“Oh, dear!” Father Jourdain murmured and at once added, “Pay no attention to me. Do go on.”
“Then,” Alleyn said, “the psychiatrist’s position in respect of these crimes is that they have all developed out of some profound emotional disturbance that the criminal is quite unaware of and is unable to control?”
“That’s it.”
“And does it follow that he may, at the conscious level, loathe what he does, try desperately hard to fight down the compulsion, and be filled with horror each time he fails?”
“Very likely.”
“Indeed, yes,” Father Jourdain said with great emphasis. “Indeed, indeed!”
Alleyn turned to him. “Then you agree with Makepiece?”
Father Jourdain passed a white hand over his dark luxuriant hair. “I’m sure,” he said, “that Makepiece has described the secondary cause and its subsequent results very learnedly and accurately.”
“The secondary cause!” Tim exclaimed.
“Yes. The repressed fear, or frustration or whatever it was — I’m afraid,” said Father Jourdain with a faint smile, “I haven’t mastered the terminology. But I’m sure you’re right about all that; indeed you know it all as a man of science. But you see I would look upon that early tragedy and its subsequent manifestations as the — well, as the modus operandi of an infinitely more terrible agent.”
“I don’t follow,” Tim said. “A more terrible agent?”
“Yes. The devil.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I believe that this poor soul is possessed of a devil.”
Tim, to Alleyn’s amusement, actually blushed scarlet as if Father Jourdain had committed some frightful social solecism.
“I see,” Father Jourdain observed, “that I have embarrassed you.”
Tim mumbled something about everybody being entitled to his opinion.
Alleyn said, “I’m afraid I’m rather stuck for a remark, too. Forgive me, but you do mean, quite literally, exactly what you’ve just said? Yes, I’see you do.”
“Quite literally. It is a case of possession. I’ve seen too many to be mistaken.”
There was a long pause during which, Alleyn reminded himself that there were a great number of not unintelligent people in the world who managed, with some satisfaction to themselves, to believe in devils. At last he said, “I must say, in that case, I very much wish you could exorcise it.”
With perfect seriousness Father Jourdain replied that there were certain difficulties. “I shall, of course, continue to pray for him,” he said.
Tim shuffled his feet, lit a cigarette, and with an air of striking out rather wildly for some kind of raft, asked Alleyn for the police view of this kind of murder. “After all,” he said, “you must be said to be experts.”
“Not at all,” Alleyn rejoined. “Very far from it. Our job, God save the mark, is first to protect society and then as a corollary to catch the criminal. These sorts of criminals are often our worst headache. They have no occupational habits. They resemble each other only in their desire to kill for gratification. In everyday life they may be anything; there are no outward signs. We generally get them but by no means always. The thing one looks for, of course, is a departure from routine. If there’s no known routine, if your man is a solitary creature as Jack the Ripper was, your chances lessen considerably.” Alleyn paused and then added in a changed voice: “But as to why, fundamentally, he is what he is — we are dumb. Perhaps if we knew we’d find our job intolerable.”
Father Jourdain said, “You are, after all, a compassionate man, I see.”
Alleyn found this remark embarrassing and inappropriate. He said quickly, “It doesn’t arise. An investigating officer examining the bodies of strangled girls who have died on a crescendo of terror and physical agony is not predisposed to feel compassion for the strangler. It’s not easy to remember that he may have suffered a complementary agony of the mind. In many cases he hasn’t done anything of the sort. He’s too far gone.”
“Isn’t it a question,” Tim asked, “of whether something might have been done about him before his obsession reached its climax?”
“Of course it is,” Alleyn agreed, very readily. “That’s where you chaps come in.”
Tim stood up. “It’s three o’clock. I’m due for a game of deck golf,” he said. “What’s the form? Watchful diligence?”
“That’s it.”
Father Jourdain also rose. “I’m going to do a crossword with Miss Abbott. She’s got the new Penguin. Mr. Merryman is Ximenes standard.”
“I’m a Times man myself,” Alleyn said.
“There’s one thing about the afternoons,” Father Jourdain sighed, “the ladies do tend to retire to their cabins.”
“For the sake of argument only,” Tim asked gloomily, “suppose Cuddy was your man. Do you think he’d be at all liable to strangle Mrs. Cuddy?”
“By thunder,” Alleyn said, “if I were in his boots, I would. Come on.”
In the afternoons there were not very many shady places on deck and a good deal of quiet manoeuvring went on among the passengers to secure them. Claims were staked. Mr. Merryman left his air cushion and his Panama on the nicest of the deck-chairs. The Cuddys did a certain amount of edging in and shoving aside when nobody else was about. Mr. McAngus laid his plaid along one of the wooden seats, but as nobody else cared for the seats this procedure aroused no enmity.
Aubyn Dale and Mrs. Dillington-Blick used their own luxurious chaise longues with rubber-foam appointments and had set them up in the little verandah, which they pretty well filled. Although the chaise longues were never occupied till after tea, nobody liked to use them in the meantime.
So while Tim, Brigid and two of the junior officers played deck golf, Miss Abbott and five men were grouped in a shady area cast by the centrecastle between the doors into the lounge and the amidships hatch. Mr. Cuddy slept noisily with a Reader’s Digest over his face. Mr. McAngus dozed, Mr. Merryman and Alleyn read,
Father Jourdain and Miss Abbott laboured at their crossword. It was a tranquil-looking scene. Desultory sentences and little spurts of observation drifted about with the inconsequence of a conversational poem by Verlaine.
Above their heads Captain Bannerman took his afternoon walk on the bridge, solacing the monotony with pleasurable glances at Brigid, who looked enchanting in jeans and a scarlet shirt. As he had predicted, she was evidently a howling success with his junior officers. And with his medical officer, too, reflected the captain. Sensible perhaps of his regard, Brigid looked up and gaily waved to him. In addition to being attractive she was also what he called a thoroughly nice, unspoiled little lady; just a sweet young girl, he thought. Dimly conscious, perhaps, of some not altogether appropriate train of thought aroused by this reflection, the captain decided to think instead of Mrs. Dillington-Blick — a mental exercise that came very easily to him.
Brigid took a long swipe at her opponent’s disc, scuppered her own, shouted “Damn!” and burst out laughing. The junior officers, who had tried very hard to let her win, now polished off the game in an expert manner and regretfully returned to duty.
Brigid said, “Oh, Tim, I am sorry! You must get another partner.”
“Are you sick of me?” Tim rejoined. “What shall we do now? Would you like to have a singles?”
“Not very much, thank you. I need the support of a kind and forebearing person like yourself. Perhaps some of the others would play. Mr. McAngus, for instance. His game is about on a par with mine.”
“Mr. McAngus is mercifully dozing and you know jolly well you’re talking nonsense.”
“Well, who?” Brigid nervously pushed her hair back and said, “Perhaps it’s too hot after all. Don’t let’s play.” She looked at the little group in the shade of the centrecastle. Mr. Merryman had come out of his book and was talking to Alleyn in an admonitory fashion, shaking his finger and evidently speaking with some heat.