Death at the Bar. Ngaio Marsh

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ is she?’

      ‘She’s the Honourable Violet Darragh. She waters.’

      ‘She what?’

      ‘She does water-colours. Wait till you hear Norman on Violet.’

      ‘Is she a nuisance?’ asked Watchman apprehensively.

      ‘Not exactly. Well, in a way. Pure joy to me. Wait till you meet her.’

      Parish would say no more about Miss Darragh, and Watchman, only mildly interested, relapsed into a pleasant doze.

      ‘By the way,’ he said presently, ‘some driving expert nearly dashed himself to extinction against my bonnet.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Yes. At Diddlestock Corner. Came bucketing out of the blind turning on my right, beat me by a split second, and hung his silly little stern on my front bumpers. Ass!’

      ‘Any damage?’

      ‘No, no. He heaved his pygmy up by the bottom and I backed away. Funny sort of fellow he is.’

      ‘You knew him?’ asked Parish in surprise.

      ‘No.’ Watchman took the tip of his nose between thumb and forefinger. It was a gesture he used in cross-examination. ‘No, I don’t know him, and yet – there was something – I got the impression that he didn’t want to know me. Quite an educated voice. Labourer’s hands. False teeth, I rather fancy.’

      ‘You’re very observant,’ said Parish, lightly.

      ‘No more than the next man, but there was something about the fellow. I was going to ask if you knew him. His car’s in the garage.’

      ‘Surely it’s not – hallo, here are others.’

      Boots and voices sounded in the public bar. Will Pomeroy came through and leant over the counter. He looked, not toward Watchman or Parish, but into a settle on the far side of the Private, a settle whose high back was towards them.

      ‘’Evening, Bob,’ said Will cordially. ‘Kept you waiting?’

      ‘That’s all right, Will,’ said a voice from beyond the settle. ‘I’ll have a pint of bitter when you’re ready.’

      Luke Watchman uttered a stifled exclamation.

      ‘What’s up? asked his cousin.

      ‘Come here.’

      Parish strolled nearer to him and, in obedience to a movement of Watchman’s head, stooped towards him.

      ‘What’s up?’ he repeated.

      ‘That’s the same fellow,’ muttered Watchman, ‘he must have been here all the time. That’s his voice.’

      ‘Hell!’ said Parish delightedly.

      ‘D’you think he heard?’

      ‘Of course he heard.’

      ‘Blast the creature! Serves him right.’

      ‘Shut up.’

      The door into the private bar opened. Old Abel came in followed by Norman Cubitt. Cubitt took three darts from a collection in a pewter pot on the bar and moved in front of the dart board.

      ‘I’ll be there in a moment,’ said a woman’s voice from the passage. ‘Don’t start without me.’

      Abel walked into the ingle-nook and put a bottle on the mantelpiece.

      ‘Well, souls,’ he said, ‘reckon we’m settled the hash of they vermin. If thurr’s not a corpse on the premises afore long, I’ll be greatly astonished.’

       CHAPTER 2

       Advance by Watchman

      The bottle was a small one and as Sebastian Parish had remarked it was conspicuously labelled. The word ‘POISON’ in scarlet on a white ground ran diagonally across on an attached label. It struck a note of interjection and alarm and focused the attention of the five men. Few who read that warning escape a sudden jolt of the imagination.

      Parish said, ‘Mr Watchman thinks you are a public danger, Abel. He’s afraid we’ll all be poisoned.’

      ‘I’m afraid he’ll poison himself,’ said Watchman.

      ‘Who, sir? Me?’ asked Abel. ‘Not a bit of it. I be mortal cautious sort of chap when it comes to this manner of murderous tipple, Mr Watchman.’

      ‘I hope you are,’ said Cubitt from the dart board.

      ‘You’re not going to leave it on the mantelshelf, father?’ asked Will.

      ‘No fear of that, sonny. I’ll stow it away careful.’

      ‘You’d much better get rid of it altogether,’ said Watchman. ‘Don’t put it away somewhere. You’ll forget all about it and some day someone will take a sniff at it to find out what it is. Let me take it back to the chemist at Illington. I’d very much like to have a word with that gentleman.’

      ‘Lord love you,’ said Abel, opening his eyes very wide, ‘us’ve not finished with they bowldacious varmints yet, my sonnies. If so be they’ve got a squeak left in ’em us’ll give ’em another powerful whiff and finish ‘em off.’

      ‘At least,’ said Cubitt, throwing a dart into double-twenty, ‘at least you might put it out of reach.’

      ‘Mr Cubitt has a poison-phobia,’ said Watchman.

      ‘A what, sir?’

      ‘Never mind about that,’ said Cubitt. ‘I should have thought anybody might boggle at prussic acid.’

      ‘Don’t fret yourselves, gentlemen,’ said Abel. ‘Thurr’ll be none of this brew served out at the Feathers Tap.’

      He mounted the settle and taking the bottle from the mantelpiece pushed it into the top shelf of a double cupboard in the corner of the ingle-nook. He then pulled off the old gloves he wore, threw them on the fire, and turned the key.

      ‘Nobody can call me a careless man,’ he said. ‘I’m all for looking after myself. Thurr’s my first-aid box in thurr, ready to hand, and if any of the chaps cuts themselves with a mucky fish-knife or any other infectious trifle of that sort, they gets a swill of iodine in scratch. Makes ’em squirm a bit and none the worse for that. I learnt that in the war, my sonnies. I was a surgeon’s orderly and I know the mighty powers thurr be in drugs.’

СКАЧАТЬ