Died in the Wool

CHAPTER XI ACCORDING TO ARTHUR RUBRICK

There was nothing further to be got from Terence Lynne. Alleyn went upstairs with her and stood in the open doorway while she fetched Arthur Rubrick’s diary from its hiding place. She gave it to him without a word and the last glimpse he had of her was of an inimical face, pale, framed in its loosened wings of black hair. She shut the door on him. He went downstairs and called Cliff Johns and Markins into the study. It was now ten o’clock.

Cliff was nervous, truculent, and inclined to give battle.

“I don’t know why you want to pick on me again,” he said. “I don’t know anything, I couldn’t have done anything, and I’ve had just about enough of these sessions. If this is the Scotland Yard method, I don’t wonder at what modern psychiatrists say about British justice.”

“Don’t you talk silly,” Markins admonished him and added hurriedly: “Beg pardon, sir, I’m sure.”

“It’s absolutely mediaeval,” Cliff mumbled.

“Now, see here,” Alleyn said. “I heartily agree that you and I have had more than enough of these interviews. In the course of them you have refused to give me certain information. I have now got that information from another source. I am going to repeat it to you and ask for your confirmation or denial. You’re in a difficult position. Indeed it is my duty to tell you that what you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.”

Cliff wetted his lips. “But that’s what they say when — that means—”

“It means that you’ll be well advised either to tell the truth or to say nothing at all.”

“I didn’t kill her. I didn’t touch her.”

“Let us start with this business of the whisky. Is it true that you caught Albert Black in the act of stealing it and were yourself in the act of replacing it when Markins found you?”

Markins had moved behind Cliff to the desk. He sat at it, opened his pocket-book and produced a stump of pencil from his waistcoat.

“Anything to say about that?” Alleyn asked Cliff. “True or untrue?”

“Did he tell you?”

Alleyn raised an eyebrow. “I extracted it from his general manner. He admitted it. Why did you refuse to give this story to Mrs. Rubrick?”

“He wouldn’t hand it over until I promised. He’d have got the sack and might have got jailed. A year before, one of the chaps on the place pinched some liquor. They searched his room and found it. She got the police on to him and he did a week in jail. Albie was a bit tight when he took it. I told him he was crazy.”

“I see.”

“I told you it hadn’t anything to do with the case,” Cliff muttered.

“But hasn’t it? We’ll go on to the following night, the night Mrs. Rubrick was murdered, the night when you, dog-tired after your sixteen-mile tramp, were supposed to have played difficult music very well for an hour on a wreck of a piano.”

“They all heard me,” Cliff cried out. “I can show you the music.”

“What happened to that week’s instalment of the published radio programs?”

As Cliff’s agitation mounted, he seemed to grow younger. His eyes widened and his lips trembled like a small boy’s.

“Did you burn it?” Alleyn asked.

Cliff did not answer.

“You knew, of course, that a Chopin ‘Polonaise’ was to be broadcast, followed by the ‘Art of Fugue.’ You had started to work at the Bach and perhaps, while you waited for the program to begin at eight-five p.m., played the opening passages. You saw him playing, Markins, didn’t you?”

“Yes sir,” said Markinns, still writing. Cliff started violently at the sound of his voice.

“But at eight-five you stopped and turned up the radio, which was probably already tuned to the station you wanted. From then, until just before your mother came, when you began to play again, the radio didn’t stop. But at some time during that fifty minutes you went to the wool-shed. It was almost dark when you came out. Albert Black saw you. He was drunk, but he remembered and when, three weeks later, Mrs. Rubrick’s body was found, and the police inquiry began, he used his knowledge for blackmail. He was afraid that when the whisky incident came to light, you would speak the truth. He drove a bargain with you. Now. Why did you go down to the wool-shed?”

“I didn’t touch her. I didn’t plan anything. I didn’t know she was going to the shed. It just happened.”

