Death at the Bar (14 page)

“Well, I’ll be blooming well blowed,” said Fox.

“He must have nearly finished. Switch off the light, Fox. It’d be a pity to keep him waiting.”

Fox switched off the light. He and Alleyn sat like shadows in the parlour. The Ottercombe town clock struck twelve and a moment later, the same dragging footsteps sounded in the yard. The side door was shut and the steps went past the parlour. The staircase light clicked and a faint glow showed underneath the door.

“Up he goes,” whispered Alleyn.

Legge went slowly upstairs, turned the light off, and moved along the passage above their heads. A door closed.

“Now then,” said Alleyn.

They went upstairs in the dark and slipped into Alleyn’s room, the first on the top landing. The upstairs passage was bright with moonlight.

“His is the end one,” murmured Alleyn. “He’s got his light on. Do you suppose he’ll set to work and wipe all the utensils in his room?”

“The thing’s silly,” whispered Fox. “I’ve never known anything like it. What’s the good of it? We’ll
get
his blasted dabs.”

“What do you bet me he won’t come down to breakfast in gloves?”

“He’s capable of anything,” snorted Fox.

“
Sssh
! He’s coming out.”

“Lavatory?”

“Possibly.”

Alleyn groped for the door and unlatched it.

“What are you doing, sir?” asked Fox rather peevishly.

“Squinting through the crack,” Alleyn whispered. “Now he’s come out of the lavatory.”

“I can hear that.”

“He’s in his pyjamas. He doesn’t look very delicious. Good Lord.”

“What?”

“He’s crossed the passage,” breathed Alleyn, “and he’s stooping down at another door.”

“What’s he up to?”

“Can’t see — shadow. Now he’s off again. Back to his own room. Shuts the door. Light out. Mr. Legge, finished for the night.”

“And not before it was time,” grumbled Fox. “They’ve got a nice sort of chap as Secretary and Treasurer for their society. How long’ll we give him, Mr. Alleyn? I’d like to have a look what he’s been up to.”

“I’ll give him ten minutes and then go along the passage.”

“Openly?”

“Yes. Quickly, but not stealthily, Fox. It’s the room on the right at the end. It looked almost as if he was shoving a note under the door. Very odd.”

“What age,” asked Fox, “is the Honourable Violet Darragh?”

“What a mind you have! It was probably young Pomeroy’s door.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, sir. Probably.”

Alleyn switched on the light and began to unpack his suit-case. Whistling soundlessly, he set his room in order, undressed, and put on his pyjamas and dressing-gown.

“Now then,” he said. He picked up his towel and spongebag and went out.

Fox waited, his hands on his knees. He heard a tap turned on. Water-pipes gurgled. In a distant room, someone began to snore in two keys. Presently Fox heard the pad of feet in the passage and Alleyn returned.

His towel was round his neck. His hair was rumpled and damp and hung comically over his eyes. He looked like a rather distinguished faun who had chosen to disguise himself in pyjamas and a dressing-gown. Between thumb and forefinger he held a piece of folded paper.

“Crikey, Fox!” said Alleyn.

“What have you got there, sir?”

“Lord knows! A threat? A billet-doux? Find my case, please, Fox, and get out a couple of tweezers. We’ll open it carefully. At least it may have his prints. Thank the Lord I brought that camera.”

Fox produced the tweezers. Alleyn dropped his paper on the glass top of the wash-stand. Using the tweezers, he opened it delicately. Fox looked over his shoulder and read ten words written in pencil.

“Crikey again!” said Alleyn. “An assignation.”

“Where did you get it, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Under the door. I fished for it with a hairpin I found in the bathroom. Luckily there was a good gap”

“Will Pomeroy’s door?”

“Does Will Pomeroy wear high-heeled shoes, size four-and-a-half, made by Rafferty, Belfast?”

“Lor’!” said Fox. “The Honourable Violet.”

i

The summer sun shines early on the Coombe, and when Alleyn looked out of his window at half-past five, it was at a crinkled and sparkling sea. The roofs of Fish Lane were cleanly pale. A column of wood-smoke rose delicately from a chimney-pot. Someone walked, whistling, down Ottercombe Steps.

