Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 5: Died in the Wool, Final Curtain, Swing Brother Swing. Ngaio Marsh
Rubrick was as a long-distance call had come through for her. He almost certainly overheard the arrangement about the keys. ‘And, by God,’ said Douglas, ‘he tried to make use of it.’
They parted company and Douglas went to bed. But he was over-stimulated and slept restlessly. At last, finding himself broad awake and obsessed with their experiment, he had decided to get up and look through the calculations they had been working on that evening. He had stretched out his hand to his bedside-table when he heard a sound in the passage beyond his door. It was no more than the impression of stealthy pressure, as though someone advanced with exaggerated caution and in slow motion. Douglas listened spellbound, his hand still outstretched. The steps paused outside his door. At that moment he made some involuntary movement of his hand and knocked his candlestick to the floor. The noise seemed to him to be shocking. It was followed by a series of creaks fading in a rapid diminuendo down the passage. He leapt out of bed and pulled open his door.
The passage was almost pitch dark. At the far end it met a shorter passage that ran across it like the head of a T. Here, there was a faint glow that faded while Douglas watched it, as if, he said, somebody with a torch was moving away to the left. The only inhabited room to the left was Markins’. The back stairs were to the right.
At this point in his narrative, Douglas tipped himself back on the sofa and glanced complacently about him. Why, he demanded, was Markins abroad in the passage at a quarter to three in the morning (Douglas had noted the time) unless it was upon some exceedingly dubious errand? And why did he pause outside his, Douglas’s door? There was one explanation which, in the light of subsequent events, could scarcely be refuted. Markins had intended to enter Douglas’s room and attempt to steal the keys of the workshop.
‘Well, well,’ said Fabian, ‘let’s have the subsequent events.’
They were, Alleyn thought, at least suggestive.
After the incident of the night Douglas took his keys to bed with him and lay fuming until daylight when he woke Fabian and told him of his suspicions. Fabian was sceptical. ‘A purely gastronomic episode, I bet you anything you like.’ But he agreed that they should be more careful with the keys and he himself contrived a heavy shutter which padlocked over the window when the room was not in use. ‘There was no satisfying Douglas,’ Fabian said plaintively. ‘He jeered at my lovely shutter, and didn’t believe I went to bed with the keys on a bootlace round my neck. I did, though.’
‘I wasn’t satisfied to let it go like that,’ said Douglas. ‘I was damned worried, and next day I kept the tag on Master Markins. Once or twice I caught him watching me with a very funny look in his eye. That was on the Thursday. Flossie had given him the Saturday off and he went down to the Pass with the mail car. He’s friendly with the pubkeeper there. I thought things over and decided to do a little investigation and I think you’ll agree I was justified, sir. I went to his room. It was locked, but I’d seen a bunch of old keys hanging up in the store-room and after filing one of them I got it to function all right.’ Douglas paused, half-smiling. His arm still rested along the back of the sofa behind Terence Lynne. She turned and, clicking her knitting-needles, looked thoughtfully at him.
‘I don’t know how you could, Douglas,’ said Ursula. ‘Honestly!’
‘My dear child, I had every reason to believe I was up against a very nasty bit of work; a spy, an enemy. Don’t you understand?’
‘Of course I understand, but I just don’t believe Markins is a spy. I rather like him.’
Douglas raised his eyebrows and addressed himself pointedly to Alleyn.
‘At first I thought I’d drawn a blank. Every blinking box and case in his room, and there were five all told, was locked. I looked in the cupboard and there, on the floor, I did discover something.’
Douglas cleared his throat, took a wallet from his breast pocket and an envelope from the wallet. This he handed to Alleyn. ‘Take a look at it, sir. It’s not the original. I handed that over to the police. But it’s an exact replica.’
‘Yes,’ said Alleyn, raising an eyebrow at it. ‘A fragment of the covering used on a film package for a Leica or similar camera.’
‘That’s right, sir. I thought I wasn’t mistaken. A bloke in our mess had used those films and I remembered the look of them. Now it seemed pretty funny to me that a man in Markins’ position should be able to afford a Leica camera. They cost anything from twenty-five to a hundred pounds out here when you could get them. Of course, I said to myself, it mightn’t be his. But there was a suit hanging up in the cupboard and in one of the pockets I found a sale docket from a photographic supply firm. Markins had spent five pounds there, and amongst the stuff he’d bought were twelve films for a Leica. I suppose he was afraid he’d run out. I shifted one of his locked cases and it rattled and clinked. I bet it had his developing plant in it. When I left his room I was satisfied I’d hit on something pretty startling. Markins was probably going to photograph everything he could lay his hands on in our workroom and send it on to his principals.’
‘I see,’ said Alleyn. ‘So what did you do?’
‘Told Fabian,’ said Douglas. ‘Right away.’
Alleyn looked at Fabian.
‘Oh, yes. He told me, and we disagreed completely over the whole thing. In fact,’ said Fabian, ‘we had one hell of a flaming row over it, didn’t we, Doug?’
III
‘There’s no need to exaggerate,’ said Douglas. ‘We merely took up different attitudes.’
‘Wildly different,’ Fabian agreed. ‘You see, Mr Alleyn, my idea, for what it’s worth, was this. Suppose Markins was a dirty dog. If questioned about his nightly prowl he had only to say: (a) 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