by Ngaio Marsh
‘Not at all, I went to her office and gave her the news.’
‘And then?’
‘Oh, well then we returned to the private room.’
‘How much time passed, do you think, between your arrival at her office and the two of you leaving together?’
‘Five minutes at most. Matron had, of course, had the paperwork prepared for some time. Old Mr Brown had surprised us all by declining rather more slowly than expected, we had imagined him ready for death several weeks ago.’
His answers to the rest of Alleyn’s questions were equally crisp. No, there was nothing of concern in Matron’s office when he went to fetch her, nor anything unusual in her demeanour, and yes he would have noticed if there were anything to report, a vicar for several decades, he was likely as well-trained in understanding human frailty as the detective himself.
‘And in spotting matters awry?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I understand there are financial problems here, at the hospital.’
The vicar bristled, ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that, Matron always ran a very tight ship as far as I could see. It is wartime, Inspector. As a nation we have given up a great deal, despite our distance from the war in Europe. And Japan has now brought a terrible worry to our own shores. It hardly seems surprising that there are financial concerns everywhere you look.’
Alleyn’s response was dangerously smooth, ‘Indeed, but there seem to have been a number of your congregation gathered here who would have been very happy with an unexpected windfall, from young Miss Farquharson to several of the young soldiers to the hospital itself.’
‘I must say, I really don’t like your tone. I know these people, they are good, hard-working souls.’
‘Every one of them, Father? A theft, Matron’s demise, and a missing body would seem to indicate otherwise.’
Alleyn found Father O’Sullivan’s response irritatingly pompous when he declared, ‘Perhaps so, Inspector, but I choose to believe the best in people. It may be that our respective paths in life indicate that particular choice rather more clearly than any words. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should like to return to those members of the congregation you have confined to a small and uncomfortable office.’
Alleyn smiled, hoping that his voice did not betray his irritation, ‘Of course, and I’m sure they will be grateful to have you back among them.’
They walked together to the Transport Office, and Alleyn excused himself for a moment to cool his heels outside. It wouldn’t do to let the rest of them see how much the vicar had riled him. Something was not right with the man, but he was damned if he knew what it was.
‘Oh, for a muse of fire, or good old Brer Fox.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Alleyn returned once more to the Transport Office and asked Sister Comfort to accompany him back to the Records Office for her interview. They had just taken their seats when there was a knock at the door. With an apologetic glance to Sister Comfort, Alleyn answered it and to his consternation he saw the earnest face of Sergeant Bix looking up at him.
‘Any luck?’
‘None at all, Sir, and we looked everywhere we could think. I mean, they might have got further away than the wards and the offices, whoever it was took the money, but I can’t see how, what with the storm and the bridge being out.’
Alleyn agreed, frowning, ‘Not to mention how little time elapsed between Matron locking away the money and Glossop finding it gone.’
‘Exactly, Sir.’
‘Very well, we have another conundrum to add to our puzzle. Thank you, Bix, I’ll leave you to get back to your duties, but stay close by, will you? I may need you again.’
Sergeant Bix nodded, hesitated, seemed about to say something and then shook his head, stepping back into the yard.
‘What is it? Is something wrong?’
‘No, it’s just, I thought, if I might, I’d quite like to—’
Alleyn was perplexed as the forthright Bix stammered to a halt and looked sheepishly up at him. ‘You’d like to what, Bix?’ he asked.
His question was answered by a sigh from Sister Comfort who suggested, in a withering tone, that perhaps Sergeant Bix was hoping to pick up interrogation techniques from the great detective himself.
‘The Sister’s got it in one,’ Bix answered with a disarmingly eager grin.
Despite the fact that Alleyn very much did not want a witness to his interview with Sister Comfort, he nonetheless felt obliged to invite the sergeant to join them in the office, he hadn’t the heart to send him away once Sister Comfort had unmasked his shy enthusiasm.
