Died in the Wool

The others stirred. Fabian reached over to the wood box and flung a log on the fire. Douglas muttered impatiently. Terence Lynne put down her knitting and folded her elegant hands together in her lap.

‘In what direction?’ Alleyn asked.

‘I’m not sure. You know how it is. Dream and waking overlap, and by the time you are really alert the sound that came into your dream and woke you has stopped. I simply know that it was real.’

‘Mrs Duck returning from the party,’ said Terence.

‘But it was three o’clock, Terry. I heard the grandfather strike about five minutes later and Duckie says they got back at a quarter to two.’

‘They’d hung about, cackling,’ said Douglas.

‘For an hour and a quarter? And, anyway, Duckie would come up the back stair. I don’t suppose it amounts to anything, Mr Alleyn, because we know now that – that it hadn’t – that it happened away from the house. It must have. But I don’t care what any one says,’ Ursula said, lifting her chin, ‘somebody was about on the landing at five minutes to three that morning.’

‘And we don’t know definitely and positively,’ said Fabian, ‘that it wasn’t Flossie herself.’

CHAPTER THREE ACCORDING TO DOUGLAS GRACE

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.’

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