by Ngaio Marsh
‘Miss Harme says she wanted to stay in England and do a job of work.’
‘Yes? Is that so? But she’d have to be the boss or nothing, I’ll be bound. My point is this, Mr Alleyn. Suppose she was offered something pretty big in the way of a position, a Reichsomething-or-other-ship, when the enemy had beaten us, would she have fallen for the notion? That’s what I asked myself.’
‘And how did you answer yourself?’
‘Doubtful. Not impossible. You see, with her as the only member of the house who had a chance of getting into this workroom I thought quite a lot about Madam. She might have got a key for herself when she had the Yale lock put on the door for the young gentlemen. It wasn’t impossible. She had to be considered. And the more she talked about getting rid of enemy agents in this country the more I wondered if she might be one herself. She used to say that we oughtn’t to be afraid to use what was good in Nazi methods: their youth training schemes and fostering of nationalistic ideas, and she used to come down very hard on anything like independent critical thinking. It was all right, of course. Lots of people think that way, all the diehards, you might say. She read a lot of their pre-war books, too. And she didn’t like Jews. She used to say they were parasites. I’d get to thinking about her this way and then I’d kind of come down with a bump and call myself crazy.’
Alleyn asked him if he had anything more tangible to go on and he shook his head mournfully. Nothing. Beyond her curiosity about the young men’s work, and she was by nature curious, there had been nothing. There was, he said, another view to take, and in many ways a more reasonable one. Mrs Rubrick had been appointed to a counter-espionage committee and, in that capacity, may have threatened the success of an agent. She may even have formed suspicions of a member of her household and have given herself away. She was not a discreet woman. This, pushed a little further, might produce a motive for her murder.
‘Yes,’ said Alleyn dryly. ‘That’s why Captain Grace thinks you killed her, you know.’
Markins said with venom that Captain Grace was not immune from suspicion himself. ‘He’s silly enough to do anything,’ he whispered angrily. ‘And what about his background anyway? Heidelberg. He doesn’t look so hot. And what about him being a Nazi sympathizer? I may be dumb but I haven’t overlooked that little point.’
‘You don’t really believe it, though, do you?’ Alleyn asked with a smile.
Markins muttered disconsolately, ‘No brains.’
‘There’s one other point,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’ve got to consider whether this attempt to forward documentary information was the be-all and end-all of the agent’s mission. If, having achieved this object, no more was expected of him, or if he were to forward other information as regards, for instance, Mrs Rubrick’s counter-espionage activities, which is the sort of stuff that needs no documentary evidence. That perennial nuisance, the hidden radio transmitter, would meet the case.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ Markins grumbled. ‘And there’s a sizable range of mountains where it could be cached.’
‘It’d have to be accessible, though. He would be under instruction to transmit his stuff every so long, when an enemy craft would edge far enough into these waters to pick it up. The files say that under cover of the hunt for Mrs Rubrick an extensive search was made. They even brought up a radio-locator in a car and bumped up the riverbed with it. But, of course, you were in that party.’
‘Yes,’ said Markins, ‘I was in with the boys. They expected me to show them the works, and what could I do? Tag on and look silly. Me, supposed to be the expert! It’s a hard world.’
‘It’s a weary world,’ said Alleyn, swallowing a yawn. ‘We’re both supposed to appear in less than four hours, with shining morning faces. I’m out of training, Markins, and you’re a working man. I think we’ll call it a night.’
Markins at once got up and, by standing attentively, his head inclined forward, seemed to reassume the character of a manservant. ‘Shall I open the window, sir?’ he asked.
‘Do, there’s a good chap, and pull back the curtains. You’ve got a torch, haven’t you? I’ll put out the candle.’
‘We’re not as fussy as that about the black-out, Mr Alleyn. Not in these parts.’
The curtain rings jingled. A square, faintly luminous, appeared in the wall. Now the air of the plateau gained entry. Alleyn felt it cold on his face and in his eyes. He pinched out the candle and heard Markins tiptoe to the door.
‘Markins,’ said Alleyn’s voice, quiet in the dark.
