by Ngaio Marsh
“It’s the same old story, Ben,” said Fabian, “but we’re hoping Mr. Alleyn may get a bit further than the other experts. We’re lucky to have him.” Mr. Wilson glanced at Alleyn and then at the floor. He smoked cautiously, sheltering his cigarette with the palm of his hand. He had the air of a man whose life’s object was to avoid making the slightest advance to anybody.
“You were here for the January shearing when Mrs. Rubrick was killed, weren’t you, Mr. Wilson?” asked Alleyn.
“That’s right,” said Mr. Wilson.
“I’m afraid you must be completely fed up with policemen and their questions.”
“That’s right.”
“And I’m afraid mine will be precisely the same set of questions all over again.” Alleyn waited and Mr. Wilson, with an extremely smug expression, compounded, it seemed, of mistrust, complacency and resignation, said: “You’re telling me.”
“All right,” said Alleyn. “Here goes, then. On the night of January 29th, 1942 when Mrs. Rubrick was stunned, suffocated, bound, and packed into a wool bale in the replica of the press over there, you were in charge of the shed as usual, I suppose?”
“I was over at Lakeside,” Mr. Wilson muttered as if the statement were an obscenity.
“At the time she was murdered? Yes, you probably were. At a dance wasn’t it? But (you must forgive me if I’ve got it wrong) the wool-shed is under your management during the shearing, isn’t it?”
“Manner of speaking.”
“Yes. And I suppose you have a look round after knock-off time?”
“Not much to look at.”
“Those trap-doors or port-holes by the shearing board for instance. Were they shut?”
“That’s right.”
“But the traps could be raised from outside?”
“That’s right.”
“And the sacking over the door at the end of the board. Was that dropped?”
“That’s right.”
“Was it fastened in any way?”
“Fastened?”
“Fastened, yes.”
“She’s nailed to a bit of three-be-two and we drop it.”
“I see. And the pile of sacks or empty bales inside these rolling double doors — were they lying in such a way that anybody coming in or going out would disturb them?”
“I’ll say.”
“But in the morning, did they look as if they’d been disturbed?”
Mr. Wilson shook his head very slightly.
“Did you notice them particularly?”
“That’s right.”
“How was that?”
“I’d told the boys to shift them and they never.”
“Could the doors have been rolled open from outside?”
“Not a chance.”
“Were they fastened inside?”
“That’s right.”
“Is it remotely possible that there was somebody hiding in here when you knocked off?”
“Not a chance.”
“Mrs. Rubrick must have come in by the sacking door?”
Mr. Wilson grunted.
“She was very short. She couldn’t reach up to fit the baton on the cross-beam where it now rests. So she probably pushed it in a little way. Is that right, should you say?”
“Might be.”
“And her murderer must have gained entrance by the same means, if we wash out the possibility of shoving up one of the traps and coming in that way?”
“Looks like it.”
“Where was the branding iron left, when you knocked off?”
“Inside the door, on the floor.”
“The sacking door, that is. And the pot of paint was there too, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Was the iron in its right place the next morning?”
“Young Cliff says it was shifted,” said Mr. Wilson in a sudden burst of loquacity.
“Had he put it away?”
“That’s right. He says it was shifted. It was him first drew attention to the thing. He put the police on to it.”
“Did you notice anything unusual that morning, Mr. Wilson? Anything at all, however trivial?”
Mr. Wilson fixed his pale blue gare upon a cluster of ewes at the far end of the paddock and said: “Look.” Alleyn looked at the ewes. “Listen,” Mr. Wilson continued. “I told Sergeant Clark what I seen when I come in and I told Sub-Inspector Jackson and they both wrote it down. The men told them what they seen and they wrote that down too, although it was the same as what I seen.”
“I know,” said Alleyn, “I know. It seems silly but I would rather like to hear it for myself now I’ve seen the place. You see, there was nothing new or confusing about a wool-shed to Clark and Jackson. They’re New Zealanders, dyed in the wool, and they understand.”
