Ngaio Marsh - Died in the Wool

The pages turned slowly.

… the injury to the back of the head. According to medical evidence it might have been caused by a downward blow from the rear made by a blunt instrument. Three medical men agreed that the injury was consistent with such a blow from the branding iron found in the shearing shed. A microscopic examination of this iron revealed stains subsequently proved by analysis to be human blood-stains. Post-mortem examination revealed that death had been caused by suffocation. The mouth and nostrils contained quantities of sheep’s wool. The injury to the skull would almost certainly have brought about unconsciousness. It is possible that the assailant, after striking the blow, suffocated the deceased while she was unconscious. The medical experts are agreed that death cannot be attributed to accidental causes or to self-inflicted injuries.

Here followed a detailed report from the police surgeon. Alleyn read on steadily —

…a triangular tear near the hem of the dress, corresponding in position to the outside left ankle bone, the apex of the tear being uppermost… subsequent investigation… nail in wall of wool-shed beside press… thread of material attached… lack of evidence after so long an interval.

“Don’t I know it,” Alleyn sighed and turned a page.

… John Merrywether, wool presser, deposed that on the evening of January 29th at knocking-off time, the press was full in both halves. It had been tramped but not pressed. He left it in this condition. The following morning it appeared to be in the same state. The two halves were ready for pressing as he had left them, the top in position on the bottom half. He pressed the wool, using the ratchet mechanism in the ordinary way. He noticed nothing that was unusual. The wool in the top half was compressed until it was packed down level with the top of the bottom half. The bale was then sewn up and branded. It was stacked alongside the other bales and the same afternoon was removed with them and trucked down-country…

Sydney Barnes, lorry driver, deposed that on January 30th, 1942 he collected the Mount Moon clip and trucked it down-country…Alfred Clark, store-man… received the Mount Moon clip on February 3rd and stacked it to await assessment… James MacBride, government wool-assessor… February 19th… noticed smell but attributed it to dead rat… Slit all packs and pulled out tuft of wool near top… noticed nothing unusual… assessed with rest of clip… Samuel Joseph, buyer…

“And back we come, full circle,” Alleyn sighed and refilled his pipe.

“Subsequent investigations,” said the files ominously. In their own language they boiled down, dehumanized and tidied up the long accounts he had listened to that evening. “It seems certain,” said the files twenty minutes later, “that the disposal of the body could not have been effected in under forty-five minutes. Tests have been made. The wool must have been removed from the press; the body bound up in the smallest possible compass, placed in the bottom half of the press, and packed round with wool. The fleeces must then have been replaced and tramped down both in the bottom and the top halves of the press, and the top half replaced on the bottom half… Thomas Johns, working manager, deposed that on the next morning he found that his overalls had been split and were stained. He accused the ‘fleecies’ of having interfered with his overalls. They denied having done so.”

It was getting very cold. Alleyn hunted out a sweater and pulled it on. The house was utterly silent now. So must it have been when Ursula Harme awoke to find her dream continued in the sound of a footfall on the landing, and when Douglas Grace heard retreating steps in the passage outside his room. It would be nice, Alleyn thought wearily, to know if the nocturnal prowler was the same in each instance.

He rose stiffly and moved to the large wardrobe whose doors were flush with the end wall of the room. He opened them and was confronted with his own clothes neatly arranged on hangers. The invaluable Markins again. It was here, at the back of the wardrobe, hidden under three folded rugs, that Flossie Rubrick’s suitcase had been found, ready packed for the journey north that she never took. Terence Lynne had discovered it, three days after the night in the garden. The purse with her travelling money and official passes had been in the drawer of the dressing-table. Had this been the errand of Ursula’s nocturnal prowler? To conceal the suitcase and the purse? And had the fragment of wool been dropped then? From a shoe that had tramped down the wool over Flossie Rubrick’s head?

This, thought Alleyn, had been a neat and expeditious job. Not too fancy. A blow on the head, solid enough to stun, not savage enough to make a great mess. Suffocation, and then the answer to the one great problem, the disposal of the body. Very cool and bold. Risky, but well-conceived and justified by results. The most difficult part had been done by other people.

And the inevitable speculation arose in his mind. What had been the thoughts of his murderer when the shearers went to work the next morning, when the moment came for the wool presser to throw his weight on the ratchet arm and force down the trampled wool from the top half of the press into the pack in the lower half? Could the murderer have been sure that when the pack was sewn up and the press opened there would be no bulges, no stains? And when the time came for a bale hook to be jabbed into the top corner of the pack and for it to be hauled and heaved into the waiting lorry? Its weight? She had been a tiny woman and very thin but how much more did she weigh than her bulk in pressed wool?

He turned back to the files.

The medical experts are of the opinion that the binding of the body was probably effected within six hours of death as the onset of rigor mortis , after that period, would probably have rendered such a process impossible. They add, however, that in the circumstances, i.e. warm temperature, lack of violent exercise before death, the onset would be unlikely to be early.

“Cautious, as always,” Alleyn thought. “Now then. Supposing he was a man. Did the murderer of Florence Rubrick, believing that he would be undisturbed, finish his appalling job while the members of the household were still up? The men were away, certainly, but what about the Johns family, and Markins and Albert Black? Might their curiosity not have been aroused by a light in the wool-shed windows? Or were they blacked-out in 1942? Probably they were not as Ursula Harme remarked that the shed was in darkness at five to nine, when she went in search of her guardian. This suggests that she expected to see lights.” The files, he reflected, made no mention of this point. If the step that Ursula had heard was the murderer’s, had he returned, having finished his work, to hide away the suitcase and purse and thus preserve the illusion that Florence had gone north? Were the killing and the trussing-up and the hiding away of the body done as a continuous operation or was there an interval? She was killed some time after eight o’clock— nobody can give the exact time when she walked down the lavender path and turned left. It had been her intention to try her voice in the shearing shed and return. She would have been anxious, surely, to know if the brooch was found. Would she have stayed longer than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour giving an imitation of an M. P. talking to herself in a deserted shed? Surely not. Surely, then, she was killed before, or quite soon after, the search-party went indoors. It was five to nine when the brooch was found, and five to nine when, on his mother’s entrance into the annex, Cliff Johns stopped playing and went home with her. During the period after the people in the house went to bed and before the party returned from the dance at a quarter to two, the wool-shed would be completely deserted. The lorry itself had broken down at the gate but the revellers would be heard long before they reached the shed. He would still have time to put out the lights, and, if necessary, hide. By that time, almost certainly, the body would have been in the bottom half of the press and probably the top half would be partially packed.