‘Sir?’
‘There’s another solution. You’ve thought of it, of course?’ Quite a long silence followed this.
‘He may talk highbrow,’ Markins whispered, ‘but when you get to know him, he’s a nice young gentleman.’
The door creaked and Alleyn was alone. He composed himself for sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
According to Ben Wilson
HAVING LEFT INSTRUCTION with himself to wake at five, Alleyn did so and was aware of distant stirrings in the house. Outside in the dark a cock crowed and the rumour of his voice echoed into nothingness. Beneath Alleyn’s window someone walked firmly along the terrace path and round the corner of the house. He carried a tin bucket that clanked with his stride and he whistled shrilly. From over in the direction of the men’s quarters all the Mount Moon sheep dogs broke into a chorus, their voices sounding hollow and cold in the dawn air. There followed the ring of an axe, an abrupt burst of conversation and presently, the smell of wood smoke, aromatic and pleasing. Beyond the still nighted windows there was only a faint promise of light, a vague thinning, but, as he watched, there appeared in the darkness a rosy horn, unearthly clear. It was the Cloud Piercer, far beyond the plateau, receiving the dawn.
Alleyn bathed and shaved by candlelight and when he returned to his room found the vague shapes of trees visible outside his window, patches of blanket mist above the swamp, and the road, lonely and bleached, reaching out across the plateau. Beneath his window the garden waited, straw coloured, frosty and rigid. As he dressed, the sky grew clear behind the mountains and though the plateau was still dusky, they became articulate in remote sunlight.
Breakfast began in artificial light, but before it was over, the lamp had grown wan and ineffectual. It was now full morning. The character of the house had changed. There was an air of preparation for the working day. Douglas and Fabian wore farm clothes; shapeless flannel trousers, faded sweaters pulled over dark shirts, old tweed jackets and heavy boots. Ursula was briskly smocked. Terence Lynne appeared, composed as ever, in a drill coat, woollen stockings and breeches—an English touch, this, Alleyn felt: alone of the four she seemed to be dressed deliberately for a high-country role. Mrs Aceworthy, alternately dubious and arch, presided.
Douglas finished before the rest and, with a word to Fabian, went out, passing in front of the dining-room windows. Presently he appeared, far beyond the lawn, in the ram paddock, a dog at his heels. Five merino rams at the far end of the paddock jerked up their heads and stared at him. Alleyn watched Douglas walk to a gate, open it, and wait. After a minute or two the rams began to cross the paddock towards him, heavily, not hurrying. He let them through the gate and they disappeared together, a portentous company.
‘When you’re ready,’ said Fabian, ‘shall we go over to the wool-shed?’
‘If there’s anything you would like—’ Mrs Aceworthy said. ‘I mean, I’m sure we all want to be helpful—so dreadful—so many inquiries. One might almost feel—but of course this is quite different, I’m sure.’ She drifted unhappily away.
‘The Acepot’s a bit scattered this morning,’ Ursula said. ‘You’ll tell us, won’t you, Mr Alleyn, if there’s anything we can do?’
Alleyn thanked her and said there was nothing. He and Fabian went out of doors.
The sun had not yet reached Mount Moon. The air was cold and the ground crisp under their feet. From the direction of the yards came the authentic voice of the high country, a dreamlike and
conglomerate drone, the voice of a mob of sheep. Fabian led the way along the left-hand walk between clipped poplar hedges, already flame coloured. They turned down the lavender path and through a gate, making a long stride over an icy little water race, and then walked uphill in the direction of the wool-shed and cottages.
The sound increased in volume. Individual bleatings, persistent and almost human, separated out from the multiple drone. A long galvanized iron shed appeared, flanked with drafting yards, beyond which lay a paddock so full of sheep that at a distance it looked like a shifting greyish lake. The sheep were driven up to the yards by men and dogs: the men yelled and the dogs barked remorselessly and without rhythm. A continual flood of sheep poured through a series of yards, each smaller than the last, into a narrow runway or race and was forced and harried towards a two-way gate which a short, monkey-faced man shoved now this way, now that, drafting them into separate pens. This progress was assisted by a youth outside the rails who continually ran towards the sheep, waving his hat and crying out in a falsetto voice. At each of these sallies the sheep, harried from the rear by dogs, would dart past the youth towards the drafting gate. The acrid smell of greasy wool was strong on the cold air.
