by Ngaio Marsh
“You should have heard her,” said Fabian. “ ‘Now what do my two inventors think?’ And then, you know, she’d pull an arch face and, for all the world like one of the weird sisters in Macbeth, she’d lay her rather choppy finger on her lips and say: ‘But we mustn’t be indiscreet, must we?’ ”
Alleyn glanced up at the picture. The spare, wiry woman stared down at him with the blank inscrutability of all Academy portraits. He was visited by a strange notion. If the painted finger should be raised to those lips that seemed to be strained with such difficulty over projecting teeth! If she could give him a secret signal: “Speak now. Ask this question. Be silent here, they are approaching a matter of importance.”
“That’s how she carried on,” Douglas agreed. “It was damned difficult and of course everybody in the house knew we were doing something hush-hush. Fabian always said: ‘What of it? We keep our stuff locked up and even if we didn’t nobody could understand it.’ But I didn’t like the way Flossie talked. Later on her attitude changed.”
“That was after questions had been asked in the House about leakage of information to the enemy,” said Ursula. “She took that very much to heart, Douglas, you know she did. And then that ship was torpedoed off the North Island. She was terribly upset.”
“Personally,” said Fabian, “I found her caution much more alarming than her curiosity. You’d have thought we had the Secret Death Key of fiction on the stocks. She papered the walls with cautionary posters. Go on, Douglas.”
“It was twenty-one days before she was killed that it happened,” said Douglas. “And if you don’t find a parallel between my experience and Ursy’s, I shall be very much surprised. Fabian and I had worked late on a certain improvement to a crucial part of our gadget — a safety device, let us call it.”
“Why not,” said Fabian, “since it is one?”
“I absolutely fail to understand your attitude, Fabian, and I’m sure Mr. Alleyn does. Your bloody English facetiousness—”
“All right. You’re perfectly right, old thing, only it’s just that all these portentous hints seem to me to be so many touches. You know as well as I do that the idea of a sort of aerial magnetic mine must have occurred to countless schoolboys. The only thing that could possibly be of use to the most sanguine dirty dog would be either the drawings, or the dummy model.”
“Exactly!” Douglas shouted and then immediately lowered his voice. “The drawings and the model.”
“And it’s all right about Markins. He’s spending the evening with the Johns family.”
“So he says,” Douglas retorted. “Well now, sir, on this night, a fortnight before Aunt Floss was killed, I was worrying about the alteration in the safety device—”
His story did bear a curious resemblance to Ursula’s.
On this particular evening, at about nine o’clock, Douglas and Fabian had stood outside their workroom door, having locked it for the night. They were excited by the proposed alteration to the safety device which Fabian now thought could be improved still further. “We’d talked ourselves silly and decided to chuck it up for the night,” said Douglas. He usually kept the keys of the workroom door and safe, but on this occasion each of them said that he might feel inclined to return to the calculations later on that night. It was agreed that Douglas should leave the keys in a box on his dressing-table where Fabian, if he so desired, could get them without disturbing him. It was at this point that they noticed Markins, who had come quietly along the passage from the backstairs. He asked them if they knew where Mrs. Rubrick was as a long-distance call had come through for her. He almost certainly overheard the arrangement about the keys. “And, by God,” said Douglas, “he tried to make use of it.”
They parted company and Douglas went to bed. But he was over-stimulated and slept restlessly. At last, finding himself broad awake and obsessed with their experiment, he had decided to get up and look through the calculations they had been working on that evening. He had stretched out his hand to his bedside table when he heard a sound in the passage beyond his door. It was no more than the impression of stealthy pressure, as though someone advanced with exaggerated caution and in slow motion. Douglas listened spell-bound, his hand still outstretched. The steps paused outside his door. At that moment he made some involuntary movement of his hand and knocked his candlestick to the floor. The noise seemed to him to be shocking. It was followed by a series of creaks fading in a rapid diminuendo down the passage. He leapt out of bed and pulled open his door.
