Dancing with Death

by Ruth Wade

  “Helen, would you mind if we ask Mike to clear up this whole affair for us?” he said gently. “We may not have him here so conveniently again. And you have a right to know exactly what happened. Then you can forget it all and make a fresh start.”

  “How thoughtful of you, John,” said Mrs. Bradley, with a look of such devotion that Daly curled up like a frightened snail in his armchair. She seemed not to notice this reaction as she finished: “Please do explain, Mr. Kenny. I can’t resist an appeal like that.”

  “Where shall I begin?” asked Mike, avoiding Daly’s eye.

  “Begin with Foxy, of course,” said Hamilton. “What on earth was he up to?”

  “He was making five-pound notes on a printing press in the Natural History Museum,” said Mike. “It was to destroy the printing press that he got Professor Delaney to burn the place down. You remember, Daly, Lewis told us a little while ago that Fox was looking for you. But it was Professor Delaney he asked for. Your names are very much alike.”

  “And he cared nothing about the rats,” said Delaney mournfully, like a Greek chorus.

  “Fox has just told me that the forgery was the President’s idea,” said Mike. “He says that it was Bradley who procured the plates and had the press set up. He says the President led him astray, and that he would never have thought of such a thing himself.

  “Fox was an amateur criminal. Bradley knew that you can’t flood the local market with forged notes. It’s quite a risky business. It must be indulged in with discretion. Also, he had sent for Leahy, and they had another game on, with no room in it for Fox.

  “This was where the trouble started. Fox did not want to stop making the notes. When Bradley told him to dismantle the press he refused. At first Bradley tried peaceful methods of persuasion. Finally he told Fox that he was going to lead the police to the College by distributing the notes in such a way that they could be traced. Just to show Fox that he was in earnest, he gave two of the notes to Miss Milligan yesterday afternoon to pay for the repairs to the chalice. He had warned Fox that the only thing that would save him when the hunt should begin would be the disappearance of the press.

  “By this time Fox had decided to murder Bradley. Bradley had never thought of this. In the circles in which he moved there is no need for murder. Everyone is in a position to blackmail everyone else, so no one feels free to begin. Bradley was not afraid of Fox. He should have been because Fox did not know the conventions.

  “It was not easy to discover the motive of the murder. There were so many people who hated Bradley that the whole situation was complicated for us, and what is usually a good pointer became instead a source of confusion.” Mike’s tone was impersonal enough, but he was taking great care to look into the fire. “Bradley had tormented Professor Milligan with extraordinary ferocity, considering the smallness of his grievance against him. The nature of the poison, too, made me think in the beginning that there was no mystery at all — that I should just go along and take Professor Milligan away. But I was disturbed from this idea by his manner. Such a highly sensitive person as he was could not have looked so unconcerned if he had poisoned Bradley. In fact, I thought he would probably have told me if it was he who had done it. I wondered at one time if he had told Miss Milligan, but a conversation with her disposed of that notion.

  “Immediately after I had been with Professor Milligan we had dinner, and Fox was there. Was it only this evening? Fox had not been at dinner here last night, but he said something about ‘that disgraceful business of the biscuit.’ It was some time afterwards that it occurred to me that no one who had been there would have told Fox about it afterwards. It was a disgraceful episode” — Burren snorted angrily at this censure — “and everyone was ashamed of it. It seemed to me that the only person who would have told Fox was Bradley himself, and this would mean that Fox must have visited Bradley late last night, after we had all gone home. Now Fox tells me that this is what happened.”

  “Wasn’t that rather a long shot?” said Hamilton mildly.

  “Not as long as you might think,” said Mike. “We knew that someone had been with Bradley late. Nellie found used glasses and the famous concert ticket there in the morning. It was only when Professor Daly mentioned that Bradley did not like music that I guessed that the ticket belonged to the murderer. Trying it on Fox was rather a long shot, to be sure, but I had to take a chance. Bradley was not called away from us during the evening, so his visitor must have come after we had left. Of course, one of us could have come back, but Professor Burren was the only one whose movements were unaccounted for.”

  “I am not a well-tempered man,” said Burren. “Last night I was in such a rage at the pass to which our College had come in having that man as its President that I could not contain myself. I behaved like a boor here, and when we were leaving, Bradley handled me again. I walked around the grounds — up and down the river-bank — through the park — everywhere — until the small hours of the morning. I’m sorry, Mrs. Bradley. I should not say these things. But he was so unacademic.”

  He brought out the word as if it were the ultimate in vituperation.