“You sat in the annex with the door open. If, after you stopped playing and the radio took up the theme, you sat on the piano chair, you would be able to see down the track. You would be able to see Mrs. Rubrick come through the gate at the end of the lavender path and walk up the track towards you. You’d see her turn off to the wool-shed and then she would disappear. I don’t for a moment suggest that you expected to see her. You couldn’t possibly do so. I merely suggest that you did see her. The door was open, otherwise they would not have been able to hear the Bach from the tennis lawn. Why did you leave the ‘Art of Fugue’ and follow her to the wool-shed?”

Watching Cliff, Alleyn thought: “When people are afraid, how little their faces express. They become wooden, dead almost. There’s only a change of colour and a kind of stiffness in the mouth.”

“Is there to be an answer?” he asked.

“I am innocent,” said Cliff, and this gracious phrase came strangely from his lips.

“If that’s true, wouldn’t it be wise to tell me the facts? Do you want the murderer to be found?”

“I haven’t got the hunter’s nose,” said Cliff harshly.

“At least, if you’re innocent, you want to clear yourself.”

“How can I? How can I clear myself when there’s only me to say what happened! She’s dead, isn’t she?” His voice rose shrilly. “And even if the dead could talk, she might still bear witness against me. If she had a moment to think, to realize she’d been hit, she may have thought it was me that did it. That may have been the last thought that flashed up in her mind before she died — that I was killing her.”

As if drawn by an intolerable restlessness, he moved aimlessly about the room, blundering short-sightedly against chairs. “That’s a pretty ghastly idea to get into your head, isn’t it? Isn’t it!” he demanded, his back to Alleyn.

“Then she was alive when you went into the shed? Did you speak to her?”

Cliff turned on him. “Alive? You must be crazy. Alive! Would I feel like this if I’d been able to speak to her?” His hands were closed on the back of a chair and he took in a shuddering breath. “Now,” Alleyn thought, “it’s coming.”

“Wouldn’t it have been different,” Cliff said rapidly, “if I could have told her I was sorry, and tried to make her believe I wasn’t a thief? That’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t know she was going to the shed. How could I? I just wanted to hear the Bach. I started off thinking I might try playing in unison with the radio, but it didn’t work, so I stopped and listened. Then I saw her come up the track and turn off to the shed. I wanted, suddenly, to tell her I was sorry. I sat by the radio for a long time listening and thinking about what I could say to her. I couldn’t make up my mind to go. Then, almost without properly willing it, I got up and walked out, leaving the music still going. I went down the hill, turning the phrases over in my mind. And then… to go in — into the dark — expecting to find her there and… I actually called out to her, you know. I wondered what she could be doing, standing so quiet somewhere in the dark. I could hear the music quite clearly. I called out: ‘Mrs. Rubrick, are you there?’ and my voice cracked. It hadn’t broken properly then, and it cracked and sounded rotten. I walked on, deeper into the shadow.”

He rubbed his face with a shaking hand.

“Yes?” Alleyn said. “You went on?”

“There was a heap of empty bales beyond the press. I was quite close to it by then. It was so queer, her not being there. I don’t know what I thought about. I don’t know really, if I’d any sort of idea about what was coming, but it seems to me now that I had got a kind of intuition. Like one of those nightmares, when something’s waiting for you and you have to go on to meet it. But I don’t know. That may not be true. It may not have happened till my foot touched hers.”

“Under the empty bales?”

“Yes, yes. Between the press and the wall. They were heaped up. I think I wondered what they were doing there. I suppose it was that. And then, in the dark, I stumbled into them. It’s very queer, but I knew at once that it was Mrs. Rubrick and that she was dead.”

“What did you do?” Alleyn said gently.

“I jumped back and bumped into the press. Then I didn’t move for a long time. I wanted to but I couldn’t. I kept thinking: ‘I ought to look at her.’ But it was dark. I stooped down and grabbed up an armful of bales. I could just see something bright. It was that diamond thing. The other one was lost. Then I listened and there wasn’t any sound. And then I put down my hand and it touched soft dead skin. My arms threw the bales down without my knowing what they did. I swear I meant to go and tell them. I swear I never thought, then, of anything else. It wasn’t till I was outside and he called out that I had any other idea.”

