Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 5: Died in the Wool, Final Curtain, Swing Brother Swing

This statement was met by a scandalized hush.

‘A commonplace exaggeration,’ said Fabian at last. ‘I’ve used it repeatedly myself in speaking of Flossie. “I could have murdered her.” I suppose she got home with her cracks at Uncle Arthur, didn’t she? Every time a coconut?’

‘Yes,’ said Terence. ‘She got home.’

A longer silence followed. Alleyn felt certain that Terence had reached a point in her story where something was to be withheld from her listeners. The suggestion of antagonism, never long absent from her manner, now deepened. She set her lips and, after a quick look into the shadow where he sat, took up her work again with an air of finality.

‘Funny,’ said Fabian suddenly. ‘I thought she seemed to be rather come-hither-ish with Uncle Arthur during that last week. There was a hint of skittishness which I found extremely awe-inspiring. And, I may say, extremely unusual. You must have noticed it, all of you. What was she up to?’

‘Honestly, Fabian darling,’ said Ursula, ‘you are too difficult. At one moment you find fault with Auntie Floss for neglecting Uncle Arthur and at the next you complain because she was nice to him. What should she have done, poor darling, to please you and Terry?’

‘How old was she?’ Douglas blurted out. ‘Forty-seven, wasn’t it? Well, I mean to say, she was jolly spry for her age, wasn’t she? I mean to say … well, I mean, there it was … I suppose –’

‘Let it pass, Douglas,’ Fabian said kindly. ‘We know what you mean. But I can’t think that Florence’s sudden access of playfulness was entirely due to natural or even pathological causes. There seemed to me to be a distinct suggestion of proprietary rights. What I have I hold. The bitch, if you will excuse the usage, Douglas, in the marital manger.’

‘It’s entirely inexcusable,’ said Ursula, ‘and so are you, Fab.’

‘I don’t mean to show off and be tiresome, darling, I promise you, I don’t. You can’t deny that she was different during that last week. As sour as a lemon with all of us, and suddenly so, so keen on Uncle Arthur. She watched him too. Indeed she looked at him as if he was some objet d’art that she’d forgotten she possessed until someone else came along and saw that it was – well, rare, and in its way rather beautiful. Wasn’t it like that?’

‘I don’t know. I thought she was horrible, baiting him about his illness. That’s what it amounted to, and that’s what I saw,’ said Terence.

‘But don’t you agree,’ Fabian persisted, ‘that along with that there was a definite – what shall I call it – why, damn it, she made advances. She was kittenish. She shook her curls and did the little devil number. Didn’t she, now?’

‘I didn’t watch her antics,’ said Terence coldly.

‘But you did, Terry. You watched. Listen to me, Terry,’ said Fabian very earnestly, ‘don’t get it into your head that I’m an enemy. I’m not. I’m sorry for you and I realize now that I’ve misjudged you. You see, I thought you were merely doing your line of oomph with Uncle Arthur out of boredom. I thought you just sat round being a cryptic woman at him to keep your hand in. I know this sounds insufferable but he was so very much older and, well, as I thought, so definitely not your cup of tea. It was perfectly obvious that he was losing his heart to you and I resented what I imagined was merely a bit of practice technique on your part. I don’t suppose you give two tuppenny damns for what I thought, Terry, but I am sorry. All right. Now, when I suggested that we should ask Mr Alleyn to come, we all agreed that rather than carry on as we were, with this unspeakable business festering in our minds, we would, each of us, risk becoming an object of suspicion. We agreed that none of us suspected any of the other three and, even with the terrifying example of the local detective force to daunt us, we said we didn’t believe that the truth, the whole truth, although it might be unpalatable, could do us any harm. Were we right in that, Mr Alleyn?’

