Died in the Wool

CHAPTER VI ACCORDING TO THE FILES

With Markins’ arrival the discussion ended. It was as if he had opened the door to a wave of self-consciousness. Douglas fussed over the drinks, urging Alleyn to have whisky. Alleyn, who considered himself to be on duty, refused it and wondered regretfully if it was from the same matchless company as the bottle that Cliff Johns had smashed on the diary floor. Any suggestion that the discussion might be taken up again was dispelled by the entrance of Mrs. Aceworthy, who, with the two girls, drank tea, and who had many playful remarks to make about the lateness of the hour. It was high time, she said, that all her chickens were in their nests. And she asked Alleyn pointedly if he had brought a hot-water bottle. Upon this hint he bade them all good-night. Fabian brought in candles and offered to see him to his room.

They went upstairs together, their shadows mounting gigantically beside them. On the landing Fabian said: “You will realize now, of course, that you’re in Flossie’s room. It’s the best one, really, but we all preferred to stay where we were.”

“Ah, yes.”

“It’s got no associations for you, of course.”

“None.”

Fabian led the way through Florence’s door. He lit candles on the dressing-table and the room came into being, a large white room with gay curtains, a pretty desk, a fine bed and a number of flower prints on the walls. Alleyn’s pyjamas were laid out on the bed, by Markins, he supposed, and his locked dispatch and investigation cases were displayed prominently on the desk. He grinned to himself.

“Got everything you want?” Fabian asked.

“Everything, thanks. Before we say good-night, though, I wonder if I might take a look at your workroom.”

“Why not? Come on.”

It was the second door on the left along the passage. Fabian detached the key from about his neck. “On a bootlace, you see,” he said. “No deception practised. Here we go.”

The strong electric lamp over their working bench dazzled eyes that had become accustomed to candlelight. It shone down on a rack of tools and an orderly collection of drawing materials. A small precision lathe was established on a side bench which was littered with a heterogeneous collection of pieces of metal. A large padlocked cupboard was built into the right-hand wall and beside it Alleyn saw a good modern safe with a combination lock. Three capacious drawers under the bench also were locked.

“The crucial drawings and formulas have always been kept in the safe,” Fabian explained. “As you can see, everything is stowed away under lock and key. And pray spare a kind thought for my window shutter, so witheringly dismissed by dear old Douglas.”

It was, Alleyn thought, an extremely workmanlike job. “And, I can assure you,” Fabian added, “it has not been fiddled with.” He sat on the bench and began to talk about their work. “It’s a magnetic fuse for anti-aircraft shells,” he said. “The shell is made of non-ferrous metal and contains a magnetically operated fuse which will explode the shell when it approaches an aircraft engine, or other metallic object. It will, we hope, be extremly useful at high altitudes where a direct hit is almost impossible. Originally I got the idea from a magnetic mine which, as of course you know, explodes in the magnetic field surrounding steel ships. Now, even though it contains a good deal of alloy, an aeroplane engine must, of necessity, also contain an appreciable amount of steel and, in addition, there’s a magnetic field from ignition coils. Our fuse is very different from the fuse in a magnetic mine but it’s a kind of second cousin in that it’s designed to explode a shell in the aeroplane’s magnetic field. As a matter of fact,” said Fabian with a glint in his eye, ”if it comes off, and it will come off, I believe, it’ll be a pretty big show.”

“Of course it will. Very big indeed. There’s one question I’d like to ask. What about ‘prematures’ by attraction to the gun itself, or explosion in transit?”

“There’s a safety device incorporated in the doings and it sees to it that the fuse won’t do its stuff until the shell starts to rotate and after it leaves the gun barrel. The result, in effect, is an aerial magnetic mine. I’ll show you the blueprints on presentation of your official card,” Fabian ended with a grin.

“I should be enormously interested. But not to-night if you don’t mind. I’ve still a job of work to do.”

“In that case, I’ll escort you back to your room, first making sure that no adventuresses lurk under the benches. Shall we go?”

Back in Alleyn’s room Fabian lit a cigarette at a candle, and gave his guest one of his sidelong glances. “Any good,” he asked, “or rotten?”

“The discussion?”

“Yes. Post-mortem. Inquest. Was it hopelessly stupid to do it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“To-morrow, I suppose, you’ll talk to the Johns family and the men and so on.”

“If I may.”

“We’re crutching. You’ll be able to see the set-up. It’s pretty much the same. All except—”

“Yes?” asked Alleyn as he paused.

“The press is new. I couldn’t stomach that. It’s the same kind, though.”

“I’ll just turn up there if I may.”

“Yes. O.K. I don’t know if you’re going to keep our unearthly hours. Please don’t if you’d rather not. Breakfast at a quarter to six.”

“Of course.”

“Then I’ll take you over to the shed. You’ll ask me for anything you want?”

