Dead Water (23 page)

The launch went about and crashed into the jetty. The last thing he heard was somebody yelling high above him.

He was climbing down innumerable flights of stairs. They were impossibly steep – perpendicular – but he had to go down. They tipped and he fell outwards and looked into an abyss laced with flashlights. He lost his hold, dropped into nothing, and was on the stairs again, climbing, climbing. Somebody was making comfortable noises. He looked into a face.

‘Fox,’ he said, with immense satisfaction.

‘There now!’ said Inspector Fox.

Alleyn went to sleep.

When he woke, it was to find Troy nearby. Her hand was against his face. ‘So there you are,’ he said.

‘Hallo,’ said Troy and kissed him.

The wall beyond her was dappled with sunshine and looked familiar. He puzzled over it for a time and because he wanted to lay
his face closer to her hand, turned his head and was stabbed through the temples.

‘Don’t move,’ Troy said. ‘You’ve taken an awful bash.’

‘I see.’

‘You’ve been concussed and all.’

‘How long?’

‘About thirty-four hours.’

‘This is Coombe’s cottage.’

‘That’s right, but you’re meant not to talk.’

‘Ridiculous,’ he said and dozed off again.

Troy slid her hand carefully from under his bristled jaw and crept out of the room.

Superintendent Coombe was in his parlour with Sir James Curtis and Fox. ‘He woke again,’ Troy said to Curtis, ‘just for a moment.’

‘Say anything?’

‘Yes. He’s – ’ her voice trembled. ‘He’s all right.’

‘Of course he’s all right. I’ll take a look at him.’

She returned with him to the bedroom and stood by the window while Curtis stooped over his patient. It was a brilliant morning. The channel was dappled with sequins. The tide was low and three people walked over the causeway: an elderly woman, a young man and a girl. Five boats ducked and bobbed in Fisherman’s Bay. The hotel launch was still jammed in the understructure of the jetty and looked inconsequent and unreal, suspended above its natural element. A complete write-off, it was thought.

‘You’re doing fine,’ Curtis said.

‘Where’s Troy?’

‘Here, darling.’

‘Good. What happened?’

‘You were knocked out,’ Curtis said. ‘Coombe and two other chaps managed to fish you up.’

‘Coombe?’

‘Fox rang him from the hotel as soon as you’d set off on your wild goose chase. They were on the jetty.’

‘Oh yes. Yelling. Where’s Fox?’

‘You’d better keep quiet for a bit, Rory. Everything’s all right. Plenty of time.’

‘I want to see Fox, Curtis.’

‘Very well, but only for one moment.’

Troy fetched him.

‘This is more like it now,’ Fox said.

‘Have you found him?’

‘We have, yes. Yesterday evening, at low tide.’

‘Where?’

‘About four miles along the coast.’

‘It was deliberate, Fox.’

‘So I understand. Coombe saw it.’

‘Yes, well now, that’s quite enough,’ said Curtis.

Fox stepped back.

‘Wait a minute,’ Alleyn said. ‘Anything on him? Fox? Anything on him?’

‘All right. Tell him.’

‘Yes, Mr Alleyn, there was. Very sodden. Pulp almost, but you can make it out. The top copy of that list and the photograph.’

‘Ah!’ Alleyn said. ‘She gave them to him. I thought as much.’

He caught his breath and then closed his eyes.

‘That’s right,’ Curtis said. ‘You go to sleep again.’

‘My sister, Fanny Winterbottom,’ said Miss Emily, two days later, ‘once remarked with characteristic extravagance (nay, on occasion, vulgarity), that, wherever I went, I kicked up as much dust as a dancing dervish. The observation was inspired more by fortuitous alliteration than by any degree of accuracy. If, however, she were alive to-day, she would doubtless consider herself justified. I have made disastrous mischief in Portcarrow.’

‘My dear Miss Emily, aren’t you, yourself, falling into Mrs Winterbottom’s weakness for exaggeration? Miss Cost’s murder had nothing to do with your decision on the future of the Spring.’

