Died in the Wool (34 page)

‘We're going to nip up when the bureau opens.'

‘Very sensible. Goodnight to you.'

‘Goodnight,' said Ursula. She took hold of his coat lapels. ‘You're terribly attractive,' she said, ‘and you're a darling because you don't think it was us. Any of us. I'm sorry he hit you.' She kissed him and walked soberly out of the room.

‘A baggage!' Alleyn said to himself, meditatively stroking the side of his face. ‘A very notable baggage.'

Markins came in. ‘That's the lot, sir,' he said. ‘Unless you want me to wake up Mrs Aceworthy and Mrs Duck.'

‘They can wait till the morning. Send the others to bed, Markins. Escort the Johns brace to their cottage and then join me in the wool-shed.'

‘So you are going.'

‘I'm afraid so. We can't wait now. I've told Captain Grace.'

‘And he told us. 'Streuth, he's a beauty, that young fellow. “Officially,” he says, “Mr Alleyn's going to bed. Between ourselves, he's not letting the grass grow under his feet. You needn't say I said so, but he's going up to the wool-shed to work on the scene of the crime!” Could you beat it? Goes and lets it out.'

‘He was under orders to do so.'

Markins looked thoughtfully at his superior. ‘Inviting them to come and have another pop at you, sir? Is that the lay? Taking a risk, aren't you?'

‘You go and do your stuff. Make sure nobody sees you go into the wool-shed. I shan't be long.'

‘Very good, sir.' Markins went out but reopened the door and put his head round it. ‘Excuse me, Mr Alleyn,' he said, wrinkling up his face, ‘but it's nice to be working with someone—after all these years on me pat—especially you.'

‘I'm delighted to have you, Markins,' said Alleyn, and when the little man had gone, he thought, ‘He's not old Fox, but he's somebody. He's a nice little bloke.'

He heard the others come out of the drawing-room. Douglas called out importantly, ‘Goodnight, Tommy; goodnight, Cliff. Report to me first thing in the morning, remember. You, too, Markins.'

‘Certainly, sir,' said Markins briskly. ‘I'll lock up, sir.'

‘Right.'

Alleyn went into the hall. Douglas and Terence were lighting their candles. The two Johns and Markins were in the back passage.

‘Captain Grace,' Alleyn said not too loudly, ‘is there such a thing as a paraffin heater on the premises? Sorry to be a nuisance, but I'd be glad of one—for my room.'

‘Yes, yes, of course,' said Douglas. ‘I quite understand, sir. There's one somewhere about, isn't there, Markins?'

‘I'll get it out for Mr Alleyn, sir, and take it up.'

‘No. Just leave it in the hall here, will you? When you come back.'

Alleyn looked at Douglas who instantly winked at him. Terence Lynne stood at the foot of the stairs, shielding her candle with her hand. She was an impressive figure in her ruby-red gown. The flame glowed through her thin fingers, turning them blood-red. Her face, lit from below, took on the strangely dramatic air induced by upward-thrown shadows. Her eyes, sunk in black rings above the brilliant points of her cheek bones, seemed to fix their gaze on Alleyn. She turned stiffly and began to mount the stairs, a dark figure. The glow of her candle died out on the landing.

Alleyn lit one of the candles. ‘Don't wait for me,' he said to Douglas. ‘I want to see that Markins comes in. I'll lock my door. Don't forget to batter on it at four-thirty, will you?'

‘Not I, sir.' Douglas jerked his head complacently. ‘I think they're quite satisfied that you're spending the night in the shed,' he whispered. ‘Markins and Tommy and Co. Rather amusing.'

‘Very,' said Alleyn dryly, ‘but please remember that Miss Lynne and Miss Harme are both included in the deception.'

‘Oh—er, yes. Yes. All right.'

‘It's important.'

‘Quite.'

‘Thanks very much, Grace,' said Alleyn. ‘See you, alas, at four-thirty.'

Douglas lowered his voice, ‘Sleep well, sir,' he chuckled.

