NGAIO MARSH

Death at the Bar

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persosn, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009

Death at the Bar first published in Great Britain by Geoffrey Bles 1940

Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works

Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1940

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Source ISBN: 9780006512356

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007344475

Version: 2016-09-08

DEDICATION

For My Friends in the Dunedin Repertory Society

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Cast of Characters

1 The Plume of Feathers

2 Advance by Watchman

3 Further Advance by Watchman

4 The Evening in Question

5 Failure by Mr Legge

6 Inquest

7 Complaint from a Publican

8 Alleyn at Illington

9 Alleyn at The Feathers

10 The Tumbler and the Dart

11 Routine

12 Curious Behaviour of Mr Legge

13 Miss Darragh Stands Firm

14 Crime and Mr Legge

15 Love Interest

16 Alleyn Exceeds his Duty

17 Mr Fox Takes Sherry

18 Mr Legge Commits a Misdemeanour

19 The Chief Constable as Watson

20 Conjecture into Fact

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Luke Watchman, KC |
Sebastian Parish | His cousin
Norman Cubitt, RA |
Abel Pomeroy | Proprietor, Plume of Feathers, Devon
Will Pomeroy | His son
Mrs Ives | Housekeeper at the Plume of Feathers
The Hon Violet Darragh | Of County Clare, Ireland
Robert Legge | Secretary and Treasurer to the CoombeLeft Movement
George Nark | Farmer, of Ottercombe
Decima Moore | Of Cary Edge Farm and of Oxford
Dr Shaw | Police Surgeon, Illington
Nicholas Harper | Superintendent of Police, Illington
Richard Oates, PC | Of the Illington and Ottercombe Constabulary
Dr Mordant | Coroner for Illington
Roderick Alleyn | Chief Detective-Inspector, Criminal Investigation Department
T. R. Fox | Inspector, Criminal Investigation Department
Colonel, The Honourable Maxwell Brammington | Chief Constable

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.’

‘The chemist had no business to give you Scheele’s, much less this infernal brew. He ought to be struck off the books. The pharmacopœial preparation would have been quite strong enough. He could have diluted even that to advantage.’

‘Well, God bless us,’ said Cubitt hastily, and took a pull at his beer.

‘What happens, actually, when someone’s poisoned by prussic acid?’ asked Parish.

‘Convulsion, clammy sweat, and death.’

‘Shut up!’ said Cubitt. ‘What a filthy conversation!’

‘Well – cheers, dear,’ said Parish, raising his tankard.

‘You do get hold of the most repellent idioms, Seb,’ said his cousin. ‘Te saluto.’

‘But not moriturus, I trust,’ added Parish. ‘With all this chat about prussic acid! What’s it look like?’

‘You bought it.’

‘I didn’t notice. It’s a blue bottle.’

‘Hydrocyanic acid,’ said Watchman with his barrister’s precision, ‘is, in appearance, exactly like water. It is a liquid miscible with water and this stuff is a dilution of hydrocyanic acid.’

‘The chemist,’ said Parish, ‘put a terrific notice on it. I remember I once had to play a man who’d taken cyanide. “Fool’s Errand,” the piece was; a revival with whiskers on it, but not a bad old drama. I died in a few seconds.’

‘For once the dramatist was right,’ said Watchman. ‘It’s one of the sudden poisons. Horrible stuff! I’ve got cause to know it. I was once briefed in a case where a woman took –’

‘For God’s sake,’ interrupted Norman Cubitt violently, ‘Shut up, both of you, I’ve got a poison phobia.’

‘Have you really, Norman?’ asked Parish. ‘That’s very interesting. Can you trace it?’

‘I think so.’ Cubitt rubbed his hair and then looked absentmindedly at his paint-grimed hand. ‘As a matter of fact, my dear Seb,’ he said, with his air of secretly mocking at himself, ‘you have named the root and cause of my affection. You have perpetrated a coincidence, Sebastian. The very play you mentioned just now, started me off on my Freudian road to the jim-jams. “Fool’s Errand,” and well named. It is, as you say, a remarkably naîve play. At the age of seven, however, I did not think so. I found it terrifying.’

‘At the age of seven?’

‘Yes. My eldest brother, poor fool, fancied himself as an amateur and essayed the principal part. I was bullied into enacting the small boy who, as I remember, perpetually bleated: “Papa, why is mamma so pale” and later on: “Papa, why is mamma so quiet? Where has she gone, papa?”’

‘We cut all that in the revival,’ said Parish. ‘It was terrible stuff.’

‘I agree with you. As you remember, papa had poisoned mamma. For years afterwards I had the horrors at the very word. I remember that I used to wipe all the schoolroom china for fear our Miss Tobin was a Borgian governess. I invented all sorts of curious devices in order that Miss Tobin should drink my morning cocoa and I hers. Odd, wasn’t it? I grew out of it but I still dislike the sound of the word and I detest taking medicine labelled in accordance with the Pure Food Act.’

‘Labelled what?’ asked Parish with a wink at Watchman.

‘Labelled poison, damn you,’ said Cubitt.

Watchman looked curiously at him.

‘I suppose there’s something in this psycho-stuff,’ he said. ‘But I always rather boggle at it.’

‘I don’t see why you should,’ said Parish. ‘You yourself get a fit of the staggers if you scratch your finger. You told me once, you fainted when you had a blood test. That’s a phobia, same as Norman’s.’

‘Not quite,’ said Watchman. ‘Lots of people can’t stand the sight of their own blood. This poison scare’s much more unusual. But you don’t mean to tell me, do you, Norman, that because at an early age you helped your brother in a play about cyanide you’d feel definitely uncomfortable if I finished my story?’

Cubitt drained his tankard and set it down on the table.

‘If you’re hell-bent on your beastly story –’ he said.

‘It was only that I was present at the autopsy on this woman who died of cyanide poisoning. When they opened her up, I fainted. Not from emotion but from the fumes. The pathologist said I had a pronounced idiosyncrasy for the stuff. I was damned ill after it. It nearly did for me.’

Cubitt wandered over to the door and lifted his pack.

‘I’ll clean up,’ he said, ‘and join you for the dart game.’

‘Splendid, old boy,’ said Parish. ‘We’ll beat them tonight.’

‘Do our damnedst anyway,’ said Cubitt. At the doorway he turned and looked mournfully at Parish.

‘She’s asking about perspective,’ he said.

‘Give her rat-poison,’ said Parish.

‘Shut up,’ said Cubitt and went out.

‘What was he talking about?’ demanded Watchman.

Parish smiled. ‘He’s got a girl-friend. Wait till you see. Funny chap! He went quite green over your story. Sensitive old beggar, isn’t he?’

‘Oh yes,’ agreed Watchman lightly. ‘I must say I’m sensitive in a rather different key where cyanide’s concerned, having been nearly killed by it.’

‘I don’t know you could have a – what did you call it?’

‘An idiosyncrasy?’

‘It means you’d go under to a very small amount?’

‘It does.’ Watchman yawned and stretched himself full length on the settle.

‘I’m sleepy,’ he said. ‘It’s the sea air. A very pleasant state of being. Just tired enough, with the impressions of a long drive still floating about behind one’s consciousness. Flying hedges, stretches of road that stream out before one’s eyes. The relaxation of arrival setting in. Very pleasant!’

He closed his eyes for a moment and then turned his head to look at his cousin.

‘So Decima Moore is still here,’ he said.

Parish smiled. ‘Very much so. But you’ll have to watch your step, Luke.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s an engagement in the offing.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Decima and Will Pomeroy.’

Watchman sat up.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said sharply.

‘Well – why not?’

‘Good Lord! A politically minded pot-boy.’

‘Actually they’re the same class,’ Parish murmured.

‘Perhaps; but she’s not of it.’

‘All the same –’

Watchman grimaced.

‘She’s a little fool,’ he said, ‘but you may be right,’ and lay back again. ‘Oh well!’ he added comfortably.

There was a moment’s silence.

‘There’s another female here,’ said Parish, and grinned.

‘Another? Who?’

‘Norman’s girl-friend of course. My oath!’

‘Why? What’s she like? Why are you grinning away like a Cheshire cat, Seb?’

‘My dear soul,’ said Parish, ‘if I could get that woman to walk on the boards every evening and do her stuff exactly as she does it here – well, of course! I’d go into management and die a millionaire.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She’s the Honourable Violet Darragh. She waters.’

‘She what?’

‘She does water-colours. Wait till you hear Norman on Violet.’

‘Is she a nuisance?’ asked Watchman apprehensively.

‘Not exactly. Well, in a way. Pure joy to me. Wait till you meet her.’

Parish would say no more about Miss Darragh, and Watchman, only mildly interested, relapsed into a pleasant doze.

‘By the way,’ he said presently, ‘some driving expert nearly dashed himself to extinction against my bonnet.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. At Diddlestock Corner. Came bucketing out of the blind turning on my right, beat me by a split second, and hung his silly little stern on my front bumpers. Ass!’

‘Any damage?’

‘No, no. He heaved his pygmy up by the bottom and I backed away. Funny sort of fellow he is.’

‘You knew him?’ asked Parish in surprise.

‘No.’ Watchman took the tip of his nose between thumb and forefinger. It was a gesture he used in cross-examination. ‘No, I don’t know him, and yet – there was something – I got the impression that he didn’t want to know me. Quite an educated voice. Labourer’s hands. False teeth, I rather fancy.’

‘You’re very observant,’ said Parish, lightly.

‘No more than the next man, but there was something about the fellow. I was going to ask if you knew him. His car’s in the garage.’

‘Surely it’s not – hallo, here are others.’

Boots and voices sounded in the public bar. Will Pomeroy came through and leant over the counter. He looked, not toward Watchman or Parish, but into a settle on the far side of the Private, a settle whose high back was towards them.

‘’Evening, Bob,’ said Will cordially. ‘Kept you waiting?’

‘That’s all right, Will,’ said a voice from beyond the settle. ‘I’ll have a pint of bitter when you’re ready.’

Luke Watchman uttered a stifled exclamation.

‘What’s up? asked his cousin.

‘Come here.’

Parish strolled nearer to him and, in obedience to a movement of Watchman’s head, stooped towards him.

‘What’s up?’ he repeated.

‘That’s the same fellow,’ muttered Watchman, ‘he must have been here all the time. That’s his voice.’

