by Ruth Wade
“I’m very pleased to hear that,” said Mike gently. “Just tell me why.”
“Milligan would never have trusted Delaney to carry the nitro-benzene without spilling it,” said Daly triumphantly. “You saw Delaney with a cup of coffee.”
“He didn’t spill it when I saw him,” Mike reminded him.
“Not that time, perhaps. But usually he does. No one knows better than Milligan that if Delaney spilled nitro-benzene on his clothes, he would almost certainly die. I looked it up in the library while you were talking to Mrs. Bradley. If Delaney spilled nitro-benzene on the front of his waistcoat — and let me tell you, Delaney spills everything on the front of his waistcoat — he would inhale the vapour of the poison and die within twenty-four hours. Even if Delaney were not such a renowned spiller of liquids, you can take it from me that Science men have no respect whatever for Arts men. They hardly believe us capable of taking an aspirin to cure a cold. And there is another point.”
“Well?”
“Delaney has been unhappy under Bradley. Milligan knew this. If the whole thing were Delaney’s idea and he had asked Milligan for the poison, would it not have occurred to Milligan that Delaney really wanted it for himself?”
“Would that have stopped Milligan from giving it to him?”
“Yes,” said Daly. “Besides, Delaney would have been incapable of administering poison to Bradley without letting Bradley know what he was about.”
They were silent again as they walked past the long wall of the College park, until they came to the little bridge over the Styx. They paused in the middle of the bridge to look back towards the lighted College buildings. The wall ended here so that there was a clear view.
“I wish we had been able to avert this misfortune,” said Daly after a moment. “Contact with reality is bad for universities. I wish it need not have happened.”
“It was Bradley’s own fault that it did,” said Mike. “A really good President would have been more careful not to have had himself murdered.”
“Bradley was incapable of being objective about his own fate,” said Daly. “I spent an hour with him yesterday afternoon, trying to persuade him to go away. But he kept on doing Julius Caesar — ‘Shall Caesar send a lie,’ and so on — until I saw that it was no use. It wasn’t nobility, or courage, or devotion to duty that prevented him, either. I think he had an idea that he was safe as long as he stayed inside the College. And as he told me on the very evening that I arrived in the College, he felt quite capable of blackmailing whoever was threatening him. He only wished to be sure of blackmailing the right person. Don’t be so distressed.” He placed a solicitous hand on Mike’s sleeve. “Presidents always blackmail their staffs. How else could they control them?”
Keeping his hand on Mike’s arm, Daly moved on again. There were grassy banks on either side of the road now. In this backwater they might have been in the deep country, but for the widely spaced street lights. Then, just beyond a curve in the road they saw ‘The Cow.’ It was a long, low house, with a square porch jutting out without apology in the middle. From a sign above the door, a stout black cow leered knowingly down at the customers as they went in. Daly looked at his watch.
“Almost closing-time,” he said. “Biddy is very punctual about shutting the door. We had better get inside quickly.”
The porch was empty, but there was an inner door through which they could hear a murmur of voices. Daly pushed the door open, with an anticipatory grin, and Mike followed him into the bar.
It was dimly lit by two red-shaded hanging lamps. Behind the long worn counter that ran across the back of the room, a stout elderly woman was drying glasses in a leisurely way, with a snow-white linen cloth. A thin, small man of the same age was opening bottles and pouring stout into glasses for the solid line of customers who sat on tall wooden three-legged stools at the bar. This man’s head was continually jerking to the right, as if his left ear was accustomed to being unexpectedly boxed. The floor was flagged with limestone, polished black by generations of boot-soles. An open turf fire at one end of the room was surrounded by grandmother chairs, each supporting a satisfied customer. Benches ran along the other walls, with small tables at intervals in front of them. Many of the occupants of the benches preferred to keep their glasses in greater safety clutched between their feet on the floor.
