An Oxford Tragedy

by Norman Russell

  ‘There, what did I say?’ cried Templar. ‘Mercuric chloride. That doesn’t surprise me in the least. But surely the Warden’s own son didn’t poison him? Timothy Fowler, I mean. I don’t believe it. But he needs to be questioned… .’

  ‘Steady!’ Fitzmaurice replied. ‘What authority have we to question anyone? We may find ourselves relishing the role of amateur detective, Templar, but it won’t do. If you ask a fellow whether he murdered his father, he’s going to say no. But it does set the mind racing. Who would have had a motive for doing away with Sir Montague Fowler?’

  ‘I can think of a number of people,’ said Templar, ‘Miss Fowler, for one. I’ve heard from certain people I know that her precious school was facing ruin, and that Sir Montague’s legacy came just in time. And what about John, the London businessman? Who knows how near Queer Street he may have been? But there are others… .’

  ‘Yes, there are,’ said Fitzmaurice. ‘People who have no connection with the family. Joe Steadman, for one. Joe’s an amiable fellow, but he has spent his life seeing others promoted over him. Sir Montague was brought in from outside when Joe was the strongest internal candidate. Not that Joe minded – or so he always says; but it may have rankled over the years.’

  ‘Well, I for one refuse to countenance the idea of Joe doing away with the Warden,’ said Templar, hotly. ‘He’s clearly heartbroken at losing so old a friend. No, if we must look to college personalities, I should think that our revered Vice-Warden, Dr William Podmore, is a likely candidate. He never liked Sir Montague, and felt diminished by every triumph that came the Warden’s way. Or so I’ve been told. And everyone – himself included – knows that he’ll be appointed the next Warden. What if he’d decided to sweep his path clear beforehand? Billy Podmore’s a hypocrite, with his spring-water and his prim admonitions. I’ve heard – well, never mind that. Rumours have been going the rounds for the last ten days.’

  ‘So what’s to be done?’ asked Stanley Fitzmaurice. His question was partly rhetorical, but it seemed that Templar had already prepared an answer.

  ‘I suggest that I lay all this tale before the Chief Anatomist here, Dr Armitage. He is, ex officio, a coroner’s officer. Let me do that, Fitzmaurice. If Armitage convinces the coroner that there are grounds for investigation, then he will contact the police.’

  ‘It’s a cowardly thing to do, Templar, to set a deadly rumour afoot, and then leave it to others to investigate. I don’t like being a sneak.’

  ‘No more do I. But if the Warden was murdered – yes, murdered! – then I for one will risk being considered a sneak.’

  Gerald Templar glanced around the grim room, and pointed to the jars lining the racks.

  ‘You remember how foully the Warden suffered,’ he said. ‘If that suffering was the result of someone administering mercuric chloride, a vicious and evil thing to do, are you content to let the matter drop?’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ said Fitzmaurice. ‘And I withdraw that word “sneak”, at least, as it may have applied to you. In fact, what you intend to do is a brave act, and one motivated by a scientist’s desire to seek out the truth.’

  ‘You make me sound very noble,’ laughed Templar. ‘The Chief Anatomist will be calling in later this morning. I’ll talk to him then. Can you come back here at one o’clock? Dr Armstrong should be here at half past twelve, and I’ll have told him the whole story by the time you arrive. If he concludes that this business is a matter for the police, you could go with him. Someone from the college should be present.’

  An insignificant lane at the side of 130 High Street gave access to the headquarters of the Oxford City Police. It was an undistinguished building, acquired in 1870, when the force had moved from its cramped premises at the conjunction of Queen Street and St Aldate’s.

  Dr Armitage and Stanley Fitzmaurice entered a small office looking out on to a flagged yard, where they found an elderly police sergeant, sweltering in his heavy serge uniform, writing in a ledger. Armitage told the man that Inspector Antrobus was expecting them.

  ‘He is, gents,’ said the sergeant, putting his pen back into the inkwell. ‘Step this way, if you please.’ He led them across the yard and into the inspector’s office. James Antrobus, busy at his desk, rose to greet the two men. He was well known to Dr Armitage, but Stanley Fitzmaurice had never seen him before.

