by Ruth Wade
The sergeant heaved himself upright.
“Just knocked off a few minutes ago for a cup of tea,” he said. He waved airily to the two women. “Hop off now, girls. Nellie, you can bring a cup of tea for the Inspector.”
They hopped off, as meek as sheep hopping through a gap, taking their tea with them. Mike commended the sergeant gravely for his mastery of them.
“Catch ’em young, treat ’em rough and tell ’em nothing,” said MacCarthy. “That’s always been my motto.”
“Have they told you anything?” Mike asked.
“I was finding out in a general kind of way what visitors the President had yesterday,” said the sergeant. He turned suddenly to Murphy, who had stood petrified with embarrassment since Mike’s entrance, and said with his habitual lack of tact: “Drink your tea, man, for Pete’s sake. The inspector knows you eat and drink sometimes, when there’s no one looking.” Murphy gurgled unhappily into his teacup. MacCarthy took a large, comfortable swallow from his own and said: “I was thinking that if the doctor is right about the nitro-benzene, Bradley could have had it at the party, or before it, even.” He closed one eye, and bent the other, large and round and measuring, upon Mike. “You were at that party yourself, sir, I’m told.”
At that moment Nellie brought in a tea-tray and the conversation had to be suspended until she had gone out again. This gave Mike time to assimilate the implications of the sergeant’s last remark. Through the facetious suggestion that Mike himself could have murdered the President it was plain to be seen that MacCarthy was hurt at being excluded from his senior’s confidence. He had made a similar leading remark earlier. Mike hurried to explain that this was his first opportunity of telling the story of Bradley’s appeal to Professor Daly to save his life. He did so now, and added Daly’s suggestion that the President could have invented the whole story of the anonymous letters as a facade behind which comfortably and secretly to commit suicide.
“I don’t believe in that,” said the sergeant. “That’s a queer kind of an idea. I knew Bradley well, because this is my district. You can take it from me, he was the sanest man in this College.”
“That is what Professor Fox said,” Mike remembered.
“But do you know who could have invented it?” MacCarthy held up a dramatic finger. “Professor Daly!”
“Nonsense!”
“Why? We only have his word for it that Bradley told him his life was being threatened.”
“But Daly told me that Bradley recognized me and was glad I was here to keep an eye on him. I might have spoken to Bradley about it, and then Daly would have been exposed. Oh, that’s all nonsense anyway, because Fox said he saw the letters.”
“Um,” said MacCarthy regretfully. “All the same, I wouldn’t trust that Professor Daly too far. He looks like a man that has something on his mind.” He shook his head, his brow black with disfavour. “Him and his jokes. I’d never trust that kind of a man.”
Mike rushed to defend Daly, but even while he did so he recalled a very faint discomfort between them which could not have existed between such old friends unless there were a lack of confidence somewhere. The reason for it was probably that Daly distrusted Mike’s ability to uncover the murderer without his help.
“Professor Daly visited Bradley yesterday afternoon,” said the sergeant insinuatingly, watching him wryly to observe the effect of this suggestion.
“Don’t be coy,” said Mike pettishly. “I know he did. It was then that Bradley told him he had recognized me. Who else came?”
“Miss Milligan, whose father is a kleptomaniac, according to your Professor Daly. And he manufactures nitro-benzene by the gallon, of course.”
Mike ignored this heavy irony, and asked again:
“Anyone else?”
“There was Professor Delaney, who told Nellie that his business concerned rats.” The sergeant’s voice was expressionless. “And Professors Hamilton and Fox who came together. That’s the lot, unless any of these crazy coots came climbing in at the windows.”
“Some of those were at the dinner-party afterwards.” He told MacCarthy about the little scene concerning the macaroons. “It was Burren who started that. He oozed hatred of Bradley. I wish I knew whether it was then that Bradley was poisoned. Burren could have prepared a poisoned biscuit, I suppose, and when the plate was being returned he could have substituted it for the single biscuit remaining. But he would have had to rehearse the other members of the party to make sure that that would work. The wrong person could so easily have got it. They were quite capable of handing the plate back empty. It would be too uncertain.”