‘But it
had,’
said Miss Emily, smacking her gloved hand on the arm of Superintendent Coombe’s rustic seat. ‘Let us have logic. If I had not persisted with my decision, her nervous system, to say nothing of her emotions (at all times unstable), would not have been
exacerbated to such a degree that she would have behaved as she did.’

‘How do you know?’ Alleyn asked. ‘She might have cut up rough on some other provocation. She had her evidence. The possession of a dangerous instrument is, in itself, a danger. Even if you had never visited the Island, Miss Emily, Barrimore and Maine would still have laughed at the Festival.’

‘She would have been less disturbed by their laughter,’ said Miss Emily. She looked fixedly at Alleyn. ‘I am tiring you, no doubt,’ she said. ‘I must go. Those kind children are waiting in the motor. I merely called to say
au revoir,
my dear Roderique.’

‘You are not tiring me in the least and your escort can wait. I imagine they are very happy to do so. It’s no good, Miss Emily. I know you’re eaten up with curiosity.’

‘Not curiosity. A natural dislike of unexplained detail.’

‘I couldn’t sympathize more. Which details?’

‘No doubt you are always asked when you first began to suspect the criminal. When did you first begin to suspect Dr Maine?’

‘When you told me that, at about twenty to eight, you saw nobody but Wally on the road down to Fisherman’s Bay.’

‘And I should have seen Dr Maine?’

‘You should have seen him pulling out from the bay jetty in his launch. And then Trehern, quite readily, said he saw the doctor leaving in his launch about five past eight. Why should he lie about the time he left? And what, as Trehern pointed out, did he do in the half-hour that elapsed?’

‘Did you not believe that poor woman when she accounted for the half-hour?’

‘Not for a second. If he had been with her she would have said so when I first interviewed her. He has a patient in the hotel and she could have quite easily given that as a reason and would have wanted to provide him with an alibi. Did you notice his look of astonishment when she cut in? Did you notice how she stopped him before he could say anything? No, I didn’t believe her and I think he knew I didn’t.’

‘And that, you consider, was why he ran away?’

‘Partly that, perhaps. He may have felt,’ Alleyn said, ‘quite suddenly, that he couldn’t take it. He may have had his moment of truth. Imagine it, Miss Emily. The blinding realization that must
come to a killer: the thing that forces so many of them to give themselves up or to bolt or to commit suicide. Suppose we had believed her and they had gone away together. For the rest of his life he would have been tied to the woman he loved by the most appalling obligation it’s possible to imagine.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was a proud man, I think. You are right. Pray go on.’

‘Maine had spoken to Miss Cost outside the church. She was telling Mrs Carstairs she would go to the Spring after the service and collect the necklace that had been left on the shelf. She ran after Maine and Mrs Carstairs went into church. We don’t know what passed between them but I think she may, poor creature, have made some final advance and been rebuffed. She must have armed herself with her horrid little snapshot and list of dates and been carrying them about in her bag, planning to call on him, precipitate a final scene and then confront him with her evidence. In any case she forced them on him and very likely told him she was going to give the whole story to the Press.’

‘Did she – ?’

‘Yes. It was in the mailbag.’

‘You said, I think, that you did not normally intercept Her Majesty’s mail.’

‘I believe I did,’ said Alleyn blandly. ‘Nor do we. Normally.’

‘Go on.’

‘He knew she was going to the Spring. He was no doubt on the look-out as he washed his hands at the sink in the Trethaways’ cottage. He saw Wally. He probably saw you pin up your notice. He saw Barrimore tear it down and go away. He went up and let himself in. He had admittance discs and used one when we sent for him. He hid behind the boulder and waited for Miss Cost. He knew of course that there were loose rocks up there. He was extremely familiar with the terrain.’

‘Ah, yes.’

‘When it was over he scraped away his footprints. Later on, when we were there, he was very quick to get up to the higher level and walk over it. Any prints that might be left would thus appear to be innocuous. Then he went back in his launch at ten minutes past eight and waited to be sent for to examine the body.’

