The Weight of the Evidence

by Michael Innes

  ‘Mr Marlow, do you admit that Mr Pinnegar and yourself planned and perpetrated a joke against the Vice-Chancellor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Mr Tavender, did you find a false beard and stow it away in the dark-room; and later, believing that the whole matter had better rest in obscurity, did you add to the confusion with more beards?’

  ‘Just that. And perhaps the confusion could have got on very well without me. I doubt whether many people here feel the affair to be exactly pellucid yet.’

  Appleby nodded gravely. ‘The matter is complex and there is a good deal that is still obscure. Several important matters have not yet been mentioned: for instance, a temple in Tartary, and a ladder, and the Strength of Materials.’ He paused and for a second his eye seemed to catch that of someone far down the table. ‘I think that some of you may want a little time to reflect, or for consultation with each other or with myself. I would suggest that we disperse now and meet again after dinner. Say in two hours’ time.’

  The proposal seemed to meet with general favour and the company filed from the room. In the long corridor bleak, bare lights burnt sparely. Appleby, his notes under his arm, said a word to Hobhouse and disappeared. Outside it was quite dark.

  Darkness was absolute in the boardroom. It was as if the nymphs were departed, leaving no addresses, and as if the bewhiskered worthies had faded, seeking a more kindly limbo. A rat crept softly among the university calendars and a night wind blowing down the chimney faintly rustled the invisible silk of the Duke of Nesfield’s gold and scarlet gown. Frozen amid their loaded vines the creatures of Burne-Jones awaited recreating light and from far away in the city the sound of horns and motors echoed up the hill. The second hour moved to its close.

  Appleby was the first back; the lights snapped on and he came in rather wearily; an observer might have remarked that he was as pale as Aphrodite and her smock. He sat down at the table, put his notes in front of him, took one glance round the empty and silent room, and began to read sombrely at the first page.

  Wednesday Morning

  Arrived yesterday afternoon and got the general hang of the case.

  Why should a man murder in this way, using a meteorite which only the uneducated could suppose to be an instrument of death by misadventure? Because either (1) the meteorite was the handiest thing or (2) it was the only thing or (3) there was attached to it a symbolism satisfactory to the perpetrator and possibly significant to some third party or (4) this particular meteorite had associations calculated to mislead or (5) a meteorite generically regarded has associations calculated to mislead. The last possibility is the most subtle and Tavender at the symposium last night seemed to have it in mind (a). A combination of the above factors is also a possibility.

  The body has been quite remarkably crushed.

  Jokes. As these have been current the crime may be (1) a joke gone wrong in some such way as Crunkhorn suggests or (2) deliberately or fortuitously intertwined with a joke or jokes itself innocently intended. Tavender again has seen something of this; he suggested correlating the crime with the matter of the skeleton in the maze and with the facetious possibilities of the Prisk-Pluckrose telephone.

  There has been the odd circumstance of the porter’s tortoise and its engendering my Aeschylus theory. In fact I find myself canvassing all the curious associations of the death-from-the-air complex (a). Even so remote an association as that of Damocles.

  The Duke of Nesfield has reason to apprehend that somebody else was actually the intended victim. Here there may he a situation which (1) bears out the Duke or (2) has been deliberately exploited by the murderer to confuse the trail or (3) introduces such a confusion by chance or (4) is capable of exploitation later to get people rattled and talking: the old technique!

  Consider the shared telephone. This might be used in contriving (1) a murder or (2) a joke. And it might introduce a factor of error or miscarriage into either of these. I feel that here is rather a chancy element to embody or exploit in a planned crime.

  A planned crime?

  Sir David Evans is concerned to befog the affair. Just the role for a metaphysician. I doubt if he tried to kill anybody. He would have it remembered that professors go mad. It is doubtful if the cold light of statistics would bear this out but certainly dons are often highly-strung and pervertedly ingenious folk – see any learned journal.

  Why turn on the fountain?

  The dark-room. If one of those ingenious persons were planning a crime it might well occur to him to exploit this. Or if he were improvising measures to escape the consequences of a crime?The lie of the place is so like the main theatre of a crime story!