  He saw a tall, gaunt man clad in a black morning suit. His face was pale, and his eyes hollow. His shoulders were bent in a premature stoop. Fitzmaurice thought: this man, surely, is emerging from some devastating illness from which he has been very lucky to recover.

  Despite his almost cadaverous appearance, the inspector’s voice was both firm and friendly. He wore a light beard and moustache, which looked as though they had been grown simply because the business of shaving had become too much of a chore.

  ‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘in what way can I serve you?’

  ‘I have come to see you, Antrobus, because I have information to lay before you. And Captain Fitzmaurice has an important document to show you. You’ll gather that we are talking about the death of Sir Montague Fowler.’

  Inspector Antrobus listened while the Chief Anatomist gave him an account of Gerald Templar’s suspicions of foul play in connection with the recent death of the Warden of St Michael’s.

  ‘I wouldn’t have approached you, Antrobus,’ said Dr Armitage, ‘unless I had already been partly persuaded by the rumours that have been going about. They started as gossip among college servants, which could have meant anything or nothing. But this young man who works with me, Gerald Templar, is a fellow of St Michael’s and Junior Dean, a man to be listened to with respect. That’s so, isn’t it, Fitzmaurice?’

  ‘It is. Mr Templar is a chemist of the first rank. He is Tutor in Chemistry.’

  ‘Well,’ Dr Armstrong continued, ‘what he told me was very disturbing. I thought you should know about it, though I’m conscious of the fact that I am regaling you with stories that are coming to you at second and third hand.’

  ‘I’ve heard a few of these rumours myself,’ said Antrobus, ‘and so have some of our constables. “Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.” Opinions are divided in the alehouses. Some say that Sir Montague Fowler was murdered by his own family. Others think it was one of the dons at St Michael’s. We’ll have to see.’

  Fitzmaurice handed the inspector the copy of Lucy Hammond’s letter that he had made. The inspector read it without revealing any reaction to its contents, but when he had finished he folded it neatly, and put it in a drawer.

  ‘Do you think there’s sufficient reason to move in the matter?’ asked Fitzmaurice.

  ‘Exhumation, you mean? Yes, I do. The contents of that girl’s letter clinch the matter, as far as I am concerned. It’s beginning to sound decidedly sinister. Mercuric chloride… . I’ll have to speak to the superintendent first, and then directly to the coroner. Is the deceased buried here in Oxford, Captain Fitzmaurice?’

  ‘Oh, no. He’s been put in a family vault somewhere in the Home Counties. Now, what was the place called? Yes, I remember. He was taken down on the railway to a little country place called Lynham Hill, in Wiltshire. His family home was there, a house called Forest Park. Poor Sir Montague would sometimes reminisce about it.’

  ‘As he was buried away from here,’ said the inspector, ‘there will be some minor inconveniences to overcome. But if he was the victim of foul play, then the investigation itself belongs here, with the City Police. So that will mean that you, Dr Armitage, or someone deputed by you – in either case you will be acting in your capacity as coroner’s officers – will need to go down to this place where he’s been laid, conduct the autopsy there, and bring whatever specimens you think necessary back here to Oxford.’

  Antrobus spoke with the pleasant accents of a native Oxfordshire man, but his choice of words, thought Fitzmaurice, showed that he had received a sound education in his youth. And he was a man who quoted Shakespeare. Really, a very intere
sting person. It was obvious that Armitage held him in high regard.

  ‘Captain Fitzmaurice,’ Antrobus said. ‘I’ll have to hear the account of that scout – what was his name? Hammond – first hand. Perhaps you could arrange for him to call in here tomorrow? Just for a chat, you know. There’s no need to alarm the man. It’ll take some time to apply for permission to exhume, but if we find that Sir Montague Fowler was indeed poisoned, then you may be sure, gentlemen, that I’ll ferret out the truth, without favour and without fear.’

  6

  The Boethian Apices

  The Bursary at St Michael’s College occupied a suite of interconnecting rooms at the top of Staircase III in the first quadrangle. It was a cosy, secluded kind of place, an oasis of peace and calm, with low, carved plaster ceilings, ancient panelling, and walls covered with Ackerman prints and fading photographs of former dons.

