‘Very much so. And finally there are the letters, if they still exist. Except for formal dedications, we haven’t got any letters of Shakespeare’s, printed or otherwise. You see what that means.’
Stagge nodded slowly. ‘Fame, sir,’ he said presently. ‘Fancy a poet – a poet – being so famous four hundred years after he’s dead that his handwriting will bring in millions.’ He paused, then, ‘“I should have been a pair of ragged claws,”’ he stated unexpectedly, ‘“scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” That’s a lobster, I take it, or a crab. Do you think the chap that wrote that’ll be worth the same money in four hundred years’ time?’
Fen chuckled. ‘I didn’t know you were a devotee of Mr Eliot, superintendent.’
‘Not me, sir. It’s my daughter. Fifteen years old, a bit precocious, and a rare one for these modern poets. I found that bit in one of her books. Queer stuff. I can’t say I disliked it, only I couldn’t quite understand it, so to speak. I felt there was something there, but it was too slippery to get a grip on. However’ – Stagge waved one hand in hurried dismissal of this literary digression – ‘to return to business. Granted the value of these manuscripts, would you mind telling me, sir, how you came to hear about them?’
Fen narrated the gist of his conversations with Mr Beresford and Mr Taverner.
‘The sequence of events is obvious enough,’ he said in conclusion. ‘Taverner discovers the manuscripts and the miniature. Taverner tells Somers about them. Somers visits Mrs Bly, and is pleased. Mrs Bly goes away to stay with her son, no one knows where. Love (if it was Love) enquires after her without success. Then the three murders.’
‘The implication being that Somers had bought these manuscripts.’
‘Yes. Hence, incidentally, his reading of The Fourth Forger. But I shouldn’t say “had bought”. Was going to buy. Remember, he visited Mrs Bly on Tuesday evening, but he didn’t get that hundred pounds out of his bank till yesterday midday.’
‘A hundred pounds. Yes. I think that’s what you said the old woman was going to ask for the manuscript. But I suppose Somers might have taken it away on Tuesday and promised to pay her when he could get to the bank and when she came back from visiting her son.’
Fen grunted uncivilly. ‘I don’t visualize Mrs Bly as having quite such a trustful nature as that. Besides, if Somers already had the manuscript, there’d be no point in anyone’s killing Mrs Bly this morning. No, my theory is that the manuscript never reached Somers’ hands.’
‘I see,’ said Stagge reflectively. ‘Someone murdered Somers to stop him getting it, and then murdered Mrs Bly and stole it. Whoever it was has to murder her, because otherwise she’d let out that Somers had been trying to buy it, and the murderer would be connected with Somers’ death, too…’ He frowned and snapped his fingers. ‘That’s no good, though. It’s as full of holes as a sieve. In the first place, why couldn’t this hypothetical chap simply outbid Somers? Why do any murdering at all?’
‘He mightn’t have had the money. Or Somers may have got Mrs Bly to sign a paper agreeing to sell.’
‘A conditional contract,’ said Stagge rather surlily, ‘isn’t legally binding.’
‘But my dear superintendent, Mrs Bly was scarcely the person to know that.’
‘All right, sir. All right. I grant you one of those two possibilities. But our difficulties don’t end there. To put the matter bluntly – why not a burglary?’
Fen lit a fresh cigarette, pushing the stub of the old one tidily out of sight among the roots of the laurel.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I agree that’s more awkward. But it isn’t unanswerable. You see—’
He stopped, for something of importance had evidently occurred to Stagge. ‘Well?’ he asked.
‘I’m answering my own question, sir,’ said Stagge a little ruefully. ‘There has been a burglary at that cottage – we found a window had been forced, though whether it was this morning, or some time when Mrs Bly was away…’
‘There you are.’ After several attempts, Fen had succeeded in blowing a smoke ring. ‘Look, isn’t that beautiful…? No, my point is this: that Mrs Bly, realizing after Somers’ visit that she possessed something valuable, either hid it where it couldn’t be found, or took it away with her. I think the latter is the more likely of the two.’
