by Ngaio Marsh
Alleyn frowned and sighed, agreeing with the young man, ‘No, it isn’t.’
‘You are going to tell them?’
There was both hope and defiance in Sydney’s voice as he asked and Alleyn felt himself on a knife edge.
The uncertainty lasted for a moment, no more, and then he answered the young man, ‘I must. His murder cannot go unpunished, no matter how old he was, how ill, or how much you believed you were forced into doing the deed. The nuance is for the court to decide, not a humble policeman.’
Sydney shrugged, ‘You know we’ve no capital punishment here now, Inspector? They don’t hang, it’s life imprisonment.’
‘I do know that, yes.’
‘So I won’t be an engineer, after all.’
Bix arrived back in the morgue and Alleyn gave his orders, ‘Take Sydney and make sure he is safely stowed until the local police arrive.’
Alleyn turned back into the morgue itself. He spoke quietly and kindly, ‘Miss Warne, you’ve been through a horrible ordeal, perhaps Dr Hughes should accompany you back to the office?’
‘I’m quite well, thank you, Inspector,’ Sarah shook her head, ‘and given what I’ve been put through, I think I ought at least be allowed to hear the reason.’
Alleyn shook his head but he did not press the matter, instead he glared at the two miscreants in front of him.
‘Well, Matron, you are our Juliet, returned to the world. And you made Dr Hughes here your Friar Laurence. He confided his awful secrets of battle to you and you made use of that information for your counterfeit death, providing a valuable distraction until you and Father O’Sullivan could get away with the money. You must have been waiting for the perfect circumstances for some time and jumped at your chance with the confluence of Mr Glossop’s flat tyre and the storm.’
‘No, no, it was not that way at all,’ Father O’Sullivan protested. ‘It wasn’t planned. I mean, we knew Mr Glossop had the payroll, it was a regular drop-off, and yes, it seemed—well, somehow intended that the storm and he were here at the same time, but the way you say it, as if we were waiting for the occurrence, oh no, it was not like that at all.’
‘Indeed not,’ Matron answered, and Alleyn was astonished to see that both she and the vicar appeared positively affronted. ‘The church is in dire need of repair, the hospital in terrific debt. We wanted nothing other than to leave the vicar’s church and my hospital in peace and security, for the good of all. Then last night, when all of this money arrived with Mr Glossop and the storm was about to come down, his tyre was flat—’
‘Yes, the tyre. You assured him there were no spares, but that was not true?’
‘It seemed, Inspector, that this was a turning point, a moment we had to take.’
‘There is a tide in the affairs of men—’ Alleyn began.
‘Quite right,’ Matron interrupted, nodding vigorously, ‘we must take the current when it serves.’
‘It was providence,’ the vicar was certain. ‘We could make arrangements to have the debts paid. Matron and I would leave, yes we might lose the respect of our respective congregations of parishioners and patients, but it would have been worth it for all of their problems would be solved, in one glorious moment,’ Father O’Sullivan’s quiet, thoughtful voice, seemed to suggest he actually believed his own words.
‘It didn’t occur to you that anyone would know where the money came from?’ Sarah Warne asked.
Father O’Sullivan replied quite simply, ‘The people to whom the hospital is in debt, those who will work on the church repairs, they need the work and the money. I don’t imagine they would have asked.’
Alleyn was becoming increasingly exasperated, nothing seemed to make a dent in their certainty that they had done the right thing, ‘But Matron, your letter to Sister Comfort, what was that for?’
Matron bristled, ‘You read the letter?’
‘I did.’
‘It was only sensible to leave her instructions, she would have to take charge in my absence.’
‘There was an unnecessarily harsh post-script.’
Matron shook her head, ‘Not at all. Gertrude had a ridiculous idea of the two of us setting up a life together. There are some perversities that cannot stand.’
Alleyn raised an eyebrow, ‘As perverse as allowing dear colleagues to believe you dead? As perverse as using information that this young doctor gave you in strictest confidence to enact your foolish ideas?’
