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

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      She said, ‘I tried very hard not to complicate things.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said Fabian. She raised her hands a little way and let them fall into her lap.

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘in the very least. It’s all over. I didn’t altogether succeed.’

      ‘You people!’ Fabian said, bending a look of tenderness and pain upon Ursula. ‘You rather make for complications.’

      ‘We people?’ she said. ‘Terry and me?’

      ‘Both of you, it seems,’ he agreed.

      Douglas suddenly raised his cry of, ‘I don’t know what all this is about.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Terence repeated. ‘It’s over.’

      ‘Poor Terry,’ said Fabian, but it seemed that Miss Lynne did not respond easily to sympathy. She took up her work again and the needles clicked.

      ‘Poor Terry,’ Douglas echoed playfully, obtusely, and sat beside her again, laying his big muscular hand on her knee.

      ‘Where are the essays?’ Fabian asked.

      ‘I’ve got them.’

      ‘I’d like to read them, Terry. May I?’

      ‘No,’ she said coldly.

      ‘Isn’t that rather churlish?’

      ‘I’m sorry. He gave them to me.’

      ‘I always thought,’ said Douglas out of a clear sky, ‘that they were an ideal couple. Awfully fond of each other. Uncle Arthur thought she was the cat’s whiskers. Always telling people how marvellous she was.’ He slapped Terence’s knee. ‘Wasn’t he?’ he persisted.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Ursula. ‘He was. He admired her tremendously. You can’t deny that, Fabian.’

      ‘I don’t deny it. It’s incredible, but true. He thought a great deal of her.’

      ‘For the things he hadn’t got,’ said Terence. ‘Vitality. Initiative. Drive. Popularity. Nerve.’

      ‘You’re prejudiced,’ Ursy said fiercely, ‘you and Fabian. It’s not fair. She was kind, kind and warm and generous. She was never petty or spiteful and how you, both of you, who owed her so much –’

      ‘I owed her nothing whatever,’ said Terence. ‘I did my job well. She was lucky to have me. I admit she was kind in the way that vain people are kind. She knew how kind she was. She was quite kind.’

      ‘And generous?’

      ‘Yes. Quite.’

      ‘And unsuspicious?’

      ‘Yes,’ Terence agreed after a pause. ‘I suppose so.’

      ‘Then I think it’s poor Florence Rubrick,’ said Ursula stoutly. ‘I do indeed, Terry.’

      ‘I won’t take that,’ Terence said, and for the first time Alleyn heard a note of anger in her voice. ‘She was too stupid to know, to notice how fortunate she was … might have been … She didn’t even look after her proprietary rights. She was like an absentee landlord.’

      ‘But she didn’t ask you to poach on the estates.’

      ‘What are you two arguing about?’ demanded the punctual Douglas. ‘What’s it all in aid of?’

      ‘Nothing,’ said Fabian. ‘There’s no argument. Let it go.’

      ‘But it was you who organized this striptease act, Fabian,’ Ursula pointed out. ‘The rest of us have had to do our stuff. Why should Terry get off?’

      She looked at Terence and frowned. She was a lovely creature, Alleyn thought. Her hair shone in copper tendrils along the nape of her neck. Her eyes were wide and lively, her mouth vivid. She had something of the quality of a Victorian portrait in crayons, a resemblance that was heightened by the extreme delicacy and freshness of her complexion and by the slender grace of her long neck and her elegant hands. She displayed too, something of the waywardness and conscious poise of such a type. These qualities lent her a dignity that was at variance with her modern habit of speech. She looked, Alleyn thought, as though she knew she would inevitably command attention and that much would be forgiven her. She was obstinate, he thought, but he doubted if obstinacy alone was responsible for her persistent defence of Florence Rubrick. He had been watching her closely and, as though she felt his gaze upon her and even caught the tenor of his thoughts, she threw him a brilliant glance and ran impulsively to Terence.

      ‘Terry,’ she said, ‘am I unfair? I don’t want to be unfair but there’s no one else but me to speak for her.’

      Without looking at him she held out her hand to Fabian, and immediately he was beside her, holding it.

      ‘You’re not allowed to snub me, Fabian, or talk over my head or go intellectual at me. I loved her. She was my friend. I can’t stand off and look at her and analyse her faults. And when all of you do this, I have to fight for her.’

      ‘I know,’ said Fabian, holding her by the hand. ‘It’s all right. I know.’

      ‘But I don’t want to fight with Terry. Terry, I don’t want to fight with you, do you hear? I’d rather, after all, that you didn’t tell us. I’d rather go on liking you.’

      ‘You won’t get me to believe,’ said Douglas, ‘that Terry’s done anything wrong, and I tell you straight, Fabian, that I don’t much like the way you’re handling this. If you’re suggesting that Terry’s got anything to be ashamed about –’

      ‘Be quiet!’

      Terence was on her feet. She had spoken violently, as if prompted by some unbearable sense of irritation. ‘You’re talking like a fool, Douglas. “Ashamed” or “not ashamed”, what has that got to do with it? I don’t want your championship and, Ursula, I promise you I don’t give a damn whether you think you’re being fair or unfair or whether, as you put it, you’re prepared to “go on liking me”. You make too many assumptions. To have dragooned me into going so far and then to talk magnanimously about letting me off! You’ve all made up your minds, haven’t you, that I loved him? Very well, then, it’s perfectly true. If Mr Alleyn is to hear the whole story, at least let me tell it, plainly and, if it’s not too fantastic a notion, with a little dignity.’

      II

      It was strange, Alleyn thought, that Terence Lynne, who from the beginning had resented the discussion and all that it implied, should suddenly yield, as the others had yielded, to this urge for self-revelation. As she developed her story, speaking steadily and with a kind of ruthlessness, he regretted more and more that he could form no clear picture in his mind of Florence Rubrick’s husband; of how he looked, or how wide a physical disparity there had been between Arthur Rubrick and this girl who must have been twenty years his junior.

      Terence had been five years in New Zealand. Equipped with a knowledge of shorthand and typing СКАЧАТЬ