“Albert Black called out?”

“He was up the track a bit. He was drunk and stumbling. He called out: ‘Hey, Cliff, what have you been up to?’ Then I felt suddenly like — well, as if I’d turned to water inside. It’s a lie to say people think when things like this happen to them. They don’t. And you don’t control your body either. It acts by itself. Mine did. I didn’t reason out anything, or tell myself what to do. It wasn’t really me that ran uphill, away from the track and round the back of the bunk-house. It was me, afterwards, thawing back into my body, going to the annex and beginning to think with the radio still playing. It was me remembering the row we’d had and what I’d said to her. It was me switching off the radio and playing, when I heard the door of our house bang and the dogs start barking. It was me, next day, when nobody said anything, and the next and the next. And the next three weeks, wondering where they’d put it, and whether it was somewhere near. I thought about that much more often than I thought about who had done it. Albie had the wind up, he thought I’d say he’d taken the whisky, and they’d start wondering if he had a grudge against her. She’d wanted Mr. Rubrick to sack him. When he was drunk he used to talk as if he’d give her the works. Then, when they found her, he talked to me just like you said. He thought I did it, he still thinks I did it, and he was afraid I’d try and put it across him and say he was tight and went for her.”

He lurched round the chair and flung himself clumsily into it. His agitation, until now precariously under control, suddenly mastered him and he began to sob, angrily, beating his hand on the chair arm. “It’s gone,” he stammered. “It’s gone. I can’t even listen now. There isn’t any music.”

Markins eyed him dubiously. Alleyn, after a moment’s hesitation, went to him and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Come,” he said, “it’s not as bad as all that. There will be music again.”

“There’s as neat a case against that boy as you’d wish to see,” said Markins. “Isn’t that right, sir? He’s signed a statement admitting he did go into the shed and we’ve only his word for it that the rest of the yarn’s not a taradiddle. D’you think they’ll take his youth into consideration and send him to a reformatory?”

Alleyn was prevented from answering this question by the entrance of Tommy Johns, white to the lips and shaking with rage.

“I’m that boy’s father,” he began, standing before Alleyn and lowering his head like an angry monkey, “and I won’t stand for this third-degree business. You’ve had him in here and grilled him till he’s broke down and said anything you liked to put into his mouth. They may be your ways, wherever you come from, but they’re not ours in this country and we won’t take it. I’ll make a public example of you. He’s out there, poor kid, all broke up and that weak and queer he’s not responsible for himself. I told him to keep his trap shut, silly young tyke, and as soon as he gets out of my sight this is what you do to him. Has anything been took down against him? Has he put his name to anything? By God, if he has, I’ll bring an action against you.”

“Cliff has made a statement,” Alleyn said, “and has signed it. In my opinion it’s a true statement.”

“You’ve no right to make him do it. What’s your standing? You’ve no bloody right.”

“On the contrary I am fully authorized by your police. Cliff has taken the only possible course to protect himself. I repeat that I believe him to have told the truth. When he’s got over the effects of the experience he may want to talk to you about it. Until then, if I may advise you, I should leave him to himself.”

“You’re trying to swing one across me.”

“No.”

“You reckon he done it. You’re looking for a case against him.”

“Without much looking, there is already a tenable case against him. At the moment, however, I don’t think he committed either of these assaults. But, as you are here, Mr. Johns—”

“You’re lying,” Tommy Johns interjected with great energy.

“—I feel I should point out that your own alibis are in both instances extremely sketchy.”

Tommy Johns was at once very still. He leant forward, his arms flexed and hanging free of his body, his chin lowered. “I’d got no call to do it,” he said. “Why would I want to do it? She treated me fair enough according to her ideas. I’ve got no motive.”

