Singing in the Shrouds - Ngaio Marsh

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What a change! Oh, dear!’ The sailor made a gesture that might have indicated his chin; or his neck. ‘I reckon he’d do better to grow again,’ he said.

      ‘Anyone else been about? Anyone you couldn’t place, at all?’

      ‘Hallo-allo! What’s wrong, anyway?’

      ‘Nothing so far as I know. Nothing at all.’

      The sailor said: ‘it’s been quiet. The fog makes it quiet.’ He spat carefully overboard. ‘I heard some poor sod singing,’ he said. ‘Just the voice: funny sort of voice too. Might of been a female and yet I don’t reckon it was. I didn’t rekkernize the chune.’

      Moir waited a moment and then said: ‘Well, thanks again, sailor, we’ll be moving along.’

      When he had withdrawn the driver to a suitable distance he said, coughing a little because a drift of fog had caught him in the throat: ‘What was she like, daddy? To look at?’

      The taxi driver gave him a jaundiced and confused description of his fare in which the only clear glimpse to emerge was of a flash piece with a lot of yellow hair done very fancy. Pressed further the driver remembered pin-heels. When she left the taxi the girl had caught her foot in a gap between two planks and had paused to adjust her shoe.

      Moir listened attentively.

      ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘Now, I think I’ll just take a wee look round, daddy. You go back to your cab and wait. Wait, see?’

      This suggestion evoked a fresh spate of expostulation but Moir became authoritative and the driver finally returned to his cab. Moir looked after him for a moment and then walked along to the forward winch where he was received by the shore gang with a degree of guarded curiosity that in some circles is reserved for the police. He asked them if they had seen the girl and repeated the driver’s description. None of them had done so.

      As he was turning away one of the men said: ‘What seems to be the trouble anyway, Copper?’

      ‘Not to say trouble,’ Moir called back easily. A second voice asked derisively: ‘Why don’t you get the Flower Killer, Superintendent?’

      Moir said good-naturedly: ‘We’re still hoping, mate.’ And walked away: a man alone on his job.

      He began to look for the girl from the flower shop. There were many dark places along the wharf. He moved slowly, flashing his lamp into the areas under platforms, behind packing-cases, between buildings and dumps of cargo and along the dark surface of the water where it made unsavoury but irrelevant discoveries.

      It was much quieter now aboard the Farewell. He heard the covers go down on the forward hatch and glancing up could just see the Blue Peter hanging limp in the fog. The gang that had been loading the ship went off through one of the sheds and their voices faded into silence.

      He arrived back at the passageway. Beyond its far end the taxi still waited. On their way through here to the wharf he and the driver had walked quickly; now he went at a snail’s pace, using his flashlight. He knew that surfaces which in the dark and fog looked like unbroken walls, were in fact the rear ends of sheds with a gap between them. There was an alley opening off the main passage and this was dark indeed.

      It was now one minute to midnight and the Cape Farewell, being about to sail, gave a raucous unexpected hoot like a gargantuan belch. It jolted PC Moir in the pit of his stomach.

      With a sudden scrabble a rat shot out and ran across his boots. He swore, stumbled and lurched sideways. The light from his flashlamp darted eccentrically up the side alley, momentarily exhibiting a high-heeled shoe with a foot in it. The light fluttered, steadied and returned. It crept from the foot along a leg, showing a red graze through the gap in its nylon stocking. It moved on and came to rest at last on a litter of artificial pearls and fresh flowers scattered over the breast of a dead girl.

       CHAPTER 2

       Embarkation

      At seven o’clock on that same evening an omnibus had left Euston Station for the Royal Albert Docks.

      It had carried ten passengers, seven of whom were to embark in the Cape Farewell, sailing at midnight for South Africa. Of the remainder, two were seeing-off friends while the last was the ship’s doctor, a young man who sat alone and did not lift his gaze from the pages of a formidable book.

      After the manner of travellers, the ship’s passengers had taken furtive stock of each other. Those who were escorted by friends speculated in undertones about those who were not.

      ‘My dear!’ Mrs Dillington-Blick ejaculated. ‘Honestly? Not one!’

      Her friend made a slight grimace in the direction of the doctor and raised her eyebrows. ‘Not bad?’ she mouthed. ‘Noticed?’

      Mrs Dillington-Blick shifted her shoulders under their mantling of silver fox and turned her head until she was able to include the doctor in an absent-minded glance.

      ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ she confessed and added, ‘Rather nice? But the others! My dear! Best forgotten! Still – ’

      ‘There are the officers,’ the friend hinted slyly.

      ‘My dear!’

      They caught each other’s eyes and laughed again, cosily. Mr and Mrs Cuddy in the seat in front of them heard their laughter. The Cuddys could smell Mrs Dillington-Blick’s expensive scent. By turning their heads slightly they could see her reflection in the window-pane, like a photomontage richly floating across street lamps and the façades of darkened buildings. They could see the ghosts of her teeth, the feather in her hat, her earrings, the orchids on her great bust and her furs.

      Mrs Cuddy stiffened in her navy overcoat and her husband smiled thinly. They, too, exchanged glances and thought of derisive things to say to each other when they were private in their cabin.

      In front of the Cuddys sat Miss Katherine Abbott; alone, neat and composed. She was a practised traveller and knew that the first impression made by fellow-passengers is usually contradicted by experience. She rather liked the rich sound of Mrs Dillington-Blick’s laughter and deplored what she had heard of the Cuddy accent. But her chief concern at the moment was for her own comfort: she disliked being ruffled and had chosen her seat in the middle of the bus because people would be unlikely to brush past her and she was out of the draught when the door opened. In her mind she checked over the contents of her two immaculately packed suitcases. She travelled extremely light because she loathed what she called the ‘fussation’ of heavy luggage. With a single exception she carried nothing that was not positively essential. She thought now of the exception, a photograph in a leather case. To her fury her eyes began to sting. ‘I’ll throw it overboard,’ she thought. ‘That’ll larn her.’

      The man in front of her turned a page of his newspaper and through her unshed tears Miss Abbott read a banner headline: ‘Killer Who Says It With Flowers. Still no arrest.’ She had longish sight and by casually leaning forward she was able to read the paragraph underneath.

      ‘The identity of the sex-murderer who sings as he kills and leaves flowers by the bodies of his victims is still unknown. Investigations leading to hundreds of interviews have proved clueless. Here (left) is a new snapshot of piquant Beryl Cohen, found strangled on the 15th January, and (right) a studio portrait of Marguerite Slatters, the second victim of a killer who may well turn out to be the worst of his kind since Jack the Ripper. Superintendent Alleyn (inset) refuses to make a statement, but says the police will welcome information about Beryl’s movements during her last hours (see page 6, 2nd column).’

      Miss Abbott waited for the owner of the newspaper to turn to page 6 but he neglected to do so. She stared greedily at the enlarged snapshot of piquant Beryl Cohen and derisively at the inset. Superintendent Alleyn, grossly disfigured

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