Matron shook her head as if Alleyn was being particularly dense, ‘I certainly never intended to play dead for my staff. You see, I brought the payroll to the morgue, I knew the under-cavity would be a useful hiding place—’
‘Behind the façade?’ Alleyn asked.
She hesitated, suddenly coy, ‘It’s for when we have too many bodies in the morgue. It happens on occasion but it’s not something the staff need to know about. It might distress them.’
‘And you came here via the tunnel in your office?’
‘Yes, we thought it would be simple to hide the money here,’ she replied, remarkably baldly.
‘How did you get to the morgue, Vicar?’ Alleyn asked, ‘The last anyone saw, you were on your way back to Civilian 3.’
The vicar smiled, absurdly pleased with himself, ‘Oh, I went along behind the wards and took the old workshop entrance to the tunnels.’
Matron took up the story again, ‘Unfortunately it was at that moment that Mr Glossop started screaming the house down.’
‘And so you had to hide your crime.’
‘To do the right thing by the hospital, Inspector? Certainly.’ Matron’s voice was surprisingly clear, given the wholescale nature of her confession.
‘But with such a cruel ruse?’ Alleyn asked.
Matron sighed, almost exasperated, ‘Our choices were made in haste, Inspector, once Mr Glossop had seen the empty safe, we knew we had to do something.’
‘And quickly,’ Father O’Sullivan added.
‘So you did dope poor Will Kelly by adding pure alcohol in his lemonade?’
‘It was simply an expedient way to ensure he didn’t disturb us for a short while,’ Father O’Sullivan answered.
Alleyn shook his head at the vicar’s lack of contrition and continued, ‘And then, Matron, you chose to take a concoction based on Dr Hughes’s in-the-field anæsthetic—’
‘Risking your own life!’ Dr Hughes exclaimed, ‘When I told you about that technique I also told you how terribly dangerous it was.’ He shook his head in anger at himself, ‘And of course I’d also told you that it made the patient awfully cold. You used me horribly, Matron.’
‘All of this in order to usurp old Mr Brown’s place on the trolley,’ Alleyn went on, ‘safe in the knowledge that if you were discovered, your colleagues would not think to blame you for the theft, distracted as they were by their terrible upset at your demise.’
‘We had no intention of upsetting anyone,’ Matron replied, ‘we simply hoped that if I could replace Mr Brown on Mr Kelly’s trolley then he would bring me through to the morgue out of the way of the fuss. Once I came to, we could use the tunnel to, to—’
She faltered and Alleyn stepped in, ‘Make a quick getaway?’
‘You make it sound so sordid,’ the vicar frowned.
‘It is sordid, Matron,’ Dr Hughes interjected, ‘Sordid and stupid and incredibly dangerous. But what really shocks me is how the two of you could have such a high idea of yourselves that you would explain away theft as worthwhile for a good cause, staging your death and causing deep pain as simply a means to an end.’
Dr Luke Hughes held out his hand to Sarah and they left the morgue, any remaining shreds of youthful idealism quite in tatters.
Bix was at the door again and Alleyn, seeing the sergeant, decided he too had heard enough for the moment. Leaving instructions to keep Matron, the vicar, and the money secured for now—all of them in separate places, if any more could be found—and then make sure the morgue was cleaned and old Mr Brown’s body respec
tfully interred, Alleyn turned to leave.
He was just at the door when he had another thought and came back, ‘One more question, why did you not simply lock the safe after the theft? Mr Glossop, and indeed anyone else who happened to be in your office, would never have known the safe was empty, you would not have been found out for many hours,’ Alleyn asked.
His question elicited an unexpected response and Alleyn watched as the two people before him who had, until this moment, been quite certain in their choices, believing their behaviour understandable and almost correct, turned to simpering, youthful lovers.
‘I can’t say,’ Matron whispered, blushing.
‘Hmm, hah, then I will,’ the vicar replied, his glossy face an even deeper shade of red than Matron’s. ‘We were happy, Inspector, hopeful and happy that we might be able to save our hospital and our church and we took a moment—just a moment—to share an embrace.’
‘And in that moment of silliness, I dropped the key, somewhere in the canvas bag containing the payroll,’ Matron found the courage to raise her face to Alleyn’s. ‘Even when we transferred the notes to the body bag, we still couldn’t find it.’
