Money in the Morgue

by Ngaio Marsh

  Alleyn nodded, thinking of Troy, ‘I recognize the people you describe, and yet, if you don’t mind me saying, you don’t seem the solitary type.’

  Rosamund opened her mouth to reply and stopped herself. Her hands were still in her lap, but they were also rigid, as held as a cat about to pounce. He could tell she wanted desperately to talk to him, to unburden herself. Despite, or perhaps because of the carefully contrived carapace, Rosamund seemed the kind of girl who would always want to talk to men, forever hoping that one of them might finally take her to task, make her drop the mask and welcome the woman he found revealed.

  Alleyn reminded himself that there was no time for pity, ‘Or have I got you all wrong, Miss Farquharson?’

  Rosamund looked directly at Alleyn, her guard fully up and yet almost transparent at the same time. He felt ashamed of the way he was playing her and yet there was more to uncover, so play her he would. He stared directly at her, knowing she would say more if he waited, reveal more if he gave her the time to do so.

  ‘No Inspector, you haven’t got me wrong at all. I’m no artist. I was at art school neither to find my talent—I have my blind spots, but I’m not foolish enough to think I have talent—nor, as so many of the mindless girls were, was I there to bag myself a husband. I was at art school to have a damn good time. After all, I’m just a silly tart, shallow, flighty, no better than she ought to be.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a moment. We’ve all made our mistakes—’

  ‘Have you?’ she asked.

  Her genuine interest was disarming and Alleyn was surprised to find himself wanting to tell her the truth, ‘Of course I have, but we’re talking about you, Rosamund.’

  She smiled at the use of her name, softened, and gave in, ‘So we are. Unfortunately my mistakes have been all too obvious. I’ve no doubt someone has told you about Maurice?’

  ‘Private Sanders?’

  ‘I made a right fool of myself there, throwing myself at him because he seemed—’

  She stopped, unsure. Alleyn couldn’t tell if her uncertainty was because she didn’t know how much to reveal about her dalliance with Sanders, or if she was worried it would reveal a side to her she didn’t want to admit, not even in the relative privacy of the interrogation confessional.

  Feeling wretched at having to probe and probing nonetheless, Alleyn gently pushed, ‘Was it perhaps that Private Sanders seemed fun and back here in New Zealand, missing London, missing your friends, you were looking for fun?’

  Rosamund shrugged, grateful for his intervention, ‘All right, that’ll do. He seemed fun. And it was great fun, honest, until Maurice decided that Sukie Johnson was a better bet. Certainly she’s better connected.’

  ‘Mrs Johnson at the Bridge Hotel?’ he asked lightly.

  ‘Oh yes, Mrs Johnson. I know she has her attractions, but I can’t help thinking Maurice and his mates found her a great way to get to her husband and her brother. Maurice is a good-looking fellow, Inspector, and he’s fun to be with, but business is his real love. He’s getting his fingers in as many pies as he possibly can, lining himself up for after the war. He’s dead certain that radio is going to take off when we get back to fun and frivolity.’

  ‘Radio?’ Alleyn kept his tone light and conversational and Rosamund chattered on.

  ‘Duncan Blaikie, Sukie’s big brother, owns a part-share in the radio company in town and Snow Johnson’s got a great tract of land, runs right up from the back of the hotel to the edge of Blaikie’s big old farm at the top of Mount Seager. Most people would think the land was only good for sheep anyway, but Maurice is sure there’s a deal to be struck, radio masts put up after the war. He reckons it’s the future. Sukie’s brother and her old man are both useful for Maurice, whereas I’m just a girl from a hick town who’s travelled a bit and likes a bit of a bet herself. I’ve none of the connections he’s after.’

  ‘Do you think I should look more closely at Sanders?’

  ‘What, for the theft of Glossop’s payroll and my winnings?’ She shook her head, ‘Goodness, no. Maurice likes a lark, a dabble, but he’s no thief.’

  Rosamund’s fingers were agitated now, her hands twisting convulsively. He knew there was something more she wanted to say, someone else she wanted to speak about and he was confident he knew what it was.

  ‘You’re very certain. Is there someone else perhaps, someone who has been acting out of character, someone with something to hide?’