  Old Hissey, the eminent epigrapher, turns out to be professor of classics here now; he is going to put out a book. Along with Evans he is the only person to convey an impression of disingenuousness so far. Marlow and Pinnegar? Well, Pinnegar perhaps a bit scared.

  Back to notes marked (a) above. I have a dim, rather startling notion. I say dim, though – mistakenly or no – its first dawning was like a flood of light. I’ve been had by floods of light before now.

  Wednesday Evening

  Miss Dearlove of the moated grange, the dirty mind. Evans and Pluckrose were both after one girl. Why not? But one imagines in rather an ineffective way: chocolates, dinners, theatres, flowers. Common enough. But then such a situation hardly gives scope for homicidal passion. Here conceivably is a more or less extraneous, but complicating, factor. It opens the whole tiresome business of private lives. Nosy-parker Pluckrose may have known too much about, say, Prisk.

  Lasscock, the man who knows something but not much.

  Marlow was a tutor at Nesfield Court. The Duke’s supposition that some other victim was designed connects, then, with Marlow.

  Church’s girl, Church’s bigamy, Miss Godkin and the Foreign Office. The inwardness of all this is pretty clear and it appears as a side issue. But it may conceivably connect with the Evans-Pluckrose-girl complex (b).

  Sir David Evans’s bust. The heart of the mystery lies here. So it is a pity I find it baffling!

  Tavender recommends a reading of Zuleika Dobson, the story of a girl who proved fatally attractive in an academic society. The hint here tends to bear out (b) above.

  If Prisk killed Pluckrose, Prisk may fake an attack upon himself, thus suggesting Prisk as the intended victim in the first place. But so may someone else. That is to say, if there is a discoverable motive for X’s killing Pluckrose it will suit X now to contrive the impression that Prisk and not Pluckrose was originally aimed at (c).

  Wednesday Night

  At Nesfield Court we have had a revelation of the sort of man Prisk is in the story of Marlow’s friend, the lad Gerald. Here is a true homicide-motive for the first time. But it is a motive for Marlow’s murdering Prisk. And, telephone and all, I distrust the notion of the wrong man’s having been killed.

  And we have discovered that Pluckrose stole the meteorite.

  Why should a man steal a meteorite?

  Well, what is unique about a meteorite?

  Pluckrose stole the meteorite; Pluckrose bashed the bust.

  BILL STUMPS HIS MARK.

  Thursday Noon

  Why did Pluckrose bash the bust green? An explanation comes from Hissey (green with envy).

  Hissey triumphantly finds possibility (c) above.

  Making the green one red. Hissey’s little joke.

  Lasscock would wake at eleven.

  Crunkhorn on fifty-ton meteorite.

  The sink was moved and this suggests that there was no previous plan to use the meteorite – although, if I am right about Bill Stumps, its use was something like poetic justice (d). The sink was picked up to use; and then the meteorite was seen, and used instead. See (a) above and (d). We are dealing with a masterpiece of improvisation.

  The false beard. False beards are used for jokes. Bogus telephone calls are used for jokes. It is a great joke to turn on a fountain on someone. Consider Evans’ quicke
st route to Pluckrose. Here then is a fortuitously synchronizing joke. And there was damp on the tower stairs: the joke and the tragedy at a sort of hide-and-seek, forming a syndrome. This, worked out, will explain all the facts. Pinnegar has decamped – but as one might from a scrape, rather than from a crime.

  Extra beards. These represent simply a malicious spoke in our wheel. Thrust in by Tavender, I should say. (And I shall never know how much Tavender knew; he is a natural born detective, I am inclined to believe.)

  Thursday Afternoon

  The affair of Timothy Church’s bigamy has cleared itself up on the expected lines. The grotesque Evans-Pluckrose-Prisk embroilment with the magnetic German lady explains Evans’ concern to conceal the joke played on him; there he was in the tower with his lewd rival Pluckrose dead below!

