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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      ‘I know,’ said Alleyn.

      ‘Do you? And her being old. That made it worse. I started by being furious because she wouldn’t believe me. Then I began to be sorry for her. Then I simply wanted to get away and get clean. She began to – to cry. She looked ghastly. I felt as if I could never bear to look at her again. She held out her hand and I couldn’t touch it. I was furious with her for making me feel so ashamed, and I turned round and cleared out of it. I suppose you know about the next part.’

      ‘I know you spent the rest of that night and a good bit of the next day, walking towards the Pass.’

      ‘That’s right. It sounds silly. An hysterical kid, you’ll think. I couldn’t help it. I made a pretty good fool of myself. I was out of training and my feet gave out. I’d have gone on, though, if Dad hadn’t come after me.’

      ‘You didn’t make a second attempt.’

      Cliff shook his head.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘They got on to me at home. Mum got me to promise. There was a pretty ghastly scene, when I got home.’

      ‘And in the evening you worked it off with Bach on the outhouse piano? That’s how it was, isn’t it?’ Alleyn insisted, but Cliff was monosyllabic again. ‘That’s right,’ he mumbled, rubbing the arm of his chair. Alleyn tried to get him to talk about the music he played that night in the darkling room while Florence Rubrick and her household sat in deck-chairs on the lawn. All through their conversation it had persisted, and through the search for the brooch. Florence Rubrick must have heard it as she climbed up her improvised rostrum. Her murderer must have heard it when he struck her down and stuffed her mouth and nostrils with wool. Murder to Music, thought Alleyn, and saw the words splashed across a news bill. Was it because of these associations that Cliff would not speak of his music? Was it because this, theatrically enough, had been the last time he played? Or was it merely that he was reluctant to speak of music with a Philistine? Alleyn found himself satisfied with none of these theories.

      ‘Losse,’ he said, ‘tells me you played extremely well that night.’

      ‘What’s he mean!’ Cliff stopped dead, as if horrified at his own vehemence. ‘I’d worked at it,’ he said indistinctly. ‘I told you.’

      ‘It’s strange to me,’ Alleyn said, ‘that you don’t go on with your music. I should have thought that not to go on would be intolerable.’

      ‘Would you,’ he muttered.

      ‘Are you sure you are not a little bit proud of your abstinence?’

      This seemed to astonish Cliff. ‘Proud!’ he repeated. ‘If you only realized …’ He got up. ‘If you’ve finished with me,’ he said.

      ‘Almost, yes. You never saw her again?’

      Cliff seemed to take this question as a statement of fact. He moved towards the french window. ‘Is that right?’ Alleyn said and he nodded. ‘And you won’t tell me what you were doing with the whisky?’

      ‘I can’t.’

      ‘All right. I think I’ll just take a look at this outhouse. I can find my way. Thank you for being so nearly frank.’

      Cliff blinked at him and went out.

      II

      The annexe proved to be grander than its name suggested. Fabian had told Alleyn that it had been added to the bunkhouse by Arthur Rubrick as a sort of common-room for the men. Florence, in a spurt of solicitude and public-spiritedness, had urged this upon her husband, and, on acquiring the Bechstein, had given the men her old piano and a radio set, and had turned the house out for odd pieces of furniture. ‘It was when she stood for parliament,’ Fabian explained acidly. ‘She had a photograph taken with the station hands sitting about in exquisitely self-conscious attitudes and sent it to the papers. You’ll find a framed enlargement above the mantelpiece.’

      The room had an unkempt look. There was a bloom of dust on the table, the radio and the piano. A heap of old radio magazines had been stacked untidily in a corner of the room and yellowing newspapers lay about the floor. The top of the piano was piled with music; ballads, student song-books and dance tunes. Underneath these he found a number of classical works with Cliff’s name written across the top. Here at the bottom was Bach’s Art of Fugue.

      Alleyn opened the piano and picked out a phrase from Cliff’s music. Two of the notes jammed. Had the Bach been full of hiatuses, then, or had the piano deteriorated so much in fifteen months? Alleyn replaced the Art of Fugue under a pile of song sheets, brushed his hands together absently, closed the door and squatted down by the heap of radio magazines in the corner.

      He waded back through sixty-five weeks of wireless programmes that had been pumped into the air from all the broadcasting stations in the country. The magazines were not stacked in order and it was a tedious business. Back to February 1942: laying them down in their sequence. The second week in February, the first week in February. Alleyn’s hands were poised over the work. There were only half a dozen left. He sorted them quickly. The last week in January 1942 was missing.

      Mechanically he stacked the magazines up in their corner and, after a moment’s hesitation, disordered them again. He walked up and down the room whistling a phrase of Cliff’s music. ‘Oh, well!’ he thought. ‘It’s a long shot and I may be off the mark.’ But he stared dolefully at the piano and presently began again to pick out the same phrase, first in the treble and then, very dejectedly, in the bass, swearing when the keys jammed. He shut the lid at last, sat in a rakish old chair and began to fill his pipe. ‘I shall be obliged to send them all away on ludicrous errands,’ he muttered, ‘and get a toll call through to Jackson. Is this high fantasy, or is it murder?’ The door opened. A woman stood on the threshold.

      She looked dark against the brilliance of sunshine outside. He could see that the hand with which she had opened the door was now pressed against her lips. She was a middle-aged woman, plainly dressed. She was still for a moment and then stepped back. The strong sunshine fell across her face, which was heavy and pale for a country-woman’s. She said breathlessly: ‘I heard the piano. I thought it was Cliff.’

      ‘I’m afraid Cliff would not be flattered,’ Alleyn said. ‘I lack technique!’ He moved towards her.

      She backed away. ‘It was the piano,’ she said again. ‘Hearing it after so long.’

      ‘Do the men never play it?’

      ‘Not in the daytime,’ she said hurriedly. ‘And I kind of remember the tune.’ She tidied her hair nervously. ‘I’m sure I didn’t mean to intrude,’ she said. ‘Excuse me.’ She was moving away when Alleyn stopped her.

      ‘Please don’t go,’ he said. ‘You’re Cliff’s mother, aren’t you?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘I’d be grateful if you would spare me a moment. It won’t be much more than a moment. Really. My name, by the way, is Alleyn.’

      ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said woodenly.

      He stood aside, holding back the door. After a little hesitation she went into the room and stood there, staring straight before her, her fingers still moving against her lips. Alleyn СКАЧАТЬ