Was It Murder?

by James Hilton

  (4) He is, according to his wife, a violent man.

  (5) He plans to leave England almost immediately.

  Fairly impressive, Revell thought, as he looked it over. And then, rather suddenly, he thought of something else that should, he upbraided himself, have struck him long before. It was a chilly evening for the time of the year, and he had donned a dressing-gown for warmth while he sat at his writing-desk. That reminded him of the dressing-gown that Wilbraham Marshall had worn on the night of the murder. Thus, with amazing swiftness, the sequence of argument developed. The boy, Revell assumed, had been shot whilst standing on the edge of the bath. He would, therefore, since the bath was empty, have been wearing his dressing-gown. Almost certainly it would have been stained with blood; ergo, the murderer, if he wished to leave an impression of an accidental dive, would have had to remove the soiled dressing-gown and leave another, unsoiled, on the side of the bath. Doubtless the former had been destroyed, but the latter, included presumably amongst the boy’s other possessions, might well yield valuable clues. Whose was it, for example, and how had it been obtained?

  The idea seemed so promising, and the urgency of the whole matter had lately been driving Revell into such agonies of fretfulness, that he allowed himself the relief of feeling that he had now really and definitely scored. The dressing-gown ought, somehow or other, to implicate Ellington. How, of course, had yet to be discovered, and there was distinctly no time to waste. He did not even at first know where the dressing-gown was; but a seemingly casual chat with Brownley drew the information that it had been taken charge of by Detective Guthrie along with other belongings of the dead boy.

  Revell was slightly chagrined by that, for Guthrie was perhaps the last person he wished to drag back into the affair. Guthrie, in his opinion, had bungled the case altogether and thrown it up far too readily; he had also, Revell considered, treated a youthful amateur with a patronage and condescension quite unjustified by their respective degrees of success. Yet there was nothing else for it; the clue of the dressing-gown must not be overlooked. So Revell, after much cogitation, there and then composed the following:

  MY DEAR GUTHRIE,

  I am still interesting myself somewhat in various aspects of recent unhappy events here. A point has occurred to me in connexion with the dressing-gown left in the swimming-bath on the night of the tragedy. I believe you took charge of it, and if it is still in your possession, would it be permissible for me to see it, at some time and place to suit your convenience, but preferably as soon as possible?

  Yours faithfully,

  COLIN REVELL.

  He was rather proud of that letter; it seemed to conceal the significance of the matter and to suggest rather a painstaking research student busily gathering material for a thesis. Guthrie would probably laugh at the amateur who continued to bother with a case long after it was finished, but that could not be helped.

  Revell had just signed the letter and sealed it in an addressed envelope when Mrs. Ellington chanced to call with a few books that he had lent her from time to time. (They were Brett Young’s Tragic Bride; Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome; and the play edition of Young Woodley—all of which he had had to send for specially from his rooms in Islington. But it had been part of her education, of course, and therefore worth the trouble.) “We’ve already begun to pack some of our things,” she explained, “and I didn’t want these of yours to get mixed up with the rest.”

  He invited her to sit down, but she declined. “Really, no, I mustn’t stay —it’s too late. And besides, you’re busy.” She approached his desk and looked over his shoulder. “What—a letter to Mr. Guthrie?” Her exclamation of astonishment gratified him, though, as a matter of fact, he would rather she had not known about the letter. “Colin—do you mean —does this mean—that at last—at last—you’ve discovered who did it?”

  He swung round and faced her startled eyes. “Not perhaps all that, Rosamund,” he answered, but with a triumph he could not disguise. “All the same, things are coming to a bit of a climax. My letter to Guthrie may —if I’m lucky—round off the whole thing.”

  “You mean that it will prove who did it?”

  “It may LEAD to a final proof.”

  “But the School is broken up—everybody’s away.”

  He answered cautiously: “Yes, I know—it’s a pity it couldn’t have happened earlier.” He had to go very carefully over this extremely slippery ground, or she would assuredly begin to suspect the truth. “Still, it’s an advantage that everything’s been kept so secret. Guthrie’s method of filling the School with policemen isn’t perhaps the best, after all.”

