Died in the Wool (22 page)

Arthur Rubrick arrived at this juncture, walking slowly and very short of breath. ‘And,' said Mr Wilson, ‘the boss picked things was not too pleasant and asked Tommy Johns what was wrong. Tommy started moaning about nobody being any good on the place. They were standing near the sorting-table and I heard what was said.'

‘Can you remember it?' Alleyn asked.

‘I can remember all right, but there was nothing in it.'

‘May I hear about it? I'm enormously grateful for all this, Mr Wilson.'

‘It didn't amount to anything. Tommy's a funny joker. He goes crook sometimes. He said the men were a lot of lazy bastards.'

‘Anything else?'

‘Young Cliff was in trouble about a bottle of booze. Mrs Rubrick had told him off a couple of nights before. Tommy didn't like it. He was complaining about it.'

‘What did Mr Rubrick say?'

‘He wasn't too good that morning. He was bad, you could see that. His face was a terrible colour. He was very quiet, and kept saying it was unfortunate. He seemed to think it was very very hot in the shed, and kept moving as if he'd like to clear out. His hands were shaky, too. He was bad, all right.'

‘How did it end?'

‘Young Doug came up—the Captain,' Mr Wilson explained with a hint of irony. ‘He was in a bit of a mess. Bloody. It seemed to upset the boss and he said quite violent, “What the devil have you been doing?” and Doug didn't like it and turned his back on him and walked out.'

‘Now, that's an incident that we haven't got in the files,' Alleyn said.

‘I never mentioned it. This Sub-Inspector Jackson comes into my shed and throws his weight about, treating us from the word go as if we're holding back on him. Very inconsiderate, he was. “I don't want to know what you think. I want you to answer my questions.” All right. We answered his questions.'

‘Oh, well,' said Alleyn pacifically.

‘We don't want to hold back on it,' Mr Wilson continued with warmth. ‘We were as much put out as any one else when we heard. It's not very nice to think about. When they told Jack Merrywether—he's the presser—what he must of done that morning, he vomited. All over my shearing-board before any one could take any steps about it. It was nearly a month afterwards but that made no difference to Jack.'

‘Quite,' said Alleyn. ‘How did this visit of Mr Rubrick's end?'

‘It finished up by the boss taking a bad turn. We helped him out into the open. You wasn't about just then, Mr Losse, and he asked us not to say anything. He carried some kind of medicine on him that he sniffed up and it seemed to fix him. Tommy sent young Cliff for the station car and he drove the boss back to the house. He was very particular we shouldn't mention it. Anxious to avoid trouble. He was a gentleman, was Mr Rubrick.'

‘Yes. Now, then, Mr Wilson, about the press. When you knocked off on the previous night it was full of wool, wasn't it? The top half was on the bottom half and the wool had been tramped down but not pressed. Is that right?'

‘That's right.'

‘And that, to all intents and purposes, was what it looked like in the morning?'

‘So far as I noticed, but I did no more than glance at it, if that. Jack Merrywether never noticed anything.'

‘When did you finish shearing?'

‘Not till six that evening. We cleaned up the sheep that'd been brought in overnight and then there was a hold up. That was at eleven. The fresh ones we'd brought in hadn't dried off. Then it come up sunny and we turned them out again. Everyone was snakey. Young Doug says the sheep are dry and I say they're not and Tommy Johns says they're not. The lorry turns up and Syd Barnes, he's the driver, he has to shove in his oar and reckon they're dry because he wants to get on with it and make the pub at the Pass before dark. So I tell the whole gang where they get off and by that time the sheep have dried and we start up again. Young Cliff was hanging round the shed doing nothing, and then he slopes off, and his father goes crook when he can't find him. It was lovely.'

The whistle tooted and the shed was at once active. Five plunging sheep were dragged in by their hind legs from the pens, machinery whirred, a raw-boned man moved over to the press, spat on his hands, and bore down on the ratchet lever. Mr Wilson pinched out his cigarette, nodded and walked back to the sorter's table.