‘Hell!’ said Parish delightedly.

‘D’you think he heard?’

‘Of course he heard.’

‘Blast the creature! Serves him right.’

‘Shut up.’

The door into the private bar opened. Old Abel came in followed by Norman Cubitt. Cubitt took three darts from a collection in a pewter pot on the bar and moved in front of the dart board.

‘I’ll be there in a moment,’ said a woman’s voice from the passage. ‘Don’t start without me.’

Abel walked into the ingle-nook and put a bottle on the mantelpiece.

‘Well, souls,’ he said, ‘reckon we’m settled the hash of they vermin. If thurr’s not a corpse on the premises afore long, I’ll be greatly astonished.’

CHAPTER 2
Advance by Watchman

The bottle was a small one and as Sebastian Parish had remarked it was conspicuously labelled. The word ‘POISON’ in scarlet on a white ground ran diagonally across on an attached label. It struck a note of interjection and alarm and focused the attention of the five men. Few who read that warning escape a sudden jolt of the imagination.

Parish said, ‘Mr Watchman thinks you are a public danger, Abel. He’s afraid we’ll all be poisoned.’

‘I’m afraid he’ll poison himself,’ said Watchman.

‘Who, sir? Me?’ asked Abel. ‘Not a bit of it. I be mortal cautious sort of chap when it comes to this manner of murderous tipple, Mr Watchman.’

‘I hope you are,’ said Cubitt from the dart board.

‘You’re not going to leave it on the mantelshelf, father?’ asked Will.

‘No fear of that, sonny. I’ll stow it away careful.’

‘You’d much better get rid of it altogether,’ said Watchman. ‘Don’t put it away somewhere. You’ll forget all about it and some day someone will take a sniff at it to find out what it is. Let me take it back to the chemist at Illington. I’d very much like to have a word with that gentleman.’

‘Lord love you,’ said Abel, opening his eyes very wide, ‘us’ve not finished with they bowldacious varmints yet, my sonnies. If so be they’ve got a squeak left in ’em us’ll give ’em another powerful whiff and finish ‘em off.’

‘At least,’ said Cubitt, throwing a dart into double-twenty, ‘at least you might put it out of reach.’

‘Mr Cubitt has a poison-phobia,’ said Watchman.

‘A what, sir?’

‘Never mind about that,’ said Cubitt. ‘I should have thought anybody might boggle at prussic acid.’

‘Don’t fret yourselves, gentlemen,’ said Abel. ‘Thurr’ll be none of this brew served out at the Feathers Tap.’

He mounted the settle and taking the bottle from the mantelpiece pushed it into the top shelf of a double cupboard in the corner of the ingle-nook. He then pulled off the old gloves he wore, threw them on the fire, and turned the key.

‘Nobody can call me a careless man,’ he said. ‘I’m all for looking after myself. Thurr’s my first-aid box in thurr, ready to hand, and if any of the chaps cuts themselves with a mucky fish-knife or any other infectious trifle of that sort, they gets a swill of iodine in scratch. Makes ’em squirm a bit and none the worse for that. I learnt that in the war, my sonnies. I was a surgeon’s orderly and I know the mighty powers thurr be in drugs.’

He stared at the glass door. The label ‘POISON’ still showed, slightly distorted, in the darkness of the little cupboard.

‘Safe enough thurr,’ said Abel and went over to the bar.

With the arrival of the Pomeroys the private bar took on its customary aspect for a summer’s evening. They both went behind the counters. Abel sat facing the Private and on Cubitt’s order drew pints of draught beer for the company. A game of darts was started in the Public.

The man in the settle had not moved, but now Watchman saw his hand reach out for his pint. He saw the callouses, the chipped nails, the coarsened joints of the fingers. Watchman got up, stretched himself, grimaced at Parish, and crossed the room to the settle.

The light shone full in the face of the stranger. The skin of his face was brown, but Watchman thought it had only recently acquired this colour. His hair stood up in white bristles, his forehead was garnished with bumps that shone in the lamplight. The eyes under the bleached lashes seemed almost without colour. From the nostrils to the corners of the mouth ran grooves that lent emphasis to the fall of the lips. Without raising his head the man looked up at Watchman, and the shadow of a smile seemed to visit his face. He got up and made as if to go to the door, but Watchman stopped him.

‘May I introduce myself?’ asked Watchman.

The man smiled more broadly. ‘They are false teeth,’ thought Watchman, and he added: ‘We have met already this evening, but we didn’t exchange names. Mine is Luke Watchman.’

‘I gathered as much from your conversation,’ said the man. He paused for a moment and then said: ‘Mine is Legge.’

‘I’m afraid I sounded uncivil,’ said Watchman. ‘I hope you’ll allow me a little motorists’ licence. One always abuses the other man, doesn’t one?’

‘You’d every excuse,’ mumbled Legge, ‘every excuse.’ He scarcely moved his lips. His teeth seemed too large for his mouth. He looked sideways at Watchman, picked up a magazine from the settle, and flipped it open, holding it before his face.

Watchman felt vaguely irritated. He had struck no sort of response from the man and he was not accustomed to falling flat. Obviously, Legge merely wished to be rid of him and this state of affairs piqued Watchman’s vanity. He sat on the edge of the table, and for the second time that evening offered his cigarette-case to Legge.

‘No thanks – pipe.’

‘I’d no idea I should find you here,’ said Watchman, and noticed uncomfortably that his own voice sounded disproportionately cordial, ‘although you did tell me you were bound for Ottercombe. It’s a good pub, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Legge hurriedly. ‘Very good.’

‘Are you making a long visit?’

‘I live here,’ said Legge.

He pulled out his pipe and began to fill it. His fingers moved clumsily and he had an air of rather ridiculous concentration. Watchman felt marooned on the edge of the table. He saw that Parish was listening with a maddening grin, and he fancied that Cubitt’s ears were cocked. ‘Damn it,’ he thought, ‘I will not be put out of countenance by the brute. He shall like me.’ But he could think of nothing to say and Mr Legge had begun to read his magazine.

From beyond the bar came the sound of raucous applause. Someone yelled: ‘Double seventeen and we’m beat the Bakery.’

Norman Cubitt pulled out his darts and paused for a moment. He looked from Watchman to Parish. It struck him that there was a strong family resemblance between these cousins, a resemblance of character rather than physique. Each in his way, thought Cubitt, was a vain man. In Parish one recognized the ingenuous vanity of the actor. Off the stage he wooed applause with only less assiduity than he commanded it when he faced an audience. Watchman was more subtle. Watchman must have the attention and respect of every new acquaintance, but he played for it without seeming to do so. He would take endless trouble with a complete stranger when he seemed to take none. ‘But he’s getting no change out of Legge,’ thought Cubitt maliciously. And with a faint smile he turned back to the dart board.

Watchman saw the smile. He took a pull at his tankard and tried again.

‘Are you one of the dart experts?’ he asked. Legge looked up vaguely and Watchman had to repeat his question.

‘I play a little,’ said Legge.

Cubitt hurled his last dart at the board and joined the others.

‘He plays like the devil himself,’ he said. ‘Last night I took him on, 101 down. I never even started. He threw fifty, one, and the fifty again.’

‘I was fortunate that time,’ said Mr Legge with rather more animation.

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Cubitt. ‘You’re merely odiously accurate.’

‘Well,’ said Watchman, ‘I’ll lay you ten bob you can’t do it again, Mr Legge.’

‘You’ve lost,’ said Cubitt.

‘Aye, he’s a proper masterpiece is Mr Legge,’ said old Abel.

Sebastian Parish came across from the ingle-nook. He looked down good-humouredly at Legge. ‘Nobody,’ thought Cubitt, ‘has any right to be as good-looking as Seb.’

‘What’s all this?’ asked Parish.

‘I’ve offered to bet Mr Legge ten bob he can’t throw fifty, one, and fifty.’

‘You’ve lost,’ said Parish.

‘This is monstrous,’ cried Watchman. ‘Do you take me, Mr Legge?’

Legge shot a glance at him. The voices of the players beyond the partition had quietened for the moment. Will Pomeroy had joined his father at the private bar. Cubitt and Parish and the two Pomeroys waited in silence for Legge’s reply. He made a curious grimace, pursing his lips and screwing up his eyes. As if in reply, Watchman used that KC’s trick of his and took the tip of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Cubitt, who watched them curiously, was visited by the fantastic notion that some sort of signal had passed between them.

Legge rose slowly to his feet.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Certainly, Mr Watchman. I take you on.’

II

Legge moved, with a slovenly dragging of his boots, into a position in front of the board. He pulled out the three darts and looked at them.

‘Getting a bit worn, Mr Pomeroy,’ said Legge. ‘The rings are loose.’

‘I’ve sent for a new set,’ said Abel. ‘They’ll be here tomorrow. Old lot can go into Public.’

Will Pomeroy left the public bar and joined his father. ‘Showing ’em how to do it, Bob?’ he asked.

‘There’s a bet on, sonny,’ said old Pomeroy.

‘Don’t make me nervous, Will,’ said Legge, with a grin.

He looked at the board, poised his first dart and, with a crisp movement of his hand flung it into the bullseye.

‘Fifty,’ said Will. ‘There you are, gentlemen! Fifty!’

‘Three-and-fourpence in pawn,’ said Watchman.

‘We’ll put it into the CLM. if it comes off, Will,’ said Legge.

‘What’s the CLM?’ demanded Watchman.

Will stared straight in front of him and said, ‘The Coombe Left Movement, Mr Watchman. We’re a branch of the South Devon Left, now.’

‘Oh Lord!’ said Watchman.

Legge threw his second dart. It seemed almost to drop from his hand, but he must have used a certain amount of force since it went home solidly into the top right-hand division.

‘And the one. Six-and-eight pence looking a bit off colour, Mr Watchman,’ said Abel Pomeroy.

‘He’s stymied himself for the other double twenty-five, though,’ said Watchman. ‘The first dart’s lying right across it.’

Legge raised his hand and, this time, took more deliberate aim. He threw from a greater height. For a fraction of a second the dart seemed to hang in his fingers before it sped downwards, athwart the first, into the narrow strip round the centre.

‘And fifty it is!’ said Will. ‘There you are. Fifty. Good for you, comrade.’

A little chorus went up from Parish, Cubitt and old Abel.

‘That man’s a wizard.’

