Читать книгу Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 5: Died in the Wool, Final Curtain, Swing Brother Swing - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 11

I

Fabian’s suggestion raised a storm of protest. The two girls and Douglas Grace began at once to combat it. It seemed to Alleyn that they thrust it from them as an idea that shocked and horrified their emotions rather than offended their reason. In the blaze of firelight that sprang from the fresh log he saw Terence Lynne’s hands weave together.

She said sharply, ‘That’s a beastly thing to suggest, Fabian.’

Alleyn saw Douglas Grace slide his arm along the sofa behind Terence. ‘I agree,’ Douglas said. ‘Not only beastly but idiotic. Why in God’s name should Flossie stay out until three in the morning, return to her room, go out again and get murdered?’

‘I didn’t say it was likely. I said it wasn’t impossible. We can’t prove it wasn’t Flossie.’

‘But what possible reason –’

‘A rendezvous?’ Fabian suggested, and looked out of the corner of his eyes at Terence.

‘I consider that’s a remark in abominable taste, Fab,’ said Ursula.

‘Do you, Ursy? I’m sorry. Must we never laugh a little at people after they are dead? But I’m very sorry. Let’s go back to our story.’

‘I’ve finished,’ said Ursula shortly and there was an uncomfortable silence.

‘As far as we’re concerned,’ said Douglas at last, ‘that’s the end of the story. Ursula went into Aunt Floss’s room the next morning to do it out, and she noticed nothing wrong. The bed was made but that meant nothing because we all do our own beds and Ursy simply thought Flossie had tidied up before she left.’

‘But it was odd all the same,’ said Terence. ‘Mrs Rubrick’s sheets were always taken off when she went away and the bed made up again the day she returned. She always left it unmade, for that reason.’

‘It didn’t strike me at the time,’ said Ursula. ‘I ran the carpet sweeper over the floor and dusted and came away. It was all very tidy. She was a tremendously orderly person.’

‘There was another thing that didn’t strike you, Ursula,’ said Terence Lynne. ‘You may remember that you took the carpet sweeper from me and that I came for it when you’d finished. It wanted emptying and I took it down to the rubbish bin. I noticed there was something twisted round one of the axles, between the wheel and the box. I unwound it.’ Terence paused, looking at her hands. ‘It was a lock of wool,’ she said tranquilly. ‘Natural wool, I mean, from the fleece.’

‘You never told us that,’ said Fabian sharply.

‘I told the detective. He didn’t seem to think it important. He said that was the sort of thing you’d expect to find in the house at shearing-time. He was a town-bred man.’

‘It might have been there for ages, Terry,’ said Ursula.

‘Oh, no. It wasn’t there when you borrowed the sweeper from me. I’m very observant of details,’ said Terence, ‘and I know. And if Mrs Rubrick had seen it she’d have picked it up. She hated bits on the carpet. She had a “thing” about them and always picked them up. I’ll swear it wasn’t there when she was in the room.’

‘How big was it?’ Fabian demanded.

‘Quite small. Not a lock, really. Just a twist.’

‘A teeny-weeny twist,’ said Ursula in a ridiculous voice, suddenly gay again. She had a chancy way with her, one moment nervously intent on her memories, the next full of mockery.

‘I suppose,’ said Alleyn, ‘one might pick up a bit of wool in the shed and, being greasy, it might hang about on one’s clothes?’

‘It might,’ said Fabian lightly.

‘And being greasy,’ Douglas added, ‘it might also hang about in one’s room.’

‘Not in Auntie Floss’s room,’ Ursula said. ‘I always did her room, Douglas, you shan’t dare to say I left greasy wool lying squalidly about for days on the carpet. Pig!’ she mocked at him.

He turned his head lazily and looked at her. Alleyn saw his arm slip down the back of the sofa to Terence Lynne’s shoulders. Ursula laughed and pulled a face at him. ‘It’s all nonsense,’ she said, ‘this talk of locks of wool. Moonshine!’

‘Personally,’ said Terence Lynne, ‘I can’t think it very amusing. For me, and I’d have thought for all of us, the idea of sheep’s wool in her room that morning is perfectly horrible.’

‘You’re hateful, Terry,’ Ursula flashed at her. ‘It’s bad enough to have to talk about it. I mind more than any of you. You all know that. It’s because I mind so much that I can’t be too solemn. You know I’m the only one of us that loved her. You’re cold as ice, Terry, and I hate you.’

‘Now then, Ursy,’ Fabian protested. He knelt up and put his hands over hers. ‘Behave!’ he said. ‘Be your age, woman. You astonish me.’

‘She was a darling, and I loved her. If it hadn’t been for her –’

‘All right, all right.’

‘You would never even have seen me if it hadn’t been for her.’