The passage was almost pitch-dark. At the far end it met a shorter passage that ran across it like the head of a T. Here, there was a faint glow that faded while Douglas watched it as if, he said, somebody with a torch was moving away to the left. The only inhabited room to the left was Markins’. The backstairs were to the right.
At this point in his narrative, Douglas tipped himself back on the sofa and glanced complacently about him. Why, he demanded, was Markins abroad in the passage at a quarter to three in the morning (Douglas had noted the time) unless it was upon some exceedingly dubious errand? And why did he pause outside his, Douglas’, door? There was one explanation which, in the light of subsequent events, could scarcely be refuted. Markins had intended to enter Douglas’ room and attempt to steal the keys to the workshop.
“Well, well,” said Fabian, “let’s have the subsequent events.”
They were, Alleyn thought, at least suggestive.
After the incident of the night Douglas had taken his keys to bed with him and lay fuming until daylight, when he woke Fabian and told him of his suspicions. Fabian was sceptical. “A purely gastronomic episode, I bet you anything you like.” But he agreed that they should be more careful with the keys, and he himself contrived a heavy shutter which padlocked over the window when the room was not in use. “There was no satisfying Douglas,” Fabian said plaintively. “He jeered at my lovely shutter and didn’t believe I went to bed with the keys on a bootlace round my neck. I did though.”
“I wasn’t satisfied to let it go like that,” said Douglas. “I was damned worried and next day I kept the tag on Master Markins. Once or twice I caught him watching me with a very funny look in his eye. That was on the Thursday. Flossie had given him the Saturday off and he went down to the Pass with the mail car. He’s friendly with the pub keeper there. I thought things over and decided to do a little investigation, and I think you’ll agree I was justified, sir. I went to his room. It was locked, but I’d seen a bunch of old keys hanging up in the store-room and after filing one of them I got it to function all right.” Douglas paused, half-smiling. His arm still rested along the back of the sofa behind Terence Lynne. She turned and, clicking her knitting needles, looked thoughtfully at him.
“I don’t know how you could, Douglas,” said Ursula. “Honestly!”
“My dear child, I had every reason to believe I was up against a very nasty bit of work — a spy, an enemy. Don’t you understand?”
“Of course I understand, but I just don’t believe Markins is a spy. I rather like him.”
Douglas raised his eyebrows and addressed himself pointedly to Alleyn.
“At first I thought I’d drawn a blank. Every blinking box and case in his room, and there were five all told, was locked. I looked in the cupboard and there, on the floor, I did discover something.”
Douglas cleared his throat, took a wallet from his breast pocket and an envelope from the wallet. This he handed to Alleyn. “Take a look at it, sir. It’s not the original. I handed that over to the police. But it’s an exact replica.”
“Yes,” said Alleyn, raising an eyebrow at it. “A fragment of the covering used on a film package for a Leica or similar camera.”
“That’s right, sir. I thought I wasn’t mistaken. A bloke in our mess had used those films and I remembered the look of them. Now it seemed pretty funny to me that a man in Markins’ position should be able to afford a Leica camera. They cost anything from £25 to £100 out here when you could get them. Of cou
rse, I said to myself, it mightn’t be his. But there was a suit hanging up in the cupboard and in one of the pockets I found a sales docket from a photographic supply firm. Markins had spent five pounds there, and amongst the stuff he’d bought were twelve films for a Leica. I suppose he was afraid he’d run out. I shifted one of his locked cases and it rattled and clinked. I bet it had his developing plant in it. When I left his room I was satisfied I’d hit on something pretty startling. Markins was probably going to photograph everything he could lay his hands on in our workroom and send it on to his principals.”
“I see,” said Alleyn. “So what did you do?”
“Told Fabian,” said Douglas. “Right away.”
Alleyn looked at Fabian.
“Oh yes. He told me and we disagreed completely over the whole thing. In fact,” said Fabian, “we had one hell of a flaming row over it, didn’t we, Doug?”
“There’s no need to exaggerate,” said Douglas. “We merely took up different attitudes.”