Alleyn stirred a little in his armchair and joined his long fingers. ‘It’s a truism to say that if the whole facts of a case are known there can be no miscarriage of justice. It’s very seldom indeed, in homicide investigations, that the police arrive at the whole truth. Sometimes they get enough of the truth to enable them to build up a case and make an arrest. Most often they get a smattering of essential facts, a plethora of inessential facts and a maddening accumulation of lies. If you really do stick to your original plan of thrashing out the whole story here tonight, in this room, you will, I think, bring off a remarkable, indeed a unique performance.’

He saw that they were young enough to be flattered and stimulated by this assurance. ‘There, now!’ said Fabian triumphantly. ‘But,’ said Alleyn, ‘I don’t believe for a moment that you will succeed. How long does it take a psychoanalyst to complete his terrifying course of treatment? Months, isn’t it? His aim, as I understand it, is to get to the bottom, to spring-clean completely, to arrive, in fact, at the clinical truths. Aren’t you, Losse, attempting something of that sort? If so, I’m sure you cannot succeed, nor, as a policeman, would I want you to do so. As a policeman, I am not concerned with the whole clinical truth. Faced with it, I should probably find myself unable to make any arrest, ever. I am required only to produce facts. If your discussion of Mrs Rubrick’s character and that of her husband can throw the smallest ray of light along the path that leads to an unknown murderer who struck her from, behind, suffocated her, bound up her body, and concealed it in a wool-press, then from the official point of view it will have been valuable. If, at the same time, somewhere along that path, there is the trace of an enemy agent, then again from my point of view, as an investigator of espionage in this country, it will have been valuable. If finally, it relieves the burden of secrecy under which you have all suffered, you, also, may profit by it, though, as you have already seen, the process is painful and may be dangerous.’

‘We realize that,’ Fabian said.

‘Do you fully realize it? You told me at first that there was a complete absence of motive among you. Would you still say so? Look what has come out. Captain Grace was Mrs Rubrick’s heir. That circumstance, which suggests the most common of all motives, has of course always been recognized by the police and must have occurred to all of you. You, Losse, advanced a theory that you yourself in a condition of amnesia attacked Mrs Rubrick and killed her. What’s more, as you developed this theme you also revealed a motive, Mrs Rubrick’s opposition to your engagement to Miss Harme. Now, under this same process of self-revelation, Miss Lynne must also be said to have a motive. Most courageously she has told us that she had formed a deep attachment for the murdered woman’s husband and you, Losse, say that this attachment obviously was returned. The second most common motive appears in both your case and hers. You have said, bravely, that none of you has anything to fear from this discussion. Are you sure you have the right to make this statement? You are using this room as a sort of confessional, but I am bound by no priestly rule. What you tell me, I shall consider from the practical point of view and may afterwards use in the report I send to your police. I should neglect my duty if, before she goes any further, I didn’t remind Miss Lynne of all the circumstances.’ Alleyn paused and rubbed his nose. ‘That all sounds pompous,’ he said. ‘But there it is. The whole thing’s a departure from the usual procedure. I doubt if any collection of possible suspects has ever before decided to have what Miss Harme has aptly described as a verbal striptease before an investigating officer.’ He looked at Terence. ‘Well, now, Miss Lynne,’ he said, ‘if you don’t want to go on –’

‘It’s not because I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do it and any attempt to prove I did would fail. I suppose I ought to be afraid but I’m not. I don’t feel in the least anxious for myself.’

‘Very well. Losse has suggested that there is some significance in the change during the last week of Mrs Rubrick’s life in her manner towards her husband. He has suggested that you can explain this change. Is he right?’

She did not answer. Slowly and, as it seemed, reluctantly, she raised her eyes and looked at the portrait of Florence Rubrick.

‘Terry!’ said Ursula suddenly, ‘did she know? Did she find out?’

Fabian gave a sharp ejaculation and Terence turned, not upon Ursula but upon him.

‘You idiot, Fabian,’ she said. ‘You unutterable fool.’

III

The fire had burnt low, and the room was colder and stale with tobacco smoke.

‘I give it up,’ said Douglas loudly. ‘I never was any good at riddles and I’m damned if I know half the time what you’re all getting at. For God’s sake let’s have some air in this room.’

