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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 programme 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.

      IV

      ‘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 OK. 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 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 diehards, 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 were 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 long, 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 radio-locator in a car and bumped up the riverbed 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 manservant. ‘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 black-out, 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 СКАЧАТЬ