‘That’s Tommy Johns,’ said Fabian, jerking his head at the man at the drafting gate. ‘The boy’s young Cliff.’
He was rather a nice-looking lad, Alleyn thought. He had a well-shaped head and a thatch of light-brown hair that overhung his forehead. His face was thin. There was an agreeable sharpness and delicacy in the bony structures of the eyes and cheek bones. The mouth was obstinate. He still had a lean, gangling air about him, the last characteristic of adolescence. His hands were broad and nervous. His grey sweater and dirty flannel trousers had a schoolboyish look that contrasted strongly with the clothes of the older men. When he saw Fabian he gave him a sidelong grin and then with a whoop and a flourish ran again at the oncoming sheep. They streamed past him to the drafting gate and huddled together, clambering on each other’s backs.
Now that he had drawn closer Alleyn could resolve the babel into its component parts, the complaint of the sheep, the patter of their hooves on frozen earth and their humanlike coughing and breathing; the yelp of dogs and men and, within the shed, the burr of an engine and intermittent bumping and thuds.
‘There’ll be a smoke-oh in ten minutes,’ said Fabian. ‘Would you like to see inside?’
‘Right,’ said Alleyn.
Tommy Johns didn’t raise his eyes as they passed him. The gate bumped to and fro against worn posts and the sheep darted through. ‘He’s counting,’ Fabian said.
The wool-shed seemed dark when they first went in and the reek of sheep was almost tangible. The greatest area of light fell where the shearers were at work. It came through a doorless opening from which a sacking curtain had been pulled back and through the open portholes that were exits for the sheep. From where Alleyn stood the shearers themselves were outlined with light and each sheep’s woolly coat had a bright nimbus. This strangely dramatic illumination focused attention on the shearing-board. The rest of the interior seemed at first to be lost in a swimming dusk. But presently a wool-sorter’s bench, ranked packs, and pens filled with waiting sheep took shape in the shadows and Alleyn was able to form a comprehensive picture of the whole scene.
For a time he watched only the shearers. He saw them lug sheep out of the pens by their hind legs and handle them with dexterity so that they became quiescent, voluptuously quiescent almost, lolling back against the shearers’ legs in a ridiculous sitting posture, or suffering their necks to be held between the shearers’ knees while the mechanically-propelled blades, hanging from long arms with flexible joints, rolled away their wool.
‘Is this crutching?’ he asked.
‘That’s it. De-bagging, you might call it.’
Alleyn saw the dirty wool turn back in a wave that was cream inside and watched the quarter-denuded sheep shoved away through the portholes. He saw the broomies, two silent boys, sweep the dirty crutchings up to the sorter and fling them out on his rack. He saw the wool sorted and tossed into bins and finally he followed it to the press.
The press was in a central position, some distance from the shearing-board. It faced the main portion of the shed and actually looked, Alleyn thought, a little like an improvised rostrum. Here Flossie Rubrick was to have stood on the night of her wool-shed party. From here she was to harangue a mob of friends, voters, and fellow-high-countrymen, almost as quiescent as the shorn sheep. Alleyn sharpened his memory until it could encompass the figure of the woman with whom he had spoken for a few minutes. A tiny woman with a clear and insistent voice and an ugly face. A woman who wished to acquire him as a guest and from whom he had escaped with difficulty. He remembered her sharp stare and her rather too-self-confident manner. These recollections remained unchanged by last night’s spate of conflicting impressions and it was the wraith of the persistent little woman he had met whom he now conjured up in the dark end of the wool-shed. Where had she stood? From what direction had her assailant come?
‘She was going to try her voice, you know,’ said Fabian at his elbow.
