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

‘It’s strange to me,’ Alleyn said, ‘that you don’t go on with your music. I should have thought that not to go on would be intolerable.’

‘Would you,’ he muttered.

‘Are you sure you are not a little bit proud of your abstinence?’

This seemed to astonish Cliff. ‘Proud!’ he repeated. ‘If you only realized …’ He got up. ‘If you’ve finished with me,’ he said.

‘Almost, yes. You never saw her again?’

Cliff seemed to take this question as a statement of fact. He moved towards the french window. ‘Is that right?’ Alleyn said and he nodded. ‘And you won’t tell me what you were doing with the whisky?’

‘I can’t.’

‘All right. I think I’ll just take a look at this outhouse. I can find my way. Thank you for being so nearly frank.’

Cliff blinked at him and went out.

II

The annexe proved to be grander than its name suggested. Fabian had told Alleyn that it had been added to the bunkhouse by Arthur Rubrick as a sort of common-room for the men. Florence, in a spurt of solicitude and public-spiritedness, had urged this upon her husband, and, on acquiring the Bechstein, had given the men her old piano and a radio set, and had turned the house out for odd pieces of furniture. ‘It was when she stood for parliament,’ Fabian explained acidly. ‘She had a photograph taken with the station hands sitting about in exquisitely self-conscious attitudes and sent it to the papers. You’ll find a framed enlargement above the mantelpiece.’

The room had an unkempt look. There was a bloom of dust on the table, the radio and the piano. A heap of old radio magazines had been stacked untidily in a corner of the room and yellowing newspapers lay about the floor. The top of the piano was piled with music; ballads, student song-books and dance tunes. Underneath these he found a number of classical works with Cliff’s name written across the top. Here at the bottom was Bach’s Art of Fugue.

Alleyn opened the piano and picked out a phrase from Cliff’s music. Two of the notes jammed. Had the Bach been full of hiatuses, then, or had the piano deteriorated so much in fifteen months? Alleyn replaced the Art of Fugue under a pile of song sheets, brushed his hands together absently, closed the door and squatted down by the heap of radio magazines in the corner.

He waded back through sixty-five weeks of wireless programmes that had been pumped into the air from all the broadcasting stations in the country. The magazines were not stacked in order and it was a tedious business. Back to February 1942: laying them down in their sequence. The second week in February, the first week in February. Alleyn’s hands were poised over the work. There were only half a dozen left. He sorted them quickly. The last week in January 1942 was missing.

Mechanically he stacked the magazines up in their corner and, after a moment’s hesitation, disordered them again. He walked up and down the room whistling a phrase of Cliff’s music. ‘Oh, well!’ he thought. ‘It’s a long shot and I may be off the mark.’ But he stared dolefully at the piano and presently began again to pick out the same phrase, first in the treble and then, very dejectedly, in the bass, swearing when the keys jammed. He shut the lid at last, sat in a rakish old chair and began to fill his pipe. ‘I shall be obliged to send them all away on ludicrous errands,’ he muttered, ‘and get a toll call through to Jackson. Is this high fantasy, or is it murder?’ The door opened. A woman stood on the threshold.

She looked dark against the brilliance of sunshine outside. He could see that the hand with which she had opened the door was now pressed against her lips. She was a middle-aged woman, plainly dressed. She was still for a moment and then stepped back. The strong sunshine fell across her face, which was heavy and pale for a country-woman’s. She said breathlessly: ‘I heard the piano. I thought it was Cliff.’

‘I’m afraid Cliff would not be flattered,’ Alleyn said. ‘I lack technique!’ He moved towards her.

She backed away. ‘It was the piano,’ she said again. ‘Hearing it after so long.’

‘Do the men never play it?’

‘Not in the daytime,’ she said hurriedly. ‘And I kind of remember the tune.’ She tidied her hair nervously. ‘I’m sure I didn’t mean to intrude,’ she said. ‘Excuse me.’ She was moving away when Alleyn stopped her.

‘Please don’t go,’ he said. ‘You’re Cliff’s mother, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’d be grateful if you would spare me a moment. It won’t be much more than a moment. Really. My name, by the way, is Alleyn.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said woodenly.

He stood aside, holding back the door. After a little hesitation she went into the room and stood there, staring straight before her, her fingers still moving against her lips. Alleyn left the door open. ‘Will you sit down?’ he said.

