by Ngaio Marsh
‘How about you head off and wake Kelly, it’s time we had a word anyway, whether he’s had his coffee or no. Find out how much of this famed lemonade he drank, and more importantly who, if anyone, gave him the bottle in question. I, meanwhile, have an uncomfortable appointment with a young lady with whom I fear I am going to have to be quite stern. This is the part of my work I enjoy the least.’
‘You and me both. Not that I’ve had a load of dealing with young ladies, mind you, but I’ve never enjoyed sifting through the ranks’ reasons for getting themselves in the dog house. More often than not I don’t reckon they know themselves, high spirits and youth, most of it. Mind you, with this lot being cooped up here in hospital, I think they’re just causing trouble out of boredom half the time, no malice in it.’
‘And the other half?’ Alleyn asked lightly.
‘A woman, usually.’
‘You’d give all men a free pass, Sergeant? You don’t think any of them are wicked to the core?’
Bix shrugged, ‘’Course there are some bad souls, Sir, one or two, we wouldn’t be in this mess otherwise, the mess of the war I mean. Well all right, maybe I mean this mess tonight as well. All the same, I’ve got faith in the average man, you’ve got to in my line of work. It’s the average man who’ll bring us through this war, you mark my words.’
He held up the dusty bottle, jerked his thumb in the direction of the Surgery and headed off.
Alleyn watched Bix go, wishing he had the same faith in human nature. He was frustrated with the extent to which the night’s events had derailed his original task at Mount Seager and irritated with those inside the cramped Transport Office. He was especially concerned about Corporal Brayling, Alleyn had felt sure the young man was trustworthy. He reached into his pocket where his fingers lingered on the comfortingly smooth wooden stem of his pipe and decided that however urgent the matter in hand, he would do better to allow himself a few moments of peace to take stock before taking his next move. The consoling plan to sit and smoke a while was dashed when Alleyn found himself in a spill of pale light and heard his name hesitantly whispered from the door.
‘Chief Detective Inspector?’
Sarah Warne’s voice pulled him to attention.
‘Miss Warne?’ he spoke quietly, neither invitation nor rejection in his manner.
‘I know I risk incurring your wrath—’
‘Wrath?’ he interjected, ‘I thought I was admirably calm with your colleagues just now.
‘You were,’ she agreed, ‘rather in the manner of a serious headmaster explaining to his favourite pupil that he has let himself and the entire school down.’
Alleyn allowed himself a small smile, ‘Did it work?’
‘Oh yes, we’re all suitably shamed, but at the risk of turning your disappointment into something more ferocious, I really must speak with you. If I may?’
Alleyn turned into the light from the door, ‘I should be delighted to have a conversation with you, Miss Warne.’
She took a step down and as she closed the door behind her Alleyn fancied he heard a low whistle from Maurice Sanders, saw Rosamund’s raised eyebrow, watched Glossop’s sweaty face turn a still more vivid shade of scarlet. Even had Sarah not been backlit from the office, Alleyn felt he couldn’t be sure whether her expression was related to the fuss that had just taken place or the more pressing matter that had driven her to the door. Something in her open face suggested the latter and he tried to sound as encouraging as possible.
‘Will it help if I promise to curb any hint of ferocity?’
Despite the warmth of his delivery, she hesitated. Whatever courage she had mustered appeared to have deserted her and she reached for the door handle behind her, teetering on the precipice between the revelation she had come to offer and the relative safety of the cramped office.
Alleyn tried again, ‘Miss Warne, if I may pre-empt your retreat—I would not, in ordinary circumstances, ever allow my temper to get the better of me with potential witnesses.’
‘Even when those witnesses necessarily include suspects?’ she asked.
‘Most especially then. I far prefer to cajole confessions from my suspects than to bludgeon truths from them.’
He spoke slowly, hoping she would be reassured and was relieved to hear the gentle creak of the old wooden steps as she quietly stepped down into the asphalt yard. As his eyes once again became accustomed to the dark he realized that she stood very close and that there were tears in the eyes she turned up to him. So that was the reason for her carefully controlled tone, she was afraid she might cry.
