Death at the Bar

NGAIO MARSH

CHAPTER 1

The Plume of Feathers

As Luke Watchman drove across Otterbrook Bridge the setting sun shone full in his eyes. A molten flood of sunlight poured towards him through the channel of the lane and broke into sequins across Otterbrook waters. He arched his hand over his eyes and peered through the spattered dazzle of the windscreen. Somewhere about here was the turning for Ottercombe. He lowered the window and leant out.

The warmth of evening touched his face. The air smelt of briar, of fern, and more astringently of the distant sea. There, fifty yards ahead, was the finger-post with its letters almost rubbed out by rain, ‘Ottercombe, 7 miles.’

Watchman experienced the fufillment of a nostalgic longing and was content. Only now, when he was within reach of his journey’s end, did he realize how greatly he had desired this return. The car moved forward and turned from the wide lane into the narrow. The curves of hills marched down behind hedgerows. There was no more sunlight. Thorns brushed the windows on each side, so narrow was the lane. The car bumped over pot-holes. The scent of spring-watered earth rose coldly from the banks.

‘Downhill all the way now,’ Watchman murmured. His thoughts travelled ahead to Ottercombe. One should always time arrivals for this hour when labourers turned homewards, when lamps were lit, when the traveller had secret glimpses into rooms whose thresholds he would never cross. At the Plume of Feathers, Abel Pomeroy would stand out in the roadway and look for incoming guests. Watchman wondered if his two companions had got there before him. Perhaps his cousin, Sebastian Parish, had set out on his evening prowl round the village. Perhaps Norman Cubitt had already found a subject and was down on the jetty dabbing nervously at a canvas. This was the second holiday they had spent together in Ottercombe. A curious trio when you came to think of it. Like the beginning of a funny story. ‘A lawyer, an actor, and a painter once went to a fishing village in Devon.’ Well, he’d rather have Cubitt and Parish than any of his own learned brethren. The law set too dead a seal on character, the very soul of a barrister took silk. And he wondered if he had failed to escape the mannerisms of his profession, if he exuded learned counsel, even at Ottercombe in South Devon.

The lane dived abruptly downhill. Watchman remembered Decima Moore. Would she still be there? Did the Coombe Left Movement still hold its meetings on Saturday nights, and would Decima allow her arguments with himself to end as they had ended that warm night nearly a year ago? He set his thoughts on the memory of the smell of seaweed and briar, and of Decima, trapped half-way between resentment and fright, walking as if by compulsion into his arms.

The hamlet of Diddlestock, a brief interlude of whitewash and thatch, marked the last stage. Already, as he slid out of the shadow of Ottercombe Woods, he fancied that he heard the thunder of the sea.

Watchman checked his car, skidded, and changed into low gear. Somewhere about here Diddlestock Lane crossed Ottercombe Lane, and the intersection was completely masked by banks and hedgerows. A dangerous turning. Yes, there it was. He sounded his horn and the next second crammed on his brakes. The car skidded, lurched sideways, and fetched up against the bank, with its right-hand front bumpers locked in the left-hand rear bumpers of a baby two-seater.

Watchman leant out of the driving window.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he yelled.

The two-seater leapt nervously and was jerked back by the bumpers.

‘Stop that!’ roared Watchman.

He got out and stumbled along the lane to the other car.

It was so dark down there between the hedgerows that the driver’s features, shadowed both by the roof of his car and the brim of his hat, were scarcely discernible. He seemed about to open the door when Watchman, bareheaded, came up to him. Evidently he changed his mind. He leant farther back in his seat. His fingers pulled at the brim of his hat.

‘Look here,’ Watchman began, ‘you’re a hell of a fellow, aren’t you, bucketing about the countryside like a blasted tank! Why the devil can’t you sound your horn? You came out of that lane about twenty times as fast as – What?’

The man had mumbled something.

‘What?’ Watchman repeated.

‘I’m extremely sorry. Didn’t hear you until –’ The voice faded away.

‘All right. Well, we’d better do something about it. I don’t imagine much damage has been done.’ The man made no move and Watchman’s irritation revived. ‘Give me a hand, will you?’

‘Yes, certainly. Of course.’ The voice was unexpectedly courteous. ‘I’m very sorry. Really, very sorry. It was all my fault.’