There was a pause in the conversation when Mike and Daly came into the room. Then there was a scuffle at the end opposite to the fireplace and a clear young voice said distinctly:
“Japers! It’s the President!”
Three dim figures darted through another door, shutting it with a rattle of bolts. Laughter and conversation broke again. Mildly curious, Daly looked towards the door and then advanced to a free place at the end of the counter, saying:
“Good evening, Biddy.”
“Good evening, sir,” said Biddy heartily. She leaned confidentially over the counter. “And I heard you’re made President, Professor. I thought we wouldn’t see you in here no more.”
“Only acting President, Biddy,” said Daly, “and I laid down as a condition of taking it that I wouldn’t have to change over to milk.”
He introduced Mike to Biddy, who leaned across to shake his hand. Then she reached for two pottery tankards and filled them to overflowing with stout. Placing one in front of each of them, she said:
“There’s a pint of the black cow’s milk to mark Mr. Kenny’s first visit, and the first appearance of a President in this bar. I hope you won’t be spoiling my trade on me, President,” she said in a low voice. “You know I conduct a good house, no alcohol for anyone under eighteen, no spirits until after the degree, maximum of three pints a man and then an hour’s rest — ”
“I know, I know,” said Daly. “I wouldn’t have come at all only that I wanted to bring Mr. Kenny.” The old clock on the wall struck the half-hour. Daly went on hurriedly: “Anyway, it’s closing-time now, and you know I couldn’t possibly drink a pint of Guinness at my age — good night, Mike!” he finished suddenly, and walked quickly out by the way that they had come in, leaving Mike speechlessly clutching the handle of his tankard.
Biddy gave a little satisfied sigh and looked after him with affection.
“Always such a gentleman,” she said complacently to Mike. “One hint is enough. Not that I liked asking him to go, but sure, I couldn’t have the President of King’s College perched on a stool at my bar. ’Twouldn’t be fitting nor right. Undignified. And I wouldn’t have a customer left after three days of it.”
She raised her voice and said in a loud monotone:
“Closing-time, gentlemen, everyone is travellers I suppose, hop over and pull down the blinds, Mattie, and lock the door.”
Everyone watched indulgently while Mattie came around from behind the bar and performed these tasks. When they turned back to their drinks again there was an increased air of intimacy and comfort in the room, as if they were all members of a benevolent though secret society. Mike took a long pull of his stout, hoping that Biddy would not discover that she was nursing a viper in her bosom, in the person of himself. Biddy seemed to have forgotten him. She was trotting briskly around the end of the counter to the door through which three of her customers had disappeared.
“Yez can come out now,” she called. “He’s gone.”
The bolts were rattled again, the door creaked open and out came James Tennyson-Smith, John Fahy and a somewhat weather-beaten young man whom Mike could not remember having seen before. Biddy did not seem surprised to find that Mike was acquainted with two of the young men already.
“Now you won’t feel lonesome,” she said comfortably. “You couldn’t be long coming here without getting to know Kidney.” She smiled indulgently at the third student. “He’s like a son to me. His name is not really Kidney. We call him that because it’s what always banjaxes him at the examinations.”
She slipped agilely around behind the bar again and looked at them expectantly, her hands spread on the counte
r.
“My nerves could do with a little steadying after that contretemps,” said the young man called Kidney. He rummaged in his pockets and produced four pennies and two half-pennies which he laid in a row on the counter. “Would that rise to a medium?” he asked hopefully.
“This will be on me,” said Mike quickly, finishing his drink. “Now we’ll all start level. You know what they like, Biddy.”
The three young men thanked him perfunctorily, like children who have been given sweets. Then John Fahy said:
“For God’s sake don’t tell my mother, Mr. Kenny. I’m not really a confirmed drunkard yet.”
His round face shone with earnestness. Kidney sighed and said lugubriously:
“Alas for me, I am.”