  Here, Joseph Steadman reigned supreme. The finances of the college, the drawing up of each term’s battels bills for dons and undergraduates alike, together with the investment portfolio, for over a century administered by Hoare’s Bank in London, but ultimately in his hands, fell to the bursar’s lot. In a cupboard near the door of the outer room was a stout straw bag containing the tools necessary for basic plumbing. If something went wrong with a tap or a flush in the night, the young men knew that the thing to do was to send for ‘Old Joe’.

  ‘We are, of course, very sorry for the family, but with the death of Sir Montague Fowler, they are no longer an immediate concern of the college. After the memorial service in St Mary the Virgin, which will be on 6 July, we can put the whole matter behind us.’

  Dr William Podmore, the acting Warden, had invited himself up to the Bursary to show Steadman how he intended to put the world to rights. Podmore looked more self-righteous than ever, and there was a kind of smirk forming around his lips that he was trying to suppress. But his voice was thick and not quite under his control; at such times, Steadman knew, Podmore would say more about his affairs than was judicious. What was he up to? He looked very smart, pristine, like a coin newly minted, but there was a tremor in his right arm that he was doing his best to suppress. Steadman had seen that tremor before, and knew what it portended.

  ‘Do you think the matter can be dismissed as lightly as that, Podmore?’ said Steadman. ‘There’s rather more to the business than laying Monty’s ghost. There are sinister rumours going around… .’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, and that’s all they are: rumours.’ The Acting Warden looked personally affronted. ‘He was always a man to hog the limelight, and he’s now doing so even after he’s dead. There is one statute of this college, Steadman, that should be repealed and replaced, and that is the one that allows a Warden to stay in office for life.’

  ‘You weren’t very impressed by Sir Montague, then?’

  Podmore blushed at the Bursar’s barbed understatement.

  ‘He did little or nothing for the college in the last ten years of his tenure. The place was stagnating! Come, now, you know that I’m right. It was “no” to anything practical, and “yes” to anything flighty and ill thought out… .’

  ‘You mean Templar’s proposed laboratory in the third quad.’

  ‘I do. There’s a crying need for three new classics scholarships here, funded by us, and linked with some of the northern public schools. That was something I suggested to Fowler, but he couldn’t see the wisdom of it. Yet he waxed enthusiastic about Templar’s scheme until I blew cold about it. He’d have paid for those scholarships out of his own pocket, you know. I told him that the College could find the money by making economies; I knew that would have made him open his own personal cheque book!

  ‘But Templar’s laboratory… . Where did the fellow come from? Some provincial university, wasn’t it? He’s an intruder here, not our kind of man at all. What was I talking about? Oh, yes. That laboratory would have involved a major reordering of the whole range of buildings facing Northgate Lane, at a cost of £11,000. Fowler neither knew, nor cared, where the money was coming from! But I soon put paid to that, as you know. Templar went into a prolonged sulk for several weeks, and then decided to behave sensibly.’

  ‘It was University College, Liverpool.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Where Templar studied. He won a scholarship there, and was an outstanding student. As for the cost, speaking as Bursar, I think we could have found the money.’

  ‘Perhaps so. But there are many priorities for St Michael’s, Steadman, and providing Templar with a place where he can play with his chemicals is not one of them. That space in the Northgate Lane buildings will be used to create ten extra rooms for undergraduates.’

  The acting Warden had been standing near the empty fireplace, fingering the silver trophies that lined the mantelpiece. Now he sat down opposite Steadman at the Bursar’s great leather-covered desk. He took an envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to Steadman.

  ‘This is what I really came up here to see you about, Steadman,’ he said. His pink, hairless face suddenly flushed with pleasure. ‘I know you will be the first to congratulate me.’

  Alone of all Oxford college headships, the Wardenship of St Michael’s was in the gift of the Crown, and was awarded for life. The letter informed Podmore that the Queen had been graciously pleased to appoint him Warden of St Michael’s College with immediate effect.

  ‘Well done, Podmore – Warden, I should call you now. You can rely on me to support you in every way, that is, if you still wish me to continue as Bursar. You are at liberty now to make your own appointments.’

  ‘Oh, not at all. Not at all. Let me leave the financial affairs of the college in your capable hands – if, that is, you wish to continue as Bursar.’

  ‘I do. When will you tell the others?’