This display of contrition mollified Watchman.

‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘no harm done, I dare say. Come on.’

The man got out on the far side and walked round to the back of his car. When Watchman joined him he was stooping over the locked bumpers.

‘I can heave mine up if you don’t mind backing an inch or two,’ said the man. With large calloused hands he gripped the bumpers of his own car.

‘All right,’ agreed Watchman.

They released the bumpers without much trouble. Watchman called through his driving-window: ‘All clear!’ The man lowered his car and then groped uncertainly in his pockets.

‘Cigarette?’ suggested Watchman and held out his case.

‘Very kind,’ said the man. ‘Coals of fire –’ He hesitated and then took a cigarette.

‘Light?’

‘I’ve got one, thanks.’

He turned aside and cupped his hands round the match, dipping his head with extravagant care as if a wind threatened the flame.

‘I suppose you’re going to Ottercombe?’ said Watchman.

He saw a flash of teeth.

‘Looks like it, doesn’t it? I’m sorry I can’t let you through till then.’

‘I shan’t be on your heels at the pace you travel,’ grinned Watchman.

‘No,’ agreed the man, and his voice sounded remote as he moved away. ‘I’ll keep out of your way. Good-night.’

‘Good-night.’

That ridiculous little car was as good as its driver’s word. It shot away down the lane and vanished over the brow of a steep drop. Watchman followed more cautiously and by the time he rounded the hill the other car had turned a farther corner. He caught the distant toot of a horn. It sounded derisive.

II

The lane ran out towards the coast and straight for Coombe Rock, a headland that rose sharply from the downs to thrust its nose into the channel. A patch on the hillside seemed to mark an inconsequent end to the route. It was only when he drew closer to this patch that a stranger might recognize it as an entrance to a tunnel, the only gate into Ottercombe. Watchman saw it grow magically until it filled his range of vision. He passed a roadsign ‘Ottercombe. Dangerous Corner. Change down,’ and entered the mouth of the tunnel. He slowed down and switched on his lights. Dank walls closed about him, the sound of his progress echoed loudly and he smelt wet stones and seaweed. Before him, coldly and inkily blue, framed in black, was the sea. From within, the tunnel seemed to end in a shelf; actually it turned sharply to the left. Watchman had to stop and back his car before he could get round. There, down on his left and facing the sea, was Ottercombe.

Probably the alarming entrance into this village has saved it from becoming another Clovelly or Polperro. Ladies with Ye Olde Shoppe ambitions would hesitate to drive through Coombe Tunnel and very large cars are unable to do so. Moreover the village is not too picturesque. It is merely a group of houses whose whitewash is tarnished by the sea. There are no secret stairs in any of them, no ghosts walk Ottercombe Steps, no smugglers’ cave looks out from Coombe Rock. For all that, the place has its history of grog-running and wrecking. There is a story of a fight in the tunnel between excisemen and the men of Coombe, and there are traces of the gate that once closed the tunnel every night at sunset. The whole of Ottercombe is the property of an irascible eccentric who keeps the houses in good repair, won’t let one of them to a strange shopkeeper and breathes venom on the word ‘publicity.’ If a stranger cares to stay in Ottercombe he must put up at the Plume of Feathers, where Abel Pomeroy has four guest rooms, and Mrs Ives does the house-keeping and cooking. If the Coombe men like him, they will take him out in their boats and play darts with him in the evening. He may walk round the cliffs, fish off the rocks, or drive seven miles to Illington where there is a golf-course and a three-star hotel. These are the amenities of Ottercombe.

The Plume of Feathers faces the cobbled road of entrance. It is a square building, scrupulously whitewashed. It has no great height but its position gives it an air of dominance over the cottages that surround it. On the corner of the Feathers the road of approach splits and becomes a sort of inn yard off which Ottercombe Steps lead through the village and down to the wharf. Thus the windows of the inn on two sides, watch for the arrival of strangers. By the corner entrance is a bench, occupied on warm evenings by Abel Pomeroy and his cronies. At intervals Abel walks into the middle of the road and looks up towards Coombe Tunnel as his father and grandfather did before him.

