by Ruth Wade
“How long have you known Bradley?” he asked.
“He’s a little younger than I am,” said Milligan. “Seven or eight years. I was an assistant in this department when he was a student.”
“Then you taught him?”
“I tried,” said Milligan. “Heaven knows I tried. He was one of those people who seem to know everything that’s required of them, and still somehow manage to remain ignorant. He was always self-satisfied, even when he was a boy. That put up a barrier between him and the knowledge that he was pursuing. I told him that. Oh, yes, I told him. It was when he was being conferred with his B.Sc. ‘You may have got first-class honours, Bradley,’ I said to him, ‘but you know no more chemistry than the sole of my boot.’ No flair, you see, no flair. He was quite annoyed with me, I remember that. I explained to him that the reason he was no good was that he had a selfish nature which would not allow him to become absorbed in his subject. I advised him to go into industry, and make money. I said that that was the only course open to chaps like him. No, he didn’t like that.”
Milligan was beginning to look happier now, as he recalled these ancient, inspired words. Not for the first time Mike felt a pang of pity for Bradley.
“I warned them when he was being appointed to Mineralogy,” Milligan went on, “but cows in Connacht have long horns and they insisted on having him. Besides, I think Africa is not the best place for learning a social sense. My daughter Sodia tells me he treated the students as if they were black.”
“Had you not seen Bradley between the time when he got his degree and his return as professor of mineralogy?” Mike asked.
“No,” said Milligan. “He did come home for holidays, but I did not see him then. I had no interest in his type, you see. They upset the other students.”
And that, to Milligan, was obviously a great crime. Suddenly he looked directly at Mike and said:
“I’d be much obliged if you would arrest a student called Tennyson-Smith and take him away. He has been, as he says, having a shot at first Arts for three years now, with no success, and still he feels free to take out my daughter Sodia, who gets first-class honours every time.”
“Has Tennyson-Smith any connection with Bradley?” Mike asked.
Milligan looked disappointed for a moment and then he gave a little jerk of pleasure as he said:
“He was at dinner at Bradley’s on the night before he died. Bradley actually asked him and Sodia to dinner together, though he knew how I hate that association.”
Mike explained gently that this would make a tenuous reason, especially as Tennyson-Smith was not a sufficiently skilled person to make nitro-benzene successfully.
“I would have made it for him if he had said what he wanted it for,” said Milligan magnanimously.
Since it had become obvious that Milligan was not taking him seriously, the policeman in Mike had been wrestling with the humanitarian. Now, quite suddenly, the policeman won. Seeing Mike’s expression change Daly gave a little squeak of dismay, but Mike was already saying:
“Did Bradley ever threaten to retire you because of your habit of picking up things that do not belong to you? Judging by Bradley’s character as you have revealed it, I can’t see how he could have restrained himself.”
Milligan groped for a tall stool that stood by the bench and leaned against it. The mischievous light went out of his eyes, and a look of unutterable pain took its place. Daly felt a sudden urgent desire to stab his friend Inspector Kenny to the heart. Mike was watching Milligan with the intense, unblinking eye of a fisherman who feels a bite. Daly felt a little flicker of physical terror go through him as he realized how completely he had lost control of the situation. But there was nothing whatever that he could do, except to tell himself feverishly and hopelessly that any other policeman would have been far less considerate.
Milligan’s face was grey and he seemed to have difficulty in moving his lips. He twitched his head sideways, like a frightened robin, and then he seemed to draw himself in with a long, terrible effort. When he spoke his voice was carefully controlled.
“Yes, Bradley did that.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
There was a pause. A little voice inside Mike said: “Aha!” Aloud he said gently with the kindness that he would show to a condemned man:
“Tell me about it.”
With a quick movement Professor Daly started for the door. Milligan looked up and said mildly:
“Are you leaving me, too, John? Then I am lost.”
“I thought you would like me to go away,” said Daly, but he turned back instantly and settled himself against the bench beside Milligan.
