Died in the Wool (36 page)

It was with the object of forcing an exposure that I laid for him. I let him know that I proposed to hunt for the candle which Albert Black threw into the pens. This evidently shook Master Douglas. We've found the candle and it has got his prints, but of course they wouldn't have been conclusive evidence. However, he'd probably decided I was a nuisance on general grounds, and that my liquidation would be to the greater glory of the Fatherland.

When I said I'd go to the annexe for my cigarette case, he made one of his snap decisions. He would follow me, get the branding iron from the wool-shed, apply the proved method, and send me down country with the crutchings. Losse, wearing my overcoat, came in for the cosh.

I was now pretty sure of Grace. By dint of a rigmarole so involved that I myself nearly got bogged in it, I induced him to tell the others that I'd be working in the shed all night, and, at the same time, to believe himself that I was going to do no such thing. He had been interrupted by the stretcher party in his first attempt to return and tidy up any prints he'd left. And he must have left some when he fetched and replaced the branding iron. Persuaded that the shed would be deserted, and alarmed by my elephantine hints of clues to be discovered at daybreak, he made his fatal slip. He waited until he thought I was asleep, and then up he came to go over the ground himself. He took off his slippers; he'd dried them at the drawing-room fire after the assault on Losse; and polished the wool-shed floor. He had another go at the branding iron which he'd already wiped on my overcoat. Then, harking back to his earlier intention, he gouged out the existing candle stump, leaving no prints on it, and dropped it into the pens. He then climbed into the pens and scuffled a branch between the slats until he'd covered the new candle end. It was odds on we'd find it before the one that Albert Black had chucked into the pens nearly two years ago.

I'd counted on a show-down and got more than I bargained for.

It all happened quickly and, until the last moment, very quietly. It was a rum scene. I flashed the torch on him and he blinked and peered at me over the partition, while Markins scudded across the shed looking for a fight. There wasn't one. Boxed up in there, he hadn't a hope. The whole affair suddenly became very formal. Grace drew himself up to attention and waited for me to make the first move. He didn't speak. I was never to hear him speak again. I gave him the official warning, told him the police would arrive in two hours, and said that if he liked to give his parole under temporary arrest we'd all move to warmer quarters.

He bowed. He bent stiffly from the waist. This made an extraordinary impression on me because in that moment, when he was queerly lit by two torches, Markins and I having turned both ours upon him, I saw him as a Nazi. He would now, I thought, play the role to which he was naturally suited. He would be formal and courageous, a figure from a recognizable pattern. He would exhibit correct manners because these are the coach-work of the Nazi machine. He would betray nothing.

Then I saw his hand move to his side pocket.

His eyes widened and his lips were compressed. I yelled out: ‘Stop that!'

If he'd been slower I'd have gone with him. As it was I'd got my foot in the partition, but it was still between us. It seemed to belly out and hit me amidships in a flare of white light. The last sensation I had was of an appalling noise and of my body hurtling through space and striking itself crazily against a wall. I was, in effect, blown into the middle of next week. He went considerably farther and is now among the eternal Herrenvolk.

There wasn't much left. However, we did find enough to show how he'd provided for the last emergency. His work on shells may have given him the idea, but I fancy he was under orders, in event of a final exit, to take me with him. We found the wreck of a cigarette case showing traces of an explosive and a detonator that had been wired to a torch cell. The cigarette case, we think, was in his breast pocket and the cell in his side pocket.

We shall never hear the story of his engineering days in Germany, of his association with other correct and terrible youths. We shall never know what oaths he took or to what intensive training he submitted himself before he was sent back to await the end of 1939 and the moment when he would enlist with our forces and begin to be useful.

Fabian Losse talks of building a new wool-shed.

Part of a letter from Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn to his wife.

…almost midnight and I am in the study with only poor Flossie Rubrick's portrait for company. I'm afraid, my love, that you would be very much put out by this painting and, indeed, it is a dreadfully slick and glossy piece of work. Yet, with its baleful assistance and the post-mortem on her character I feel as if I had known her very well. In a sense, Fabian Losse was right when he said the secret of her end lay in her own character. Who but Florence Rubrick would have practised a speech in the dark to a handful of sheep during a search for her own diamonds? Who but she, having made up her mind that her nephew was an enemy agent, would have informed her husband, bound him over to secrecy, and decided to tackle the job herself? That it was Douglas Grace she suspected, and not Markins, is clear enough when one remembers that Rubrick clung to Markins after her death, and that, after her interview with Grace, her manner towards him altered and she subsequently climbed down over Fabian Losse's engagement to Ursula Harme. She said nothing of her precise suspicions to any one else. She played a lone hand and she hadn't a chance. Down she went, that ugly little woman, with all her obstinacy, arrogance, generosity, shrewdness and energy, down she went before an idea that was too strong for her.

It's all over. Already the inhabitants of Mount Moon are beginning to readjust themselves. Fabian Losse, who is fast recovering from the whack on his head, is naturally shocked and horrified by the discovery that his partner gave it to him, and appalled to think that for years he has been confiding his dearest secret to his country's enemy. Grace's death is no more than an additional cause for bewilderment. It's poor consolation for Fabian that the Portuguese journalist was intercepted. He feels he's criminally blind and stupid. He doesn't think Grace managed to get any information away. I'm not so sure, but at all events there's no sign of the enemy using the Losse aerial magnetic fuse. Fabian will recover. Ursula Harme will make nonsense of his scruples. They will be married and he will become an important but unknown expert, one of the ‘boys in the back room'. Miss Lynne will composedly follow her neat destiny and will never forgive herself or me for her one outburst. Young Cliff, who, of the entire set-up, would interest you, will, I hope, grow out of his megrim and return to his music. He was suffering from chronic fear, and psychological constipation. The cause has been removed. His father will doubtless continue to draft sheep and eat fire with perfect virtuosity. I've persuaded Losse to get rid of the abominable Albert.

I almost dare to say I may soon come home. I've just taken my pen again after stopping to ruminate and fill my pipe. When you pause at midnight in this house, the landscape comes in through the windows and sends something exciting down your spinal column. Out there are the plateau, the cincture of mountains, the empty sparkling air. To the north, more mountains, a plain, turbulent straits, another island, thirteen thousand miles of sea and at the far end, you.

The case is wound up but, as I stretch my cold fingers and look once again at the portrait of Florence Rubrick, I regret very much that I didn't accept her invitation and come, before she was dead, for a weekend at Mount Moon.

All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.

DIED IN THE WOOL

A Felony & Mayhem “Vintage” mystery

PUBLISHING HISTORY

First U.K. print edition (Collins): 1945

First U.S. print edition (Little, Brown): 1945

Felony & Mayhem electronic edition: 2012

Copyright © 1941, 1969 by Ngaio Marsh

All rights reserved

E-book ISBN: 978-1-937384-47-0

You're reading a book in the Felony & Mayhem “Vintage” category. These books were originally published prior to about 1965, and feature the kind of twisty, ingenious puzzles beloved by fans of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. If you enjoy this book, you may well like other “Vintage” titles from Felony & Mayhem Press.

“Vintage” titles available as e-books:

The Poisoned Chocolates Case,
by Anthony Berkeley

The “Henry Gamadge” series, by Elizabeth Daly

The “Roderick Alleyn” series, by Ngaio Marsh

“Vintage” titles available as print books:

The “Albert Campion” series, by Margery Allingham

The “Gervase Fen” series, by Edmund Crispin

For more about these books, and other Felony & Mayhem titles, please visit our website:

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