Pax Britannia: Human Nature

by Jonathan Green

  The Chief Inspector expressed his irritation by breathing out loudly through his nose. "Point taken."

  He turned to his Detective Sergeant. "First it was Higgins, wealthy banker, out for a walk with his dog along Brewer Street, two nights ago. And now this poor bugger."

  "Yes, sir," Whately confirmed.

  "Two men, two murders, two nights. But what was it that connected the victims? Why were they the targets that our killer chose?"

  There was the creak and bang of a door opening and closing, accompanied by the tap-tap-tap of footsteps on the polished archive floor.

  "And what have we here?" came a cheery voice from behind the Chief Inspector. Thaw turned and came face-to-face with a smartly-dressed man, in his mid-to-late thirties judging by the streaks of grey present at the temples of his thick head of hair. He was handsome, with a well-defined jaw-line, and tall, and the Chief Inspector could see that beneath his long coat and tweed suit he had the physique of an athlete. Behind him, at his shoulder, stood an older man, dressed in the traditional attire of a butler. He was tall like his master and broad across the shoulders, his grey hair swept back from a clearly-defined widow's peak

  "Who the bloody hell are you?" Chief Inspector Thaw demanded.

  The interloper fixed the policeman with sparkling brown eyes and grinned. "Ulysses Quicksilver, at your service," he said, holding out a black-gloved hand. "You might have heard of me."

  "Might I?" the Chief Inspector returned. "Should I have heard of him, Whately?"

  "Oh yes, sir," the Detective Sergeant blurted excitedly. "Mr Quicksilver saved her Majesty's life, sir, during the Wormwood Debacle. Don't you remember?"

  The Chief Inspector muttered something as undoubtedly unflattering as it was unintelligible.

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir," the Detective Sergeant said, with all the enthusiasm of an over-excited puppy, taking the proffered handshake where his superior had not.

  "Thank you...?"

  "Whately. Detective Sergeant Whately."

  "Sergeant Whately. A pleasure!"

  "Who let you in here anyway?" Thaw snapped.

  "Does that matter? I'm here now, and I'm here to help."

  "What brings you to Oxford, Mr Quicksilver?" Whately asked, patently awestruck finding himself in the presence of a genuine Hero of the Empire.

  "Looking up an old friend," Quicksilver replied. "Or at least I will be when we're done here. Saw all the commotion in the street as we were driving over to Boriel."

  "Well, you'll be pleased to hear that we are all done here," the Chief Inspector declared. "Isn't that right, doctor?"

  "Yes, Chief Inspector. It's over to you now."

  "So thank you for the offer of your help, but we won't need to keep you from renewing your old acquaintance after all."

  "What happened to the poor fellow?" Quicksilver pressed, craning to peer past the Chief Inspector at the body lying between the stacks. "Stabbed was he?"

  "Yes," Whately replied helpfully, "several times. Just like the other one."

  "The other one?"

  "Whately!" the irascible Thaw growled.

  "Sorry, sir." The Detective Sergeant turned an embarrassed shade of beetroot.

  "So, Mr Quicksilver, as we like to say in the Force, there really is nothing to see here. We have everything under control."

  "Oh, I'm sure you do, Inspector."

  "That's Chief Inspector."

  "Oh, I do beg your pardon, Chief Inspector. We wouldn't want to be getting in your way now would we, Nimrod?"

  "Indeed not, sir," the dandy's manservant replied in a tone that matched the severity of his expression of aloof disdain as he regarded the two policemen with a stony, sapphire gaze.

  "But if you would like my help at all, I'll be in Oxford for the rest of the day, so don't hesitate to get in touch."

  He pulled a leather wallet from a jacket pocket and from that extracted a printed calling card, passing it to the still-grinning Sergeant.

  "Thank you for your time, Chief Inspector. Merry Christmas."

  And with that he turned, and left the library.

  "Nimrod, I do believe we have tarried here long enough," Ulysses Quicksilver announced as he and his manservant left the crime scene that the Bodleian Library had become. "I rather feel we've kept old Monty waiting far too long already."