“I just want a free hand to fossick. I’d be grateful if I could be disregarded.”

“Not very easy, I’m afraid. But of course you’ll have a free hand. I’ve told the men and Ducky and everybody that you’ll be talking to them.”

“How did they like that?”

“Quite keen. It’s given a fillip to the ever-popular murder story. Damned ghouls! There’ll be one or two snags, though. Wilson, the wool sorter, and Jack Merrywether, the presser, are not at all keen. Your friend Sub-Inspector Jackson got badly offside with both of them. And there’s Tommy Johns.”

“The boy’s father?”

“Yes. He’s a difficult chap, Tommy. I get on with him all right. He thinks for himself, does Tommy, and what’s more,” said Fabian with a grin, “he thinks much like me, politically, so I consider him a grand guy. But he’s difficult. He resented Flossie’s handling of young Cliff and small blame to him. And what he thinks of police methods! You won’t find him precisely come-to-ish.”

“And the boy himself?”

“He’s all right, really. He’s a likely lad, and he thinks for himself, too. We’re good friends, young Cliff and I. I lend him the New Statesman and he rebuilds the government, social customs and moral standards of mankind on a strictly non-economic basis two or three times a week. His music is really good, I believe, though I’m afraid it’s not getting much of a run these days. I’ve tried to induce him to practise on the Bechstein over here but he’s an obstinate young dog and won’t.”

“Why?”

“It was Flossie’s.”

“So the quarrel went deep?”

“Yes. It’s lucky for young Cliff that he spent the crucial time screwing Bach out of that haggard old mass of wreckage in the annex. Everybody knew about the row and his bolt down-country afterwards. Your boy-friend, the Sub-Inspector, fastened on it like a limpet but fortunately we could all swear to the continuous piano playing. Cliff’s all right.”

“What’s the explanation of the whisky incident?”

“I’ve not the slightest idea but I’m perfectly certain he wasn’t pinching it. I’ve tried to get the story out of him but he won’t come clean, blast him.”

“Does he get on well with the other men?”

“Not too badly. They were inclined at one time to look upon him as a freak. His schooling and tastes aroused their deepest suspicions, of course. In this country, young men are judged almost entirely on their ability to play games and do manual labour. However, Cliff set about his holiday jobs on the station with such energy that they overlooked his other unfortunate interests and even grew to encourage him in playing the piano in the evening. When he came home a good whole-hog Leftist, they were delighted, of course. They’re a good lot — most of them.”

“Not all?”

“The shearers’ cook is not much use. He only comes at shearing time. Mrs. Johns looks after the regular hands at other times. Lots of the shearers wait until they’ve knocked up a good fat cheque and then go down-country and blue it all at the pub. That’s the usual routine and you won’t change it until you change the social condition of the shearer. But this expert keeps the stuff in his cookhouse and if we get through the shearing season without a bout of D.T.s we’re lucky. He’s a nasty affair is Cookie but he’s unavoidable. They don’t dislike him, oddly enough. The roustabout, Albie Black, is rather thick with him. He used to be quite mately with young Cliff, too, but they had a break of some sort. Fortunately, I consider. Albie’s a hopeless sort of specimen. Now, if it’d been Albie who pinched the whisky I shouldn’t have been the least surprised. Or Perce. The cook’s name is Percy Gould, commonly called Perce. All Christian names are abbreviated in this country.”

“How did Mrs. Rubrick get on with the men?”

“She thought she was a riotous success with them. She adopted a pose of easy jocularity that set my teeth on edge. They took it, with a private grin, I fancy. She imagined she had converted them to a sort of antipodean feudal system. She couldn’t have been more mistaken, of course. I heard the wool sorter, a perfectly splendid old boy, he is, giving a very spirited imitation of her one evening. I’m glad the men were fifteen miles away from the wool-shed that night. The Sub-Inspector is a very class-conscious man. His suspicions would have gravitated naturally to the lower orders.”

“Nonsense,” said Alleyn cheerfully.

“It’s not. He brightened up no end when Douglas started off on his Markins legend. Markins, being a servant, might so much more easily be a murderer than any of us gentry. God, it makes you sick!”

“Tell me,” said Alleyn, “have you any suspicions?”

“None! I think it’s odds on a swagger had strayed up to the wool-shed and decided to doss down for the night. Flossie may have surprised him and had a row with him. In the heat of the argument he may have lost his temper and gone for her. Then when he found what he’d done, he put on Tommy Johns’s overalls, disposed of his mistake in the first place that suggested itself to him, and made off down-country. She hated swaggers. Most stations gave them their tucker and a doss-down for the night in exchange for a job of work, but not Flossie. That’s my idea. It’s the only explanation that seems reasonable. The only type that fits.”

“One of the lower orders in fact?”

“Yes,” said Fabian after a pause. “You got me there, didn’t you?”