Alleyn had been dressed for an hour. He was waiting for Mr. Robert Legge. He supposed that the word “immediately” in the note for Miss Darragh might be interpreted as “the moment you read this,” which no doubt would be soon after Miss Darragh awoke.

Fox and Alleyn had been very industrious before they went to bed. They had poured iodine into a flat dish and they had put Mr. Legge’s letter into the dish but not into the iodine. They had covered the dish and left it for five minutes, and then set up an extremely expensive camera, by whose aid they could photograph the note by lamplight. They might have spared themselves the trouble. There were no fingerprints on Mr. Legge’s note. Fox had gone to bed in high dudgeon. Alleyn had refolded the note and pushed it under Miss Darragh’s door. Four minutes later he had slipped peacefully into sleep.

The morning smelt freshly. Alleyn leant over the window-sill and glanced to his left. At the same moment, three feet away, Fox leant over his window-sill and glanced to his right. He was fully dressed and looked solidly prepared to take up his bowler hat and go anywhere.

“Good morning, sir,” said Fox in a whisper, “pleasant morning. He’s just stirring, I fancy.”

“Good morning to you, Br’er Fox,” rejoined Alleyn. “A very pleasant morning. I’ll meet you on the stairs.”

He stole to the door of his room and listened. Presently the now familiar footsteps sounded in the passage. Alleyn waited for a few seconds and then slipped through the door. Fox performed a similar movement at the same time.

“Simultaneous comedians,” whispered Alleyn. “Come on.”

Keeping observation is one of the most tedious of a detective officer’s duties. Laymen talk of “shadowing.” It is a poetic term for a specialized drudgery. In his early days at Scotland Yard, Alleyn had hated keeping observation and had excelled at it, a circumstance which casts some light on his progress as a detective. There are two kinds of observation, in the police sense. You may tail a man in such a manner that you are within his range of vision but unrecognized or unremarked by him. You may also be obliged to tail a man in circumstances that forbid his seeing you at all. In a deserted hamlet, at half-past five on a summer’s morning, Mr. Legge could scarcely fail to recognize his tormentors of the previous evening. Alleyn and Fox wished to follow him without being seen.

They reached the entrance lobby of the pub as Mr. Legge stepped into the street. Alleyn moved into the private tap and Fox into a sort of office on the other side of the front entrance. Alleyn watched Mr. Legge go past the window of the private tap and signalled to Fox. They hurried down the side passage in time to see Mr. Legge pass the garage and make for the South Steps. Alleyn nodded to Fox who strolled across the yard, and placed himself in a position where he could see the South Steps, reflected handily in a cottage window. When the figure of Mr. Legge had descended the steps and turned to the left, Fox made decent haste to follow his example. Alleyn opened the garage and backed the police Ford into the yard. He then removed his coat and hat, let a good deal of air out of his spare tyre and began, in a leisurely manner, to pump it up again. He had inflated and replaced the spare tyre, and was peering into the engine, when Miss Darragh came out of the pub.

Alleyn had not questioned the superintendent at all closely about Miss Darragh, nor was her appearance dwelt upon in the files of the case. He was therefore rather surprised to see how fat she was. She was like a pouter-pigeon in lavender print. She wore an enormous straw hat, and carried a haversack and easel. Her round face was quite inscrutable but Alleyn thought she looked pretty hard at him. He dived further inside the bonnet of the car, and Miss Darragh passed down the South Steps.

Alleyn gave her a good start and then put on his coat and hat.

When he reached the foot of the steps he looked cautiously round the corner of the wall to the left. Miss Darragh had reached the south end of Fish Lane and now plodded along a stone causeway to the last of the jetties. Alleyn crossed Fish Lane and followed under lee of the houses. At the end of Fish Lane he behaved with extreme caution, manoeuvring for a vantage point. There was nobody about. The fishing fleet had gone out at dawn and the housewives of Ottercombe were either in bed or cooking breakfast. Alleyn paused at Mary Yeo’s shop on the corner of Fish Lane and the causeway. By peering diagonally through both windows at once, he had a distorted view of the jetty and of Miss Darragh. She had set up a camp stool and had her back to Ottercombe. Alleyn saw her mount her easel. A sketching block appeared. Presently Miss Darragh began to sketch.

