Singing in the Shrouds by Ngaio Marsh Page A

but look here,” Tim said, “a little further examination—”
    Mr. Merryman blandly and deliberately misunderstood him. “By all means!” he ejaculated. “Precisely. Let us continue. Miss Abbott—”
    “What about yourself?” Mr. Cuddy suddenly bawled from the far end of the room.
    “Ah!” Mrs. Cuddy rejoined and produced a Rabelaisian laugh. “Ho, ho, ho,” she said, without moving a muscle of her face. “What about yourself, Mr. Merryband?”
    “Steady, Ethel,” Mr. Cuddy muttered.
    “Good God!” Tim muttered to Brigid. “She’s tiddly!”
    “She was tossing down bumpers at dinner — probably for the first time in her life.”
    “That’s it. Tiddly. How wonderful!”
    “Ho, ho, ho!” Mrs. Cuddy repeated. “Where was Merryband when the lights went out?”
    “Eth!”
    “Fair enough,” Aubyn Dale exclaimed. “Come along, Mr. Merryman. Alibi, please.”
    “With all the pleasure in life,” Mr. Merryman said. “I have none. I join the majority. On the evening in question,” he continued didactically, as if he expected them all to start taking dictation, “I attended a suburban cinema. The Kosy, spelt (abominable vulgarism) with a ‘K.’ In Bounty Street, Chelsa. By a diverting coincidence the film was
The Lodger
. I am totally unable to prove it,” he ended triumphantly.
    “Very fishy!” Tim said, shaking his head owlishly. “Oh, very fishy indeed, I fear, sir!”
    Mr. Merryman gave a little crowing laugh.
    “I know!” Mr. McAngus abruptly shouted. “I have it! Tuesday! Television!” And at once added, “No, no, wait a moment.
What
did you say the date was?”
    Alleyn told him and he became silent and depressed.
    “What about Miss Abbott, now?” Captain Bannerman asked. “Can Miss Abbott find an alibi? Come along, Miss Abbott. January fifteenth.”
    She didn’t answer at once but sat, unsmiling and staring straight before her. A silence fell upon the little company.
    “I was in my flat,” she said at last, and gave the address. There was something uncomfortable in her manner. Alleyn thought, “Damn! The unexpected. In a moment somebody will change the conversation.”
    Aubyn Dale was saying waggishly, “Not good enough! Proof, Miss Abbott, proof.”
    “Did anybody ring up or come in?” Brigid prompted with a friendly smile for Miss Abbott.
    “My friend — the person I share my flat with — came in at ten-thirty-five.”
    “How clever to remember!” Mrs. Dillington-Blick murmured and managed to suggest that she herself was enchantingly feckless.
    “And before that?” Mr. Merryman demanded.
    A faint dull red settled above Miss Abbott’s cheekbones. “I watched television,” she said.
    “Voluntarily?” Mr. Merryman asked in astonishment.
    To everybody’s surprise Miss Abbott shuddered. She wetted her lips. “It passed… it… sometimes helped to pass the time—”
    Tim Makepiece, Father Jourdain, and Brigid, sensing her discomfiture, tried to divert Mr. Merryman’s attention, but he was evidently one of those people who are unable to abandon a conversation before they have triumphed. “ ‘Pass the time,’ ” he ejaculated, casting up his eyes. “Was ever there a more damning condemnation of this bastard, this emasculate, this enervating peepshow. What was the programme?”
    Miss Abbott glanced at Aubyn Dale, who was looking furiously at Mr. Merryman. “In point of fact—” she began.
    Dale waved his hands. “Ah-ah! I knew it. Alas, I knew it! Nine to nine-thirty. Every Tuesday night, God help me. I knew.” He leaned forward and addressed himself to Mr. Merryman. “My session, you know. The one you dislike so much. The Jolyon swimsuit programme—
Pack Up Your Troubles,
which, oddly enough, appears to create a slightly different reaction in its all-time-high viewing audience. Very reprehensible, no doubt, but there it is. They seem quite to like it.”
    “Hear, hear!” Mrs. Cuddy shouted vaguely from the far end of the lounge and stamped