Mike said again:
“Tell me about your conversation with Bradley.”
“It was the morning after I had ordered him out of the lab,” said Milligan. He brightened a little at the recollection of this victory. “That fellow, Jennings, came over here, and told me that the President wanted to see me. I sent him back to say that I was busy, but that I would try to see him in the afternoon. That annoyed Bradley because he had a strange notion that we were his minions, to be summoned at his pleasure. I had two further messages before luncheon. When I saw Jennings approaching for the fourth time I locked the outer door of the lab. When I did go to see Bradley, at about five in the afternoon, he was in a great taking. What he had wanted me about was something trivial, that could easily have been settled over the telephone. He was in such a fury that he almost forgot to tell me about it.”
Then Milligan went dumb at the recollection of this scene, and it took great patience and skill on Mike’s part before he could draw from him the end of the story. Since Milligan had passed his sixty-fifth birthday he could only be continued from year to year at the President’s pleasure. It had become obvious to Milligan quite early that Bradley had no intention of retiring him. Milligan was an ornament to the College and his removal would have raised a storm of protest. But Bradley had wanted to tease him in revenge for the insult that he had suffered at Milligan’s hands the day before, and to show Milligan that he had him in his power. Milligan had understood all this and Bradley knew that he did. Still Bradley had kept the terrible game going for about half an hour. At the end of that time Milligan had been in a state of collapse. Now in his distress his words were jerky but meticulously chosen.
“I thought of murder when I left him,” he said. “I thought of that. Not nitro-benzene. Too pleasant. You go into an abrupt coma. Never wake up. All those nasty things like the blood turning black and so on — that all happens while the victim is unconscious. I thought of hatchets. Ropes. Cliffs. Big, heavy things — to hit him on the head with. But I didn’t do any of them. No. I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” asked Daly gently.
Milligan turned to him forcefully.
“I’d have had to go near him. Close to him. I couldn’t do that. He had a nasty aura of some kind. Did you ever feel it? It prickled you. Gave you a headache. Did you ever feel it?”
“A little,” said Daly.
“You were lucky.” He reached for a clean beaker off a shelf, ran some water into it from the tall, curved tap on the bench sink and drank the water with slow deliberation. Then he turned back to Mike, his manner quite changed. “Please forgive this exhibition, Mr. Kenny. You started it yourself, you know, by accusing me of murder.” A slightly quizzical look came into his eye as Mike began to protest. “Oh, I don’t mind. I might have done it, if I had had the courage, or if I could have stood near him for long enough. I never thought of poison. I’m a hopeless shot, by the way. But now I’m rather glad that I didn’t, because of Sodia. She would have hated it. I don’t show her much consideration, poor child, but that would have been the last straw. I didn’t mean to tell anyone about this, and I was sure that Bradley would not. I hope you won’t have to broadcast it?”
“Of course not,” said Mike.
He added an uncomfortable apology which Milligan waved away, saying:
“I’m glad I told you. It clears the air. Now you will know why I sing about my work.” He picked up a flask which stood on the bench and swung it expertly until the colourless liquid it contained swirled about. Then he held it up to the light and said:
“Tch, tch!”
Daly pulled at Mike’s sleeve and they moved towards the door. Milligan waved vaguely with his free hand and began to sing falsetto, very quietly:
When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me.
Plant thou no roses at my head, nor shady cypress tree.
Outside, in the hallway, Mike leaned weakly against the wall and said:
“What goes on in that man’s head?”
“A great variety of things,” said Daly, “as you heard. He tells the truth because he is a good chemist.”
“But not all of it,” said Mike. “He did not deny that Bradley had accused him of stealing things from the College, but he did not tell us which things Bradley mentioned.”
“Do you think that was important?”
“It could be. I’ll have to ask his daughter.”
“I suppose so,” Daly sighed.
“And I’ll have to see Burren. How did he know that Bradley’s heart was black? That’s not such a joke now that we hear it really was turned black by the action of the poison.”
