and then let them fall limply to his sides. “Work!” he said. “Back to the old grind. Ah well!” And he added with an air of martyrdom, “I can go back by train.”

“I’ll drive you into Illington, of course.”

“Thank you, old boy. Yes, I’d better get back to the treadmill.”

“Keep a stiff upper lip, Seb,” said Cubitt with a grin.

The door opened and Alleyn came in. He wore a dinner jacket and stiff shirt. Someone once said of him that he looked like a cross between a grandee and a monk. In evening clothes the grandee predominated. Parish gave him a quick appraising glance, Mr. Nark goggled, and Miss Darragh looked up with a smile. Cubitt rumpled his hair and said: “Hullo! Here comes the county!”

Mr. Legge shrank back into the inglenook. Upon all of them a kind of wariness descended. They seemed to melt away from him and towards each other. Alleyn asked for two glasses of the special sherry and told Abel that he and Fox would be out till latish.

“May we have a key, Mr. Pomeroy?”

“Us’ll leave side-door open,” said Abel. “No need fur key, sir. Be no criminals in this neighbourhood. Leastways—” He stopped short and looked pointedly at Legge.

“That’s splendid,” said Alleyn. “How far is it to Colonel Brammington’s?”

“ ’Bout eight mile, sir. Shankley Court. A great masterpiece of a place, sir, with iron gates and a deer park. Carry on for mile beyond Illington and turn left at The Man of Devon.”

“Right,” said Alleyn. “We needn’t leave for half an hour.”

Cubitt went out.

Alleyn fidgeted with a piece of rag round his left hand. It was clumsily tied and fell away, disclosing a trail of red.

He twitched the handkerchief out of his breast pocket, glanced at it and swore. There was a bright red spot on the handkerchief.

“Blast that cut,” said Alleyn. “Now I’ll have to get a clean one.”

“Hurt hurrself, sir?” asked Abel.

“Tore my hand on a rusty nail in the garage.”

“In the garage!” ejaculated Mr. Nark. “That’s a powerful dangerous place to get a cut finger. Germs galore, I dessay, and as like as not some of the poison fumes still floating about”

“Aye,” said Abel angrily, “that’s right, George Nark. All my premises is still with poison. Wonder ’tis you come anigh ’em. Here, Mr. Alleyn, sir, I’ll get ’ee a dressing fur that-thurr cut.”

“If I could have a bit of rag and a dab of peroxide or something.”

“Doan’t you have anything out of that fatal cupboard,” said Mr. Nark. “Not if you value the purity of your blood stream.”

“You know as well as I do,” said Abel, “that thurr cupboard’s been scrubbed and fumigated. Not that thurr’s anything in it. Thurr b’ain’t. Nicholas Harper made off with my first-aid set, innocent though it wurr.”

“And the iodine bottle,” pointed out Mr. Nark, “so you can’t give the inspector iodine, lethal or otherwise.”

“Thurr’s another first-aid box upstairs,” said Abel. “In bathroom cupboard. Will!” He looked into the public bar. “Will! Get t’other out of bathroom cupboard, my sonny. Look lively.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Pomeroy,” said Alleyn. “Don’t bother. I’ll use this handkerchief.”

“No trouble, sir, and you’ll need a bit of antiseptic in that cut if you took it off a rusty nail. I’m a terror fur iodine, sir. I wurr a surgeon’s orderly in France, Mr. Alleyn, and learned hospital ways. Scientific ideas b’ain’t George Nark’s private property though you might think they wurr.”

Will Pomeroy came downstairs and into the private bar. He put a small first-aid box on the counter and returned to the public bar. Abel opened the box.

“ ’Tis spandy-new,” he said, “I bought it from a traveller only couple of days afore accident. Hullo! Yurr, Will!”

“What’s up?” called Will.

“Iodine bottle’s gone.”

“Eh?”

“Where’s iodine?”

“I dunno. It’s not there!” shouted Will.

“Who’s had it?”

“I dunno. I haven’t.”

“It really doesn’t matter, Mr. Pomeroy,” said Alleyn. “It’s bled itself clean. Perhaps there wasn’t any iodine.”

“Course there wurr,” said Abel. “Yurr’s lil’ bed whurr it lay. Damme, who’s been at it?
Mrs. Ives
!”

He stumped out and could be heard roaring angrily about the back premises.

Alleyn put a bit of lint over his finger and Miss Darragh stuck it down with strapping. He went upstairs, carrying his own glass of sherry and Fox’s. Fox was standing before the looking-glass in his room, knotting a sober tie. He caught sight of Alleyn in the glass.

“Lucky I brought my blue suit,” said Fox, “and lucky you brought your dress clothes, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Why didn’t you let me tell Colonel Brammington that we’d neither of us change, Foxkin?”

“No, no, sir. It’s the right thing for you to dress, just as much as it’d be silly for me to do so. Well, it’d be an affected kind of way for me to act, Mr. Alleyn. I never get a black coat and boiled shirt on my back except at the Lodge meetings and when I’m on a night-club job. The Colonel would only think I was trying to put myself in a place where I don’t belong. Did you find what you wanted, Mr. Alleyn?”

‘“Abel bought another first-aid set, two days before Watchman died. The iodine has been taken. He can’t find it.”

“Is that so?”

Fox brushed the sleeves of his coat and cast a final searching glance at himself in the glass. “I washed that razor blade,” he said.

“Thank you, Fox. I was a little too free with it. Bled all over Abel’s bar. Most convincing. What’s the time? Half-past seven. A bit early yet. Let’s think this out.”

