Death at the Bar. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ look at me!’ said Miss Darragh. ‘What a pickle I’m in, and me picture ruined. I was determined to finish it and I stayed on till the thunder and lightning drove me away in terror of me life, and when I emerged from the tunnel didn’t it break over me like the entire contents of the ocean. Well, I’ll go up now and change, for I must look a terrible old sight.’

      She glanced down at herself, gasped, cast a comical glance at the three men, and bolted.

      Will Pomeroy and two companions entered the Public from the street door. They wore oilskin hats and coats, and their boots squelched on the floor-boards. Will went into the bar and served out drinks. Parish leant over the private bar and gave them good-evening.

      ‘You seem to have caught it in the neck,’ he observed.

      ‘That’s right, Mr Parish,’ said Will. ‘She’s a proper masterpiece. The surface water’ll be pouring through the tunnel if she keeps going at this gait. Here you are chaps, I’m going to change.’

      He went through the Private into the house, leaving a wet trail behind him. They heard him at the telephone in the passage. He had left the door open and his voice carried above the sound of the storm.

      ‘That you, Dessy? Dessy, this storm’s a terror. You’d better not drive that old car over tonight. Tunnel’ll be a running stream. It’s not safe.’

      Watchman began to whistle under his breath. Abel returned and took Will’s place in the bar.

      ‘I’d walk over myself,’ Will was saying, ‘only I can’t leave father single-handed. We’ll have a crowd in, likely, with this weather.’

      ‘I’m going to have a drink,’ said Watchman suddenly.

      ‘Walk?’ said Will. ‘You’re not scared of lightning, then. Good enough, and nobody better pleased than I am. I’ll lend you a sweater and, Dessy, you’d better warn them you’ll likely stay the night. Why not? So I do, then and you’ll find it out, my dear. I’ll come a fetch along the way to meet you.’

      The receiver clicked. Will stuck his head round the door.

      ‘Dessy’s walking over, Dad. I’ll go through the tunnel to meet her. Have you seen Bob Legge?’

      ‘He said he’d be up to Illington tonight, sonny.’

      ‘He’ll never make it. Has he left?’

      ‘In his room yet, I fancy.’

      ‘I’ll see,’ said Will. ‘I’ve told Dessy she’d better stay the night.’

      ‘Very welcome, I’m sure. Ask Mrs Ives to make room ready.’

      ‘So I will, then,’ said Will, and disappeared.

      ‘Walking over!’ said Abel. ‘A matter of two miles it is, from yurr to Cary Edge. Wonderful what love’ll do, gentlemen, ’baint it?’

      ‘Amazing,’ said Watchman. ‘Is nobody else going to drink?’

      II

      By eight o’clock the public tap was full and the private nearly so. Decima Moore and Will had looked in, but at the moment were closeted upstairs with Mr Legge who had apparently decided not to go to Illington. Miss Darragh came down in dry clothes with her curls rubbed up, and sat writing letters by the fire.

      Two of Abel’s regular cronies had come in: Dick Oates, the Ottercombe policeman, and Arthur Gill, the grocer. A little later they were joined by Mr George Nark, an elderly bachelor-farmer whose political views chimed with those of the Left Movement, and who was therefore a favourite of Will Pomeroy’s. Mr Nark had been a great reader of the Liberal Literature of his youth, and had never got over the surprise and excitement that he had experienced thirty years ago on reading Winwood Reade, H G Wells, and the Evolution of Man. The information that he had derived from these and other serious works had, with the passage of time, become transmitted into simplified forms which though they would have astonished the authors, completely satisfied Mr Nark.

      The rain still came down in torrents and Mr Nark reported the Coombe Tunnel was a running stream.

      ‘It’s a crying shame,’ he said, gathering the attention of the Private. ‘Bin going on for hundreds of years and no need for it. We can be flooded out three times a year and capitalistic government only laughs at us. Science would have druv a class-A highroad into the Coombe if somebody had axed it. But does a capitalistic government ax the advice of Science? Not it. It’s afraid to. And why? Because Science knows too much for it.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Mr Gill.

      ‘That’s capitalism for you,’ continued Mr Nark. ‘Blind-stupid and arrogant. Patching up where it should pitch-in and start afresh. What can you expect, my sonnies, from a parcel of wage-slaves and pampered aristocrats that don’t know the smell of a day’s work. So long as they’ve got their luxuries for themselves –’

      He stopped and looked at Miss Darrah.

      ‘Axing your pardon, Miss,’ said Mr Nark. ‘In the heat of my discourse I got carried off my feet with the powerful rush of ideas and forgot your presence. This’ll be all gall and wormwood to you, doubtless.’

      ‘Not at all, Mr Nark,’ said Miss Darragh cheerfully. ‘I’m myself a poor woman, and I’ve moods when I’m consumed with jealousy for anybody who’s got a lot of money.’

      This was not precisely the answer Mr Nark, who was a prosperous farmer, desired.

      ‘It’s the government,’ he said, ‘that does every man jack of us out of our scientific rights.’

      ‘As far as that goes,’ said PC Oates, ‘I reckon one government’s as scientific as the other. Look at sewage for instance.’

      ‘Why?’ demanded Mr Nark, ‘should we look at sewage? What’s sewage got to do with it? We’re all animals.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Mr Gill, ‘so we are, then.’

      ‘Do you know, Dick Oates,’ continued Mr Nark, ‘that you’ve got a rudimentary tail?’

      ‘And if I have, which I don’t admit –’

      ‘Ask Mr Cubitt, then. He’s an artist and no doubt has studied the skeleton of man in its present stage of evolution. The name escapes me for the moment, but we’ve all got it. Isn’t that correct, sir?’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ said Norman Cubitt hurriedly. ‘Quite right, Mr Nark.’

      ‘There you are,’ said Mr Nark. ‘Apes, every manjack of us, and our arms have only grown shorter through us knocking off the habit of hanging from limbs of trees.’

      ‘What about our tongues?’ asked Mr Oates.

      ‘Never mind about them,’ answered Mr Nark warmly, ‘do you know that an unborn child’s got gills like a fish?’

      ‘That doesn’t make a monkey of it, however.’

      ‘It СКАЧАТЬ