‘Thank you. I've a job of writing to do first.'

‘And don't forget to lock your door.'

‘No, no. I'll come up quietly in a moment.'

‘Goodnight, Mr Alleyn.'

‘Goodnight.'

‘I'm sorry,' Douglas muttered, ‘that I didn't take it better in there. Bad show.'

‘Not a bit. Goodnight.'

Alleyn waited until he heard a door bang distantly upstairs and then went up to his room. He brought two sweaters and a cardigan out of his wardrobe, put them all on, and then wedged himself into a tweed jacket. The candle he had used the previous night was burned down to less than a quarter of an inch. ‘Good for twenty minutes,' he thought, and lit it. He heard Douglas come along the passage to the landing, go into the bathroom, emerge, and tap on Terence Lynne's door. ‘Damn the fellow!' thought Alleyn, ‘are we never to be rid of his amatory gambits?' He heard Douglas say, ‘Are you all right, Terry?…Sure? Promise? Goodnight again, then, bless you.' He creaked away down the passage. Here, it seemed, he ran into Ursula Harme emerging from Fabian's room. Alleyn watched the encounter through the crack between the hinges of his open door. Ursula whispered and nodded, Douglas whispered and smiled. He patted her on the head. She put her hand lightly on his and came tiptoe with her candle past Alleyn's door to her own room. Douglas went into his and in a minute or two all was quiet. Alleyn put his torch in one pocket and Arthur Rubrick's diary in the other. He then went quietly downstairs. A paraffin heater was set out in the hall. He left it behind him with regret and once more went out into the cold. It was now five minutes to eleven.

Alleyn shone his torch on Markins. Sitting on a heap of empty bales with one pulled about his shoulders, he looked like some chilly kobold. Alleyn squatted beside him and switched off his torch.

‘It'll be nice when we can converse in a normal manner with no more stage whispers,' he muttered.

‘I've been thinking things over, sir. I take it your idea is to lay a trap for our joker. Whoever he is—say “he” for argument's sake—he thinks the captain's let the cat out of the bag about you coming up here and that you'd be off your guard and wide open to another welt on the napper? I'm to lie low, cut in at the last moment, and catch him hot.'

‘Just a second,' said Alleyn. He pulled off his shoes and thudded to the press. ‘We've got to stow ourselves away.'

‘Both of us?'

‘Yes. It may be soon and it may be a hellish long wait. You'll get in the wool-press. Into that half. The one with the door. Be ready to open the front a crack for a view. I'm going to lie alongside it. I'll get you to cover me with these foul sacks. It sounds idiotic, but I think it's going to work. Don't disturb the sacks that Mr Losse was lying on. Now, then.'

Alleyn, remembering Cliff's narrative, spread three empty sacks on the floor behind the press. He lay on them with Arthur Rubrick's diary open under his chin. Markins dropped several more sacks over him. ‘I'll put my torch on,' Alleyn whispered. ‘Can you see any light?'

‘Wait a bit, sir.' A further weight fell across Alleyn's shoulders and head. ‘OK now, sir.' Alleyn stretched himself like a cat and relaxed his muscles systematically until his body lay slack and resistless on its hard bed. It was abominably stuffy and there was some danger of the dusty hessian inducing a sneeze. If his nose began to tickle he'd have to plug it. Close beside him the press creaked. Markins' foot rapped against the side. He thudded down into his nest.

‘Any good?' Alleyn whispered.

‘I'm tying a bit of string to the side,' said a tiny voice. ‘I can let it open then.'

‘Good. Don't move unless I do.'

After a silence of perhaps a minute, Alleyn said, ‘Markins?'

‘Sir?'

‘Shall I tell you my bet for our visitor?'

‘If you please.'

Alleyn told him. He heard Markins give a thin ghost of a whistle. ‘Fancy!' he whispered.

Alleyn turned his torch on the open pages of Arthur Rubrick's diary. On closer inspection it proved to be a well-made, expensively-bound affair, with his initials stamped on the cover. On the fly-leaf was an enormous inscription: ‘Arthur with fondest love from Florence, Christmas, 1941.'

