“My child!” Father Jourdain said. “You must stop.” But she pointed wildly and clumsily at Cuddy. “To trick that man! To use his idiotic, hopeless infatuation! And the other—”
“No, no. Please!” Mr. McAngus cried out. “It doesn’t matter. Please!”
Miss Abbott looked at him with what might have been a kind of compassion and turned on Mrs. Dillington-Blick. “And you,” she said, “with your beauty and fascination, with everything that unhappy women long for, to lend yourself to such a thing! To give him your lovely dress, to allow him to so much as touch it! What were you thinking of!” She ground her heavy hands together. “Beauty is sacred!” she said. “It is sacred in its own right; you have committed sacrilege.”
“Katherine, you must come away. As your priest, I insist. You will do yourself irreparable harm. Come with me.”
For the first time she seemed to hear him. The familiar look of mulish withdrawal returned and she got up.
“Alleyn?” Father Jourdain asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“Come along,” he said, and Miss Abbott let him take her away.
“That woman’s upset me,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick said, angrily sobbing. “I don’t feel at all well. I feel awful.”
“Ruby, darling!”
“No! No, Aubyn, don’t paw me. We shouldn’t have done it. You shouldn’t have started it. I feel ghastly.”
Captain Bannennan squared his shoulders and approached her. “Nor you!” she said, and, perhaps for the first time in her adult life, she appealed to someone of her own sex. “Brigid!” she said. “Tell me I needn’t feel like this. It’s not fair. I’m hating it.”
Brigid went to her. “I can tell you, you needn’t,” she said, “but we all know you do and that’s much better than not minding at all. At least—” she appealed to Alleyn— “isn’t it?”
“Of course it is.”
Mr. McAngus, tying himself up in a sort of agonized knot of sympathy, said, “You mustn’t think about it. You mustn’t reproach yourself. You are goodness itself. Oh, don’t!”
Mrs. Cuddy sniffed piercingly.
“It’s this awful heat,” Mrs. Dillington-Blick moaned. “One can’t think.” She had, in fact, gone very white. “I–I feel faint.”
Alleyn opened the double doors. “I was going to suggest,” he said, “that we let a little air in.” Brigid put her arm round Mrs. Dillington-Blick and Tim went over to her. “Can you manage?” he asked. “Come outside.”
They helped her through the doors. Alleyn moved Mr. Merryman’s chair so that its back was turned to the lounge and Mrs. Dillington-Blick sank out of sight. “Will you stay here?” Alleyn asked. “When you feel more like it I should be glad of another word with you. I’ll ask Dr. Makepiece to come and see how you are. Perhaps, Miss Carmichael, you’d stay with Mrs. Dillington-Blick. Would you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“All right?” Tim asked her.
“Perfectly.”
Alleyn had a further word with Tim and then the two men went back into the room.
Alleyn said, “I’m afraid I must press on. I shall need all the men, but if you, Mrs. Cuddy, would rather go to your cabin, you may.”
“I prefer to stay with Mr. Cuddy, thank you.”
Mr. Cuddy moistened his lips and said, “Look, Eth, you toddle off. It’s not suitable for ladies.”
“I wouldn’t fancy being there by myself.”
“You’ll be O.K., dear.”
“What about you, though?”
He didn’t look at her. “I’ll be O.K.,” he said.
She was staring at him, expressionless as always. It was odd to see that her eyes were masked in tears.
“Oh, Fred,” Mrs. Cuddy said, “why did you do it?”
CHAPTER 11
Arrest
The four men in the lounge behaved exactly as if Mrs. Cuddy had uttered an indecency. They looked anywhere but at the Cuddys, they said nothing, and then after a moment eyed Alleyn surreptitiously, as if they expected him to take drastic action.
His voice broke across the little void of silence.
“Why did he do what, Mrs. Cuddy?”
“Eth,” Mr. Cuddy said, “for God’s sake choose your words. They’ll be thinking things, Eth. Be careful.”
She didn’t take her eyes off him, and though she seemed to disregard completely what he had said to her, Alleyn thought that she was scarcely aware of anybody else in the room. Mr. Cuddy returned her gaze with a look of terror.
“You know how I feel about it,” she said, “and yet you go on. Making an exhibition of yourself. I blame her, mind, more than I do you; she’s a wicked woman, Fred. She’s poking fun at you. I’ve seen her laughing behind your back with the others. I don’t care,” Mrs. Cuddy went on, raising her voice and indicating the inarticulate back of Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s deck chair, “if she hears what I say. What’s happened is her fault; she’s as good as responsible for it. And you had to go and chase after her and get yourself mixed up with a corpse. I hope it’ll be a lesson to you.” A kind of spasm twitched at her mouth and her eyes overflowed. She ended as she had begun. “Oh, Fred,” Mrs. Cuddy said again, “why did you do it!”
“I’m sorry, dear. It was just a bit of fun.”
“Fun!” Her voice broke. She went up to him and made a curious gesture, a travesty of playfulness, shaking her fist at him. “You old fool!” she said and without a word to anyone else bolted out of the room.
Mr. Cuddy made a slight move as if to follow her but found himself confronted by Alleyn. He stood in the middle of the room, half smiling, scanning the faces of the other men.
“You don’t want to misunderstand Mrs. Cuddy,” he ventured. “I’m not a violent man. I’m quiet.”
Captain Bannerman cleared his throat. “It looks to me,” he said, “as if you’ll have to prove that.” He glanced at the open doors to the deck, at the back of Mrs. Dillington-Blick’s chair and at Brigid, who sat on the edge of the hatch with her chin in her hands.
“This is a man’s job,” he said to Alleyn. “For God’s sake, keep the women out of it,” and with some emphasis shut the doors.
Alleyn had been speaking to Tim. He said, “Very well. For the moment.”
The captain pulled chairs up to the biggest table in the room, motioning Alleyn to sit at one end and himself taking the other. “I like to see things done shipshape,” he muttered and his longing for a boardroom could be sensed. Aubyn Dale and Mr. McAngus at once took chairs. Tim, after a moment’s hesitation, followed suit. Mr. Cuddy hung off, winding the cord of his dressing-gown round his spatulate fingers. Mr. McAngus, with trembling fingers, lit one of his medicated cigarettes.
Father Jourdain came back and, in response to a gesture from the captain, also sat at the table.
“That’s more like it,” sighed Captain Bannerman and made a clumsy ducking movement at Alleyn.
“Carry on, if you please, Mr. A’leen,” he said.
But Aubyn Dale, who for some time had been casting fretful glances at the bar, cut in. “Look, I need a drink. Is there anything against my ringing for the steward?”
“Which steward?” Captain Bannerman asked, and Dale said, “God, I forgot.”
“We’ll do our drinking,” the captain pronounced, “later. Mr. Cuddy, I’ll thank you to take a seat.”
Mr. Cuddy said, “That’s all right, Captain. Don’t rush us. I’d still like to know why we don’t send for Merryman,” and he pulled out his chair, sat back in it with an affectation of ease, and stared, nervously impertinent, at Alleyn.
Aubyn Dale said, “I must say, seeing this gets more like a board meeting every second, I don’t see why Merryman should have leave of absence. Unless—” He paused and the others stirred, suddenly alert and eager. “Unless—”