He went to the far end of the study, jerked back the curtains, and pushed open a french window. The night air came in, not as a wind, but stilly, with a tang of extreme cleanliness. The moon was up and, across the plateau, fifty miles away, it shone on the Cloud Piercer and his attendant peaks. Alleyn joined Douglas at the window. ‘If I spoke,’ he thought, ‘my voice would go out towards those mountains and between my moving lips and that distant snow there would be only clear darkness.’ He had noticed, on the drive up to Mount Moon, that the flats in front of the homestead were swampy and studded with a few desultory willows. Now, in the moonlight, he caught a glint of water and he heard the cry of wild duck and the beat of wings. Behind him in the room, someone threw wood upon the fire and Alleyn’s shadow flickered across the terrace.

‘Need we freeze?’ Ursula asked fretfully. Douglas reached out his hand to the french window, but before he shut it or drew the curtain a footfall sounded briskly and a man walked along the terrace towards the north side of the house. As he reached the part of the terrace that was lit from the room he was seen to be wearing a neat black suit and a felt hat. It was Markins, returning from his visit to the manager’s cottage. Douglas slammed the french window and pulled the curtain across it.

‘And there goes the expert,’ he said, ‘who runs about the place, scot-free, while we sit yammering a lot of high-falutin bilge about the character of the woman he may have killed. I’m going to bed.’

‘He’ll bring the drinks in a minute,’ said Fabian. ‘Why not wait and have one.’

‘If he’s got wind of this I wouldn’t put it past him to monkey with the decanter.’

‘Honestly, Douglas!’ Fabian and Ursula said together. ‘You are –!’

‘All right, all right,’ Douglas said angrily. ‘I’m a fool. Say no more.’ He flung himself down on the sofa again, but this time he did not rest his arm along the back behind Terence. Instead he eyed her with an air of discomfort and curiosity.

‘So you prefer to leave Miss Harme’s question unanswered,’ Alleyn said to Terence.

She had picked up her knitting as if hoping by that gesture to recapture something of her lost composure. But her hands turned her work over, rolling the scarlet mesh round the white needles and, as aimlessly, spreading it out again across her knees.

‘You force me to speak of it,’ she said. ‘All of you. You talk about us all agreeing to this discussion, Fabian. When you and Ursula and Douglas planned it, how could I not agree? It’s not my business to refuse. I’m an outsider. I was paid to work for Mrs Rubrick, and now you, Fabian, pay me to work for you in your garden. It’s not my business to refuse.’

‘Nonsense, Terry,’ said Fabian.

‘You’ve never been in my position. You don’t understand. You’re all very kind and informal and treat me, as we say in my class, almost like one of yourselves. Almost, not quite.’

‘My dear girl, that’s an insult to me, at least. You know quite enough about my views to realize that any such attitude is revolting to me. “Your class.” How dare you go class-conscious at me, Terry.’

‘You’re my boss. You were not too much of a communist to accept Mount Moon when he left it to you.’

‘I think,’ said Alleyn crisply, ‘that we might come back to the question which, believe me, Miss Lynne, you are under no compulsion to answer. This is it. Did Mrs Rubrick, during the last week of her life, become aware of the attachment between you and her husband?’

‘And if I don’t answer what will you think? What will you do? Go to Mrs Aceworthy, who dislikes me intensely, and get some monstrously distorted story that she’s concocted. When he was ill he wanted me to look after him and wouldn’t see her or have her here. She’s never forgiven me. Better you should hear the truth from me.’

‘Very much better,’ Alleyn agreed cheerfully. ‘Let’s have it.’