‘I won’t bother, thanks.’

He moved the chair forward and waited. She sat on the edge of it, unwillingly.

‘I expect you’ve heard why I’m here,’ Alleyn said gently. ‘Or have you?’

She nodded, still not looking at him.

‘I want you to help me, if you will.’

‘I can’t help you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know the first thing about it. None of us do. Not me, or Mr Johns or my boy.’ He voice shook. She added rapidly with an air of desperation, ‘You leave my boy alone, Mr Alleyn.’

‘Well,’ said Alleyn, ‘I’ve got to talk to people, you know. That’s my job.’

‘It’s no use talking to Cliff. I tell you straight, it’s no use. It’s something cruel what those others done to Cliff. Pestering him, day after day, and him proved to be innocent. They proved it themselves with what they found out and even then they couldn’t let him alone. He’s not like other lads. Not tough. Different.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed, ‘he’s an exceptional chap, isn’t he?’

‘They broke his spirit,’ she said, frowning, refusing to look at him. ‘He’s a different boy. I’m his mother and I know what they done. It’s wicked. Getting on to a bit of a kid when it was proved he was innocent.’

‘The piano?’ Alleyn said.

‘Mrs Duck saw him. Mrs Duck who cooks for them down there. She was out for a stroll, not having gone to the dance, and she saw him sit down and commence to play. They all heard him and they said they heard him, and me and his Dad heard him too. On and on, and him dead beat, till I couldn’t stand it any longer and come over myself and fetched him home. What more do they want?’

‘Mrs Johns,’ Alleyn began, ‘what sort –’ He stopped short, feeling that he could not repeat once more the too-familiar phrase. ‘Did you like Mrs Rubrick?’ he said.

For the first time she looked sharply at him. ‘Like her?’ she said unwillingly. ‘Yes, I suppose I did. She was kind. Always the same to everyone. She made mistakes as I well know. Things didn’t pan out the way she’d reckoned.’

‘With Cliff?’

‘That’s right. There’s been a lot of rubbish talked about the interest she took in my boy. People are funny like that. Jealous.’ She passed her roughened hand over her face with a movement that suggested the wiping away of a cobweb. ‘I don’t say I wasn’t a bit jealous myself,’ she said grudgingly. ‘I don’t say I didn’t think it might make him discontented like with his own home. But I saw what a big thing it was for my boy and I wouldn’t stand in his light. But there it is. I won’t say I didn’t feel it.’

She said all this with the same air of antagonism, but Alleyn felt a sudden respect for her. He said: ‘But this feeling didn’t persist?’

‘Persist? Not when he grew older. He grew away from her, if you can understand. Nobody knows a boy like his mother and I know you can’t drive Cliff. She tried to drive him and in the finish she set him against her. He’s a good boy,’ said Mrs Johns coldly, ‘though I say it, but he’s very unusual. And sensitive.’

‘Did you regret taking her offer to send him to school?’

‘Regret it?’ she repeated, examining the word. ‘Seeing what’s happened, and the cruel way it’s changed him –’ She pressed her lips together and her hands jerked stiffly in her lap. ‘I wish she’d never seen my boy,’ she said with extraordinary vehemence and then caught her breath and looked frightened. ‘It’s none of his doing or of hers, poor lady. They were devoted to each other. When it happened there was nobody felt it more than Cliff. Don’t let anyone tell you different. It’s wicked, the way an innocent boy’s been made to suffer. Wicked.’

Her eyes were still fixed on the wall, beyond Alleyn and above his head. They were wet, but so wooden was her face that her tears seemed to be accidental and quite inexpressive of sorrow. She ended each of her speeches with such an air of finality that he felt surprised when she embarked on a new one.

‘Mrs Johns,’ he said, ‘what do you make of this story about the whisky?’

‘Anybody who says my boy’s a thief is a liar,’ she said. ‘That’s what I make of it. Lies! He never touched a drop in his life.’

‘Then what do you think he was doing?’

At last she looked full at him. ‘You ask the station cook what he was doing. Ask Albert Black. Cliff won’t tell you anything, and he won’t tell me. It’s my idea and he’d never forgive me if he knew I’d spoken of it.’ She got up and walked to the door, staring out into the sunshine. ‘Ask them,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’