Died in the Wool (21 page)

‘She was going to try her voice, you know,' said Fabian at his elbow.

‘Yes, but from where? The press? It was full of unpressed wool and open, when the men stopped work the previous night. Did she damp down the pressing-lid or whatever it's called and climb up?'

‘That's what we've always supposed.'

‘Is the new press in exactly the same place?'

‘Yes. Under that red show ticket nailed up on the post.'

Alleyn walked past the shearing-board or floor. The wall opposite was a five-foot-high partition separating the indoor pens from the rest of the shed. Further along, behind the press, this wall was extended up towards the roof. At some time a nail had been driven through it from the other side and the point, now rusty, projected close to the wool-press. He stopped to look at it. The machines still thrummed and the sheep plunged and skidded as they were hauled out of the pens. The work went on but Alleyn thought that the men knew exactly what he was doing. He straightened up. Above the rusty nail there ran a cross beam in the wall on which anybody intending to mount the press might find foothold. Round the nail they had found a thread of Flossie's dress material. The apex of the tear in her dress had been uppermost, so it had been caused by an upward pull. ‘As she climbed the press,' thought Alleyn, ‘not when her assailant disposed of the body. It was too securely bound and the press opens from the front. He would truss the body, then clear the tramped wool out of the pack, leaving only the bottom layer, then open the front of the press and get the body into the bale, then would begin the repacking. But where was she when he struck her? A downward blow from behind near the base of the skull and grazing the back of the neck. Was she bent forward, her hands on the press? Stooping to free her dress? Was she in the act of climbing down from the press to speak to him, her feet already on the floor, her back towards him? That seemed most likely,' he thought.

Near the wool-press a hurricane lantern hung from a nail in the wall. Further along, to the left, a rough candlestick hammered out of tin was nailed high up on a joist. It held a guttered stump of candle. A box of matches stood beside it. These appointments had been there at the time of the tragedy. Had Flossie lit the lantern or the candle? Surely. It was dusk outside and the wool-shed must have been in darkness. How strange, he thought, as the image of a tiny indomitable woman, lit fantastically, grew in his imagination. There she must have stood, in semi-darkness, shouting out the phrases of which Terence Lynne and Fabian Losse had grown weary, while her sharp voice echoed in the emptiness. ‘Ladies and gentlemen!' How far had she got? What did her assailant hear as he approached? Was he—or she—actually an audience, stationed by Flossie at the far end of the shed, to mark the resonant phrases? Or did he creep in under cover of the darkness and wait until she descended? With the branding iron grasped in his right hand? Behind her and to her right, the inside pens had been crowded with sheep waiting for the next day's shearing, too closely packed to do more than shift a little and tap with their small hooves on the slatted floor. Did they bleat at all, Alleyn wondered, when Flossie tried her voice? ‘Ladies and gentlemen.' ‘Ba-a-a.' From where he stood Alleyn could see slantwise through the five portholes and the open doorway at the end of the shearing-board. The sun was bright on the sheep-pens outside. But when Florence Rubrick stood on the wool-press it had been almost dark outside, the portholes must have been shut and the sacking curtain dropped over the doorway. The main doors of the shed had been shut that night and a heap of folded wool bales that had fallen across the floor, inside the main entrance, had not been disturbed; the murderer, then, had come in by this sacking door. Did Flossie see the sacking drawn aside and a black silhouette against the dusk? Or did he, perhaps, crawl in through one of the portholes, unobserved. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure…'

A whistle tooted. Each shearer finished crutching the sheep in hand and loosed it through a porthole. The engine stopped and the wool-shed was suddenly quiet. The noise from outside became dominant again.

‘Smoke-oh,' Fabian explained. ‘Come and meet Ben Wilson.'

Ben Wilson was the sorter, boss of the shed, an elderly mild man who shook hands solemnly with Alleyn and said nothing. Fabian explained why Alleyn was there and Wilson looked at the floor and still said nothing. ‘Shall we move away a bit,' Alleyn suggested, and they walked to the double doors at the far end of the shed and stood there, enveloped in sunshine and, the silence of Ben Wilson. Alleyn offered his cigarette case. Mr Wilson said, ‘Ta,' and took one.