Alleyn walked down an alley toward the jetty, and took cover in an angle of one of the ramshackle cottages that sprawl about the waterfront. This is the rough quarter of Ottercombe. Petronella Broome has a house of ill-repute, four rooms, on the south waterfront; and William Glass’s tavern was next door until Superintendent Harper made a fuss and had the license cancelled. This stretch of less than two hundred yards is called the South Front. At night it takes on a sort of glamour. Its lamps are reflected redly in the water. Petronella’s gramophone advertises her hospitality, bursts of laughter echo over the harbour, and figures move dimly to and fro across the lights. But at ten to six in the morning it smells of fish and squalor.

Alleyn waited for five minutes before Legge appeared from behind a bollard at the far end of the jetty. Legge crossed the end of the jetty and stood behind Miss Darragh, who continued to sketch.

“Damn,” said Alleyn.

The tide was out and three dinghies were beached near the jetty. A fourth was made fast to the far end and seemed to lie, bobbing complacently, directly under Miss Darragh. Alleyn thought the water looked fairly shallow for at least halfway down the jetty. He groaned and, with caution, moved towards the front

Miss Darragh did not turn, but from time to time Legge glanced over his shoulder. Alleyn advanced to the foreshore under cover of boats, fishing gear, and the sea wall. To an observer from one of the windows, he would have seemed to be hunting for lost property. He reached the jetty.

For halfway along the jetty, the water was about two feet deep. Alleyn, cursing inwardly, rolled up his trousers and took to it, keeping under the jetty. The water was cold and the jetty smelt. Abruptly the bottom shelved down. Alleyn could now hear the faintest murmur of voices and knew that he was not so very far from his objective. The dinghy was hidden by posts but he could hear the
glug-glug
of its movement and the hollow thud it made when it knocked against the post to which it was made fast. Just beyond it was a flight of steps leading up to the jetty. Alleyn mounted a crossbeam. It was slimy and barnacled but he found handholds at the end. If he could reach the dinghy! His progress was hazardous, painful, and maddeningly slow, but at last he grasped the post. He embraced it with both arms, straddled the crossbeams and wriggled round until he reached the far side.

Underneath him was the dinghy and lying full length in the dinghy was Inspector Fox. His note-book lay open on his chest.

Fox winked at his superior and obligingly moved over. Alleyn pulled the dinghy closer, and, not without difficulty, lowered himself into the bows.

“Two minds with but a single thought” he whispered. “Simultaneous comedy again.”

He took out his note-book and cocked his ears.

From the jetty above, the voices of Miss Darragh and Mr. Legge sounded disembodied and remote. For a second or two Alleyn could hear nothing distinctly but, as his concentration sharpened, words and phrases began to take form. Miss Darragh was speaking. She spoke in little bursts of eloquence broken by pauses that fell oddly until he realized that while she talked, she painted.

“… And haven’t I gone sufficiently far, coming down here, to meet you? I go no farther at all. I’m sorry for the nasty pickle you’re in… terribly cruel the way… haunts you… compromised myself… can’t expect…” Her voice died into a mysterious murmur. Alleyn raised his eyebrows and Fox shook his head. Miss Darragh droned on. Suddenly she said very distinctly: “It’s no good at all asking, for I’ll not do ut.”

Legge began to mumble, quite inaudibly. She interrupted him with a staccato: “Yes, yes, I realize all that.” And a moment later: “Don’t think I’m not sorry. I am.” And then, incisively: “Of course, I know you’re innocent of ut, but I can’t—”

For the first time Mr. Legge became intelligible.

“My blood be on your head,” said Mr. Legge loudly.

“Ah, don’t say that. Will you be quiet, now? You’ve nothing to fear.”

Legge’s voice dropped again but Alleyn’s hearing was now attuned to it. He heard isolated phrases. “Hounded to death… just when I was… expiated my fault… God knows… never free from it.”

Footsteps plodded across the beams overhead and when Miss Darragh spoke, it was from a different place. She had moved, perhaps to look at the sketch, and now stood near the edge of the jetty. Her voice, seeming very close, was startlingly clear.

“I promise you,” she said, “that I’ll do my best, but I’ll not commit perjury—”

“Perjury!” said Legge irritably. He had followed her.

