Died in the Wool ra-13

by Ngaio Marsh

  “He’ll bring the drinks in a minute,” said Fabian. “Why not wait and have one?”

  “If he’s got wind of this I wouldn’t put it past him to monkey with the decanter.”

  “Honestly, Douglas!” Fabian and Ursula said together. “You are—”

  “All right, all right,” Douglas said angrily. “I’m a fool. Say no more.” He flung himself down on the sofa again but this time he did not rest his arm along the back behind Terence. Instead he eyed her with an air of discomfort and curiosity.

  “So you prefer to leave Miss Harme’s question unanswered,” Alleyn said to Terence.

  She had picked up her knitting as if hoping by that gesture to recapture something of her composure. But her hands turned her work over, rolling the scarlet mesh round the white needles and, as aimlessly, spreading it out again across her knees.

  “You force me to speak of it,” she said. “All of you. You talk about us all agreeing to this discussion, Fabian. When you and Ursula and Douglas planned it how could I not agree? It’s not my business to refuse. I’m an outsider. I was paid to work for Mrs. Rubrick and now you, Fabian, pay me to work for you in your garden. It’s not my business to refuse.”

  “Nonsense, Terry,” said Fabian.

  “You’ve never been in my position. You don’t understand. You’re all very kind and informal and treat me, as we say in my class, almost like one of yourselves. Almost, not quite.”

  “My dear girl, that’s an insult to me, at least. You know quite enough about my views to realize that any such attitude is revolting to me. ‘Your class.’ How dare you go class-conscious at me, Terry?”

  “You’re my boss. You were not too much of a communist to accept Mount Moon when he left it to you.”

  “I think,” said Alleyn crisply, “that we might come back to the question which, believe me, Miss Lynne, you are under no compulsion to answer. This is it. Did Mrs. Rubrick, during the last week of her life, become aware of the attachment between you and her husband?”

  “And if I don’t answer what will you think? What will you do? Go to Mrs. Aceworthy, who dislikes me intensely, and get some monstrously distorted story that she’s concocted. When he was ill he wanted me to look after him and wouldn’t see her or have her here. She’s never forgiven me. Better you should hear the truth, from me.”

  “Very much better,” Alleyn agreed cheerfully. “Let’s have it.”

  It would have come as something of an anticlimax if it had not made a little clearer the still nebulous picture of that strange companionship. They had been working together over one of Flossie’s articles, he at the table near the windows and Terence moving between him and the bookcases. She had returned to him with a volume of Hansard and had laid it on the table before him, standing behind him and pressing it open with her hand at the passage he had asked for. He leant forward and the rough tweed of his coat sleeve brushed her forearm. They were motionless. She looked down at him but his face was hidden from her. He stooped. Her free hand moved and rested on his shoulder. She described the scene carefully, with precision, as if these details were important, as if, having undertaken her story, she was resolved to leave nothing unsaid. She was, Alleyn thought, a remarkable young woman. She said it was the first passage of its kind between them and she supposed they were both too much moved by it to hear the door open. Her right hand was still upon him when she turned and saw her employer. He was even slower to move and her left hand remained, weighed down by his, upon the open pages of the book. It was only when she pulled it away that he too turned, and saw his wife.

  Florence remained in the doorway. She had a sheaf of papers in her hand and they crackled as her grip tightened on them. “Hers was an expressionless face,” Terence said and Alleyn glanced up at the portrait. “Her teeth showed a little, as usual. Her eyes always looked rather startled, they looked no more so, then. She just stared at us.”

  Neither Rubrick nor Terence spoke. Florence said loudly: “I’m in a hurry for those reports,” and turned on her heel. The door slammed behind her. Rubrick said to Terence: “My dear, I hope you can forgive me,” and Terence, sure now that he loved her, and feeling nothing but pleasure in her heart, kissed him lightly and moved away. They returned tranquilly to Flossie’s interminable reports. It was strange, Terence said, how little troubled they both were at that time by Flossie’s entrance. It seemed then to be quite irrelevant, something to be dismissed impatiently, before the certainty of their attachment. They continued with their employment, Terence said, and Alleyn had a picture of the two of them at work there, sometimes exchanging a brief smile, more often turning the pages of Hansard, or making notes of suitable platitudes for Flossie. An odd affair, he thought.

