Died in the Wool

‘Me?’ Ursula shook her head impatiently. ‘I’m nothing in particular. Auntie Florence called me her ADC. I helped wherever I could and did my VAD training in between. It was fun – something going to happen all the time. I adore that,’ cried Ursula. ‘To have events waiting for me like little presents in a treasure-hunt. She made everything exciting, all her events were tied up in gala wrappings with red ribbon. It was Heaven.’

‘Like the party that was to be held in the wool-shed?’ asked Fabian dryly.

‘Oh dear!’ said Ursula, catching her breath. ‘Yes. Like that one. I remember –’

III

The picture of that warm summer evening of fifteen months ago grew as she spoke of it. Alleyn, remembering his view through the dining-room window of a darkling garden, saw the shadowy company move along a lavender path and assemble on the lawn. The light dresses of the women glimmered in the dusk. Lancelike flames burned steadily as they lit cigarettes. They drew deck-chairs together. One of the women threw a coat of some thin texture over the back of her chair. A tall personable young man leant over the back in an attitude of somewhat studied gallantry. The smell of tobacco mingled with that of night-scented stocks and of earth and tussock that had not yet lost all warmth of the sun. It was the hour when sounds take on a significant clearness and the senses are sharpened to receive them. The voices of the party drifted vaguely yet profoundly across the dusk. Ursula could remember it very clearly.

‘You must be tired, Aunt Florence,’ she had said.

‘I don’t let myself be tired,’ answered that brave voice. ‘One mustn’t think about fatigue, Ursy, one must nurse a secret store of energy.’ And she spoke of Indian ascetics and their mastery of fatigue and of munition workers in England and of air-raid wardens. ‘If they can do so much surely I, with my humdrum old routine, can jog along at a decent trot.’ She stretched out her bare arms and strong hands to the girls on each side of her: ‘And with my Second Brain and my kind little ADC to back me up,’ she cried cheerfully, ‘what can I not do?’

Ursula slipped down to the warm dry grass and leant her cheek against her guardian’s knee. Her guardian’s vigorous fingers caressed rather thoroughly the hair which Ursula had been at some expense to have set on a three days’ visit down-country.

‘Let’s make a plan,’ said Aunt Florence.

It was a phrase Ursula loved. It was the prelude to adventure. It didn’t matter that the plan was concerned with nothing more exciting than a party in the wool-shed which would be attended by back-country men and their womenkind, dressed unhappily in co-operative store clothes, and by a sprinkling of such runholders as had enough enthusiasm and petrol to bring them many miles to Mount Moon. Aunt Florence invested it all in a pink cloud of anticipation. Even Douglas became enthusiastic and, leaning over the back of Flossie’s chair, began to make suggestions. Why not a dance? he asked, looking at Terence Lynne. Florence agreed. There would be a dance. Old Jimmy Wyke and his brothers who played accordions must practise together and take turn about with the radio-gramophone.

‘You ought to take that old piano over from the annexe,’ said Arthur Rubrick in his tired breathless voice, ‘and get young Cliff Johns to join forces with the others. He’s extraordinarily good. Play anything. Listen to him now.’

It was an unfortunate suggestion and Ursula felt the caressing fingers stiffen. As she recalled this moment, fifteen months later, for Alleyn, he heard her story recede backwards, into the past, and this quality, he realized, would be characteristic of all the stories he was to hear. They would dive backwards from the moment on the lawn into the events that foreshadowed it.

Ursula said she knew that Aunt Florence had been too thoughtful to worry Uncle Arthur with the downfall of young Cliff Johns. It was a story of the basest sort of ingratitude. Young Cliff, son of the manager, Tommy Johns, had been an unusual child. He had thrown his parents into a state of confusion and doubt by his early manifestations of aesthetic preferences, screaming and plugging his ears with his fists when his mother sang, yet listening with complacency for long periods to certain instrumental programmes on the wireless. He had taken a similar line over pictures and books. When he grew older and was collected in a lorry every morning and taken to a minute pink-painted State school out on the plateau, he developed a talent for writing florid compositions which changed their style with each new book he read, and much too fast for the comprehension of his teacher. His passion for music grew precociously and the schoolmistress wrote to his parents saying that his talent was exceptional. Her letter had an air of nervous enthusiasm. The boy, she said bravely, was phenomenal. He was, on the other hand, bad at arithmetic and games and made no attempt to conceal his indifference to both.