Tennyson-Smith was silent and dull and it was plain that what thoughts he could achieve were engaged somewhere else. Mike watched him out of the corner of his eye and thought he discerned the hunted look of a young man about to run away and join the Foreign Legion. Biddy placed a pint of porter in front of Kidney and a mixture of beer and lemonade before each of the other two. Tennyson-Smith looked disparagingly at his and said:
“I’ll have a double brandy.”
“Faith and soul you won’t,” said Biddy cheerfully as she handed Mike another pint of porter. She moved away to register the price of the drinks on an old cash register with bells.
Kidney raised his glass to heaven and took a long drink. He put down the glass and turned to gaze at Mike as he said:
“Didn’t I see you in the restaurant this evening with our honoured acting President, to flee from whose watchful eye we had to scoot into Biddy’s kitchen?”
“That’s right,” said Mike.
John Fahy pulled at Kidney’s sleeve and whispered sibilantly into his ear. Kidney looked at Mike again with greatly increased respect. John said:
“There’s no secret about it now, Mr. Kenny, I suppose?”
“No,” said Mike drily, “except for the awkward little fact that it’s after closing-time.”
“Don’t mention that word,” said Kidney sharply. “I should explain that we are conducting a philosophical experiment here. We hope that by ignoring the existence of — the phenomenon that you mentioned — it will be forced to cease to exist. As you see, we have already had a great measure of success. I’m afraid we may have suffered a setback this evening, since both yourself and the acting President mentioned — it.”
“Sorry,” said Mike meekly. “I didn’t know.”
“You couldn’t have,” said Kidney handsomely. “And you can understand that we can’t put up a notice about it. Tell me, Mr. Kenny, are you here on business or pleasure? I hope you are leaving no stone unturned in your efforts to discover who murdered our President. We don’t like that sort of thing in the College.”
Mike assured him that he was leaving no stone unturned.
“Having the President murdered makes everyone very uneasy,” said Kidney seriously. “Why, it might be a student next.”
They had not noticed that Biddy had moved up behind the counter until she was level with them again. Now suddenly she leaned across the counter until her head was among them and looked eagerly from one to another.
“The President murdered?” she said. “Did you say murdered? And no one told me! There’s gratitude, Kidney, after all the years I ran you through your physiology book, for all the good it did you. That Professor Badger was in a while back and he said the police were in the College about the President’s death, but I thought ’twas only that there would be an inquest because he died sudden.”
“Not so loud, please,” said Kidney. “We don’t want the whole mob discussing a family affair.”
There was a pause while they listened to a loud argument about the breeding of greyhounds. The big man in the gaberdine coat who sat with his back firmly turned on Mike droned out for the fourth time:
“I say that Mutton Cutlet was overbred. There’s Cutlets in every parish in Ireland after him.”
“They’re not listening,” said Biddy. She hitched herself closer, so that Mike thought her feet must be swinging clear of the floor as she hung across the counter to whisper confidentially: “When you said murder, do you know who ran into my head at once? Professor Daly, that was in here a few minutes ago!”
“What about him?” asked Kidney. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Do you mean that he may have killed the President so that he could be acting President?” asked John Fahy innocently.
“You may laugh,” said Biddy heavily. “You may jeer and sneer and jib, but Professor Daly is a man that had a very good reason for wanting to see President Bradley under the sod.”
She said this with such conviction that Mike felt as if he had always known its truth. He remembered immediately that the sergeant had said Daly looked like a man who had something to hide. Mike felt himself clutched in the grip of a primitive urge, like the instinctive craft of a hunting cat. He said carelessly:
“Why should Professor Daly wish Bradley dead? I thought they were great friends.”
“On the outside, maybe,” said Biddy. “But it’s not everyone that knows that Mrs. Bradley was married to Professor Daly for three years, until one day Bradley came and took her away.”
“Took her away?”
“Yes. You see, the way of it was that she thought Bradley was dead — guzzled by a mine in Africa or something — and she came home a poor widow and married Professor Daly. But after a while the bold Bradley came home, too, and demanded her back. Now, wouldn’t that annoy a saint? Who’d blame Professor Daly for doing in the man that took his wife off him — a great housekeeper she was, too.”