‘Miss Warne?’
There was silence and he tried again.
‘I fear we have not one but several concurrent mysteries tonight and the presence of one confusion is wont to obscure the truth of another. I believe there is something you want to say, Miss Warne, something you have been aching to tell me for several hours. I would very much like you to do so, not least because you are next on my list to interview.’
‘I thought you’d have a search party out for Cuth Brayling.’
‘I expect Corporal Brayling will turn up of his own accord soon enough,’ he said, obliquely. ‘I’m grateful you stepped forward before I had to come and call you. I have an uncomfortable sense of playing a role on these occasions and I’d far rather not have to pull rank.’
‘But you do have rank, Inspector.’
‘Yes, which is why I have no doubt that you will feel enormously relieved once you have spoken. I am a policeman, as used to hearing secrets as—’ He paused, he had been about to say ‘as a doctor or a priest’ but neither seemed appropriate given the company she had most recently been keeping. ‘As any other detective. I assure you, Miss Warne, you will not shock, or even disturb me. You may, however, find that you are able to unburden yourself, if only a little.’
Alleyn waited, aware that this was her turning point, and he hated himself for the brief moment of gratification when he heard first a sigh and then a broken held-back sob.
‘Please,’ he said, crooking his arm, ‘come along with me to the end of the hospital drive. There is a bench and starlight enough for you to sit and speak in the safety of relative darkness and for me to listen as adroitly as I must. I will smoke my pipe and you can tell your story there.’
‘Oh yes, please.’ Now that she had made her mind up to tell him whatever she had been withholding, Sarah’s words tumbled from her, ‘I desperately need to tell you about something that has happened, but—’
‘Not until we are seated, Miss Warne,’ Alleyn lifted an admonishing finger. ‘Let’s put some distance between ourselves and this office. I feel certain you will be able to speak more freely then.’
They walked to the bench in silence and Sarah waited as Alleyn removed his pipe, refilled it slowly and meticulously with tobacco from a small leather pouch, and then carefully lit it. In the brief glow from the match she looked at him from the corner of her eye. Fine features, long nose, high brow. He gave the perfect impression of a thoughtful favourite uncle or perhaps a serious older cousin. She felt she had to trust him, she had no choice.
Alleyn took a long draw on the pipe, studied the stars, noting that since last he looked up the swirl of the Milky Way had shifted on its axis across the heavens. He waited and it was his ability to wait that drew out Sarah’s words.
‘My father had a pipe, I’ve always associated the smell of pipe smoke with long Sunday afternoons, walking in the bush or along the beach, trailing in his footsteps.’
‘Were you very young when he died?’ Alleyn asked gently.
‘Not so very or at least I didn’t feel it at the time. I’d not long had my fifteenth birthday, but it was terribly sudden and I had to become awfully grown-up, almost at once. My mother wasn’t strong emotionally, she’s never been strong, and my sister—well, she was much younger, just a child of nine.’
‘She must have been awfully young when—?’
‘Sixteen. Of course I had to come home to
my poor mother when my sister became ill, and then—well, Mother couldn’t bear it, she still can’t.’ Sarah Warne shook her head and frowned looking out into the night, ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it, Inspector, how we can speak of these things without tearing out our hair, rending our clothes? How we can sit here with all that has gone on this evening and you can smoke your pipe, I can prattle on.’
‘I daresay I’ve had more practice than you, and you’re not really prattling, it just feels that way to you because you haven’t yet reached the crux of what it is you want to say.’
‘Golly,’ he heard a smile in her voice, ‘you’re very direct, aren’t you?’
‘When I need to be. Go on Miss Warne.’
‘I will,’ she spoke resolutely, ‘I promise, but I need to finish my train of thought, I feel it’s connected in some way.’
This time he left a silence where she had hoped he might continue the conversation. She felt his waiting as if it were a gentle push in the small of her back.
She took a deep breath and began, ‘We endure such losses, Inspector Alleyn, so much pain, and yet we carry on. I don’t mean carrying on as if nothing has happened, my mother will be fractured always, I think, at the loss of my sister, her child, and yet still the heart beats. Still we breathe.’
