A Javelin for Jonah mb-47

by Gladys Mitchell

  It was dark by this time, but the summer night was full of stars. As he walked across the turf—for the changing-rooms had been put up on the side of the grounds furthest from the house but nearest to the halls of residence—he thought about the Warden and wondered, not for the first time, what that enigmatical man was really like. From Gascoigne Medlar his thoughts turned again to Jones. Even allowing for all the claims which close relationship—and was a brother-in-law so close a relative, after all?—it seemed strange that such a single-minded egoist as he judged Medlar to be should tolerate, at close quarters and for so long a time, the only person on the College staff who seemed bent on sabotage. How many of Jones’s exploits could be put down to sheer but well-intentioned idiocy became more and more doubtful, but of his drinking-habits and the even more reprehensible actions to which his self-indulgence committed him, there seemed no reasonable doubt. Medlar’s continued toleration of him seemed remarkable enough to be mysterious unless (again it occurred to Hamish) Jones was in a position to blackmail the Warden.

  The changing-rooms, brick-built and commodious, stood out against a background of glimmering sky and the pale wreaths of the stars. Hamish walked up to the window and called Jones by name. There was neither answer nor any sound of movement from within the building. He walked all the way round it, tapping on the walls and doors and continuing to call out, “Jones! I say! Are you there, Jones?” But, like the lonely traveller in the poem, he called out in vain. In the starlight the building stood silent and apparently deserted. The men-students had keys to the cupboards, but the only key to the outside doors must be with the head groundsman. Hamish trotted back to the main building to keep his appointment with Henry.

  “I’ve tried the changing-rooms,” he said, when they met. “It was a pretty long shot, but I just thought they might have shut him up in one of those big cupboards. I hadn’t a key, but I walked all the way round and hammered and shouted. I didn’t get any reply, but, of course, if he was shut away like that, he might have passed out, I suppose.”

  “Oh,” said Henry, “I shouldn’t think he would. All those cupboards have ventilation holes in the doors. He wouldn’t suffocate. No, if you didn’t get any reply, he isn’t there. It would be too obvious a hiding-place, anyway. Besides, the groundsman has a cupboard and a locker there. He’d have found him and let him out before this. Well, have you any other ideas? You’re nearer in age to the students than I am. Where would be a likely place to start? What are they likely to have thought of?”

  “The whale’s belly,” said Hamish. “You know, Henry, I seem to think that must be more than merely a fanciful way of describing Jones’s prison. Can’t you think of any place which might fit the reference? To my mind, under the ground seems likelier than above it. Isn’t there a cellar, or something of the sort, attached to this house?”

  “A cellar…” Henry considered the suggestion. “There’s a wine-cellar, but nobody except Gassie and the butler have access to that.”

  “Well, it’s not an old enough house to have a priest’s room or secret passages, so there’s no problem there.”

  “I’ll tell you what there is, now I come to think of it,” said Henry. “There’s the underground installation for the central heating. I wonder whether they can have thought of that? It’s known to the College as the stoke-hole. That might fit the bill if they could get hold of the key.”

  “How does one get to it?”

  “Well, there’s a kind of janitor who looks after it. Access to it is by what looks like a half-door, with a tiny round-headed window, in the wall round by the kitchens, It’s down a steep step. I went in once with Jackson—that’s the janitor fellow—and he showed me round. I believe you may have hit on the very place, although I’m surprised the students should have known how to gain access to it. Well, one thing: if Jonah is down there he’ll be all right. It’s warm and dry, and there must be plenty of ventilation because Jackson has a sort of cubby-hole down there and uses it quite a lot in winter weather, he informed me. There’s an armchair—basket-work, with cushions—and a primus stove and a food cupboard—all modern conveniences, so to speak.”

  “Well, shall we go and take a look?”

  “Have to wait until I can get the key off Jackson tomorrow morning before we can get in, I’m afraid, but we could go to the doorway and speak. I don’t suppose the door is soundproof, so at least we may be able to establish whether Jones is there or not.”

  “Could Jones have been down there for a couple of days without Jackson finding him, though?”

  “Oh, yes. Jackson wouldn’t go down there in this weather. Let’s make a recce and take a butchers.”

