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

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       CHAPTER SEVEN ACCORDING TO BEN WILSON

      I

      Having left instruction with himself to wake at five, Alleyn did so and was aware of distant stirrings in the house. Outside in the dark a cock crowed and the rumour of his voice echoed into nothingness. Beneath Alleyn’s window someone walked firmly along the terrace path and round the corner of the house. He carried a tin bucket that clanked with his stride and he whistled shrilly. From over in the direction of the men’s quarters all the Mount Moon sheep dogs broke into a chorus, their voices sounding hollow and cold in the dawn air. There followed the ring of an axe, an abrupt burst of conversation and presently, the smell of wood smoke, aromatic and pleasing. Beyond the still nighted windows there was only a faint promise of light, a vague thinning, but, as he watched, there appeared in the darkness a rosy horn, unearthly clear. It was the Cloud Piercer, far beyond the plateau, receiving the dawn.

      Alleyn bathed and shaved by candlelight and when he returned to his room found the vague shapes of trees visible outside his window, patches of blanket mist above the swamp, and the road, lonely and bleached, reaching out across the plateau. Beneath his window the garden waited, straw coloured, frosty and rigid. As he dressed, the sky grew clear behind the mountains and though the plateau was still dusky, they became articulate in remote sunlight.

      Breakfast began in artificial light, but before it was over, the lamp had grown wan and ineffectual. It was now full morning. The character of the house had changed. There was an air of preparation for the working day. Douglas and Fabian wore farm clothes; shapeless flannel trousers, faded sweaters pulled over dark shirts, old tweed jackets and heavy boots. Ursula was briskly smocked. Terence Lynne appeared, composed as ever, in a drill coat, woollen stockings and breeches – an English touch, this, Alleyn felt: alone of the four she seemed to be dressed deliberately for a high-country role. Mrs Aceworthy, alternately dubious and arch, presided.

      Douglas finished before the rest and, with a word to Fabian, went out, passing in front of the dining-room windows. Presently he appeared, far beyond the lawn, in the ram paddock, a dog at his heels. Five merino rams at the far end of the paddock jerked up their heads and stared at him. Alleyn watched Douglas walk to a gate, open it, and wait. After a minute or two the rams began to cross the paddock towards him, heavily, not hurrying. He let them through the gate and they disappeared together, a portentous company.

      ‘When you’re ready,’ said Fabian, ‘shall we go over to the wool-shed?’

      ‘If there’s anything you would like –’ Mrs Aceworthy said. ‘I mean, I’m sure we all want to be helpful – so dreadful – so many inquiries. One might almost feel – but of course this is quite different, I’m sure.’ She drifted unhappily away.

      ‘The Acepot’s a bit scattered this morning,’ Ursula said. ‘You’ll tell us, won’t you, Mr Alleyn, if there’s anything we can do?’

      Alleyn thanked her and said there was nothing. He and Fabian went out of doors.

      The sun had not yet reached Mount Moon. The air was cold and the ground crisp under their feet. From the direction of the yards came the authentic voice of the high country, a dreamlike and conglomerate drone, the voice of a mob of sheep. Fabian led the way along the left-hand walk between clipped poplar hedges, already flame coloured. They turned down the lavender path and through a gate, making a long stride over an icy little water race, and then walked uphill in the direction of the wool-shed and cottages.

      The sound increased in volume. Individual bleatings, persistent and almost human, separated out from the multiple drone. A long galvanized iron shed appeared, flanked with drafting yards, beyond which lay a paddock so full of sheep that at a distance it looked like a shifting greyish lake. The sheep were driven up to the yards by men and dogs: the men yelled and the dogs barked remorselessly and without rhythm. A continual flood of sheep poured through a series of yards, each smaller than the last, into a narrow runway or race and was forced and harried towards a two-way gate which a short, monkey-faced man shoved now this way, now that, drafting them into separate pens. This progress was assisted by a youth outside the rails who continually ran towards the sheep, waving his hat and crying out in a falsetto voice. At each of these sallies the sheep, harried from the rear by dogs, would dart past the youth towards the drafting gate. The acrid smell of greasy wool was strong on the cold air.

      ‘That’s Tommy Johns,’ said Fabian, jerking his head at the man at the drafting gate. ‘The boy’s young Cliff.’

      He was rather a nice-looking lad, Alleyn thought. He had a well-shaped head and a thatch of light-brown hair that overhung his forehead. His face was thin. There was an agreeable sharpness and delicacy in the bony structures of the eyes and cheek bones. The mouth was obstinate. He still had a lean, gangling air about him, the last characteristic of adolescence. His hands were broad and nervous. His grey sweater and dirty flannel trousers had a schoolboyish look that contrasted strongly with the clothes of the older men. When he saw Fabian he gave him a sidelong grin and then with a whoop and a flourish ran again at the oncoming sheep. They streamed past him to the drafting gate and huddled together, clambering on each other’s backs.

      Now that he had drawn closer Alleyn could resolve the babel into its component parts, the complaint of the sheep, the patter of their hooves on frozen earth and their humanlike coughing and breathing; the yelp of dogs and men and, within the shed, the burr of an engine and intermittent bumping and thuds.

      ‘There’ll be a smoke-oh in ten minutes,’ said Fabian. ‘Would you like to see inside?’

      ‘Right,’ said Alleyn.

      Tommy Johns didn’t raise his eyes as they passed him. The gate bumped to and fro against worn posts and the sheep darted through. ‘He’s counting,’ Fabian said.

      II

      The wool-shed seemed dark when they first went in and the reek of sheep was almost tangible. The greatest area of light fell where the shearers were at work. It came through a doorless opening from which a sacking curtain had been pulled back and through the open portholes that were exits for the sheep. From where Alleyn stood the shearers themselves were outlined with light and each sheep’s woolly coat had a bright nimbus. This strangely dramatic illumination focused attention on the shearing-board. The rest of the interior seemed at first to be lost in a swimming dusk. But presently a wool-sorter’s bench, ranked packs, and pens filled with waiting sheep took shape in the shadows and Alleyn was able to form a comprehensive picture of the whole scene.

      For a time he watched only the shearers. He saw them lug sheep out of the pens by their hind legs and handle them with dexterity so that they became quiescent, voluptuously quiescent almost, lolling back against the shearers’ legs in a ridiculous sitting posture, or suffering their necks to be held between the shearers’ knees while the mechanically-propelled blades, hanging from long arms with flexible joints, rolled away their wool.

      ‘Is this crutching?’ he asked.

      ‘That’s it. De-bagging, you might call it.’

      Alleyn saw the dirty wool turn back in a wave that was cream inside and watched the quarter-denuded sheep shoved away through the portholes. He saw the broomies, two silent boys, sweep the dirty crutchings up to the sorter and fling them out on his rack. He saw the wool sorted and tossed СКАЧАТЬ