  "Very good, sir," Nimrod replied matter-of-factly. "Would you like to take the car, sir?"

  The two of them ducked under the police line at the arched entrance to the Bodleian Square and turned left, making for where Nimrod had parked the Mark IV Silver Phantom at the entrance to Catte Street.

  "Let's leave the car," Ulysses said, buttoning his coat against the cold. "A walk in this bracing air will help clear the remains of last night's excesses from my head, I hope."

  "Very good, sir."

  A young woman, wearing a woollen beret and full-length coat against the cold, emerged from the throng of curious onlookers collected outside the Bodleian and hurried to intercept them.

  "Mr Quicksilver?" she called.

  "Who wants to know?" was Ulysses' sharp rebuttal.

  "Lucy Gudrun, Oxford Echo. What is that brings you to Oxford on Christmas Eve, when only last night you were seen gallivanting at Lord and Lady Rothschild's Christmas Ball?" The young woman suddenly seemed very confident as to Ulysses' identity.

  "Personal business."

  "And would that same personal business include the investigation of the Christmas Killings?"

  Ulysses' carefully-composed grimace of passive indifference slipped and he turned to look at the girl directly. "Killings plural, you say?"

  He was caught by her obvious attractiveness, which she seemed at pains to cover up. But even without the application of any obvious make-up, her cheeks still had an appealing rosy glow and her rosebud lips were none the less appealing.

  "Everett Willoughby's death is the second in as many days that match the same M.O. within the city."

  "How do you know...?" Ulysses broke off. He wasn't that naive. His comment had been a knee jerk reaction. He knew how the press worked. They always 'had their sources'.

  "I have my sources," the young woman said with a mixture of smugness and pride.

  "I knew you were going to say that," Ulysses said raising a wry eyebrow. She was young and eager, barely into her twenties, if he was any judge, and he was. "Look, Miss Gudrun, I have tarried too long already and have places I need to be, as I'm sure do you. Now if you'll excuse me."

  "Just one comment for the Oxford Echo?" the plucky reporter pressed, tireless in her efforts.

  Ulysses stopped. "Alright, here's a comment for you. No comment!" With that he turned on his heel and strode on his way.

  "Can I have a comment from you, sir?" the young woman asked, thrusting the hand-held recorder under Nimrod's nose before he even had a chance to follow his master. The young woman almost wilted under his withering sapphire stare.

  "Good day, Miss Gudrun," he intoned sonorously, but the look in his eyes said so much more, and none of it pleasant.

  She watched them leave.

  Lucy Gudrun knew a good story when she stumbled on one, like a chalk-outlined body on the floor of the Bodleian library, but she also knew when she was pushing her luck and when to admit defeat. Besides, she might have lost this particular battle, but she hadn't lost the war. Not yet.

  She turned back to the Great Gate that led from Catte Street into the School's quadrangle and from there into the Bodleian itself. She was just in time to see the curmudgeonly Chief Inspector Thaw and his sidekick Sergeant Whately emerge from beneath the stone gateway and cross the police line.

  Ensuring that her hand-held recorder was still running, she trotted towards the pair of policemen. "Chief Inspector!" she shouted. "A word for the Oxford Echo?"

  IV - THE DAMOCLES CLUB

  He knew that something was wrong before the porter even opened the door to the old man's rooms. It was the smell. The iron-rich tang of blood at the b
ack of his throat again, the rancid ammonia smell of voided bowels, the unpleasant and wholly unmistakeable smell of death.

  "Bloody 'ell!" the porter swore, his hand slipping from the doorknob as he stood there dumbfounded, the door swinging open to reveal the scene of devastation and death beyond.

  "Monty!" Ulysses Quicksilver gasped, pushing past the porter - his bowler hat held tight in his shaking hands now - and into the room.

  It had obviously been a mess to begin with. A proliferation of books and manuscripts, along with empty tea cups, half-eaten plates of food, and the skull of an Australopithecus, were scattered over desks and bookcases. The half-expected scholarly clutter of an absent-minded professor even littered the tops of glass-fronted cabinets containing stuffed animals and Neolithic tools, cracked leather chairs, and the Persian rugs on the floor as well. The attack on Professor Montgomery Summerson, had obviously left the study in an even greater state of chaos and confusion.