As Watchman drove down, he could see old Pomeroy standing there in his shirt sleeves. Watchman flicked his headlights and Pomeroy raised his hand. Watchman sounded his horn and a taller figure, dressed in the slacks and sweater of some superb advertisement, came through the lighted doorway. It was Watchman’s cousin, Sebastian Parish. Then the others had arrived.

He drew up and opened the door.

‘Well, Pomeroy.’

‘Well, Mr Watchman, we’m right down glad to see you again. Welcome to you.’

‘I’m glad to get here,’ said Watchman, shaking hands. ‘Hallo, Seb. When did you arrive?’

‘This morning, old boy,’ answered his cousin. ‘We stopped last night at Exeter with Norman’s sister.’

‘I was at Yeovil,’ said Watchman. ‘Where is Norman?’

‘Painting down by the jetty. The light’s gone. He’ll be in soon. He’s started a portrait of me on Coombe Rock. It’s going to be rather wonderful. I’m wearing a red sweater and the sea’s behind me. Very virile!’

‘Good Lord!’ said Watchman cheerfully.

‘We’ll get your things out for you, sir,’ said old Pomeroy. ‘Will!’

A tall fox-coloured man came through the doorway. He screwed up his eyes, peered at Watchman, and acknowledged his greeting without much show of enthusiasm.

‘Well, Will.’

‘Evening, Mr Watchman.’

‘Bear a hand, my sonny,’ said old Pomeroy.

His son opened the luggage carrier and began to haul out Watchman’s suitcases.

‘How’s the Movement, Will?’ asked Watchman. ‘Still well on the left?’

‘Yes,’ said Will shortly. ‘It’s going ahead. Will these be all?’

‘Yes, thanks. I’ll take the car round, Seb, and join you in the bar. Is there a sandwich or so anywhere about, Abel?’

‘We can do a bit better than that, sir. There’s a fine lobster Mrs Ives has put aside, special.’

‘By George, you’re a host in a million. God bless Mrs Ives.’

Watchman drove round to the garage. It was a converted stable, a dark building that housed the memory of sweating horses rubbed down by stable lads with wisps of straw. When he stopped his engine Watchman heard a rat plop across the rafters. In addition to his own the garage held four cars. There was Norman Cubitt’s Austin, a smaller Austin, a Morris and there, demure in the corner, a battered two-seater.

‘You again!’ said Watchman, staring at it. ‘Well I’ll be damned!’

He returned to the pub, delighted to hear the familiar ring of his own steps, to smell the tang of the sea and of burning driftwood. As he ran upstairs he heard voices and the unmistakable tuck of a dart in a cork board.

‘Double twenty,’ said Will Pomeroy, and above the general outcry came a woman’s voice.

‘Splendid, my dear. We win!’

‘So, she is here,’ thought Watchman as he washed his hands. ‘And why, “my dear”? And who wins?’

III

Watchman, with his cousin for company, ate his lobster in the private taproom. There is a parlour at the Feathers but nobody ever uses it. The public and the private taprooms fit into each other like two L’s, the first standing sideways on the tip of its short base, the second facing backwards to the left. The bar proper is common to both. It occupies the short leg of the Public, has a counter for each room and faces the short leg of the Private. The top of the long leg forms a magnificent ingle-nook flanked with settles and scented with three hundred years of driftwood smoke. Opposite the ingle-nook at the bottom angle of the L hangs a dart board made by Abel Pomeroy himself. There, winter and summer alike, the Pomeroys’ chosen friends play for drinks. There is a board in the Public for the rank and file. If strangers to the Feathers choose to play in the Private, the initiates wait until they have finished. If the initiates invite a stranger to play, he is no longer a stranger.

The midsummer evening was chilly and a fire smouldered in the ingle-nook. Watchman finished his supper, swung his legs up on the settle, and felt for his pipe. He squinted up at Sebastian Parish, who leant against the mantelpiece in an attitude familiar to every West End playgoer in London.

‘I like this place,’ Watchman said. ‘Extradordinarily pleasant, isn’t it, returning to a place one likes?’

Parish made an actor’s expressive gesture.

‘Marvellous!’ he said richly. ‘To get away from everything! The noise! The endless racket! The artificiality! God, how I loathe my profession!’

‘Come off it, Seb,’ said Watchman. ‘You glory in it. You were born acting. The gamp probably burst into an involuntary round of applause on your first entrance and I bet you played your mother right off the stage.’