“Burren,” said MacCarthy thoughtfully. “He’s a sour-puss, all right. And the way he talked about the President now that he’s dead — ’twould turn a horse from his oats. I was there when the ambulance men were taking him away — ”
“Yes,” said Mike. “Nellie told us. We’ll have to find out what is behind all that. What did you learn in the kitchen?”
But all that MacCarthy had learned was that Bradley was as much disliked below stairs as above. A very strong rumour existed in the kitchen that Bradley’s methods in acquiring his fortune in Africa were discreditable to him.
“So maybe we’ll find that someone had the black on him,” said the sergeant comfortably, “and that he done himself in when he was broke.”
But Mike did not incline to believe in this theory. He would have expected that Bradley would kill the blackmailer rather than himself, and that he would have done so long before he had exhausted his resources.
“I can’t see him committing suicide,” said the sergeant after a pause. “He’d always be sure that there was a special trick in the bag for him.”
“That is what Mrs. Bradley says, too,” said Mike.
“And still,” MacCarthy went on in a hurt tone, “he didn’t believe in God at all. He explained it all to me one evening that I met him strolling over by the park. Luck, and good fortune, and that class of thing was what he believed in, like a child believing in fairies. Ah, well, he must have got the drop of his life when he died.”
While Mike finished his tea they arranged to start enquiries about Bradley’s years in Africa, and to include a suggestion that his honesty in general be brought into question.
“That will give them enough to get suspicious on,” said MacCarthy. He looked uncomfortable and stammered a word or two. Then suddenly he thundered: “Off with you, Murphy! Are you going to stand there all day?”
Murphy gave a sharp, involuntary yelp. His cup shot off the saucer, but he clutched at it in mid-air and saved it from crashing to ruin on the flags. He stood crouched, staring at the sergeant while his huge hands encircled the china like a hen’s wings. Then he whispered:
“Yes, sir.”
He laid down the cup and saucer and got out of the room as if it had been a cage of lions. In the following silence they heard him move up the corridor as slowly as a sleepwalker.
“What are you doing to poor Murphy?” said Mike in astonishment, when the sound had died away.
“I didn’t want him to hear what I’m going to say to you,” said MacCarthy, looking a little shamefaced. “Anyway, how was I to know he’s so sensitive?”
Mike made no reply to this. He had almost bitten his tongue at the sergeant’s shout, but he had no intention of admitting it. MacCarthy went on, heavily explanatory:
“It’s not that I would ever be slow to do my duty, sir. You know I fought three gunmen that were trying to raid the safe in Walsh’s shop last year, and kept them off until help arrived. It’s not that I’m afraid. But don’t ask me to go questioning those professors. I could never stand it. It’s the way they look at you, kind of slow, and grinning at something inside in their own heads all the time. You can’t hurry them and you can’t frighten them. They know too much about everything. And they wouldn’t mind a bit going to gaol, even. Professor Badger, now, he says he’d like gaol. Quiet and peaceful, and plenty of time for reading and writing, no c
hildren around the place, lots of sleep, plain wholesome food, interesting company — that’s what he told me a few weeks back.”
“Never mind, Sergeant,” said Mike soothingly. “I’ll talk to the professors myself, if you’ll handle Nellie and Jennings and Lewis and the rest of the porters. There is a cook here, I’m told, as well as ‘that Annie’.”
“I’ll talk to them with the greatest of pleasure,” said MacCarthy, “if you’ll do the professors. Mind you, I like them well enough, and I know nearly all of them on account of living so near the College. But I come all over queer when I think of asking them where they spent yesterday and would they have any reason for polishing off the President.” He looked at Mike with deep respect. “You have a great nerve, sir, so you have.”