Aunt Florence hearing of this took an interest in young Cliff, explaining to his reluctant parents that they were face to face with the Artistic Temperament.

‘Now, Mrs Johns,’ she said cheerfully, ‘you mustn’t bully that boy of yours because he’s different. He wants special handling and lots of sympathy. I’ve got my eye on him.’

Soon after that she began to ask Cliff to the big house. She gave him books and a gramophone with carefully-chosen records and she won him completely. When he was thirteen years old, she told his bewildered parents that she wanted to send him to the nearest equivalent in this country of an English Public School. Tommy Johns raised passionate objections. He was an ardent trades unionist, a working manager and a bit of a communist. But his wife, persuaded by Flossie, overruled him and Cliff went off to boarding-school with sons of the six runholders scattered over the plateau.

His devotion to Florence, Ursula said, appeared to continue. In the holidays he spent a great deal of time with her and, having taken music lessons at her expense, played to her on the Bechstein in the drawing-room. At this point in Ursula’s narrative, Fabian gave a short laugh.

‘He plays very well,’ Ursula said. ‘Doesn’t he?’

‘Astonishingly well,’ Fabian agreed, and she said quickly: ‘She was very fond of music, Fab.’

‘Like Douglas,’ Fabian murmured, ‘she knew what she liked, but unlike Douglas she wouldn’t own up to it.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by that,’ said Ursula grandly and went on with her narrative.

Young Cliff continued at school when Florence went to England. He had full use of the Bechstein in the drawing-room during the holidays. She returned to find him a big boy but otherwise, it seemed, still docile under her patronage. But when he came home for his summer holidays at the end of 1941, he was changed, not, Ursula said emphatically, for the better. He had had trouble with his eyes and the school oculist had told him that he would never be accepted for active service. He had immediately broken bounds and attempted to enlist. On being turned down he wrote to Florence saying that he wanted to leave school and, if possible, do a job of war work on the sheeprun until he was old enough to get into the army, if only in a C3 capacity. He was now sixteen. This letter was a bombshell for Flossie. She planned a university career, followed, if the war ended soon enough, by a move to London and the Royal College of Music. She went to the manager’s cottage with the letter in her hand, only to find that Tommy Johns, also, had heard from his son and was delighted. ‘We’re going to need good men on the land as we’ve never needed them before, Mrs Rubrick. I’m very very pleased young Cliff looks at it that way. If you’ll excuse me for saying so, I thought this posh education he’s been getting would make a class-conscious snob of the boy but from what he tells me of his ideas I see it’s worked out different.’ For young Cliff, it appeared, was now a communist. Nothing could have been further removed from Flossie’s plans.

When he appeared, she could make no impression on him. He seemed to think that she alone would sympathize with his change of heart and plans and would support him. He couldn’t understand her disappointment nor, as he continued in his attitude, her mounting anger. He grew dogmatic and stubborn. The woman of forty-seven and the boy of sixteen quarrelled bitterly and strangely. It was a cruel thing for him to do, Ursula said, cruel and stupid. Aunt Florence was the most patriotic soul alive. Look at her war work. It wasn’t as though he was old enough or fit for the army. The least he could do was to complete the education she had so generously planned and in part given him.

After their quarrel they no longer met. Cliff went out with the high-country musterers and continued in their company when they came in from the mountains behind droning mobs of sheep. He became very friendly with Albie Black, the rouseabout. There was a rickety old piano in the bunkhouse annexe and in the evenings Cliff played it for the men. Their voices, singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and strangely Victorian ballads, would drift across the yards and paddocks and reach the lawn where Flossie sat with her assembled forces, every night after dinner. But on the night she disappeared, his mates had gone to the dance and Cliff played alone in the annexe, strange music for that inarticulate old instrument.

‘Listen to him, now,’ said Arthur Rubrick. ‘Remarkable chap, that boy. You wouldn’t believe that old hurdy-gurdy over there had as much music in it. Extraordinary. Sounds like a professional.’

‘Yes,’ Fabian agreed after a pause. ‘It’s remarkable.’

Ursula wished they wouldn’t talk about Cliff. It would have been better to have told Uncle Arthur about the episode of the previous night, she thought, and let him deal with Cliff. Aunt Florence shouldn’t have to cope with everything and this had hurt her so deeply.