Their audience settled and with his notebook in his hand, Alleyn began his questioning and observed with some amusement that Sister Comfort appeared to be playing up to Bix for all she was worth. Her peroration so completely mirrored Mr Glossop’s pattern, that Alleyn felt they might have been the patter act at the start of an old Vaudeville show. Where Glossop had blustered about being cooped up with a potential killer, she blustered about being cooped up with Glossop. Where the pay-box man had cast aspersions on the good nurse, she pointed out that Glossop could not possibly be as wholly blameless as he insisted, he had long known how difficult the roads were out here, he complained about them enough, and as Sarah Warne and her Transport team managed perfectly well, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he hadn’t engineered the flat tyre himself.
Bix jumped in at this point, ‘As a way to steal the money, Sister? But he’d need an accomplice in that case, surely? He must have known Matron would insist on locking away the payrolls, so why do you reckon Mr Glossop engineered the flat tyre, so close to Christmas Day, at such a—what’d’you call it? Inopportune moment?’
Sister Comfort again looked at Bix as if he were the most dense of fools, ‘Inopportune? The man is infatuated with Matron. He could think of nothing more delightful that having to spend a full day and night, or more, in her company. We all knew a storm was brewing, didn’t we?’
‘True enough,’ Bix agreed.
Alleyn looked from one to the other, ‘Someone might have told me. If I’d have known I’d be hiding from a hurricane coupled with a monsoon this evening, when I have become accustomed to taking a walk, I’d have taken out my pipe this afternoon instead of spending my time writing letters. Or failing to do so,’ he added under his breath, ‘But how did you know the weather would be bad?’
Sister Comfort glanced pityingly at Alleyn, ‘We live in the shadow of the mountains. Anyone who understands the country would have known a storm was on the way, it was quite clear from the close calm of the late afternoon.’
‘I see,’ he said, not seeing at all. The afternoon had simply felt as stiflingly hot as had every afternoon of the past week, no different at all and yet, like every night before, it had yielded a clear sky and the merest hint of a breeze from the snow-capped peaks far above. ‘You’ll accept that local weather is not my forte.’
‘Hang on a minute, Sister,’ Bix interrupted again, ‘I don’t quite see what you mean about Mr Glossop and Matron, are you suggesting they were having an affair?’
‘I certainly am not. Matron would never—how could you, Sergeant? Matron is far removed from any of the nasty, sordid behaviour that this hospital, that our Mount Seager, has been witness to recently. When I think of our plans, our hopes for this—’
Sister Comfort stopped, pulled herself up short. Alleyn had to admire her self-control, it was quite astonishing. She smiled, as best she could, a crooked tooth protruding from her upper lip, her shoulders, neck and jaw tight with the effort of holding back, holding in. She smiled again, her snaggle-tooth almost endearing in her effort to seem light and charming, ‘Honestly, Inspector, what is the problem with men that they cannot see the method in other men’s behaviour?’
‘The method in their madness? I expect we’re blinded by fellow feeling. I have long believed women to be far more sensible than men, certainly more thorough in their thinking.’
‘Exactly,’ she responded. ‘Now, have you finished your questions for me? I’m worried about the night staff, no one has checked on them and I’m sure you don’t want them coming over to Matron’s office to ask where we’ve all got to. They’re used to a midnight round.’
‘Well noted, but there’s much to do before we sleep.’
‘We’re all busy, Inspector,’ she said with a gloriously arched brow, ‘I have a list of patients I particularly want to look in on.’
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper which Alleyn politely and promptly took from her, ‘Thank you, Sister.’
Sister Comfort pursed her lips as if he were an exceptionally trying serviceman she was about to admonish for cheek, and then seeing a particular glint in his eye she thought better of it, adding simply, ‘If you don’t trust me to go alone to the wards, I will allow you to accompany me, as long as you are quite silent and don’t disturb either my staff or my patients.’