  This mood of acceptance sustained them through their morning’s work. At luncheon when the party of six assembled, Terence noticed that her employer was less talkative than usual and she realized that she herself was being closely watched by Flossie. This did not greatly disturb her. She thought vaguely: “I suppose she merely said to herself that it’s not much like me to put my hand on anyone’s shoulder. I suppose she thinks it was a bit of presumption on my part. She’s noticing me as a human being.”

  At the end of lunch Flossie suddenly announced that she wanted Terence to work with her all the afternoon. She kept Terence hard at it, taking down letters and typing them. It was a perfectly normal routine and at first Terence noticed nothing unusual in Flossie’s manner. Presently, however, she became conscious that Flossie, from behind the table, across the room, or by the fireplace, was watching her closely. She would deny herself the uncomfortable experience of meeting this scrutiny but sooner or later she would find herself unable to resist and would look up and there, sure enough, would be that gimlet-like stare that contrived to be at once so penetrating and so expressionless. Terence began to feel that she could not support this behaviour and to wish, in acute discomfort, that Florence would speak to, or even upbraid, her. The flood of contentment that had come upon her when she knew that Rubrick loved her now receded and left in its wake a sensation of shame. She began to see herself with Flossie’s eyes as a second-rate little typist who flirted with her employer’s husband. She felt sick and humiliated and was filled with a kind of impatience for the worst to happen. There must be a climax, she thought, or she would never recover from the self-disgust that Flossie’s stare had put upon her. But there was no climax. They plodded on with their work. When at last they had finished and Terence was gathering together her papers, Flossie, as she walked to the door, said over her shoulder “I don’t think Mr. Rubrick’s at all well.” Calling him “Mr. Rubrick,” Terence felt, put her very neatly in her place. “I don’t consider,” Florence added, “that we should bother him just now with our silly old statistics. I am rather worried about him. We’ll just leave him quietly to himself, Miss Lynne. Will you remember that?” And she went out, leaving Terence to draw what conclusions she chose from this pronouncement.

  “And it was after that,” Terence said, “almost immediately after — it was the same night, at dinner — when the change you all noticed appeared in her manner towards him. To me it was horrible.”

  “She decided, in fact,” said Fabian, “to meet you on your own ground, Terry, and give battle.” He added awkwardly: “That doesn’t seem horrible to me; pitiful, rather, and intensely embarrassing. How like her and how futile.”

  “But he was devoted to her,” Ursula protested. And as if she had made a discovery that astonished and shocked her, she cried out: “You cheated, Terry. It happened because you were young. You shouldn’t cheat in that way when you’re young. They’re all alike — men of his age. If you’d gone away he’d have forgotten.”

  “No!” said Terence strongly.

  To Alleyn’s discomfiture they both turned to him.

  “He’d have forgotten,” Ursula repeated. “Wouldn’t he?”

  “My dear child,” Alleyn said, intensely conscious of his age, “how can I possibly tell?” But when
he thought of Arthur Rubrick, ill, and exhausted by his wife’s public activities, he was inclined to believe that Ursula was partly right. With Terence gone, might not the emotion that Rubrick had felt for her have faded soon into an only half-regretful memory?

  “You’re all the same,” Ursula muttered, and Alleyn felt himself classed, disagreeably, with Arthur Rubrick, among the senile romantics. “You go queer.”

  “Well, but damn it all,” Fabian protested. “If it comes to that, Flossie’s behaviour was pretty queer too. To flirt with your husband after twenty-five years of married life—”

  “That was entirely different,” Ursula flashed at him, “and anyway, Terry, if she did, it was your fault.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Terence said, for the first time defending herself. “It happened. And until she came into the room it was right. I knew it was right. I knew it completely with my reason as well as with my emotion. It was as if I had suddenly been brought into focus, as if I was, for the first time, completely Me. It couldn’t possibly be wrong.”