  Ulysses stood there, amidst the disorder and disarray, staring down at the cold carcass of his old tutor. Honeyed sunlight pierced the leadlights of the room's windows, revealing the full horror of the scene in intense, sun-washed colours, predominantly red.

  Summerson had called him at home only the evening before, but Ulysses had been out on the town, enjoying the company of tipsy and compliant young socialites at the Rothschild's Christmas Ball, held at his Lordship' Gunnersbury Park estate, west of the capital. Ulysses had missed the call then and hadn't even been aware of it until Nimrod woke him that morning, having checked the calls logged to the house the night before.

  "I should have come sooner," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper of regret.

  "You were out, sir," Nimrod replied. "You weren't to know that Professor Summerson would call. After all, you have not heard from him in some time."

  "I know, but if hadn't been out gallivanting about the place, like the self-indulgent idiot I was in my youth, I wouldn't have missed his call."

  "You've had a lot on your mind, sir."

  Ulysses swore under his breath. "He was onto something, Nimrod," he said, nudging a pile of papers at his foot. "He wanted my help and because I wasn't there for him he's dead."

  Ulysses looked at the body again. It was a mess. He didn't need to be a coroner to pronounce the cause of death. He had been knifed like Willoughby the librarian. His face had been carved up by four slashing knife strokes, while his shirt had been turned wholly red by his own blood.

  Ulysses knelt down beside the body. Summerson had died in agony, his body curled into an agonised question mark, as if in death every part of him had wanted to know why he had to die in this manner. As far as Ulysses could tell, he had bled to death, having been stabbed so many times that the blood-sodden fabric of his clothes now lay in tatters over the mangled meat of his chest.

  There was blood on his face, on his chest, his arms, blood had pooled on the floor around him, soaking fallen papers, the threadbare Persian rug on which he lay, contorted in his death-agonies, it covered his hands... Only it didn't. Ulysses paused and looked more closely.

  The dead man only had blood on the rigoured claw of his right hand, and no signs of any wounds there. The hand was stretched out from the professor's body, his fingers partially obscured by a bloodied document that must have fallen across him as he lay dying on the floor of his study.

  Suddenly aware of the rapid beating of his heart, caged within his chest, carefully Ulysses moved the papers aside. His breath caught in his throat. There, formed of bloody finger-strokes, was one semi-congealed word: Damocles.

  Monty Summerson had sent Ulysses a final message, written in his own blood.

  "I-I'd better call the-the police," the porter stammered, backing out of the room, leaving the door open behind him.

  "Just give us half an hour," Ulysses said, without looking at the man, but flashing him the contents of his leather card-holder again just in case he needed reminding who's authority they were working under.

  For a moment neither Ulysses nor Nimrod moved. Neither of them said anything, the only sound that broke the stillness of the study the insistent ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece on the other side of the room.

  As Ulysses continued to take in every detail of the murder scene, a shadow fell across him from the doorway to the study behind him.

  He heard a startled gasp and turned.

  In a moment the young woman had composed herself again. "Perhaps you would like to make a comment now, Mr Quicksilver," Lucy Gudrun suggested, recording device pointing towards him.

  "Anything that has the name Damocles on it. Anything that might give us any kind of a clue. Anything at all." Ulysses said, frustrated at his own failure to so far discover what it was that his former tutor had been trying to tell him through his last, dying act.

  Heedless to what Chief Inspector Thaw might have to say about them disturbing a crime scene, Nimrod set about bringing some semblance of order back to the professor's study - although he made sure that he left the body just as it was - so that Ulysses' search for clues might be made all the easier, while the reporter began going through the papers on the dead man's desk.

  Ulysses had taken the attitude that her arrival at Boriel College, having obviously followed them from the Bodleian, had been opportune. She obviously already had a handle on what was going on, and she had seen too much of the scene of Summerson's murder already to be fobbed off, and so he had decided to treat her presence as an asset rather than a hindrance. He had put her to work, promising her the scoop of her career as he set about solving the Christmas Killings. She was tough too, not seeming to mind that the professor's body was still there in the room.