  She nodded. “It’s terrible, though.” He saw with deep pity the strain that was put upon her; he smiled and, changing the subject, asked how she felt about going away so soon.

  “I’m trying my best to be thrilled,” she answered, valiantly. “It seems almost impossible to believe that I shall soon be seeing Paris, Marseilles, Suez, the Red Sea, and so many other places. I hate the thought of the life at the end of it all, but I daresay I shall manage to enjoy the journey.”

  “Unfortunately the journey will only last three weeks, whereas the life after it—”

  “Oh yes, but please don’t remind me of it.”

  He felt he could all the better remind her of it because in his own mind he was telling himself: “She will never see those places—at least, not with Ellington. By the day planned for the departure, Ellington will be under arrest. It will be a bitter ordeal for her, but perhaps less bitter than the one she is fearing now.”

  They chatted on for a time, more intimately than since the night of the concert, till at last, with the chiming of the School clock, she exclaimed: “Oh, how thoughtless I’ve been—I’ve made you miss the post with that important letter! Really, Colin, I’m ever so sorry! Do forgive me!”

  He had missed it right enough; the last collection from the village post-office was made at ten-fifteen, and it had just chimed the half-hour. A pity; it would mean perhaps a day’s delay, and a day that could ill be spared. Her face, however, so anxious and self-reproachful, made him take an easier view of the matter. After all, he could go out and post the letter early in the morning in time for the first collection. He comforted her by saying so, and assured her that it was not her fault at all. Besides, it would reach Guthrie some time on the morrow. “And as soon as he gets it,” he added, “the wheels ought to be set in motion, and maybe within twenty-four hours—” He shrugged his shoulders; he could not forbear a little boastfulness in front of her. “It’s been a fearful job,” he said, with the air of a veteran detective, and he rejoiced to see the strange look of wonder in her eyes.

  Suddenly, standing near the window, she stepped back with a startled exclamation. “Oh, Colin, I must hurry back. I’ve just seen Tom at the front door and he looked up and saw me here. Isn’t it awful to have to run away like a guilty schoolboy? But I must. So good night.”

  But for the compelling thought of what was so soon to happen, he would have refused to let her go. He would have said: “No, you are doing no harm here and here you shall stay. And if your husband fancies he has any grievance, then let him come here and talk to me about it…” That, undoubtedly, would have been magnificent, but, in the circumstances, it would hardly have been the right kind of war. So, with inward indignation and a final handshake of sympathy and understanding, he opened the door for her and heard her light footsteps die away along the corridor.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 12. — ALMOST THE FOURTH OAKINGTON TRAGEDY

  It was getting on for eleven, but he was far too excited for sleep; the dressing-gown clue and her visit to him had combined to fill his mind with surging anticipations. What, he speculated, would happen to her after her husband’s arrest? How would she take it? Was there anywhere she could go, or anyone who would look after her? It would be a frightful position for a woman to be in, but was it any more frightful than the position she was in, all unknowingly, at the mome
nt? He wondered if definite suspicion of her husband had ever crossed her mind. Some little thing that he had said or done— some odd happening or coincidence that had seemed trivial enough at the time, but which she might have remembered since—had she ever envisaged the terrible possibility? He rather believed that she hadn’t, despite Roseveare’s queer story of her behaviour after the dormitory affair. It was a pity, in a way; it would have made it easier for her when the crisis did come.

  She would have to leave Oakington of course. How would she manage during the trial? If she came to London, as she would probably have to, he could make things as pleasant for her as possible. And then afterwards—at an altogether decent interval afterwards—was it also possible… ? Revell was not wholly mercenary (no more so, that is, than most young men of his age and income), but he could not help a thrill at the thought that she would inherit (presumably) all the money that Ellington had inherited from the two boys. She would be a tolerably rich woman, in fact. Would she, then, with an income of a hundred pounds a week or so, be attracted by a vagabond life in a Chelsea studio? Very well, if not, he would have to be adaptable. For her sake he would cheerfully become a country gentleman; he would even hunt foxes and attend agricultural shows if it were positively demanded of him. With her, anyhow, he would have a thrilling and joyous existence; he was confident of that.

