Died in the Wool ra-13

by Ngaio Marsh

  “But how would she tackle Markins,” Terence objected, “except by questioning him?” She spoke so seldom that the sound of her voice, cool and incisive, came as a little shock.

  “She was a bit of a Polonius, was Flossie. I think she went round to work. She may even,” said Fabian, giving a curious inflection to the phrase, “she may even have consulted Uncle Arthur.”

  “No,” said Douglas.

  “How on earth can you tell?” asked Ursula.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “It would not have been in her character,” said Douglas.

  “Her character, you see,” Fabian said to Alleyn. “Always her character.”

  “Ever since fifth-column trouble started in this country,” said Douglas, “Flossie had been asking questions about it in the house. Markins knew that as well as we did. If she gave him so much as an inkling that she suspected him, how d’you suppose he’d feel?”

  “And even if she decided not to accuse him straight out,” Ursula said, “don’t you think he’d notice some change in her manner?”

  “Of course he would, Ursy,” Douglas agreed. “How could she help herself?”

  “Quite easily,” said Fabian. “She was as clever as a bagful of monkeys.”

  “I agree,” said Terence.

  “Well, now,” said Alleyn, “did any of you, in fact, notice any change in her manner towards Markins?”

  “To be quite honest,” said Fabian slowly, “we did. But I think we all put it down to her row with Cliff Johns. She was extremely cantankerous with all hands and the cook during that last week, was poor Flossie.”

  “She was unhappy,” Ursula declared. “She was wretchedly unhappy about Cliff. She used to tell me everything. I’m sure if she’d had a row with Markins she’d have told me about it. She used to call me her Safety Valve.”

  “Mrs. Arthur Rubrick,” said Fabian, “accompanied by Miss U. Harme, S.V., A.D.C., etc., etc.!”

  “She may have waited to talk to him until that night,” said Douglas. “The night she disappeared, I mean. She may have written for advice to a certain Higher Authority, and waited for the reply before she tackled Markins. Good Lord, that might have been the very letter she started writing while I was there!”

  “I think,” said Alleyn, “that I should have heard if she’d done that.”

  “Yes,” agreed Fabian. “Yes. After all you are the Higher Authority, aren’t you?”

  Again there was a silence, an awkward one. Alleyn thought: Damn that boy, he’s said precisely the wrong thing. He’s made them self-conscious again.

  “Well, there’s my case against Markins,” said Douglas grandly. “I don’t pretend it’s complete or anything like that, but I’ll swear there’s something in it, and you can’t deny that after she disappeared his behaviour was suspicious.”

  “I can deny it,” said Fabian, “and what’s more I jolly well do. Categorically, whatever that may mean. He was worried and so were all of us.”

  “He was jumpy.”

  “We were all as jumpy as cats. Why shouldn’t he jump with us? It’d have been much more suspicious if he’d remained all suave and imperturbable. You’re reasoning backwards, Douglas.”

  “I couldn’t stand the sight of the chap about the house,” said Douglas. “I can’t now. It’s monstrous that he should still be here.”

  “Yes,” Alleyn said. “Why is he still here?”

  “You might well ask,” Douglas rejoined. “You’ll scarcely credit it, sir, but he’s here because the police asked Uncle Arthur to keep him on. It was like this…”

  The story moved forward. Out of the narrative grew a theme of mounting dissonance, anxiety and fear. Five days after Florence had walked down the lavender path and turned to the left, the overture opened on the sharp note of a telephone bell. The Post Office at the Pass had a wire for Mrs. Rubrick. Should they read it? Terence took it down. trust you are not indisposed your presence urgently reguested at thursday’s meeting. It was signed by a brother M.P. There followed a confused and hurried passage. Florence had not gone north! Where was she? Inquiries, tentative at first but growing hourly less guarded and more frantic; long-distance calls, calls to her lawyers with whom she was known to have made an appointment, to hospitals and police stations; the abandonment of privacy following a dominion-wide SOS on the air; search-parties radiating from Mount Moon and culminating in the sudden collapse of Arthur Rubrick; his refusal to have a trained nurse or indeed anyone but Terence and Markins to look after him — all these abnormalities followed each other in an ominous crescendo that reached its peak in the dreadful finality of discovery.