‘All the same, old boy, this good clean air means a hell of a lot to me.’

‘Exactly,’ agreed Watchman dryly. His cousin had a trick of saying things that sounded a little like quotations from an interview with himself. Watchman was amused rather than irritated by this mannerism. It was part and parcel, he thought, of Seb’s harmless staginess, like his clothes which were too exactly what a gentleman, roughing it in South Devon, ought to wear. He liked to watch Seb standing out on Coombe Rock, bareheaded to the breeze, in effect waiting for the camera man to say ‘OK for sound.’ No doubt that was the pose Norman had chosen for his portrait of Sebastian. It occurred to him now that Sebastian was up to something. That speech about the artificiality of the stage was the introduction to a confidence, or Watchman didn’t know his Parish. Whatever it was, Sebastian missed his moment. The door opened and a thin man with untidy fair hair looked in.

‘Hallo!’ said Watchman. ‘Our distinguished artist.’ Norman Cubitt grinned, lowered his painter’s pack, and came into the ingle-nook.

‘Well, Luke? Good trip?’

‘Splendid! You’re painting already?’ Cubitt stretched a hand to the fire. The fingers were grimed with paint.

‘I’m doing a thing of Seb,’ he said. ‘I suppose he’s told you about it. Laying it on with a trowel, I am. That’s in the morning. Tonight I started a thing down by the jetty. They’re patching up one of the posts. Very pleasant subject, but my treatment of it so far is bloody.’

‘Are you painting in the dark?’ asked Watchman with a smile.

‘I was talking to one of the fishing blokes after the light went. They’ve gone all politically-minded in the Coombe.’

‘That,’ said Parish, lowering his voice, ‘is Will Pomeroy and his Left Group.’

‘Will and Decima together,’ said Cubitt. ‘I’ve suggested they call themselves the Decimbrists.’

‘Where are the lads of the village?’ demanded Watchman. ‘I thought I heard the dart game in progress as I went upstairs.’

‘Abel’s rat-poisoning in the garage,’ said Parish. ‘They’ve all gone out to see he doesn’t give himself a lethal dose of prussic acid.’

‘Good Lord!’ Watchman ejaculated. ‘Is the old fool playing around with cyanide?’

‘Apparently. Why wouldn’t we have a drink?’

‘Why not indeed?’ agreed Cubitt. ‘Hi, Will!’

He went to the bar and leant over it, looking into the Public.

‘The whole damn place is deserted. I’ll get our drinks and chalk them up. Beer?’

‘Beer it is,’ said Parish.

‘What form of cyanide has Abel got hold of?’ Watchman asked.

‘Eh?’ said Parish vaguely. ‘Oh, let’s see now. I fetched it for him from Illington. The chemist hadn’t got any of the stock rat-banes, but he poked round and found this stuff. I think he called it Scheele’s acid.’

‘Good, God!’

‘What? Yes, that was it – Scheele’s acid. And then he said he thought the fumes of Scheele’s acid mightn’t be strong enough, so he gingered it up a bit.’

‘With what, in the name of all the Borgias?’

‘Well – with prussic acid, I imagine.’

‘You imagine! You imagine!’

‘He said that was what it was. He said it was acid or something. I wouldn’t know. He warned me in sixteen different positions to be careful. Suggested Abel wore a half-crown gas mask, so I bought it in case Abel hadn’t got one. Abel’s using gloves and everything.’

‘It’s absolutely monstrous!’

‘I had to sign for it, old boy,’ said Parish. ‘Very solemn we were. God, he was a stupid man! Bone from the eyes up, but so, so kind.’

Watchman said angrily, ‘I should damn well think he was stupid. Do you know that twenty-five drops of Scheele’s acid will kill a man in a few minutes? Why, good Lord, in Rex v. Bull, if I’m not mistaken, it was alleged that accused gave only seven drops. I myself defended a medical student who gave twenty minims in error. Charge of manslaughter. I got him off but – how’s Abel using it?’

‘What’s all this?’ inquired Cubitt. ‘There’s your beer.’

‘Abel said he was going to put it in a pot and shove it in a rathole,’ explained Parish. ‘I think he’s filled with due respect for its deadliness, Luke, really. He’s going to block the hole up and everything.’