The Cornmarket is one of the busiest streets in Oxford, though scarcely the most attractive. It has its compensations – the shapely, faded façade of the old Clarendon Hotel, the quiet gabled coaching yard of the Golden Cross, and a good prospect of the elongated pumpkin which is Tom Tower – but primarily it is a street of big shops. Above one of these was 193A, the office of Mr Aaron Rosseter, solicitor, as dingy, severe, and uncomfortable as most solicitor’s offices. What was it, Cadogan wondered, which made solicitors so curiously insensible to the graces of this life?
A faintly Dickensian clerk, with steel-rimmed spectacles and leather pads sewn to the elbows of his coat, showed them into the presence. The appearance of Mr Rosseter, though Asiatic, did not justify the Semitic promise of his baptismal name. He was a small, sallow man, with a tremendous prognathous jaw, a tall forehead, a bald crown, horn-rimmed spectacles, and trousers which were a little too short for him. His manner was abrupt, and he had a disconcerting trick of suddenly whipping off his glasses, polishing them very rapidly on a handkerchief which he pulled from his sleeve, and restoring them with equal suddenness to his nose. He looked a trifle seedy, and one suspected that his professional abilities were mediocre.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘and may I know your business?’ He examined the rather overwhelming presence of Gervase Fen with faint signs of trepidation.
Fen beamed at him. ‘This person,’ he said, pointing to Cadogan, ‘is a second cousin to Miss Snaith, for whom I believe you acted during her lifetime.’
Mr Rosseter was almost as startled at this dramatic revelation as Cadogan. ‘Indeed,’ he said, tapping his fingers very rapidly on the desk. ‘Indeed. I’m very pleased to know you, sir. Do me the honour of sitting down.’
Blinking reproachfully at Fen, Cadogan obeyed, though as to what honour he could be doing Mr Rosseter in lowering his behind on to a leather chair he was not entirely clear. ‘I had rather lost touch with my cousin,’ he announced, ‘during the last years of her life. Actually she was not, properly speaking, a second cousin at all.’ Here Fen glared at him malevolently. ‘My mother, one of the Shropshire Cadogans, married my father – no, I don’t mean that exactly, or rather, I do – anyway, my father was one of seven children, and his third sister Marion was divorced from a Mr Childs, who afterwards remarried and had three children – Paul, Arthur, and Letitia – one of whom (I forget which) married, late in life, a nephew (or possibly a niece), of a Miss Bosanquet. It’s all rather complex, I’m afraid, like a Galsworthy novel.’
Mr Rosseter frowned, took off his glasses, and polished them very rapidly. Evidently he did not find this funny. ‘Perhaps you would state your business, sir?’ he barked.
To Cadogan’s alarm, Fen burst at this point into a noisy peal of laughter. ‘Ha! ha!’ he shouted, apparently overcome with merriment. ‘You must forgive my friend, Mr Rosseter. Such a droll fellow, but no business sense, none at all. Ha! ha! ha! A Galsworthy novel, eh? That’s very, very funny, old man. Ha! ha!’ He mastered himself with apparent difficulty. ‘But we mustn’t waste Mr Rosseter’s valuable time like this – must we?’ he concluded savagely.
Repressing the imp of mischief within him, Cadogan nodded. ‘I do apologize, Mr Rosseter. The fact is that I sometimes write things for the B.B.C., and I like to try them out on people beforehand.’ Mr Rosseter made no reply; his dark eyes were wary. ‘Yes,’ said Cadogan heavily. ‘Well, now, Mr Rosseter: I heard only the bare facts of my cousin’s death. Her end was peaceful, I hope?’
‘In fact,’ said Mr Rosseter, ‘no.’ His small form, behind the old-fashioned roll-top desk, was silhouetted against a window overlooking the Cornmarket. ‘She was, unhappily, run over by a bus.’
‘Like Savonarola Brown,’ put in Fen, interested.
‘Really?’ said Mr Rosseter sharply, as though he suspected he was being trapped into some damaging admission.
‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said Cadogan, trying to inject something like sorrow into his voice. ‘Though, mind you,’ he added, sensing failure in this endeavour, ‘I only met her once or twice, so I wasn’t exactly bowled over by her death. “No longer, mourn for me when I am dead then you shall hear the surly sullen bell” – you understand.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Fen sighed unnecessarily.