Outside on the steps they looked in at Milligan again. He was working at his experiment now with renewed energy, wrinkling his nose like a conscientious rabbit, as he bent over the bench.
“He hasn’t quite cleared the air yet,” said Mike softly. “The reason why I’m not bringing him away by the scruff of the neck is that he sounded so surprised and pleased that nitro-benzene was the poison used. And his rage at the memory of Bradley’s threats to retire him — that was all wrong, too. He should have been forgiving, even patronizing towards Bradley if he had killed him for that.”
“Milligan is no actor,” said Daly, as they walked back to the quadrangle. “When he has something to conceal he becomes surly and uncivil. One can tell at once that he has been up to something. After having met him in that humour most of his acquaintances would go straight home and count the spoons. I’m very fond of Milligan,” he added after a moment. “I wonder if he is more odd than Delaney, or Burren, or Badger?”
“In my business,” said Mike, “you learn that what we call normality is never more than skin-deep. The reason why these people seem so odd may be that they have never found it necessary to lay on a veneer of respectability.”
“And if they had laid it on,” said Daly, “your first business would be to dig it off again. So you really have nothing to complain about.”
Chapter 11
“Dinner,” said Daly, when they reached the quadrangle. “When life looks black that is the answer. It restoreth my soul. I’ll give you five minutes to wash your hands.”
Presently on their way to the restaurant they were joined by Hamilton. Daly was instantly cheered by the sight of his round, innocent face.
“I’ll have dinner with you, if I may,” said Hamilton. “What have you been doing to my future father-in-law?”
Daly stopped dead, so that Fox who had been hurrying to catch up on them, almost cannoned into him.
“Who is your future father-in-law?” Daly asked, covering his eagerness with a kind of desperate calm that amused Mike, though he did not dare to show it.
“Milligan, of course,” said Hamilton, with a fat chuckle. “I’m going to marry Sodia.”
“When?” Daly demanded.
“Oh, time will tell that,” said Hamilton. “She doesn’t know about it yet. She’s a young thing and cannot leave her mother.”
“I thought her mother was dead,” said Mike obtusely, and received a pitying glance from Daly.
“I must dispose of this Tennyson-Smith wart-hog first,” Hamilton explained. “We couldn’t allow a fine girl like Sodia to be wasted on him. She’s a wonderful person, Daly, believe me, and she has an uncanny insight into bio-chemistry.”
He said this in the reverent tone that another man would use to describe the physical beauties of his beloved, and he followed it with the traditional and genuine lover’s sigh of admiration.
“Who told you that we were talking to Milligan?” Mike asked.
Hamilton looked at him as if he were a backward child and said:
“We don’t have to be told those things. We just know. Of course we may have been watching to see would you start with Milligan,’ he conceded, “seeing that Bradley was poisoned with nitro-benzene, and in view of the fact that Bradley was threatening only last week to retire Milligan — Mr. Kenny, what can the matter be?”
Mike’s sharp yelp of dismay had brought them all to a halt outside the dining-room door. Now he stood looking Hamilton up and down, breathing hard in his exasperation. Hamilton returned the look with wide-open child-like eyes. Then he said:
“Have I done something wrong?”
“I’d like to have a talk with you afterwards,” said Mike meaningly.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Hamilton pleaded. “I can’t help seeing a hole through a ladder, can I? I shouldn’t have mentioned Milligan at all, only for Sodia.”
“Oh, dear, I hope it wasn’t Milligan that did it,” Fox was muttering half to himself. “He’s such a dear, good fellow. I don’t know what we should do. And there’s Badger, I meant to tell you, Mr. Kenny. I found him in the President’s office just now going through the filing-cabinet. That sort of thing looks very bad. I told him so. I did indeed.”
“Did he say what he wanted?” asked Mike.
