Fen looked as though he had seen a ghost – as, in a sense, he had. The incredible had happened. He made swift calculations: Stratford was fourteen miles away, not much more than an hour’s ride…And still it was unbelievable.
Even Mr Taverner was startled at the effect he had made. His mouth dropped open, he gaped oafishly, his ambassadorial dignity gone. Mr Tye, to whom this momentary stasis was wholly incomprehensible, stared bemusedly at both of them. Daphne became motionless, sensing a crux but uncertain of its nature. And for half a minute they were all completely silent.
Fen was the first to recover himself, a consummation which he achieved by several times repeating to himself the words, ‘This thing is impossible.’ That it was, in fact, by no means impossible he dared not allow himself to think; if it were true, and the letters – the letters – had been burned…He shivered like one smitten with an ague. Of course it explained the murders; the stake involved was gigantic.
He found that without knowing it he had been holding his breath, and expelled it with an audible gasp. Then he drained his tankard to the last drop, and when he looked up again normalcy was restored. Mr Taverner had ceased to gape, Mr Tye had relapsed again into uncritical acquiescence, and Daphne looked merely puzzled. Sunlight winked on the bottles and glasses behind the bar, and a bee was droning fretfully on the window pane.
Fen said, ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Taverner. Very helpful’ – a statement which, had Mr Taverner only known it, represented an iron self-control; Fen’s principal emotion with regard to Mr Taverner was a desire to take him by the neck and throttle him.
‘You flatter me, sir,’ said Mr Taverner, unwittingly accurate. ‘You flatter me.’
Distantly, Fen heard a car approaching, his taxi, in all probability. There was only one more question he needed to ask, and to that he already knew the answer.
‘Mr Taverner, did you last Monday evening mention to Mr Somers, from the school, the facts about these papers which you’ve just given me?’
Mr Taverner looked surprised. ‘I did, sir. He was most interested.’
The car had drawn up at the door. Fen got to his feet.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I expect he would have been. It may interest you to know, Mr Taverner, that you are indirectly responsible for three murders and directly responsible for the destruction of property worth, at a conservative estimate, about a million pounds. And I suggest that in future you refrain from offering people inexpert advice about the value of their property and confine yourself to pulpits and screwdrivers. Good morning.’
In a paralysed hush he stalked out of the inn. He was at the door of his taxi when Daphne caught him up.
‘Golly!’ she exclaimed. ‘What was all that about?’
Though still simmering with fury, Fen managed to smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I oughtn’t to have let you in for that.’
‘I don’t mind. But what was it about? What’s Love’s Labour’s Won?’
‘It’s a lost play by Shakespeare,’ Fen told her, ‘which hasn’t been heard of since 1598. Luckily I don’t think it can have been burned, though at present it’s certainly in the possession of a murderer…Forgive me if I hurry away.’ He climbed into the taxi. ‘I’ll remember to suggest that your Mr Plumstead comes and stays here.’
The taxi moved off, and Daphne was left staring blankly after it.
10
Meditations Among the Tombs
The luncheon at the headmaster’s house was a large and ceremonial affair. Miss Parry was there, and the bursar, and one or two housemasters, and the secretary of the Old Boys’ Society, and the mayor of Castrevenford, and the entire board of governors. When Fen arrived they were consuming sherry and martinis in the drawing room, about whose windows Mr Merrythought was prowling like the wraith of Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights. Fen had barely time to be introduced before the gong sounded.
The meal, though larded with a rather specious gaiety, was not entirely successful. The chairman of the governors, a garrulous, self-important little man, clearly regarded it as an occasion for anecdotes, and never ceased telling them from the soup to the coffee. Their point was invariably tenuous, and so not immediately comprehensible, and he was generally obliged to explain it. Matters were not improved when on two occasions Fen and the headmaster, in an attempt to abolish these exegetical appendices, laughed prematurely. But beyond the chairman’s conversational reach, the tropes of sociability proceeded smoothly, and Fen was occasionally relieved from the need of being jocular by Miss Parry, who sat on his left.