“It was a cheap score, I’m afraid. Your theory is reasonable enough but no wandering tramp was seen about the district that day. I understand they stick to the road and usually make themselves known at the homesteads.”

“Not at Mount Moon with Flossie at home.”

“Perhaps not. Still your swagger remains a figure that as far as the police investigations go, and they seem to have been painstaking and thorough, was seen by nobody, either before or after the night of the disappearance.”

“I’ve no other contribution to offer, I’m afraid, and I’m keeping you up. Good night, sir. I’m still glad you came.”

“I hope you’ll continue of that mind,” said Alleyn. “Before you go, would you tell me how many of you played tennis on the night Mrs. Rubrick disappeared?”

“Now, this,” said Fabian with an air of gratification, “is the real stuff. Why should you want to know that, I wonder? Only Douglas and I played tennis.”

“You wore rubber-soled shoes during the search, then?”

“Certainly.”

“And the others? Can you remember?”

“Pin heels. They always did in the evenings.”

“When, actually, did Mrs. Rubrick first say she was going to the wool-shed?”

“Soon after we sat down. Might have been before. She was all arch about it. ‘What do you suppose your funny old Floosie’s going to do presently?’ That kind of thing. Then she developed her theme; the party and what-not.”

“I see. Thank you, very much. Good night.”

Fabian had gone and Alleyn was alone in the silent room. He stood motionless, a tall thin shape, dark in the candlelight. Presently he moved to the desk and opened one of the locked cases. From this he took a small tuft of cotton wool and dropped it on the carpet. Even by candlelight it was conspicuous, unavoidable, a white accent on a dark green ground. So must the tuft of wool have looked when Ursula, on the morning after Florence disappeared, caught it up in the carpet sweeper. Yet she hadn’t noticed it. Or had she merely forgotten it? They were all agreed that Flossie would never have suffered it to lie there. She had been up to her room after dinner and before the walk through the garden. Presumably, there had been no wool on her carpet then. Alleyn heard again Ursula Harme’s voice: “I don’t care what anybody says. Somebody was about on the landing at five minutes to three that morning.”

Alleyn pulled out his pipe, sat down at the desk, and unlocked his dispatch case. Here were the police files. With a sigh he opened them out on the desk. The room grew hazy with tobacco smoke, the pages turned at intervals and the grandfather clock on the landing told twelve, half-past twelve and one o’clock.

The pages turned slowly.

Here followed a detailed report from the police surgeon. Alleyn read on steadily —

“Don’t I know it,” Alleyn sighed and turned a page.

“And back we come, full circle,” Alleyn sighed and refilled his pipe.

“Subsequent investigations,” said the files ominously. In their own language they boiled down, dehumanized and tidied up the long accounts he had listened to that evening. “It seems certain,” said the files twenty minutes later, “that the disposal of the body could not have been effected in under forty-five minutes. Tests have been made. The wool must have been removed from the press; the body bound up in the smallest possible compass, placed in the bottom half of the press, and packed round with wool. The fleeces must then have been replaced and tramped down both in the bottom and the top halves of the press, and the top half replaced on the bottom half… Thomas Johns, working manager, deposed that on the next morning he found that his overalls had been split and were stained. He accused the ‘fleecies’ of having interfered with his overalls. They denied having done so.”

It was getting very cold. Alleyn hunted out a sweater and pulled it on. The house was utterly silent now. So must it have been when Ursula Harme awoke to find her dream continued in the sound of a footfall on the landing, and when Douglas Grace heard retreating steps in the passage outside his room. It would be nice, Alleyn thought wearily, to know if the nocturnal prowler was the same in each instance.

He rose stiffly and moved to the large wardrobe whose doors were flush with the end wall of the room. He opened them and was confronted with his own clothes neatly arranged on hangers. The invaluable Markins again. It was here, at the back of the wardrobe, hidden under three folded rugs, that Flossie Rubrick’s suitcase had been found, ready packed for the journey north that she never took. Terence Lynne had discovered it, three days after the night in the garden. The purse with her travelling money and official passes had been in the drawer of the dressing-table. Had this been the errand of Ursula’s nocturnal prowler? To conceal the suitcase and the purse? And had the fragment of wool been dropped then? From a shoe that had tramped down the wool over Flossie Rubrick’s head?

This, thought Alleyn, had been a neat and expeditious job. Not too fancy. A blow on the head, solid enough to stun, not savage enough to make a great mess. Suffocation, and then the answer to the one great problem, the disposal of the body. Very cool and bold. Risky, but well-conceived and justified by results. The most difficult part had been done by other people.

And the inevitable speculation arose in his mind. What had been the thoughts of his murderer when the shearers went to work the next morning, when the moment came for the wool presser to throw his weight on the ratchet arm and force down the trampled wool from the top half of the press into the pack in the lower half? Could the murderer have been sure that when the pack was sewn up and the press opened there would be no bulges, no stains? And when the time came for a bale hook to be jabbed into the top corner of the pack and for it to be hauled and heaved into the waiting lorry? Its weight? She had been a tiny woman and very thin but how much more did she weigh than her bulk in pressed wool?