“I imagine,” Alleyn said, “it’s fairly open secret on the place that the work Captain Grace and Mr. Losse have been doing together is of military importance. That it is, in fact, an experimental war job and, as such, has been carried out in secrecy. You also know that Mrs. Rubrick was particularly interested in anti-espionage precautions.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Tommy Johns began, but Alleyn interrupted him.

“You don’t see a windmill put up at considerable expense to provide an electric supply for one room only, and that a closely guarded workroom, without wondering what it’s in aid of. Mrs. Rubrick herself seems to have adopted a somewhat obvious attitude of precaution and mystery. The police investigation was along unmistakable lines. You can’t have failed to see that they were making strenuous efforts to link up murder with possible espionage. To put it bluntly, your name appears in the list of persons who might turn out to be agents in the pay of an enemy power, and therefore suspects in the murder of Mrs. Rubrick. Of course there’s a far more obvious motive: anger at Mrs. Rubrick’s attitude towards your son in the matter of the stolen whisky, and fear of any further steps she might take.”

Tommy Johns uttered an extremely raw expletive.

“I only mention it,” said Alleyn, “to remind you that Cliff’s ‘grilling,’ as you call it, was in no way peculiar to him. Your turn may come, but not to-night. I’ve got to start work at five, and I must get some sleep. You pipe down like a sensible chap. If you and your boy had no hand in these assaults, you’ve nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not so sure,” Tommy Johns said, blinking. “The wife’s had about as much as she can take,” he added indistinctly, and looked at Alleyn from under his jutting brows. “Oh, well,” he said.

“Murder takes it out of all hands,” Alleyn murmured, piloting him to the door. Johns halted in front of Markins. “What’s he doing in here?” he demanded.

“I’m O.K., Tommy,” said Markins. “Don’t start in on me, now.”

“I haven’t forgot it was you that put the boy away with her in the first instance,” said Johns. “The boy asked us not to let it make an unpleasantness so we didn’t. But I haven’t forgot. You’re the fancy witness in this outfit, aren’t you? What’s he pay you for it?”

“He’s not in the least fancy,” said Alleyn. “He’s going to see you and the boy home in about ten minutes. In the meantime I want you all to wait in the drawing-room.”

“What d’you mean, see us home?”

“In case there are any more murders and you’re littered about the place without alibis.” He nodded to Markins, who opened the door. “You might ask Miss Harmc to come in,” Alleyn said, and they went away.

“I wanted to see you by yourself,” said Ursula. “I never have, you know.”

“I’m afraid there’ll be no marked improvement,” said Alleyn.

“Well, I rather like you,” she said, “and so does Fab. Of course I’m terribly pleased that the murderer didn’t kill you, and so will Fab be when he’s better, but I must say I do wish he could have missed altogether and not caught my poor boyfriend on his already very tricky head.”

“It may all turn out for the best,” Alleyn said.

“I don’t quite see how. Fabian will almost certainly consider himself well below C3 as a marrying man and turn me down flat.”

“You’ll have to insist.”

“Well, so I will if I can, but it’s a poor prospect. I wanted to ask you. Was he at all peculiar while he was unconscious? Did he want to go swarming up the walls or anything?”

Alleyn hesitated before answering this startlingly accurate description. “I see he did,” said Ursula quickly. “Then it did get to the old spot. I’d hoped not. Because, you know, he was hit behind the ear when he was climbing up into the boat at Dunkirk and this is at the back of his head.”

“Perhaps it’s just because he was unconscious.”

“Perhaps,” she said doubtfully. “Did he talk about dropping into the sea, and did he do the sort of gallant young leader number for the men who were with him? ‘Come on, you chaps. Excelsibloodyor.’ ”

“Exactly that.”

“Isn’t it difficult!” Ursula said gloomily. “I had a frightful set-to with him in the ship. Up the companion-way like greased lightning and then all for shinning up the rigging only fortunately there was no rigging very handy. But to do him justice I must say he didn’t fight me. Although concussed I supposed he knew a lady when he saw one and remained the little gent.”