Mr. Wilson laughed surprisingly and with unexampled contempt. “Them?” he said. “They were as much at home in the shed as a couple of ruddy giraffes, those two jokers.”
“In that case,” said Alleyn with a mental apology to his colleagues, “I should certainly prefer to hear the story from you.”
“There isn’t a story,” said Mr. Wilson piteously. “That’s what I keep telling you. There isn’t a ruddy story.”
“Just give Mr. Alleyn an account of the way you opened up the shed and got going, Ben,” said Fabian.
“That’s it,” Alleyn agreed hurriedly. “I only want to know the routine as you went through with it that morning, step by step. So that I can get an idea of how things went. Step by step,” he repeated. “Put yourself in my position, Mr. Wilson. Suppose you had to find out, all of a sudden, exactly what took place at dawn in a — in a pickle factory or a young ladies’ boarding-school, or a maternity hospital. I mean—” Alleyn thrust his cigarettes at Mr. Wilson and clapped him nervously on the shoulder. “Be a good chap, for God’s sake,” he said, “and spit it out.”
“Ta,” said Mr. Wilson, lighting the new cigarette at the butt of the old one. “Oh, well,” he said resignedly, and Alleyn sat down on a wool pack.
Once embarked Mr. Wilson made better showing than might have been hoped for. There was a tendency to skip and become cryptic but Fabian acted as a sort of interpreter and on the whole he did not too badly. A picture of the working day in a wool-shed began to take shape. Everybody had been short-tempered that morning, it seemed. Mr. Wilson himself had a bad attack of some gastric complaint to which he was prone and which had developed during the night on the journey back from the dance. At a quarter to two that morning, when they reached Mount Moon, he was, he said, proper crook, and he had spent the remainder of the night in acute discomfort. No, he said wearily, they’d noticed nothing funny in the wool-shed when they came home. They were not in the mood, Alleyn gathered, to notice anything. The farm lorry had sprung a puncture down by the front gate, and they decided to leave it there until morning. They walked the half mile up to the homestead, with the liquor dying out in them as they did so. They hadn’t talked much until they got level with the yards, and there a violent political argument had suddenly developed between two of the shearers. “I told them to pass it up,” said Mr. Wilson, “and we all turned in.”
They were up again at dawn. The sky was overcast and when Albie Black went down to open up the shed a very light drizzle had set in. If this continued, it meant that when the sheep under cover were shorn, the men would have to knock off until the next batch had dried. This was the last day’s shearing and the lorry was to call in the afternoon for the clip which should have been ready before noon. Albie Black went to light the hurricane lantern and found that the boys hadn’t filled it with kerosene as he had instructed. He cursed and turned to the candle, only to find it had burnt down to a stump and been squashed out so firmly that the wick had sunk into the wax. He got a fresh piece of candle from another part of the shed, gouged the old stump out and tossed it into the pens. By this time it was light enough to do without it. When Mr. Wilson arrived, Albie poured out his complaints and Mr. Wilson, him
self enraged by gastric disorder, gave the boys the sharp edge of his tongue. He was further incensed by finding, as he put it, “a dump of wool in my number two bin that hadn’t been there when we knocked off the night before. All mucked up, it was, as if someone had been messing it about and then tried to roll it up proper.”
“The wool is put into bins according to its grade?” Alleyn asked.
“That’s right. This was number two stuff, all right. I reckoned the broomies had got into the shed when we was over at the dance and started mucking round with the stuff in the press.”
The boys, however, had vigourously denied these accusations. They swore that they had filled the lamp and had not meddled with the candle which had been fully five inches long. Tommy Johns arrived and pulled on his overalls which hung on a nail near the shearing board. His foot caught in an open seam in the trousers and tore it wider. He instantly accused Albie Black of having used the overalls, which were new. Albie hotly denied this. Mr. Johns pointed out several dark stains on the front of the overalls and muttered incredulously.
The men started shearing. Damp sheep were crammed under cover to dry off as the already dry sheep thinned out. Fabian and Douglas arrived, anxious about the weather. By this time almost everybody on the place was in an evil temper. One of the shearers, in running across the belly of a sheep, cut it badly and Douglas, who happened to be standing by, trod in a pool of blood. “And did he go crook!” Mr. Wilson ruminated appreciatively.