‘Who was it,’ Fabian murmured, ‘who held the grapes above Tantalus’s lips? Could it have been Aunt Florence?’

‘All the same,’ said Ursula with that curious air, half-rueful, half-obstinate, that seemed to characterize her relationship with Fabian, ‘you’re beastly to me. I’m sorry, Terry.’

‘May we go on?’ asked Douglas.

Alleyn, in his chair beyond the firelight, stirred slightly and at once they were attentive and still.

‘Captain Grace,’ Alleyn said, ‘during the hunt for the diamond brooch, you went up to the house for a torch, didn’t you?’

‘For two torches, sir. I gave one to Uncle Arthur.’

‘Did you see any one in the house?’

‘No. There was only Markins. Markins says he was in his room. There’s no proof of that. The torches are kept on the hall table. The telephone rang while I was there and I answered it. But that only took a few seconds. Somebody wanting to know if Aunt Florence was going north in the morning.’

‘From the terrace in front of the house you look down on the fenced paths, don’t you? Could you see the other searchers from there?’

‘Not Uncle Arthur or Fabian, but I could just see the two girls. It was almost dark. I went straight to my uncle with the torch, he was there all right.’

‘Were you with him when he found the brooch?’

‘No. I simply gave him the torch and returned to my own beat with mine. I heard him call out a few moments later. He left the brooch where it was for me to see. It looked like a cluster of blue and red sparks in the torchlight. It was half-hidden by zinnia leaves. He said he’d looked there before. It wasn’t too good for him to stoop much and his sight wasn’t so marvellous. I supposed he’d just missed it.’

‘Did you go into the end path, the one that runs parallel with the others and links them?’

‘No. He did.’

‘Mr Rubrick?’

‘Yes. Earlier. Just as I was going to the house and before you went down there, Ursy, and talked to Terry.’

‘Then you and Mr Rubrick must have been there together, Miss Lynne,’ said Alleyn.

‘No,’ said Terence Lynne quickly.

‘I understood Miss Harme to say that when she met you in the bottom path you told her you had been searching there.’

‘I looked about there for a moment. I don’t remember seeing Mr Rubrick. I wasn’t with him.’

‘But –’ Douglas broke off. ‘I suppose I made a mistake,’ he said. ‘I had it in my head that as I was going up to the house for the torches he came out of the lavender walk into my path and then moved on into the bottom path. And then I had the impression that as I returned with the torches he came back from the bottom path. It was just then that I heard you two arguing about whether you’d stop in the bottom path or not. You were there then.’

‘I may have seen him,’ said Terence. ‘I was only there a short time. I don’t remember positively, but we didn’t speak – I mean we were not together. It was getting dark.’

‘Well, but Terry,’ said Ursula, ‘when I went into the bottom path you came towards me from the far end, the end nearest the lavender walk. If he was there at all, it would have been at that end.’

‘I don’t remember, Ursula. If he was there we didn’t speak and I’ve simply forgotten.’

‘Perhaps I was mistaken,’ said Douglas uncertainly. ‘But it doesn’t matter much, does it? Arthur was somewhere down there and so were both of you. I don’t mind admitting that the gentleman whose movements that evening I’ve always been anxious to trace, is our friend Mr Markins.’

‘And away we go,’ said Fabian cheerfully. ‘We’re on your territory now, sir.’

‘Good,’ said Alleyn; ‘what about Markins, Captain Grace? Let’s have it.’

‘It goes back some way,’ said Douglas. ‘It goes back, to be exact, to the last wool sale held in this country, which was early in 1939.’

II

‘– So Aunt Floss jockeyed poor old Arthur into scraping acquaintance with this Jap. Kurata Kan his name was. They brought him up here for the weekend. I’ve heard that he took a great interest in everything, grinning like a monkey and asking questions. He’d got a wizard of a camera, a German one, and told them photography was his hobby. Landscape mostly, he said, but he liked doing groups of objects too. He took a photograph in the Pass. He was keen on flying. Uncle Arthur told me he must have spent a whole heap of money on private trips while he was here, taking his camera with him. He bought photographs too, particularly infra-red aerial affairs. He got the names of the photographers from the newspaper offices. We found that out afterwards, though apparently he didn’t make any secret of it at the time. It seems he was bloody quaint in his ways and talked like something out of the movies. Flossie fell for it like an avalanche. “My dear little Mr Kan.” She was frightfully bucked because he gave top price for her wool clip. The Japs always bought second-rate stuff and anyway it’s very unusual for merino wool to fetch top price. I consider the whole thing was damn fishy. When she went to England they kept up a correspondence. Flossie had always said the Japs would weigh in on our side when war came. “My Mr Kan tells me all sorts of things.” By God, there’s this to say for the totalitarian countries, they wouldn’t have had gentlemen like Mr Kurata Kan hanging about for long. I’ll hand that to them. They know how to keep the rats out of their houses.’ Douglas laughed shortly.

