‘To be quite honest,’ said Fabian slowly, ‘we did. But I think we all put it down to her row with Cliff Johns. She was extremely cantankerous with all hands and the cook during that last week, was poor Flossie.’
‘She was unhappy,’ Ursula declared. ‘She was wretchedly unhappy about Cliff. She used to tell me everything. I’m sure if she’d had a row with Markins she’d have told me about it. She used to call me her Safety Valve.’
‘Mrs Arthur Rubrick,’ said Fabian, ‘accompanied by Miss U. Harme, SV, ADC, etc., etc.!’
‘She may have waited to talk to him until that night,’ said Douglas. ‘The night she disappeared, I mean. She may have written for advice to a certain higher authority, and waited for the reply before she tackled Markins. Good Lord, that might have been the very letter she started writing while I was there!’
‘I think,’ said Alleyn, ‘that I should have heard if she’d done that.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Fabian. ‘Yes. After all, you are the higher authority, aren’t you?’
Again there was a silence, an awkward one. Alleyn thought: Damn that boy, he’s said precisely the wrong thing. He’s made them self-conscious again.
‘Well, there’s my case against Markins,’ said Douglas grandly. ‘I don’t pretend it’s complete or anything like that, but I’ll swear there’s something in it, and you can’t deny that after she disappeared his behaviour was suspicious.’
‘I can deny it,’ said Fabian, ‘and what’s more I jolly well do. Categorically, whatever that may mean. He was worried and so were all of us.’
‘He was jumpy.’
‘We were all as jumpy as cats. Why shouldn’t he jump with us? It’d have been much more suspicious if he’d remained all suave and imperturbable. You’re reasoning backwards, Douglas.’
‘I couldn’t stand the sight of the chap about the house,’ said Douglas. ‘I can’t now. It’s monstrous that he should still be here.’
‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘Why is he still here?’
‘You might well ask,’ Douglas rejoined. ‘You’ll scarcely credit it, sir, but he’s here because the police asked Uncle Arthur to keep him on. It was like this …’
The story moved forward. Out of the narrative grew a theme of mounting dissonance, anxiety and fear. Five days after Florence had walked down the lavender path and turned to the left, the overture opened on the sharp note of a telephone bell. The post office at the Pass had a wire for Mrs Rubrick. Should they read it? Terence took it down. ‘Trust you are not indisposed your presence urgently requested at Thursday’s meeting.’ It was signed by a brother MP. There followed a confused and hurried passage. Florence had not gone north! Where was she? Inquiries, tentative at first but growing hourly less guarded and more frantic, long distance calls, calls to her lawyers, with whom she was known to have made an appointment, to hospitals and police stations, the abandonment of privacy following a dominion-wide SOS on the air; search parties radiating from Mount Moon and culminating in the sudden collapse of Arthur Rubrick; his refusal to have a trained nurse or indeed any one but Terence and Markins to look after him: all these abnormalities followed each other in an ominous crescendo that reached its peak in the dreadful finality of discovery. As this phase unfolded, Alleyn thought he could trace a change of mood in the little company assembled in the study. At first Douglas alone stated the theme. Then, one by one, at first reluctantly, then with increasing freedom the other voices joined in, and it seemed to Alleyn that after their long avoidance of the subject they now found ease in speaking of it. After the impact of the discovery, there followed the slow assembly of official themes: the inquest adjourned, the constant appearance of the police, and the tremendous complications of the public funeral: these events mingled like phrases of a movement until they were interrupted emphatically by Fabian. When Douglas, who had evidently been impressed by it, described Flossie’s cortege –‘there were three bands’– Fabian shocked them all by breaking into laughter. Laughter bubbled out of him. He stammered, ‘It was so horrible … disgusting … I’m terribly sorry, but when you think of what had happened to her … and then to have three brass bands … Oh, God, it’s so electrically comic!’ He drew in his breath in a shuddering gasp.
‘Fabian!’ Ursula murmured, and put her arm about him, pressing him against her knees. ‘Darling Fabian, don’t.’
Douglas stared at Fabian and then looked away in embarrassment. ‘You don’t want to think of it like that,’ he said. ‘It was a tribute. She was enormously popular. We had to let them do it. Personally –’
‘Go on with the story, Douglas,’ said Terence.
‘Wait,’ said Fabian. ‘I’ve got to explain. It’s my turn. I want to explain.’
‘No,’ cried Ursula. ‘Please not.’
‘We agreed to tell him everything. I’ve got to explain why I can’t join in this nil nisi stuff. It crops up at every turn. Let’s clear it up and then get on with the job.’
‘No!’
‘I’ve got to, Ursy. Please don’t interrupt, it’s so deadly important. And, after all, one can’t make a fool of oneself without some sort of apology.’
‘Mr Alleyn will understand.’ Ursula appealed urgently to Alleyn, her hands still pressed down on Fabian’s shoulders. ‘It’s the war,’ she said. ‘He was dreadfully ill after Dunkirk. You mustn’t mind.’
‘For pity’s sake shut up, darling, and let me tell him,’ said Fabian violently.
‘But it’s crazy. I won’t let you, Fabian. I won’t let you.’
‘You can’t stop me,’ he said.
‘What the hell is this about?’ Douglas asked angrily.
‘It’s about me,’ said Fabian. ‘It’s about whether or not I killed your Aunt Florence. Now, for God’s sake, hold your tongue and listen.’
CHAPTER FOUR ACCORDING TO FABIAN LOSSE
I
Sitting on the floor and hugging his knees, Fabian began his narrative. At first he stammered. The phrases tumbled over each other and his lips trembled. As often as this happened he paused, frowning, and, in a level voice, repeated the sentence he had bungled, so that presently he was master of himself and spoke composedly.
‘I think I told you,’ he said, ‘that I got a crack on the head at Dunkirk. I also told you, didn’t I, that for some weeks after I was supposed to be more or less patched up, they put me on a specialized job in England. It was then I got the notion of a magnetic fuse for anti-aircraft shells, which is, to make no bones about it, the general idea behind our precious X Adjustment. I suppose, if things had gone normally, I’d have muddled away at it there in England, but they didn’t.
‘I went to my job one morning with a splitting headache. What an admirably chosen expression that is: “a splitting headache”. My head really felt like that. I’d had bad bouts of it before and tried not to pay any attention. I was sitting at my desk looking at a memorandum from my senior officer and thinking I must collect myself and do something about it. I remember pulling a sheet of paper towards me. An age of nothingness followed this and then I came up in horrible waves out of dark into light. I was hanging over a gate in a road a few minutes away from my own billet. It was a very high gate, an eight-barred affair with wire on top, and padlocked. The place beyond was army property. I must have climbed up. I was very sick. After a bit I looked at my watch. I’d missed an hour. It was as if it had been cut out of my mind. I looked at my right hand and saw there