  Can the joke be got clearer? I think it can. By a little after ten Lasscock is comfortably asleep in the court. He may wake up for the fun, or he may not; it is not very material to the jokers. Somewhere about ten twenty Marlow rings up Evans on the Prisk-Pluckrose telephone, represents himself as Pluckrose, and asks Evans to come over urgently. Evans therefore takes the short route through the Wool Court. Pinnegar meanwhile has disguised himself as Murn (overcoat, hat, and muffler as well as the beard probably); he dodges out before the astounded Evans, turns on the fountain, and drenches him. Evans, his Celtic spirit roused, pursues the elderly-seeming jester. Pinnegar bolts round to the tower and up the staircase to the top floor. Evans still follows, and Pinnegar gives him the slip by coming down the hoist – having abandoned the beard. Evans is completely winded and more or less collapses; and meanwhile the murderer is at work on the floor below. So that when Evans recovers and looks out of the window there is Pluckrose dead beneath him. He hurries downstairs, taking Pinnegar’s abandoned beard with him – and thus leaves no trace of the affair except puddles on the stairs. At the doorway he is fearful of being seen, so on a sudden impulse he claps on the beard until he is well down the street. Then, perhaps, he attempts to stuff it in a drain – whence it is retrieved by the interested Tavender and later secreted in the dark-room cupboard: the first of Tavender’s little jokes. Evans hurries to his room (glimpsed by the porter); changes his jacket (warm day, he said, and something odd about his subsequent appearance, Hissey told Hobhouse); and goes to the refectory as usual. Note as a pleasant coda to all this unhappily timed buffoonery that he is there presently engaged in polite conversation by a beardless Pinnegar.

  This gets a great deal out of the way, at least to my own satisfaction. I hope to get corroboration by staging a general show-down this evening.

  And now it is all plain sailing:

  The Munchausen inscriptions are at Cambridge.

  The bust was new – and it turned green.

  And:

  The meteorite was on record as only recently arrived on earth.

  And:

  The noise of a steam hammer; the Strength of Materials

  The forge room is little used

  The prime association of meteorite is from above

  The extension ladder

  The hoist will go up to the top storey

  The hoist can be operated from the dark-room

  The weight of the evidence.

  15

  John Appleby put his notes in his pocket; he brought out a letter and laid it on the table in front of him. Crunkhorn came into the room followed by Hobhouse and Marlow, and at short intervals the others arrived. Appleby looked at nobody and said nothing, seemingly lost in some sombre reverie of his own. Hobhouse, counting the people as they came in, eventually leant forward and whispered to him. And then Appleby spoke.

  ‘I have here a letter addressed to the Chancellor of the University by Professor Hissey. I have spoken to the Duke on the telephone and he has given me permission to read it to you.’

  And Appleby picked up the letter from the table, opened it, and read – slowly and in a clear, unemphatic voice.

  The University of Nesfield

  MY LORD DUKE,

  I am informed by Mr Appleby of the metropolitan police that the lamentable events which have lately taken place within the university have been to you a matter of personal concern. It is for this reason – and because your Vice-Chancellor, by an irresponsible frolic unhappily implicated in the affair, may wish for the moment to stand aside – that I venture to address this letter to Your Grace. I shall be as little tedious as may be. Of what I have to say the greater part must necessarily be explanatory. Nevertheless the essence of my purpose is apologetic. I am sorry that I punched Pluckrose on the jaw. The fact that he thereupon fell under the steam hammer; that in falling back I pressed against the valve-lever; and that as a necessary consequence Pluckrose was instantly killed: these are points upon which remorse would be inappropriate, as they were concomitants fortuitous and undesigned. But I am sorry that I punched the man on the jaw.

  I am sorry that I involved Prisk in the risk of a serious motor accident. Legally and morally, this act was attempted murder. I would not have done it had I not had a great deal of work on hand. Night after night I sat up trying to get through with this, but I was early aware that Appleby was progressing too rapidly for me. It became clear that something must be done. Otherwise Annotatiunculae Criticae would never be completed, for I believe that there are few opportunities for scholarly disquisition afforded to occupants of a condemned cell. The particular clouding of the issue which I attempted was possibly but indifferently conceived – but I was tempted into feeling that if it could be made apparent that Prisk had always been the predestined victim I should be in a considerably stronger position. It was an uncomfortable night, with its long lurking round Nesfield Court.

