Hands come down on her shoulders. She gave a little cry: “Oh, don’t! You made me jump.”
The hands shifted towards her neck and she felt her chain of pearls move and twist and break. She snatched at the hands and they were not Tim’s.
“No—” she cried out. “No! Tim!”
There was a rapid thud of retreating feet. Brigid struggled out of her chair and ran down the dark tunnel of the covered deck into someone’s arms.
“It’s all right,” Alleyn said. “You’re all right. It’s me.”
A few seconds later, Tim Makepiece came back.
Alleyn still held Brigid in his arms. She quivered and stammered and clutched at him like a frightened child.
“What the hell—” Tim began but Alleyn stopped him.
“Did you turn out the deckhead lights?”
“No. Biddy, darling—”
“Did you meet anyone?”
“No. Biddy—!”
“All right. Take over, will you? She’ll tell you when she’s got her second wind.”
He disengaged her arms. “You’re in clover,” he said. “Here’s your medical adviser.”
She bolted into Tim’s arms and Alleyn ran down the deck.
He switched on the overhead lights and followed round the centrecastle. He looked up and down companionways, along hatch combings, behind piles of folded chairs and into recesses. He knew, as he hunted, he was too late. He found nothing but the old blankness of a ship’s decks at night. On the excuse that he had lost his pocketbook with his passport and letters of credit, he aroused all the men, including Mr. Cuddy. Dale was still dressed and in his sitting-room. The others were in pyjamas and varying degress of ill temper. He told Father Jourdain, briefly, what had happened and arranged that they would go, with Tim, to the captain.
Then he returned to Brigid’s chair. Her pearls were scattered on the deck and in the loose seat. He collected them and thought at first that otherwise he had drawn a blank. But at the last he found, clinging to the back of the chair, discoloured and crushed, a scrap of something which, when he took it to the light, declared itself plainly enough. It was a tiny fragment of a flower petal.
It still retained, very faintly, the scent of hyacinth.
CHAPTER 9
Monday the Fourteenth
“Now,” Alleyn demanded, standing over Captain Bannerman. “Now do you believe this murderer’s on board? Do you?”
But as he said it he knew he was up against the unassailable opponent: the elderly man who has made up his mind and is temperamentally incapable of admitting he has made it up the wrong way.
“I’ll be damned if I do,” said Captain Bannerman.
“I am appalled to hear you say so.”
The captain swallowed the end of his drink and clapped the glass down on the table. He looked from Alleyn to Father Jourdain, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “You’ve got this blasted notion into your heads and every footling little thing that takes place you make out is something to do with it. What takes place? Little Miss Brigid is sitting all alone in her deck-chair. Some chap comes up and puts his hands on her shoulders. Playful, like. And what’s unnatural in that? By gum, I wouldn’t blame—” He pulled himself up, turned a darker shade of brick red and continued, “On your own statement, she’s got ideas into her head about these murders. Natural enough, I daresay, seeing how the lot of you can’t let the matter alone but never stop talking about it. She’s startled, like, and jumps up and runs away. Again — natural enough. But you come blustering up here and try to tell me she was nigh-on murdered. You won’t get anywhere with me, that road. Someone’s got to hang on to his common sense in this ship and, by gum, that’s going to be the master.”
Father Jourdain said, “But it’s not the one incident, it’s the whole sequence, as Alleyn has shown us only too clearly. An embarkation paper in the hand of the girl on the wharf. The incident of the doll. The fact that singing was heard. The Peeping Tom at Miss Carmichael’s porthole. Now this. What man among us, knowing these crimes are in all our minds, would play such a trick on her?”
“And what man among you would murder her — tell me that!”
Tim had been sitting with his head between his hands. He now looked up and said, “Sir, even if you do think there’s nothing in it, surely there can be no harm in taking every possible precaution—?”
“What the hell have you all been doing if you haven’t been taking precautions? Haven’t I said just that, all along? Didn’t I”—he pointed his stubby finger at Alleyn—“get them all jabbering about alibis because you asked me to? Haven’t I found out for you that the whole boiling went ashore the night we sailed, never mind if my own deckhand thought I was balmy? Haven’t I given out there’s an undesirable character in my ship’s company, which there isn’t, and ordered the ladies to lock their doors? What the suffering cats more could I have done? Tell me that!”
Alleyn said instantly, “You could, you know, do something to ensure that there’s no more wandering about deserted decks at night in Spanish dresses.”
“I’ve told you. I won’t have any interference with the rights of the individual in my ship.”
“Will you let me say something unofficially about it?”
“No.”
“Will you consider a complete showdown? Will you tell the passengers who I am and why I’m here? It’ll mean no arrest, of course,” Alleyn said, “but with the kind of threat that I believe hangs over this ship I’m prepared to admit defeat. Will you do this?”
“No.”
“You realize that tomorrow is the night when, according to the considered opinion of experts, this man may be expected to go into action again?”
“He’s not aboard my ship.”
“And that Miss Carmichael,” Father Jourdain intervened, “naturally will speak of her fears to the other ladies.”
Tim said, “No.”
“No?”
“No,” Alleyn said. “She’s not going to talk about it. She agrees that it might lead to a panic. She’s a courageous child.”
“She’s been given a shock,” Tim said angrily to the captain, “that may very easily have extremely serious results. I can’t allow—”
“Dr. Makepiece, you’ll be good enough to recollect you have signed on as a member of my ship’s company.”
“Certainly, sir.”
The captain stared resentfully about him, made a petulant ejaculation and roared out, “Damn it, you can tell her to stay in bed all day tomorrow and the next day too, can’t you? Suffering from shock? All right. That gets her out of the way, doesn’t it? Where is she now?”
“I’ve given her a Nembutal. She’s asleep in bed. The door’s locked and I’ve got the key.”
“Well, keep it and let her stay there. The steward can take her meals. Unless you think he’s the sex monster,” said the captain with an angry laugh.
“Not in the sense you mean,” Alleyn said.
“That’s enough of that!” the captain shouted.
“Where,” Father Jourdain asked wearily, “is Mrs. Dillington-Blick?”
“In bed,” the captain said at once, and added in a hurry, “She left Dale’s suite when I did. I saw her to her cabin.”
“They do lock their doors, don’t they?”
“She did,” said the captain morosely.
Father Jourdain got up. “If I may be excused,” he said. “It’s very late. Past midnight.”
“Yes,” Alleyn said and he also rose. “It’s February the fourteenth. Good-night, Captain Bannerman.”
He had a brief session with Father Jourdain and Tim. The latter was in a rage. “That bloody old man,” he kept saying. “Did you ever know such a bloody old man!”