Singing in the Shrouds

‘ – a pipe, if you don’t mind.’ Alleyn pulled it out and as he talked, filled it.

‘These cases,’ he said, ‘are the worst of the lot from our point of view. We can pick a card-sharp or a con-man or a sneak-thief or a gunman or a dozen other bad lots by certain mannerisms and tricks of behaviour. They develop occupational habits and they generally keep company with their own kind. But not the man who, having never before been in trouble with the police, begins, perhaps latish in life, to strangle women at ten-day intervals and leave flowers on their faces. He’s a job for the psychiatrist if ever there was one and he doesn’t go in for psychiatry. He’s merely an example. But of what? The result of bad housing conditions, or a possessive mother or a kick on the head at football or a bullying schoolmaster or a series of regrettable grandparents? Again, your guess is as good as mine. He is. He exists. He may behave with perfect propriety in every possible aspect of his life but this one. He may be, and often is, a colourless little fellow who trots to and fro upon his lawful occasions for, say fifty years, seven months and a day. On the day after that he trots out and becomes a murderer. Probably there have been certain eccentricities of behaviour which he’s been at great pains to conceal and which have suddenly become inadequate. Whatever compulsion it is that hounds him into his appointed crime, it now takes over. He lets go and becomes a monster.’

‘Ah!’ Captain Bannerman said, ‘a monster. There’s unnatural things turn up where you’d least expect to find them in most human souls. That I will agree to. But not in my ship.’

The two men looked at each other, and Alleyn’s heart sank. He knew pigheadedness when he met it.

The ship’s engines, now at full speed, drove her, outward bound, upon her course. There was no more fog: a sunny seascape accepted her as its accident. Her wake opened obediently behind her and the rhythm of her normal progress established itself. England was left behind and the Farewell, sailing on her lawful occasions, set her course for Las Palmas.

V

‘What,’ Captain Bannerman asked, ‘do you want me to do? The thing’s flat-out ridiculous but let’s hear what you want. I can’t say fairer than that, can I? Come on.’

‘No,’ Alleyn agreed, ‘that’s fair enough and more than I bargained for. First of all, perhaps I ought to tell you what I don’t want. Particularly, I don’t want to be known for what I am.’

‘Is that so?’

‘I gather that supercargoes are a bit out-of-date, so I’d better not be a supercargo. Could I be an employee of the company going out to their Durban office?’

Captain Bannerman stared fixedly at him and then said: ‘It’d have to be something very senior.’

‘Why? On account of age? – ’

‘It’s nothing to do with age. Or looks. Or rather,’ Captain Bannerman amended, ‘it’s the general effect.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite – ’

‘You don’t look ill, either. Voyage before last, outward bound, we carried a second cousin of the managing director’s. Getting over D.T.’s, he was, after taking one of these cures. You’re not a bit like him. You’re not a bit like a detective either if it comes to that,’ Captain Bannerman added resentfully.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Have you always been a ’tec?’

‘Not absolutely.’

‘I know,’ Captain Bannerman said, ‘leave it to me. You’re a cousin of the chairman and you’re going out to Canberra via Durban to one of these legations or something. There’s all sorts of funny jobs going in Canberra. Anybody’ll believe anything, almost.’

‘Will they?’

‘It’s a fact.’

‘Fair enough. Who is your chairman?’

‘Sir Graeme Harmond.’

‘Do you mean a little fat man with pop eyes and a stutter?’

‘Well,’ said Captain Bannerman, staring at Alleyn, ‘if you care to put it that way.’

‘I know him.’

‘You don’t tell me!’

‘He’ll do.’

‘Do!’

‘I’d better not use my own name. There’s been something in the papers. How about C.J. Roderick?’

‘Roderick?’

‘It happens to be the first chunk of my own name but it’s never appeared in print. When you do this sort of thing you answer more readily to a name you’re used to.’ He thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let’s play safer and make it Broderick.’

‘Wasn’t your picture in last night’s Herald?’

‘Was it? Hell!’

‘Wait a bit.’

The Captain went into his stateroom and came back with a copy of the paper that had so intrigued Mr Cuddy. He folded it back at the snapshot of piquant Beryl Cohen and Superintendent R. Alleyn (inset).

‘Is that like me?’ Alleyn said.

‘No.’

‘Good.’

‘There may be a very slight resemblance. It looks as if your mouth was full.’

‘It was.’

‘I see,’ said Captain Bannerman heavily.

‘We’ll have to risk it.’

‘I suppose you’ll want to keep very much to yourself?’

‘On the contrary. I want to mix as much as possible with the passengers.’

‘Why?’

Alleyn waited for a moment and then asked: ‘Have you got a good memory for dates?’

‘Dates.’

‘Could you, for instance, provide yourself with a cast-iron alibi plus witnesses for the fifteenth of last month between ten and eleven p.m., the twenty-fifth between nine p.m. and midnight and for last night during the half-hour before you sailed?’

Captain Bannerman breathed stertorously and whispered to himself. At last he said: ‘Not all three, I couldn’t.’