‘And there’s no vitality in it, Fabian,’ she said anxiously. ‘You must admit that. I mean she was a much more splendid person than that. So marvellously alive.’ She caught her breath at the unhappy phrase. ‘She made you feel like that about her,’ she added. ‘The portrait gives you nothing of it.’
‘I don’t pretend to know anything about painting,’ said Douglas Grace, ‘but I do know what I like.’
‘Would you believe it?’ Fabian murmured under his breath. He said aloud, ‘Is it so great a merit, Ursy, to be marvellously alive? I find unbounded vitality very unnerving.’
‘Not if it’s directed into suitable channels,’ pronounced Grace.
‘But hers was. Look what she did!’ said Ursula.
‘She was extraordinarily public-spirited, you know,’ Grace agreed. ‘I must say I took my hat off to her for that. She had a man’s grasp of things.’ He squared his shoulders and took a cigar case out of his pocket. ‘Not that I admire managing women,’ he said, sitting down by Miss Lynne. ‘But Auntie Floss was a bit of a marvel. You’ve got to hand it to her, you know.’
‘Apart from her work as an MP?’ Alleyn suggested.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Ursula, still watching Fabian Losse. ‘I don’t know why we’re talking about her, Fabian, unless it’s for Mr Alleyn’s information.’
‘You may say it is,’ said Fabian.
‘Then I think he ought to know what a splendid sort of person she was.’
Fabian did an unexpected thing. He reached out his long arm and touched her lightly on the cheek. ‘Go ahead, Ursy,’ he said gently. ‘I’m all for it.’
‘Yes,’ she cried out, ‘but you don’t believe.’
‘Never mind. Tell Mr Alleyn.’
‘I thought,’ said Douglas Grace, ‘that Mr Alleyn was here to make an expert investigation. I shouldn’t think our ideas of Aunt Florence are likely to be of much help. He wants facts.’
‘But you’ll all talk to him about her,’ said Ursula, ‘and you won’t be fair.’
Alleyn stirred a little in his chair in the shadows. ‘I should be very glad if you’d tell me about her, Miss Harme,’ he said. ‘Please do.’
‘Yes, Ursy,’ said Fabian. ‘We want you to. Please do.’
She looked brilliantly from one to another of her companions. ‘But—it seems so queer. It’s months since we spoke of her. I’m not at all good at expressing myself. Are you serious, Fabian? Is it important?’
‘I think so.’
‘Mr Alleyn?’
‘I think so, too, I want to start with the right idea of your guardian. Mrs Rubrick was your guardian, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you must have known her very well.’
‘I think I did. Though we didn’t meet until I was thirteen.’
‘I should like to hear how that came about.’
Ursula leant forward, resting her bare arms on her knees and clasping her hands. She moved into the region of firelight. ‘You see—’ she began.
CHAPTER TWO
According to Ursula Harme
URSULA BEGAN HALTINGLY with many pauses but with a certain air of championship. At first Fabian helped her, making a conversation rather than a solo performance of the business. Douglas Grace, sitting beside Terence Lynne, sometimes spoke to her in a low voice. She had taken up a piece of knitting and the click of the needles lent a domestic note to the scene, a note much at variance with her sleek and burnished appearance. She did not reply to Grace but once Alleyn saw her mouth flicker in a smile. She had small sharp teeth.
As Ursula grew into her narrative she became less uneasy, less in need of Fabian’s support, until presently she could speak strongly, eager to draw her portrait of Florence Rubrick.
A firm picture took shape. A schoolgirl, bewildered and desolated by news of her mother’s death, sat in the polished chilliness of a headmistress’s drawing-room. ‘I’d known ever since the morning. They’d arranged for me to go home by the evening train. They were very kind but they were too tactful, too careful not to say the obvious thing. I didn’t want tact and delicacy, I wanted warmth. Literally, I was shivering. I can hear the sound of the horn now. It was the sort that chimes like bells. She brought it out from England. I saw the car slide past the window and then I heard her voice in the hall asking for me. It’s years ago but I can see her as clearly as if it were yesterday. She wore a fur cape and smelt lovely and she hugged me and talked loudly and cheerfully and said she was my guardian and had come for me and that she was my mother’s greatest friend and had been with her when it happened. Of course I knew all about her. She was my godmother. But she had stayed in England when she married after the last war and when she returned we lived too far away to visit. So I’d never seen her. So I went away with her. My other guardian is an English uncle. He’s a soldier and follows the drum and he was very glad when Aunt Florence (that’s what I called her) took hold. I stayed with her until it was time to go back to school. She used to come during term and that was marvellous.’