  She looked up at him sharply and then looked back down at her hands, ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Alleyn’s tone was brusque and Rosamund started, shocked.

  ‘You’re very good at this, aren’t you, Inspector?’

  Alleyn didn’t respond and finally she spoke up, ‘Luke—Dr Hughes—he’s in love with Sarah. I know it, he knows it, she knows it, but he’s been ever so odd with her recently. He’s put it down to wanting to ask her to marry him, wanting to buy her the ring, set them up with a fine future, all those things young women are supposed to want, the future every girl dreams of.’

  ‘Do they really?’

  She frowned, ‘Some girls do, I suppose. They must do or they wouldn’t all say yes, would they? But the money story is just an excuse, so even though it’s what he’s been giving out, I cannot possibly believe he’d stoop to stealing the payroll.’

  ‘Do you know what is troubling him?’ Alleyn asked, well aware of the truth.

  ‘Fear, Inspector. It’s always fear, isn’t it? Fear of being a coward, fear of being thought a coward, fear of pain, fear of causing pain. He’s had an awful war and it won’t let him be.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  She looked down at her hands in her lap and stilled them with great effort. When she looked up at Alleyn she was, finally, quite revealed. He thought she looked very young and very hurt, ‘The good doctor cries out in his sleep, Inspector, and when he wakes he is shaking in terror.’

  Alleyn tidied up the interview after that, there was no need to embarrass the young woman any more than necessary and while Rosamund was capable of brazening out any amount of sly nudges from the young VADs or even some of the soldiers, it was clear somehow that revealing herself to him had been exquisitely painful.

  He rather admired her courage and told her so, ‘You know, Rosamund, I do wish that your generation of young people were more willing to embrace openness and simplicity, you’re quite marvellous when you do. I’m sure it would be all the better for you.’

  Rosamund laughed a genuine, open laugh, ‘Did your generation do that? Isn’t it more likely that every litter of young people tries to appear older, wiser, more cynical, than the one before?’

  ‘You know, I think you’re right, even when the world is in such a parlous state.’

  ‘Perhaps especially then?’

  ‘Perhaps. You’re a smart girl.’

  ‘Clearly not smart enough, Inspector, or I wouldn’t be one hundred pounds and one broken heart the worse off, more fool me.’ She grinned ruefully, shook out her fair curls and checked to see that they fell across her shoulders with a satisfying bounce, ‘Are we finished?’

  ‘We are. I shall lead you back.’

  ‘Just in case I run off to fetch the hidden cash?’

  ‘Quite so.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  With Sanders, Brayling and Pawcett following, Alleyn walked ahead thinking about the nervous tension in the Transport Office, the manner in which each of the possible suspects had assumed a guilty aspect when he pushed open the door, and how much he disliked locking the door on them again.

  Sanders muttered to his mates as they fell into line, ‘Here he comes, the Pommie prince, playing the big I-am.’

  ‘Shut up, Maurice,’ Pawcett whispered. ‘We’ve got to play this right or we’ll all be in the doghouse.’

  ‘Too right we do,’ agreed Brayling, ‘I want to get off this weekend, take my Ngaire over to stay with her people. I’m going to tell the tr
uth and be done with it. We didn’t do nothing wrong.’

  ‘You didn’t, Cuth,’ Sanders said.

  ‘And neither did you or I,’ Pawcett whispered, his voice sharp, ‘All right?’

  ‘All right, calm down,’ Sanders agreed, ‘but let’s go easy on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, eh, Cuth? You tell your bit if you reckon you need to, but keep me and Bob out of it.’

  Alleyn turned to watch as the men reached the steps and slowly walked into the Records Office. He took in the Māori man’s sharp glance to Sanders, Pawcett’s dark look as he nervously chewed on his lower lip, Sanders’s own deep frown. Alleyn took a moment to wonder whose story was going to collapse first.

  He was surprised that it was Private Pawcett who gave them up, after a gentle nudge when Alleyn wondered aloud whether he ought to invite Sergeant Bix into the interrogation.