  And yet, here they were, with the half hour's grace granted them by the porter almost up, half-expecting the police to turn up at any moment, and still without any answers.

  "Here, take a look at this!" Lucy suddenly piped up. Ulysses joined her at the professor's desk. She was poring over a pile of newspapers, among them copies of the Oxford Echo. Ulysses peered over her shoulder to see what it was that had caused her outburst.

  She had a copy of The Times in front of her, folded so as to expose the obituaries page. Circled in red pen was the obituary of Dr Lockwood Lacey, doctor of psychiatry. Ulysses scanned the piece.

  "Fifty-seven years old... worked at the Saint Ophelia Sanatorium for the Mentally Infirm," he read. "Very interesting, but what does this have to do with Damocles, or the other killings, for that matter?"

  "Well, your professor friend circled it for a reason and then there's this." She moved the paper to reveal another, with another article circled, this time reporting the murder of one Aloysius Higgins, a banker. "This one just made yesterday's Echo."

  "When's the obituary from?"

  "The eighth of December. It says Lacey died on the first of December."

  "And when did Higgins die?"

  "The night of the twenty-second."

  "So how does this one fit in?" Ulysses asked, lifting another folded newspaper from a pile of books on a chair beside him and placing it on the desk. In this case, Summerson appeared to have circled a few lines at the bottom of an inside page of the local paper, that reported the killing of a tramp well-known in the Jericho area, who went by the name of Noah.

  "That's news to me," Lucy admitted. "When did that happen?"

  "On..." Ulysses paused, searching for a date at the top of the page. "On the twenty-first. Sunday night."

  "And then the Chief Librarian was killed last night, which was the twenty-third," Lucy pondered, gazing thoughtfully into the middle distance.

  "Along with Summerson. So, what could possibly connect the Professor of Social Anthropology, the Chief Librarian of the Bodleian, a successful banker, and a homeless tramp?"

  "You think something does connect them then?"

  "Well, apart from the manner of their deaths? It seems likely, doesn't it to you?"

  "Well yes, but a couple of academics, a banker and a tramp?"
>
  "And let's not forget the suicidal doctor of psychiatry." Ulysses' face twisted into a knot of concentration. "Physician, heal thyself," he said quietly to himself.

  "Excuse me, sir," Nimrod said interrupting his master's musings, "but I think this might be of interest." He was holding up a framed photograph. The glass was cracked right across the middle, no doubt having been damaged at the same time that Summerson was attacked.

  Ulysses crossed the room in a series of excited, leaping strides. "Good show, old chap!"

  The photograph showed seven young men, undoubtedly undergraduates, by their dress and apparent age. The picture had been taken within the Boriel College quad. Although the pose was formal, their attitude was anything but. All of them were wearing expressions of smug arrogance or feigned aloof indifference.

  "Obnoxious arrogant bastards, convinced of their own superiority over the rest of the human race the lot of them," Ulysses muttered under his breath.

  "I couldn't possibly comment, sir," was Nimrod's tactful reply, his gaze lingering on Ulysses.

  The sepia-tint photograph was mounted within a card frame, at the bottom of which had been written, in an exaggerated Gothic hand:

  The Damocles Club, Michaelmas Term, 1960.

  Underneath that were recorded the names of the individuals in the picture.

  "Well, there are a few familiar names here," he stated with glee. Her reporter's sense of curiosity piqued, Lucy rose from her place behind the desk and joined the two men in their inspection of the image. "There's Higgins, the banker, second from the left, and L. Lacey next to him, the suicidal doctor. Two along from him again is poor old Monty, of all people, and next to him, second from the right, is Willoughby."

  "You think this is the connection then?" Lucy asked.

  "Well, considering that we have the word 'Damocles' written over there on the floor in Monty's blood, and three of the men from this photograph have been murdered within as many days, I can hardly see how it can be anything other," Ulysses declared.

  "It's four, actually," Lucy said.