  As this phase unfolded, Alleyn thought he could trace a change of mood in the little company assembled in the study. At first Douglas alone stated the theme. Then one by one, at first reluctantly, then with increasing freedom, the other voices joined in, and it seemed to Alleyn that after their long avoidance of their subject they now found ease in speaking of it. After the impact of the discovery, there followed the slow assembly of official themes: the inquest adjourned, the constant appearance of the police, and the tremendous complications of the public funeral. These events mingled like phrases of a movement till interrupted emphatically by Fabian. When Douglas, who had evidently been impressed by it, described Flossie’s cortège—“there were three bands”—Fabian shocked them all by breaking into laughter. Laughter bubbled out of him. He stammered: “It was so horrible… disgusting… I’m terribly sorry, but when you think of what had happened to her… and then to have three brass bands… Oh God, it’s so electrically comic!” He drew in his breath in a shuddering gasp.

  “Fabian!” Ursula murmured and put her arm about him, pressing him against her knees. “Darling Fabian, don’t.”

  Douglas stared at Fabian and then looked away in embarrassment. “You don’t want to think of it like that,” he said. “It was a tribute. She was enormously popular. We had to let them do it. Personally—”

  “Go on with the story, Douglas,” said Terence.

  “Wait,” said Fabian. “I’ve got to explain. It’s my turn. I want to explain.”

  “No,” cried Ursula. “Please not.”

  “We agreed to tell him everything. I’ve got to explain why I can’t join in this nil nisi stuff. It crops up at every turn. Let’s clear it up and then get on with the job.”

  “No!”

  “I’ve got to, Ursy. Please don’t interrupt, it’s so deadly important. And after all one can’t make a fool of oneself without some sort of apology.”

  “Mr. Alleyn will understand.” Ursula appealed urgently to Alleyn, her hands still pressed down on Fabian’s shoulders. “It’s the war,” she said. “He was dreadfully ill after Dunkirk. You mustn’t mind.”

  “For pity’s sake shut up, darling, and let me tell him,” said Fabian violently.

  “But it’s crazy. I won’t let you, Fabian. I won’t let you.”

  “You can’t stop me,” he said.

  “What the hell is this about?” Douglas asked angrily.

  “It’s about me,” said Fabian. “It’s about whether or not I killed your Aunt Florence. Now for God’s sake hold your tongue and listen.”

  CHAPTER IV

  ACCORDING TO FABIAN

  Sitting on the floor and hugging his knees, Fabian began his narrative. At first he stammered. The phrases tumbled over each other and his lips trembled. As often as this happened he paused, frowning, and, in a level voice, repeated the sentence he had bungled, so that presently he was master of himself and spoke composedly.

  “I think I told you,” he said, “that I got a crack on the head at Dunkirk. I also told you, didn’t I, that for some weeks after I was supposed to be more or less patched up they put me on a specialized job in England? It was then I got the notion of a magnetic fuse for anti-aircraft shells, which is, to make no bones about it, the general idea behind our precious X Adjustment. I suppose, if things had gone normally, I’d have muddled away at it there in En
gland, but they didn’t.

  “I went to my job one morning with a splitting headache. What an admirably chosen expression that is—‘a splitting headache.’ My head really felt like that. I’d had bad bouts of it before and tried not to pay any attention. I was sitting at my desk looking at a memorandum from my senior officer and thinking I must collect myself and do something about it. I remember pulling a sheet of paper towards me. An age of nothingness followed this and then I came up in horrible waves out of dark into light. I was hanging over a gate in a road a few minutes away from my own billet. It was a very high gate, an eight-barred affair with wire on top and padlocked. The place beyond was army property. I must have climbed up. I was very sick. After a bit I looked at my watch. It’d missed an hour. It was as if it had been cut out of my mind. I looked at my right hand and saw there was ink on my fingers. Then I went home, feeling filthily ill. I rang up the office and I suppose I sounded peculiar because the army quack came in the next morning and had a look at me. He said it was the crack on my skull. I’ve got the report he gave me to bring out here. You can see it if you like.