‘Yes, but from where? The press? It was full of unpressed wool and open, when the men stopped work the previous night. Did she damp down the pressing-lid or whatever it’s called and climb up?’
‘That’s what we’ve always supposed.’
‘Is the new press in exactly the same place?’
‘Yes. Under that red show ticket nailed up on the post.’
Alleyn walked past the shearing-board or floor. The wall opposite was a five-foot-high partition separating the indoor pens from the rest of the shed. Further along, behind the press, this wall was extended up towards the roof. At some time a nail had been driven through it from the other side and the point, now rusty, projected close to the wool-press. He stopped to look at it. The machines still thrummed and the sheep plunged and skidded as they were hauled out of the pens. The work went on but Alleyn thought that the men knew exactly what he was doing. He straightened up. Above the rusty nail there ran a cross beam in the wall on which anybody intending to mount the press might find foothold. Round the nail they had found a thread of Flossie’s dress material. The apex of the tear in her dress had been uppermost, so it had been caused by an upward pull. ‘As she climbed the press,’ thought Alleyn, ‘not when her assailant disposed of the body. It was too securely bound and the press opens from the front. He would truss the body, then clear the tramped wool out of the pack, leaving only the bottom layer, then open the front of the press and get the body into the bale, then would begin the repacking. But where was she when he struck her? A downward blow from behind near the base of the skull and grazing the back of the neck. Was she bent forward, her hands on the press? Stooping to free her dress? Was she in the act of climbing down from the press to speak to him, her feet already on the floor, her back towards him? That seemed most likely,’ he thought.
Near the wool-press a hurricane lantern hung from a nail in the wall. Further along, to the left, a rough candlestick hammered out of tin was nailed high up on a joist. It held a guttered stump of candle. A box of matches stood beside it. These appointments had been there at the time of the tragedy. Had Flossie lit the lantern or the candle? Surely. It was dusk outside and the wool-shed must have been in darkness. How strange, he thought, as the image of a tiny indomitable woman, lit fantastically, grew in his imagination. There she must have stood, in semi-darkness, shouting out the phrases of which Terence Lynne and Fabian Losse had grown weary, while her sharp voice echoed in the emptiness. ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ How far had she got? What did her assailant hear as he approached? Was he—or she—actually an audience, stationed by Flossie at the far end of the shed, to mark the resonant phrases? Or did he creep in under cover of the darkness and wait until she descended? With the branding iron grasped in his right hand? Behind her and to her right, the inside pens had been crowded with sheep waiting for the next day’s shearing, too clo
sely packed to do more than shift a little and tap with their small hooves on the slatted floor. Did they bleat at all, Alleyn wondered, when Flossie tried her voice? ‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ ‘Ba-a-a.’ From where he stood Alleyn could see slantwise through the five portholes and the open doorway at the end of the shearing-board. The sun was bright on the sheep-pens outside. But when Florence Rubrick stood on the wool-press it had been almost dark outside, the portholes must have been shut and the sacking curtain dropped over the doorway. The main doors of the shed had been shut that night and a heap of folded wool bales that had fallen across the floor, inside the main entrance, had not been disturbed; the murderer, then, had come in by this sacking door. Did Flossie see the sacking drawn aside and a black silhouette against the dusk? Or did he, perhaps, crawl in through one of the portholes, unobserved. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure…’
A whistle tooted. Each shearer finished crutching the sheep in hand and loosed it through a porthole. The engine stopped and the wool-shed was suddenly quiet. The noise from outside became dominant again.
‘Smoke-oh,’ Fabian explained. ‘Come and meet Ben Wilson.’
Ben Wilson was the sorter, boss of the shed, an elderly mild man who shook hands solemnly with Alleyn and said nothing. Fabian explained why Alleyn was there and Wilson looked at the floor and still said nothing. ‘Shall we move away a bit,’ Alleyn suggested, and they walked to the double doors at the far end of the shed and stood there, enveloped in sunshine and, the silence of Ben Wilson. Alleyn offered his cigarette case. Mr Wilson said, ‘Ta,’ and took one.