‘I sometimes think,’ she said, ‘that there is a certain pathos about an occasion like this.’
Fen examined the faces of his fellow guests for evidences of pathos, but without success.
‘Not about the luncheon,’ Miss Parry explained rather severely, ‘but about speech day in general.’ Fen made noises of civil incomprehension. ‘I refer, of course, to the parent–child relationship. This asparagus is tinned.’
Fen tasted it and assented. ‘But about the parent–child relationship,’ he prompted.
‘I believe that many of the boys have a lurking fear that their parents will disgrace them in some fashion.’ Miss Parry emptied her glass and gazed fixedly at a maidservant, who hastened to refill it. ‘And the parents, of course, are aware of this. The fathers come here anxious to look intelligent, amiable and prosperous; the mothers put on their best frocks and hope that their sons’ friends will think them young-looking, attractive, well turned out…’ Champagne was one of the few things capable of provoking Miss Parry to sentimentality; she sighed. ‘Those with the money bags win, of course.’
Fen nodded. ‘When I was a boy I had some such feeling. I was greatly ashamed of it then, and I am still. It does, I agree, produce an undertow of pathos.’
‘But curiously enough, not with girls,’ said Miss Parry. She reached for a second roll, and tore it briskly in two. ‘Except, of course, as regards the fathers’ looks, about which nothing can be done in any case. A girl with a handsome father is in a fortunate position, but everyone recognizes that it’s due to an act of God, and so there’s very little ill feeling.’
‘And while we’re on the subject of these young women’s preferences’ – Fen lowered his voice and spoke rather cautiously – ‘what is your opinion about the disappearance of Brenda Boyce?’
Miss Parry hesitated for a moment, then, looking straight in front of her: ‘So you’ve heard about that,’ she said.
Fen sensed something inimical in her tone; no doubt she regarded the whole affair as a reflection on her own competence, and hence disliked the fact of its being bruited abroad.
‘Very tiresome for you,’ he observed tactfully. ‘But of course, you did everything you could.’
She thawed a little. ‘Professor Fen, I’m convinced that the letter which she left is a fake.’
‘Yes?’
‘The handwriting is hers, but the style is not. It should have been gaudy and elaborate. I’m convinced that the letter was dictated to her.’
‘Under duress?’
‘Possibly.’ There was a catch in Miss Parry’s voice. ‘In any case it could very easily have been placed on the desk through the study window.’
This was no more than confirmation, Fen reflected, of what he already suspected. The murderer had, of course, made a mistake; the letter was a needless and risky elaboration. He should have killed the girl and left it at that…
A momentary nausea overwhelmed him, and the champagne which he drank to relieve it had the opposite effect. How had it happened? A blow or a shot from behind? Or had she known it was coming? Had she sobbed, pleaded? Or clenched her teeth silently and closed her eyes? Or fought, or tried to run away? She was sixteen. Sixteen. And – the thought occurred to him for the first time – her death was needless if only the murderer had chosen to change his plans, to take a little more risk himself. She might have been lunching at this moment with her parents, full of deliciously nervous anticipat
ion of the evening’s performance…
Moral indignation was an emotion which Fen distrusted; he made an effort and quelled it.
After the meal he found time to ring up Stagge at the police station.
‘Motive,’ he said curtly. ‘I think I have it. The death of Mrs Bly and the deaths here are undoubtedly connected.’
‘Well, that’s an advance, sir,’ said Stagge, markedly respectful. ‘How do you work that out?’
‘No time to tell you now, I’m afraid. I have to go off to the speeches. Can you meet me afterwards – about four?’
‘Well, sir, if you’re sure the delay won’t help our man…’
‘No, I don’t see how it can. The one thing I’m waiting for now is the alibi reports.’
‘They should be ready by then, sir.’
‘Good. Have you still got Plumstead with you?’
‘Yes, sir. But there’s a difficulty about finding anywhere for him to sleep tonight.’
‘Tell him to go to the pub at Ravensward. That young woman – Daphne Savage—’
‘Yes, sir,’ Stagge interrupted percipiently. ‘I thought that myself. I’ll tell him.’