For the previous night, Markins, the manservant, hearing furtive noises in the old dairy that now served as a cellar, and imagining them to be made by a rat, had crept up and flashed his torch in at the window. Its beam darted mothlike about dusty surfaces of bottles. There was a brief sound of movement. Markins sought it out with his light. Cliff Johns’ face sprang out of the dark. His eyes were screwed up blindly and his mouth was open. Markins had described this very vividly. He had dipped the torch beam until it discovered Cliff’s hands. They were long and flexible hands and they grasped a bottle of Arthur’s twenty-year-old whisky. As the light found them they opened and the bottle crashed on the stone floor. Markins, a taciturn man, darted into the dairy, grasped Cliff by his wrist and, without a word, lugged him unresisting into the kitchen. Mrs Duck, outraged beyond measure, had instantly bustled off and fetched Mrs Rubrick. The interview took place in the kitchen. It nearly broke Florence’s heart, Ursula said. Cliff, who of course reeked of priceless whisky, said repeatedly that he had not been stealing, but would give no further explanation. In the meantime Markins had discovered four more bottles in a sugar bag, dumped round the corner of the dairy. Florence, naturally, did not believe Cliff and in a mounting scene called him a sneak-thief and accused him of depravity and ingratitude. He broke into a white rage and stammered out an extraordinary arraignment of Florence, saying that she had tried to buy him and that he would never rest until he had returned every penny she had spent on his schooling. At this stage Florence sent Markins and Mrs Duck out of the kitchen. The scene ended by Cliff rushing away while Florence, weeping and shaking, sought out Ursula and poured out the whole story. Arthur Rubrick had been very unwell and they decided to tell him nothing of this incident.

Next morning – the day of her disappearance – Florence went to the manager’s cottage only to be told that Cliff’s bed had not been slept in and his town clothes were missing. His father had gone off in their car down the road to the Pass. At midday he returned with Cliff whom he had overtaken at the crossroads, dead-beat, having covered sixteen miles on the first stage down-country to the nearest army depot. Florence would tell Ursula nothing of her subsequent interview with Tommy Johns.

‘So Uncle Arthur’s suggestion on that same evening that Cliff should play at the dance came at rather a grim moment,’ said Ursula.

‘The boy’s a damned conceited pup if he’s nothing worse,’ said Douglas Grace.

‘And he’s still here?’ said Alleyn. Fabian looked round at him.

‘Oh, yes. They won’t have him in the army. He’s got something wrong with his eyes, and anyway he’s ranked as doing an essential job on the place. The police got the whole story out of Markins, of course,’ said Fabian, ‘and for want of a better suspect, concentrated on the boy. I expect he looms large in the files, doesn’t he?’

‘He peters out about halfway through.’

‘That’s because he’s the only member of the household who’s got a sort of alibi. We all heard him playing the piano until just before the diamond clip was found, which was at five to nine. When he’d just started, at eight o’clock it was, Markins saw him in the annexe, playing, and he never stopped for longer than half a minute or less. Incidentally, to the best of my belief, that’s the last time young Cliff played on the piano in the annexe, or on any other piano, for a matter of that. His mother, who was worried about him, went over to the annexe and persuaded him to return with her to the cottage. There he heard the nine o’clock news bulletin and listened to a programme of classical music.

‘You may think that was a bit thick,’ said Fabian. ‘I mean a bit too much in character with the sensitive young plant, but it’s what he did. The previous night you must remember he’d had a snorting row with Flossie, and followed it up with a sixteen-mile hike and no sleep. He was physically and emotionally exhausted and dropped off to sleep in his chair. His mother got him to bed and she and his father sat up until after midnight, talking about him. Before she turned in, Mrs Johns looked at young Cliff and found him fathoms deep. Even the detective-sergeant saw that Flossie would have returned by midnight if she’d been alive. Sorry, Ursy dear, I interrupt continually. We are back on the lawn. Cliff is playing Bach on a piano that misses on six notes and Flossie’s talking about the party in the shearing-shed. Carry on.’