  As they had keys to the front door, they let themselves out that way and walked round the side of the mansion towards the kitchen regions. When they were under the pantry window, Henry switched on a torch and played the spotlight from it over the surrounding brickwork. A couple of yards further on, Hamish saw the round-headed glass in the half-door which Henry had mentioned. They pushed at the door and tried to rattle it, but it was well-fitted and did not budge. Hamish descended the step, knelt on the narrow stone doorsill, put his lips close to the key-hole and called out Jones’s name, but there was no response. Then Henry tried. His voice boomed back at him, but that was all.

  “There’s no supervision in the halls of residence, is there?” asked Hamish, as Henry stood up.

  “No, and to those I do have a key. We shan’t be popular if we go invading them at this time of night, though. Much better wait until the huts are empty tomorrow morning. Not that I think they’ll have hidden him there. Servants go in to clean up and make the beds and collect the laundry, you know, and there’s an odd-job fellow who empties waste-paper baskets and cleans boots and shoes.”

  “The servants could be squared, perhaps.”

  “By penniless students?”

  “Well, scared into keeping quiet, then.”

  “Possibly. All right, we’ll take a look round while the chaps are having breakfast. Is there anywhere else you can think of?”

  “Well, he would hardly have been hidden in the room of one of the girls, but what about trying the attics?”

  “The girls’ rooms?” said Henry thoughtfully. “You know, you may have hit on something there. It’s quite clear that the women students are in on the rag. It’s also fairly certain that they’re nervous about it. It’s true that most of the lasses hate old Jonah like poison, but there are one or two types who might take a pop at him and think the fun and games worthwhile. His prowess with Bertha may have given the hussies— and we’ve got our share of them—a bit of a kick.”

  “Isn’t there the same objection, though?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The servant problem.”

  “No, as it happens, there isn’t. The girls are supposed to make their own beds and keep their rooms tidy.”

  “What about their laundry, though?”

  “They wash and iron their own bits of frippery and just chuck their bed-linen and so forth outside their bedroom doors every Thursday morning. I believe Miss Yale does an occasional inspection of rooms, but she always gives warning of her visits, so the girls are never taken on the hop. I really think, you know, James, that I’ll go and rake her out and suggest she does a round-up. If there’s anything scandalous going on, I think we should nip it in the bud.”

  “I should think Miss Yale would nip us in the bud, if we go disturbing her at one o’clock in the morning.”

  “Not she. Come along. Let’s chance it.”

  Miss Yale’s large bed-sitter had a fanlight over the door and they could see that her light was on. Henry tapped and they waited. There was no invitation to them to enter, but after a few moments Miss Yale opened the door.

  “Oh, it’s you two,” she said. “Come in. Sorry to have kept you waiting, but thought I’d better hide my chunk of porn in case it was one of the hussies. What can I do for you? If you’re looking for Jonah, try elsewhere. I haven�
�t got him.”

  “How did you guess we were looking for Jonah?” Henry enquired, closing the door behind himself and Hamish.

  “Spotted you snooping round the house. No luck, I suppose?”

  “We’ve tried the changing-rooms and the stoke-hole,” said Hamish, “but haven’t found him.”

  “I suppose you’ve tried his own room to make sure they haven’t trussed him up and bundled him into his own wardrobe or somewhere?”

  “We wondered,” said Henry, with some diffidence, “whether, while we do that, you could make sure that none of your young ladies is giving him her hospitality.”

  “Think it’s likely? I don’t. I’ll go the rounds, if you like, but it won’t be any help. Good thing I hadn’t gone to bed. You push along to Jonah’s quarters, then, and I’ll give the girls’ rooms the once-over. They are three to a room, so it won’t take me all that long.”

  “Not much privacy for the girls, then,” said Hamish, when they had inspected Jones’s two splendid rooms and had assured themselves that he was not in residence or captivity there.

  “Oh, they can curtain all the rooms into cubicles, I believe,” said Henry. “They probably like it quite well. Lots of delinquent girls are definitely gregarious, curiously enough. In fact, I would say that our young women are far more homogeneous than the men.”

  Miss Yale returned at the end of twenty-five minutes.