  “While he was with me the letter came.

  “It was addressed to me by me. That gives one an unpleasant feeling at any time. When I opened it six sheets of office paper fell out. They were covered in my writing and figures. Nonsense they were, disjointed bits and pieces from my notes and calculations hopelessly jumbled together. I showed them to the doctor. He found it all enthralling and had me marched out of the army. That was when Flossie turned up.”

  Fabian paused for a moment, his chin on his knees.

  “I only had two other goes of it,” he said at last, rousing himself. “One was in the ship. I was supposed to be resting in my deck-chair. Ursy says she found me climbing. This time it was up the companion-way to the boat deck. I don’t know if I told you that when I caught my packet at Dunkirk I was climbing up a rope ladder into a rescue ship. I’ve sometimes wondered if there’s a connection. Ursy couldn’t get me to come down so she stayed with me. I wandered about, it seems, and generally made a nuisance of myself. I got very angry about something and said I was going to knock hell out of Flossie. A point to remember, Mr. Alleyn. I think I’ve mentioned before that Flossie’s ministrations in the ship were very agitating and tiresome. Ursy seems to have kept me quiet. When I came up to the surface she was there, and she helped me get back to my cabin. I made her promise not to tell Flossie. The ship’s doctor was generally tight so we didn’t trouble him either.

  “Then the last go. The last go. I suppose you’ve guessed. It was on what your friend in the force calls the Night in Question. It was, in point of fact, while I was among the vegetable marrows hunting for Flossie’s brooch. Unhappily, this time Ursy was not there.”

  “I suppose,” Fabian said, shifting his position and looking at his hands, “that I’d walked about, with my nose to the ground, for so long that I’d upset my equilibrium or something. I don’t know. All I do know is that I heard the two girls having their argument in the bottom path and then, without the slightest warning, there was the blackout, and, after the usual age of nothingness, that abominable, that disgusting sense of coming up to the surface. There I was at the opposite end of the vegetable garden, under a poplar tree, feeling like death and bruised all over. I heard Uncle Arthur call out: ‘Here it is. I’ve found it.’ I heard the others exclaim and shout to each other and then to me. So I pulled myself together and trotted round to meet them. It was almost dark by then. They couldn’t see my face which I daresay was bright green. Anyway they were all congratulating themselves over the blasted brooch. I trailed indoors after them and genteelly sipped soda-water while they drank hock and Uncle Arthur’s whisky. He was pretty well knocked up himself, poor old thing. So I escaped notice, except—”

  He moved away a little from Ursula and looked up at her with a singularly sweet smile. “Except by Ursula,” he said. “She appeared to have noted the resemblance to a dead groper and she tackled me about it the next morning. So I told her that I’d had another of my ‘turns,’ as poor Flossie called them.”

  “It’s so silly,” Ursula whispered. “The whole thing’s so silly. Mr. Alleyn is going to laugh at you.”

  “Is he? I hope he is. I must say it’d be a great relief to me if Mr. Alleyn began to rock with professional laughter, but at the moment I see no signs of it. Of course you know where all this is leading, sir, don’t you?”

  “I think so,” said Alleyn. “You wonder, don’t you, if in a condition of amnesia or automatism or unconscious behaviour or whatever it should be called, you could have gone to the wool-shed and committed this crime?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You say you heard Miss Harme and Miss Lynne talking in the bottom path?”

  “Yes. I heard Terry say, ‘Why not just do what we’re asked? It would be so much simpler.’ ”

  “Did you say that, Miss Lynne?”

  “Something like it, I believe.”

  “Yes,” said Ursula. “She said that! I remember.”

  “And then I blacked-out,” said Fabian.

  “Soon after you came to yourself again you heard Mr. Rubrick call out that he had found the diamond clip?”

  “Yes. It’s the first thing I was fully aware of. His voice.”

  “And how long,” Alleyn asked Terence Lynne, “was the interval between your remark and the discovery of the brooch?”