He turned back to the files.

“Cautious, as always,” Alleyn thought. “Now then. Supposing he was a man. Did the murderer of Florence Rubrick, believing that he would be undisturbed, finish his appalling job while the members of the household were still up? The men were away, certainly, but what about the Johns family, and Markins and Albert Black? Might their curiosity not have been aroused by a light in the wool-shed windows? Or were they blacked-out in 1942? Probably they were not as Ursula Harme remarked that the shed was in darkness at five to nine, when she went in search of her guardian. This suggests that she expected to see lights.” The files, he reflected, made no mention of this point. If the step that Ursula had heard was the murderer’s, had he returned, having finished his work, to hide away the suitcase and purse and thus preserve the illusion that Florence had gone north? Were the killing and the trussing-up and the hiding away of the body done as a continuous operation or was there an interval? She was killed some time after eight o’clock— nobody can give the exact time when she walked down the lavender path and turned left. It had been her intention to try her voice in the shearing shed and return. She would have been anxious, surely, to know if the brooch was found. Would she have stayed longer than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour giving an imitation of an M. P. talking to herself in a deserted shed? Surely not. Surely, then, she was killed before, or quite soon after, the search-party went indoors. It was five to nine when the brooch was found, and five to nine when, on his mother’s entrance into the annex, Cliff Johns stopped playing and went home with her. During the period after the people in the house went to bed and before the party returned from the dance at a quarter to two, the wool-shed would be completely deserted. The lorry itself had broken down at the gate but the revellers would be heard long before they reached the shed. He would still have time to put out the lights, and, if necessary, hide. By that time, almost certainly, the body would have been in the bottom half of the press and probably the top half would be partially packed.

“It boils down to this then,” Alleyn thought. “If any of the five members of the search-party committed this crime, he or she probably did so during the actual hunt for the brooch, since, if she’d been alive after then, Mrs. Rubrick would almost certainly have returned to the house.” But as, in the case of the searchers, this allowed only a margin of four minutes or so, the murderer, if one of that party, must have returned later to complete the arduous task of encasing the body with firmly packed wool and refilling the press exactly as it was before the job was begun. The business of packing round the body would be particularly exacting. The wool must have been forced down into a layer solid enough, for all its thinness, to form a kind of wall and prevent the development of bulges on the surface of the pack. ”

But suppose it was the murderer whom Ursula heard on the landing at five minutes to three. If his errand was to hide the suitcase and purse, whether he was an inmate of the house or not, he would almost certainly wait until he could be reasonably certain that the household was asleep.

Alleyn himself was sleepy now, and tired. The stale chilliness of extreme exhaustion was creeping about his limbs. “It’s been a long day,” he thought, “and I’m out of practice.” He changed into pyjamas and washed vigorously in cold water. Then, for warmth’s sake, he got into bed, wearing his dressing-gown. His candle, now a stump, guttered, spattered in its own wax, and went out. There was another on the desk but Alleyn had a torch at his bedside and he did not stir. It was half-past two on a cold morning.

“Can I allow myself a cat-nap,” he muttered, “or shall I write to Troy?” Troy was his wife, thirteen thousand miles away, doing camouflage and pictorial surveys instead of portraits, at Bossicote in England. He said wistfully: “She’s very easy to think about.” He considered the chilly journey from his bed to the writing desk and had flung back the bedclothes when, in a moment, he was completely still.

No night wind sighed about the windows of Mount Moon, no mouse scuttled in the wainscoting. From somewhere far outside the house, by the men’s quarters, he supposed, a dog barked, once, very desolately. But the sound that had arrested Alleyn came from within the house. It was the measured creak made by the weight of someone moving up the old stairs. Then, very slow but vivid because of their slowness, sensed rather than heard, footfalls sounded on the landing. Alleyn counted eight of them, reached for his torch and waited for the brush of finger tips against his own door, and the decisive unmuffled click of the latch. His eyes had grown accustomed to the dark and he could make out a faint greyness which was the surface of his white-painted door. It shifted towards him, slowly at first, and remained ajar for some seconds. Then, incisively, candidly as it seemed, the door was pushed wide and against the swimming blue of the landing he saw the shape of a man. His back was towards Alleyn. He shut the door delicately and turned. Alleyn switched on his torch. As if by trickery, a face appeared, its eyes screwed up in the unexpected light.

It was Markins.

“You’ve been the hell of a time,” said Alleyn.