‘Very well, sir. So far, so good. Somers finds out about the manuscript. Someone else also finds out about it. That someone attempts a burglary, but doesn’t get what he wants. So he kills Somers because he can’t outbid him, or for some other reason. And he kills Mrs Bly because – because—’
‘Because he can’t either pay for the manuscript or find out, without her assistance, where it is.’
‘Yes, sir. It fits, as well as these things ever do fit.’
They fell silent. From the cricket pitch, they heard the click of leather against willow, and a moment later a listless round of clapping. Apparently someone had hit a boundary – or perhaps been caught out; audience reaction is identical in both cases.
‘The only thing I don’t quite grasp, sir,’ said Stagge carefully, ‘is where Love comes into it.’
‘Well, there’s that unfinished statement of his, “What can only be described as a fraud”. When people say that something can only be described as something, they mean that most other people wouldn’t so describe it at all. It seems to me that Love must have been referring to an action which was legally innocent but morally dubious.’
‘Such as buying a manuscript worth a million pounds for a hundred because the seller was too uneducated to know its value.’
‘Such as that. I fancy that somehow or other Love came to hear of this proposed transaction, and made up his mind to tell Mrs Bly of the real value of what she possessed. Hence his enquiries for her at the Beacon.’
‘And hence his death,’ said Stagge. ‘A fortune like that is enough to tempt anyone to murder, and if Love was proposing to put a spoke in the wheel…’ He hesitated. ‘There’s a snag, though. It was Somers who was going to buy the manuscript, and Somers couldn’t have killed Love. He couldn’t have killed him before ten, on the medical evidence. And of the hour between ten, when he was last seen alive, and eleven, when he was found dead, he spent at least fifty-five minutes writing reports. It’s physically impossible for him to have gone right the way over to Love’s house, killed him, and got back again to the common room, in only five minutes.’
‘You must remember,’ said Fen mildly, ‘that Love refers to two colleagues who are involved in this so-called fraud.’
‘Ah, yes. That had slipped my memory for the moment.’ But Stagge was still puzzled. ‘But look here, sir, if Somers was in cahoots with someone, that makes it odder still. It upsets all these motives we’ve been working out so carefully, for Mrs Bly’s murder and Somers’ own. Mrs Bly wouldn’t need to be murdered if these two had the money between them to buy the manuscript – as we know they had. And Somers—’
‘A double-cross, perhaps,’ Fen suggested.
‘Perhaps,’ said Stagge doubtfully. It was clear that, like Fen, he was tiring of this particular aspect of their problem. ‘Anyway, there are certain steps I shall have to take, in view of this new information. One is to search that cottage from end to end, and another is to see if we can’t definitely identify Love as the man who was asking at the Beacon for Mrs Bly.’
He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brick-red forehead. ‘There’s only one thing more, sir. These manuscripts – is it possible that they’re forged?’
‘I’ve been wondering about that,’ said Fen. ‘It’s an interesting point, for various reasons. On the whole I’m inclined to think not. You see, there are two possibilities. One is that they’re a modem forgery, which means that both Taverner and Mrs Bly are involved in the fraud. But that, quite frankly, seems to me impossible. A village carpenter and a drunken witch forging a plausible Shakespeare manuscript – no, no.’
‘They might be only the agents.’
‘True. But th
en look at the money side of it. Three people are involved – and many weeks’ laborious work on the part of the forger. And what do they ask for the thing? A pitiful hundred pounds.’
‘We’ve only Taverner’s word for that.’
‘Not at all. It was a hundred pounds that Somers withdrew from the bank. No. Having met Taverner, I’m tolerably certain he was telling the truth, and that he did find the things where he said he did. There remains the possibility that at some time in the past some joker with a perverted sense of humour put them there to deceive whoever might find them.’
‘Oh, come now, sir,’ Stagge protested. ‘The thing about practical jokers is that they like to be there when their jokes take effect.’
‘I agree it’s unlikely. I agree it doesn’t ring true. All I’m saying is that it’s not inconceivable. The thing that chiefly militates against the theory is that miniature, which is genuinely Elizabethan. It’s too much to support that that would be hidden away just to give local colour to a forgery.’