‘But not the bats out of their belfries,’ said Fabian. ‘Please don’t deviate into herrenvolk-lore, Douglas.’

‘This Kan lived for half the year in Australia,’ Douglas continued. ‘Remember that. Flossie got back here in ’40, bringing Ursy and Fabian with her. Before she went Home she used to run this place on a cook and two housemaids, but the maids had gone and this time she couldn’t raise the sight of a help. Mrs Duck was looking after Uncle Arthur singlehanded. She said she couldn’t carry on like that. Ursy did what she could but she wasn’t used to housework, and anyway it didn’t suit Flossie.’

‘Ursy seemed to me to wield a very pretty mop,’ said Fabian.

‘Of course she did, but it was damned hard work scrubbing and so on, and Auntie Floss knew it.’

‘I didn’t mind,’ said Ursula.

‘Anyway, when I got back after Greece, I found the marvellous Markins running the show. And where d’you think he’d blown in from? From Sydney, with a letter from Mr Kurata Kan. Can you beat that?’

‘A reference, do you mean?’

‘Yes. He hadn’t actually been with these precious Kans. He says he was valet to an English artillery officer who’d picked him up in America. He says he was friendly with the Kans’ servants. He says that when his employer left Australia he applied to Kan for a job. But the Kans were winging their way to Japan. Markins said he’d like to try his luck in New Zealand and Kan remembered Flossie moaning about the servant problem in this country. Hence, the letter. That’s Kan’s story. The whole thing looks damned fishy to me. Markins, an efficient, well-trained servant, could have taken a job anywhere. Beyond the fact that he was born British but has an American passport we know nothing about him. He gave the name of his American employers but doesn’t know their present address.’

‘I think I should tell you,’ said Alleyn, ‘that the American employers have been traced for us and verify the story.’

This produced an impression. Fabian said, ‘Not Understood, or The Modest Detective! I take back some of my remarks about him. Only some,’ he added. ‘I still maintain that, taking him by and large, our Mr Jackson is almost certifiable.’

‘It makes no difference,’ Douglas said. ‘It proves nothing. My case rests on pretty firm ground, as I think you’ll agree, sir, when you’ve heard it.’

‘Do remember, Douglas,’ Fabian murmured, ‘that Mr Alleyn has seen the files.’

‘I realize that, but God knows what sort of a hash they’ve made of it. Now, I don’t want to be unnecessarily hard on the dead,’ said Douglas loudly; Fabian grimaced and muttered to himself; ‘but I look at it this way. It’s my duty to give an honest opinion, and I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say that Aunt Floss liked to know about things. Not to mince matters, she was a very inquisitive woman, and what’s more she enjoyed showing people that she was in on everything.’

‘I know what you’re going to say next,’ said Ursula brightly, ‘and I disagree with every word of it.’

‘My dear girl, you’re talking through your hat. Look here, sir. When I got back from Greece and was marched out of the army and came here, I found Fabian doing a certain type of work. I needn’t be more explicit than that,’ said Douglas portentously and raised his eyebrows.

‘You’re superb, Douglas,’ said Fabian. ‘Of course you needn’t. Do remember that Mr Alleyn is the man who knows all.’

‘Be quiet, Losse,’ said Alleyn unexpectedly. Fabian opened his mouth and shut it again. ‘You’re a mosquito,’ Alleyn added mildly.

‘I really am sorry,’ said Fabian. ‘I know.’

‘Shall I go on?’ asked Douglas huffily.

‘Please do.’

‘Fabian told me about his work. He called it, for security reasons, the egg-beater. Fabian’s idea. I prefer simply the X Adjustment.’

‘I see,’ said Alleyn. ‘The X Adjustment.’ Fabian grinned.

‘And he asked me if I’d like to have a look at his notes and drawings and so on. As a gunner I was, of course, interested. I satisfied myself there was something in it. I’d taken my electrical engineering degree before I joined up, and was rather keen on the magnetic fuse idea. I need go no further at the moment,’ said Douglas with another significant glance.

Alleyn thought, ‘He really is superb,’ and nodded solemnly.

‘Of course,’ Douglas continued, ‘Auntie Floss had to be told something. I mean, we wanted a room and certain facilities, and so on. She advanced us the cash for our gear. There’s no electrical supply this side of the plateau. We built a windmill and got a small dynamo. Later on she was going to have the house wired, but at the moment we’ve only got the juice in the workroom. She paid for all that. We began to spend more and more time on it. And later on, when we were ready to show something to somebody in the right quarter, she was damned useful. She’d talk anybody into anything, would Flossie, and she got hold of a certain authority at army headquarters and arranged for us to go up north and see him. He sent a report Home and things began to look up. We’ve now had a very encouraging answer from – however! I need not go into that.’