“He said he was looking for a letter he wrote to Bradley once. He thought it might be there in some file and he didn’t want anyone to find it and read it. I got on quite well with Bradley myself, but I must admit that he brought out the worst in people. What do you think, Daly, while you are in office, would it not be well to have a sort of general amnesty? You could easily destroy all those letters of a personal nature and say nothing about it.”
“A very good idea,” said Daly. “We’ll talk about it again.”
As Fox showed no sign of moving away, Daly asked him to join them at dinner. He was pleased that he had done so when he saw how eagerly Fox accepted the invitation.
“You know, I’m rather low-spirited this evening,” he said as if this were something that should cause surprise. “I was closely associated with Bradley, and I think I knew him better than any of you did. His private character was a great deal better than his public one.” Mike remembered Mrs. Bradley and smiled wryly at this. “It’s a terrible thing to think that if he had had more control over himself he would be alive and with us this evening.”
“Terrible,” said Hamilton sardonically.
“Then you think he was poisoned by someone whom he had injured?” Mike asked.
“I don’t know,” said Fox. “I can’t imagine what else could have happened. Everyone seems to have hated him. Look at that disgraceful thing they did to him last night, at his own dinner-table.” He rubbed his forehead as if to stimulate his brain from without. “I can’t think clearly to-day. I never have trouble with the students, but to-day I just couldn’t do anything with them. I heard myself twittering at them like an old woman, and still I could not do any better.”
“That’s because you haven’t been eating sweets,” said Hamilton. “Sweets are a great stimulant. Still I’m glad you’ve taken my advice about them.”
Fox glared, but Hamilton was impassively drinking his soup.
“Never mind, Foxy,” said Daly kindly. “Eat up your soup and you’ll find that things will improve.”
Fox did so and presently looked a little less worried. The rest of the company in the dining-room was not in the least depressed at Bradley’s end. Indeed, it seemed to have stimulated them to an unaccustomed friendliness with each other. Professors who would normally have allowed their colleagues to expire for lack of salt now passed it assiduously up and down the tables with polite ejaculations.
Still they kept their eyes fixed on Daly’s table and their ears cocked to hear as much of the conversation as possible. The students’ eyes darted from the professors’ tables to Daly’s. Even under cover of their chatter Mike did not feel free to join in the conversation. His companions took no notice whatever of this restraint, for they were too busy with their own speculations.
“I met Mr. Leahy going about like a tigress bereft of her young,” said Hamilton, happily falling upon a fillet steak with mâitre d’hôtel butter. “I wonder what will happen about his money now. What would you say, Foxy?”
Fox looked distinctly affronted at this form of address from so young a man. Hamilton, masticating his steak with enjoyment, took no notice of this but waited with interest for his reply.
“I haven’t asked Mr. Leahy,” said Fox after a moment, “but I assume that he will go ahead as if Bradley were still with us.”
“I shouldn’t bank on that, if I were you,” said Hamilton. “Mr. Leahy spent most of yesterday with Bradley. Now he feels cheated, I think, as if someone had run over his dog.”
“How do you know what he feels?” said Fox testily.
“He told me,” said Hamilton calmly.
Watching his pleasure in the sensation he had caused, it occurred to Mike that Daly forty years ago must have been very like Hamilton now.
“I’ve seen rather a lot of Mr. Leahy,” said Hamilton.
“He took a fancy to me because I have just come back from America. He gets lonesome sometimes, he says, lonesome and uneasy.” He reproduced Leahy’s twang without effort. “He says he’s going right back to the U.S. without any more delay, yes, sir, he is.”
“When?” said Fox curtly.
“Three or four days,” said Hamilton. “He says he has a few things to clear up or he would be gone before the end of the week.”
“I must see him.” Fox looked as if he would burst into tears. “He can’t slip out now. He’s gone too far for that.” He drew a long sobbing breath and let it out slowly and with a kind of grating restraint as he said: “This is the last straw. Whoever is responsible for Bradley’s death has a lot to answer for. Not only does he deprive our College of the most energetic President it has ever had, but of a benefactor who would have — ”