‘No, I’ll be frank with you, Mr Rosseter,’ said Cadogan. ‘My cousin was a rich woman and had few – ah – relatives. As regards the will … ’ He paused delicately.
‘I see.’ Mr Rosseter seemed a little relieved. ‘Well, I’m afraid I must disappoint you there, Mr – er – Cadogan. Miss Snaith left the whole of her fairly considerable fortune to her nearest relative – a Miss Emilia Tardy.’
Cadogan looked up sharply. ‘I know the name, of course.’
‘Quite a considerable fortune,’ Mr Rosseter enunciated with relish. ‘In the region of a million pounds.’ He looked at his visitors, pleased with the effect he had created. ‘Large sums, naturally, were swallowed up in estate and death duties, but well over half of the original amount is left. Unfortunately, Miss Emilia Tardy is no longer in a position to claim it.’
Cadogan stared. ‘No longer in a position – ’
‘The terms of the will are peculiar, to say the very least of it.’ Again Mr Rosseter polished his glasses. ‘I have no objection to telling you gentlemen of them, since the will has been proved, and you may discover the details yourself from Somerset House. Miss Snaith was an eccentric old lady – I might say very eccentric. She had a strong sense of – ah – family ties, and had, moreover, promised to leave her estate to her nearest surviving relative, Miss Tardy. But at the same time she was a woman of – ah – old-fashioned views, and disapproved of the kind of life her niece was leading, travelling and living, as she did, almost wholly on the Continent. In consequence, she added a curious proviso in her will: I was to advertise for Miss Tardy in the English newspapers, with a certain specified regularity, but not in the Continental ones; and if within six months of the date of Miss Snaith’s death Miss Tardy had not appeared to lay claim to her inheritance, then automatically she forfeited all right to it. In this way Miss Snaith proposed to revenge herself for Miss Tardy’s way of life and for her neglect of her aunt, with whom, I believe, she had not communicated for many years, without on the other hand transgressing the letter of her promise.
‘Gentlemen, the period of six months came to an end at midnight last night, and I have had no communication from Miss Tardy of any kind.’
There was a long silence. Then Fen said:
‘And the estate?’
‘It goes entirely to charity.’
‘To charity!’ Cadogan exclaimed.
‘I should say to various charities.’ Mr Rosseter, who had been standing all this time, relapsed into the swivel chair behind his desk. ‘In point of fact, I was occupied with the details of the administration when you came in; Miss Snaith appointed me as her executor.’
Cadogan felt blank. Unless Rosseter was lying, a superb motive had been whisked away from under their noses. Charities did not murder elderly maiden ladies for the purpose of obtaining benefactions.
‘That, then, is the position, gentlemen,’ said Mr Rosseter briskly. ‘And now if you’ll forgive me’ – he gestured – ‘a great deal of work – ’
‘One more thing, if you’ll be so kind,’ Fen interrupted. ‘Or, now I come to think of it, two. Did you ever meet Miss Tardy?’
It seemed to Cadogan that the solicitor avoided looking Fen in the eye. ‘Once. A very strong-willed and moral person.’
‘I see. And you put an advertisement in the Oxford Mail the day before yesterday – ’
Mr Rosseter laughed. ‘Ah, that. Nothing to do with Miss Snaith or Miss Tardy, I assure you. I’m not so unpopular’ – he grinned with unconvincing roguishness – ‘as to have only one client, you know.’
‘A curious advertisement – ’
‘It was, wasn’t it? But I’m afraid I should be violating a confidence if I were to explain.
And now, gentlemen, if ever I can deal with any business for you … ’
The Dickensian clerk ushered them out. As he departed, Cadogan said wryly:
‘My only second cousin. A millionairess. And she leaves me nothing – not even a book of comic verse,’ he added, remembering Mrs Wheatley’s comment on this prepossession of Miss Snaith. ‘Well, it’s a hard world.’
It was a pity he did not look round as he spoke. For Mr Rosseter was gazing after him with an odd expression on his face.
The mild sun gleamed on the thronged street outside. Cycling undergraduates pushed between the jams of cars and buses, and the housewives of Oxford shopped.
‘Well,’ said Cadogan, ‘was he telling the truth?’