Alleyn watched the presser complete his work. The bale was sewn up, removed, and shoved along the floor towards the double doors where he and Fabian still waited. This process was assisted by the use of a short hook which was caught into the corners of the bale. ‘The lorry backs in here,' Fabian said, ‘and the packs are dumped on board. The floor's the same height as the lorry, or a little higher. There's no lifting. It's the same sort of business in the wool store at the other end.'

‘Is that the same presser? Jack Merrywether?'

‘Yes,' said Fabian, ‘that's Jack. He who was so acutely inconvenienced by the absence of a vomitorium in the wool-shed.'

‘Is he apt to be sick again, do you imagine, if I put a few simple questions to him?'

‘Who can tell? What do you want to ask him?'

‘Whether he used one of those hooks when he shifted the crucial bale.'

‘Ticklish!' Fabian said. ‘It makes even me a little queasy to think of it. Hi, Jack!'

Merrywether's reaction to his summons was disquieting. No sooner had Fabian spoken his introductory phrases than the presser turned pale and stared at Alleyn with an expression of panic.

‘Look,' he said. ‘I wouldn't of come back on this job if it hadn't of been for the war. That's how it affected me. I'd have turned it up only for the war and there being a shortage. “Look,” I said to Mr Johns and Ben Wilson, I said: “not if it's the same outfit,” I said. “You don't get me coming at the Mount Moon job if it's the same press again,” I said. Then they told me it was a new press and I give in. I come to oblige. Not willing, though. I didn't fancy it and I don't yet. Call me soft if you like, but that's how I am. If anybody starts asking me about you know what, it catches me smack in the belly. I feel shocking. I don't reckon I'll ever shake it off. Now!'

Alleyn murmured sympathetically.

‘Look at it whatever way you like,' Merrywether continued argumentatively, ‘and it's still a fair cow. You think you're mastering the sensation and then somebody comes along and starts asking you a lot of silly questions and you feel terrible again.'

‘As far as I'm concerned,' Alleyn said hurriedly, ‘there's only one detail I'd like to check.' He glanced at the bale hook which Merrywether still grasped in his pink freckled hand. Merrywether followed his glance. His fingers opened and the hook crashed on the floor. With clairvoyant accuracy he roared out: ‘I know what you mean and I never! It wasn't there. I never touched it with the hook. Now!' And before Alleyn could reply, he added: ‘You ask me why. All right. They'd dumped the hook on me. There you are! Deliberate, I reckon.'

‘Dumped it on you? The hook? Hid it?'

‘That's right. Deliberate. Stuck it up on a beam over there.' He gestured excitedly at the far wall of the shed. ‘There's two of those hooks and that's what they done with them. In that dark corner and high up, where I couldn't see them. So what do I do? Go crook at the fleecies. Naturally. I get the idea they done it to swing one across me. They're boys and they act like boys. Cheeky. I'd told them off the day before, and I reckoned they'd come back at me with this one. “You come to light with them two hooks,” I said, “or I'll knock your blocks off for you.” Well, of course, they says they don't know anything about it, and I don't believe them and away we go. And by this time the bins are full and me and my mate are behind on our job.'

Alleyn walked over to the wall and reached up. He could just get his hand on the beam.

‘So you moved the bales without using hooks?'

‘That's right. Now don't ask me if we noticed anything. If we'd noticed anything we'd have said something, wouldn't we? All right.'

‘When did you find the hooks?'

‘That night when we was clearing up, Albie Black starts in again on the boys, saying they never done their job, not filling up the kerosene lamps and fooling round with the candle. So we all look over where the lantern and the candle are on the wall and my mate says they've been swarming up the wall like a couple of blasted monkeys. “What's that up there,” he howls. He's a tall joker, and he walks across and yanks down the bale hooks off of the top beam. The boys reckon they don't know how the hooks got up there, and we argue round the point till Tommy Johns has to bring up the matter of who the hell put his foot through his overall pants. Oh, it was a lovely day.'