  ‘Ah, it’s no good, Maurice,’ Pawcett said to Sanders, ‘we’re going to have to tell him, I can’t chance Bix running to the brass with this, I’m in enough bother as it is. Nothing serious,’ he added, assuring Alleyn, ‘It’s just that I’ve never been too good with the old “Yes, Sir, no, Sir” if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I’ve come across that in my time.’

  ‘I bet you have. Right, Inspector, well, the thing is—’

  Pawcett looked at his comrades once more, Sanders shot him a filthy look but said nothing and Brayling nodded his go-ahead.

  ‘We’ve been running a racket, Sir,’ Pawcett said.

  ‘A racket?’

  ‘On the races, you know, running a book,’ Sanders added.

  Alleyn bit back a smile and managed to nod seriously at the confession, ‘I see.’

  ‘None of the lads could get out to put on a bet, could they?’ Pawcett went on, ‘And we had a friend—I mean, Maurice here had a friend—at the pub,’ he faltered, wondering if mentioning Sukie Johnson’s name would get him even deeper in his pal’s bad books.

  Alleyn saved him from worse, ‘You needn’t kick your mate, Private Sanders, I’m not investigating a nefarious gambling den. Not tonight at least. I don’t need to know the name of your contact at the pub, whoever he,’ he paused, clasping his long hands together, ‘or she, may be. What I do need to know is where all three of you were this afternoon and into the evening. Let’s proceed, shall we, soldiers? A quick, precise report and I can get on with my job.’

  Standing to attention, each man gave an account of himself and Alleyn found he almost felt sorry for them. Pawcett was clearly headed for trouble before long and admitted both setting up the book and running the bets.

  ‘I had in mind to make a little on the side from a gambling racket right from the start, you see. I mean, not when they first brought me back, I was awful crook at first, but after I started to perk up a bit I ran a sideline on the nurses.’

  ‘On the nurses?’ asked Alleyn.

  ‘Yeah, you know, how often we could get Sister Comfort to storm off to Matron, how many times we could get one of those little VADs to run squealing at the suggestion of a mouse. Harmless stuff.’

  ‘Unless you’re Sister Comfort or the VAD in question,’ Alleyn said lightly.

  ‘Come off it, it was just something to pass the time.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt, but it’s not quite the behaviour one might expect from a man proud of his countrywomen.’

  ‘Hold on a minute, boss,’ Pawcett bridled. ‘I’m flamin’ well just as proud of the New Zealand lasses as you are of your English girls back home, I’ll tell you that for nothing. They’ve done a damn good job of keeping things running here while we’ve been sent off Gawd knows where, and some of our mothers doing it for the second time in their lives, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘Quite,’ Alleyn agreed, the mildness of his tone at odds with the cold steel in his eyes, and Pawcett remembered where he was and to whom he was speaking. He also took Alleyn’s point.

  ‘Ah, yeah, I see. Well, when you put it like that, I reckon it’s not—only we—’ he stuttered to a halt.

  ‘Let’s move on, shall we?’ Alleyn said briskly, ‘Private Sanders, tell me your reasons for being involved in this racket, as your friend calls it.’

  Maurice Sanders told his own tale of needing a few bob for ‘this and that’, Alleyn chose not to enquire. He also noticed that Sanders steered clear of mentioning any of the nurses, the VADs, or Sukie Johnson from the Bridge Hotel. He was simply helping his mate Bob run a book, that was all.

  ‘No harm meant, no harm done.’

  ‘So you all keep saying, and yet you’re very keen that Sergeant Bix doesn’t know any of this? Despite your assurance of “no harm done”?’ Alleyn asked.

  Sanders snapped out his answer, making no attempt to soften his tone, ‘What we’re keen on is getting out of this blasted hospital and finally taking the spot of R and R we were long promised and we’ve all been denied by damn well getting sick—in the course of duty, mind—in the first place. What’s more, we’d quite like that flamin’ R and R before the educated idiots in charge pack us off again to their blasted war. Sir.’

  It was on the tip of Alleyn’s tongue to snap back, everything in his bearing urged him to pull rank, Sanders’s tone and attitude were both quite out of order, but all of a sudden he felt for the man, he felt for all three of them. Young men, their lives ahead of them and already tainted with what they had seen and done in war. There was a brief moment when the three soldiers awaited the icy blast of a superior’s ire, until Alleyn, aware that a compliant informant was far more useful than an irate one, answered simply, ‘I’m sure you would, Private. And no doubt it would do you all the world of good, nothing like a holiday to set the world to rights. And you, Corporal Brayling, what’s your story?’