“Well, whatever it is. I’ll do my best. I’ve no fear at all of their suspecting you, for they’ll have their wits about them and will soon see it’s impossible.”

“But don’t you see… They’ll think… they’ll tell everyone…”

“I can see it’s going to be hard on you and I’ve got my… You know well enough why I feel bound to help you. That’ll do now. Rest easy, and we’ll hope for the best.”

“Don’t forget how I came to my trouble.”

“I do not and I will not. Be off, now, for it’s getting late. I’ve finished me little peep and it’s nothing better than a catastrophe; me mind was not on ut. We’d best not be seen walking back together.”

“I’m at your mercy,” said Legge. And they heard him walk away.

ii

Alleyn and Fox breakfasted in the dining-room. Cubitt and Parish were nowhere to be seen but Miss Darragh sat at a corner table and gave them good morning as they came in. Alleyn knew that from behind the paper she watched them pretty closely. He caught her at it twice, but she did not seem to be at all embarrassed and, the second time, twinkled and smiled at him.

“I see you’ve no paper,” said Miss Darragh. “Would you like to have a look at the
Illington Courier
?”

“Thank you so much,” said Alleyn, and crossed over to the table.

“You’re Mr. Roderick Alleyn, are ye not?”

Alleyn bowed.

“Ah, I knew you from your likeness to your brother George,” said Miss Darragh.

“I am delighted that you knew me,” said Alleyn, “but I’ve never thought that my brother George and I were much alike.”

“Ah, there’s a kind of a family resemblance. And then, of course I knew you were here, for the landlord told me. You’re a good deal better-looking than your brother George. He used to stay with me cousins, the Sean O’Darraghs, for Punchestown. I met ’um there. I’m Violet Darragh, so now you know who ’tis that’s so bold with you.”

“Miss Darragh,” said Alleyn, “would you spare us a moment when you have finished your breakfast?”

“I would. Is it about this terrible affair?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be delighted. I’m a great lover of mysteries, myself, or I was before this happened. They’re not such grand fun when you’re in the middle of ’um. I’ll be in the private tap-room when you want me. Don’t hurry, now.”

“Thank you,” said Alleyn. Miss Darragh rose and squeezed past the table. Alleyn opened the door. She nodded cheerfully and went out.

“Cool,” said Fox, when Alleyn joined him. “You’d never think she had anything up her sleeve, sir, now would you?”

“No, Fox, you wouldn’t. I wonder what line I’d better take with her. She’s as sharp as a needle.”

“I’d say so,” agreed Fox.

“I think, Fox, you had better ask her, in your best company manners, to walk into our parlour. It looks more official. I must avoid that friend-of-the-family touch—” Alleyn stopped short and rubbed his nose. “Unless, indeed, I make use of it,” he said. “Dear me, now, I wonder.”

“What’s the friend-of-the-family touch, sir?”

“Didn’t you hear? She has met my brother George who is physically as unlike me as may be. Mentally, too, I can’t help hoping. But perhaps that’s vanity. What do you think?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Sir George, Mr. Alleyn.”

“He’s rather an old ass, I’m afraid. Have you finished?”

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

“Then I shall remove to the parlour. My compliments to Miss Darragh, Foxkin, and I shall be grateful if she will walk into my parlour. Lord, Lord, I hope I don’t make a botch of this.”

Alleyn went to the parlour. In a minute or two, Fox came in with Miss Darragh.

Ever since he entered the detective service, Alleyn has had to set a guard against a habit of instinctive reactions to new acquaintances. Many times has he repeated to himself the elementary warning that roguery is not incompatible with charm. But he has never quite overcome certain impulses towards friendliness, and his austerity of manner is really a safeguard against this weakness; a kind of protective colouring, a uniform for behaviour.

When he met Violet Darragh he knew that she would amuse and interest him, that it would be easy to listen to her and pleasant to strike up a sort of friendship. He knew that he would find it difficult to believe her capable of double-dealing. He summoned the discipline of a system that trains its servants to a high pitch of objective watchfulness. He became extremely polite.

“I hope you will forgive me,” he said, “for suggesting that you should come in here. Mr. Pomeroy has given us this room as a sort of office, and as all our papers—”