‘We might know,’ said Fen aggrievedly, as they pushed along the crowded pavement, ‘if you hadn’t started off by behaving like something out of a mental home.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t suddenly foist these impostures on me. There’s one thing, the centre of interest seems to have shifted from Miss Tardy to Miss Snaith and her millions.’
‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s shifted to Mr Rosseter.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You see’ – Fen cannoned into a woman who had suddenly stopped in front of him to look at a shop window – ‘you see, any ordinary solicitor, if two total strangers rushed into his office and demanded details of his clients’ private affairs, would quite certainly just kick them out. Why was Mr Rosseter so candid, so open and informative? Because he was telling a pack of lies? But as he quite rightly remarked, we can check what he said from Somerset House. All the same, I don’t trust Mr Rosseter.’
‘Well, I’m going to the police,’ said Cadogan. ‘If there’s anything I hate, it’s the sort of book in which characters don’t go to the police when they’ve no earthly reason for not doing so.’
‘You’ve got an earthly reason for not doing so immediately.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The pubs are open,’ said Fen, as one who after a long night sees dawn on the hills. ‘Let’s go and have a drink before we do anything rash.’
4. The Episode of the Indignant Janeite
‘Which in effect,’ said Cadogan, ‘leaves us exactly where we were before.’
They were sitting in the bar of the ‘Mace and Sceptre’, Fen drinking whisky, Cadogan beer. The ‘Mace and Sceptre’ is a large and quite hideous hotel which stands in the very centre of Oxford and which embodies, without apparent shame, almost every architectural style devised since the times of primitive man. Against this initial disadvantage it struggles nobly to create an atmosphere of homeliness and comfort. The bar is a fine example of Strawberry Hill Gothic.
It was only a quarter past eleven in the morning, so few people were drinking as yet. A young man with a hooked nose and a broad mouth was talking to the barman about horses. Another young man with horn-rimmed glasses and a long neck was engrossed in Nightmare Abbey. And a pale, rather grubby undergraduate with untidy red hair was talking politics to an earnest-looking girl in a dark green jersey.
‘So you see,’ he was saying, ‘it’s by such means that the moneyed classes, gambling on the Stock Exchange, ruin millions of poor investors.’
‘But surely the poor investors were gambling on the Stock Exchange too.’
‘Oh, no, that’s quite different … ’
Mr Hoskins, more like a vast, lugubrious blood-hound than ever, was sitting at a table with a dark and beautiful girl called Miriam. He was drinking a small glass of pale sherry.
‘But, darling,’ said Miriam, ‘it will be simply awful if the proctors catch me in here. You know they send women down if they catch them in bars.’
‘The proctors never come in in the mornings,’ said Mr Hoskins. ‘And in any case, you don’t look a bit like an undergraduate. Now, just don’t you worry. Look, I’ve got some chocolates for you.’ He pulled a box from his pocket.
‘Oh, you darling … ’
The only other occupant of the bar was a thin, rabbit-faced man of about fifty, greatly muffled up in coats and scarves, who was sitting by himself drinking rather more than was good for him.
Fen and Cadogan had been running over the facts of the case as far as they knew them, and it was the result of this investigation which had prompted Cadogan’s remark. Those facts boiled down to dispiritingly little:
(1) A grocery shop in Iffley Road had been turned into a toyshop during the night, and then back into a grocery shop.
(2) A Miss Emilia Tardy had been found dead there, and her body had subsequently vanished.
(3) A rich aunt of Emilia Tardy, Miss Snaith, had been run over by a bus six months previously, and had left her fortune to Miss Tardy under certain conditions which made it as likely as not that Miss Tardy would never even become aware of her inheritance (if Rosseter was telling the truth).
‘And I suppose,’ said Fen, ‘that he wasn’t allowed to communicate directly with any known address of Miss Tardy. By the way, I was meaning to ask you: did you feel the body at all?’
‘Yes, I did, in a sort of way.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Like?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Fen impatiently. ‘Cold? Stiff?’
Cadogan considered. ‘Well, it was certainly cold, but I don’t think it was stiff. In fact I’m sure it wasn’t, because the arm flopped back when I moved it to look at the head.’ He shivered slightly.