“Does he ever call you ‘funny old thing’?”

“Never. That’s not at all his line. Why?”

“He called somebody that when he was talking.”

“You perhaps?”

“Positively not. He merely hit me.”

“Well, it would be a man.”

“Are you at all interested in the shearing process?”

Ursula stared at him. “Me?” she said. “What do you mean?”

“Do you ever help in the shed? Pick up fleeces or anything?”

“Good heavens, no. Women don’t, though I suppose we’ll have to if the war goes on much longer. Why?”

“Then you couldn’t tell me anything about sorting?”

“Of course not. Ask Douglas or Fab or Tommy Johns. Or why not Ben Wilson? It’s frightfully technical.”

“Yes. Do you suppose Fabian tried to climb anything when he blacked-out on the night of the search?”

“I’m quite sure he did,” said Ursula soberly.

“You are? Why?”

“I had a good look at him, you know. You remember I guessed he’d had another go. The palms of his hands were stained as if he’d held on to things like branches. I sent his white trousers to the wash. They had green lines on them.”

“You’re a very good sensible girl,” said Alleyn warmly, “and if you want to marry him, you shall.”

“I don’t see what you can do about it, but it’s nice of you all the same. Why are you so excited about Fabian climbing the tree?”

“Because if he did he had a view of the lay-out.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Yes. Scarcely evidence, I’m afraid. The only way to get that would be to knock him neatly over the head in the witness-box and I don’t suppose you’d allow that. He’ll have forgotten all about his blackouts, as usual, when he cornes round. It seems that when they happen he is at once aware of the previous experiences and returns in memory to them.”

“Isn’t it rum?” said Ursula.

“Very. I think you may go to bed now. Here is the key of Losse’s room. You may open the door and look at him if you like. If he wakes, whisper some pacific reassurance and come away.”

“I suppose I couldn’t sit with him for a bit?”

“It’s half-past ten. I thought it was to be an early night.”

“I’d like to. I’d be as still as a mouse.”

“Very well. I’ll leave the key in your charge. What did you decide about a doctor?”

“We’re going to nip up when the Bureau opens.”

“Very sensible. Good night to you.”

“Good night,” 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. ’Strewth, 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: “Good night, Tommy; good night, 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 Johnses 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.”

“Good night, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Good night.”

“I’m sorry,” Douglas muttered, “that I didn’t take it better in there. Bad show.”

“Not a bit. Good night.”

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? Good night 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 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 packs 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. “O.K., 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.

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.

A rat scuttled in the rafters.

“Markins?”

“Sir?”

“Remember, no move until you get your cue.”

“Quite so, sir.”

Alleyn turned a page.

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.

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

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

Alleyn read on quickly, reaching the sentence he had lighted upon when he first opened the book. Behind the formal phrases he saw Arthur Rubrick, confused and desperately ill, moved and agitated by the discovery of Terence Lynne’s attachment to him, irked and repelled by his wife’s determined attentions. Less stylized phrases began to appear at the end of the day’s record. “A bad night”… “Two bad turns, to-day.” A few days before his wife was killed, he had written: “I have been reading a book called Famous Trials. I used to think such creatures as Crippen must be monsters; unbalanced and quite without the habit of endurance by which custom inoculates the normal man against intolerance, but am now of a different opinion. I sometimes think that if I could be alone with her and at peace I might recover my health… ” On the night of Florence’s death he had written: “It cannot go on like this. I must not see her alone. To-night, when we met by chance, I was unable to obey the rule I had set myself. It is too much for me.”

There were no other entries.

Alleyn closed the book, shifted his position a little and switched off his torch. Cautiously he adjusted the covering over his head to leave a peep-hole for his right eye and, like a trained actor, dismissed all senses but one from his mind. He listened. Markins, a few inches away, whispered: “Now then, sir.”