“Wildly different,” Fabian agreed. “You see, Mr. Alleyn, my idea, for what it’s worth, was this. Suppose Markins was a dirty dog. If questioned about his nightly prowl he had only to say: (a) That his tummy was upset and he didn’t feel up to going to the downstairs Usual Offices so had visited ours, or (b) that it wasn’t him at all. As for his photographic zeal, if it existed, he might have been given a Leica camera by a grateful employer or saved up his little dimes and dollars and bought one second-hand in America. Every photographic zealot is not a fifth columnist. If he kept his developing stuff locked up it might be because he was innately tidy or because he didn’t trust us, and I must say that with Douglas on the premises he wasn’t far wrong.”
“So you were for doing nothing about it?”
“No. I thought we should keep our stuff well stowed away and our eyes open. I suggested that if, on consideration, we thought Markins was a bit dubious, we should report the whole story to the people who are dealing with espionage in this country.”
“And did you agree with this plan, Grace?”
Douglas had disagreed most vigorously. He had, he said with a short laugh, the poorest opinion of the official counter-espionage system and would greatly prefer to tackle the matter himself. “That’s what we’re like out here, sir,” he told Alleyn. “We like to go to it on our own and get things done.” He added that he felt, personally, so angry with Markins that he had to do something about it. Fabian’s suggestion he dismissed as unrealistic. Why wait? Report the matter certainly, but satisfy themselves first and then go direct to the Authority they had seen at Army Headquarters and get rid of the fellow. They argued for some time and separated without having come to any conclusion. Douglas on parting from Fabian encountered his aunt, who as luck would have it launched out on an encomium upon her manservant. “What should I do without my Markins? Thank heaven he comes back this evening. I touch wood,” Flossie had said, tapping a gnarled finger playfully on her forehead, “every time he says he’s happy here. It’d be so unspeakably dreadful if he were lost to us.”
This, Douglas said, was too much for him. He followed his aunt into the study and, as he said, gave her the works. “I stood no nonsense from Flossie,” said Douglas, brushing up his moustache. “We understood each other pretty well. I used to pull her leg a bit and she liked it. She was a good scout, taking her all round, only you didn’t want to let her ride roughshod over you. I talked pretty straight to her. I told her she’d have to get rid of Markins and I told her why.”
Terence Lynne said under her breath: “I never realized you did that.”
Flossie had been very much upset. She was caught. On the one hand there was her extreme reluctance to part with her jewel, as she had so often called Markins; on the other her noted zeal, backed up by public utterance, in the matter of counter-espionage. Douglas said he reminded her of a speech she had made in open debate in which she had wound up with a particularly stately peroration: “I say now, and I say it solemnly and advisedly,” Flossie had urged, “that, with our very life-blood at stake, it is the duty of us all not only to get a guard upon our own tongue but to make a public example of anyone, be he stranger or dearest friend, who, by the slightest deviation from that discretion which is his duty, endangers in the least degree the safety of our realm. Make no doubt about it,” she had finally shouted, “there is an enemy in our midst, and let each of us beware lest, unknowingly, we give him shelter.” This piece of rhetoric had a wry flavour in regurgitation, and for a moment Flossie stared miserably at her nephew. Then she rallied.
“You’ve been working too hard, Douglas,” she said. “You’re suffering from nervous strain, dear.”
But Douglas made short work of this objection and indignantly put before her the link with Mr. Kurata Kan, at which Flossie winced, the vagueness of Markins’ antecedents, the importance of their work, the impossibility of taking the smallest risk and their clear duty in the matter. It would be better, he said, if, after further investigation on Douglas’ part, Markins still looked suspicious, for Flossie and not Douglas or Fabian to report the matter to the highest possible authority.
Poor Flossie wrung her hands. “Think of what he does,” she wailed. “And he’s so good with Arthur. He’s marvellous with Arthur. And he’s so obliging, Douglas. Single-handed butler in a house of this size! Everything so nice, always. And there’s no help to be got. None.”
“The girls will have to manage.”