‘It's the same old story, Ben,' said Fabian, ‘but we're hoping Mr Alleyn may get a bit further than the other experts. We're lucky to have him.'

Mr Wilson glanced at Alleyn and then at the floor. He smoked cautiously, sheltering his cigarette with the palm of his hand. He had the air of a man whose life's object was to avoid making the slightest advance to anybody.

‘You were here for the January shearing when Mrs Rubrick was killed, weren't you, Mr Wilson?' asked Alleyn.

‘That's right,' said Mr Wilson.

‘I'm afraid you must be completely fed up with policemen and their questions.'

‘That's right.'

‘And I'm afraid mine will be precisely the same set of questions all over again.' Alleyn waited and Mr Wilson with an extremely smug expression, compounded, it seemed, of mistrust, complacency and resignation said, ‘You're telling me.'

‘All right,' said Alleyn. ‘Here goes, then. On the night of January 29th, 1942, when Mrs Rubrick was stunned, suffocated, bound, and packed into a wool bale in the replica of the press over there, you were in charge of the shed as usual, I suppose?'

‘I was over at Lakeside,' Mr Wilson muttered as if the statement was an obscenity.

‘At the time she was murdered? Yes, you probably were. At a dance, wasn't it? But (you must forgive me if I've got it wrong) the wool-shed is under your management during the shearing, isn't it?'

‘Manner of speaking.'

‘Yes. And I suppose you have a look round after knock-off time?'

‘Not much to look at.'

‘Those trap doors or portholes by the shearing-board for instance. Were they shut?'

‘That's right.'

‘But the traps could be raised from outside?'

‘That's right.'

‘And the sacking over the door at the end of the board. Was that dropped?'

‘That's right.'

‘Was it fastened in any way?'

‘Fastened?'

‘Fastened, yes.'

‘She's nailed to a bit of three-by-two and we drop it.'

‘I see. And the pile of sacks or empty bales inside these rolling double doors; were they lying in such a way that anybody coming in or going out would disturb them?'

‘I'll say.'

‘But in the morning, did they look as if they'd been disturbed?'

Mr Wilson shook his head very slightly.

‘Did you notice them particularly?'

‘That's right.'

‘How was that?'

‘I'd told the boys to shift them and they never.'

‘Could the doors have been rolled open from outside?'

‘Not a chance.'

‘Were they fastened inside?'

‘That's right.'

‘Is it remotely possible that there was somebody hiding in here when you knocked off?'

‘Not a chance.'

‘Mrs Rubrick must have come in by the sacking door?'

Mr Wilson grunted.

‘She was very short. She couldn't reach up to fit the baton on the cross beam where it now rests. So she probably pushed it in a little way. Is that right, should you say?'

‘Might be.'

‘And her murderer must have gained entrance by the same means, if we wash out the possibility of shoving up one of the traps and coming in that way?'

‘Looks like it.'

‘Where was the branding iron left, when you knocked off?'

‘Inside the door, on the floor.'

‘The sacking door, that is. And the pot of paint was there too, wasn't it?'

‘That's right.'

‘Was the iron in its right place next morning?'

‘Young Cliff says it was shifted,' said Mr Wilson in a sudden burst of loquacity.

‘Had he put it away?'

‘That's right. He says it was shifted. It was him first drew attention to the thing. He put the police on to it.'

‘Did you notice anything unusual that morning, Mr Wilson? Anything at all, however trivial?'

Mr Wilson fixed his pale blue gaze upon a duster of ewes at the far end of the paddock and said, ‘Look.' Alleyn looked at the ewes. ‘Listen,' Mr Wilson continued, ‘I told Sergeant Clark what I seen when I come in and I told Sub-Inspector Jackson and they both wrote it down. The men told them what they seen and they wrote that down too, although it was the same as what I seen.'

‘I know,' said Alleyn, ‘I know. It seems silly but I would rather like to hear it for myself now. I've seen the place. You see, there was nothing new or confusing about a wool-shed to Clark and Jackson. They're New Zealanders, dyed in the wool, and they understand.'

Mr Wilson laughed surprisingly and with unexampled contempt. ‘Them?' he said. ‘They were as much at home in the shed as a couple of ruddy giraffes, those two jokers.'