As seen when the remaining candle had been lighted, he was a spare bird-like man. His black hair was brushed strongly back, like a coarse wig with no parting. He had small black eyes, a thin nose and a mobile mouth. Above his black trousers he wore a servant’s alpaca working jacket. His habit of speech was basic cockney with an overlay of Americanisms, but neither of these characteristics was very marked and he would have been a difficult man to place. He had an air of naïveté and frankness, almost of innocence, but his dark eyes never widened and he seemed, behind his manner, which was pleasing, to be always extremely alert. He carried the candle he had lit to Alleyn’s bedside table and then stood waiting, his arms at his sides, his hands turned outwards at the wrists.

“Sorry I couldn’t make it before, sir,” he murmured. “They’re light sleepers, all of them, more’s the pity. All four.”

“No more?” Alleyn whispered.

“Five.”

“Five’s out.”

“It used to be six.”

“And two from six is four with the odd one out.”

They grinned at each other.

“Right,” said Alleyn. “I walk in deadly fear of forgetting these rigmaroles. What would you have done if I’d got it wrong?”

“Not much chance of that, sir, and I’d have known you anywhere, Mr. Alleyn.”

“I should keep a false beard by me,” said Alleyn gloomily. “Sit down for heaven’s sake, and shoot the works. Have a cigarette? How long is it since we met?”

“Back in ’37, wasn’t it, sir? I joined the Special Branch in ’36. I saw you before I went over to the States on that pre-war job.”

“So you did. We fixed you up as a steward in a German liner, didn’t we?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“By the way, is it safe to speak and not whisper?”

“I think so, sir. There’s nobody in the dressing-room or on this side of the landing. The two young ladies are over the way. Their doors are shut.”

“At least we can risk a mutter. You did very well on that first job, Markins.”

“Not so good this time, I’m afraid, sir. I’m properly up against it.”

“Oh, well,” said Alleyn resignedly, “let’s have the whole story.”

“From the beginning?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well, sir,” said Markins and pulled his chair closer to the bed. They leant towards each other. They resembled some illustration by Cruikshank from Dickens: Alleyn in his dark gown, his long hands folded on the counterpane; Markins, small, cautious, bent forward attentively. The candle glowed like a nimbus behind his head, and Alleyn’s shadow, stooping with theatrical exaggeration on the wall beside him, seemed to menace both of them. They spoke in a barely vocal but pedantically articulate mutter.

“I was kept on in the States,” said Markins, “as of course you know. In May, ’38, I got instructions from your people, Mr. Alleyn, to get alongside a Japanese wool buyer called Kurata Kan, who was in Chicago. It took a bit of time but I made the grade, finally, through his servant. A half-caste Jap this servant was, and used to go to a sort of night school. I joined up, too, and found that this half-caste was sucking up to another pupil, a janitor at a place where they made hush-hush parts for aeroplane engines. He was on the job, all right, that half-caste. They pay on the nail for information, never mind how small, and he and Kan were in the game together. It took me weeks of geography and American history lessons before I got a lead and then I sold them a little tale about how I’d been sacked for showing too much interest. After that it was money for jam. I sold Mr. Kurata Kan quite a nice little line of bogus information. Then he moved on to Australia. I got instructions from the Special Branch to follow him up. They fixed me up as a gent’s valet in Sydney. I was supposed to have been in service with an artillery expert from Home who visited the Governor of New South Wales. He gave me the references himself on Government House notepaper. He was in touch with your people, sir. Well, after a bit I looked up Mr. Kan and made the usual offer. He was quite glad to see me and I handed him a little line of stuff the gentleman was supposed to have let out when under the influence. Your office supplied it.”

“I remember.”

“He was trying to get on to some stuff about fortifications at Darwin and we strung him along quite nicely for a time. Of course he was away a great deal on his wool-buying job. Nothing much happened, till August 1940, when he put it up to me that it might be worth my while to come over here with a letter from him to a lady friend of his, a Mrs. Arthur Rubrick M.P., who was keen on English servants. He said a nephew of Mr. Rubrick’s was doing a job they’d like to get a line on. Very thorough, the Japs, sir.”

“Very.”

“That’s right. I cabled in code to the Special Branch and they told me to go ahead. They were very interested in Mr. Kan. So I came over and it worked out nicely. Mrs. Rubrick took me on, and here I stuck. The first catch in it, though, was what would I tell Kurata Kan? The Special Branch warned me that Mr. Losse’s work was important and they gave me some phoney stuff I could send on to Kan when he got discontented. That was O.K. I even rigged up a bit of an affair with some spare radio parts, all pulled to pieces and done up different. I put it in a bad light and took a bad photograph of it and told him I’d done it through a closed window from the top of a ladder. I’ve often wondered how far it got before some expert took a look at it and said the Japanese for ‘Nuts.’ Kan was pleased enough. He knew nothing. They pulled him in at last on my information and then there was Pearl Harbor. Finish!”

“Only as far as Kan was concerned.”

“True enough, sir. There was the second catch. But you know all about that, Mr. Alleyn.”

“I’d like to hear your end of it.”