Stagge had taken the miniature from his pocket and was regarding it pensively. ‘Do you think, sir, that it’s’ – he lowered his voice reverently – ‘him?’
‘It very well might be,’ said Fen.
‘Not much like the other pictures of him I’ve seen, though.’
‘No. He’s younger in that, of course, than in the Stratford bust and the Droeshout engraving, where he looks like nothing in the world but a pig. Besides, I don’t believe the Stratford bust is anything like Shakespeare; it couldn’t conceivably have written Lear.’ Fen sat up energetically. ‘Not forgeries, my dear Stagge. I’m certain of it. Think how near Stratford we are.’
He relapsed again. ‘Those letters,’ he murmured nostalgically. ‘They might have explained everything in the sonnets…Did that fiend of a woman really burn them, I wonder? And who was living in that cottage in the last ten years of the sixteenth century? The parish registers might help. A beautiful girl, I like to think, for when he got tired of Anne. A fancy lady. He would have been twenty-nine in 1593…’
But Stagge declined to embark on this sea of hazy conjecture. ‘There’s one thing I ought to mention, sir, about the question of forgery or otherwise. I’ve been picking up a good deal of odd information about various people during the day, and one of the things I happened to learn was that Galbraith – that’s the headmaster’s secretary – makes a hobby of old manuscripts and knows a lot about them.’
Fen was interested. ‘Does he, indeed? I wonder if Somers spoke to him about this one? He wouldn’t want to spend a hundred pounds on a worthless heap of paper. I’ll ask Galbraith when I see him…But what I’d much rather know is who lived in that cottage.’
‘What I want to know,’ said Stagge grimly, ‘is who committed these murders.’
‘Have you got the alibi reports yet?’
‘Here in this briefcase.’
‘Then what,’ Fen asked, ‘are we waiting for?’
11
Reasoning but to Err
Stagge opened the briefcase and took a sheaf of neatly written notes from it.
‘Not entirely satisfactory, sir,’ he observed. ‘We’ve eliminated a good many people, of course, but we’ve still got four – well, say three and a half – to choose from.’
‘A half?’ Fen queried blankly. ‘You don’t mean a boy, I take it?’
‘No, no, sir. Only there’s one person who could have killed Love, but not Somers. Galbraith, to be specific.’
Fen snorted. ‘Galbraith didn’t kill Love,’ he said impatiently. It occurred to him seriously for the first time that Stagge had not the rudiments of an idea about what had been going on. ‘What’s the nature of his alibi?’
Stagge scrabbled through the papers until he found the relevant entry. ‘He was alone in his rooms from 7.30 onwards, according to his own account. It seems he’s not married, and he could easily have gone in or out without his landlady knowing it.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘In Snagshill. Not far from here. Most of them do. Anyway, he telephoned the chaplain about 10.30, in reference to the seating arrangements at this morning’s service, and found that there’d been a hitch of some sort. So he came round here to talk to Dr Stanford about it, and was with him from 10.45 till after the murders were discovered. You see what that means? – since Somers wasn’t killed till just before eleven?’
Fen sighed. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I see what it means. Well, who are your three full-time suspects?’
Stagge again consulted his papers. ‘Mathieson, to start with.’
‘Oh, yes. The man who’s producing the play.’
‘That’s him. He was at this Fasti meeting, with nearly a dozen other people, from 9.30 to 10.44. He walked back to his rooms alone, and says he got there about 11.00. But there’s no confirmation of that.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘Quite near Love. A fair distance, in fact. It would have taken him a quarter of an hour. But as a matter of fact he could have arrived home unobserved any time up to midnight. He’s living with a family at a private house – accommodation being so limited in this part of the world – and they were all out till midnight.’
‘I see. Next candidate, please.’
‘Philpotts,’ said Stagge. ‘That’s the chemistry master who found the cupboard had been broken open. He was at the Fasti meeting, too, from 9.30 to 10.44. And he walked home alone, arriving, he says, about 10.55. That fits the distance all right, but again there’s no confirmation. His wife was out at a bridge party till well after midnight, and his children were all asleep. He has eight children,’ said Stagge informatively. ‘Eight,’ he repeated, shocked at such uncontrolled fecundity. ‘And apparently none of them heard him come in. He sleeps in a different room from his wife – fancy that, with eight children – so the plain fact is that no one set eyes on him from 10.44 last night till breakfast time this morning.’