  She appealed to Ursula and perhaps, Alleyn thought, to the two young men. She asked them for understanding and succeeded in faintly embarrassing them.

  “Yes,” said Ursula uncomfortably, “but how you could! With Uncle Arthur! He was nearly fifty.”

  Silence followed this statement. Alleyn, who was forty-seven, realized with amusement that Douglas and Fabian found Ursula’s argument unanswerable.

  “I didn’t hurt him, Fabian,” Terence said at last. “I’m certain I didn’t. If he was hurt it was by her. She was atrociously possessive.”

  “Because of you,” said Ursula.

  “But we couldn’t help it. You talk as if I planned what happened. It came out of a clear sky. It wasn’t of my doing. And there wasn’t a sequel, Ursula. You needn’t think we had surreptitious scenes. We didn’t. We were both of us, I believe, a little happier in our knowledge of each other. That was all.”

  “When he was ill,” said Fabian, “did you talk about it, Terry?”

  “A little. Just to say we were glad we knew.”

  “If he had lived,” said Ursula harshly, “would you have married him?”

  “How can I tell?”

  “Why shouldn’t you have married? Auntie Florence, who was such a bore to both of you, was out of the way. Wasn’t she?”

  “That’s an extraordinary cruel thing to say, Ursula.”

  “I agree,” said Douglas and Fabian muttered: “Pipe down, Ursy.”

  “No,” said Ursula. “We undertook to finish our thoughts in this discussion. You’re all cruel to her memory. Why should any of us get off? Why not say what you all must have thought: with her death they were free to marry.”

  A footfall sounded outside in the hall, accompanied by a faint jingle of glasses. It was Markins with the drinks.

  CHAPTER VI

  ACCORDING TO THE FILES

  With Markins’ arrival the discussion ended. It was as if he had opened the door to a wave of self-consciousness. Douglas fussed over the drinks, urging Alleyn to have whisky. Alleyn, who considered himself to be on duty, refused it and wondered regretfully if it was from the same matchless company as the bottle that Cliff Johns had smashed on the diary floor. Any suggestion that the discussion might be taken up again was dispelled by the entrance of Mrs. Aceworthy, who, with the two girls, drank tea, and who had many playful remarks to make about the lateness of the hour. It was high time, she said, that all her chickens were in their nests. And she asked Alleyn pointedly if he had brought a hot-water bottle. Upon this hint he bade them all good-night. Fabian brought in candles and offered to see him to his room.

  They went upstairs together, their shadows mounting gigantically beside them. On the landing Fabian said: “You will realize now, of course, that you’re in Flossie’s room. It’s the best one, really, but we all preferred to stay where we were.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “It’s got no associations for you, of course.”

  “None.”

  Fabian led the way through Florence’s door. He lit candles on the dressing-table and the room came into being, a large white room with gay curtains, a pretty desk, a fine bed and a number of flower prints on the walls. Alleyn’s pyjamas were laid out on the bed, by Markins, he supposed, and his locked dispatch and investigation cases were displayed prominently on the desk. He grinned to himself.

  “Got everything you want?” Fabian asked.

  “Everything, thanks. Before we say good-night, though, I wonder if I might take a look at your workroom.”

  “Why not? Come on.”

  It was the second door on the left along the passage. Fabian detached the key from about his neck. “On a bootlace, you see,” he said. “No deception practised. Here we go.”

  The strong electric lamp over their working bench dazzled eyes that had become accustomed to candlelight. It shone down on a rack of tools and an orderly collection of drawing materials. A small precision lathe was established on a side bench which was littered with a heterogeneous collection of pieces of metal. A large padlocked cupboard was built into the right-hand wall and beside it Alleyn saw a good modern safe with a combination lock. Three capacious drawers under the bench also were locked.

  “The crucial drawings and formulas have always been kept in the safe,” Fabian explained. “As you can see, everything is stowed away under lock and key. And pray spare a kind thought for my window shutter, so witheringly dismissed by dear old Douglas.”

