The reactions go like this:
McAngus does a great deal of tut-tuttering, protests that the subject is too horrid to dwell upon but is nevertheless quite unable to go away while it’s under discussion. He gets all the facts wrong, confuses names and dates so persistently that you’d think it was deliberate, and is slapped back perpetually by Merryman.
Cuddy is utterly absorbed. He goes over the details and incessantly harks back to Jack the Ripper, describing all the ritualistic horrors and speculating about their possible significance.
Merryman, of course, is overbearing, didactic, and argumentative. He’s got a much better brain than any of the others, is conversant with the cases, never muddles the known facts and never loses a chance of blackguarding the police. In his opinion they won’t catch their man and he obviously glories in the notion (“Hah-hah, did he but know,” sneered Hawkshaw, the detective).
Dale, like McAngus, puts up a great show of abhorrence but professes an interest in what he calls the “psychology of sadistic homicide.” He talks like a signed article in one of the less responsible of our dailies and also, of course, like a thoroughly nice chap on television. “Poor wretch!” is his cry. “Poor, poor girls, poor everybody. Sad! Sad!”
Meanwhile, being in merry pin, he has had enough misguided energy to sew up Mr. Merryman’s pyjamas and put a dummy woman made from one of the D-B’s tremendous nightgowns in Mr. McAngus’s bed, and has thus by virtue of these hilarious pranks graduated as a potential victim himself. Merryman’s reaction was to go straight to the captain and McAngus’s to behave as if he was a typical example from Freud’s casebook.
Well, there they are, these four precious favorites in the homicide handicap. I’ve told you that I fancy one in particular, and in the classic tradition, my dearest, having laid bare the facts, I leave you to your deduction; always bearing in mind that the captain and his mates may be right and there ain’t no flaming murderer on board.
Good-night, darling. Don’t miss our next instalment of this absorbing serial.
Alleyn put his letter away, doodled absently on his blotting paper for a few minutes, and then thought he’d stretch his legs before turning in.
He went down to the deck below and found it deserted. Having walked six times round it and had a word with the wireless officer, who sat lonely as a cloud in his cubbyhole on the starboard side, Alleyn thought he would call it a day. He passed Father Jourdain’s cabin door on his way through the passengers’ quarters and as he did so the handle turned and the door was opened a crack. He heard Father Jourdain’s voice.
“But, of course. You must come to me whenever you want to. It’s what I’m for, you know.”
A woman’s voice answered harshly and indistinguishably.
“I think,” said Father Jourdain, “you should dismiss all that from your mind and stick to your duties. Perform your penance, come to Mass tomorrow, make the special intention I have suggested. Go along, now, and say your prayers. Bless you, my child. Good-night.”
Alleyn moved quickly down the passage and had reached the stairs before Miss Abbott had time to see him.
CHAPTER 8
Sunday the Thirteenth
The next day being Sunday, Father Jourdain with the captain’s permission celebrated Holy Communion in the lounge at seven o’clock. The service was attended among the passengers by Miss Abbott, Brigid, Mr. McAngus, and rather surprisingly, Mr. Merryman. The third officer, the wireless officer, two of the cadets, and Dennis represented the ship’s complement. Alleyn, at the back of the room, listened, watched, and not for the first time felt his own lack of acceptance to be tinged with a faint regret.
When the service was over the little group of passengers went out on deck and presently were joined by Father Jourdain, wearing, as he had promised, his “decent black cassock.” He looked remarkably handsome in it with the light breeze lifting his glossy hair. Miss Abbott, standing, characteristically, a little apart from the others, watched him, Alleyn noticed, with a look of stubborn deference. There was a Sunday morning air about the scene. Even Mr. Merryman was quiet and thoughtful, while Mr. McAngus, who, with Miss Abbott, had carried out the details of Anglo-Catholic observance like an old hand, was quite giddy and uplifted. He congratulated Brigid on her looks and did his little chassé before her with his head on one side. Mr. McAngus’s russet-brown hair had grown, of course, even longer at the back, and something unfortunate seemed to have happened round the brow and temples. But as he always wore his felt hat out-of-doors and quite often in the lounge, this was not particularly noticeable.
Brigid responded gaily to his blameless compliments and turned to Alleyn.
“I didn’t expect to see you about so early,” she said.
“And why not?”
“You were up late! Pacing round the deck. Wrapped in thought!” teased Brigid.
“That’s all very fine,” Alleyn rejoined. “But what, I might ask, were you up to yourself? From what angle of vantage did you keep all this observation?”
Brigid blushed. “Oh,” she said with a great air of casualness, “I was sitting in the verandah along there. We didn’t like to call out as you passed, you looked so solemn and absorbed.” She turned an even brighter pink, glanced at the others, who were gathered round Father Jourdain, and added quickly, “Tim Makepiece and I were talking about Elizabethan literature.”
“You were not talking very loudly about it,” Alleyn observed mildly.
“Well—” Brigid looked into his face. “I’m not having a ship-board flirtation with Tim. At least — at least, I don’t think I am.”
“Not a flirtation?” Alleyn repeated and smiled at her.
“And not anything else. Oh, golly!” Brigid said impulsively. “I’m in such a muddle.”
“Do you want to talk about your muddle?”
Brigid put her arm through his. “I’ve arrived at the age,” Alleyn reflected, “when charming young ladies take my arm.” They walked down the deck together.
“How long,” Brigid asked, “have we been at sea? And, crikey!” she added. “What an appropriate phrase that is!”
“Six days.”
“There you are! Six days! The whole thing’s ridiculous. How can anybody possibly know how they feel in six days? It’s out of this world.”
Alleyn remarked that he had known how he felt in one day. “Shorter even than that,” he added. “At once.”
“Really? And stuck to it?”
“Like a limpet. She took much longer, though.”
“But—? Did you?”
“We are very happily married, thank you.”
“How lovely,” Brigid sighed.
“However,” he added hurriedly, “don’t let me raise a finger to urge you into an ill-considered undertaking.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything about that,” she rejoined with feeling. “I’ve made that sort of ass of myself in quite a big way, once already.”