Read Online Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh - Free Book Online Page B

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!” ’
    â€˜Did it strike you as odd that she’d made no inquiries about the clip?’ Alleyn asked.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜There’s no need to nag if you’re an efficient dictator,’ Fabian pointed out. ‘I’ll admit her efficiency.’
    â€˜Masculine jealousy,’ said Ursula, without malice, and he grinned and said, ‘Perhaps.’
    Ursula waited for a moment and then continued her narrative.
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜With gusto.’
    â€˜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.’
    The others stirred. Fabian reached over to the wood box and flung a log on the fire. Douglas muttered impatiently. Terence Lynne put down her knitting and folded her elegant hands together in her lap.
    â€˜In what direction?’ Alleyn asked.
    â€˜I’m not sure. You know how it is. Dream and waking overlap, and by the time you are really alert the sound that came into your dream and woke you has stopped. I simply know that it was real.’
    â€˜Mrs Duck returning from the party,’ said Terence.
    â€˜But it was three o’clock, Terry. I heard