‘You no longer seriously suspect him of killing Mrs Bly?’
‘Not really, sir, no.’
‘You’re wise. He didn’t. Goodbye for now.’
Fen rang off and went upstairs to don the robes of a doctor of philosophy. Presently the whole party set off for the school site.
It was close on half past two when they arrived, and the crowds of parents and boys in the sunshine outside the hall were beginning to move into the building, their faces wearing the limp, uneasy expressions of those who are obliged to endure boredom and discomfort for appearances’ sake; only those fathers who had stayed prolongedly in the Castrevenford bars showed any signs of cheerfulness. A substantial party had settled down to watch the cricket, which had already begun, and Fen cast a regretful glance at the sun-dappled pattern of white flannels against green turf as he was led through a side entrance into an annexe of the hall. The clock on Hubbard’s Building struck the half hour. Fen, the headmaster and the governors moved amid a slentando hum of conversation on to the stage.
The hall was as unadorned inside as out; besides, it looked somehow insubstantial, as though built of plywood, and its walls seemed as if they might burst apart with the pressure of the mass of humanity at present packed into it. The atmosphere was stifling; people were fanning themselves with their printed programmes. In the front two rows of hard wooden chairs sat the masters, robed, gowned, their attitudes varying from indulgent ennui to virtual coma. Behind them, in the body of the hall, was a great concourse of perspiring parents. And into the gallery – the hands of whose clock were paralysed at five minutes past eleven, and had been as long as anyone could remember – all the boys had been somehow crammed, with the exception of the prizewinners, who were being got into line in one of the corridors which bounded the length of the hall by two officious monitors. There was whispering, fidgeting, shuffling of feet. Someone was struggling to open a defective window. Through the glass doors beneath the balcony disembodied faces were peering.
Fen, the headmaster, and the chairman of the governors settled down on the platform behind a long table laden with books. To the left of it sat Saltmarsh, among whose other duties was the purchase and general organization of prizes, holding several typewritten pages clipped together. In a semicircle of chairs at the back of the platform sat the governors, dignified but nugatory. There was a burst of preparatory coughing. The chairman of the governors got up to make his speech.
He spoke lengthily, vaguely, facetiously, sententiously. When, after what seemed an eternity, he sat down amid relieved applause, the headmaster rose to summarize the academic and athletic achievements of the school during the past year, and to express conventionally pious hopes and aspirations for its future. In conclusion he introduced Fen, who spoke wittily and unimprovingly for exactly five minutes – a fact which endeared him instantly to every member of his cramped and sweating audience. Then he gave away the prizes. Saltmarsh read out the names one by one and gave the book or books to Fen, who handed them to the appropriate boy and shook him earnestly by the hand, while everyone clapped, in metronomic spasms. One boy, overcome by the heat and the solemnity of the ccasion, fainted away and had to be carried out (‘Someone always faints,’ said the headmaster resignedly). Finally Weems, the music master, sat down at the piano and accompanied the school song, which the boys bellowed with the exuberance of reprieved assassins, while the parents, ignorant of the words, stood looking sternly respectful and moving their mouths in rather an improbable fashion. Thus the speeches came to an end.
Fen left his robes in an anteroom, and, after shaking off the chairman of the governors and assuring the headmaster that he would attend the garden party a little later on, emerged into the open air. Stagge was waiting for him with a briefcase in his hand, his features wearing the harassed, withdrawn look of one who is trying to add up sums in his head. By common consent the two men walked across the dry grass towards Davenant’s and the headmaster’s study until they were out of earshot of the crowds, who were either lingering to watch the cricket or drifting slowly away in the direction of the headmaster’s house.
‘Well, sir,’ said Stagge, ‘I had lunch with the chief constable. He’s telephoned to Scotland Yard, and they’re sending some men down early tomorrow morning. I shall be relieved, I confess.’
Fen spoke slowly. ‘I doubt, you know, if by that time there’ll be anything much for them to do.’
The superintendent looked up sharply. ‘Then this new information of yours—’
‘It’s not of that I’m thinking so much.’ Fen was staring rather absently about him. ‘Let’s sit down, somewhere in the open, and talk.’
