Free Death at the Bar by Ngaio Marsh

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 that,” answered Mr. Nark warmly. “Do you know that an unborn child’s got gills like a fish?”
    “That doesn’t make it a monkey, 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 understood 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, chap,” he continued, looking round the company. “I read a good many of them and it’s always the same thing. The keen young P.C. 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 P.C.’s working with one of the Big Four and getting praised for his witty deductions. All I can say is, I wished 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 drowned hole’ll see of me to-night. 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 inglenook 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 daresay.” 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 thunder storm, 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