The picture sharpened on a note of adolescent devotion. There had been the year when Auntie Florence returned to England but wrote occasionally and caused sumptuous presents to be sent from London stores. She reappeared when Ursula was sixteen and ready to leave school.
‘It was Heaven. She took me Home with her. We had a house in London and she brought me out and presented me and everything. It was wizard. She gave a dance for me.’ Ursula hesitated. ‘I met Fabian at that dance, didn’t I, Fabian?’
‘It was a great night,’ said Fabian. He had settled on the floor, his back was propped against the side of her chair and his thin knees were drawn up to his chin. He had lit a pipe.
‘And then,’ said Ursula, ‘it was September, 1939, and Uncle Arthur began to say we’d better come out to New Zealand. Auntie Florence wanted us to stay and get war jobs but he kept on cabling for her to come.’
Terence Lynne’s composed voice cut across the narrative. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘he was her husband.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Douglas Grace and patted her knee.
‘Yes, but she’d have been wonderful in a war job,’ said Ursula impatiently. ‘I always took rather a gloomy view of his insisting like that. I mean, it was a thought selfish. Doing without her would really have been his drop of war work.’
‘He’d had three months in a nursing-home,’ said Miss Lynne without emphasis.
‘I know, Terry, but all the same…Well, anyway, soon after Dunkirk he cabled again and out we came. I had rather thought of joining something but she was so depressed about leaving. She said I was too young to be alone and she’d be lost without me, so I came. I loved coming, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Fabian murmured.
‘And there was you to be looked after on the voyage.’
‘Yes, I’d staged my collapse by that time. Ursula acted,’ Fabian said, turning his head towards Alleyn, ‘as a kind of buffer between my defencelessness and Flossie’s zeal. Flossie had been a VAD in the last war and the mysteries had lain fallow in her for twenty years. I owe my reason if not my life to Ursula.’
‘You’re not fair,’ she said but with a certain softening of her voice. ‘You’re ungrateful, Fab.’
‘Ungrateful to Flossie for plumping herself down in your affections like an amiable, no, not even an amiable cuttlefish? But go on, Ursy.’
‘I don’t know how much time Mr Alleyn has to spare for our reminiscences,’ began Douglas Grace, ‘but I must say I feel deeply sorry for him.’
‘I’ve any amount of time,’ said Alleyn, ‘and I’m extremely interested. So you all three arrived in New Zealand in 1940? Is that it, Miss Harme?’
‘Yes. We came straight here. After London,’ said Ursula gaily, ‘it did seem rather hearty and primitive but quite soon after we got here the member for the district died and they asked her to stand and everything got exciting. That’s when you came in, Terry, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Miss
Lynne, clicking her needles. ‘That’s where I came in.’
‘Auntie Floss was marvellous to me,’ Ursula continued. ‘You see, she had no children of her own so I suppose I was rather special. Anyway she used to say so. You should have seen her at the meetings, Mr Alleyn. She loved being heckled. She was as quick as lightning and absolutely fearless, wasn’t she, Douglas?’
‘She certainly could handle them,’ agreed Grace. ‘She was up to her neck in it when I got back. I remember at one meeting some woman shouted out: “Do you think it’s right for you to have cocktails and champagne when I can’t afford to give my kiddies eggs?” Aunt Floss came back at her in a flash: “I’ll give you a dozen eggs for every alcoholic drink I’ve consumed.” ’
‘Because,’ Ursula explained, ‘she didn’t drink, ever, and most of the people knew and clapped, and Aunt Florence said at once: “That wasn’t fair, was it? You didn’t know about my humdrum habits.” And she said: “If things are as bad as that you should apply to my Relief Supply Service. We send plenty of eggs in from Mount Moon.” ’
Ursula’s voice ran down on a note of uncertainty. Douglas Grace cut in with his loud laugh. ‘And the woman shouted “I’d rather be without eggs,” and Aunt Floss said: “Just as well perhaps while I’m on my soap-box,” and they roared with laughter.’
‘Parry and riposte,’ muttered Fabian. ‘Parry and riposte!’
‘It was damned quick of her, Fabian,’ said Douglas Grace.
‘And the kids continued eggless.’
‘That wasn’t Aunt Florence’s fault,’ said Ursula.
‘All right, darling. My sympathies are with the woman but let it pass. I must say,’ Fabian added, ‘that in a sort of way I rather enjoyed Floss’s electioneering campaign.’