  It was, Alleyn thought, an extremely workmanlike job. “And, I can assure you,” Fabian added, “it has not been fiddled with.” He sat on the bench and began to talk about their work. “It’s a magnetic fuse for anti-aircraft shells,” he said. “The shell is made of non-ferrous metal and contains a magnetically operated fuse which will explode the shell when it approaches an aircraft engine, or other metallic object. It will, we hope, be extremly useful at high altitudes where a direct hit is almost impossible. Originally I got the idea from a magnetic mine which, as of course you know, explodes in the magnetic field surrounding steel ships. Now, even though it contains a good deal of alloy, an aeroplane engine must, of necessity, also contain an appreciable amount of steel and, in addition, there’s a magnetic field from ignition coils. Our fuse is very different from the fuse in a magnetic mine but it’s a kind of second cousin in that it’s designed to explode a shell in the aeroplane’s magnetic field. As a matter of fact,” said Fabian with a glint in his eye, ”if it comes off, and it will come off, I believe, it’ll be a pretty big show.”

  “Of course it will. Very big indeed. There’s one question I’d like to ask. What about ‘prematures’ by attraction to the gun itself, or explosion in transit?”

  “There’s a safety device incorporated in the doings and it sees to it that the fuse won’t do its stuff until the shell starts to rotate and after it leaves the gun barrel. The result, in effect, is an aerial magnetic mine. I’ll show you the blueprints on presentation of your official card,” Fabian ended with a grin.

  “I should be enormously interested. But not to-night if you don’t mind. I’ve still a job of work to do.”

  “In that case, I’ll escort you back to your room, first making sure that no adventuresses lurk under the benches. Shall we go?”

  Back in Alleyn’s room Fabian lit a cigarette at a candle, and gave his guest one of his sidelong glances. “Any good,” he asked, “or rotten?”

  “The discussion?”

  “Yes. Post-mortem. Inquest. Was it hopelessly stupid to do it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “To-morrow, I suppose, you’ll talk to the Johns family and the men and so on.”

  “If I may.”

  “We’re crutching. You’ll be able to see the set-up. It’s pretty much the same. All except—”

  “Yes?” asked Alleyn as he paused.

  “The press is new. I couldn’t stomach that. It’s the same kind, though.”

  “I’ll just turn up t
here if I may.”

  “Yes. O.K. I don’t know if you’re going to keep our unearthly hours. Please don’t if you’d rather not. Breakfast at a quarter to six.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I’ll take you over to the shed. You’ll ask me for anything you want?”

  “I just want a free hand to fossick. I’d be grateful if I could be disregarded.”

  “Not very easy, I’m afraid. But of course you’ll have a free hand. I’ve told the men and Ducky and everybody that you’ll be talking to them.”

  “How did they like that?”

  “Quite keen. It’s given a fillip to the ever-popular murder story. Damned ghouls! There’ll be one or two snags, though. Wilson, the wool sorter, and Jack Merrywether, the presser, are not at all keen. Your friend Sub-Inspector Jackson got badly offside with both of them. And there’s Tommy Johns.”

  “The boy’s father?”

  “Yes. He’s a difficult chap, Tommy. I get on with him all right. He thinks for himself, does Tommy, and what’s more,” said Fabian with a grin, “he thinks much like me, politically, so I consider him a grand guy. But he’s difficult. He resented Flossie’s handling of young Cliff and small blame to him. And what he thinks of police methods! You won’t find him precisely come-to-ish.”

  “And the boy himself?”

  “He’s all right, really. He’s a likely lad, and he thinks for himself, too. We’re good friends, young Cliff and I. I lend him the New Statesman and he rebuilds the government, social customs and moral standards of mankind on a strictly non-economic basis two or three times a week. His music is really good, I believe, though I’m afraid it’s not getting much of a run these days. I’ve tried to induce him to practise on the Bechstein over here but he’s an obstinate young dog and won’t.”

  “Why?”

  “It was Flossie’s.”

  “So the quarrel went deep?”