Ursula and Florence had steered Arthur Rubrick away from Cliff though the piano in the annexe continued to remind them of him. Flossie began to plan her speech on post-war land settlement for soldiers. ‘There’ll be no blunders this time,’ she declared. ‘The bill we’re planning will see to that. A committee of experts.’ The phrases drifted out over the darkling garden. ‘Good country, properly stocked … adequate equipment … Soldiers Rehabilitation Fund … I shall speak for twenty minutes before supper …’ But from what part of the wool-shed should she speak? Why not from the press itself? There would be a touch of symbolism in that, Flossie cried, taking fire. It would be from the press itself with an improvised platform across the top. She would be a dominant figure there. Perhaps some extra lighting? ‘We must go and look!’ she cried, jumping to her feet. That had always been her way with everything. No sooner said than done. She had tremendous driving power and enthusiasm. ‘I’m going to try my voice there – now. Give me my coat, Douglas darling.’ Douglas helped her into the diaphanous coat.

It was then that he discovered the loss of the diamond clip.

It had been a silver wedding present from Arthur, one of a pair. Its mate still twinkled on the left lapel of the coat. Flossie announced simply that it must be found, and Douglas organized the search party. ‘You’ll see it quite easily,’ she told them, ‘by the glitter. I shall walk slowly to the shearing-shed, looking as I go. I want to try my voice. Please don’t interrupt me, any of you. I shan’t get another chance and I must be in bed before ten. An early start in the morning. Look carefully and mind you don’t tread on it. Off you go.’

To Ursula’s lot had fallen a long path running down the right-hand side of the tennis lawn between hedges of clipped poplars, dense with summer foliage. This path divided the tennis lawn from a farther lawn which extended from the front along the south side of the house. This also was bordered by a hedged walk where Terence Lynne hunted, and, beyond her again, lay the kitchen gardens, allotted to Fabian. To the left of the tennis lawn Douglas Grace moved parallel with Ursula. Beyond him, Arthur Rubrick explored a lavender path that led off at right angles through a flower garden to a farther fence, beyond which lay a cart track leading to the manager’s hut, the bunkhouses and the shearing-shed.

‘No gossiping, now,’ said Flossie. ‘Be thorough.’

She turned down the lavender path, moving slowly. Ursula watched her go. The hills beyond her had now darkened to a purple that was almost black and, by the blotting out of nearer forms, Flossie seemed to walk directly into these hills until, reaching the end of the path, she turned to the left and suddenly vanished.

Ursula walked round the top of the tennis court, past the front of the house, to her allotted beat between the two lawns. The path was flanked by scrubby borders of parched annuals amongst which she hunted assiduously. Cliff Johns now played noisily but she was farther away and only heard disjointed passages, strident and angry. She thought it was a Polonaise. TUM, te-tum. Te-tum-te-tum-te TUM, te-tum. Tiddlytumtum. She didn’t know how he could proclaim himself like that after what had happened. Across the lawn, on her right, Fabian, making for the kitchen garden, whistled sweetly. Between them Terence Lynne hunted along the companion path to Ursula’s. The poplar fences completely hid them from each other but every now and then they would call out: ‘Any luck?’ ‘Not so far.’ It was now almost dark. Ursula had worked her way to the bottom of her beat and turned into the connecting path that ran right along the lower end of the garden. Here she found Terence Lynne. ‘It’s no good looking along here,’ Terence had said. ‘We didn’t come here with Mrs Rubrick. We crossed the lawn to the kitchen garden.’ But Ursula reminded her that earlier in the evening while Douglas and Fabian played an after-dinner singles, the girls had come this way with Florence. ‘But I’m sure she had the clip then,’ Terence objected. ‘We should have noticed if one was missing. And in any case, I’ve looked along here. We’d better not be together. You know what she said.’ They argued in a desultory way and then Ursula returned to her beat. She saw a light flash beyond the fence on the right side of the tennis lawn and heard Douglas call out, ‘Here’s a torch, Uncle Arthur.’ It was not long after this that Arthur Rubrick found the clip in a clump of zinnias along the lavender walk.

‘He said the beam from the torch caught it and it sent out sparks of blue light. They shouted, “Got it. We’ve found it!” and we all met on the tennis lawn. I ran out to a place on the drive where you can see the shearing-shed but there was no light there so we all went indoors.’ As they did this the music in the annexe stopped abruptly.

They had trailed rather wearily into the dining-room just as the nine o’clock bulletin was beginning on the radio. Fabian had turned it off. Arthur Rubrick had sat at the table, breathing short, his face more congested than usual. Terence Lynne, without consulting him, poured out a stiff nip of whisky. This instantly reminded Ursula of Cliff’s performance on the previous night. Arthur thanked Terence in his breathless voice and pushed the diamond clip across the table to Ursula.