“How long ago did this happen?” Mike asked as soon as he could frame a coherent question out of the many that tumbled about in his brain.
The students were silent now, as if they felt themselves in the presence of something beyond their understanding. Biddy calculated rapidly on her fingers.
“I suppose it must be twenty-five years,” she said.
“That’s a long time,” said Mike gently.
“The mills of God grind slowly,” said Biddy, “but they grind exceeding small. Maybe Professor Daly got brooding about it after he retired. I suppose he doesn’t have much else to do below in Galway.”
It was clear from her disparaging tone that she thought Galway was a desert. Now she was peeping eagerly up at Mike to see the effect of her information. Suddenly a wave of rage seemed to sweep over Kidney, for he shot out an arm as if he intended to knock Biddy off the counter. Mike seized his wrist in time, and forced his hand down by his side again. John Fahy’s face had gone white. Tennyson-Smith had stepped back a pace. Kidney’s lips were drawn back in a snarl. He spoke in a low monotone, all the more charged with venom for its apparent restraint:
“I know you now, Miss Macnamara. I don’t believe your name is Biddy at all. You use false friendship and a cunning, seductive air to lure in your prey. You are a character, a good sort. You’ll play stage-Irish if anyone brings a foreign visitor into your pub. Behind that you think you can be as mean-souled and as grasping as you like. But I see it all in your eyes — your spite against an innocent old man, because you don’t want him here any more — ”
“That’s enough,” said Mike sharply. “Come along now. We’ll all be going.”
Biddy’s face was purple with indignation, but she had not yet found her voice. Mike hustled the three young men before him to the door. As he swung it open, the voice of the big man in the gaberdine coat boomed out:
“Cutlets in every parish in Ireland after him!”
Chapter 13
Outside, the night air restored a feeling of sanity to them all. Mike realized that the young man called Kidney was shaking.
“What is your real name?” he asked.
“Thomas Finlay.”
“Never submit to being called Kidney again,” said Mike. “Do you realize how close you have gone to becoming a character yourself?”<
br />
“I’ll never be able to go to ‘The Cow’ again,” said Finlay mournfully. “No more sitting by the fire there in the winter evenings, with my books — ”
“Don’t you think that this will mean you will be able to pass your examinations?” said Mike.
“Oh-me-oh-my, all the same,” said Finlay. “I suppose I knew it would have to end some day. But to see it suddenly as I did now, how cruel she is and what a fake — that was a shock, that was.”
“I always knew she was a fake,” said John Fahy mildly. “I watched her this morning getting old Lewis drunk and then trying to pump out of him what was happening in the College. She didn’t get much change out of Lewis, though.”
“You knew? Then why didn’t you tell me?” Finlay demanded.
“Because you said she was like a mother to you,” said Fahy without expression.
As long as he was in the company of the three young men Mike could not properly realize the implications of what Biddy had said. Finlay’s disillusion was like a minor version of his own feeling that the whole world had slipped a cog and was hanging precariously over a bottomless chasm. Finlay’s naive and childish attack on Biddy had been a lesson to Mike, if he had needed it, on the futility of giving way to instinctive reaction. He wished that Finlay had held his peace, because Biddy just then had been eager to supply information, true or false, about everyone. Mike thought she had probably guessed that he was a policeman, and that she had been anxious to curry favour with him. Finlay’s voice broke in on his thoughts.
“I’m afraid I made an ass of myself just now. You’re not going to believe what a woman like that says, I hope.”
“I think you’re too hard on her,” said Mike. “You go from one extreme to the other. Publicans often become ham actors as a sideline, to stimulate trade. After all, she’s an uneducated old woman.”
“Touché,” said Finlay, after an uncomfortable pause.
Suddenly Tennyson-Smith came to life.