‘Yes,’ said Fen pensively. ‘I’d like to digress for just a moment, if I may. Did you talk to Philpotts yesterday about that cupboard?’
‘I did, sir.’
‘Did you find out in what circumstances it’s locked and unlocked, and what masters have keys to it?’
‘All the science masters have keys to it, sir – six of them. And it’s always kept locked when there isn’t a master in the room, for obvious reasons. Philpotts said they were very strict about that, and as far as he knew the rule had always been observed.’
‘Good.’ Fen took a handkerchief from his pocket and draped it solemnly over his head as a protection against the sun; it made him look a particularly disreputable Bedouin. ‘It’s a small point, but worth settling. And now, the third suspect.’
‘Etherege,’ said Stagge. ‘He’s got no alibi for any part of the relevant period. He was last seen by Wells leaving Hubbard’s Building at 10.00. He says he went for a walk, and didn’t get home till 11.45. I distrust people,’ Stagge added peevishly, ‘who go for walks at night. It isn’t natural.’
Fen meditated. ‘You know, there’s one notable omission in your list,’ he said mildly after a while.
‘Omission, sir? What do you mean?’
‘Wells, superintendent. The impeccable Wells. He was alone in his office, wasn’t he, between ten and eleven?’
Stagge stared. ‘Good Lord, sir, you’re quite right. I told my people not to worry about him, as he’d already given an account of himself. And then forgot about him.’ He produced a pencil and made a hurried note at the bottom of the last sheet. ‘Wells. Yes, he had the opportunity all right.’
‘You’ve checked on all the other employees of the school? Oddments – such as the bursar – as well as the masters?’
‘Yes, sir. Even the groundsmen. Not the domestic staffs, though. Do you think I should have included them?’
‘No,’ said Fen definitely. ‘It would have been a complete waste of time. You think these reports are reliable?’
‘I think so, sir, yes. There were a lot of pa
rties going on last night, so my men were able to cross-check almost indefinitely. The people they exempt are exempt, I’m certain of that.’
Fen took the papers from him and read them through. Apart from what he had already heard they offered nothing of interest – though he noted that the bursar, the JTC adjutant, the school doctor, and the school librarian had all been playing bridge at the bursar’s house between ten and eleven, and vouched for one another.
‘And the next thing,’ he said sadly as he handed the papers back, ‘is to find out about alibis for Mrs Bly’s murder.’
Stagge nodded dolefully. ‘That, as you say, is the next thing.’
‘When exactly was she killed?’
‘Plumstead thinks it was about five or ten past eleven.’
‘Ah. During the gym display, in fact. So Etherege didn’t do it. I was talking to him at the time.’
‘Were there many masters watching the display, sir?’
‘Not a great many, I fancy. Nothing like all of them.’
‘Philpotts?’
‘I’ve never met him. Don’t know what he looks like.’
‘Mathieson, then?’
‘No, I don’t think he was there.’
‘Wells?’
‘I didn’t see him, either. But then I wasn’t looking, you know.’ Fen glanced at his companion, whose face was pitifully despondent. ‘Well, superintendent, have you come to any conclusion about those five?’
Stagge returned the papers to the briefcase, snapped it shut, and deposited it on the grass by the side of the bench. He looked about him – at the upper windows of Hubbard’s Building, at the flawless sky, at the tops of the beeches on the river bank, at the cool, fugitive glint of the river itself. And he did not seem encouraged by what he saw.
‘It’s difficult, sir,’ he said at last. ‘Damnably difficult. I was thinking about it while I waited for you to come out of the hall.’ He fingered his moustache, as though uncertain of finding it still there. ‘Take the murder of Love, for instance. He was found dead at eleven, and Mathieson and Philpotts didn’t leave that meeting till a quarter to – barely time to walk there and shoot him.’
Love Lies Bleeding Page 14