Near them was a bench embowered in laurels. They occupied it and lit cigarettes. Fen waved away a wasp which was hovering inquisitively about his nose.
‘This is it, then,’ he said. ‘The motive for all these murders is a Shakespeare manuscript, and possibly some Shakespeare letters.’
Stagge looked puzzled rather than surprised. ‘Manuscript, sir? Something valuable?’
‘Enormously valuable. Worth, I should say, a million pounds.’
‘A million?’ Stagge laughed, openly incredulous. ‘You’re joking, sir.’
‘Far from it. I mean exactly what I say. If letters are involved as well, the sum would probably be in the neighbourhood of two million.’
The superintendent, watching Fen’s face and seeing no evidence of a hoax there, became grave. ‘Perhaps you’d explain, sir. I’m not well up in these things. Can’t get on with Shakespeare, to tell you the honest truth.’
Fen pulled off a laurel leaf from the bush behind him and began shredding it slowly into segments along the veins.
‘Well,’ he said after a moment’s consideration, ‘it’s like this. There are only four certain examples of Shakespeare’s handwriting in existence, all of them signatures: three on the will and one on a piece of evidence given in a lawsuit in 1612.’
Stagge shifted uneasily. ‘But how about the plays, sir?’
‘There are no original manuscripts; only printed copies – the quartos and the folios and so forth. And one of those fetches a good many thousands in the saleroom.’
Stagge nodded. ‘I see, sir. So a complete play in Shakespeare’s own handwriting—’
‘Exactly. The idea’s almost fabulous. I believe that in America there are people who’d give a million for it. And that’s not all. That’s only point number one.’
Stagge gazed intently at the tip of his cigarette. ‘Go on, sir.’
‘The name of this particular play is Love’s Labour’s Won.’
‘Ah, yes, sir. I fancy I was made to read it at school. About some men who settle down to study for a year and are put off it by some girls.’ Stagge shook his head, critically. ‘Didn’t seem to come to much, in the end.’
‘Whet
her or not it comes to much,’ said Fen, who as a matter of fact was rather of the same opinion, ‘the play you’re speaking of is Love’s Labour’s Lost – quite a different kettle of fish. And by the way, there’s a spider on your collar.’
‘A money spider,’ Stagge observed, transferring it delicately to a blade of grass. ‘Though to judge from what you’re saying, it oughtn’t to be me it’s walking over. About this other play—’
‘No one has read it or heard of it,’ said Fen, ‘since 1598, when Shakespeare was thirty-four.’
Stagge appeared dubious. ‘Surely, sir, a play by Shakespeare couldn’t just vanish.’
Fen aimed the ash from his cigarette at the money spider, which was sitting quiescent on the blade of grass brooding over its experience.
‘It could vanish very easily,’ he remarked. ‘Lots of Elizabethan plays have vanished – Jonson’s and Nashe’s Isle of Dogs, for example. And but for one thing, we should never have known Love’s Labour’s Won existed at all.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘In 1598,’ said Fen, ‘a student called Francis Meres published a book named Palladis Tamia, with a chapter in it entitled “A Comparative Discourse of our English poets with the Greek, Latin and French poets”. In that chapter he talks about Shakespeare, whom he idolized, and gives a list of his works. Possibly not a complete list, but that’s not the point. “For Comedy,”’ Fen quoted, ‘“witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love’s Labour’s Lost, his Love’s Labour’s Won, his Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his Merchant of Venice.” There it is, you see. The fact that Meres doesn’t mention Much Ado about Nothing, which is generally thought to have been written before 1598, has led some critics to suppose that Much Ado is just another name for Love’s Labour’s Won. But that’s only a guess. No one really knows.’
‘Lord,’ Stagge murmured, impressed despite himself with the difficulties of Shakespeare scholarship. ‘Lord. I never dreamed it was as complicated as all that…’ He roused himself abruptly. ‘But anyway, sir, the fact that it’s a new play – one no one’s ever read – would increase its value, wouldn’t it?’
Love Lies Bleeding Page 13