‘You don’t understand the people in this country,’ said Grace. ‘We like it straight from the shoulder and Aunt Floss gave it to us that way. She had them eating out of her hand, hadn’t she, Terry?’
‘She was very popular,’ said Terence Lynne.
‘Did her husband take an active part in her public life?’ asked Alleyn.
‘It practically killed him,’ said Miss Lynne, clicking her needles.
There was a flabbergasted silence and she continued sedately. ‘He went for long drives and sat on platforms and fagged about from one meeting to another. This house was never quiet. What with Red Cross and Women’s Institute and EPS and political parties it was never quiet. Even this room, which was supposed to be his, was invaded.’
‘She was always looking after him,’ Ursula protested. ‘That’s unfair, Terry. She looked after him marvellously.’
‘It was like being minded by a hurricane.’
Fabian and Douglas laughed. ‘You’re disloyal and cruel,’ Ursula flashed out at them. ‘I’m ashamed of you. To make her into a figure of fun! How can you, when you, each of you, owed her so much.’
Douglas Grace at once began to protest that this was unfair, that nobody could have been fonder of his aunt than he was, that he used to pull her leg when she was alive and that she liked it. He was flustered and affronted and the others listened to him in an uncomfortable silence. ‘If we’ve got to talk about her,’ Douglas said hotly, ‘for God’s sake let’s be honest. We were all fond of her, weren’t we?’ Fabian hunched up his shoulders but said nothing. ‘We all took a pretty solid knock when she was murdered, didn’t we? We all agreed that Fabian should ask Mr Alleyn to come? All right. If we’ve got to hold a post-mortem on her character which, personally, seems to me to be a waste of time, I suppose we’re meant to say what we think.’
‘Certainly,’ said Fabian. ‘Unburden the bosom, work off the inhibitions. But it’s Ursy’s innings at the moment, isn’t it?’
‘You interrupted her, Fab.’
‘Did I? I’m sorry, Ursy,’ said Fabian gently. He slewed round—put his chin on the arm of her chair and looked up comically at her.
‘I’m ashamed of you,’ she said uncertainly.
‘Please go on. You’d got roughly to 1941 with Flossie in the full flush of her parliamentary career, you know. Here we were, Mr Alleyn. Douglas, recovered from his wound but passed unfit for further service, going the rounds of a kind of superior Shepherd’s Calendar. Terry, building up Flossie’s prestige with copious shorthand notes and cross-references. Ursula—’ He broke off for a moment. ‘Ursula provided enchantment,’ he said lightly, ‘and I, comedy. I fell off horses and collapsed at high altitudes, and fainted into sheep-dips. Perhaps these antics brought me en rapport with my unfortunate uncle who, at the same time, was fighting his own endocarditic battle. Carry on, Ursy.’
‘Carry on with what? What’s the good of my trying to give my picture of her when you all—when you all—’ Her voice wavered for a moment. ‘All right,’ she said more firmly. ‘The idea is that we each give our own account of the whole thing, isn’t it? The same account that I’ve bleated out at dictation speed to that monumental bore from the detective’s office. All right.’
‘One moment,’ said Alleyn’s voice out of the shadows. He saw the four heads turn to him in the firelight.
‘There’s this difference,’ he said. ‘If I know anything of police routine you were continually stopped by questions. At the moment I don’t want to nail you down to an interrogation. I want you, if you can manage to do so, to talk about this tragedy as if you spoke of it for the first time. You realize, don’t you, that I’ve not come here, primarily, to arrest a murderer. I’ve been sent to try and discover if this particular crime has anything to do with unlawful behaviour in time of war.’
‘Exactly,’ said Douglas Grace. ‘Exactly, sir. And in my humble opinion,’ he added, stroking the back of his head, ‘it most undoubtedly has. However!’
‘All in good time,’ said Alleyn. ‘Now, Miss Harme, you’ve given us a clear picture of a rather isolated little community up to, let us say, something over a year ago. At the close of 1941 Mrs Rubrick is much occupied by her public duties, with Miss Lynne as her secretary. Captain Grace is a cadet on this sheep station. Mr Losse is recuperating and has begun, with Captain Grace’s help, to do some very specialized work. Mr Rubrick is a confirmed invalid. You are all fed by Mrs Duck, the cook, and attended by Markins, the houseman. What are you doing?’
‘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—’
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 wa
rdens. ‘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 cooperative 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.