  And now I must be something more systematic. But first let me repeat that this letter is motivated by ethical concern. I am anxious – I have from the first been anxious – that all the facts of the matter should be known and that justice should ultimately take its course. I have no wish to avoid the consequences of the unhappy deeds which have been forced upon me. This being so, you may ask – with a recourse to that Latinity which is but one evidence of Your Grace’s distinguished abilities:

  Quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori?

  And the answer is, of course, that I have not wanted to hurry up and die; I have had, I reiterate, too much work on hand. It would be no exaggeration to say that, from the first moment of my realizing that Pluckrose was dead, I have been entirely engaged in arranging what might be described as a series of delaying actions. At first my expectations were modest; I sought for no more than a few days in which I could order my papers and prepare one or two learned trifles – significant only to myself – for the press. Later I saw that I might take somewhat larger scope, and at least get out my projected book. But that this was not to be and that the twitch of the tether – or should I say halter? – was imminent I realized upon learning from Inspector Hobhouse, an amiable if unwary officer, that the perspicacious Appleby had penetrated to what may be called the Pickwickian or Stumpsian aspect of the case.

  And now let me tell you about Pluckrose. He was an interfering fellow, if ever there was one – and in a peculiarly laborious way. He would get up enough of another man’s subject to enable him to take more or less effective ground in his badgering activities. He did this with my own subject, which – perhaps it is necessary to mention – is that branch of classical archaeology known as epigraphy, or the science of deciphering inscriptions cut in stone. Of recent years we have had to deal with one or two odd cases of fraud or forgery in this department of knowledge; and, hearing of this, Pluckrose took an extraordinary notion into his head. He declared – no less – that the inscriptions on the celebrated Tartary obelisks recovered by my honoured teacher and close friend Professor Munchausen of Riga were an out-and-out fake! This nonsense was tiresome enough, but there was worse to follow. Pluckrose, in addition to being a busybody, was a chemist. And he declared his intention of undertaking a chemical experiment which should pr
ove the truth of his assertion.

  Although extremely annoyed by this grotesque and offensive talk, I was not actually alarmed until the startling incident at Mrs Tavender’s party. It was here that Pluckrose explained to me the nature of the test he proposed. More or less freshly cut stone, he declared, could be made to respond to chemical action in a manner altogether different from stone the surfaces of which had been exposed to the air for many centuries. It was his intention to go up to Cambridge and empty a vial of fluid on the inscriptions. If these had indeed – as he asserted – been cut within the last two or three years the surfaces thus recently exposed would react by turning green. And to make good this assertion Pluckrose perpetrated his astounding and offensive attack upon Sir David Evans’ recently chiselled bust. It will certainly occur to you – as it certainly occurred to Appleby – that this was very imperfect evidence of Pluckrose’s being able, or disposed, to carry out his threat. A colourless liquid which will act as a green dye when exposed to air is likely enough, but a similar fluid which will distinguish between old and fresh-cut stone is altogether less probable. Had this struck me at the time, how different might the issue of the whole affair have been. Sed haec prius fuere.

  I expostulated with Pluckrose more than once, endeavouring to urge the disrepute into which his futile and disgusting experiment would bring both Nesfield and academic people in general. I expostulated with him on that fatal Monday morning in the Wool Court, having previously made an appointment for the purpose. This was at ten thirty, and the place was suitable as being commonly quiet and secluded – with only Lasscock, perhaps, asleep under the tower. But on this morning the Wool Court was somewhat uncomfortable; the fountain had been turned full on and – owing to the direction of the wind – only Lasscock’s corner was entirely dry. I had, of course, no idea of what this matter of the fountain meant – or that at that very moment Evans was pursuing the disguised Pinnegar to the topmost storey of the tower. I drew Pluckrose into the forge room, a little-used place in which the engineers have their drop hammer and one or two other pieces of heavy apparatus. He was very offensive. It was there that I punched him on the jaw.