‘Quite,’ said Alleyn. Fabian suddenly offered him a cigar which he refused.

‘Well, as I say, she was very helpful in many ways, but she did gimlet rather and she used to talk jolly indiscreetly at meal times.’

‘You should have heard her,’ said Fabian. ‘“Now, what do my two inventors think?” And then, you know, she’d pull an arch face and for all the world like one of the weird sisters in Macbeth, she’d lay her rather choppy finger on her lips and say, “But we mustn’t be indiscreet, must we?”’

Alleyn glanced up at the picture. The spare, wiry woman stared down at him with the blank inscrutability of all Academy portraits. He was visited by a strange notion. If the painted finger should be raised to those lips, that seemed to be strained with such difficulty over projecting teeth! If she could give him a secret signal: ‘Speak now. Ask this question. Be silent here, they are approaching a matter of importance.’

‘That’s how she carried on,’ Douglas agreed. ‘It was damned difficult, and of course everybody in the house knew we were doing something hush-hush. Fabian always said, “What of it? We keep our stuff locked up and even if we didn’t, nobody could understand it.” But I didn’t like the way Flossie talked. Later on, her attitude changed.’

‘That was after questions had been asked in the House about leakage of information to the enemy,’ said Ursula. ‘She took that very much to heart, Douglas, you know she did. And then that ship was torpedoed off the North Island. She was terribly upset.’

‘Personally,’ said Fabian, ‘I found her caution much more alarming than her curiosity. You’d have thought we had the Secret Death Ray of fiction on the stocks. She papered the walls with cautionary posters. Go on, Douglas.’

‘It was about three weeks before she was killed that it happened,’ said Douglas. ‘And if you don’t find a parallel between my experience and Ursy’s, I shall be very much surprised. Fabian and I had worked late on a certain improvement to a crucial part of our gadget, a safety device, let us call it.’

‘Why not,’ Fabian, ‘since it is one?’

‘I absolutely fail to understand your attitude, Fabian, and I’m sure Mr Alleyn does. Your bloody English facetiousness –’

‘All right. You’re perfectly right, old thing, only it’s just that all these portentous hints seem to me to be so many fancy touches. You know as well as I do that the idea of a sort of aerial magnetic mine must have occurred to countless schoolboys. The only thing that could possibly be of use to the most sanguinary dirty dog would be either the drawings or the dummy model.’

‘Exactly!’ Douglas shouted, and then immediately lowered his voice. ‘The drawings and the model.’

‘And it’s all right about Markins. He’s spending the evening with the Johns family.’

‘So he says,’ Douglas retorted. ‘Well, now, sir, on this night, three weeks before Aunt Floss was killed, I was worrying about the alteration in the safety device –’

His story did bear a curious resemblance to Ursula’s.

On this particular evening, at about nine o’clock, Douglas and Fabian stood outside their workroom door, having locked it up for the night. They were excited by the proposed alteration to the safety device which Fabian now thought could be improved still further. ‘We’d talked ourselves silly and decided to chuck it up for the night,’ said Douglas. He usually kept the keys of the workroom door and safe but on this occasion each of them said that he might feel inclined to return to the calculations later on that night. It was agreed that Douglas should leave the keys in a box on his dressing-table where Fabian, if he so desired, could get them without disturbing him. It was at this point that they noticed Markins, who had come quietly along the passage from the back stairs. He asked them if they knew where Mrs Rubrick was as a long-distance call had come through for her. He almost certainly overheard the arrangement about the keys. ‘And, by God,’ said Douglas, ‘he tried to make use of it.’

They parted company and Douglas went to bed. But he was over-stimulated and slept restlessly. At last, finding himself broad awake and obsessed with their experiment, he had decided to get up and look through the calculations they had been working on that evening. He had stretched out his hand to his bedside-table when he heard a sound in the passage beyond his door. It was no more than the impression of stealthy pressure, as though someone advanced with exaggerated caution and in slow motion. Douglas listened spellbound, his hand still outstretched. The steps paused outside his door. At that moment he made some involuntary movement of his hand and knocked his candlestick to the floor. The noise seemed to him to be shocking. It was followed by a series of creaks fading in a rapid diminuendo down the passage. He leapt out of bed and pulled open his door.

The passage was almost pitch dark. At the far end it met a shorter passage that ran across it like the head of a T. Here, there was a faint glow that faded while Douglas watched it, as if, he said, somebody with a torch was moving away to the left. The only inhabited room to the left was Markins’. The back stairs were to the right.