  ‘I thought that I’d do so tonight, at dinner. Most of the Fellows are still up, so it would be a practical thing to do. And over the next fortnight, I’ll move into the Lodgings. I’ll write to Mr John Fowler, and ask him to collect Sir Montague’s things.’

  Podmore suddenly laughed.

  ‘I usually get my own way where college business is concerned. Do you remember when old Earnshaw wanted to get G.F. Bodley in here to restore the chapel? That was in your time, wasn’t it? Sir Benjamin Green was still Warden. It was an appalling idea, and would have wrecked the whole interior, which is fifteenth century, and with the original pews. Well, Earnshaw was recovering from a bad bout of pneumonia that year – yes, it was 1872. His specialism was Celtic poetry, and he’d written a couple of monographs on the subject.’

  ‘Earnshaw? Oh, yes. I’d just about forgotten him entirely. So what happened?’

  ‘It was a very cold winter, with snow on the ground, and I told him that a cache of ancient Celtic manuscripts, including hitherto unknown poems, had been discovered at Craigarvon Castle, in Fife. Lord Craigarvon was rumoured to be about to sell them to an American institution. Would he like to go up to Scotland there and then, and examine them? So he went, and it was so cold that he caught pneumonia again, and when he got to the castle, they’d no idea, of course, what he was talking about. They put him up, naturally, but he died at Craigarvon, and was buried in the kirk-yard there. Rather vexing, for a staunch Anglican. And so the college chapel was saved. I can always find ways to get rid of a trouble-maker.’

  ‘Why didn’t they know what old Earnshaw was talking about?’

  ‘Well, of course, there were no ancient manuscripts there! I just made that up to lure him as far away from Oxford as possible. You might say that his death was a kind of bonus!’

  ‘How very droll, Warden! Thank you for telling me that. I used to wonder what had become of the old fellow.’

  When Podmore left the Bursary, Steadman sat for a while in thought. Podmore had come with the sole intention of gloating over his appointment as Warden, and making it quite certain that he intended to be a new broom. He set no store by Podmore’s assurance that he could remain Bursar forever.

/>   Podmore had also come to enjoy his discomfiture, knowing that the glittering prize of Warden had slipped once more from Steadman’s grasp. Well, he had not given him the satisfaction of seeing how much he, Steadman, smarted under Podmore’s hypocrisy, and how humiliated he now felt: he and his colleagues were to be the underlings of a man whom most of them secretly despised.

  So he had sent an old, ailing man – Earnshaw, Reader in Celtic Languages, had been well over eighty – to snow-bound Scotland in the depth of winter, hoping that his pneumonia would break out again, and kill him. Wicked, wicked! It made one wonder whether he hadn’t helped poor Monty out of this world to achieve his own ends… . No, that kind of speculation was wicked, too.

  Podmore, the enemy of ‘ardent spirits’, had left the reek of gin behind him in the Bursary. It was gin that loosened his tongue, and made his hand tremble. As far as Steadman was aware, there were only two men in the college who knew for certain that Podmore was a secret drinker. One was himself; the other was Haynes, Podmore’s scout, a buttoned-up, surly fellow whom Podmore evidently paid handsomely to remove all traces of his secret vice from his rooms. They were to have an alcoholic Warden. An alcoholic hypocrite.

  And perhaps something more. There were few crimes in academe more heinous than forgery.

  Steadman rose from his seat, and began to examine the old photographs adorning the walls of the Bursary. Among them was a faded image of an elderly gentleman, his eyes wide and gentle, his face lined and creased as a result of much physical suffering. He wore a frock coat over a low-cut, lapelled waistcoat, and a patterned silk tie arranged below a raised collar in the form of a loose bow. An inscription on the frame read:

  Georg Joachim Bosch (1794 – 1873)

  Dean of Degrees and Tutor in Mathematics

  Older dons, themselves long gone, had spoken affectionately of the old mathematician, who had come from Germany in his mid-thirties, having achieved the highest honours at the University of Heidelberg. He had proved to be a most able and popular tutor, and a true college man. He had still occupied the post of Tutor in Mathematics when Billy Podmore came up from Rugby in 1862. It seemed that Podmore had been an apt and proficient student, and a favourite with the old German don.