‘I’ll just run up with it. Auntie Floss will like to know it’s found.’

It struck her that the house was extraordinarily quiet. This impression deepened as she climbed the stairs. She stood for a moment on the top landing, listening. As in all moments of quietude, undercurrents of sound, generally unheard, became disconcertingly audible. The day had been hot and the old wooden house relaxed with stealthy sighs or sudden cracks. Flossie’s room was opposite the stairhead. Ursula, stock-still on the landing, listened intently for any movement in the room. There was none. She moved nearer to the door and stooping down could just see the printed legend. Flossie was adamant about obedience to this notice, but Ursula paused while the inane couplet which she couldn’t read jigged through her memory:

Please don’t knock upon my door,

The only answer is a snore.

Auntie Flossie, she confessed, was a formidable snorer. Indeed it was mainly on this score that Uncle Arthur, an uneasy sleeper, had removed to an adjoining room. But on this night no energetic counterpoint of intake and expulsion sounded from behind the closed door. Ursula waited in vain and a small trickle of apprehension dropped down her spine. She stole away to her own room and wrote a little note. ‘It’s found. Happy trip, darling. We’ll listen to you.’ When she came back and slid it under Flossie’s door the room beyond was still quite silent.

Ursula returned to the dining-room. She said the light dazzled her eyes after the dark landing. She stood in the doorway and peered at the group round the table, ‘It’s odd, isn’t it, how, for no particular reason, something you see will stick in your memory? I mean there was no particular significance about my going back to the dining-room. I didn’t know then. Terry stood behind Uncle Arthur’s chair. Fabian was lighting a cigarette and I remember feeling worried about him –’ Ursula paused unaccountably. ‘I thought he’d been overdoing things a bit,’ she said. ‘Douglas was sitting on the table with his back towards me. They all turned their heads as I came in. Of course they were just wondering if I’d given her the diamond clip but it seems to me now that they asked me where she was. And, really, I answered as if they had done so. I said, “She’s in her room. She’s asleep!”’

‘Did it strike you as odd that she’d made no inquiries about the clip?’ Alleyn asked.

‘Not very odd. It was her way, to organize things and then leave them, knowing they’d be done. She was rather wonderful like that. She never nagged.’

‘There’s no need to nag if you’re an efficient dictator,’ Fabian pointed out. ‘I’ll admit her efficiency.’

‘Masculine jealousy,’ said Ursula, without malice, and he grinned and said, ‘Perhaps.’

Ursula waited for a moment and then continued her narrative.

‘We were all rather quiet. I suppose we were tired. We had a drink each and then we parted for the night. We keep early hours on the plateau, Mr Alleyn. Can you face breakfast at a quarter to six?’

‘With gusto.’

‘Good. We all went quietly upstairs and said goodnight in whispers on the landing. My room is at the end of the landing and overlooks the side lawn. Terry’s is opposite Auntie Florence’s and there’s a bathroom next door to her that is opposite Uncle Arthur’s dressing-room where he was sleeping. He’d once had a bad attack in the night and Auntie always left the communicating door open so that he could call to her. He remembered afterwards that this door was shut and that he’d opened it a crack and listened, thinking, as I had thought, how still she was. The boys’ rooms are down the corridor and the servants’ quarters at the back. When I came out in my dressing-gown to go to the bathroom, I met Terry. We could hear Uncle Arthur moving about quietly in his room. I glanced down the corridor and saw Douglas there and, farther along, Fabian in the door of his room. We all had candles, of course. We didn’t speak. It seemed to me that we were all listening. We’ve agreed, since, that we felt not exactly uneasy but not quite comfortable. Restless. I didn’t go to sleep for some time, and when I did it was to dream that I was searching in rather terrifying places for the diamond clip. It was somewhere in the wool-shed but I couldn’t find it because the party had started and Auntie Florence was making a speech on the edge of a precipice. I was late for an appointment and hunted in that horribly thwarted way one does in nightmares. I wouldn’t have bored you with my dream if it hadn’t turned into the dark staircase with me feeling on the treads for the brooch. The stairs creaked like they do at night, but I knew somebody was crossing the landing and I was terrified and woke up. The point is,’ said Ursula, leaning forward and looking directly at Alleyn, ‘somebody really was crossing the landing.’