‘It doesn’t help much’ – Fen was pensive – ‘but it’s reasonable to suppose, in view of what we know, that she was killed before the witching and important hour of midnight. And that in turn suggests that she did in fact see the advertisement and, presumably, applied to Mr Rosseter. Hence, again presumably, Mr Rosseter was lying. And that makes it all very odd indeed, because in that case it’s quite likely that Mr Rosseter didn’t kill her.’
‘Why?’
‘You agree that the person who knocked you on the head was probably the murderer?’
‘Yes, Socrates.’
Fen glared malignantly and drank some whisky. ‘And in that case he got a good look at you?’
‘All right, all right.’
‘Well now, suppose Mr Rosseter is the murderer. He recognizes you when you come into his office, he knows you’ve seen the body, and he’s horrified to hear you inquiring about an aunt of the murdered woman and about the murdered woman herself. So what does he do? He gives a detailed account of the provisions of the will, which we can check, and then – then, mark you – says he’s had no communication from Miss Tardy, knowing that after what you’ve seen you simply won’t believe him. Ergo, he didn’t recognize you. Ergo, he didn’t knock you on the head. Ergo, he wasn’t the murderer.’
‘That’s rather clever,’ said Cadogan grudgingly.
‘It isn’t clever at all,’ Fen groaned. ‘It leaks at every joint, like an Emmett railway engine. In the first place, we don’t know that the person who hit you was the murderer; and in the second, all that stuff about the will may be mere hooey. There are other staring gaps, too. It’s possible Miss Tardy wasn’t killed in the toyshop at all. But in that case, why take her body there, and then take it away again? The whole thing’s quite topsy-turvy, and we simply don’t know enough to form an opinion.’
Cadogan’s admiration waned somewhat. He regarded gloomily a group of newcomers to the bar as he emptied his pint glass. ‘What can we do now, anyway?’
Possible courses of action, when discussed, resolved themselves into four:
(1) Attempt to trace the body (impossible).
(2) Interview Mr Rosseter again (dubious).
(3) Get some further information about Miss Alice Winkworth, proprietress of Winkworth, Family Grocer and Provisioner (possible).
(4) Ring up a friend of Fen’s at Somerset House and check on the details of Miss Snaith’s will (practicable and necessary).
‘But as far as I’m concerned,’ Cadogan added, ‘I’m going off to the police. I’m sick of rushing about,
and my head still aches like a thousand devils.’
‘Well, you can wait a minute till I’ve finished my whisky,’ said Fen. ‘I’m not going to make myself sick just because of your miserable, nagging conscience.’
They had been talking in low tones, and he was relieved at being able to raise his voice. Also he had consumed a comfortable amount of whisky. His ruddy, cheerful face grew ruddier and more cheerful; his hair stood up with unquenchable vitality; he fidgeted his long, lanky form about in his chair, shuffled his feet, and beamed on the dark, supercilious features, now particularly dejected, of Richard Cadogan.
‘… and then the public schools,’ the young man with red hair was piping. The peruser of Nightmare Abbey looked up wearily at the mention of this hoary topic; the hooknosed person at the bar continued to talk uninterruptedly about horses. ‘The public schools produce a brutal, privileged, ruling-class mentality.’
‘But didn’t you go to one yourself?’
‘Yes. But, you see, I shook it off.’
‘Don’t the others, then?’
‘Oh, no, they have it for life. It’s only the exceptional people who shake it off.’
‘I see.’
‘The fact is, the whole economic life of the nation has got to be reorganized … ’
‘Now, don’t you worry about the proctors,’ Mr Hoskins was soothing his companion. ‘There’s nothing to fear. Let’s both have another chocolate.’
‘We might as well play a game while we’re waiting,’ said Fen, who still had a good deal of whisky left in his glass. ‘Detestable Characters in Fiction. Both players must agree, and each player has five seconds in which to think of a character. If he can’t, he misses his turn. The first player to miss his turn three times loses. They must be characters the author intended to be sympathetic.’
Cadogan grunted, and at this point a University proctor entered the bar. The proctors are appointed from the dons in rotation, and go about accompanied by small, thickset men in blue suits and bowler hats, who are known as bullers. Members of the University in statu pupillari are not allowed on licensed premises, and so their main occupation is to process dismally from bar to bar, asking people if they are members of the University, taking the names of those who are, and subsequently fining them. Not much obloquy or enthusiasm is attached to this procedure.
The Moving Toyshop Page 5