‘It gives me an unpleasant
frisson
when I remember that he also examined mine,’ said Miss Emily. ‘A cool, resourceful man. I rather liked him.’

‘So did I,’ Alleyn said. ‘I liked him. He intended us, of course, to follow up the idea of mistaken identity but he was too clever to push it overmuch. If we hadn’t discovered that you visited the Spring, he would have said he’d seen you. As it was he let us find out for ourselves. He hoped Wally would be thought to have done it and would have given evidence of his irresponsibility and seen him bestowed in a suitable institution, which, as he very truly observed, might be the best thing for him, after all.’

‘I shall do something about that boy,’ said Miss Emily. ‘There must be special schools. I shall attend to it.’ She looked curiously at Alleyn. ‘What would you have done if the lights had not failed, or if you had caught up with him?’

‘Routine procedure, Miss Emily. Asked him to come to Coombe’s office and make a statement. I doubt if we had a case against him. Too much conjecture. I hoped, by laying so much of the case open, to induce a confession. Once the Wally theory was dismissed, I think Maine would have not allowed Barrimore or anyone else, to be arrested. But I’m glad it turned out as it did.’

Fox came through the gate into Coombe’s garden.

‘Bon jour, Mademoiselle,’
he said laboriously.
‘J’espère que vous êtes en bonne santé ce matin.’

Miss Emily winced. ‘Mr Fox,’ she said in slow but exquisite French. ‘You are, I am sure, a very busy man, but if you can spare an hour twice a week, I think I might be able to give you some assistance with your conversation. I should be delighted to do so.’

Fox asked her if she would be good enough to repeat her statement and as she did so, blushed to the roots of his hair.

‘Mademoiselle,’
he said,
‘c’est bonne,
no blast –
pardon – bien aimable de vous
– I mean –
de votre part.
Would you really? I can’t think of anything I’d like better.’

‘Alors, c’est entendu,’
said Miss Emily.

Patrick and Jenny sat in his car down by the waterfront. Miss Emily’s luggage and Jenny’s and Patrick’s suitcases were roped into the open boot. Miss Emily had settled to spend a few days at the Manor Park
Hotel and had invited them both to be her guests. Patrick felt he should stay with his mother but she was urgent for him to go.

‘It made me feel terribly inadequate,’ he said. ‘As if somehow I must have failed her. And yet, you know, I thought we got on awfully well together, always. I’m fond of my mama.’

‘Of course you are. And she adores you. I expect it’s just that she wants to be by herself until – well, until the first ghastly shock’s over.’

‘By herself? With him there?’

‘He’s not behaving badly, Patrick. Is he?’

‘No. Oddly enough, no.’ He looked thoughtfully at Jenny. ‘I knew about Bob Maine,’ he said. ‘Of course I did. I’ve never been able to make out why I didn’t like it. Not for conventional reasons. If you say Œdipus Complex I shall be furious.’

‘I won’t say it then.’

‘The thing is, I suppose, one doesn’t like one’s mama being a
femme fatale.
And she is, a bit, you know. I’m so sorry for her,’ he said violently, ‘that it makes me angry. Why should that be? I really don’t understand it at all.’

‘Do you know, I think it’s impossible for us to take the idea of older people being in love. It’s all wrong, I expect, and I daresay it’s the arrogance of youth or something.’

‘You may be right. Jenny, I do love you with all my heart. Could we get married, do you think?’

‘I don’t see anything against it,’ said Jenny.

After a longish interval, Jenny said: ‘Miss Emily’s taking her time, isn’t she? Shall we walk up to the cottage and say goodbye to that remarkable man?’

‘Well – if you like.’

‘Come on.’

They strolled along the seafront, holding hands. A boy was sitting on the edge of the terrace, idly throwing pebbles into the channel.

It was Wally.

As they came up he turned and, when he saw them, held out his hands.

‘All gone,’ he said.

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Published by
HarperCollinsPublishers
2009

FIRST EDITION

Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works

Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1963

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EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-34479-6