Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 5: Died in the Wool, Final Curtain, Swing Brother Swing. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ That his tummy was upset and he didn’t feel up to going to the downstairs Usual Offices so had visited ours, or (b) That it wasn’t him at all. As for his photographic zeal, if it existed, he might have been given a Leica camera by a grateful employer or saved up his little dimes and dollars and bought one second-hand in America. Every photographic zealot is not a fifth columnist. If he kept his developing stuff locked up it might be because he was innately tidy or because he didn’t trust us, and I must say that with Douglas on the premises he wasn’t far wrong.’

      ‘So you were for doing nothing about it?’

      ‘No. I thought we should keep our stuff well stowed away and our eyes open. I suggested that if, on consideration, we thought Markins was a bit dubious, we should report the whole story to the people who are dealing with espionage in this country.’

      ‘And did you agree with this plan, Grace?’

      Douglas had disagreed most vigorously. He had, he said with a short laugh, the poorest opinion of the official counter-espionage system and would greatly prefer to tackle the matter himself. ‘That’s what we’re like, out here, sir,’ he told Alleyn. ‘We like to go to it on our own and get things done.’ He added that he felt, personally, so angry with Markins that he had to do something about it. Fabian’s suggestion he dismissed as unrealistic. Why wait? Report the matter certainly, but satisfy themselves first and then go direct to the authority they had seen at army headquarters and get rid of the fellow. They argued for some time and separated without having come to any conclusion. Douglas, on parting from Fabian, encountered his aunt who, as luck would have it, launched out on an encomium upon her manservant. ‘What should I do without my Markins? Thank Heaven he comes back this evening. I touch wood,’ Flossie had said, tapping a gnarled finger playfully on her forehead, ‘every time he says he’s happy here. It’d be so unspeakably dreadful if he were lost to us.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘The girls will have to manage.’

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘How?’

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

      ‘But, Auntie,’ he protested, ‘we’ve a right to know. After all –’

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

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

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

      ‘Auntie Floss, please listen to me!’

      ‘I thought I told you –’

      Appalled at his own handiwork, he left her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘Sorry, СКАЧАТЬ