“Would you, sir? O.K., then. My instructions from your end had been that I was on no account to let Mrs. Rubrick or either of the young gentlemen get any idea that I wasn’t exactly what I seemed. After a bit your people let me know that there’d been leakage of information — not my phoney dope, but genuine stuff — about this magnetic fuse. Not through Japanese canals but German ones. Now that was a facer. So my next job was to turn round after three years’ working the bogus agent and look for the genuine article. And that,” said Markins plaintively, “was where I fluttered to pieces. I hadn’t got a thing. Not a bloody inkling, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

“So we gathered,” said Alleyn.

“The galling thing, Mr. Alleyn, the aspect of the affair that got under my professional skin, as you might say, was this: somebody in this household had been working under my nose for months. What did I feel like when I heard it? Dirt. Kuh! Thinking myself the fly operator, cooking up little fake photographs and all the time — look, Mr. Alleyn, I handed myself the raspberry in six different positions. I did indeed.”

“If it’s any satisfaction to you,” said Alleyn, “one source of transit was stopped. Two months ago a German supply ship was taken off the Argentine coast. Detailed drawings of the magnetic fuse and instructions in code were found aboard her. The only link we could establish between this ship and New Zealand was the story of a free-lance journalist who was cruising round the world in a tramp steamer. There are lots of these sportsmen about, harmless eccentrics, no doubt, for the most part. This particular specimen, a native of Portugal, visited most of the ports in this country during last year. Our people have tracked him down to a pub in a neutral port where he was seen drinking with the skipper of this German ship, and was suddenly very flush with cash. Intensive probing brought to light an involved story that cast a very murky light on the journalist. All the usual stuff. We’re pretty certain of him and he won’t be given a shore permit next time the Wanderlust drives him this way, romantic little chap.”

“I remember when he was about,” said Markins. “Señor or Don or Something de Something. He was in town during Easter race week last year. The two young gentlemen and Miss Harme and most of the staff went down for three days, I stayed behind. Mr. Rubrick was very poorly.”

“And Miss Lynne?”

“She stayed behind too. Wouldn’t leave him.” Markins looked quickly at Alleyn. “Very sad, that,” he added.

“Very. We’ve found that this gentleman lived aboard his tramp steamer while he was in port. He showed up at the races wearing a white beret and clad for comfort rather than smartness; a conspicuous figure. We think this stuff about this gadget of Mr. Losse’s was passed to him at this time. It had been folded small. The paper was of New Zealand manufacture.”

Markins clucked angrily. “Under my very nose, you might say.”

“Well, your nose was up here and the transaction probably took place on a race-course two hundred miles away or more.”

“All the same.”

“So you see, by a stroke of luck, we stopped the hole, and the information, as far as we know, didn’t reach the enemy. Mr. Losse was warned by Headquarters that he should take particular care, and at the same time was advised to confide in nobody, not even his partner, about the attempt. Oddly enough he seems to have been sceptical about the danger of espionage while Captain Grace, from the beginning, has taken a very gloomy view of — who do you think?”

“You’re asking me, sir,” said Markins in an indignant whisper. “Look! If that young man had crawled about after me on his stomach in broad daylight he wouldn’t have given himself away more than he did. Look, sir. He got into my room and messed about like a coal heaver. His prints all over everything! Butted his head in among my suits and left them smelling of his hair oil and I’m blest if he didn’t pinch a bill out of my pockets. Well, I mean to say, it was awkward. If he went howling up to Headquarters about me being a spy or some such, they’d be annoyed with me for putting myself away. It was comical too. I was there to watch his blinking plant for him and he goes and makes up his mind I’m just what I pretended I was to Kan & Co.”

“You must have done something to arouse his suspicions.”

“I never!” said Markins indignantly. “Why should I? As far as he knew, I never went near his blinking workroom, but once. That was when I had an urgent telephone call for Mrs. Rubrick. I heard voices up there and went along. He and Mr. Losse were muttering in the doorway and didn’t hear me. When he did see me, he looked at me like I was the Demon King.”

“He says he heard you prowling about the passage at a quarter to three in the morning, a fortnight before Mrs. Rubrick was killed.”

Markins made a faint squeaking noise. “Like hell he did! I never heard such a thing! What’d I be doing outside his workroom? Yes, and what does he do but rush off to Madam and tell her she’s got to give me the sack.”

“You heard about that, did you?”