Arthur Rubrick arrived at this juncture, walking slowly and very short of breath. “And,” said Mr. Wilson, “the boss picked things was not too pleasant and asked Tommy Johns what was wrong. Tommy started moaning about nobody being any good on the place. They were standing near the sorting table and I heard what was said.”
“Can you remember it?” Alleyn asked.
“I can remember all right, but there was nothing in it.”
“May I hear about it? I’m enormously grateful for all this, Mr. Wilson.”
“It didn’t amount to anything. Tommy’s a funny joker. He goes crook sometimes. He said the men were a lot of lazy bastards.”
“Anything else?”
“Young Cliff was in trouble about a bottle of booze. Mrs. Rubrick had told him off a couple of nights before. Tommy didn’t like it. He was complaining about it.”
“What did Mr. Rubrick say?”
“He wasn’t too good that morning. He was bad, you could see that. His face was a terrible colour. He was very quiet, and kept saying it was unfortunate. He seemed to think it was very very hot in the shed, and kept moving as if he’d like to clear out. His hands were shaky, too. He was bad, all right.”
“How did it end?”
“Young Doug came up — the Captain,” Mr. Wilson explained with a hint of irony. “He was in a bit of a mess. Bloody. It seemed to upset the boss and he said quite violent: ‘What the devil have you been doing?’ and Doug didn’t like it and turned his back on him and walked out.”
“Now, that’s an incident that we haven’t got in the files,” Alleyn said.
“I never mentioned it. This Sub-Inspector Jackson comes into my shed and throws his weight about, treating us from the word go as if we’re holding back on him. Very inconsiderate, he was. ‘I don’t want to know what you think. I want you to answer my questions.’ All right. We answered his questions.”
“Oh, well,” said Alleyn pacifically.
“We don’t want to hold back on it,” Mr. Wilson continued with warmth. “We were as much put out as anyone else when we heard. It’s not very nice to think about. When they told Jack Merrywether — he’s the presser — what he must of done that morning, he vomited. All over my shearing board before anyone could take any steps about it. It was nearly a month afterwards but that made no difference to Jack.”
“Quite,” said Alleyn. “How did this visit of Mr. Rubrick’s end?”
“It finished up by the boss taking a bad turn. We helped him out into the open. You wasn’t about just then, Mr. Losse, and he asked us not to say anything. He carried some kind of medicine on him that he sniffed up and it seemed to fix him. Tommy sent young Cliff for the station car and he drove the boss back to the house. He was very particular we shouldn’t mention it. Anxious to avoid trouble. He was a gentleman, was Mr. Rubrick.”
“Yes. Now then, Mr. Wilson, about the press. When you knocked off on the previous night it was full of wool, wasn’t it? The top half was on the bottom half and the wool had been tramped down but not pressed. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“And that, to all intents and purposes, was what it looked like in the morning?”
“So far as I noticed but I did no more than glance at it, if that. Jack Merrywether never noticed anything.”
“When did you finish shearing?”
“Not till six that evening. We cleaned up the sheep that’d been brought in overnight and then there was a hold-up. That was at eleven. The fresh ones we’d brought in hadn’t dried off. Then it come up sunny and we turned them out again. Everyone was snaky. Young Doug says the sheep are dry and I say they’re not and Tommy Johns says they’re not. The lorry turns up and Syd Barnes, he’s the driver, he has to shove in his oar and reckon they’re dry because he wants to get on with it and make the pub at the Pass before dark. Sol tell the whole gang where they get off and by that time the sheep have dried and we start up again. Young Cliff was hanging around the shed doing nothing, and then he slopes off, and his father goes crook when he can’t find him. It was lovely.”
The whistle tooted and the shed was at once active. Five plunging sheep were dragged in by their hind legs from the pens, machinery whirred, a raw-boned man moved over to the press, spat on his hands, and bore down on the ratchet lever. Mr. Wilson pinched out his cigarette, nodded and walked back to the sorter’s table.