  “Now I know why you are so thin,” said the placid Hamilton. “You are consuming your protective fat with these internal rages. I must teach you some philosophy.”

  “I should be much obliged,” said Burren with savage intensity.

  “Now, now, nasty temper!” said Hamilton.

  Burren relaxed a little and actually managed a small, lemony smile.

  “The reason why I thought of Fox at all,” Mike went on hurriedly, “was that I noticed inconsistencies in his behaviour. On my first evening here he had joined with the rest in telling Professor Daly about Bradley’s shortcomings. Later, however, he assured everyone that Bradley had a heart of gold under his very rough exterior. I noticed, too, that he seemed unable to bring himself to come into Bradley’s bedroom, in fact he was in tears for part of the time. I thought this rather odd. Another strange thing was that Fox did not seem surprised at finding a police inspector ready and waiting on the College premises. Bradley must have told him about me, to bring home to him the danger he was in.

  “Fox had told me that Bradley had shown him the anonymous letters. Bradley had, but it was to accuse Fox of having written them. Then Professor Daly made up a good suicide theory and Fox demolished it. He had become frightened at what he had done and he made several mistakes. That was one of them. Another was in showing his dismay when he heard that Leahy was proposing to leave the country. Fox’s plan was to join up with Leahy in the same way as Bradley had intended to do. Of course it would not have worked. Fox was not Bradley’s calibre at all.”

  “You said that Leahy and Bradley had some kind of a plot on,” said Burren. “He looked too good to be true, but sort of innocent.”

  “That innocence was Leahy’s stock-in-trade,” said Mike. “Leahy’s job was to play the part of benefactor to the College. Later, when everyone would trust him, he was going to float a company and depart with the assets. He has done this with varying degrees of success in different parts of the world. Fox has just been telling me all this. He’s madly trying to put the blame on Leahy, poor chap. Leahy and Bradley were old associates in Africa and had made a lot of money there out of mines. But Bradley had lost his — no doubt we shall find out how — and at the time of his appointment here he was almost desperate. He was getting older and he was afraid that he had lost the knack of creating confidence by his appearance. This was a new sensation for him, and it worried him a great deal, as I saw when I had coffee with him on my first evening here. So he sent for Leahy in the hope of making one good coup that would keep him in comfort for the rest of his life. Leahy was to pay Bradley a large sum of money as a sort of agent’s fee. Part of it would be spent on the College, but there would be something for Bradley himself, too. Bradley wanted fifty thousand pounds, but Leahy thought the same number of dollars would be plenty. They had not reached agreement about this at the time of Bradley�
��s death. Leahy was very dissatisfied and complained to Fox. He may have suggested then to Fox that they drop Bradley and carry on together, but of course he will not admit this now because it would have been tantamount to inciting Fox to murder Bradley.

  “It was Badger who spotted that there was something wrong about Leahy. Mrs. Badger’s anonymous letters upset Bradley, and frightened him off the forgery game, and were the beginning of his falling out with Fox — ”

  “Did you say Mrs. Badger wrote anonymous letters to my husband?” asked Mrs. Bradley in awed tones.

  “She did,” said Daly. “But she meant well. I hope you won’t hold it against her.”

  “I’m not likely to see her again,” said Mrs. Bradley faintly. “I shall probably go away.”

  “Why did Bradley ask me to come at all?” Daly asked, after the little pause that followed. “I wish I understood that. Surely he saw that he was risking the disclosure of all his jiggery-pokery.”

  “It’s hard to say,” said Mike. “We can only speculate about that, from what we know of his character. Remember that he really was afraid of the letter-writer. And you are not as young as you used to be. He may have thought you would not see beyond the task he had given you, and that you would be flattered at being asked at all.”

  “He may, indeed,” said Daly, remembering Bradley’s patronizing manner to him on the afternoon of his arrival. “I’m going to give the rest of my lectures no matter what happens,” he finished truculently.

  “Of course,” said Hamilton. “Already to-day I have heard several people lamenting that you would probably not finish the series now.”

  “I am very pleased,” said Daly. “Frustration is bad for my liver. Where did Fox get the nitro-benzene?”

  “He made it himself, a few days ago, in Milligan’s lab,” said Mike. He glanced uneasily at Mrs. Bradley, but she seemed hardly to be listening. “He carried it about in his pocket waiting for an opportunity to use it. He would have tried it when he visited the President in the afternoon, but he met Professor Hamilton on the doorstep, and they came into the house together. Fox knew that Bradley would not offer him a drink while Hamilton was waiting outside in the hall. So he planned to come back after the dinner-party so that they could talk without interruption. He told Bradley that he had decided to dismantle the printing press. Bradley did not tell Fox that he had already taken steps to draw the police to the College.