It would have come as something of an anti-climax if it had not made a little clearer the still nebulous picture of that strange companionship. They had been working together over one of Flossie’s articles, he at the table near the windows and Terence moving between him and the bookcases. She had returned to him with a volume of Hansard and had laid it on the table before him, standing behind him and pressing it open with her hand at the passage he had asked for. He leant forward and the rough tweed of his coat sleeve brushed her forearm. They were motionless. She looked down at him but his face was hidden from her. He stooped. Her free hand moved and rested on his shoulder. She described the scene carefully, with precision as if these details were important, as if, having undertaken her story, she was resolved to leave nothing unsaid. She was, Alleyn thought, a remarkable young woman. She said it was the first passage of its kind between them and she supposed they were both too much moved by it to hear the door open. Her right hand was still upon him when she turned and saw her employer. He was even slower to move and her left hand remained, weighed down by his, upon the open pages of the book. It was only when she pulled it away that he too turned, and saw his wife.

Florence remained in the doorway. She had a sheaf of papers in her hand and they crackled as her grip tightened on them. ‘Hers was an expressionless face,’ Terence said, and Alleyn glanced up at the portrait. ‘Her teeth showed a little, as usual. Her eyes always looked rather startled, they looked no more so then. She just stared at us.’

Neither Rubrick nor Terence spoke. Florence said loudly, ‘I’m in a hurry for those reports,’ and turned on her heel. The door slammed behind her. Rubrick said to Terence, ‘My dear, I hope you can forgive me,’ and Terence, sure now that he loved her, and feeling nothing but pleasure in her heart, kissed him lightly and moved away. They returned tranquilly to Flossie’s interminable reports. It was strange, Terence said, how little troubled they both were at that time by Flossie’s entrance. It seemed then to be quite irrelevant, something to be dismissed impatiently, before the certainty of their attachment. They continued with their employment, Terence said, and Alleyn had a picture of the two of them at work there, sometimes exchanging a brief smile, more often turning the pages of Hansard, or making notes of suitable platitudes for Flossie. An odd affair, he thought.

This mood of acceptance sustained them through their morning’s work. At luncheon when the party of six assembled, Terence noticed that her employer was less talkative than usual and she realized that she herself was being closely watched by Flossie. This did not greatly disturb her. She thought vaguely, ‘I suppose she merely said to herself that it’s not much like me to put my hand on any one’s shoulder. I suppose she thinks it was a bit of presumption on my part. She’s noticing me as a human being.’

At the end of lunch Flossie suddenly announced that she wanted Terence to work with her all the afternoon. She kept Terence hard at it, taking down letters and typing them. It was a perfectly normal routine and at first Terence noticed nothing unusual in Flossie’s manner. Presently, however, she became conscious that Flossie, from behind the table, across the room, or by the fireplace was watching her closely. She would deny herself the uncomfortable experience of meeting this scrutiny but sooner or later she would find herself unable to resist and would look up, and there, sure enough, would be that gimlet-like stare that contrived to be at once so penetrating and so expressionless. Terence began to feel that she could not support this behaviour and to wish, in acute discomfort, that Florence would speak to, or even upbraid her. The flood of contentment that had come upon her when she knew that Rubrick loved her now receded and left in its wake a sensation of shame. She began to see herself with Flossie’s eyes as a second-rate little typist who flirted with her employer’s husband. She felt sick and humiliated and was filled with a kind of impatience for the worst to happen. There must be a climax, she thought, or she would never recover from the self-disgust that Flossie’s stare had put upon her. But there was no climax. They plodded on with their work. When at last they had finished and Terence was gathering together her papers, Flossie, as she walked to the door, said over her shoulder, ‘I don’t think Mr Rubrick’s at all well.’ Calling him ‘Mr Rubrick’, Terence felt, put her very neatly in her place. ‘I don’t consider,’ Florence added, ‘that we should bother him just now with our silly old statistics. I am rather worried about him. We’ll just leave him quietly to himself, Miss Lynne. Will you remember that?’ And she went out, leaving Terence to draw what conclusions she chose from this pronouncement.

‘And it was after that,’ Terence said, ‘almost immediately after – it was the same night, at dinner – when the change you all noticed, appeared in her manner towards him. To me it was horrible.’