Died in the Wool (13 page)

‘Honestly!' said Ursula and giggled.

‘Come on, now, Douglas. Egged on by Flossie you did make a formal pass at Ursy that very afternoon. Didn't you, now?'

‘I only want to spare Ursy—'

‘No you don't,' said Fabian. ‘Come off it, Doug. You want to spare yourself, old cock. This is how it went, I fancy: Flossie, observing my exaltation, told you that it was high time you made a move. Encouraged by Ursy's carryings on at lunch—you overdid it a bit, Ursy—and gingered up by Flossie, you proposed and were refused.'

‘You didn't really mind, though, did you, Douglas?' asked Ursula gently. ‘I mean, it was all rather spur-of-the-momentish, wasn't it?'

‘Well, yes,' said Douglas. ‘Yes, it was. But I don't mean…'

‘Give it up,' Fabian advised him kindly. ‘Or were you by any chance in love with Ursy?'

‘Naturally. I wouldn't have asked Ursy to be my wife…' Douglas began and then swore softly to himself.

‘And with the wealthy aunt's blessing why shouldn't the good little heir speak up like a man? We'll let it go at that,' said Fabian, ‘Ursy said her piece, Mr Alleyn, and Douglas took it like a hero and the next thing that happened was me on the mat before Flossie.'

The scene had been formidable and had taken place there, in the study. Flossie, Fabian explained, had contrived to give the whole thing an air of the grossest impropriety. She had spoken in a cold hushed voice. ‘Fabian, I'm afraid what I'm going to say to you is very serious and most unpleasant. I am bitterly disappointed and dreadfully grieved. I think you know what it is that has hurt me so much, don't you?'

‘I'm afraid I haven't an inkling so far, Aunt Flossie,' Fabian had answered brightly and with profound inward misgivings.

‘If you think for a minute, Fabian, I'm sure your conscience will tell you.'

But Fabian refused to play this uncomfortable game and remained obstinately unhelpful. Flossie extended her long upper lip and the corners of her mouth turned down dolorously. ‘Oh, Fabian, Fabian!' she said in a wounded voice, and, after an unfruitful pause, she added: ‘And I put such trust in you. Such trust!' She bit her lip and shielded her eyes wearily. ‘You refuse to help me, then. I had hoped it would be easier than this. What have you been saying to Ursula? What have you done, Fabian?'

This persistent repetition of his name had jarred on his nerves, Fabian said, but he had replied without emphasis. ‘I'm afraid I've told Ursula that I'm fond of her.'

‘Do you realize how dreadfully wrong that was? What right had you to speak to Ursy?'

There was only one answer to this. ‘None,' said Fabian.

‘None,' Flossie repeated. ‘None! You see? Oh, Fabian.'

‘Ursula returns my love,' said Fabian, taking some pleasure in the old-fashioned phrase.

Two brick-red patches appeared over Flossie's cheek bones. She abandoned her martyrdom. ‘Nonsense,' she said sharply.

‘I know it's incredible, but I have her word for it.'

‘She's a child. You've taken advantage of her youth.'

‘That's ridiculous, Aunt Florence,' said Fabian.

‘She's sorry for you,' said Flossie cruelly. ‘It's pity she feels. You've played on her sympathy for your bad health. That's what it is. Pity,' she added with an air of originality, ‘may be akin to love but it's not love and you've behaved most unscrupulously in appealing to it.'

‘I made no appeal. I agree that I've no business to ask Ursula to marry me and I said as much to her.'

‘That was very astute of you,' she said.

‘I said there must be no engagement between us unless my doctor could give me a clean bill of health. I assure you, Aunt Florence, I've no intention of asking her to marry a crock.'

‘If you were bursting with health,' Flossie shouted, ‘you'd still be entirely unsuited to each other.' She elaborated her theme, pointing out to Fabian the weaknesses in his character, his conceit, his cynicism, his absence of ideals. She emphasized the difference in their circumstances. No doubt, she said, Fabian knew very well that Ursula had an income of her own and, on her uncle's death, would be extremely well provided. Fabian said that he agreed with everything Flossie said but that after all it was for Ursula to decide. He added that if the magnetic fuse came up to their expectations he would be in a better position financially and could hope for regular employment in specialized and experimental jobs. Flossie stared at him. Almost, Fabian said, you could see her lay back her ears.