Alleyn watched the presser complete his work. The bale was sewn up, removed, and shoved along the floor towards the double doors where he and Fabian still waited. This process was assisted by the use of a short hook which was caught into the corners of the bale. “The lorry backs in here,” Fabian said, “and the packs are dumped on board. The floor’s the same height as the lorry, or a little higher. There’s no lifting. It’s the same sort of business in the wool store at the other end.”
“Is that the same presser? Jack Merrywether?”
“Yes,” said Fabian, “that’s Jack. He who was so acutely inconvenienced by the absence of a vomitorium in the wool-shed.”
“Is he apt to be sick again, do you imagine, if I put a few simple questions to him?”
“Who can tell? What do you want to ask him?”
“Whether he used one of those hooks when he shifted the crucial bale.”
“Ticklish!” Fabian said. “It makes even me a little queasy to think of it. Hi, Jack!”
Merrywether’s reaction to his summons was disquieting. No sooner had Fabian spoken his introductory phrases than the presser turned pale and stared at Alleyn with an expression of panic.
“Look,” he said. “I wouldn’t of come back on this job if it hadn’t of been for the war. That’s how it affected me. I’d have turned it up only for the war and there being a shortage. ‘Look,’ I said to Mr. Johns and Ben Wilson, I said, ‘not if it’s the same outfit,’ I said. ‘You don’t get me coming at the Mount Moon job if it’s the same press again,’ I said. Then they told me it was a new press and I give in. I come to oblige. Not willing, though. I didn’t fancy it and I don’t yet. Call me soft if you like but that’s how I am. If anybody starts asking me about you-know-what, it catches me smack in the belly. I feel shocking. I don’t reckon I’ll ever shake it off. Now!”
Alleyn murmured sympathetically.
“Look at it whatever way you like,” Merrywether continued argumentatively, “and it’s still a fair cow. You think you’re mastering the sensation and then somebody comes along and starts asking you a lot of silly questions and you feel terrible again.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” Alleyn said hurriedly, “there’s only one detail I’d like to check.” He glanced at the bale hook which Merrywether still grasped in his pink freckled hand. Merrywether followed his glance. His fingers opened and the hook crashed on the floor. With clairvoyant accuracy he roared out: “I know what you mean and I never! It wasn’t there. I never touched it with the hook. Now!” And before Alleyn could reply he added: “You ask me why. All right. They’d dumped the hook on me. There you are! Deliberate, I reckon.”
“Dumped it on you? The hook? Hid it?”
“That’s right. Deliberate. Stuck it up on a beam over there.” He gestured excitedly at the far wall of the shed. “There’s two of those hooks and that’s what they done with them. In that dark corner and high up where I couldn’t see them. So what do I do? Go crook at the broomies. Naturally. I get the idea they done it to swing one across me. They’re boys and they act like boys. Cheeky. I’d told them off the day before and I reckoned they’d come back at me with this one. ‘You come to light with them two hooks,’ I said, ‘or I’ll knock your blocks off you.’ Well, of course they says they don’t know anything about it and I don’t believe them and away we go. And by this time the bins are full and me and my mate are behind on our job.”
Alleyn walked over to the wall and reached up. He could just get his hand on the beam.
“So you moved the bales without using hooks?”
“That’s right. Now don’t ask me if we noticed anything. If we’d noticed anything we’d have said something, wouldn’t we? All right.”
“When did you find the hooks?”
“That night when we was clearing up, Albie Black starts in again on the boys, saying they never done their job, not filling up the kerosene lamp and fooling round with the candle. So we all look over where the lantern and the candle are on the wall and my mate says they’ve been swarming up the wall like a couple of blasted monkeys. ‘What’s that up there?’ he howls. He’s a tall joker and he walks across and yanks down the bale hooks off of the top beam. The boys reckon they don’t know how the hooks got up there and we argue round the point till Tommy Johns has to bring up the matter of who the hell put his foot through his overall pants. Oh, it was a lovely day.”