At this point in his narrative, Douglas tipped himself back on the sofa and glanced complacently about him. Why, he demanded, was Markins abroad in the passage at a quarter to three in the morning (Douglas had noted the time) unless it was upon some exceedingly dubious errand? And why did he pause outside his, Douglas’s door? There was one explanation which, in the light of subsequent events, could scarcely be refuted. Markins had intended to enter Douglas’s room and attempt to steal the keys of the workshop.

‘Well, well,’ said Fabian, ‘let’s have the subsequent events.’

They were, Alleyn thought, at least suggestive.

After the incident of the night Douglas took his keys to bed with him and lay fuming until daylight when he woke Fabian and told him of his suspicions. Fabian was sceptical. ‘A purely gastronomic episode, I bet you anything you like.’ But he agreed that they should be more careful with the keys and he himself contrived a heavy shutter which padlocked over the window when the room was not in use. ‘There was no satisfying Douglas,’ Fabian said plaintively. ‘He jeered at my lovely shutter, and didn’t believe I went to bed with the keys on a bootlace round my neck. I did, though.’

‘I wasn’t satisfied to let it go like that,’ said Douglas. ‘I was damned worried, and next day I kept the tag on Master Markins. Once or twice I caught him watching me with a very funny look in his eye. That was on the Thursday. Flossie had given him the Saturday off and he went down to the Pass with the mail car. He’s friendly with the pubkeeper there. I thought things over and decided to do a little investigation and I think you’ll agree I was justified, sir. I went to his room. It was locked, but I’d seen a bunch of old keys hanging up in the store-room and after filing one of them I got it to function all right.’ Douglas paused, half-smiling. His arm still rested along the back of the sofa behind Terence Lynne. She turned and, clicking her knitting-needles, looked thoughtfully at him.

‘I don’t know how you could, Douglas,’ said Ursula. ‘Honestly!’

‘My dear child, I had every reason to believe I was up against a very nasty bit of work; a spy, an enemy. Don’t you understand?’

‘Of course I understand, but I just don’t believe Markins is a spy. I rather like him.’

Douglas raised his eyebrows and addressed himself pointedly to Alleyn.

‘At first I thought I’d drawn a blank. Every blinking box and case in his room, and there were five all told, was locked. I looked in the cupboard and there, on the floor, I did discover something.’

Douglas cleared his throat, took a wallet from his breast pocket and an envelope from the wallet. This he handed to Alleyn. ‘Take a look at it, sir. It’s not the original. I handed that over to the police. But it’s an exact replica.’

‘Yes,’ said Alleyn, raising an eyebrow at it. ‘A fragment of the covering used on a film package for a Leica or similar camera.’

‘That’s right, sir. I thought I wasn’t mistaken. A bloke in our mess had used those films and I remembered the look of them. Now it seemed pretty funny to me that a man in Markins’ position should be able to afford a Leica camera. They cost anything from twenty-five to a hundred pounds out here when you could get them. Of course, I said to myself, it mightn’t be his. But there was a suit hanging up in the cupboard and in one of the pockets I found a sale docket from a photographic supply firm. Markins had spent five pounds there, and amongst the stuff he’d bought were twelve films for a Leica. I suppose he was afraid he’d run out. I shifted one of his locked cases and it rattled and clinked. I bet it had his developing plant in it. When I left his room I was satisfied I’d hit on something pretty startling. Markins was probably going to photograph everything he could lay his hands on in our workroom and send it on to his principals.’

‘I see,’ said Alleyn. ‘So what did you do?’

‘Told Fabian,’ said Douglas. ‘Right away.’

Alleyn looked at Fabian.

‘Oh, yes. He told me, and we disagreed completely over the whole thing. In fact,’ said Fabian, ‘we had one hell of a flaming row over it, didn’t we, Doug?’

III

‘There’s no need to exaggerate,’ said Douglas. ‘We merely took up different attitudes.’

‘Wildly different,’ Fabian agreed. ‘You see, Mr Alleyn, my idea, for what it’s worth, was this. Suppose Markins was a dirty dog. If questioned about his nightly prowl he had only to say: (a) That his tummy was upset and he didn’t feel up to going to the downstairs Usual Offices so had visited ours, or (b) That it wasn’t him at all. As for his photographic zeal, if it existed, he might have been given a Leica camera by a grateful employer or saved up his little dimes and dollars and bought one second-hand in America. Every photographic zealot is not a fifth columnist. If he kept his developing stuff locked up it might be because he was innately tidy or because he didn’t trust us, and I must say that with Douglas on the premises he wasn’t far wrong.’

‘So you were for doing nothing about it?’