‘Ah, but there’s no need for your rounds, Sister,’ Bix piped up, ‘I took Dr Hughes over to check on everyone and we’re just done. He was worried about the midnight round too. All sweet and soundly sleeping over there.’
Alleyn nodded his thanks to Bix and smiled at Sister Comfort, ‘That being the case, I think we must trust the good sergeant that all is well for now. If you’re still worried later, you and I might take a walk over to the wards together. As you rightly said, we don’t want to alarm anyone else just yet. Shall we?’
He nodded to Bix who stood up smartly, giving Sister Comfort no option but to allow him to escort her back to the Transport Office. Alleyn waited until Bix had closed the door behind them and then opened the sheet of paper he had taken from Sister Comfort. He stared at the words as if he couldn’t quite make out her writing and then he nodded, folding away the paper and tucking it safely into his pocket along with his pipe and the letter from Matron’s desk he had stowed earlier. He opened the door and took a deep breath of the sweet night air. A morepork hooted from the patch of thick bush away to the north of Military 3, where the hospital grounds stopped and the rich land reclaimed its rightful place. In the silence he could hear the rush of the swollen river, he imagined the wild water, swirling beneath the old bridge, wind pulling hard at the uneven planks until one was wrenched loose and the bridge became impassable. Sometimes all it took was one element for the rest to begin to make sense. Alleyn stepped smartly down the thin wooden steps to the yard, a smile on his face. Suddenly he felt more awake than he had all evening.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Rosamund Farquharson studied Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn from her usual chair at the Records Office desk. She had followed him into the office determined not to let him put her at a disadvantage, staking out her place at the desk, arranging her pose just so. Even though it was hours since she had set her hair, Rosamund knew exactly how best to set off her determinedly pretty face and with a practised toss of the head she ensured her curls sat charmingly on her shoulders. Then she leaned back in the chair and gave the detective the benefit of her full attention. It was her experience that men found a frank look either disarming or utterly charming. As he was about to interrogate her, she preferred to begin the exchange with as much information about the detective as possible. Inspector Alleyn was a good-looking man, there was no doubt about it, even if his austere air was a little too monkish for her tastes. He was well-spoken and plainly quite smart, that much was clear from the way he had spoken to the soldiers, warm enough to include them, his tone commanding enough to gain respect, but with just a touch of self-deprecation which meant even the perennially frowning Bob Pawcett hadn’t flown off too angrily when Alleyn took control. She had also detected a hint of humour and would love to know in which direction it lay. Even so, and despite considering herself an acute judge of men, Rosamund couldn’t quite make him out. The detective had all of the finesse of certain fellows she’d known, just down from Cambridge and living the life before the war, but he seemed to have none of the stuffiness those chaps usually revealed, Englishmen in particular, the moment a girl spoke up for herself. The way he’d come into the Transport Office just now, he’d had every reason to pull rank, especially once Glossop started on again about how tired everyone was and couldn’t they at least have a cup of tea, and Sister Comfort moaning about how her nurses needed proper supervision and the hospital would go to rack and ruin overnight, yet it seemed water off a duck’s back to him. He simply smiled politely, ignored their complaints and elegantly asked Rosamund if she might accompany him to the Records Office. He might have been asking her what she liked on the midnight menu at the Café de Paris.
‘You’re scrutinizing me, Miss Farquharson?’
‘Rosamund, please, “Miss” sounds rather too much like a frowsty old maid and I pride myself on getting on with all sorts.’
‘Rosamund, then.’
‘Thank you. And yes, Inspector, I am rather scrutinizing you.’
Alleyn made a quick judgement, Rosamund Farquharson was sharp. If he asked her about anything other than the theft, he was sure she would notice. However, it was clear that she knew the soldiers, the hospital staff and the surrounding area very well, if he let her take the lead, she might have something to say that could shed some light on the matter he was actually supposed to be investigating right now.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘You don’t quite fit the mould.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
She went on, ‘For one thing, you’re clearly what they’d call a “gentleman” back Home, a fully-fledged blue-blood aristocrat, I’ll bet.’