‘Shouldn’t be allowed!’

‘You’m a proper masterpiece.’

‘Well done, Bob,’ added Will, as if determined to give the last word of praise.

Watchman laid a ten-shilling note on the table.

‘I congratulate you,’ he said.

Legge looked at the note.

‘Thank you, Mr Watchman,’ he said. ‘Another ten bob for the fighting fund, Will.’

‘Good enough, but it’s straightout generous to give it.’

Watchman sat down again on the table-edge.

‘All very nice,’ he said. ‘Does you credit, Mr Legge. I rather think another drink’s indicated. With me, if you please. Loser’s privilege.’

Will Pomeroy glanced uncomfortably at Legge. By Feathers etiquette, the winner of a bet at darts pays for the next round. There was a short silence broken by old Pomeroy who insisted that the next round should be on the house, and served the company with a potent dark ale, known to the Coombe as Treble Extra.

‘We’ll all play like Mr Legge with this inside us,’ said Parish.

‘Yes,’ agreed Watchman, looking into his tankard, ‘it’s a fighting fund in itself. A very pretty tipple indeed.’ He looked up at Legge.

‘Do you know any other tricks like that one, Mr Legge?’

‘I know a prettier one than that,’ said Legge quietly, ‘if you’ll assist me.’

‘I assist you?’

‘Yes. If you’ll stretch your hand out flat on the board I’ll outline it with darts.’

‘Really? You ought to be in the sawdust ring. No I don’t think I trust you enough for that, you know. One would need a little more of Mr Pomeroy’s Treble Extra.’

He stretched out his hand and looked at it.

‘And yet, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see you do it. Some other time. You know, Mr Legge, as a good Conservative, I feel I should deplore your gesture. Against whom is your fighting fund directed?’

But before Legge could speak, Will answered quickly, ‘Against the capitalist, Mr Watchman, and all his side.’

‘Really? So Mr Legge is also an ardent proletarian fan?’

‘Secretary and treasurer for the Coombe Left Movement.’

‘Secretary and treasurer,’ repeated Watchman. ‘Responsible jobs, aren’t they?’

‘Aye,’ said Will, ‘and it’s a responsible chap that’s taken ’em on for us.’

Legge turned away and moved into the ingle-nook. Watchman looked after him. Cubitt noticed that Watchman’s good humour seemed to be restored. Any one would have thought that he had won the bet and that it had been for a much larger sum. And for no reason in the world Cubitt felt that there had been a passage of arms between Legge and Watchman, and that Watchman had scored a hit.

‘What about you, Abel?’ Watchman asked abruptly. ‘Are you going to paint the Feathers red?’

‘Me sir? No. I don’t hold with Will’s revolutionary ideas and he knows it, but us’ve agreed to differ. Does no harm, I reckon, for these young chaps to meet every Friday and make believe they’re hashing up the laws and serving ’em out topsy-turvy – game in servants’ hall and prunes and rice for gentry. Our Will was always a great hand for make-believe from the time he learned to talk. Used to strut about taproom giving orders to the furniture. “I be as good as Squire, now,” he’d say in his little lad’s voice and I reckon he’s saying it yet.’

‘You’re blind to reason, father,’ said Will. ‘Blind-stupid and hidebound. Either you can’t see or you won’t. Us chaps are working for the good of all, not for ourselves.’

‘Right enough, sonny. A fine noble ideal, I don’t doubt, and when you’ve got us all toeing the line with no handicaps and nothing to run for –’

‘The good of the State to run for. Each man equal –’

‘And all coming in first. Damn’ queer sort of race.’

‘The old argument,’ said Legge from the fireplace, ‘and based as usual on a false analogy.’

‘Is it a false analogy?’ asked Watchman. ‘You propose to kill private enterprise –’

‘A chap,’ said Will Pomeroy, ‘will be as ambitious for the public good as he will for his own selfish aims. Give him the chance – that’s all. Teach him to think. The people –’

‘The people!’ interrupted Watchman, looking at Legge’s back. ‘What do you mean by the people? I suppose you mean that vast collection of individuals whose wages are below a certain sum and who are capable of being led by the nose when the right sort of humbug comes along.’

‘That’s no argument,’ began Will angrily. ‘That’s no more than a string of silly opinions.’

‘That’ll do, sonny,’ said Abel.

‘It’s all right, Abel,’ said Watchman, still looking at Legge. ‘I invited the discussion. No offence, I should like to hear what Mr Legge has to say about private enterprise. As treasurer –’

‘Wait a bit, Bob,’ said Will as Legge turned from the fireplace. ‘I don’t like the way you said that, Mr Watchman. Bob Legge here is well-respected in the Coombe. He’s not been long in these parts, ten months isn’t it, Bob? But we’ve learned to know him and we’ve learned to like him. Reckon we’ve showed we trust him, too, seeing the position we’ve given him.’

‘My dear Will,’ said Watchman delicately, ‘I don’t dispute it for a moment. I think Mr Legge has done remarkably well for himself, in ten months.’

Will’s face was scarlet under his thatch of fox-coloured hair. He moved forward and confronted Watchman, his tankard clenched in a great ham of a fist, his feet planted apart.

‘Shut up, now, Luke,’ said Sebastian Parish softly, and Cubitt murmured, ‘don’t heckle, Luke, you’re on a holiday.’

‘See here, Mr Watchman,’ said Will, ‘you can afford to sneer, can’t you, but I’d like to know –’

‘Will!’ Old Abel slapped the bar with an open hand. ‘That’s enough. You’m a grown chap, not a lad, and what’s more, the son of this house. Seems like I ought to give’ee light draught and lemonade till you learn to take a man’s pint like a man. If you can’t talk politics and hold your temper then you’ll not talk politics at all. ‘Be a job for you in Public here. ’Tend it.’

‘I’m sorry, Will,’ said Watchman. ‘Mr Legge is fortunate in his friend.’

Will Pomeroy stood and looked under his brows from Watchman to Legge. Legge shrugged his shoulders, muttered something about moving into the public bar, and went out. Will turned on Watchman.

‘There’s something behind all this,’ he said. ‘I want to know what the game is, Mr Watchman, and damme, I’m going to find out.’

‘Did I hear something about a game?’ said a woman’s voice. They all turned to look at the doorway. There they saw a short fat figure clad in a purple tweed skirt and a green jersey.

‘May I come in?’ asked the Hon. Violet Darragh.

III

Miss Darragh’s entrance broke up the scene. Will Pomeroy turned, ducked under the flap of the private bar, and leant over the counter into the Public. Watchman stood up. The others turned to Miss Darragh with an air of relief, and Abel Pomeroy, with his innkeeper’s heartiness, intensified perhaps by a feeling of genuine relief, said loudly, ‘Come in then, Miss, company’s waiting for you and you’m in time for a drink, with the house.’

‘Not Treble Extra, Mr Pomeroy, if you don’t mind. Sherry for me, if you please.’

She waddled over to the bar, placed her hands on the counter, and with an agility that astonished Watchman, made a neat little vault on to one of the tall stools. There she sat beaming upon the company.

She was a woman of perhaps fifty, but it would have been difficult to guess at her age since time had added to her countenance and figure merely layer after layer of firm wholesome fat. She was roundabout and compact. Her face was babyish, and this impression was heightened by the tight grey curls that covered her head. In repose she seemed to pout, and it was not until she spoke that her good humour appeared in her eyes, and was magnified by her spectacles. All fat people wear a look of inscrutability, and Violet Darragh was not unlike a jolly sort of sphinx.

Abel served her and she took the glass delicately in her small white paws.

‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘is everybody having fun?’ and then caught sight of Watchman. ‘Is this your cousin, Mr Parish?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Parish hurriedly. ‘Mr Watchman, Miss Darragh.’

‘How d’ye do?’ said Miss Darragh.

Like many Irishwomen of her class she spoke with such a marked brogue that one wondered whether it was inspired by a kind of jocularity that had turned into a habit.

‘I’ve heard about you, of course, and read about you in the papers, for I dearly love a good murder and if I can’t have me murder I’m all for arson. That was a fine murder case you defended last year, now, Mr Watchman. Before you took silk, ’twas you did your best for the poor scoundrel.’

Watchman expanded.

‘I didn’t get him off, Miss Darragh.’

‘Ah well, and a good job you didn’t, for we’d none of us have been safe in our beds. And there’s Mr Cubitt come from his painting down by the jetty, in mortal terror, poor man, lest I plague him with me perspective.’

‘Not at all,’ said Cubitt, turning rather pink.

‘I’ll leave you alone now. I know very well I’m a trouble to you, but it’s good for your character, and you may look upon me as a kind of holiday penance.’

‘You’re a painter too, Miss Darragh?’ said Watchman.

‘I’m a raw amateur, Mr Watchman, but I’ve a kind of itch for ut. When I see a little peep I can’t rest till I’m at ut with me paints. There’s Mr Cubitt wincing as if he had a nagging tooth, when I talk of a pretty peep. You’ve a distinguished company in your house, Mr Pomeroy,’ continued Miss Darragh. ‘I thought I was coming to a quiet little village, and what do I find but a galaxy of the talents. Mr Parish who’s turned me heart over many a time with his acting; Mr Cubitt, down there painting within stone’s throw of meself, and now haven’t we the great counsel to add to our intellectual feast. I wonder now, Mr Watchman, if you remember me poor cousin Bryonie’s case?’

‘I – yes,’ said Watchman, greatly disconcerted. ‘I – I defended Lord Bryonie. Yes.’

‘And didn’t he only get the mere eighteen months due entirely to your eloquence? Ah, he’s dead now, poor fellow. Only a shadow of himself, he was when he came out. It was a terrible shock to ’um.’

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘’Twas indeed. He never had many brains, poor fellow, and it was an unlucky day for the family when he took it into his head to dabble in business. Where’s Miss Moor? I thought I heard you speak of a game of darts.’

‘She’s coming,’ said Cubitt.

‘And I hope you’ll all play again for I found it a great entertainment. Are you a dart player too, Mr Watchman?’

‘I try,’ said Watchman.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

‘Here is Decima,’ said Cubitt.

IV

A tall young woman came into the room and stood, very much at her ease, screwing her eyes up a little in the glare of the lights.

‘I’m so sorry if I’ve kept you waiting,’ said Decima Moor. ‘Good-evening, every one.’