  “With a poison like nitro-benzene it is difficult to say to within a few hours when it was taken. But we know that its action is accelerated if it is taken with alcohol. Bradley had sherry before dinner and two wines with the meal, and whiskey afterwards. If one of his afternoon visitors had poisoned him, he would probably have collapsed before the dinner-party was over.”

  “You’ll have to let Mr. Leahy off,” said Sodia, who had made no comment until now. “You have nothing against him. I’m very glad. He’s a nice little man.”

  “It was Bradley’s misfortune that Leahy was such a nice little man that everyone took a great interest in him,” said Mike. “Bradley had thought he would be allowed to make all the arrangements about the endowment without giving any details.”

  “We would never have allowed it in any event,” said Burren. “Fellow behaved as if he owned the College.”

  “Professors love having a say in that sort of thing,” said Daly. “He really should have known better.”

  “Fox tells me that while he was with the President last night he took some of the forged notes out of his pocket and burned them to prove that he was determined to finish with that game. It was then that he dropped the ticket.”

  “No wonder Foxy didn’t like it when I said his name suited him,” said Hamilton. “Now we’ll have to start off to-morrow and find a new administrative staff for our College. Ah, ah!” he said warningly, as Burren sat up and looked interested. “Not for you, Burren. You’re going to take up fishing, to teach you patience. I’m going to need patience, too, because Sodia must take her degree before we can be married.”

  Sodia raised her eyebrows but made no objection. Mike said to Mrs. Bradley:

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay in Dublin for a while.”

  Suddenly they found that they must all look at her. Slowly her eyes travelled from one to another of them, while she smiled in a queer, rather ugly way. At last she said softly:

  “I’m going to live alone now. That is something I have never done in all my life. I think I’m going to like it very much indeed.”

  Somehow there was an end of all conversation after that. Professor Daly found himself filled with such an indecent joy that he did not trust himself to speak. He shook her hands, too heartily, and then withdrew at speed as if he feared she would bite him. The others murmured an indistinguishable word or two and followed Daly into the hall. Mike came last, leading Professor Delaney gently by the arm.

  Though the quadrangle was deserted now, all the outside lights were on. Lights shone from the upper windows, too, where the students had retired to discuss, no doubt, the possibility of starting another fire some time, when a diversion should seem necessary. Sodia stopped and turned to Mike.

  “I wish I had not tripped Professor Fox,” she said, with bitter intensity. “I wish he had got away. Why did you not just tell him that you knew what he had done, and let him go?”

  Mike did not answer for a moment. The eyes of the rest were fixed on him, except for Delaney, who drooped a little now as if he were tired. Then Mike said, carefully, as if each word had been rehearsed many times:

  “There was no escape for Fox. He knew that Professor Delaney would tell everyone about the splendid idea for disposing of the rats. He had kept some of the nitro-benzene for him. And he says he knew he could always make more — for instance, if your father had happened to discover that someone had used his lab without permission, or if Professor Burren had been made President instead of himself, in succession to Bradley.” The sharp note went out of his voice as he continued: “I’m sorry you had to see the end of him. There was no time to be lost, you see. Once people get the habit of interfering with the laws of nature, their whole mind and character change. Fox is a different person now from what he was three years ago.”

  “I never liked him,” said Burren.

  “I tried to like him,” said Daly, “but somehow I could never manage it. People who diet to the extent that Fox did are denying the goodness of God. He was bound to pay for that sooner or later.”

  Hamilton chuckled with pleasure. Then he said to Mike:

  “Could Professor Delaney come and stay at Milligan’s tonight? Sodia and her father will look after him. There is a bed for you, too, if you like.”

  Mike accepted this offer with gratitude, for he had been a little perplexed as to where Delaney should spend the remainder of the night. Hamilton’s kindness and forethought were deeply consoling to him now, when he had suddenly found himself overwhelmed with weariness. Perhaps this was why he went off with the others with no more than a word to Professor Daly.

  The old man stood in the quadrangle, sharply lonely, watching the little group move down the avenue. The night wind was cold. Presently he shivered, and then turned with a quick movement to go in. The hallway was deserted, and again he felt a sharp emptiness about the heart, which would have been relieved even by the aggravating presence of Lewis.

  “But it’s too late at night for philosophizing,” he said to himself. “Everything will look different in the morning.”

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