The person who moved across the frozen ground towards the wool-shed did so very slowly. Alleyn was aware not so much of footsteps as of interruptions in the silence, interruptions that might have been mistaken for some faint disturbance of his own ear-drums. They grew more definite and were presently accompanied by a crisp undertone when occasionally the advancing feet brushed against stivered grass. Alleyn directed his gaze through his peep-hole toward that part of the darkness where the sacking should be.

The steps halted and were followed, after a pause, by a brushing sound. A patch of luminous blue appeared and widened until a star burned in it. It opened still wider and there hung a patch of glittering night sky and the shape of a hill. Into this, sidelong, edged a human form, a dark silhouette that bent forward, seeming to listen. The visitor’s feet were still on the ground below, but, after perhaps a minute, the form rose quickly, mounting the high step, and showed complete for a moment before the sacking door fell back and blotted out the picture. Now there were three inhabitants of the wool-shed.

How still and how patient was this visitor to wait so long! No movement, no sound but quiet breathing. Alleyn became aware of muscles in his own body that asked for release, of a loose thread in the packing that crept down and tickled his ear.

At last a movement. Something had been laid down on the floor. Then two soft thuds. A disk of light appeared, travelled to and fro across the shearing board and halted. The reflection from its beam showed stockinged feet and the dim outline of a coat. The visitor squatted and the light fanned out as the torch was laid on the floor. A soft rhythmic noise began. Gloved hands moved in and out of the region of light. The visitor was polishing the shearing board.

It was thoroughly done, backwards and forwards with occasional shifting of the torch, always in the direction of the press. There was a long pause. Torch-light found and played steadily upon the heap of packs where Fabian had rested. It moved on.

It found a single empty pack that Alleyn had dropped over the branding iron. This was pulled aside by a gloved hand, the iron was lifted and a cloth was rubbed vigorously over the head and shaft. It was replaced and its covering restored. For a blinding second the light shone full in Alleyn’s right eye. He wondered how quickly he could collect himself and dive. It moved on and the press hid it.

Holding his breath, Alleyn writhed forward an inch. He could make out the visitor’s shape, motionless in the shadow beyond the press. The light now shone on a tin candlestick nailed to a joist, high up on the wall.

Alleyn had many times used the method of reconstruction but this was the first time it had been staged for him by an actor who was unaware of an audience. The visitor reached up to the candle. The torch moved and for a brief space Alleyn saw a clear silhouette. Gloved fingers worked, a hand was drawn back. The figure moved over to the pens. Presently there was the sound of a sharp impact, a rattle and a soft plop. Then silence.

“This is going to be our cue,” thought Alleyn.

The visitor had returned to the shearing board. Suddenly and quite clearly a long thin object was revealed, lying near the doorway. It was taken up and Alleyn saw that it was a green branch. The visitor padded back to the sheep pens. The light jogged and wavered over the barrier and was finally directed inside. Alleyn began to slough his covering. Now he squatted on his heels with the press between himself and the light. Now he rose until he crouched behind it and could look with his left eye round the corner. The visitor fumbled and thumped softly. The light darted eccentrically about the walls and, for a brief flash, revealed its owner astride the barrier. A movement and the figure disappeared. Alleyn looked over the edge of the press into blackness. He could hear Markins breathing. He reached down and his fingers touched short coarse hair.

“When you hear me,” he breathed, and a tiny voice replied, “O.K.”

He slipped off his too tight jacket and moving sideways glided across the shed and along the wall, until his back was against the port-holes. He peered across the shearing board towards the pens, now faintly lit by reflected light from the visitor’s torch. A curious sound came from them, a mixture of rattle and scuffle.

Alleyn drew his breath. He was about to discover whether the post-mortem on Florence Rubrick’s character, the deductions he had drawn from it, and the light it had seemed to cast on her associates, were true or false. The case had closed in upon a point of light still hidden from him. He felt an extraordinary reluctance to take the final step. For a moment time stood still. “Get it over,” he thought, and lightly crossed the shearing board. He rested his hand on the partition and switched on his torch.

It shone full in the eyes of Douglas Grace.