“Right-o, sir,” said Fox. He lifted his glass of sherry. “Good luck, Mr. Alleyn,” he said.

ii

Decima had promised to come to Coombe Head at eight o’clock. Cubitt lay on the lip of the cliff and stared at the sea beneath him, trying, as Alleyn had tried, to read order and sequence into the hieroglyphics traced by the restless seaweed. The sequence was long and subtle, unpausing, unhurried. Each pattern seemed significant but all melted into fluidity and he decided, as Alleyn had decided, that the forces that governed these beautiful but inane gestures ranged beyond the confines of his imagination. He fell to appraising the colour and the shifting tones of the water, translating these things into terms of paint, and he began to think of how, in the morning, he would make a rapid study from the lip of the cliff.

“But I must fix one pattern only in my memory and watch for it to appear in the sequence, like a measure in some intricate saraband.”

He was so intent on this project that he did not hear Decima come and was startled when she spoke to him.

“Norman?”

Her figure was dark and tall against the sky. He rose and faced her.

“Have you risen from the sea?” he asked. “You are lovely enough.”

She did not answer and he took her hand and led her a little way over the headland to a place where their figures no longer showed against the sky. Here they faced each other again.

“I am so bewildered,” said Decima. “I have tried since this morning to feel all sorts of things. Shame. Compassion for Will. Anxiety. I can feel none of them. I can only wonder why we should so suddenly have fallen in love.”

“It was only sudden for you,” said Cubitt. “Not for me.”

“But — Is that true? How long…?”

“Since last year. Since the first week of last year.”

Decima drew away from him.

“But, didn’t you know? I thought last year that you had guessed.”

“About Luke? Yes, I guessed.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“I wish very much that it hadn’t happened,” said Decima. “Of that I am ashamed. Not for the orthodox reason but because it made such a fool of me; because I pretended to myself that I was sanely satisfying a need, whereas in reality I merely lost my head and behaved like a dairymaid.”

“Hullo,” said Cubitt. “You’re being very county. What’s wrong with dairymaids in the proletariat?”

“Brute,” muttered Decima and, between laughter and tears, stumbled into his arms.

“I love you very much,” whispered Cubitt.

“You’d a funny way of showing it. Nobody ever would have dreamed you thought anything about me.”

“Oh yes, they would. They did.”

“Who?” cried Decima in terror. “Not Will?”

“No. Miss Darragh. She as good as told me so. I’ve seen her eyeing me whenever you were in the offing. God knows I had a hard job to keep my eyes off you. I’ve wanted like hell to do this.”

But after a few moments Decima freed herself.

“This is going the wrong way,” she said. “There mustn’t be any of this.”

Cubitt said, “All right. We’ll come back to earth. I promised myself I’d keep my head. Here, my darling, have a cigarette, for God’s sake, and don’t look at me. Sit down. That’s right. Now listen. You remember the morning of that day?”

“When you and Sebastian came over the hill?”

“Yes. Just as you were telling Luke you could kill him. Did you?”

“No.”

“Of course you didn’t. Nor did I. But we made a botch of things this morning. Seb and I denied that we saw Luke as we came back from Coombe Head and I think Alleyn knew we were lying. I got a nasty jolt when he announced that he was going to see you. I didn’t know what to do. I dithered round and finally followed him, leaving Seb to come home by himself. I was too late. You’d told him?”

“I told him that Luke and I quarrelled that morning because Luke had tried — had tried to make love to me. I didn’t tell him… Norman: I lied about the rest. I said it hadn’t happened before. I was afraid. I was cold with panic. I didn’t know what you and Sebastian had told him. I thought if he found out that I had been Luke’s mistress and that we’d quarrelled, he might think… They say poison’s a woman’s weapon don’t they? It was like one of those awful dreams. I don’t know what I said. I lost my head. And that other man, Fox, kept writing in a book. And then you came and it was as if — oh, as if instead of being alone in the dark, and terrified, I had someone beside me.”

“Why wouldn’t you stay with me when they’d gone?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to think. I was muddled.”

“I was terrified you wouldn’t come here to-night, Decima.”

“I shouldn’t have come. What are we to do about Will?”

“Tell him.”

“He’ll be so bewildered,” said Decima, “and so miserable.”

“Would you have married him if this hadn’t happened?”

“I haven’t said I would marry you.”

“I have,” said Cubitt.

“I don’t know that I believe in the institution of marriage.”

“You’ll find that out when you’ve tried it, my darling.”

“I’m a farmer’s daughter. A peasant.”

“The worst of you communists,” said Cubitt, “is that you’re such snobs. Always worrying about class distinctions. Come here.”

“Norman,” said Decima presently, “who do you think it was?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Cubitt pressed her hands against him and, after a moment, spoke evenly. “Did Will ever guess about you and Luke?”

She moved away from him at arm’s-length. “You can’t think Will would do it?”

“Did he guess?”

“I don’t think — I—”

“I rather thought he had guessed,” said Cubitt.

iii

When Alleyn had gone out, the atmosphere of the taproom changed. Parish began to talk to Abel, Miss Darragh asked Legge when he was moving into Illington, Mr. Nark cleared his throat and, by the simple expedient of shouting down everyone else, won the attention of the company.

“Ah,” he said. “Axing the road to Shankley Court, was he? Ah. I expected it.”

Abel gave a disgruntled snort.

“I expected it,” repeated Mr. Nark firmly. “I had a chat with the Chief Inspector this morning.”