“McAngus.”
“That’s right. Well, I ask you! I’m turning in,” added the captain. “I’m a wee bit plastered. She’s a wonderful woman though. Good-ni’.”
“Good-night, sir.”
The captain moved away, paused and came back.
“I had a signal from the company,” he said. “They don’t want any kind of publicity and in my opinion they’re right. They reckon it’s all my eye. They don’t want the passengers upset for nothing and n’more do I. You might ’member that.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“At sea-master’s orders.”
“Sir.”
“Ver’well.” The captain made a vague gesture and climbed carefully up the companionway to the bridge.
Alleyn walked aft to where Father Jourdain, still leaning on the taffrail, his hands loosely folded, stared out into the night.
“I’ve been wondering,” Alleyn said, “if you played Horatio’s part just now.”
“I? Horatio?”
“Observing with the very comment of your soul.”
“Oh, that! If that’s to be my rôle! I did, certainly, watch the men.”
“So did I. How about it?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Unless you count Mr. Merryman keeping his hat over his face or his flying into a temper.”
“Or Mr. Cuddy’s overt excitement.”
“Or Mr. McAngus’s queer little trick of dancing backwards and forwards. No!” Father Jourdain exclaimed strongly. “No! I can’t believe it of any of them. And yet—”
“Do you still smell evil?”
“I begin to ask myself if I merely imagine it.”
“As well you may,” Alleyn agreed. “I ask myself continually if we’re building a complete fantasy round the fragment of paper clutched in that wretched girl’s hand. But then — You see, you all had your embarkation notices when you came aboard. Or so it seems. Could one of the lost ones — yours, for instance — have blown through the porthole to the dock and into her hand? No. The portholes were all shut as they always are when the ship’s tied up. Let’s take a turn, shall we?”
They walked together down the well-deck on the port side. When they reached the little verandah aft of the engine house, they stopped while Alleyn lit his pipe. The night was still very warm, but they had run into a stiff breeze and the ship was alive with it. There was a high thrumming sound in the shrouds.
“Someone singing,” Alleyn said.
“Isn’t it the wind in those ropes? Shrouds, don’t they call them? I wonder why.”
“No. Listen. It’s clearer now.”
“So it is. Someone singing.”
It was a high, rather sweet voice and seemed to come from the direction of the passengers’ quarters.
“ ‘The Broken Doll,’ ” Alleyn said.
“A strangely old-fashioned choice.”
“You’ll be sorry some day
You left behind a broken doll.”
The thin commonplace tune evaporated.
“It’s stopped now,” said Alleyn.
“Yes. Should these women be warned, then?” Father Jourdain asked as they continued their walk. “Before the deadline approaches?”
“The shipping company is all against it and so’s the captain. My bosses tell me, as far as possible, to respect their wishes. They think the women should be protected without knowing it, which is all bloody fine for them. Makepiece, by the way, seems O.K. We’ll tell him, I think. He’ll be delighted to protect Miss Carmichael.”
Like the captain, Father Jourdain said, “That leaves Dale, Merryman, Cuddy and McAngus.” But unlike the captain he added, “I suppose it’s possible. I suppose so.” He put his hand on Alleyn’s arm. “You’ll think I’m ridiculously inconsistent; it’s only that I’ve remembered—” He stopped for a moment, and his fingers closed over Alleyn’s coatsleeve.
“Yes?” Alleyn said.
“You see, I’m a priest, an Anglo-Catholic priest. I hear confessions. It’s a humbling and an astonishing duty. One never stops being dumbfounded at the unexpectedness of sin.”
Alleyn said, “I suppose in a way the same observation might apply to my job.”
They walked on in silence, rounded the end of the hatch and returned to the port side. The lights in the lounge were out and great pools of shadow lay about the deck.
“It’s an awful thing to say,” Father Jourdain observed abruptly, “but do you know, for a moment I almost found myself wishing that rather than go in such frightful uncertainty, we knew, positively, that this murderer was on board.” He turned aside to sit on the hatch. The hatch-combing cast a very deep shadow along the deck. He seemed to wade into it as if it were a ditch.
“Ma-ma!”
The voice squeaked horridly from under his feet. He made a stifled sound and lurched against the hatch.
“Good heavens, what have I done!” cried Father Jourdain.
“By the sound of it,” Alleyn said, “I should say you’ve trodden on Esmeralda.”
He stooped. His hands encountered lace, a hard dead surface and something else. “Don’t move,” he said. “Just a moment.”
He carried a pencil-thin flashlamp in his pocket. The beam darted out like a replica in miniature of P. C. Moir’s torch.
“It was already broken. Look.”
It was indeed broken. The head had been twisted so far and with such violence that Esmeralda now grinned over her left shoulder at a quite impossible angle. The black lace mantilla was wound tightly round the neck and lying on the rigid bosom was a litter of emerald beads and a single crushed hyacinth.
“You’ve got your wish,” Alleyn said. “He’s on board, all right.”
Captain Bannerman pushed his fingers through his sandy hair and rose from his sitting-room table.
“It’s half-past two,” he said, “and for any good the stuff I drank last night does me, I might as well have not taken it. I need a dram and I advise you gentlemen to join me.”
He dumped a bottle of whisky and four glasses on the table and was careful not to touch a large object that lay there, covered with a newspaper. “Neat?” he asked. “Water? Or soda?”
Alleyn and Father Jourdain had soda and Tim Makepiece water. The captain took his neat.
“You know,” Tim said. “I can’t get myself geared to this situation. Really, it’s jolly nearly impossible to believe it.”
“I don’t,” said the captain. “The doll was a joke. A damn nasty, spiteful kind of joke, mind. But a joke. I’ll be sugared if I think I’ve shipped a Jack the Ripper. Now!”
“No, no,” Father Jourdain muttered. “I’m afraid I can’t agree. Alleyn?”
Alleyn said, “I suppose the joke idea’s just possible, given the kind of person and all the talk about these cases and the parallel circumstances.”
“There you are!” Captain Bannerman said triumphantly. “And if you ask me, we haven’t got far to look for the kind of chap. Dale’s a great card for practical jokes. Always at it on his own confession. Bet you what you like—”
“No, no!” Father Jourdain protested. “I can’t agree. He’d never perpetrate such an unlovely trick. No.”
Alleyn said, “I can’t agree either. In my opinion, literally it’s no joke.”
Tim said slowly, “I suppose you all noticed that — well, that Mr. McAngus was wearing a hyacinth in his coat.”
Father Jourdain and the captain exclaimed, but Alleyn said, “And that he dropped it when he clashed heads with Mr. Merryman. And that Mr. Merryman picked it up and threw it down on the deck.”
“Ah!” said the captain triumphantly. “There you are! What’s the good of that!”
“Where,” Tim asked, “did she leave the doll?”