Alleyn read with some difficulty. The book was no more than five inches from his nose, and Rubrick had written a tiny and delicate script. His curiously formal style appeared in the first line and continued for many pages without interruption or any excursions into modernity. It was in this style or one more antique, Alleyn supposed, that he had written his essays.

‘December 28th, 1941,' Alleyn read. ‘I cannot but think it a curious circumstance that I should devote these pages, the gift of my wife, to a purpose I have long had in mind, but have been too languid or too idle to pursue. Like an unstudious urchin I am beguiled by the smoothness of paper and the invitation of pale-blue lines, to accomplish a task to which a common ledger or exercise book could not beguile me. In short, I intend to keep a journal. In my judgement there is but one virtue in such a practice: the writer must consider himself free; nay, rather, bound to set down impartially those thoughts, hopes, and secret burdens of the heart which, at all other times, he may not disclose. This, then, I propose to do, and I believe those persons who study the ailments of the mind would applaud my intention as salutary and wise.'

Alleyn paused in his stuffy confinement and listened for a moment. He heard only the sound of his pulse and when he moved his head the scratch of hessian against his shoulders.

‘…that I had been mistaken in my choice was too soon apparent. We had not been married a year before I wondered at the impulse that had led me into such an unhappy union, and it seemed to me that some other than I had acted so precipitately. Let me be just. The qualities that had invoked the admiration I so rashly mistook for affection were real. All those qualities, indeed, which I am lacking are hers in abundance: energy, intelligence, determination and, above all, vitality…'

A rat scuttled in the rafters.

‘Markins?'

‘Sir?'

‘Remember, no move until you get your cue.'

‘Quite so, sir.'

Alleyn turned a page.

‘…is it not a strange circumstance that admiration should go hand in hand with faded love? Those qualities for which I most applaud her have most often diminished, indeed prevented altogether, my affection. Yet I believed my indifference to be caused, not so much by a fault in her or in myself, as by the natural and unhappy consequence of my declining health. Had I been more robust, I thought, I would, in turn, have responded more easily to her energy. In this belief I might have well continued for the remainder of our life together, had not Terence Lynne come upon me in my solitude.'

Alleyn rested his hand upon the open book and called to his mind the photograph of Arthur Rubrick. ‘Poor devil!' he thought. ‘What bad luck!' He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes past eleven. The candle in his bedroom would soon gutter and go out.

‘…it is over a fortnight now since I engaged to keep this journal. How can I describe my emotions during this time? “I attempt from love's sickness to fly,” and (how true): “I cannot raise forces enough to rebel.” Is it not pitiful that a man of my age and sad health should fall a victim of this other distemper? Indeed, I am now become an antic, a classical figure of fun, old Sir Ague who languishes upon a pretty wench. At least she is ignorant of my dotage and in her divine kindness finds nothing but gratitude in me.'

Alleyn thought, ‘If, after all, the diary gives no inkling, I shall think myself a toad for having read it.'

‘January 10th: Florence came to me today with a tale of espionage at which I am greatly disquieted, the more so that her suspicions are at war with her inclining. I cannot, I will not believe what my judgement tells me is possible. Her very astuteness (I have never known her at fault in appraisement of character), and her great distress, combine to persuade me of that which I cannot bring myself to set down in detail. I am the more uneasy that she is determined to engage herself in the affair. I have entreated her to leave it in the hands of authority, and can only hope that she will pursue this course and that they will be removed from Mount Moon and placed under a more careful guard, as indeed would sort well with their work. I am pledged to say nothing of this and, truth to tell, am glad to be so confined. My health is so poor a thing nowadays, that I have no stomach for responsibility and would be rid, if I might, of all emotions, yet am not so, but rather the more engaged. Yet I must ponder the case and find myself, upon consideration, woefully persuaded. Circumstance, fact, and his views and character all point to it.'

Alleyn read this passage through again. Markins, inside the press, gave a hollow little cough and shifted his position.