Died in the Wool (10 page)

This, Douglas said, was too much for him. He followed his aunt into the study and, as he said, gave her the works. ‘I stood no nonsense from Flossie,' said Douglas, brushing up his moustache. ‘We understood each other pretty well. I used to pull her leg a bit and she liked it. She was a good scout, taking her all round, only you didn't want to let her ride roughshod over you. I talked pretty straight to her. I told her she'd have to get rid of Markins, and I told her why.'

Terence Lynne said under her breath, ‘I never realized you did that.'

Flossie had been very much upset. She was caught. On the one hand there was her extreme reluctance to part with her jewel, as she had so often called Markins; on the other, her noted zeal, backed up by public utterance, in the matter of counter-espionage. Douglas said he reminded her of a speech she had made in open debate in which she had wound up with a particularly stately peroration: ‘I say now, and I say it solemnly and advisedly,' Flossie had urged, ‘that with our very life blood at stake, it is the duty of us all not only to set a guard upon our own tongue but to make a public example of any one, be he stranger or dearest friend, who, by the slightest deviation from that discretion, which is his duty, endangers in the least degree the safety of our realm. Make no doubt about it,' she had finally shouted, ‘there is an enemy in our midst and let each of us beware lest, unknowingly, we give him shelter.' This piece of rhetoric had a wry flavour in regurgitation, and for a moment Flossie stared miserably at her nephew. Then she rallied.

‘You've been working too hard, Douglas,' she said. ‘You're suffering from nervous strain, dear.'

But Douglas made short work of this objection and indignantly put before her the link with Mr Kurata Kan, at which Flossie winced, the vagueness of Markins' antecedents, the importance of their work, the impossibility of taking the smallest risk and their clear duty in the matter. It would be better, he said, if after further investigation on Douglas's part Markins still looked suspicious, for Flossie and not Douglas or Fabian to report the matter to the highest possible authority.

Poor Flossie wrung her hands. ‘Think of what he does,' she wailed. ‘And he's so good with Arthur. He's marvellous with Arthur. And he's so obliging, Douglas. Single-handed butler in a house of this size! Everything so nice, always. And there's no help to be got. None.'

‘The girls will have to manage.'

‘I don't believe it!' she cried, rallying. ‘I'm always right in my judgement of people. I never go wrong. I won't believe it.'

But, as Ursula had said, Flossie was an honest woman, and it seemed as if Douglas had done his work effectively. She tramped up and down the room hitting her top teeth with a pencil, a sure sign that she was upset. He waited.

‘You're right,' Flossie said at last. ‘I can't let it go.' She lowered her chin and looked at Douglas over the tops of her pince-nez. ‘You were quite right to tell me, dear,' she said. ‘I'll handle it.'

This was disturbing. ‘What will you do?' he asked.

‘Consider,' said Florence magnificently. ‘And act.'

‘How?'

‘Never you mind.' She patted him rather too vigorously on the cheek. ‘Leave it all to your old Floosy,' she said. This was the abominable pet name she had for herself.

‘But, Auntie,' he protested, ‘we've a right to know. After all—'

‘So you shall. At the right moment.' She dumped herself down at her desk. She was a tiny creature but all her movements were heavy and noisy. ‘Away with you,' she said. Douglas hung about. She began to write scratchily and in a moment or two tossed another remark at him. ‘I'm going to tackle him,' she said.

Douglas was horrified. ‘Oh, no, Aunt Floss. Honestly, you mustn't. It'll give the whole show away. Look here, Aunt Floss—'

But she told him sharply that he had chosen to come to her with his story and must allow her to deal with her own servants in the way that seemed best to her. Her pen scratched busily. When in his distress he roared at her, she, too, lost her temper and told him to be quiet. Douglas, unable to make up his mind to leave her, stared despondently through the window and saw Markins, neatly dressed, walk past the window mopping his brow. He had tramped up from the front gate.

