Singing in the Shrouds. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ thought I’d bring these up myself, sir,’ he said, referring obliquely to his cadet. ‘They’re in code. Urgent.’

      Captain Bannerman said: ‘All right. You might wait, will you,’ and went into his room. He got out his code book and deciphered the messages. After a considerable interval he called out: ‘Sparks.’

      The wireless officer tucked his cap under his arm, entered the captain’s cabin and shut the door.

      ‘This is a damned perishing bloody turn-up,’ Captain Bannerman said. The wireless officer waited, trying not to look expectant. Captain Bannerman walked over to the starboard porthole and silently re-read the decoded messages. The first was from the Managing Director of the Cape Line Company:

      ‘Very secret. Directors compliments stop confident you will show every courtesy to Superintendent Alleyn boarding you off Portsmouth by pilot cutter stop will travel as passenger stop suggest uses pilots room stop please keep me personally advised all developments stop your company relies on your discretion and judgment stop Cameron stop message ends.’

      Captain Bannerman made an indeterminate but angry noise and re-read the second message.

      ‘Urgent immediate and confidential stop Superintendent R. Alleyn will board you off Portsmouth by pilot cutter stop he will explain nature of problem stop this department is in communication with your company stop C.A. Majoriebanks Assistant Commissioner Criminal Investigation Department Scotland Yard message ends.’

      ‘I’ll give you the replies,’ Captain Bannerman said, glaring at his subordinate. ‘Same for both! “Instructions received and noted Bannerman.” And you’ll oblige me, Sparks, by keeping the whole thing under your cap.’

      ‘Certainly, sir.’

      ‘Dead under.’

      ‘Certainly, sir.’

      ‘Very well.’

      ‘Thank you, sir.’

      When the wireless officer had gone Captain Bannerman remained in a sort of scandalized trance for half a minute and then returned to the bridge.

      Throughout the rest of the night he gave the matter in hand, which was the pilotage of his ship through the worst fog for ten years, his sharpest attention. At the same time and on a different level, he speculated about his passengers. He had caught glimpses of them from the bridge. Like every man who so much as glanced at her, he had received a very positive impression of Mrs Dillington-Blick. A fine woman. He had also noticed Jemima Carmichael who came under the general heading of Sweet Young Girl and as they approached the tropics would probably cause a ferment among his officers. At another level he was aware of, and disturbed by the two radiograms. Why the suffering cats, he angrily wondered, should he have to take in at the last second, a plain-clothes detective? His mind ranged through an assortment of possible reasons. Stowaway? Escaping criminal? Wanted man in the crew? Perhaps, merely, a last-minute assignment at Las Palmas but if so, why didn’t the fellow fly? It would be an infernal bore to have to put him up: in the pilot’s room of all places where one would be perpetually aware of his presence. At four o’clock, the time of low vitality, Captain Bannerman was visited by a premonition that this was going to be an unlucky voyage.

       III

      All the next morning the fog still hung over the English Channel. As she waited off Portsmouth the Farewell was insulated in obscurity. Her five male passengers were on deck with their collars turned up. In the cases of Messrs Merryman, McAngus and Cuddy and Father Jourdain they wore surprised-looking caps on their heads and wandered up and down the boat-deck or sat disconsolately on benches that would probably never be used again throughout the voyage. Before long Aubyn Dale came back to his own quarters. He had, in addition to his bedroom, a little sitting-room: an arrangement known in the company’s offices as The Suite. He had asked Mrs Dillington-Blick and Dr Timothy Makepiece to join him there for a drink before luncheon. Mrs Dillington-Blick had sumptuously appeared on deck at about eleven o’clock and, figuratively speaking with one hand tied behind her back, had achieved this invitation by half past. Dr Makepiece had accepted, hoping that Jemima Carmichael, too, had been invited but Jemima spent the morning walking on the boat-deck and reading in a chilly but undiscovered little shelter aft of the centrecastle.

      Mr McAngus, too, remained but a short time on deck and soon retired to the passengers’ drawing-room, where, after peering doubtfully at the bookcases, he sat in a corner and fell asleep. Mrs Cuddy was also there and also asleep. She had decided in the teeth of the weather forecast that it was going to be rough and had taken a pill. Miss Abbott was tramping up and down the narrow lower deck having, perhaps instinctively, hit upon that part of the ship which, after the first few hours, is deserted by almost everyone. In the plan shown to passengers it was called the promenade deck.

      It was Jemima who first noticed the break in the weather. A kind of thin warmth fell across the page of her book: she looked up and saw that the curtain of fog had grown threadbare and that sunlight had weakly filtered through. At the same moment the Farewell gave her noonday hoot and then Jemima heard the sound of an engine. She went over to the port side and there, quite close, was the pilot cutter. She watched it come alongside the rope ladder. A tall man stood amidships, looking up at the Farewell. Jemima was extremely critical of men’s clothes and she noticed his with absentminded approval. A sailor at the head of the ladder dropped a line to the cutter and hauled up two cases. The pilot went off and the tall man climbed the ladder very handily and was met by the cadet on duty who took him up to the bridge.

      On his way he passed Mr Merryman and Mr Cuddy who looked up from their crime novels and were struck by the same vague notion, immediately dismissed, that they had seen the new arrival before. In this they were not altogether mistaken: on the previous evening they had both looked at his heavily distorted photograph in the Evening Herald. He was Superintendent R. Alleyn.

       IV

      Captain Bannerman put his hands in his jacket pockets and surveyed his latest passenger. At the outset Alleyn had irritated Captain Bannerman by not looking like his own conception of a plainclothes detective and by speaking with what the Captain, who was an inverted snob, considered a bloody posh accent entirely unsuited to a cop. He himself had been at some pains to preserve his own Midland habit of speech.

      ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Superintendent A ’leen is it? – I take it you’ll tell me what all this is in aid of and I don’t mind saying I’ll be glad to know.’

      ‘I suppose, sir,’ Alleyn said, ‘you’ve been cursing ever since you got whatever signals they sent you.’

      ‘Well – not to say cursing.’

      ‘I know damn’ well what a bore this must be. The only excuse I can offer is one of expedience: and I must say of extreme urgency.’

      Captain Bannerman, deliberately broadening his vowels said: ‘Sooch a-a-s?’

      ‘Such as murder. Multiple murder.’

      ‘Mooltipul murder? Here: you don’t mean this chap that says it with flowers and sings.’

      ‘I do, indeed.’

      ‘What the hell’s he got to do with my ship?’

      Tve every reason to believe,’ Alleyn said, ‘that he’s aboard your ship.’

      ‘Don’t talk daft.’

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