They all greeted her. There was a second’s pause and then Watchman moved into the centre of the room.

‘Good-evening,’ said Watchman.

She faced him and met his gaze.

‘So you have arrived,’ she said. ‘Good-evening.’

She touched his outstretched hand, walked over to the bar, and settled herself on one of the tall stools. She wore a fisherman’s jersey and dark blue slacks. Her hair was cut like a poet’s of the romantic period and was moulded in short locks about her head and face. She was good-looking with a classic regularity of beauty that was given an individual quirk by the blackness of her brows and the singular intensity of her eyes. She moved with the kind of grace that only just escapes angularity. She was twenty-four years of age.

If an observant stranger had been at the Feathers that evening, he might have noticed that on Decima’s entrance the demeanour of most of the men changed. For Decima owned that quality which Hollywood has loudly defined for the world. She owned a measure of attraction over which she herself had little governance. Though she must have been aware of this, she seemed unaware, and neither in her manner nor in her speech did she appear to exercise conscious charm. Yet from the moment of her entrance the men when they spoke to each other, looked at her, and in each of them was the disturbance of Decima’s attraction reflected. Watchman’s eyes brightened, he became more alert, and he spoke a little louder. Parish expanded as if in a spotlight and he exuded gallantry. Cubitt’s air of vague amiability contracted to a sharp awareness. Abel Pomeroy beamed upon Decima. Will, still flushed from his passage with Watchman, turned a deeper red. He answered her greeting awkwardly and was very much the solemn and self-conscious rustic.

Decima took a cigarette from Parish and looked round the taproom.

‘Has the dart game begun?’ she asked.

‘We’re waiting for you, my angel,’ said Parish. ‘What have you been doing with yourself all this time?’

‘Washing. I’ve attended a poison party. I hope you didn’t spill prussic acid about the garage, you two Pomeroys.’

‘You’re not ’feared, too, are you Miss Dessy?’ asked Abel. ‘A fine, bold, learned, female like you.’

Decima laughed.

‘A revolting picture,’ she said. ‘What do you think Will?’

She leant across the bar and looked beyond Abel into the Public. Will’s back was towards her. He turned and faced Decima. His eyes devoured her, but he said nothing. Decima raised her tankard and drank to him. He returned the gesture clumsily, and Cubitt saw Watchman’s eyebrows go up.

‘Well,’ said Decima suddenly, ‘what have you all been talking about? You’re very silent now, I must say.’

Before any of the others could reply, Watchman said: ‘We’ve been arguing, my dear.’

‘Arguing?’ She still looked at Will. Watchman drained his tankard, moved up to the bar, and sat on the stool next hers.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Until Miss Darragh came in we did nothing else.’

‘And why should I stop you?’ asked Miss Darragh. She slipped neatly off her high stool and toddled into the ingle-nook. ‘I’ve a passion for argument. What was it about, now? Art? Politics? Love?’

‘It was about politics,’ said Watchman, still looking at Decima. ‘The State, the People, and – private enterprise.’

‘You?’ Decima said. ‘But you’re hopeless. When our way of things comes round, you’ll be one of our major problems.’

‘Really? Won’t you need any barristers?’

‘I wish I could say no,’ said Decima.

Watchman laughed.

‘At least,’ he said, ‘I may hold a watching brief for you.’

She didn’t answer and he insisted: ‘Mayn’t I?’

‘You’re talking nonsense,’ said Decima.

‘Well,’ said Parish suddenly, ‘how about a Round-the-Clock contest to enliven the proceedings?’

‘Why not, indeed?’ murmured Cubitt.

‘Will you play?’ Watchman asked Decima.

‘Of course. Let’s all play. Coming, Will?’

But Will Pomeroy jerked his head towards the public taproom where two or three new-comers noisily demanded drinks.

‘Will you play, Miss Darragh?’ asked Decima.

‘I will not, thank you my dear. I’ve no eye at all for sport. When I was a child, didn’t I half-blind me brother Terence with an apple intended to strike me brother Brian? I’d do you some mischief were I to try. Moreover, I’m too fat. I’ll sit and watch the fun.’

Cubitt, Parish and Decima Moore stood in front of the dart-board. Watchman walked into the ingle-nook. From the moment when Will Pomeroy had taken up cudgels for him against Watchman, Legge had faded out. He had taken his drink, his pipe, and his thoughts, whatever they might be, into the public bar.

Presently a burst of applause broke out, and Will Pomeroy shouted that Legge was a wizard and invited Decima and Cubitt to look at what he had done. The others followed, peered into the public bar. A colossal red-faced man stood with his hand against the public dart-board. His fingers were spread out, and in the gaps between darts were embedded, with others outside the thumb and the little finger.

‘Look at that!’ cried Will. ‘Look at it!’

‘Ah,’ said Watchman. ‘So Mr Legge has found another victim. A great many people seem to have faith in Mr Legge.’

There was a sudden silence. Watchman leant over the private bar and raised his voice.

‘We are going to have a match,’ he said. ‘Three-a-side. Mr Legge, will you join us?’

Legge took his pipe out of his mouth and said, ‘What’s the game?’

‘Darts. Round-the-Clock.’

‘Round-the-Clock?’

‘Yes. Haven’t you played that version?’

‘A long time ago. I’ve forgotten –’

‘You have to get one dart in each segment in numerical sequence, ending on a double,’ explained Cubitt.

‘In fact,’ said Watchman very pleasantly, ‘you might call it “Doing Time.” Haven’t you ever done time, Mr Legge?’

‘No,’ said Legge, ‘But I’ll take you on. I’ll be there in a minute.’

‘Right. And if you beat me at this I’m damned if tomorrow night I don’t let you take a pot at my hand.’

‘Thank you,’ said Legge. ‘I’ll remember.’

CHAPTER 3
Further Advance by Watchman

‘The chief fault in Luke,’ said Sebastian Parish, ‘is that he is quite incapable of letting well alone.’

Norman Cubitt tilted his hat over his eyes, peered from Parish to his canvas, and began to scuffle among his tubes of paint. He uttered a short grunt.

‘More than that,’ added Parish, ‘he glories in making bad a good deal worse. Do you mind my talking, old boy?’

‘No. Turn the head a little to the right. Too much. That’s right. I won’t keep you much longer. Just while the sun’s on the left side of the face. The shoulders are coming too far round again.’

‘You talk like a doctor about my members – “the” head, “the” face, “the” shoulders.’

‘You’re a vain fellow, Seb. Now, hold it like that, do. Yes, there’s something persistently impish in Luke. He jabs at people. What was he up to last night with Will Pomeroy and Legge?’

‘Damned if I know. Funny business, wasn’t it? Do you think he’s jealous of Will?’

‘Jealous?’ repeated Cubitt. With his palette-knife he laid an unctuous stroke of blue beside the margin of the painted head. ‘Why, jealous?’

‘Well – because of Decima.’

‘Oh nonsense! And yet I don’t know. He’s not your cousin for nothing, Seb. Luke’s got his share of the family vanity.’

‘I don’t know why you say I’m vain, damn you. I don’t think I’m vain at all. Do you know I get an average of twelve drivelling letters a day from females in front? And do they mean a thing to me?’

‘You’d be bitterly disappointed if there was a falling off. Don’t move your shoulders. But you may be right about Luke.’

‘I’d like to know,’ said Parish, ‘just how much last year’s little flirtation with Decima added up to.’

‘Would you? I don’t think it’s relevant.’

‘Well,’ said Parish, ‘she’s an attractive wench. More “It” to the square inch than most of them. It’s hard to say why. She’s got looks, of course, but not the looks that usually get over that way. Not the voluptuous type. Her –’

‘Shut up,’ said Cubitt violently and added: ‘I’m going to paint your mouth.’

His own was set in an unusually tight line. He worked for a time in silence, stood back, and said abruptly:

‘I don’t really think Will Pomeroy was his objective. He was getting at Legge, and why the devil he should pick on a man he’d never seen in his life until last night is more than I can tell.’

‘I thought he seemed to be sort of probing. Trying to corner Legge in some way.’

Cubitt paused with his knife over the canvas.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s perfectly true. I thought so too. Trick of the trade perhaps. Counsels curiosity. Almost one expected him to put his foot on the seat of a chair and rest his elbow on his knee. Now I come to think of it, I believe he did hitch his coat up by the lapels.’

‘Characteristic,’ pronounced Parish seriously. He himself had used these touches several times in trial scenes.

Cubitt smiled. ‘But he sounded definitely malicious,’ he added.

‘He’s not malicious,’ said Parish uncomfortably.

‘Oh yes, he is,’ said Cubitt coolly. ‘It’s one of his more interesting qualities. He can be very malicious.’

‘He can be very generous too.’

‘I’m sure he can. I like Luke, you know. He interests me enormously.’

‘Apparently, he likes you,’ said Parish. ‘Apparently.’

‘Hallo!’ Cubitt walked back from his canvas and stood squinting at it. ‘You said that with a wealth of meaning, Seb. What’s in the air? You can rest a minute if you like.’

Parish moved off the boulder where he had been sitting, stretched himself elaborately, and joined Cubitt. He gazed solemnly at his own portrait. It was a large canvas. The figure in the dull red sweater was three-quarter life-size. It was presented as a dark form against the lighter background which was the sea and sky. The sky appeared as a series of paling arches, the sea as a simple plane broken by formalized waves. A glint of sunlight had found the cheek and jawbone on the right side of the face.

‘Marvellous, old boy,’ said Parish. ‘Marvellous!’

Cubitt, who disliked being called ‘old boy,’ grunted.

‘Did you say you’d show it in this year’s Academy?’ asked Parish.

‘I didn’t, Seb, but I will. I’ll stifle my æsthetic conscience, prostitute my undoubted genius, and send your portrait to join the annual assembly of cadavers. Do you prefer “Portrait of an Actor”, “Sebastian Parish, Esq”! or simply “Sebastian Parish”?’

‘I think I would like my name,’ said Parish seriously. ‘Not, I mean, that everybody wouldn’t know –’

‘Thank you. But I see your point. Your press agent would agree. What were you going to say about Luke? His generosity, you know, and his apparently liking me so much?’

‘I don’t think I ought to tell you, really.’

‘But of course, you are going to tell me.’

‘He didn’t actually say it was in confidence,’ said Parish.

Cubitt waited with a slight smile.