‘I’m surprised to hear you call England “Home”?’ he spoke lightly, ignoring her offer to discuss his ancestry.
She grinned at the deflection, with a slight incline of her prettily shaped head, ‘Only when I want to irritate other New Zealanders, I’ve been doing it all night to dig at old Glossop. My mother’s generation called it Home, they honestly felt it was. Those who’d come from there I mean, especially those who had the money to get back and visit every now and then.’
‘But not your generation?’
‘My generation are all honest-to-goodness New Zealanders, salt of the earth, hard-working, proud to be from God’s own country, dinkum jokers the lot of us. You only need to spend half an hour in the saloon bar of the Bridge pub to know the ones I mean.’
‘I’m not sure I do.’
‘Here’s an example. I upset Snow Johnson no end a week or two ago. It’s his pub you know, and we’re right out here, only locals ever go in, even so it’s the closest there is to an actual bar. All I did was ask for a “port and lemon with ice, just as they serve it in London”, you should have heard the mouthful I got in return.’
Alleyn extended a hand to suggest she should continue.
‘Oh yes, a long lecture about how we’d given so much to England and England should be giving back, not the other way around. That I was lucky to be here, lucky to be a New Zealander, should never have left in the first place. And on, and on, and on.’ She shrugged, ‘I’m proud of my country, of course I am—’
‘And yet you left?’
‘You can’t even imagine the frustrations of small town life, can you, Inspector? How it feels to stand out, always.’
‘You did just infer that I am not a typical copper.’
‘Fair enough, I did. I just knew I had to get away, right from when I was a little girl in primary school.’ She leaned forward now, warming to her story, ‘New Zealanders are not very kind to those of us who leave, you know. It’s all fine and good to travel, see a bit of the world, but we’re meant to come back chastened, vowing we’ll never leave again. We’re only meant to go away so that we can come home and attest to the certain belief, firm in this nation’s soul, that New Zealand is the only place on earth anyone could wish to be.’
‘But not you, Miss Farquharson?’
She frowned, ‘I’ve always wanted more, bigger, louder, faster. Per
haps it’s a flaw in me that I could never be content with a small town life.’
‘There are small towns in England.’
‘Yes, but they’re only a train ride from London, from the lights and noise. A day’s journey at most from bars that stay open until dawn, from dances and galleries and theatres and—’ She stopped, shook her head, ‘What’s the good? I’m back, and nothing to be done.’
‘You will content yourself?’
‘I will accommodate, as Matron likes—sorry, liked, to say. I will accommodate myself to my circumstances. There is a war on after all, as if we could ever forget.’
‘Do you miss London?’
‘Fearfully.’
The passion she brought to the single word was enormous and Alleyn had the odd sensation of finally seeing the young woman behind the striking dress and the deep red lipstick, behind the carefully arranged curls and the insistent mask of indifferent pride. For a brief moment she almost looked her age and then suddenly the shutters were down and she was the brittle, manufactured Rosamund again, back into her stride.
‘Admittedly there were a few—I’ll call them “scrapes”—in my time away, but all the same, I miss London like the blazes. I can’t bear to think what’s happening to that lovely city while we’re stuck here, moaning about our rationing, when it’s nothing compared to what’s going on back there, getting our news days or weeks later, fearful of an invasion that’s never going to come.’
Alleyn wanted to assure her that fear of invasion was far more valid than she might suspect, but he very much wanted to speak with that girl again, the open and trusting one, so he prompted another recollection.
‘I imagine you and Sarah Warne were friends in London?’
‘We knew each other a little. We weren’t really in the same set. I guess to people like you, someone with a usual job, the arts and theatre all seem the same, but they’re not really. Theatre people like to work in groups, packs almost, they hang around together, eat together, play together. They’re all about the company, a spirit of many as one. Artists are quite different, solitary creatures.’