  Pleasant dreams; and they passed the time very satisfactorily until midnight. Cigarette after cigarette he smoked in his chair by the empty fire-grate, yet still the tide of excited anticipation flowed in his brain without abatement. There was no chance of sleep yet, he knew—not that he particularly wanted to sleep, for his thoughts were quite enjoyable enough to be savoured for another hour or so. And an additional pleasure was the fact that, for the time being, he could do no more at “the case”; until Guthrie replied, the affair was beyond his control. He was, in a way, heartily sick of pondering over the ghoulish details of the murders, and now that he could lawfully put them out of his mind for the time being, he felt as buoyant as a schoolboy excused homework.

  Shortly after midnight he left the easy-chair and uncovered his typewriter at the desk in front of the window. He would, he decided, compose a stanza of his epic before going to bed. And the stanza, naturally enough, would be about his hero’s affair with a pretty woman unfortunately married to a man as nearly as possible like Ellington. This woman, as nearly as possible like Mrs. Ellington, had just had a clandestine meeting with her lover (a youth as nearly as possible like Revell), and when she got back to her own home she discovered that:

  Her husband was in bed; his huddled torso Upwards and downwards in his slumber heaved; It jarred on her; she wished he didn’t snore so; And then besides, she was a trifle peeved To think—

  To think what? She had really so many things to be peeved about (or aggrieved about, for that matter—the rhyme would suit equally well), but just what, out of so many? He pondered, with his fingers poised above the typewriter keys. Then suddenly, facing him from the uncurtained window as he looked up, he saw something that made his heart miss a beat and the blood tingle sharply through all the veins of his body.

  It was, or appeared to be, the barrel of a revolver placed right up against the outside of the window-pane and pointing directly at his eyes. It was at the right-hand side of the pane, close up to the wooden window-frame, and it was impossible in the darkness to see how it was fixed or held in position. Revell, at the first instant of seeing it, had stared incredulously; he half-thought himself dreaming. Then, as his wits returned to him more completely, he jerked his chair backwards and stood up; and at that moment, with his eyes still fixed upon it, the strange phenomenon disappeared.

  Was he mad? Had he been overworking his brain till the danger-point of hallucination had been reached? He would not have been surprised, for the apparition at the window had not been plain enough to be sworn to. Quickly, with sharpening determination to discover what, if anything, had happened, he went to the window and threw it wide open. There was nothing to be seen except the black and starless night. The very emptiness and innocence of it seemed more than ever to point to the theory of hallucination. But Revell was desperately anxious to take no chances, and every second increased his excitement. Inevitably his brain linked the matter with the entire chapter of Oakington horrors; and, if the apparition had been real at all, he was quick to realise that it could signify only one thing. An attempt had been made on his life. Not a moment ago the revolver had been there; now it was gone, but its owner could not be far away—must, in fact, be quite close. And with a growing perception that every second counted, Revell dashed into the corridor.

  First he turned to the left, into the dark and empty dormitory. He pressed the switch that should have illuminated it, but no light appeared. The same old trick of the broken fuse? It was natural, perhaps, that he should think so at first, but he remembered, a second later, that Brownley had been in the dormitories during the day removing all the globes and shades for a terminal clean. Nevertheless, though it was almost pitch dark and he could see nothing, he strode down the central gangway between the two long tiers of beds. It was not the best thing to have done, as he realised as soon as he reached the end wall, for he heard a sharp movement at the doorway where he had entered and a rush of footsteps along the corridor past his room.

  He raced back; his blood was up. The revolver at the window now became an indisputable fact, for he had heard the assailant escaping. Revell chased wildly after him, oblivious of the probability that the fellow still had his revolver with him. At the landing where the stairs led down to the lower floors, Revell halted; it seemed likely that the fugitive had taken the obvious line of escape. But then, in the almost total darkness to which his eyes were becoming accustomed, he noticed that the small door, usually closed and locked, which admitted to the stairs leading up to the disused sickrooms, was very slightly ajar. It was as if someone had tried to bang it behind him but had given it just too little a push. Revell, listening with his ear to the opening, fancied he heard faint sounds above; that settled it; he pushed the door wide open and began to climb.