“Madam told me. She said she had something very serious to talk to me about. She as good as said I’d been suspected of prying into the workroom. You could have pulled me to pieces with a pin, I was that taken aback. And riled! I reckon my manner was convincing, because she was satisfied. I ought to explain, Mr. Alleyn, that I myself had heard somebody that night. I’m a light sleeper and I heard someone all right and it wasn’t either of the young gents. They get spasms of working late but they don’t bother to tiptoe into the workroom. I got out of bed, you bet, and had a look, but it was all quiet and after a bit I give up. I told Madam. She was very put about. Naturally. I satisfied her, of course, but it was awkward and what’s more I evidently missed a bit of funny business. Who was it, anyway, in the passage? I’m a sweet little agent, and that’s a fact. But before we parted she says: ‘Markins,’ she says, ‘there’s something I don’t like about this business and next time I go up to Wellington,’ she says, ‘I’m going to speak about it to the authorities. I’m going to suggest that the young gentlemen work under proper protection,’ she says, ‘in their own interest, and I shall tell the Captain what I’ve decided.’ What I can not understand,” said Markins, pulling at his thin underlip, “is why the Captain got it into his head I was an agent.”

“Perhaps you look like one, Markins.”

“I begin to think I must, Mr. Alleyn, but I’d prefer it was the British variety.”

“Actually, you know, the circumstances were a bit suspicious. He opened his bedroom door and saw a light disappear in the direction of your room. That afternoon, as you yourself admit, you’d come upon Captain Grace and Mr. Losse arranging where they’d leave the key of the workroom. I think he had some cause for alarm.”

Markins darted a very sharp glance at Alleyn. “She never said a word about that,” he said.

“She didn’t?”

“Not a word. Only that the Captain was upset because he thought I’d been poking about the passage late at night. I didn’t hear what they were saying that afternoon. They spoke too low and stopped as soon as they saw me.” He gave a thoughtful hiss. “That’s different. It’s a whole lot different. Saw something did he?”

“A light,” said Alleyn and repeated Douglas’ account of the night prowler.

“The only tangible bit of evidence and I miss it,” said Markins. “That’s the way to get promotion. I’m disgusted.”

Alleyn pointed out that, whoever the night prowler might have been, he didn’t gain access to the room that night. But Markins instantly objected that this failure must have been followed by success as copies for designs had been handed over to the Portugese journalist at Easter. “You’re disappointed in my work, sir,” he whispered dolorously. “You’re disgusted and I’m sure I don’t blame you. Put it bluntly, this expert’s been one too many for me. He’s got into that room and he’s got away with the stuff and I don’t know who he is or how he did it. It’s disgraceful. I’d be better in the Middle East.”

“Well,” said Alleyn, “it’s a poor show, certainly, but I shan’t do any good by rubbing it in and you won’t do any good by calling yourself names. I’ll look at the room. Losse has rigged a home-made but effective shutter that’s padlocked over the window every night. There’s a Yale lock on the door and after the scare he wore the key on a bootlace round his neck. You can gain entrance by boring a hole in the door-post and using wire. That might have been the prowler’s errand on the night Grace heard him. He failed then but brought it off some time before Easter. How about that?”

“No, sir. I kept an eye on that lock. There’d been no interference. While they were away at the races that Easter I took a good look round. The room was sealed all right, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Very well, then, the entrance was effected before the scare when they were not so careful and the interloper was returning for another look when Grace heard him. Any objections?”

“No,” said Markins slowly. “No. He’d got enough to work on for the stuff he handed to the Portuguese, and he kept it until the man got to this country. That’ll work.”

“All right,” said Alleyn. “Any suspicions?”

“It might have been the old girl herself,” said Markins, “for anything I know to the contrary. There!”

“Mrs. Rubrick?”

“Well, she was in and out of the room often enough. Always tapping at the door and saying: ‘Can my busy bees spare me a moment?’ ”

Alleyn stirred and his shadow moved on the wall. It might be difficult to interview Markins at great length during the day and he himself had a formidable program to face. Four versions of Flossie already and it must now be half-past two at least. Must he listen to a fifth? He reached out his hand for his cigarettes.

“What did you think of her?” he asked.

“Peculiar,” said Markins.

“Ambitious,” Markins added, after reflection. “The ambitious type. You see them everywhere. Very often they’re childless women. She was successful, too, but I wouldn’t say she was satisfied. Capable. Knew how to get her own way, but once she’d got it liked everybody else to be comfortable when she remembered them. When women get to her age,” said Markins, “they’re one of three kinds. They may be O.K. They may go jealous of younger women and peculiar about men, particularly young men, or they may take it out in work. She took it out in work. She thrashed herself and everybody round her. She wanted to be the big boss, and round here she certainly was. Now, you ask me, sir, would she be an enemy agent? Not for money, she wouldn’t. She’d got plenty of that. For an idea? Now, what idea in the Nazi book of words would appeal to Madam? The Herrenvolk spiel? I’d say, yes, if she was to be one of the Herrenvolk. But was she the type of lady who’d work against her own folk and her own country? Now, was she? She was great on talking Imperialism. You know. The brand that’s not taken for granted quite so much, these days. She talked a lot about patriotism. I don’t know how things are at Home, sir, having been away so long, but it seems to me we are getting round to thinking more about how we can improve our country and bragging about it less than we used to. From what I read and hear, it strikes me that the people who criticize are the ones that work and are most set on winning the war. Take some of the English people who got away to the States when the war began. Believe me, a lot of them talked that big and that optimistically you’d wonder how the others got on in the blitz without them. And when there was hints about muddle or hints that before the war we’d got slack and a bit too keen on easy money and a bit too pleased with ourselves — Lord, how they’d perform. Wouldn’t have it at any price! I’ve heard these people say that what was wanted at Home was concentration camps for the critics and that a bit of Gestapo technique wouldn’t do any harm. Now Mrs. Rubrick was a little in that line of business herself.”

