“Mr. Chips is at it again,” Tim said. “Poor Alleyn!” He experienced the sensation of his blood running down into his boots. Surely he, Tim Makepiece, a responsible man, a man of science, a psychiatrist, could not have slipped into so feeble, so imbecile an error. Would he have to confess to Alleyn? How could he recover himself with Brigid? Her voice recalled him.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“ ‘Poor Broderick.’ ”
“Is he called Allan? You’ve got down to Christian names pretty smartly. Very chummy of you.”
Tim said after a pause, “I don’t to his face. I like him.”
“So do I. Awfully. We agreed about it before.” Brigid shook her head impatiently. “At any rate,” she said, “he’s not the guilty one. I’m sure of that.”
Tim stood very still and after a moment wetted his lips.
“What do you mean?” he said. “The guilty one?”
“Are you all right, Tim?”
“Perfectly
“You look peculiar
“It’s the heat. Come back here, do.” He took her arm and led her to the little verandah, pushed her down on the sumptuous footrest belonging to Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s chaise longue and himself sat at the end of Aubyn Dale’s, “What guilty one?” he repeated.
Brigid stared at him. “There’s no need, really, to take it so massively,” she said. “You may not feel as I do about it.”
“About what?”
“The business with the D-B’s doll. It seems to me such a beastly thing to have done and I don’t care what anyone says, it was done on purpose. Just treading on it wouldn’t have produced that result. And then, putting the flower on its chest — a scurvy trick, I call it.”
Tim stooped down and made a lengthy business of tying his shoelace. When he straightened up Brigid said, “You are all right, aren’t you? You keep changing colour like a chameleon.”
“Which am I now?”
“Fiery red.”
“I’ve been stooping over. I agree with you about the doll. It was a silly unbecoming sort of thing to do. Perhaps it was a drunken sailor.”
“There weren’t any drunken sailors about. Do you know who I think it was?”
“Who?”
“Mr. Cuddy.”
“Do you, Biddy?” Tim said. “Why?”
“He kept smiling and smiling all the time that Mr. Broderick was showing the doll.”
“He’s got a chronic grin. It never leaves his face.”
“All the same—” Brigid looked quickly at Tim and away again. “In my opinion,” she muttered, “he’s a D.O.M.”
“A what?”
“A dirty old man. I don’t mind telling you, I’d simply hate to find myself alone on the boat-deck with him after dark.”
Tim hastily said that she’d better make sure she never did. “Take me with you for safety’s sake,” he said. “I’m eminently trustworthy.”
Brigid grinned at him absent-mindedly. She seemed to be in two minds about what she should say next.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing. Nothing, really. It’s just-I don’t know — it’s ever since Dennis brought Mrs. D-B’s hyacinths into the lounge on the second day out. We don’t seem to be able to get rid of those awful murders. Everybody talking about them. That alibi discussion the night before Las Palmas and Miss Abbott breaking down. Not that her trouble had anything to do with it, poor thing. And then the awful business of the girl that brought Mrs. D-B’s flowers being a victim and now the doll being left like that. You’ll think I’m completely dotty,” Brigid said, “but it’s sort of got me down a bit. Do you know, just now I caught myself thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be awful if the Flower Murderer was on board.’ ”
Tim had put out a warning hand, but a man’s shadow had already fallen across the deck and across Brigid.
“Dear child!” said Aubyn Dale. “What a pathologically morbid little notion!”
Tim and Brigid got up. Tim said automatically, “I’m afraid we’ve been trespassing on your footrests,” and hoped this would account for any embarrassment they might have displayed.
“My dear old boy!” Dale cried. “Do use the whole tatty works! Whenever you like, as far as I’m concerned. And I’m sure Madame would be enchanted.”
He had an armful of cushions and rugs which he began to arrange on the chaise longues. “Madame tends to emerge for a nice cuppa,” he explained. He punched a cushion with all the aplomb of the manservant in Charley’s Aunt and flung it into position. “There now!” he said. He straightened up, pulled a pipe out of his pocket, gripped it mannishly between his teeth, contrived to tower over Brigid and became avuncular.
“As for you, young woman,” he said cocking his head quizzically at her. “You’ve been letting a particularly lively imagination run away with you. What?”
This was said with such an exact reproduction of his television manner that Tim, in spite of his own agitation, felt momentarily impelled to whistle “Pack Up Your Troubles.” However, he said quickly, “It wasn’t as morbid as it sounded. Brigid and I have been having an argument about the alibi bet and that led to inevitable conjectures about the flower expert.”
“M-m-m,” Dale rumbled understandingly, still looking at Brigid. “I see.” He screwed his face into a whimsical grimace. “You know, Brigid, I’ve got an idea we’ve just about had that old topic. After all, it’s not the prettiest one in the world, is it? What do you think? Um?”
Pink with embarrassment, Brigid said coldly, “I feel sure you’re right.”
“Good girl,” Aubyn Dale said and patted her shoulder.
Tim muttered that it was tea-time and withdrew Brigid firmly to the starboard side. It was a relief to him to be angry.
“My God, what a frightful fellow,” he fulminated. “That egregious nice-chappery! That ineffable decency! That indescribably phony good-will!”
“Never mind,” Brigid said. “I daresay he has to keep in practice. And, after all, little as I relish admitting it, he was in fact right. I suppose I have been letting my imagination run away with me.”
Tim stood over her, put his head on one side and achieved a quite creditable imitation of Aubyn Dale. “Good girl,” he said unctuously and patted her shoulder.
Brigid made a satisfactory response to this sally and seemed to be a good deal cheered. “Of course,” she said, “I didn’t really think we’d shipped a murderer; it was just one of those things.” She looked up into Tim’s face.
“Brigid!” he said, and took her hands in his.
“No, don’t,” she said quickly. “Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Pay no attention. Let’s go and talk to Mr. Chips.”
They found Mr. Merryman in full cry. He had discovered Brigid’s book, The Elizabethans, which she had left on her deck-chair, and seemed to be giving a lecture on it. It was by an authoritative writer, but one, evidently, with whom Mr. Merryman found himself in passionate disagreement. It appeared that Alleyn, Father Jourdain and Miss Abbott had all been drawn into the discussion while Mr. McAngus and Mr. Cuddy looked on, the former with admiration and the latter with his characteristic air of uninformed disparagement.
Brigid and Tim sat on the deck and were accepted by Mr. Merryman as if they had come late for class but with valid excuses. Alleyn glanced at them and found time to hope that theirs, by some happy accident, was not merely a shipboard attraction. After all, he thought, he himself had fallen irrevocably in love during a voyage from the Antipodes. He turned his attention back to the matter in hand.