“I don’t believe it!” she cried, rallying. “I’m always right in my judgment of people. I never go wrong. I won’t believe it.”
But, as Ursula had said, Flossie was an honest woman and it seemed as if Douglas had done his work effectively. She tramped up and down the room hitting her top teeth with a pencil, a sure sign that she was upset. He waited.
“You’re right,” Flossie said at last. “I can’t let it go.” She lowered her chin and looked at Douglas over the tops of her pince-nez. “You were quite right to tell me, dear,” she said. “I’ll handle it.”
This was disturbing. “What will you do?” he asked.
“Consider,” said Florence magnificently. “And act.”
“How?”
“Never you mind.” She patted him rather too vigorously on the cheek. “Leave it all to your old Floosie,” she said. This was the abominable pet name she had for herself.
“But, Auntie,” he protested, “we’ve a right to know. After all—”
“So you shall. At the right moment.” She dumped herself down at her desk. She was a tiny creature but all her movements were heavy and noisy. “Away with you,” she said. Douglas hung about. She began to write scratchily and in a moment or two tossed another remark at him. “I’m going to tackle him,” she said.
Douglas was horrified. “Oh, no, Aunt Floss. Honestly, you mustn’t. It’ll give the whole show away. Look here, Aunt Floss—”
But she told him sharply that he had chosen to come to her with his story and must allow her to deal with her own servants in the way that seemed best to her. Her pen scratched busily. When in his distress he roared at her, she, too, lost her temper and told him to be quiet. Douglas, unable to make up his mind to leave her, stared despondently through the window and saw Markins, neatly dressed, walk past it mopping his brow. He had tramped up from the front gate.
“Auntie Floss, please listen to me!”
“I thought I told you—”
Appalled at his own handiwork, he left her.
At this point in his narrative Douglas rose and straddled the hearth-rug.
“I don’t mind telling you,” he said, “that we weren’t the same after it. She got the huff and treated me like a kid.”
“We noticed,” Fabian said, “that your popularity had waned a little. Poor Flossie! You’d hoist her with the petard of her own conscience. A maddening and unforgivable thing to do, of course. Obviously she would hate your guts for it.”
“There’s no need to put it like that,” said Douglas grandly.
/> “With a little enlargement,” Fabian grinned, “it might work up into quite a pretty motive against you.”
“That’s a damned silly thing to say, Fabian,” Douglas shouted.
“Shut up, Fab,” said Ursula. “You’re impossible.”
“Sorry, darling.”
“I still don’t see,” Douglas abjectly fumed, “that I could have taken any other line. After all, as she pointed out, it was her house and he was her servant.”
“You didn’t think of that when you picked his door lock,” Fabian pointed out.
“I didn’t pick the lock, Fabian, and anyhow that was entirely different.”
“Did Mrs. Rubrick tackle him?” Alleyn asked.
“I presume so. She said nothing to me, and I wasn’t going to ask and be ticked off again.”
Douglas lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Obviously,” Alleyn thought, “he still has something up his sleeve.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Douglas lightly, “I’m quite positive she did tackle him, and I believe it’s because of what she said that Markins killed her.”
“And there,” said Fabian cheerfully, “you have it. Flossie says to Markins: ‘I understand from my nephew that you’re an enemy agent. Take a week’s wages in lieu of notice and expect to be arrested and shot when you get to the railway station!’ ‘No you don’t,’ says Markins to himself. He serves up the soup with murder in his heart, takes a stroll past the wool-shed, hears Flossie in the full spate of her experimental oratory, nips in and — does it. To me it just doesn’t make sense.”
“You deliberately make it sound silly,” said Douglas hotly.
“It is silly. Moreover it’s not in her character, as I read it, to accuse Markins. It would have been the action of a fool and, bless my soul, Flossie was no fool.”
“It was her deliberately expressed intention.”
“To ‘tackle Markins.’ That was her phrase, wasn’t it? That is, to tackle l’affaire Markins. She wanted to get rid of you and think. And, upon my soul, I don’t blame her.”