“Miss Harme says she wanted to stay in England and do a job of work.”

“Yes? Is that so? But she’d have had to be the boss or nothing, I’ll be bound. My point is this, Mr. Alleyn. Suppose she was offered something pretty big in the way of a position, a Reich-something-or-other ship, when the enemy had beaten us, would she have fallen for the notion? That’s what I asked myself.”

“And how did you answer yourself?”

“Doubtful. Not impossible. You see with her as the only member of the house who had a chance of getting into this workroom I thought quite a lot about Madam. She might have got a key for herself when she had the Yale lock put on the door for the young gentlemen. It wasn’t impossible. She had to be considered. And the more she talked about getting rid of enemy agents in this country the more I wondered if she might be one herself. She used to say that we oughtn’t to be afraid to use what was good in Nazi methods, their youth-training schemes and fostering of nationalistic ideas, and she used to come down very hard on anything like independent critical thinking. It was all right, of course. Lots of people think that way, all the die-hards, you might say. She read a lot of their pre-war books, too. And she didn’t like Jews. She used to say they were parasites. I’d get to thinking about her this way and then I’d kind of come down with a bump and call myself crazy.”

Alleyn asked him if he had anything more tangible to go on and he shook his head mournfully. Nothing. Beyond her curiosity about the young men’s work, and she was by nature curious, there had been nothing. There was, he said, another view to take, and in many ways a more reasonable one. Mrs. Rubrick had been appointed to a counter-espionage committee and, in that capacity, may have threatened the success of an agent. She may even have formed suspicions of a member of her household and have given herself away. She was not a discreet woman. This, pushed a little further, might produce a motive for her murder.

“Yes,” said Alleyn dryly. “That’s why Captain Grace thinks you killed her, you know.”

Markins said with venom that Captain Grace was not immune from suspicion himself. “He’s silly enough to do anything,” he whispered angrily. “And what about his background, anyway? Heidelberg. He doesn’t look so hot. And what about him being a Nazi sympathizer? I may be dumb but I haven’t overlooked that little point.”

“You don’t really believe it, though, do you?” Alleyn asked with a smile.

Markins muttered disconsolately: “No brains.”

“There’s one other point,” Alleyn said. “We’ve got to consider whether this attempt to forward documentary information was the be-all and end-all of the agent’s mission. If, having achieved this object, no more was expected of him, or if he was to forward other information as regards, for instance, Mrs. Rubrick’s counter-espionage activities, which is the sort of stuff that needs no documentary evidence. That perennial nuisance, the hidden radio transmitter, would meet the case.”

“Don’t I know it,” Markins grumbled. “And there’s a sizable range of mountains where it could be cached.”

“It’d have to be accessible, though. He would be under instruction to transmit his stuff every so often when an enemy craft would edge far enough into these waters to pick it up. The files say that under cover of the hunt for Mrs. Rubrick, an extensive search was made. They even brought up a radiolocator in a car and bumped up the river-bed with it. But of course you were in that party.”

“Yes,” said Markins, “I was in with the boys. They expected me to show them the works and what could I do? Tag on and look silly. Me, supposed to be the expert! It’s a hard world.”

“It’s a weary world,” said Alleyn, swallowing a yawn. “We’re both supposed to appear in less than four hours, with shining morning faces. I’m out of training, Markins, and you’re a working man. I think we’ll call it a night.”

Markins at once got up and, by standing attentively, his head inclined forward, seemed to reassume the character of a man-servant. “Shall I open the window, sir?” he asked.

“Do, there’s a good chap, and pull back the curtains. You’ve got a torch, haven’t you? I’ll put out the candle.”

“We’re not as fussy as that about the blackout, Mr. Alleyn. Not in these parts.”

The curtain rings jingled. A square, faintly luminous, appeared in the wall. Now the air of the plateau gained entry. Alleyn felt it cold on his face and in his eyes. He pinched out the candle and heard Markins tiptoe to the door.

“Markins,” said Alleyn’s voice, quiet in the dark.

“Sir?”

“There’s another solution. You’ve thought of it, of course?”

Quite a long silence followed this.

“He may talk highbrow,” Markins whispered, “but when you get to know him, he’s a nice young gentleman.”

The door creaked and Alleyn was alone. He composed himself for sleep.