‘When the bales were finally loaded on the lorry—' Alleyn began, but at once Merrywether took fright. ‘Now, don't you start in on me about that,' he scolded, ‘I never noticed nothing, How would I? I never handled it.'

‘All right, my dear man,' said Alleyn pacifically, ‘you didn't. That disposes of that. Don't be so damned touchy; I never knew such a chap.'

‘I got to consider my stomach,' said Merrywether darkly.

‘Your stomach'll have to lump it, I'm afraid. Who stencilled the Mount Moon mark on the bales?'

‘Young Cliff.'

‘And who sewed up the bales?'

‘I did. Now!'

‘All right. Now the bale with which I'm concerned was the first one you handled that morning. When you started work, it was full of wool that apparently had been trampled down but not pressed. You pressed it. You told the police you noticed no change whatever, nothing remarkable or unusual in the condition of the bale. It was exactly as you'd left it the night before.'

‘So it was the same. Wouldn't I of noticed if it hadn't been?'

‘I should have thought so, certainly. The floor, for instance, round the press.'

‘What about it?' Merrywether began on a high note. Alleyn saw his hands contract. He blinked, his sandy lashes moving like shutters over his light eyes. ‘What about the floor?' he said, less truculently.

‘I notice how smooth the surface is. Would that be the natural grease in the fleeces? It's particularly noticeable on the shearing-board and round the press where the bales may act as polishing agents when they are shoved across the floor.' He glanced at Merrywether's feet. ‘You wear ordinary boots. The soles must get quite glassy in here, I should have thought.'

‘Not to notice,' he said uncomfortably.

‘The floor was in its normal condition that morning, was it? No odd pieces of wool lying about?'

‘I told you—' Merrywether began, but Alleyn interrupted him. ‘And as smooth as ever?' he said. Merrywether was silent. ‘Come now,' said Alleyn, ‘haven't you remembered something that escaped your memory before, when Sub-Inspector Jackson talked to you?'

‘I couldn't be expected—I was crook. The way he kept asking me how could I of shifted a pack with you-know-what inside it. It turned my stomach on me.'

‘I know. But the floor. Thinking back, now. Was there anything about the floor, round the press, when you arrived here that morning? Was it swept and polished as usual?'

‘It was swept.'

‘And polished?'

‘All right, all right, it wasn't. How was I to remember, three weeks later? The way I'd got churned up over what, in all innocence, I done? It never crossed me mind till just now when you brought it up. I noticed it and yet I never noticed it if you can understand.'

‘I know,' said Alleyn.

‘But, in pity's name, Jack,' cried Fabian, who had been silent throughout the entire interview, ‘what did you not notice?'

‘The floor was kind of smudged,' said Merrywether.

In the men's midday dinner hour, Fabian brought Cliff Johns to the study. Alleyn felt curious about this boy who had so unexpectedly refused the patronage of Florence Rubrick. He had asked Fabian to leave them alone together and now, as he watched the uncoordinated movements of the youth's hands, he wondered if Cliff knew that, in defiance of his alibi, he was Sub-Inspector Jackson's pet among the suspects.

He got the boy to sit down and asked him if he understood the reason for the interview. Cliff nodded and clenched and unclenched his wide mobile hands. Behind him, beyond open windows, glared a noonday garden, the plateau, blank with sunshine, and the mountains, etherealized now by an intensity of light. Shadows on those ranges appeared translucent as though the sky beyond shone through. Their snows dazzled the eyes and seemed to be composed of light without substance. A nimbus of light rimmed Cliff's hair. Alleyn thought that his wife would have liked to paint the boy, and would have found pleasure in reflected colour that swam in the hollow of his temples and beneath the sharp arches of his brows. He said: ‘Are you interested in painting as well as music?'