  The ancient sick-rooms, musty from long disuse, sent their own peculiar smell down the stairs to greet him. He had no light, not even a box of matches; his quarry, too, was by that time hidden, perhaps, and able to listen carefully to the sounds of the pursuit. Revell thought of all that in a vague sort of way, but it hardly affected his attitude towards the immediate future. He was only conscious that at last, at long last, Ellington had played into his hands. The man had been deuced clever with his earlier affairs, but this last one, engendered probably out of a sudden sex-jealousy of another man, had made him over-reach himself. That was how Revell phrased it to himself, and he was full of an avenging fury. Someone had actually tried to murder him, to shoot him in cold blood as he sat at his typewriter; it was a monstrous thing, and he experienced, though a hundred times more intensely, the feeling that constrains so many Englishmen to write to The Times.

  At the top of the stairs he found himself panting for breath. He knew the plan of those old rooms as well as anybody; he had spent many well-remembered days in them as a boy. A corridor went off to the right, and from it the various rooms opened off, divided from each other and from the corridor by matchboard partitions. To the left were lavatories, a kitchen, and the room where Murchiston had been wont to examine the tongues of an earlier generation of Oakingtonians. Revell tried the handle of one of the doors; it was locked. Then, almost as if Providence had given him a sign (Daggat would certainly have thought so), he heard a faint sound along the corridor to the right.

  But now the need for caution began to occur to him. He was in total darkness; he had no flashlight or weapon; the pursued might at any moment turn the beam of a torch upon him and fire. It was not a pleasant thought that somewhere in the darkness a few yards away from him a person, possibly a homicidal maniac, crouched in a corner knowing that he had been traced at last. The danger of people who have already
committed several murders is that nothing very much worse can happen to them if they are convicted of an extra one; Revell realised this, and the implication was by no means comforting. Those sick-rooms, too, were eerie places to be in; there was a stale smell of drugs and disinfectant still lingering about them after a decade of disuse. The boards, he recollected, had been torn up in some of them; if he were not careful he might pitch head foremost to the floor. And then, presented with such an opportunity, what might not his assailant do?

  Revell paused; his heart was beating like a pumping-engine; perspiration, also, began to stream down his forehead and face. The joists creaked under his feet, and a breath of tainted air wafted by him, as if in alarm at being so unusually disturbed. Decidedly he was in an awkward position—alone with a maniac on a disused floor of an empty school. Courage, that had flowed so strongly in him at first, began to ebb away with every second. And then, with a sudden freezing sensation at the base of his spine, he heard a sound from the far end of the corridor—a faint creaking of the joists, as though someone were beginning to move again after a stillness. Supposing the murderer were now to reverse the rôles and become the pursuer instead of the pursued? A thrill of fear clutched at Revell’s heart, and involuntarily he took a step back. He was at the head of the stairs now; he had only to dash down and he would be quite safe. It looked a craven thing to do, perhaps, but really, it was only common sense; no one could blame him; there had been two and perhaps three Oakington murders already—why make a possible fourth? Besides, he could lie in wait at the bottom, summon help, or do something or other. He was just preparing for a cautious downward retreat when something happened that stiffened every hair of his head. It was a sound from below like the careful closing of a door.

  TRAPPED? It looked as if he might be, anyhow, and he silently cursed himself for having been such a reckless fool. Meanwhile he was enveloped by a feeling of slow paralysis, and as he stood there with his back pressed against the wall he knew well enough that he was in deadliest fear as well as danger. The joists still creaked along the corridor to the right—was it only his imagination that made the sound of the creaking seem nearer? But there was something even more horrible to come, for a few seconds later he heard a faint but perfectly identifiable sound from below—the tap of a footstep climbing the stairs.