‘You’d be amazed if you knew,’ continued Parish.

‘Yes?’

‘Yes. Oh, rather. At least I imagine you would be. I was. I never expected anything of the sort, and after all I am his nearest relation. His next-of-kin.’

Cubitt turned and looked at him in real astonishment.

‘Are you by any chance,’ he asked, ‘talking about Luke’s will?’

‘How did you guess?’

‘My dear, good Seb –’

‘All right, all right. I suppose I did give it away. You may as well hear the whole thing. Luke told me the other day that he was leaving his money between us.’

‘Good Lord!’

‘I know. I happened to look him up after the show one evening, and found him browsing over an official-looking document. I said something, chaffingly you know, about it, and he said: “Well, Seb, you’ll find it out some day, so you may as well know now.” And then he told me.’

‘Extraordinarily nice of him,’ said Cubitt uncomfortably, and he added: ‘Damn! I wish you hadn’t told me.’

‘Why on earth?’

‘I don’t know. I enjoy discussing Luke and now I’ll feel he’s sort of sacrosanct. Oh well, he’ll probably outlive both of us.’

‘He’s a good bit older than I am,’ said Parish. ‘Not, I mean, that I don’t hope with all my heart he will. I mean – as far as I’m concerned –’

‘Don’t labour it, Seb,’ said Cubitt kindly. ‘I should think Luke will certainly survive me. He’s strong as a horse and I’m not. You’ll probably come in for the packet.’

‘I hate talking about it like that.’

Parish knocked his pipe out on a stone. Cubitt noticed that he was rather red in the face.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he muttered, ‘it’s rather awkward.’

‘Why?’

‘Well I’m plaguilly hard up at the moment and I’d been wondering –’

‘If Luke would come to the rescue?’ Parish was silent.

‘And in the light of this revelation,’ Cubitt added, ‘you don’t quite like to ask. Poor Seb! But what the devil do you do with your money? You ought to be rolling. You’re always in work. This play you’re in now is a record run, isn’t it, and your salary must be superb.’

‘That’s all jolly fine, old man, but you don’t know what it’s like in the business. My expenses are simply ghastly.’

‘Why?’

‘Why, because you’ve got to keep up a standard. Look at my house. It’s ruinous, but I’ve got to be able to ask the people that count to a place they’ll accept and, if possible, remember. You’ve got to look prosperous in this game, and you’ve got to entertain. My agent’s fees are hellish. My clubs cost the earth. And like a blasted fool I backed a show that flopped for thousands last May.’

‘What did you do that for?’

‘The management are friends of mine. It looked all right.’

‘You give money away, Seb, don’t you? I mean literally. To out-of-luck actors? Old-timers and so on?’

‘I may. Always think “there but for the grace of God!” It’s such a damn’ chancy business.’

‘Yes. No more chancy than painting, my lad.’

‘You don’t have to show so well if you’re an artist. People expect you to live in a peculiar way.’

Cubitt looked at him, but said nothing.

Parish went on defensively: ‘I’m sorry, but you know what I mean. People expect painters to be Bohemians and all that.’

‘There was a time,’ said Cubitt, ‘when actors were content to be Bohemians, whatever that may mean. I never know. As far as I am concerned it means going without things you want.’

‘But your pictures sell.’

‘On an average I sell six pictures a year. Their prices range from twenty pounds to two hundred. It usually works out at about four hundred. You earn that in as many weeks, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘Oh, I’m not grumbling. I’ve got a bit of my own and I could make more, I dare say, if I took pupils or had a shot at commercial art. I’ve suited myself and it’s worked out well enough until –’

‘Until what?’ asked Parish.

‘Nothing. Let’s get on with the work, shall we? The light’s no good after about eleven.’

Parish walked back to the rock and took up his pose. The light wind whipped his black hair from his forehead. He raised his chin and stared out over the sea. He assumed an expression of brooding dominance.

‘That right?’ he asked.

‘Pretty well. You only want a pair of tarnished epaulettes and we could call it “Elba.”’

‘I’ve always thought I’d like to play Napoleon.’

‘A fat lot you know about Napoleon.’

Parish grinned tranquilly.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’d read him up a bit if I had to. As a matter of fact Luke looks rather like him.’

‘The shoulders should come round,’ said Cubitt. ‘That’s more like it. Yes, Luke is rather the type.’

He painted for a minute or two in silence, and then Parish suddenly laughed.

‘What’s up?’ asked Cubitt.

‘Here comes your girl.’

‘What the devil do you mean?’ demanded Cubitt angrily and looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh – I see.’

‘Violet,’ said Parish. ‘Who did you think it was?’

‘I thought you’d gone dotty. Damn the woman.’

‘Will she paint me too?’

‘Not if I know it.’

‘Unkind to your little Violet?’ asked Parish.

‘Don’t call her that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well damn it, she’s not very young and she’s – well, she may be a pest, but she’s by way of being a lady.’

‘Snob!’

‘Don’t be so dense, Seb. Can’t you see – oh Lord, she’s got all her gear. She is going to paint. Well, I’ve just about done for today.’

‘She’s waving.’

Cubitt looked across the headland to where Miss Darragh, a droll figure against the sky, fluttered a large handkerchief.

‘She’s put her stuff down,’ said Parish. ‘She’s going to sketch. What is there to paint, over there?’

‘A peep,’ said Cubitt. ‘Now, hold hard and don’t talk. There’s a shadow under the lower lip –’

He worked with concentration for five minutes, and then put down his palette.

‘That’ll do for today. We’ll pack up.’

But when he’d hitched his pack on his shoulders and stared out to sea for some seconds, he said suddenly:

‘All the same, Seb, I wish you hadn’t told me.’

II

It was understood among the three friends that each should go his own way during the weeks they spent at Ottercombe. Watchman had played with the notion of going out in the dawn with the fishing boats. He woke before it was light and heard the tramp of heavy boots on cobble-stones and the sound of voices down on Ottercombe Steps. He told himself comfortably that here was a link with the past. For hundreds of years the Coombe men had gone down to their boats before dawn. The children of Coombe had heard them stirring, their wives had fed them and seen them go, and for centuries their voices and the sound of their footsteps had roused the village for a moment in the coldest hour of the night. Watchman let the sounds die away, snuggled luxuriously down in bed, and fell asleep.

He woke again at half-past nine and found that Parish had already breakfasted and set out for Coombe Rock.

‘A mortal great mammoth of a picture Mr Cubitt be at,’ said Abel Pomeroy, as Watchman finished his breakfast. ‘Paint enough to cover a wall, sir, and laid on so thick as dough. At close quarters it looks like one of they rocks covered in shell-fish, but ’od rabbit it, my sonnies, when you fall away twenty feet or more, it’s Mr Parish so clear as glass. Looking out over the Rock he be, looking out to sea, and so natural you’d say the man was smelling the wind and thinking of his next meal. You might fancy a stroll out to the Rock, sir, and take a look at Mr Cubitt flinging his paint left and right.’

‘I feel lazy, Abel. Where’s Will?’

‘Went out along with the boats, sir.’ Abel rasped his chin, scratched his head, and re-arranged the objects on the bar.

‘He’s restless, is Will,’ he said suddenly. ‘My own boy, Mr Watchman, and so foreign to me as a changeling.’

‘Will is?’ asked Watchman, filling his pipe.

‘Ah, Will. What with his politics and his notions he’s a right down stranger to me, is Will. A very witty lad too, proper learned, and so full of arguments as a politician. He won’t argufy with me, naturally, seeing I’m not his equal in the way of brains, nor anything like it.’

‘You’re too modest, Abel,’ said Watchman lightly.

‘No, sir, no. I can’t stand up to that boy of mine when it comes to politics and he knows it and lets me down light. I’m for the old ways, a right down Tory, and for why? For no better reason than it suits me, same as it suited my forebears.’

‘A sound enough reason.’

‘No, sir, not according to my boy. According to Will it be a damn’ fool reason and a selfish one into the bargain.’

‘I shouldn’t let it worry you.’

‘More I do, Mr Watchman. It’s not our differences that worry me. It’s just my lad’s restless mumbudgetting ways. You saw how he was last night. Speaking to you that fashion. Proper ’shamed of him, I was.’

‘It was entirely my fault, Abel, I baited him.’

‘Right down generous of you to put it like that, but all the same he’s not himself these days. I’d like him to settle down. Tell you the truth, sir, it’s what’s to become of the Feathers that troubles me, and it troubles me sore. I’m nigh on seventy, Mr Watchman. Will’s my youngest. ’Tother two boys wurr took in war, and one girl’s married and in Canada, and ’tother in Australia. Will’ll get the Feathers.’

‘I expect,’ said Watchman, ‘that Will’ll grow out of his red ideas and run the pub like any other Pomeroy.’

Old Abel didn’t answer and Watchman added: ‘When he marries and settles down.’

‘And when will that be, sir? Likely you noticed how ’tis between Will and Miss Dessy? Well now, that’s a funny state of affairs, and one I can’t get used to. Miss Dessy’s father, Jim Moore up yurr to Carey Edge Farm, is an old friend of mine. Good enough. But what happens when Dessy’s a lil’ maid no higher than my hand? ’Od rabbit it, if old Jim don’t come in for a windfall. Now his wife being a ghastly proud sort of a female and never tired of letting on she came down in society when she married, what do they do but send young Dessy to a ladies’ school where she gets some kind of free pass into a female establishment at Oxford.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘’Ess and comes home at the end of it a dinky lil’ chit, sure enough, and husband-high; but speaking finniky-like and the equal of all the gentlefolks in the West Country.’

‘Well?’ said Watchman.

‘Well, sir, that’s fair enough. If she fancies our Will above the young sparks she meets in her new walk of life, good enough. I’m proper fond of the maiden, always have been. Good as a daughter to me, and just the same always, no matter how ladylike she’m grown.’

Watchman stood up and stretched himself.

‘It all sounds idyllic, Abel. A charming romance.’