‘In that case,' said Alleyn with a mental apology to his colleagues, ‘I should certainly prefer to hear the story from you.'

‘There isn't a story,' said Mr Wilson piteously. ‘That's what I keep telling you. There isn't a ruddy story.'

‘Just give Mr Alleyn an account of the way you opened up the shed and got going, Ben,' said Fabian.

‘That's it,' Alleyn agreed hurriedly. ‘I only want to know the routine as you went through with it that morning, step by step. So that I can get an idea of how things went. Step by step,' he repeated. ‘Put yourself in my position, Mr Wilson. Suppose you had to find out, all of a sudden, exactly what took place at dawn in a—in a pickle factory or a young ladies' boarding school, or a maternity hospital. I mean—' Alleyn thrust his cigarettes at Mr Wilson and clapped him nervously on the shoulder. ‘Be a good chap, for God's sake,' he said, ‘and spit it out.'

‘Ta,' said Mr Wilson, lighting the new cigarette at the butt of the old one. ‘Oh, well,' he said resignedly, and Alleyn sat down on a wool-pack.

Once embarked, Mr Wilson made better showing than might have been hoped for. There was a tendency to skip and become cryptic but Fabian acted as a sort of interpreter and on the whole he did not too badly. A picture of the working day in a wool-shed began to take shape. Everybody had been short-tempered that morning, it seemed. Mr Wilson himself had a bad attack of some gastric complaint to which he was prone and which had developed during the night on the journey back from the dance. At a quarter to two that morning, when they reached Mount Moon, he was, he said, proper crook, and he had spent the remainder of the night in acute discomfort. No, he said wearily, they'd noticed nothing funny in the wool-shed when they came home. They were not in the mood, Alleyn gathered, to notice anything. The farm lorry had sprung a puncture down by the front gate, and they decided to leave it there until morning. They walked the half-mile up to the homestead, with the liquor dying out in them as they did so. They hadn't talked much until they got level with the yards, and there a violent political argument had suddenly developed between two of the shearers, ‘I told them to pass it up,' said Mr Wilson, ‘and we all turned in.'

They were up again at dawn. The sky was overcast and when Albie Black went down to open up the shed a very light drizzle had set in. If this continued, it meant that when the sheep under cover were shorn, the men would have to knock off until the next batch had dried. This was the last day's shearing and the lorry was to call in the afternoon for the clip, which should have been ready before noon. Albie Black went to light the hurricane lantern and found that the boys hadn't filled it with kerosene as he had instructed. He cursed and turned to the candle, only to find it had burnt down to a stump and been squashed out so firmly that the wick had sunk into the wax. He got a fresh piece of candle from another part of the shed, gouged the old stump out and tossed it into the pens. By this time it was light enough to do without it. When Mr Wilson arrived, Albie poured out his complaints and Mr Wilson, himself enraged by gastric disorder, gave the boys the sharp edge of his tongue. He was further incensed by finding, as he put it, ‘a dump of wool in my number two bin that hadn't been there when we knocked off the night before. All mucked up, it was, as if someone had been messing it about and then tried to roll it up proper.'

‘The wool is put into bins according to its grade?' Alleyn asked.

‘That's right. This was number two stuff, all right. I reckoned the fleeces had got into the shed when we was over at the dance and started mucking round with the stuff in the press.'

The boys, however, had vigorously denied these accusations. They swore that they had filled the lamp and had not meddled with the candle which had been fully five inches long. Tommy Johns arrived and pulled on his overalls, which hung on a nail near the shearing-board. His foot caught in an open seam in the trousers and tore it wider. He instantly accused Albie Black of having used the overalls, which were new. Albie hotly denied this. Mr Johns pointed out several dark stains on the front of the overalls and muttered incredulously.

The men started shearing. Damp sheep were crammed under cover to dry off as the already dry sheep thinned out. Fabian and Douglas arrived, anxious about the weather. By this time almost everybody on the place was in an evil temper. One of the shearers, in running across the belly of a sheep, cut it badly, and Douglas, who happened to be standing by, trod in a pool of blood. ‘And did he go crook!' Mr Wilson ruminated appreciatively.