Mike could not bring himself to demolish his own reputation at a single blow by confessing that he, too, was frightened of the task before him.
It was in a depressed mood that he left the sergeant, who was on his way to the kitchen, and let himself out of the President’s Lodging again. Mrs. Bradley was not about when he hurried through the hall, and he was glad of this, for he had not asked her permission to go through to the service part of the house.
When he came out into the quadrangle he found that the afternoon had slipped away and a gilded gloom had fallen on the buildings. He walked over towards the main door, from which a wide river of light flowed out on to the gravel. The moment that he stepped into its radiance, Jennings came darting out on to the steps, the picture of obsequious goodwill.
“I was watching out for you, sir. The President asked me to bring you over to him at once.”
“The President? What are you talking about?” Mike stopped dead in his astonishment.
Jennings laughed in a high whinny.
“I should have said the acting President,” he said. He rubbed his hands together in an ingratiating gesture that Mike found rather pathetic. “The Governors met and appointed Professor Daly acting President. A great honour for him, but he’s worthy of it. Yes, he’s worthy of it.”
And Jennings had picked up an inkling of it in advance, said Mike to himself grimly. He studied him while he followed him towards the President’s office. Jennings was the sort of subject that monarchs dream about. The king to him was always splendid, noble, praiseworthy, to be defended with his very life. A new king or an old king — it was all the same to him. In fact, the passing of one king and the crowning of the next only served to stimulate him to further transports of fealty. He saw only the crown, never the face underneath it.
At a heavy, carved oak door, pillared and panelled impressively, he paused for a reverent moment. Then he swung the door silently inwards and said in a voice almost choked with respect:
“Inspector Kenny, President.”
Mike was shocked to find that he had contracted some of Jennings’s awe. He felt his heart pound as he moved silently into the room. The door clicked shut behind him. The little sound awoke him as if from a trance, and he saw Daly, adorned with a devilish grin, sitting at a massive desk watching him.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” said Mike indignantly. “I thought from Jennings’s behaviour that you would be robed like Finn MacCool, and at least six inches taller than when I saw you last.”
Daly wagged his head appreciatively.
“Do you know, Mike, I feel the lust for power rising up in me. It’s Jennings that has done it. I feel an almost uncontrollable longing to make him lie down on the floor so that I can put my foot on his neck. Isn’t that a terrible thing?”
“Terrible,” said Mike solemnly. “How did it happen?
“It was because I succeeded in dispersing the students this morning when Foxy failed,” said Daly. “They had a meeting and nominated me as acting President, if I would be good enough to undertake the job. I was good enough, because I have always had a secret longing to sit in this chair.” He thumped the arms of it appreciatively. “They had several reasons for choosing me. The main one is that being seventy-four years old I can stake no claim to succeed Bradley. Anyway, here I am, lord of the fowl and the brute. Plenty of fowls and brutes about,” he finished meditatively.
Mike was whole-heartedly pleased with Daly’s appointment, not only for the child-like pleasure that it afforded his friend, but also for the help and understanding of which he would now be certain. In the huge, timeless air of the College, for the first time in his life he had begun to doubt the importance of his profession. Bradley seemed already almost forgotten. No one mourned him. The formalities of his disposal were carried out and a successor appointed with a monastic detachment that Mike found devastating to his notions of life and death. The problem of the cause of his death seemed to arouse interest still, but only in the same way as would the problem of discovering the author of a medieval manuscript. As if he had been following Mike’s thoughts, Daly said:
“You won’t find the staff very anxious to talk about Bradley from what I can gather. They are like children whose cross nurse has been given the sack. They’ll forget him quite soon.”
“I’ll have to try to persuade them to talk,” said Mike. “I’m relying on you to help me.”
