Died in the Wool

Ngaio Marsh

Died in the Wool

For the Lexicographers

PROLOGUE

1939

“I am Mrs. Rubrick of Mount Moon,” said the golden-headed lady. “And I should like to come in.”

The man at the stage-door looked down into her face. Its nose and eyes thrust out at him, pale, all of them, and flecked with brown. Seen at close quarters these features appeared to be slightly out of perspective. The rest of the face receded from them, fell away to insignificance. Even the mouth with its slightly projecting, its never quite hidden, teeth was forgotten in favour of that acquisitive nose, those protuberant exacting eyes. “I should like to come in,” Flossie Rubrick repeated.

The man glanced over his shoulder into the hall. “There are seats at the back,” he said. “Behind the buyers’ benches.”

“I know there are. But I don’t want to see the backs of the buyers. I want to watch their faces. I’m Mrs. Rubrick of Mount Moon and my wool clip should be coming up in the next half-hour. I want to sit up here somewhere.” She looked beyond the man at the door, through a pair of scenic book wings to the stage where an auctioneer in shirt-sleeves sat at a high rostrum, gabbling. “Just there,” said Flossie Rubrick, “on that chair by those painted things. That will do quite well.” She moved past the man at the door. “How do you do?” she said piercingly as she came face to face with a second figure. “You don’t mind if O- come in, do you? I’m Mrs. Arthur Rubrick. May I sit down?”

She settled herself on a chair she had chosen, pulling it forward until she could look through an open door in the proscenium and down into the front of the house. She was a tiny creature and it was a tall chair. Her feet scarcely reached the floor. The auctioneer’s clerks, who sat below his rostrum, glanced up curiously from their papers.

“Lot One-seven, six,” gabbled the auctioneer. “Mount Silver.”

“Eleven,” a voice shouted.

In the auditorium two men, their arms stretched rigid, sprang to their feet and screamed. “Three!” Flossie settled her furs and looked at them with interest. “Eleven-three,” said the auctioneer.

The chairs proper to the front of the hall had been replaced by rows of desks, each of which was labelled with the name of its occupant’s firm. Van Huys. Riven Brothers. Dubois. Yen. Steiner. James Ogden. Hartz. Ormerod. Rhodes. Markino. James Barnett. Dressed in business men’s suits woven from good wool, the buyers had come in from the four corners of the world for the summer wool sales. They might have been carefully selected types, so eloquently did they display their nationality. Van Huys’s buyer with his round wooden head and soft hat; Dubois’s, sleek, with a thin moustache and heavy grooves ru

In the open doorways and under the gallery stood groups of men whose faces and hands were raddled and creased by the sun and whose clothes were those of the countryman in town. They were the wool growers, the run holders, the sheep cockies, the back-countrymen. Upon the behaviour of the buyers their ma

Flossie saw her husband, Arthur Rubrick, standing in a doorway. She waved vigorously. The men who were with Arthur pointed her out. He gave her a dubious nod and began to make his way along a side aisle towards her. As soon as he reached the steps that led from the auditorium up to her doorway she called out in a sprightly ma

“What are you doing up here, Floss?” he said. “You ought to have gone down below.”

“Down below wouldn’t suit me at all.”

“Everyone’s looking at you.”

“That doesn’t embarrass me,” she said loudly. “When will he get to us, darling? Show me.”

“Ssh!” said her husband unhappily and handed her his catalogue.

Flossie made play with her lorgnette. She flicked it open modishly with a white-gloved hand and looked through it at the lists. There was a simultaneous flutter of white paper throughout the hall. “Over we go, I see,” said Flossie and turned a page. “Now, where are we?”

Her husband grunted urgently and jerked up his head.

“Lot One-eighty,” gabbled the auctioneer.

“Thirteen.”

“Half!” yelled old Ormerod.

“Three!”

“Fourteen!”

The spectacled Mr. Kurata Kan was on his feet yelping a fraction of a second quicker than Ormerod.

“Top price,” cried Flossie shrilly. “Top price! Isn’t it, darling? We’ve got top price, haven’t we? That dear little Jap!”

A ripple of laughter ran through the hall. The auctioneer gri

“Flossie, for God’s sake,” Arthur Rubrick muttered.

But Flossie made a series of crisp little nods in the direction of Mr. Kurata Kan and at last succeeded in attracting his attention. His eyelids creased, his upper lip lifted in a crescent over his long teeth and he bowed.

“There!” said Flossie in triumph as she swept out at the stage-door, followed by her discomfited husband. “Isn’t that splendid?”

He piloted her into a narrow yard. “1 wish you wouldn’t make me quite so conspicuous, my dear,” he said. “I mean, waving to that Jap. We don’t know him or anything.”

“No,” cried Flossie. “But we’re going to. You’re going to call on him, darling, and we shall ask him to Mount Moon for the week-end.”

“Oh, no, Flossie. Why? Why on earth?”

“I’m all for promoting friendly relations. Besides, he’s paid top price for my wool. He’s a sensible man. I want to meet him.”

“Gri

“Darling, you’re absolutely antediluvian. Before we know where we are you’ll be talking about the Yellow Peril.”

She tossed her head and a lock of hair dyed a brilliant gold slipped down her forehead. “Do remember this is 1939,” said Flossie.

1942

On a summer’s day in February, 1942, Mr. Sammy Joseph, buyer for Riven Brothers Textile Manufactory, was going through their wool stores with the storeman. The windows had been blacked-out with paint, and the storeman, as they entered, switched on a solitary lamp. This had the effect of throwing into strong relief the square hessian bales immediately under the lamp. Farther down the store they dissolved in shadow. The lamp was high and encrusted with dust: the faces of the two men looked cadaverous. Their voices sounded stifled, there is no echo in a building lined with wool. The air was stuffy and smelt of hessian.