  “Perhaps ten minutes. No longer.”

  “I see. Mr. Losse,” said Alleyn, “you seem to me to be a more than usually intelligent young man.”

  “Thank you,” said Fabian, “for those few unsolicited orchids.”

  “So why on earth, I wonder, have you produced this ridiculous taradiddle?”

  “There!” cried Ursula. “There! What did I tell you?”

  “All I can say,” said Fabian stiffly, “is that I am extremely relieved that Mr. Alleyn considers pure taradiddle a statement upon which I found it difficult to embark and which was, in effect, a confession.”

  “My dear chap,” said Alleyn. “I don’t doubt for a moment that you’ve had these beastly experiences. I spoke carelessly and I apologize. What I do suggest is that the inference you have drawn is quite preposterous. I don’t say that, pathologically speaking, you were incapable of committing this crime, but I do say that, physically speaking, on the evidence we’ve got, you couldn’t possibly have done so.”

  “Ten minutes,” said Fabian.

  “Exactly. Ten minutes. Ten minutes in which to travel about a fifth of a mile, strike a blow, and — I’m sorry to be specific over unpleasant details but it’s as well to clear this up — suffocate your victim, remove a great deal of wool from the press, bind up the body, dispose of it, and refill the press. You couldn’t have done it during the short time you were unconscious, and I don’t imagine you are going to tell me you returned later, master of yourself, to tidy up a crime you didn’t remember committing. As you know, these must have been the circumstances. You wore white flannels, I understand? Very well, what sort of state were they in when you came to yourself?”

  “Loamy,” said Fabian. “Don’t forget the vegetable marrows. Evidently I’d collapsed into them.”

  “But not woolly? Not stained in any other way?”

  Ursula got up quickly and walked over to the window.

  “Need we?” asked Fabian, watching her.

  “Certainly not. It can wait.”

  “No,” said Ursula. “We asked for it; let’s get on with it. I’m all right. I’m only getting a cigarette.”

  Her back was towards them. Her voice sounded remote and it was impossible to glean from it the colour of her thoughts. “Let’s get on with it,” she repeated.

  “You may remember,” said Fabian, “that the murderer was supposed to have used a suit of overalls belonging to Tommy Johns and a pair of working gloves out of one of the pockets. The overalls hung on a nail near the press. Next morning when Tommy put them on he found a seam had split
and he noticed — other details.”

  “If that theory is correct,” said Alleyn, “and I think that very probably it is, another minute or two is added to the time-table. You know you must have thought all this out for yourself. You must have thrashed it out a great many times. To reach the wool-shed and escape the notice of the rest of the party in the garden, you would have had to go round about, either through the house or by way of the side lawn and the yards at the back. You couldn’t have used the bottom path because Miss Lynne or Miss Harme would have seen you. Now, before dinner I ran by the most direct route from the vegetable garden to the wool-shed and it took me two minutes. In your case the direct route is impossible. By the indirect routes it took three and four minutes respectively. That leaves a margin, at the best, of about four minutes in which to commit the crime. Can you wonder that I described your theory, inaccurately perhaps but with some justification, as a taradiddle?”

  “In England,” Fabian said, “after I’d had my first lapse, I went rather thoroughly into the whole business of unconscious behaviour following injuries to the head. I was—” his mouth twisted—“rather interested. The condition is quite well-known and apparently not even fantastically unusual. Oddly enough it’s sometimes accompanied by an increase in physical strength.”

  “But not,” Alleyn pointed out mildly, “by the speed of a scalded cat going off madly in all directions.”

  “All right, all right,” said Fabian with a jerk of his head. “I’m immensely relieved. Naturally.”

  “I still don’t see—” Alleyn began, but Fabian, with a spurt of nervous irritation, cut him short: “Can you see, at least, that a man in my condition might become morbidly apprehensive about his own actions? To have even one minute cut out of your life, leaving an unknown black lane down which you must have wandered, horribly busy! It’s a disgusting, an intolerable thing to happen to you. You feel that nothing was impossible during the lost time, nothing!”

  “I see,” said Alleyn’s voice quietly in the shadow.