‘Still we love?’ he ventured after a moment.
‘Oh yes,’ she replied almost bitterly, ‘still we love.’
She turned to look at him and he looked back plainly, holding her gaze in the bare light.
‘I won’t say it for you.’
Even in the night he could tell that her smile at being caught out was as deep as her frown, ‘Silly me. I was hoping you might save me by speaking the words for me. You know, don’t you, Inspector?’
Alleyn’s face remained impassive, and he turned from her to stare blindly towards the swollen river, still raging across the huge boulders and rocks of the deep riverbed, ‘I believe I do, but you know I cannot do this for you. Come on now, be a good girl.’
When the words finally spilled out, Sarah felt dizzy and ill and unburdened all at once, ‘I was so in love with Luke when we were together in London, and he with me. At least I thought so, but then when I came back—when I had to come home to my poor mother, and he was in London, and then off in the field—it all seemed so different. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, of course I did, and anyway, we weren’t promised to each other, not formally, but I felt it, I felt that we were. I still do. We wrote and although the letters were infrequent, he was overseas after all, and the mail has been impossible since the war, still we wrote to each other. They were good letters, very good. Honest and kind. Then when Luke was posted here, of all places, it felt like such a hopeful omen and I thought we might just take up where we had left off. But he was so distant, very different to the Luke who had been warm and hopeful and ever so easy to be with in London. Of course that was before the war and I know he’d seen awful things, been through awful things, but as I said, we keep on, don’t we? You’ll think me a foolish girl, desperate to bag herself a doctor like all the other silly little VADs, but I promise it isn’t that. Luke’s the only one for me, always has been. And then this evening—oh, it all seems so very long ago, doesn’t it? I’d given her so much, you know?’
‘Rosamund?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she breathed, ‘So you do know?’ Alleyn didn’t answer and she went on, her words almost monotonous with the effort to get them out, ‘I’d loaned her quite a bit when we were in London together. She was always getting into scrapes, running out of cash for rent or food, and Luke loaned her several pounds too, more than once. She owed us. She owed me. Yet she didn’t once mention paying either of us back, not a suggestion of it, even though we’ve all been working here at Mount Seager together. Luke’s people aren’t wealthy, you know, and he’s been sending as much as he can back to them. I’m sure she knows that’s the case, yet there she was, gloating about her winnings and not a glimmer of a suggestion that the debts were even in her mind. So tonight, I mean last night, when all the VADs were squealing about her win on the drive out and then she came charging in late, with all that money, positively skiting about it, I just assumed she’d share.’ She paused for breath and said, almost to herself, ‘Even her win seemed unfair when Rosamund has never known one end of a horse from the other as far as I can tell, let alone how to lay a bet. Anyway, Inspector, I honestly thought she’d give us back what she owes and then Luke wouldn’t feel so beleaguered, he’d go back to being the old Luke. More fool me. But she didn’t say a word about her debts to either of us, not a single word. She can’t possibly have forgotten. And so I—’
She paused, her mouth dry, her hands clenched in her lap.
Alleyn tried to keep his tone neutral but he couldn’t quite manage it and the words that came were sharp, ‘Finish your sentence, Miss Warne.’
Sarah took a deep breath and blurted it out, ‘I told Luke I thought we should take her money. I knew where Matron kept the spare set of keys and I said we could just—’
‘Spare set? I was told there was no spare set.’
Sarah had the grace to look shame-faced, ‘Matron’s been a little odd recently, Inspector, she’s—sorry, she had—been worried about the hospital, lack of nursing staff, keeping the soldiers under control. It’s all been awfully difficult. She told me she had forgotten her keys, left them at home two or three times, and it’s a long drive all the way out here to turn right back and go home again. I suggested she bring the spare set here and hide them in her office.’
Alleyn couldn’t keep the anger from his voice now, it was all he could do not to shake the foolish girl for not mentioning another set of keys hours ago. He managed to keep his hands still and asked, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, what time was this?’