‘I shall speak to Ursula,' she said.

This announcement filled him with dismay. He lost his head and implored her to wait until he had seen the doctor. ‘You see,' he told Alleyn, ‘I knew so well what would happen. Ursy, of course, doesn't agree with me but the truth is that for her Flossie was a purely symbolic figure. You've heard what Flossie did for Ursy. When Ursy was thirteen years old and completely desolate, Flossie came along like a plain but comforting goddess and snatched her up into a system of pink clouds. She still sees her as the beneficent super-mother. Flossie had a complete success with Ursula. She caught her young. She loaded her down with a sense of gratitude and gingered her up with inoculations of heroine-worship. Flossie was, as people say, everything to Ursula. She combined the roles of adored form-mistress, Queen-Mother and lover.'

‘I never heard such utter tripe,' said Ursula, quite undisconcerted by this analysis. ‘All this talk of Queen-Mothers! Do pipe down, darling.'

‘I mean it,' Fabian persisted. ‘Instead of having a good healthy giggle about some frightful youth or mooning over a talkie idol or turning violently Anglo-Catholic which is the correct behaviour in female adolescence, you converted all these normal impulses into a blind devotion to Flossie.'

‘Shut up, do. We've had it all out a dozen times.'

‘It wouldn't have mattered if it had passed off in the normal way but it became a fixation.'

‘She was marvellous to me. I owed everything to her. I was discreetly grateful. And I loved her. I'd have been a monster if I didn't. You and your fixations!'

‘Would you believe it,' said Fabian, angrily addressing himself to Alleyn. ‘This silly girl, although she says she loves me, won't marry me, not because I'm a bad bargain physically which I admit, but simply because Flossie, who's dead, screwed some sort of undertaking out of her that she'd give me up.'

‘I promised to wait two years and I'm going to keep my promise.'

‘There!' cried Fabian triumphantly. ‘A promise under duress if ever there was one. Imagine the interview. All the emotional jiggery-pokery that she'd tried on me and then some. “Darling little Ursy, if I'd had a baby of my own she couldn't have been dearer. Poor old Floosie knows best. You're making me so unhappy.” Faugh!' said Fabian violently. ‘It's enough to make you sick.'

‘I didn't think anybody ever said “Faugh” in real life,' Ursula observed. ‘Only Hamlet. “And smelt so. Faugh!” '

‘That was “Puh!” ' said Alleyn mildly.

‘Well, there you have it,' said Fabian after a pause. ‘Ursy went off the day after our respective scenes with Flossie. The Red Cross people rang up to know if she could do her sixty-hours hospital duty. I've always considered that Flossie arranged it. Ursula wrote to me from the hospital and that was the first I knew about this outrageous promise. And, by the way, Flossie didn't commute the sentence into two years' probation until afterwards. At first she exacted a straight-out pledge that Ursy would give me up altogether. The alteration was due, I fancy, to my uncle.'

‘You confided in him?' Alleyn asked.

‘He found out for himself. He was extraordinarily perceptive. He seemed to me,' said Fabian, ‘to resemble some instrument. He would catch and echo in himself, delicately, the coarser sounds made by other people. I suppose his ill health made for a contemplative habit of mind. At all events he achieved it. He was very quiet always. One would almost forget he was in the room sometimes, and then one would look up and meet his eye and know that he had been with one all the time; perhaps critically, perhaps sympathetically. That didn't matter. He was a good companion. It was like that over this affair with Ursy. Apparently he had known all the time that I was in love with her. He asked me to come and see him while he was having his afternoon rest. It was the first time, I believe, that he'd ever asked me a direct question. He said: “Has it reached a climax, then, between you and that child?” You know, he was fond of you, Ursy. He said, once, that since Flossie was not transparent he could hardly expect that you should notice him.'