‘Auntie Floss, please listen to me!'

‘I thought I told you—'

Appalled at his own handiwork, he left her.

At this point in his narrative Douglas rose and straddled the hearth-rug.

‘I don't mind telling you,' he said, ‘that we weren't the same after it. She got the huff and treated me like a kid.'

‘We noticed,' Fabian said, ‘that your popularity had waned a little. Poor Flossie! You'd hoist her with the petard of her own conscience. A maddening and unforgivable thing to do, of course. Obviously she would hate your guts for it.'

‘There's no need to put it like that,' said Douglas grandly.

‘With a little enlargement,' Fabian grinned, ‘it might work up into quite a pretty motive against you.'

‘That's a damned silly thing to say, Fabian,' Douglas shouted.

‘Shut up, Fab,' said Ursula. ‘You're impossible.'

‘Sorry, darling.'

‘I still don't see,' Douglas fumed, ‘that I could have taken any other line. After all, as she pointed out, it was her house and he was her servant.'

‘You didn't think of that when you picked his door lock,' Fabian pointed out.

‘I didn't pick the lock, Fabian, and anyhow that was entirely different.'

‘Did Mrs Rubrick tackle him?' Alleyn asked.

‘I presume so. She said nothing to me, and I wasn't going to ask and be ticked off again.'

Douglas lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Obviously,' Alleyn thought, ‘he still has something up his sleeve.'

‘As a matter of fact,' said Douglas lightly, ‘I'm quite positive she did tackle him, and I believe it's because of what she said that Markins killed her.'

‘And there,' said Fabian cheerfully, ‘you have it. Flossie says to Markins, “I understand from my nephew that you're an enemy agent. Take a week's wages in lieu of notice and expect to be arrested and shot when you get to the railway station!” “No, you don't,” says Markins to himself. He serves up the soup with murder in his heart, takes a stroll past the wool-shed, hears Flossie in the full spate of her experimental oratory, nips in and—does it. To me it just doesn't make sense.'

‘You deliberately make it sound silly,' said Douglas hotly.

‘It is silly. Moreover, it's not in her character, as I read it, to accuse Markins. It would have been the action of a fool and, bless my soul, Flossie was no fool.'

‘It was her deliberately expressed intention.'

‘To “tackle Markins.” That was, her phrase, wasn't it? That is, to tackle
l'affaire Markins
. She wanted to get rid of you and think. And, upon my soul, I don't blame her.'

‘But how would she tackle Markins?' Terence objected, ‘except by questioning him?' She spoke so seldom that the sound of her voice, cool and incisive, came as a little shock.

‘She was a bit of a Polonius, was Flossie. I think she went round to work. She may even,' said Fabian, giving a curious inflection to the phrase, ‘she may even have consulted Uncle Arthur.'

‘No,' said Douglas.

‘How on earth can you tell?' asked Ursula.

There was a moment's silence.

‘It would not have been in her character,' said Douglas.

‘Her character, you see,' Fabian said to Alleyn. ‘Always her character.'

‘Ever since fifth column trouble started in this country,' said Douglas, ‘Flossie had been asking questions about it in the House. Markins knew that as well as we did. If she gave him so much as an inkling that she suspected him, how d'you suppose he'd feel?'

‘And even if she decided not to accuse him straight out,' Ursula said, ‘don't you think he'd notice some change in her manner?'

‘Of course he would, Ursy,' Douglas agreed. ‘How could she help herself?'

‘Quite easily,' said Fabian. ‘She was as clever as a bagful of monkeys.'

‘I agree,' said Terence.

‘Well, now,' said Alleyn, ‘did any of you, in fact, notice any change in her manner towards Markins?'

‘To be quite honest,' said Fabian slowly, ‘we did. But I think we all put it down to her row with Cliff Johns. She was extremely cantankerous with all hands and the cook during that last week, was poor Flossie.'