Daly smiled with simple delight, but before he had time to reply Jennings came creeping in at the door with a salver on which lay an envelope. He slithered over to the desk and held the salver under Daly’s nose. Within ten seconds of Daly’s taking the letter in his hand, Jennings was out through the door again like an eel. Daly looked after him with raised eyebrows.
“Fellow is like a caricature of himself,” he said. He glanced at the envelope and then handed it to Mike. “This is for you. Jennings seems to think I should censor your correspondence.”
He watched anxiously while Mike opened the envelope and in the little pause that followed he seemed to have difficulty in restraining himself from demanding to know the contents.
“It was nitro-benzene, all right,” said Mike softly. “Good man, Mullen. Now at last we know where to begin.”
“Milligan?”
“Milligan first,” said Mike. “I hope he has not gone home. We didn’t try to make everyone stay in the College. There are too many of them.”
“Milligan hardly ever goes home,” said Daly briskly. “Come along and I’ll show you where to find him.”
Chapter 10
Professor Milligan’s department was housed in a long, one-storied red-brick building a short distance away from the main buildings. They were silent as they walked towards it through the gathering darkness.
Mike felt that Daly was longing to implore him not to mention Milligan’s little failing, but that he was afraid to do so lest he cast too much emphasis upon it. They paused at the foot of a shallow flight of stone steps that led up to the door. To the right they could see through long windows into a lighted laboratory. Milligan was there, tall and thin and slightly stooped, moving up and down before a bench on which he had erected some extremely impressive apparatus. He prodded at it with the concentrated incisiveness of a heron fishing off a mudbank. He had the ageless dignity of a heron, too, in his narrow grey suit and black smoking cap, which would have looked bizarre on a lesser man. His expression was mild and scholarly, and he smiled gently to himself as if he found life pleasant.
The door was open and Daly led the way through the hall to the laboratory. Milligan looked up with a welcoming smile.
“Ah, come along in, Daly. Badger was here just now to tell me about you. How does it feel?”
“Much the same,” said Daly airily, “you know, as friend Burns would say: ‘Rank is but a ten-guinea pants. A tail’s a tail, for a’ that.’”
Milligan chuckled with delight.
“Badger tells me that Burren is very sore about it. It seems he thought he was the obvious choice.” He looked at Mike with mildly interested light blue eyes. “You are Inspector Kenny, I think? Didn’t we meet at the President’s Lodging this afternoon?” He shook Mike’s hand with solemn care. Then his face lit up with a smile tha
t was both guilty and smug as he said: “Badger told me, too, that Bradley was poisoned with nitro-benzene.”
“How under heaven did Badger find that out?” said Mike angrily.
Milligan said:
“Then it’s true. Ha! Who would have thought it, after all these years.” He nodded to himself. “I have always said it was a first-rate poison.”
He might have been talking about an unsuspected Old Master whose worth had at last been discovered.
“Inspector Kenny wants to know if you could suggest where that nitro-benzene could have come from,” said Daly with no great delicacy.
“From here, most likely,” said Milligan, staring. “My students make it every year. A child could make it.”
“A child who knew how,” said Mike.
“Every child knows how,” said Milligan with a shrug. “I shouldn’t think there would be any difficulty in getting it. Bradley himself would have known how to make it. He had a science degree as well as a degree in engineering.”
“Had he been over here lately?” Mike asked eagerly, for he had not lost all hope of discovering that Bradley had taken his own life.
“He was always nosing about,” said Milligan, with a little snort. “I ordered him off in the end. Ha! I did, indeed. Fellow put his hand on a most delicate piece of apparatus and shoved it all out of line. Said he was looking at it. ‘Be off with you,’ I said to him. ‘If you were not the President I’d box your ears for that!’ Ha! He went away, all right. Great clumsy oaf!”
He frowned like an angry monkey. He looked capable of murder just then. And, thought Mike in despair, he would need no stronger motive than that Bradley had dislocated his apparatus. One of Mike’s customers had been an old maid who had murdered her neighbour for stepping on the cat.