‘Coming up for ten o’clock, perhaps? The storm was about to break. I was still so angry with Rosamund going on about her winnings and—well, I don’t know what came over me. I decided she owed us and if she wasn’t going to pay up then I would force the issue. I took the keys and waited until I could talk to Luke about it.’ She went quiet for a moment and added, ‘I suppose I must have thought that if he agreed with me then it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to do.’
‘And did he?’
‘He was furious. I said we could take what she owed us and then I’d put the rest back, but he was having none of it. We had a fearful row and I would have gone anywhere to get away, but then the storm broke so forcefully. Luke was saying such awful things and I realized I’d got completely the wrong end of the stick, the money wasn’t it at all—I mean, I know he’s not all right, of course I do, I just thought the money might help a little. It was a moment of madness that I even considered it, I know, but then there was all the fuss when Mr Glossop discovered the payroll missing, and then Matron and that awful scene with the trolley and old Will Kelly, and—well, you know the rest.’
Alleyn turned to her, ‘You have been an awful idiot, Miss Warne. Not least because someone else may have known about those spare keys, someone else might well have used them to steal the payroll. Where are the keys now?’
‘In the Transport Office.’
‘And I suppose the argument that Glossop overheard was you suggesting to Dr Hughes that you both take the money and him refusing?’
‘Luke was shocked that I’d even think of it, even though it was more or less ours.’
‘It was not yours at all until Miss Farquharson gave it you.’
‘That’s what Luke said, he’s furious with me.’
‘And I’m furious with the pair of you. Between your foolishness and your absurd choice not to tell me what you’d done, that you had the spare keys, you’ve wasted several precious hours and put me quite on the back foot. Right, get up, we’re going back to the Transport Office and we’re going to make some sense of this.’
He stood up and held out his hand, giving her no choice, Sarah took it meekly.
‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘awfully s
orry. For all of it. I thought I was so clever. So much cleverer than Rosamund and her absurd affairs, but it’s me who’s made a fool of myself, just like her, over a man.’
‘Affairs?’ Alleyn asked quietly, aware that they were coming to the point of it now.
‘Oh yes, Inspector Alleyn. While I was here in New Zealand, looking after my grieving mother, grieving myself, Rosamund took my place with Luke. He was posted to North Africa quite quickly and she came back to New Zealand shortly after me, so at least it can’t have been anything serious, there wasn’t time. I know he feels like a pig about it, but I might as well admit to you now that when I thought about taking her money I felt a moment of deep satisfaction. I felt that Rosamund owed me in more ways than one.’
‘How did you know about this affair?’ he asked.
Sarah’s paused a moment before she said, ‘Luke talks in his sleep, Inspector.’ She took a sharp breath and went on, ‘he cries out in horror sometimes and it frightens me.’ Alleyn ached for her as she followed that admission and said, in a tone of deep resignation, ‘I’m sure I’m not the first to say those words this evening.’
They walked back to the hospital buildings in silence. Alleyn heard the deep, emphatic hoot of the morepork on the useless telegraph wire as a clear signal to get on, yet he kept his pace measured and careful. Her cool hand in his felt very small and very young.
Beside him, grateful for the darkness, Sarah Warne used her free hand to brush away her tears. Dashing away her shame would take a little longer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sarah walked alongside Alleyn, her eyes downcast, fearing the light of the Transport Office with every step. How could she face Luke having revealed so much? Let alone bear seeing Luke and Rosamund sitting so comfortably together, now that she could see them through the Inspector’s eyes, and had seen herself through his eyes as well. She had never told Luke and Rosamund that she knew about their affair, in many ways, acknowledging it to them would be more painful than simply allowing herself to forget it had ever happened. The relief she felt at finally admitting her jealousy and shame seemed almost palpable, it must be obvious to them. She winced, realizing she was more upset about the mess of emotions that lay between Luke and Rosamund and herself, than she was about admitting she had considered taking Rosamund’s money. Sarah sighed and almost smiled at the turn of events. She was so used to being thought of as the sensible one compared to Rosamund and most of the other VADs and now she had revealed herself to be as foolish as any other girl and reckless into the bargain. She acknowledged ruefully that the most painful part was that her foolishness had been a revelation to herself as well.