‘Wait a bit, sir, wait a bit. ’Baint so simple as all that. These yurr two young folks no sooner mets again than my Will sets his heart, burning strong and powerful, on Decima Moore. Eaten up with love from time he sets eyes on her, was Will, and hell-bent to win her. She come back with radical notions, same as his own, and that’s a bond a’tween ’em from the jump. Her folks don’t fancy my Will, however, leastways not her mother, and they don’t fancy her views neither, and worst of all they lays blame on Will. Old Jim Moore comes down yurr and has a tell with me, saying life’s not worth living up to farm with Missus at him all day and half night to put his foot down and stop it. That’s how ’twurr after you left last year, sir, and that’s how ’tis still. Will burning to get tokened and wed, and Dessy –’

‘Yes?’ asked Watchman as Abel paused and looked fixedly at the ceiling. ‘What about Decima?’

‘That’s the queerest touch of the lot, sir,’ said Abel.

Watchman, lighting his pipe, kept his eye on his host and saw that he now looked profoundly uncomfortable.

‘Well?’ Watchman repeated.

‘It be what she says about wedlock,’ Abel muttered.

‘What does she say?’ asked Watchman sharply.

‘Be shot if she haven’t got some new-fangled notion about wedlock being no better than a name for savagery. Talks wild trash about freedom. To my way of thinking the silly maiden don’t know what she says.’

‘What,’ asked Watchman, ‘does Will say to all this?’

‘Don’t like it. The chap wants to be tokened and hear banns read, like any other poor toad, for all his notions. He wants no free love for his wife or himself. He won’t talk to me, not a word, but Miss Dessy does, so open and natural as a daisy. Terrible nonsense it be, I tells her, and right down dangerous into bargain. Hearing her chatter, you might suppose she’s got some fancy-chap up her sleeve. Us knows better of course, but it’s an uncomfortable state of affairs and seemingly no way out. Tell you what, sir, I do blame this Legge for the way things are shaping. Will’d have settled down, he was settling down, afore Bob Legge come yurr. But now he’ve stirred up all their revolutionary notions again, Miss Dessy’s along with the rest. I don’t fancy Legge. Never have. Not for all he’m a masterpiece with darts. My way of thinking, he’m a cold calculating chap and powerful bent on having his way. Well, thurr ’tis, and talking won’t mend it.’

Watchman walked to the door and Abel followed him. They stood looking up the road to Coombe Tunnel.

‘Daily-buttons!’ exclaimed Abel, ‘talk of an angel and there she be. That’s Miss Dessy, the dinky little dear. Coming in to do her marketing.’

‘So it is,’ said Watchman. ‘Well, Abel, on second thoughts I believe I’ll go and have a look at that picture.’

III

But Watchman did not go directly to Coombe Rock. He lingered for a moment until he had seen Decima Moore go in at the post-office door, and then he made for the tunnel. Soon the darkness swallowed him, his footsteps rang hollow on the wet stone floor, and above him, a luminous disc, shone the top entry. Watchman emerged, blinking, into the dust and glare of the high road. To his left, the country rolled gently away to Illington, to his right, a path led round the cliffs to Coombe Rock, and then wound inland to Cary Edge Farm where the Moores lived.

He arched his hand over his eyes and on Coombe Head could make out the shape of canvas and easel with Cubitt’s figure moving to and fro, and beyond a tiny dot which must be Sebastian Parish’s head. Watchman left the road, climbed the clay bank, circled a clump of furze and beneath a hillock from where he could see the entrance to the tunnel, he lay full length on the short turf. With the cessation of his own movement the quiet of the countryside engulfed him. At first the silence seemed complete, but after a moment or two the small noises of earth, and sky welled up into his consciousness. A lark sang above his head with a note so high that it impinged upon the outer borders of hearing and at times soared into nothingness. When he turned and laid his ear to the earth it throbbed with the far-away thud of surf against Coombe Rock, and when his fingers moved in the grass it was with a crisp stirring sound. He began to listen intently, lying so still that no movement of his body could come between his senses and more distant sound. He closed his eyes and to an observer he would have seemed to sleep. Indeed his face bore that look of inscrutability which links sleep in our minds with death. But he was not asleep. He was listening: and presently his ears caught a new rhythm, a faint hollow beat. Someone was coming up through the tunnel.

Watchman looked through his eyelashes and saw Decima Moore step into the sunlight. He remained still, while she mounted the bank to the cliff path. She rounded the furze-bush and was almost upon him before she saw him. She stood motionless.

‘Well, Decima,’ said Watchman and opened his eyes.

‘You startled me,’ she said.

‘I should leap to my feet, shouldn’t I? And apologize?’

‘You needn’t trouble. I’m sorry I disturbed you. Goodbye.’

She moved forward.

Watchman said: ‘Wait a moment, Decima.’

She hesitated. Watchman reached out a hand and seized her ankle.

‘Don’t do that,’ said Decima. ‘It makes us both look silly. I’m in no mood for dalliance.’

‘Please say you’ll wait a moment and I’ll behave like a perfect little gent. I’ve something serious to say to you.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I promise you. Of the first importance. Please.’

‘Very well,’ said Decima.

He released her and scrambled to his feet.

‘Well, what is it?’ asked Decima.

‘It’ll take a moment or two. Do sit down and smoke a cigarette. Or shall I walk some of the way with you?’

She shot a glance at the distant figures on Coombe Head and then looked at him. She seemed ill at ease, half-defiant, half-curious.

‘We may as well get it over,’ she said.

‘Splendid. Sit down now, do. If we stand here, we’re in full view of anybody entering or leaving Ottercombe, and I don’t want to be interrupted. No, I’ve no discreditable motive. Come now.’

He sat down on the hillock under the furze-bush and after a moment’s hesitation she joined him.

‘Will you smoke? Here you are.’

He lit her cigarette, dug the match into the turf, and then turned to her.

‘The matter I wanted to discuss with you,’ he said, ‘concerns this Left Movement of yours.’

Decima’s eyes opened wide.

‘That surprises you?’ observed Watchman.

‘It does rather,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine why you should suddenly be interested in the CLM’

‘I’ve no business to be interested,’ said Watchman, ‘and in the ordinary sense, my dear Decima, I am not interested. It’s solely on your account – no, do let me make myself clear. It’s on your account that I want to put two questions to you. Of course if you choose you may refuse to answer them.’

Watchman cleared his throat, and pointed a finger at Decima.

‘Now in reference to this society –’

‘Dear me,’ interrupted Decima with a faint smile. ‘This green plot shall be our court, this furze-bush our witness-box; and we will do in action as we will do it before the judge.’

‘A vile paraphrase, and if we are to talk of midsummernight’s dreams, Decima –’

‘We certainly won’t do that,’ she said, turning very pink. ‘Pray continue your cross-examination, Mr Watchman.’

‘Thank you, my lord. First question: is this body – society, club, movement, or whatever it is – an incorporated company?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means among other things that the books would have to be audited by a chartered accountant.’

‘Good Heavens, no. It’s simply grown up, largely owing to the efforts of Will Pomeroy and myself.’

‘So I supposed. You’ve a list of subscribing members.’

‘Three hundred and forty-five,’ said Decima proudly.

‘And the subscription?’

‘Ten bob. Are you thinking of joining us?’

‘Who collects the ten bobs?’

‘The treasurer.’

‘And secretary. Mr Legge?’

‘Yes. What are you driving at? What were you at last night, baiting Bob Legge?’

‘Wait a moment. Do any other sums of money pass through his hands?’

‘I don’t see why I should tell you these things,’ said Decima.

‘There’s no reason, but you have my assurance that I mean well.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘And you may be sure I shall regard this conversation as strictly confidential.’

‘All right,’ she said uneasily. ‘We’ve raised sums for different objects. We want to start a Left Book Club in Illington and there are one or two funds – Spanish, Czech and Austrian refugees and the fighting fund and so on.’

‘Yes. At the rate of how much a year. Three hundred for instance?’

‘About that. Quite that, I should think. We’ve some very generous supporters.’

‘Now look here, Decima. Did you inquire very carefully into this man Legge’s credentials?’

‘I – no. I mean, he’s perfectly sound. He’s secretary for several other things. Some philatelic society and a correspondence course, and he’s agent for one or two things.’

‘He’s been here ten months, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes. He’s not strong, touch of TB, I think, and some trouble with his ears. His doctor told him to come down here. He’s been very generous and subscribed to the movement himself.’

‘May I give you a word of advice? Have your books audited.’

‘Do you know Bob Legge? You can’t make veiled accusations –’

‘I have made no accusations.’

‘You’ve suggested that –’

‘That you should be business-like,’ said Watchman. ‘That’s all.’

‘Do you know this man? You must tell me.’

There was a very long silence and then Watchman said:

‘I’ve never known anybody of that name.’

‘Then I don’t understand,’ said Decima.

‘Let us say I’ve taken an unreasonable dislike to him.’

‘I’d already come to that conclusion. It was obvious last night.’

‘Well, think it over.’ He looked fixedly at her and then said suddenly:

‘Why won’t you marry Will Pomeroy?’

Decima turned very white and said: ‘That, at least is entirely my own business.’

‘Will you meet me here tonight?’

‘No.’

‘Do I no longer attract you, Decima?’

‘I’m afraid you don’t.’

‘Little liar, aren’t you?’

‘The impertinent lady-killer stuff,’ said Decima, ‘doesn’t wear very well. It has a way of looking merely cheap.’

‘You can’t insult me,’ said Watchman. ‘Tell me this. Am I your only experiment?’

‘I don’t want to start any discussion of this sort. The thing’s at an end. It’s been dead a year.’

‘No. Not on my part. It could be revived; and very pleasantly. Why are you angry? Because I didn’t write?’

‘Good Lord, no!’ ejaculated Decima.

‘Then why –’

He laid his hand over hers. As if unaware of his touch, her fingers plucked at the blades of grass beneath them.

‘Meet me here tonight,’ he repeated.

‘I’m meeting Will tonight at the Feathers.’

‘I’ll take you home.’

Decima turned on him.

‘Look here,’ she said, ‘we’d better get this straightened out. You’re not in the least in love with me, are you?’

‘I adore you.’

‘I dare say, but you don’t love me. Nor do I love you. A year ago I fell for you rather heavily and we know what happened. I can admit now that I was – well, infatuated. I can even admit that what I said just then wasn’t true. For about two months I did mind your not writing. I minded damnably. Then I recovered in one bounce. I don’t want any recrudescence.’

‘How solemn,’ muttered Watchman. ‘How learned, and how young.’

‘It may seem solemn and young to you. Don’t flatter yourself I’m the victim of remorse. I’m not. One has to go through with these things, I’ve decided. But don’t let’s blow on the ashes.’