‘I liked him very much,' said Ursula defensively, ‘he was just so quiet that somehow one didn't notice him.'

‘I told him the whole story. It was one of his bad days. He was breathing short and I was afraid I'd tire him but he made me go on. When I'd finished he asked me what we were going to do if the doctor didn't give me a clean bill. I said I didn't know, but it didn't matter much because Flossie was going to take a stand about it and I was afraid of her influence over Ursy. He said he believed that might be overcome. I thought then that perhaps he meant to tackle Flossie. I still think that he may have been responsible for her suddenly commuting the life sentence into a mere two years, but of course her row with Douglas over Markins may have had something to do with it. You were never quite the same hot favourite after that, were you, Douglas?'

‘Not quite,' Douglas agreed sadly.

‘Perhaps it was a bit of both,' Fabian continued. ‘But I fancy Uncle Arthur did tackle her. Before I left him he said with that wheezy little laugh of his: “It takes a strong man to be a weak husband. Matrimonially speaking, a condition of perpetual apology is difficult to sustain. I've failed signally in the role.” I think I know what he meant, don't you, Terry?'

‘I,' said Terence. ‘Why do you ask me?'

‘Because unlike Ursy you were not blinded by Flossie's splendours. You must have been able to look at them both objectively.'

‘I don't think so,' she said, but so quietly that perhaps only Alleyn heard her.

‘And he must have been attached to you, you know, because when he became ill, you were the one he wanted to see.'

As if answering some implied criticism in this, Douglas said: ‘I don't know what we'd have done without Terry all through that time. She was marvellous.'

‘I know,' said Fabian, still looking at her. ‘You see, Terry, I've often thought that of all of us you're best equipped to look at the whole thing in perspective. Or are you?'

‘I wasn't a relation,' said Terence, ‘if that's what you mean. I was an outsider, a paid employee.'

‘Put it that way if you like. What I meant was that in your case there were no emotional complications.' He waited, and then, with a precise repetition of his former inflection, he added: ‘Or were there?'

‘How could there be? I don't know what you want me to say. I'm no good at this kind of thing.'

‘Not much in our line, is it, Terry?' said Douglas, instantly forming an alliance. ‘When it comes to all this messing about and holding post-mortems and wondering what everybody was thinking about everybody else, you and I are out of the picture, aren't we?'

‘All right,' said Fabian, ‘let's put it to the authority. What do you say, Mr Alleyn? Is this admittedly ragged discussion a complete waste of time? Does it leave you precisely where you were with the police files? Or has it, if only in the remotest degree, helped you along the path towards a solution?'

‘It's of interest,' Alleyn replied. ‘It's given me something that no amount of poring over the files could have produced.'

‘And my third question?' Fabian persisted.

‘I can't answer it,' Alleyn rejoined gravely. ‘But I do hope, very much, that you'll carry on with the discussion.'

‘There you are, Terry,' said Fabian, ‘it's up to you, you see.'

‘To do what?'

‘To carry forward the theme, to be sure. To tell us where we were wrong and why. To give us, without prejudice, your portrait of Flossie Rubrick.'

Again Fabian looked up at the painting. ‘You said you thought that blank affair up there was like her. Why?'

Without glancing at the portrait, Miss Lynne said: ‘It's a stupid looking face in the picture. In my opinion that's what she was. A stupid woman.'

T
HE ASPECT OF
Terence Lynne that struck Alleyn most forcibly was her composure. He felt quite sure that, more than any of them, she disliked and resented these interminable discussions. Yet she answered his questions composedly. Unlike her companions, she showed no sign of launching into a continuous narrative and the sense of release which had encouraged them to talk was, he felt certain, absent in Miss Lynne. He had the feeling that unless he was careful he would find himself engaged in something very like routine police interrogation. This, above all things, he was anxious to avoid. He wanted to retain his position as an onlooker before whom the spoil of an indiscriminate rummage was displayed, leaving him free to sort, reject and set aside. Terence Lynne waited for a specific demand, yet her one contribution up to date had been, in its way, sufficiently startling.