Alleyn’s voice was cold when he said, ‘You must have tossed the key into the body bag along with the notes. I found it in the bag in the cave, where you callously discarded Mr Brown’s body.’
‘Not at all,’ Matron said, and the sure, certain woman was back, ‘Mr Brown was laid out gently and carefully in the cave, just as he would have been here in the morgue. It is all the same earth, Inspector.’
Alleyn had had enough. He walked out into the dawn, a deep frown creasing his forehead. There was poor, misguided Sydney Brown facing life imprisonment for a terrible set of events that had left him believing he had no escape but to hasten the old man’s imminent death so he could hand over the farm to Blaikie before dawn, to men who would continue to blackmail him about both the murder and passing on Pawcett’s message. A message Pawcett could simply have delivered himself if he’d been able to get away from the ward, but Duncan Blaikie understood that tying Sydney Brown into the mess would make him forever theirs. Meanwhile, here were Matron and Father O’Sullivan, not a malicious bone in either body, dragging themselves deeper and deeper into the mire with every step, and each step to save their beloved buildings. Matron’s trick of distraction really had worked, all this fuss about payrolls and trolleys and the hoax of her death had entirely undermined the real matter of the night. Alleyn felt certain that Pawcett would give up some useful information and the coded message Sydney had been given would undoubtedly be of some use. He was far less sure of Blaikie, whoever he had been intending to contact would certainly know by now that something was wrong and the element of surprise was lost.
Alleyn strode off along the yard, the least he could do now was put in an urgent call to Wellington and let them know what had happened. Just as he reached the gap between the Records Office and Matron’s office, the risen sun finally broke free from the long low line of cloud over in the east and the plains in front of the hospital were flooded with a fierce golden light. He turned and behind the wards he saw the foothills glowing in a clear midsummer morning, the ranges beyond lit up, the peaks shining bright. The vision was breathtaking and, unlike the bitter anger and foolish passions of the small people milling about in the foothills, unlike his own upset, it was as eternal and as untouched as the land on which he stood.
Alleyn stopped in his tracks and allowed the grandeur of the scene to touch the deep disappointment he felt in his fellow man. He whispered to himself, ‘If we shadows have offended …’
Then he turned back towards Matron’s office. There was a great deal of sweeping away to do yet, of that he was sure.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Alleyn was seated at the table in his private room when a call came at the open window. He turned to see Sergeant Bix standing outside with a tea tray, complete with teapot covered in a knitted tea cosy.
‘I know you say the English don’t really break for afternoon tea, Sir, but here in New Zealand we take smoko very seriously. It’s gone four, none of us have slept a wink since early yesterday, I saw you barely touched a bite of the lunch they laid on for the local force—’
‘Neither did you, Bix.’
‘Fair go, Sir, we were both busy and I reckon you’re like me, you’d rather get the work done and then have your break whenever it might come.’
‘Indeed.’
‘But I also think you might need a cuppa about now, it’s a little way till tea and the kitchen does a very good ginger crunch, so I thought you might fancy a walk along the drive. You’ll be off soon enough and it’d be a crying shame if the most you saw of Mount Seager was that little room of yours and those flamin’ tunnels.’
‘I couldn’t agree more, Sergeant. Give me a moment and I’ll be straight with you.’
Alleyn put away the papers he had been working on, making sure to lock them in the combination case and left his little room to join Bix.
Five minutes later they were seated on the bench and listening to the river beyond, now running at a far more usual pace, its pitiless flow settled into a musical backdrop for the warm afternoon. Bix had poured the tea and was pointing out bird calls as they came, tui, fantails and, ‘Over there, up on the flax flowers, lovely pair of waxeyes, they’ll be fighting the fantails for a feed soon enough.’
Alleyn smiled as he allowed the sun and the strong tea to warm his tired limbs. It had indeed been a long night followed by a long day, the birdsong was sweet and the sound of the river positively soothing. He might have given in to the warmth and closed his eyes for a moment, until Bix revealed his ulterior motive for the tea.
