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

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.

‘It’s the same old story, Ben,’ said Fabian, ‘but we’re hoping Mr Alleyn may get a bit further than the other experts. We’re lucky to have him.’

Mr Wilson glanced at Alleyn and then at the floor. He smoked cautiously, sheltering his cigarette with the palm of his hand. He had the air of a man whose life’s object was to avoid making the slightest advance to anybody.

‘You were here for the January shearing when Mrs Rubrick was killed, weren’t you, Mr Wilson?’ asked Alleyn.

‘That’s right,’ said Mr Wilson.

‘I’m afraid you must be completely fed up with policemen and their questions.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And I’m afraid mine will be precisely the same set of questions all over again.’ Alleyn waited and Mr Wilson with an extremely smug expression, compounded, it seemed, of mistrust, complacency and resignation said, ‘You’re telling me.’

‘All right,’ said Alleyn. ‘Here goes, then. On the night of January 29th, 1942, when Mrs Rubrick was stunned, suffocated, bound, and packed into a wool bale in the replica of the press over there, you were in charge of the shed as usual, I suppose?’

‘I was over at Lakeside,’ Mr Wilson muttered as if the statement was an obscenity.

‘At the time she was murdered? Yes, you probably were. At a dance, wasn’t it? But (you must forgive me if I’ve got it wrong) the wool-shed is under your management during the shearing, isn’t it?’

‘Manner of speaking.’

‘Yes. And I suppose you have a look round after knock-off time?’

‘Not much to look at.’

‘Those trap doors or portholes by the shearing-board for instance. Were they shut?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But the traps could be raised from outside?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And the sacking over the door at the end of the board. Was that dropped?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Was it fastened in any way?’

‘Fastened?’

‘Fastened, yes.’

‘She’s nailed to a bit of three-by-two and we drop it.’

‘I see. And the pile of sacks or empty bales inside these rolling double doors; were they lying in such a way that anybody coming in or going out would disturb them?’

‘I’ll say.’

‘But in the morning, did they look as if they’d been disturbed?’

Mr Wilson shook his head very slightly.

‘Did you notice them particularly?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How was that?’

‘I’d told the boys to shift them and they never.’

‘Could the doors have been rolled open from outside?’

‘Not a chance.’

‘Were they fastened inside?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is it remotely possible that there was somebody hiding in here when you knocked off?’

‘Not a chance.’

‘Mrs Rubrick must have come in by the sacking door?’

Mr Wilson grunted.

‘She was very short. She couldn’t reach up to fit the baton on the cross beam where it now rests. So she probably pushed it in a little way. Is that right, should you say?’

‘Might be.’

‘And her murderer must have gained entrance by the same means, if we wash out the possibility of shoving up one of the traps and coming in that way?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Where was the branding iron left, when you knocked off?’

‘Inside the door, on the floor.’

‘The sacking door, that is. And the pot of paint was there too, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’