‘No. I thought we should keep our stuff well stowed away and our eyes open. I suggested that if, on consideration, we thought Markins was a bit dubious, we should report the whole story to the people who are dealing with espionage in this country.’

‘And did you agree with this plan, Grace?’

Douglas had disagreed most vigorously. He had, he said with a short laugh, the poorest opinion of the official counter-espionage system and would greatly prefer to tackle the matter himself. ‘That’s what we’re like, out here, sir,’ he told Alleyn. ‘We like to go to it on our own and get things done.’ He added that he felt, personally, so angry with Markins that he had to do something about it. Fabian’s suggestion he dismissed as unrealistic. Why wait? Report the matter certainly, but satisfy themselves first and then go direct to the authority they had seen at army headquarters and get rid of the fellow. They argued for some time and separated without having come to any conclusion. Douglas, on parting from Fabian, encountered his aunt who, as luck would have it, launched out on an encomium upon her manservant. ‘What should I do without my Markins? Thank Heaven he comes back this evening. I touch wood,’ Flossie had said, tapping a gnarled finger playfully on her forehead, ‘every time he says he’s happy here. It’d be so unspeakably dreadful if he were lost to us.’

This, Douglas said, was too much for him. He followed his aunt into the study and, as he said, gave her the works. ‘I stood no nonsense from Flossie,’ said Douglas, brushing up his moustache. ‘We understood each other pretty well. I used to pull her leg a bit and she liked it. She was a good scout, taking her all round, only you didn’t want to let her ride roughshod over you. I talked pretty straight to her. I told her she’d have to get rid of Markins, and I told her why.’

Terence Lynne said under her breath, ‘I never realized you did that.’

Flossie had been very much upset. She was caught. On the one hand there was her extreme reluctance to part with her jewel, as she had so often called Markins; on the other, her noted zeal, backed up by public utterance, in the matter of counter-espionage. Douglas said he reminded her of a speech she had made in open debate in which she had wound up with a particularly stately peroration: ‘I say now, and I say it solemnly and advisedly,’ Flossie had urged, ‘that with our very life blood at stake, it is the duty of us all not only to set a guard upon our own tongue but to make a public example of any one, be he stranger or dearest friend, who, by the slightest deviation from that discretion, which is his duty, endangers in the least degree the safety of our realm. Make no doubt about it,’ she had finally shouted, ‘there is an enemy in our midst and let each of us beware lest, unknowingly, we give him shelter.’ This piece of rhetoric had a wry flavour in regurgitation, and for a moment Flossie stared miserably at her nephew. Then she rallied.

‘You’ve been working too hard, Douglas,’ she said. ‘You’re suffering from nervous strain, dear.’

But Douglas made short work of this objection and indignantly put before her the link with Mr Kurata Kan, at which Flossie winced, the vagueness of Markins’ antecedents, the importance of their work, the impossibility of taking the smallest risk and their clear duty in the matter. It would be better, he said, if after further investigation on Douglas’s part Markins still looked suspicious, for Flossie and not Douglas or Fabian to report the matter to the highest possible authority.

Poor Flossie wrung her hands. ‘Think of what he does,’ she wailed. ‘And he’s so good with Arthur. He’s marvellous with Arthur. And he’s so obliging, Douglas. Single-handed butler in a house of this size! Everything so nice, always. And there’s no help to be got. None.’

‘The girls will have to manage.’

‘I don’t believe it!’ she cried, rallying. ‘I’m always right in my judgement of people. I never go wrong. I won’t believe it.’

But, as Ursula had said, Flossie was an honest woman, and it seemed as if Douglas had done his work effectively. She tramped up and down the room hitting her top teeth with a pencil, a sure sign that she was upset. He waited.

‘You’re right,’ Flossie said at last. ‘I can’t let it go.’ She lowered her chin and looked at Douglas over the tops of her pince-nez. ‘You were quite right to tell me, dear,’ she said. ‘I’ll handle it.’

This was disturbing. ‘What will you do?’ he asked.

‘Consider,’ said Florence magnificently. ‘And act.’

‘How?’

‘Never you mind.’ She patted him rather too vigorously on the cheek. ‘Leave it all to your old Floosy,’ she said. This was the abominable pet name she had for herself.

‘But, Auntie,’ he protested, ‘we’ve a right to know. After all –’

‘So you shall. At the right moment.’ She dumped herself down at her desk. She was a tiny creature but all her movements were heavy and noisy. ‘Away with you,’ she said. Douglas hung about. She began to write scratchily and in a moment or two tossed another remark at him. ‘I’m going to tackle him,’ she said.