‘She was unhappy,' Ursula declared. ‘She was wretchedly unhappy about Cliff. She used to tell me everything. I'm sure if she'd had a row with Markins she'd have told me about it. She used to call me her Safety Valve.'

‘Mrs Arthur Rubrick,' said Fabian, ‘accompanied by Miss U. Harme, SV, ADC, etc., etc.!'

‘She may have waited to talk to him until that night,' said Douglas. ‘The night she disappeared, I mean. She may have written for advice to a certain higher authority, and waited for the reply before she tackled Markins. Good Lord, that might have been the very letter she started writing while I was there!'

‘I think,' said Alleyn, ‘that I should have heard if she'd done that.'

‘Yes,' agreed Fabian. ‘Yes. After all, you are the higher authority, aren't you?'

Again there was a silence, an awkward one. Alleyn thought: Damn that boy, he's said precisely the wrong thing. He's made them self-conscious again.

‘Well, there's my case against Markins,' said Douglas grandly. ‘I don't pretend it's complete or anything like that, but I'll swear there's something in it, and you can't deny that after she disappeared his behaviour was suspicious.'

‘I can deny it,' said Fabian, ‘and what's more I jolly well do. Categorically, whatever that may mean. He was worried and so were all of us.'

‘He was jumpy.'

‘We were all as jumpy as cats. Why shouldn't he jump with us? It'd have been much more suspicious if he'd remained all suave and imperturbable. You're reasoning backwards, Douglas.'

‘I couldn't stand the sight of the chap about the house,' said Douglas. ‘I can't now. It's monstrous that he should still be here.'

‘Yes,' Alleyn said. ‘Why is he still here?'

‘You might well ask,' Douglas rejoined. ‘You'll scarcely credit it, sir, but he's here because the police asked Uncle Arthur to keep him on. It was like this…'

The story moved forward. Out of the narrative grew a theme of mounting dissonance, anxiety and fear. Five days after Florence had walked down the lavender path and turned to the left, the overture opened on the sharp note of a telephone bell. The post office at the Pass had a wire for Mrs Rubrick. Should they read it? Terence took it down. ‘Trust you are not indisposed your presence urgently requested at Thursday's meeting.' It was signed by a brother MP. There followed a confused and hurried passage. Florence had not gone north! Where was she? Inquiries, tentative at first but growing hourly less guarded and more frantic, long distance calls, calls to her lawyers, with whom she was known to have made an appointment, to hospitals and police stations, the abandonment of privacy following a dominion-wide SOS on the air; search parties radiating from Mount Moon and culminating in the sudden collapse of Arthur Rubrick; his refusal to have a trained nurse or indeed any one but Terence and Markins to look after him: all these abnormalities followed each other in an ominous crescendo that reached its peak in the dreadful finality of discovery. As this phase unfolded, Alleyn thought he could trace a change of mood in the little company assembled in the study. At first Douglas alone stated the theme. Then, one by one, at first reluctantly, then with increasing freedom the other voices joined in, and it seemed to Alleyn that after their long avoidance of the subject they now found ease in speaking of it. After the impact of the discovery, there followed the slow assembly of official themes: the inquest adjourned, the constant appearance of the police, and the tremendous complications of the public funeral: these events mingled like phrases of a movement until they were interrupted emphatically by Fabian. When Douglas, who had evidently been impressed by it, described Flossie's cortège—‘there were three bands'—Fabian shocked them all by breaking into laughter. Laughter bubbled out of him. He stammered, ‘It was so horrible…disgusting…I'm terribly sorry, but when you think of what had happened to her…and then to have three brass bands…Oh, God, it's so electrically comic!' He drew in his breath in a shuddering gasp.

‘Fabian!' Ursula murmured, and put her arm about him, pressing him against her knees. ‘Darling Fabian, don't.'

Douglas stared at Fabian and then looked away in embarrassment. ‘You don't want to think of it like that,' he said. ‘It was a tribute. She was enormously popular. We had to let them do it. Personally—'