‘We wouldn’t have to blow very hard.’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘You admit that, do you?’

‘Yes. But I don’t want to do it.’

‘Why? Because of Pomeroy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you going to marry him, after all?’

‘I don’t know. He’s ridiculously class-conscious about sex. He’s completely uneducated in some ways, but – I don’t know. If he knew about last year he’d take it very badly, and I can’t marry him without telling him.’

‘Well,’ said Watchman suddenly, ‘don’t expect me to be chivalrous and decent. I imagine chivalry and decency don’t go with sex-education and freedom anyway. Don’t be a fool, Decima. You know you think it would be rather fun.’

He pulled her towards him. Decima muttered, ‘No, you don’t,’ and suddenly they were struggling fiercely. Watchman thrust her back till her shoulders were against the bank. As he stooped his head to kiss her, she wrenched one hand free and struck him clumsily but with violence, across the mouth.

‘You –’ said Watchman.

She scrambled to her feet and stood looking down at him.

‘I wish to God,’ she said savagely, ‘that you’d never come back.’

There was a moment’s silence.

Watchman, too, had got to his feet. They looked into each other’s eyes; and then, with a gesture that, for all its violence and swiftness suggested the movement of an automaton, he took her by the shoulders and kissed her. When he had released her they moved apart stiffly with no eloquence in either of their faces or figures.

Decima said, ‘You’d better get out of here. If you stay here it’ll be the worse for you. I could kill you. Get out.’

They heard the thud of footsteps on turf, and Cubitt and Sebastian Parish came over the brow of the hillock.

CHAPTER 4
The Evening in Question

Watchman, Cubitt and Parish lunched together in the taproom. Miss Darragh did not appear. Cubitt and Parish had last seen her sucking her brush and gazing with complacence at an abominable sketch. She was still at work when they came up with Watchman and Decima. At lunch, Watchman was at some pains to tell the others how he and Decima Moore met by accident, and how they had fallen to quarrelling about the Coombe Left Movement.

They accepted his recital with, on Parish’s part, rather too eager alacrity. Lunch on the whole, was an uncomfortable affair. Something had gone wrong with the relationship of the three men. Norman Cubitt, who was acutely perceptive in such matters, felt that the party had divided into two, with Parish and himself on one side of an intangible barrier, and Watchman on the other. Cubitt had no wish to side, however, vaguely, with Parish against Watchman. He began to make overtures, but they sounded unlikely and only served to emphasize his own discomfort. Watchman answered with the courtesy of an acquaintance. By the time they had reached the cheese, complete silence had overcome them.

They did not linger for their usual post-prandial smoke. Cubitt said he wanted to get down to the jetty for his afternoon sketch, Parish said he was going to sleep, Watchman, murmuring something about writing a letter, disappeared upstairs.

They did not see each other again until the evening when they met in the private taproom for their usual cocktail. The fishing boats had come in, and at first the bar was fairly full. The three friends joined in local conversation and were not thrown upon their own resources until the evening meal which they took together in the ingle-nook. The last drinker went out saying that there was a storm hanging about, and that the air was unnaturally heavy. On his departure complete silence fell upon the three men. Parish made one or two halfhearted attempts to break it but it was no good, they had nothing to say to each other. They finished their meal and Watchman began to fill his pipe.

‘What’s that?’ said Parish suddenly. ‘Listen!’

‘High tide,’ said Watchman. ‘It’s the surf breaking on Coombe Rock.’

‘No, it’s not. Listen.’

And into the silence came a vague gigantic rumble.

‘Isn’t it thunder?’ asked Parish.

The others listened for a moment but made no answer.

‘What a climate!’ added Parish.

The village outside the inn seemed very quiet. The evening air was sultry. No breath of wind stirred the curtains at the open windows. When, in a minute or two, somebody walked round the building, the footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. Another and more imperative muttering broke the quiet.

Cubitt said nervously:

‘It’s as if a giant, miles away on Dartmoor, was shaking an iron tray.’

‘That’s exactly how they work thunder in the business,’ volunteered Parish.

‘The business,’ Watchman said with violent irritation. ‘What business? Is there only one business?’

‘What the hell’s gone wrong with you?’ asked Parish.

‘Nothing. The atmosphere,’ said Watchman.

‘I hate thunder-storms,’ said Cubitt quickly. ‘They make me feel as if all my nerves were on the surface. A loathsome feeling.’

‘I rather like them,’ said Watchman.

‘And that’s the end of that conversation,’ said Parish with a glance at Cubitt.

Watchman got up and moved into the window. Mrs Ives came in with a tray.

‘Storm coming up?’ Parish suggested.

‘’Ess, sir. Very black outside,’ said Mrs Ives.

The next roll of thunder lasted twice as long as the others and ended in a violent tympanic rattle. Mrs Ives cleared the table and went away. Cubitt moved into the ingle-nook and leant his elbows on the mantelpiece. The room had grown darker. A flight of gulls, making for the sea, passed clamorously over the village. Watchman pulled back the curtains and leant over the window-sill. Heavy drops of rain had begun to fall. They hit the cobble-stones in the inn yard with loud slaps.

‘Here comes the rain,’ said Parish, unnecessarily.

Old Abel Pomeroy came into the Public from the far door. He began to shut the windows and called through into the Private.

‘We’m in for a black storm, souls.’

A glint of lightning flickered in the yard outside. Parish stood up scraping his chair-legs on the floor-boards.

‘They say,’ said Parish, ‘that if you count the seconds between the flash and the thunder it gives you the distance –’

A peal of thunder rolled up a steep crescendo.

‘– the distance away in fifths of a mile,’ ended Parish.

‘Do shut up, Seb,’ implored Watchman, not too unkindly.

‘Damn it all,’ said Parish. ‘I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with you. Do you, Norman?’

Abel Pomeroy came through the bar into the taproom.

‘Be colder soon, I reckon,’ he said. ‘If you’d like a fire gentlemen –’

‘We’ll light it, Abel, if we want it,’ said Cubitt.

‘Good enough, sir.’ Abel looked from Cubitt and Parish to Watchman, who still leant over the window-sill.

‘She’ll come bouncing and teeming through that window, Mr Watchman, once she do break out. Proper deluge she’ll be.’

‘All right, Abel. I’ll look after the window.’

A livid whiteness flickered outside. Cubitt and Parish had a momentary picture of Watchman, in silhouette against the background of inn-yard and houses. A second later the thunder broke in two outrageous claps. Then, in a mounting roar, the rain came down.

‘Yurr she comes,’ said Abel.

He switched on the light and crossed to the door into the passage.

‘Reckon Legge’ll bide tonight after all,’ said Abel.

Watchman spun round.

‘Is Legge going away?’ he asked.

‘He’m called away on business, sir, to Illington. But that lil’ car of his leaks like a lobster-pot. Reckon the man’d better wait till tomorrow. I must look to the gutters or us’ll have the rain coming in through upstairs ceilings.’

He went out.

The evening was now filled with the sound of rain and thunder. Watchman shut the window and came into the room. His head was wet.

He said: ‘It’s much colder. We might have that fire.’

Cubitt lit the fire and they watched the first flames rise uncertainly among the driftwood.

‘The rain’s coming down the chimney,’ said Parish. ‘Hallo! Who’s this?’

The taproom door opened slowly. There, on the threshold, stood the Hon. Violet Darragh, dripping like a soused hen. Her cotton dress was gummed to her person with such precision that it might as well have melted. Her curls were flattened into streaks, and from the brim of her hat poured little rivers that rushed together at the base of her neck, and, taking the way of least resistance, streamed centrally to her waist where they deployed and ran divergently to the floor. With one hand she held a canvas hold-all, with the other a piece of paper that still bore streaks of cobalt-blue and veridian across its pulpy surface. She might have been an illustration from one of the more Rabelaisian pages of La Vie Parisienne.

‘My dear Miss Darragh!’ ejaculated Watchman.

‘Ah, look at me!’ said Miss Darragh. ‘What a pickle I’m in, and me picture ruined. I was determined to finish it and I stayed on till the thunder and lightning drove me away in terror of me life, and when I emerged from the tunnel didn’t it break over me like the entire contents of the ocean. Well, I’ll go up now and change, for I must look a terrible old sight.’

She glanced down at herself, gasped, cast a comical glance at the three men, and bolted.

Will Pomeroy and two companions entered the Public from the street door. They wore oilskin hats and coats, and their boots squelched on the floor-boards. Will went into the bar and served out drinks. Parish leant over the private bar and gave them good-evening.

‘You seem to have caught it in the neck,’ he observed.

‘That’s right, Mr Parish,’ said Will. ‘She’s a proper masterpiece. The surface water’ll be pouring through the tunnel if she keeps going at this gait. Here you are chaps, I’m going to change.’

He went through the Private into the house, leaving a wet trail behind him. They heard him at the telephone in the passage. He had left the door open and his voice carried above the sound of the storm.

‘That you, Dessy? Dessy, this storm’s a terror. You’d better not drive that old car over tonight. Tunnel’ll be a running stream. It’s not safe.’

Watchman began to whistle under his breath. Abel returned and took Will’s place in the bar.

‘I’d walk over myself,’ Will was saying, ‘only I can’t leave father single-handed. We’ll have a crowd in, likely, with this weather.’

‘I’m going to have a drink,’ said Watchman suddenly.

‘Walk?’ said Will. ‘You’re not scared of lightning, then. Good enough, and nobody better pleased than I am. I’ll lend you a sweater and, Dessy, you’d better warn them you’ll likely stay the night. Why not? So I do, then and you’ll find it out, my dear. I’ll come a fetch along the way to meet you.’

The receiver clicked. Will stuck his head round the door.

‘Dessy’s walking over, Dad. I’ll go through the tunnel to meet her. Have you seen Bob Legge?’

‘He said he’d be up to Illington tonight, sonny.’

‘He’ll never make it. Has he left?’

‘In his room yet, I fancy.’

‘I’ll see,’ said Will. ‘I’ve told Dessy she’d better stay the night.’

‘Very welcome, I’m sure. Ask Mrs Ives to make room ready.’

‘So I will, then,’ said Will, and disappeared.

‘Walking over!’ said Abel. ‘A matter of two miles it is, from yurr to Cary Edge. Wonderful what love’ll do, gentlemen, ’baint it?’