  Brayling’s tale was unexpected. The Māori man told of his love for his Ngaire, the importance of being on hand to welcome his child, to safeguard that the correct protocols were carried out for the woman and child, ensuring the baby knew its place in the family and on the land. Brayling had simply gone along with his mates’ gambling racket as something that kept the other men happy to turn a blind eye to his visits with his wife.

  ‘Not close enough to get her sick, Inspector. I’d never do that, ’specially not with her hapū, baby on the way. She kept to her side of the river and me to mine. That old river, it runs way down to her people’s marae, Sir, their land. It knows her iwi, her people, knows mine too, I reckon. It wouldn’t have let me get across to her, even if I wanted. The river’s smart, knows just where to twist and fling you back up on the old rocks. I wasn’t going to get close, on my oath I wasn’t, I just needed Ngaire to know I was all right and I’d be there when it was time for the baby to come. You know?’

  Alleyn noticed that the two Pākehā men listened politely to their friend speaking of the river as if it were a living thing. He might have expected a raised eyebrow or even a laugh, but neither man behaved as he’d seen other white men do, dismissing their Māori compatriots’ beliefs as flights of fancy. Perhaps they were better soldiers, more of a team, than their antics had led him to believe. He told them to wait outside where he could see them from the doorway while he took a few notes in his small notebook, then he would escort them back to the Transport Office.

  The comrades went out into the welcoming night air, their relief palpable, and Alleyn heard two matches strike as they lit up their cigarettes, deep breaths in and then long exhaled sighs, the sweet smell of tobacco marking their stay of execution. He scribbled down a few lines, stared at what he had written, paused, and looked up. He caught sight of himself in the blank window opposite, saw the deep frown cutting across his forehead and sighed, it was no good minding, there was a good deal of poking and prying to do yet. Alleyn felt certain that the two cases were connected somehow, at the very least there was the matter of the intercepted radio signals and Private Sanders’s interest in Duncan Blaikie’s radio company, the possibility of high land from which to send a signal. He rubbed his nose, looked d
own at the page, crossed out all three of the lines he had just written and wrote two short questions to himself. He closed the notebook, put it and his pen back in his breast pocket, and waited a moment while Sanders, his whisper a little louder than intended no doubt due to the shock of their reprieve, gave his opinion of the detective.

  ‘What did I tell you? ’Course we thought he was coming over the big chief when he started this malarkey, ordering everyone about like he owned the place and talking with more plums in his mouth than Aunt Daisy puts in the Christmas pudding, but stone me, it’s another thing entirely when he’s got a bit of history of his own. He’s been a soldier, I reckon. Hark at how he talked to us. What’s the betting he was in the first war? He’ll do.’

  ‘For a Pom,’ Pawcett added, grudgingly.

  ‘For a Pākehā,’ Brayling added.

  They chuckled and fell easily into line behind Alleyn as he walked down the steps and, paying no attention to the men or their whispers about him, turned towards the Transport Office.

  They had not taken more than half a dozen paces when a white-faced Dr Hughes attended by an equally horrified Sergeant Bix overtook them.

  In a move worthy of a prize sheepdog, Bix rounded on the night walkers and came to a halt directly in front of Alleyn.

  Pawcett grunted an angry sigh, would have spat on the ground in front of him if he had dared, ‘Right. And after all that he’s called the sergeant out, all guns blazing. Thanks very much for nothing, Inspector.’

  ‘Hellfire, what now?’ Alleyn whispered to himself and, ignoring Pawcett and his chums, took a quick look at the faces of the two men before them, lifted an eyebrow to Hughes, and in a delicate sleight of hand simultaneously raised a thumb backwards, in the direction of the morgue. Hughes had the presence of mind to hold his tongue and simply nod. Alleyn didn’t yet know what the nod meant, but he knew enough to take charge of the situation and fast, before Sergeant Bix blurted out whatever disaster in the morgue had brought them to this pass.