Douglas was horrified. ‘Oh, no, Aunt Floss. Honestly, you mustn’t. It’ll give the whole show away. Look here, Aunt Floss –’

But she told him sharply that he had chosen to come to her with his story and must allow her to deal with her own servants in the way that seemed best to her. Her pen scratched busily. When in his distress he roared at her, she, too, lost her temper and told him to be quiet. Douglas, unable to make up his mind to leave her, stared despondently through the window and saw Markins, neatly dressed, walk past the window mopping his brow. He had tramped up from the front gate.

‘Auntie Floss, please listen to me!’

‘I thought I told you –’

Appalled at his own handiwork, he left her.

At this point in his narrative Douglas rose and straddled the hearth-rug.

‘I don’t mind telling you,’ he said, ‘that we weren’t the same after it. She got the huff and treated me like a kid.’

‘We noticed,’ Fabian said, ‘that your popularity had waned a little. Poor Flossie! You’d hoist her with the petard of her own conscience. A maddening and unforgivable thing to do, of course. Obviously she would hate your guts for it.’

‘There’s no need to put it like that,’ said Douglas grandly.

‘With a little enlargement,’ Fabian grinned, ‘it might work up into quite a pretty motive against you.’

‘That’s a damned silly thing to say, Fabian,’ Douglas shouted.

‘Shut up, Fab,’ said Ursula. ‘You’re impossible.’

‘Sorry, darling.’

‘I still don’t see,’ Douglas fumed, ‘that I could have taken any other line. After all, as she pointed out, it was her house and he was her servant.’

‘You didn’t think of that when you picked his door lock,’ Fabian pointed out.

‘I didn’t pick the lock, Fabian, and anyhow that was entirely different.’

‘Did Mrs Rubrick tackle him?’ Alleyn asked.

‘I presume so. She said nothing to me, and I wasn’t going to ask and be ticked off again.’

Douglas lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Obviously,’ Alleyn thought, ‘he still has something up his sleeve.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Douglas lightly, ‘I’m quite positive she did tackle him, and I believe it’s because of what she said that Markins killed her.’

IV

‘And there,’ said Fabian cheerfully, ‘you have it. Flossie says to Markins, “I understand from my nephew that you’re an enemy agent. Take a week’s wages in lieu of notice and expect to be arrested and shot when you get to the railway station!” “No, you don’t,” says Markins to himself. He serves up the soup with murder in his heart, takes a stroll past the wool-shed, hears Flossie in the full spate of her experimental oratory, nips in and – does it. To me it just doesn’t make sense.’

‘You deliberately make it sound silly,’ said Douglas hotly.

‘It is silly. Moreover, it’s not in her character as I read it, to accuse Markins. It would have been the action of a fool and, bless my soul, Flossie was no fool.’

‘It was her deliberately expressed intention.’

‘To “tackle Markins”. That was her phrase, wasn’t it? That is, to tackle l’affaire Markins. She wanted to get rid of you and think. And, upon my soul, I don’t blame her.’

‘But how would she tackle Markins?’ Terence objected, ‘except by questioning him?’ She spoke so seldom that the sound of her voice, cool and incisive, came as a little shock.

‘She was a bit of a Polonius, was Flossie. I think she went round to work. She may even,’ said Fabian, giving a curious inflection to the phrase, ‘she may even have consulted Uncle Arthur.’

‘No,’ said Douglas.

‘How on earth can you tell?’ asked Ursula.

There was a moment’s silence.

‘It would not have been in her character,’ said Douglas.

‘Her character, you see,’ Fabian said to Alleyn. ‘Always her character.’

‘Ever since fifth column trouble started in this country,’ said Douglas, ‘Flossie had been asking questions about it in the House. Markins knew that as well as we did. If she gave him so much as an inkling that she suspected him, how d’you suppose he’d feel?’

‘And even if she decided not to accuse him straight out,’ Ursula said, ‘don’t you think he’d notice some change in her manner?’

‘Of course he would, Ursy,’ Douglas agreed. ‘How could she help herself?’

‘Quite easily,’ said Fabian. ‘She was as clever as a bagful of monkeys.’

‘I agree,’ said Terence.

‘Well, now,’ said Alleyn, ‘did any of you, in fact, notice any change in her manner towards Markins?’

‘To be quite honest,’ said Fabian slowly, ‘we did. But I think we all put it down to her row with Cliff Johns. She was extremely cantankerous with all hands and the cook during that last week, was poor Flossie.’

‘She was unhappy,’ Ursula declared. ‘She was wretchedly unhappy about Cliff. She used to tell me everything. I’m sure if she’d had a row with Markins she’d have told me about it. She used to call me her Safety Valve.’

‘Mrs Arthur Rubrick,’ said Fabian, ‘accompanied by Miss U. Harme, SV, ADC, etc., etc.!’