‘Amazing,’ said Watchman. ‘Is nobody else going to drink?’

II

By eight o’clock the public tap was full and the private nearly so. Decima Moore and Will had looked in, but at the moment were closeted upstairs with Mr Legge who had apparently decided not to go to Illington. Miss Darragh came down in dry clothes with her curls rubbed up, and sat writing letters by the fire.

Two of Abel’s regular cronies had come in: Dick Oates, the Ottercombe policeman, and Arthur Gill, the grocer. A little later they were joined by Mr George Nark, an elderly bachelor-farmer whose political views chimed with those of the Left Movement, and who was therefore a favourite of Will Pomeroy’s. Mr Nark had been a great reader of the Liberal Literature of his youth, and had never got over the surprise and excitement that he had experienced thirty years ago on reading Winwood Reade, H G Wells, and the Evolution of Man. The information that he had derived from these and other serious works had, with the passage of time, become transmitted into simplified forms which though they would have astonished the authors, completely satisfied Mr Nark.

The rain still came down in torrents and Mr Nark reported the Coombe Tunnel was a running stream.

‘It’s a crying shame,’ he said, gathering the attention of the Private. ‘Bin going on for hundreds of years and no need for it. We can be flooded out three times a year and capitalistic government only laughs at us. Science would have druv a class-A highroad into the Coombe if somebody had axed it. But does a capitalistic government ax the advice of Science? Not it. It’s afraid to. And why? Because Science knows too much for it.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Gill.

‘That’s capitalism for you,’ continued Mr Nark. ‘Blind-stupid and arrogant. Patching up where it should pitch-in and start afresh. What can you expect, my sonnies, from a parcel of wage-slaves and pampered aristocrats that don’t know the smell of a day’s work. So long as they’ve got their luxuries for themselves –’

He stopped and looked at Miss Darrah.

‘Axing your pardon, Miss,’ said Mr Nark. ‘In the heat of my discourse I got carried off my feet with the powerful rush of ideas and forgot your presence. This’ll be all gall and wormwood to you, doubtless.’

‘Not at all, Mr Nark,’ said Miss Darragh cheerfully. ‘I’m myself a poor woman, and I’ve moods when I’m consumed with jealousy for anybody who’s got a lot of money.’

This was not precisely the answer Mr Nark, who was a prosperous farmer, desired.

‘It’s the government,’ he said, ‘that does every man jack of us out of our scientific rights.’

‘As far as that goes,’ said PC Oates, ‘I reckon one government’s as scientific as the other. Look at sewage for instance.’

‘Why?’ demanded Mr Nark, ‘should we look at sewage? What’s sewage got to do with it? We’re all animals.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Gill, ‘so we are, then.’

‘Do you know, Dick Oates,’ continued Mr Nark, ‘that you’ve got a rudimentary tail?’

‘And if I have, which I don’t admit –’

‘Ask Mr Cubitt, then. He’s an artist and no doubt has studied the skeleton of man in its present stage of evolution. The name escapes me for the moment, but we’ve all got it. Isn’t that correct, sir?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Norman Cubitt hurriedly. ‘Quite right, Mr Nark.’

‘There you are,’ said Mr Nark. ‘Apes, every manjack of us, and our arms have only grown shorter through us knocking off the habit of hanging from limbs of trees.’

‘What about our tongues?’ asked Mr Oates.

‘Never mind about them,’ answered Mr Nark warmly, ‘do you know that an unborn child’s got gills like a fish?’

‘That doesn’t make a monkey of it, however.’

‘It goes to show, though.’

‘What?’

‘You want to educate yourself. In a proper government the State ’ud educate the police so’s they’d understand these deep matters for themselves. They know all about that in Russia. Scientific necessity that’s what it is.’

‘I don’t see how knowing I’ve got a bit of a tail and once had a pair of gills is going to get me any nearer to a sergeant’s stripe,’ reasoned Mr Oates. ‘What I’d like is a case. You know how it happens in these crime stories, chaps,’ he continued, looking round the company. ‘I read a good many of them, and it’s always the same thing. The keen young PC happens to be on the spot when there’s a homicide. His super has to call in the Yard and before you know where you are, the PC’s working with one of the Big four and getting praised for his witty deductions. All I can say is I wish it happened like that in the Illington and Ottercombe Riding. Well, I’d best go round the beat, I reckon Down the Steps and up again, is about all this drownded hole’ll see of me tonight. I’ll look in again, chaps.’

Mr Oates adjusted his helmet, fastened his mackintosh, looked to his lamp, and went out into the storm.

‘Ah, the poor fellow!’ murmured Miss Darragh comfortably from inside the ingle-nook settle.

‘In a properly conducted state –’ began Mr Nark.

His remark was drowned in a clap of thunder. The lights wavered and grew so dim that the filaments in the bulbs were reduced to luminous threads.

‘Drat they electrics,’ said old Abel. ‘That’s the storm playing bobs-a-dying with the wires somewhere. Us’ll be in darkness afore closing time, I dare say.’ And he raised his voice to a bellow.

‘Will! Oi, Will!’

Will’s voice answered from above. The lights brightened. After a minute or two, Decima and Will came downstairs and into the Private. Each carried an oil lamp.

‘Guessed what you were hollowing for,’ said Will, with a grin. ‘Here’s the lamps. We’ll put ’em on the two bars, Dessy, and matches handy. Bob Legge’s fetching the other, Dad. Ceiling in his room’s sprung a leak and the rain’s coming in pretty heavy. The man was sitting there, so lost in thought he might have drowned. I’ve fixed up a bucket to catch it, and told him to come down.’

Will stared for a second at Watchman, and added rather truculently: ‘We told Bob we missed his company in the Private, didn’t we, Dess?’

‘Yes,’ said Decima.

Watchman looked at her. She turned her back to him and said something to Will.

‘Let us by all means have Mr Legge among us,’ Watchman said. ‘I hope to beat him – all round the clock.’

And in a minute or two, Mr Legge came in with the third unlit lamp.

III

On the day following the thunderstorm, the patrons of the Plume of Feathers tried very hard to remember in some sort of order, the events of the previous evening; the events that followed Mr Legge’s entrance into the private taproom. For one reason and another their stories varied, but no doubt the principal reason for their variation might be found in the bottle of Courvoisier ’87 that Abel Pomeroy had brought up from the cellar. That was after Mr Gill had gone home, and before Mr Oates returned from a somewhat curtailed beat round the village.

It was Watchman who started the discussion on brandy. Watchman apparently had got over whatever unfriendly mood had possessed him earlier in the evening and was now as communicative as he had been silent. He began to tell legal stories and this he did very well indeed, so that in a minute or two he had the attention of both bars; the patrons of the public taproom leaning on the bar counter and trying to see into the other room. He told stories of famous murder trials, of odd witnesses, and finally of his biggest case before he took silk. He did not give the names of the defendants, only describing them as the embezzling experts of the century. He had led for the defence of one of them and had succeeded in shifting most of the blame to the other who got, he said, a swingeing big sentence. He became quite exalted over it all.

Sebastian always said that his cousin would have made an actor. He was certainly an excellent mimic. He gave a character sketch of the judge and made a living creature of the man. He described how, after the verdict, when the defendant’s house was sold up, he had bought three dozen of brandy from the cellar.

‘Courvoisier ’87,’ said Watchman. ‘A superb year.’

‘Me cousin Byronie,’ said Miss Darragh, looking round the corner of her settle, ‘had the finest cellar in County Clare, I believe. Before the disaster of course.’

Watchman started and stared at Miss Darragh in confusion.

‘Dear me, Mr Watchman,’ she said composedly, ‘what is the matter with you? Had you forgotten I was here?’

‘I – it sounds very ungallant, but I believe I had.’

‘What brandy did you say, sir?’ asked Abel, and when Watchman repeated mechanically, “Courvoisier ’87,” Abel said placidly that he believed he had three bottles in his own cellar.

‘I picked ’em up when old Lawyer Payne over to Diddlestock died and was sold up,’ said Abel. ‘Half-dozen, thurr was, and squire split ’em with me. I think that’s the name. It’s twelve month or more since I looked at ‘em.’

Watchman had already taken three glasses of Treble Extra and, although sober, was willing to be less so. Parish, suddenly flamboyant, offered to bet Abel a guinea that the brandy was not Courvoisier ’87 and on Abel shaking his head, said if it was Courvoisier ’87, damn it, they’d kill a bottle of it there and then. Abel took a candle and went off to the cellar. The three men in the public taproom went away. Will Pomeroy left the public bar and came to the private one. He had shown little interest in Watchman’s stories. Legge had gone into the ingle-nook where he remained reading a book on the Red Army in Northern China. Watchman embarked on a discussion with Cubitt on the subject of capital punishment. Soon it became a general argument with Decima, Cubitt and Parish on one side; and Watchman, dubiously supported by Mr Nark, on the other.

‘It’s a scientific necessity,’ said Mr Nark. ‘The country has to be purged. Cast out your waste material is what I say and so does Stalin.’

‘So does Hitler if it comes to that,’ said Cubitt. ‘You’re talking of massed slaughter, aren’t you?’

‘You can slaughter in a righteous manner,’ said Mr Nark, ‘and you can slaughter in an unrighteous manner. It’s all a matter of revolution. Survival of the fittest.’

‘What on earth’s that to say to it?’ asked Cubitt.

‘We’re talking about capital punishment in this country aren’t we?’ Decima asked.

Throughout the discussion, though she had launched several remarks at Watchman, she had not spoken directly to him. In each instance Watchman had answered exactly as if the conversation was between those two alone. He now cut in quickly.

‘I thought so,’ said Watchman. ‘My learned friend is a little confused.’

‘I regard it,’ Decima continued, always to Cubitt, ‘as a confession of weakness.’

‘I think it’s merely barbaric and horrible,’ said Parish.

‘Terrible,’ murmured Miss Darragh drowsily. ‘Barbarous indeed! If we can’t stop men from killing each other by any better means than killing in turn then they’ll persist in it till their dying day.’

Cubitt, with some difficulty, stifled a laugh.

‘Quite right, Miss Darragh,’ he said. ‘It’s a concession to the savage in all of us.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Watchman. ‘It’s an economic necessity.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Nark with the air of one clutching at a straw, ‘ah, now you’re talking.’

Abel came back with a bottle in his hands.

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