Death at the Bar by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online Page A

out in the dawn with the fishing boats. He woke before it was light and heard the tramp of heavy boots on cobblestones 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 his 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 shellfish, 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 rearranged 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, mumbudgeting 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. T’other two boys wurr took in war, and one girl’s married and in Canada, and t’other 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’s Jim Moore up yurr to Cary Edge Farm, and an old friend of mine. Good enough. But what happens when Dessy’s a li’l 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