‘She may have waited to talk to him until that night,’ said Douglas. ‘The night she disappeared, I mean. She may have written for advice to a certain higher authority, and waited for the reply before she tackled Markins. Good Lord, that might have been the very letter she started writing while I was there!’

‘I think,’ said Alleyn, ‘that I should have heard if she’d done that.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Fabian. ‘Yes. After all, you are the higher authority, aren’t you?’

Again there was a silence, an awkward one. Alleyn thought: Damn that boy, he’s said precisely the wrong thing. He’s made them self-conscious again.

‘Well, there’s my case against Markins,’ said Douglas grandly. ‘I don’t pretend it’s complete or anything like that, but I’ll swear there’s something in it, and you can’t deny that after she disappeared his behaviour was suspicious.’

‘I can deny it,’ said Fabian, ‘and what’s more I jolly well do. Categorically, whatever that may mean. He was worried and so were all of us.’

‘He was jumpy.’

‘We were all as jumpy as cats. Why shouldn’t he jump with us? It’d have been much more suspicious if he’d remained all suave and imperturbable. You’re reasoning backwards, Douglas.’

‘I couldn’t stand the sight of the chap about the house,’ said Douglas. ‘I can’t now. It’s monstrous that he should still be here.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘Why is he still here?’

‘You might well ask,’ Douglas rejoined. ‘You’ll scarcely credit it, sir, but he’s here because the police asked Uncle Arthur to keep him on. It was like this …’

The story moved forward. Out of the narrative grew a theme of mounting dissonance, anxiety and fear. Five days after Florence had walked down the lavender path and turned to the left, the overture opened on the sharp note of a telephone bell. The post office at the Pass had a wire for Mrs Rubrick. Should they read it? Terence took it down. ‘Trust you are not indisposed your presence urgently requested at Thursday’s meeting.’ It was signed by a brother MP. There followed a confused and hurried passage. Florence had not gone north! Where was she? Inquiries, tentative at first but growing hourly less guarded and more frantic, long distance calls, calls to her lawyers, with whom she was known to have made an appointment, to hospitals and police stations, the abandonment of privacy following a dominion-wide SOS on the air; search parties radiating from Mount Moon and culminating in the sudden collapse of Arthur Rubrick; his refusal to have a trained nurse or indeed any one but Terence and Markins to look after him: all these abnormalities followed each other in an ominous crescendo that reached its peak in the dreadful finality of discovery. As this phase unfolded, Alleyn thought he could trace a change of mood in the little company assembled in the study. At first Douglas alone stated the theme. Then, one by one, at first reluctantly, then with increasing freedom the other voices joined in, and it seemed to Alleyn that after their long avoidance of the subject they now found ease in speaking of it. After the impact of the discovery, there followed the slow assembly of official themes: the inquest adjourned, the constant appearance of the police, and the tremendous complications of the public funeral: these events mingled like phrases of a movement until they were interrupted emphatically by Fabian. When Douglas, who had evidently been impressed by it, described Flossie’s cortege –‘there were three bands’– Fabian shocked them all by breaking into laughter. Laughter bubbled out of him. He stammered, ‘It was so horrible … disgusting … I’m terribly sorry, but when you think of what had happened to her … and then to have three brass bands … Oh, God, it’s so electrically comic!’ He drew in his breath in a shuddering gasp.

‘Fabian!’ Ursula murmured, and put her arm about him, pressing him against her knees. ‘Darling Fabian, don’t.’

Douglas stared at Fabian and then looked away in embarrassment. ‘You don’t want to think of it like that,’ he said. ‘It was a tribute. She was enormously popular. We had to let them do it. Personally –’

‘Go on with the story, Douglas,’ said Terence.

‘Wait,’ said Fabian. ‘I’ve got to explain. It’s my turn. I want to explain.’

‘No,’ cried Ursula. ‘Please not.’

‘We agreed to tell him everything. I’ve got to explain why I can’t join in this nil nisi stuff. It crops up at every turn. Let’s clear it up and then get on with the job.’

‘No!’

‘I’ve got to, Ursy. Please don’t interrupt, it’s so deadly important. And, after all, one can’t make a fool of oneself without some sort of apology.’

‘Mr Alleyn will understand.’ Ursula appealed urgently to Alleyn, her hands still pressed down on Fabian’s shoulders. ‘It’s the war,’ she said. ‘He was dreadfully ill after Dunkirk. You mustn’t mind.’

‘For pity’s sake shut up, darling, and let me tell him,’ said Fabian violently.

‘But it’s crazy. I won’t let you, Fabian. I won’t let you.’

‘You can’t stop me,’ he said.

‘What the hell is this about?’ Douglas asked angrily.

‘It’s about me,’ said Fabian. ‘It’s about whether or not I killed your Aunt Florence. Now, for God’s sake, hold your tongue and listen.’