‘The thing is, Sir, I don’t know—well, how did you know?’
‘Know what, Bix? You were with me much of the time, you saw what I saw.’
‘Yes, Sir, but putting the pieces together, I mean.’
‘I’m not sure I did put all that many together, I simply noted them as they revealed themselves and followed them to their logical conclusion.’
‘All right, so tell me how you did that.’
Alleyn nodded his head and took a deep breath, then he began, ‘There were the discrepancies in the interviews of course. Glossop was so sure he’d seen Matron and the vicar leaving her office, and yet he later admitted he’d kept his eyes tight shut against the storm. There was every chance they left separately, or that Matron did not exit through the door at all.’
‘Then did you know all along that Matron wasn’t dead?’
‘No, not consciously. When I first chose to open the body bag on Will Kelly’s trolley I had assumed it held the missing payroll. Matron’s body was as much of a surprise to me as it was to everyone else. But then Hughes told me that he had a valuable knowledge of particularly effective anæsthetic. He also said Matron had been kind to him, she had listened to him when he needed a confidante.’
‘And that’s how you knew Matron had doped herself?’
‘That’s how I guessed she might have. It was entirely supposition on my part, without my usual medical experts to hand, the vials and concoctions in the morgue are just so many names on paper to me. I have come across many of them in my line of work, of course, but I’d never leap to an accusation without solid proof and that was impossible last night.’
‘Especially once Matron’s body had disappeared.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And did you always suspect the vicar?’
‘Again, it was a combination of things. Unlike the rest of you he studiously spoke of Matron in the past tense. This struck me as odd at first and then, as the night progressed, it seemed positively intentional. I didn’t know why he was doing it, but I knew it wasn’t right. Even in our little re-enactment, as he walked across to Matron’s office, there was something in his manner that was off. I honestly couldn’t have said more than that though. There was one other thing, something I entirely missed.’
‘Sir?’
‘It was when we were preparing for the re-enactment. You were dealing with your soldiers—’
‘Yes, and if I’d have been paying attention then, I’d’ve noticed that neither Brayling nor Sanders could swear hand on heart that Pawcett had been with them.’
‘You were paying attention, Bix, your men were covering for their comrade. We make a choice to trust those we lead.’
‘That’s kind, Sir. Go on then.’
‘While you were doing that I was with Father O’Sullivan and Sydney Brown, and I heard a most peculiar sound. The vicar assured me it was a possum, screeching in the bush. Once he disappeared and the van roared off, I realized what the sound really was. It must have been the ratcheting of the jack as Matron changed the tyre. I knew I recognized it as something more commonplace to me than one of your native birds or the invader mammals, I simply could not place it in that context. More fool me.’
‘Ah, come on, no one would expect you to have picked up on that, Sir.’
‘Be that as it may, once I heard the van’s engine roar into life I immediately recognized the sound I had heard just minutes earlier and I knew that someone else must have been changing the tyre at that exact moment. Given the circumstances, the most likely suspect was Matron.’
‘Smart, Sir, very smart.’ Bix nodded and took a gulp of his tea. His next question came from a deeper place, ‘And Pawcett, Sir? What do you think about him?’
‘I think you can’t feel responsible for the man, Sergeant.’
Bix shook his head, Alleyn had hit right at the heart of his concern, ‘Ah, but I do, so your thinking I can’t makes no odds. I can’t for the life of me work out what’d turn a man, a soldier, and a good one by all accounts, to that. To spying.’ Bix said the last word as if he were spitting.
‘Nor I, but we know it has happened before and will no doubt happen again. We also know from his fellows that Pawcett was unhappy, we know from young Sydney and from Sanders’s interview that Duncan Blaikie was in the perfect position to be useful for our enemies. A man with both radio interest and access to a tract of land reaching right up to the peaks is quite ideal. What we don’t yet know is for whom they were working. It is to be hoped one of them has the decency to come clean. I suspect it may be Pawcett, where Duncan Blaikie seems both dangerous and persuasive, Pawcett’s is a sadder case, more a matter of his boredom and disaffection with the war.’