  “Nothing doing,” she reported. “A few cases of incipient lesbianism, but nothing more. They get lonely, you know, and as they can’t co-habit with the men, what can you expect? After all, they’re in prison here, poor little stinkers.” With this sympathetic pronouncement she said goodnight and closed her door.

  “Now for the attics,” said Henry. But in the attics they drew blank once more. “Well, we shall have to give it up for tonight,” he added at last, “but in the morning I’ll inspect the halls of residence, just to leave no stone unturned, and get keys to the changing-rooms. I’m beginning not to like the look of things, and that’s a fact.”

  chapter

  5

  Interviews

  « ^ »

  Well,” said Henry on the following morning, “there seems to be nobody in the stoke-hole, or anywhere else we thought of. If Jones doesn’t turn up at lunch I shall speak to Gassie and get him to utter threats.”

  “What sort of threats?” asked Hamish.

  “That is up to him. Expulsion of ringleaders, I suppose, although I do hope it won’t really come to that. The threat may be sufficient to bring them to their senses.”

  “Who are the ringleaders?”

  “One can do no more than guess, at this juncture. After all, there are those among us who have grievances, are there not?”

  “Yes, but the chief sufferers from Jones’s machinations are still in hospital.”

  “How do we know they’re the chief ones? There may be others. In fact, we know there are.”

  “Good Lord! You don’t suppose Barry or Lesley would be a party to a student rag, do you?”

  “No, of course not. Anyway, we’ll hope to goodness Jones shows up at lunch, that’s all.”

  Jones was not at lunch. Henry, looking worried, left his seat at the high table, got out his car and drove to the village to make certain that the missing man had not decided upon a snack and a drink at the public-house which was his frequent haven. He drew blank, as he had expected to do, returned to College and caught up, as best he could, with his meal.

  The students were unusually quiet. Such talk as went on was in undertones. There was an air of conspiracy about the place.

  “Have you been to see Gassie? Does he know that Jonah is still missing?” Hamish asked when Henry had re-seated himself at the high table.

  “I’m going to see him directly after lunch. I’m beginning to hope that the students will have freed Jones and that he’s decided to sling his hook, after all. There was that rumour, you know, that he had resigned.”

  “I thought it had been scotched, and by Medlar himself.”

  “I know. And, of course, Gassie, I feel certain, would be loth to ask Jonah to go. I have an idea that, apart from being his brother-in-law, Jones has some special reason for having earned Gassie’s gratitude. What it is I don’t know and should never attempt to find out, but, shortly before you came, Miss Yale and I made representations to him to get rid of the mischievous, unpleasant fellow. Some of the women students had tackled us about his little ways, you know. It was then that Gassie told me privately that he owed Jones a living and could never sufficiently indulge him for something he had done for him in the past. Personally, I cannot visualize Jones’s doing anything for anybody unless he had to, but one never knows, of course, and therefore one should not judge, I suppose.”

  He was about to rise from the table to pronounce the customary Latin grace when Richard, flushed and sweating, came up to the high table and said,

  “Would you make an announcement, Harry boy?‘

  “Now?” asked Henry.

  “Well, everybody seems to be here except Gassie.”

  “And Jonah,” said Henry, glancing towards Jones’s vacant chair.

  “Well, that’s it,” said Richard. “They shoved Jonah down the stoke-hole. We’ve just been along to get him out. He isn’t there. They didn’t leave him any more grub after yesterday, so you might ask the chaps who’ve moved him whether they’ve fed him or not. Nobody wants the poor poop to starve to death.”

  “I think you’d better speak to Mr. Medlar,” said Henry formally, “but, as he isn’t at lunch, I’ll make an announcement if you like.” He rose and tapped on the table. “Look,” he said to the students, “a joke’s all right, but it might be as well to produce Jonah and let him eat. No questions will be asked, provided he makes his reappearance immediately this meal is over. Benedicam dominum. Amen.”

  There was a stir among the students and a girl called out, “Nobody here knows where Jonah is. There were six of us in it. We’re prepared to give you our names. Nobody else is involved. We intended to let him out last night after dinner, but when we went along he wasn’t there.”

  “He was there up to tea-time yesterday,” said a boy, leaving his place and walking round to stand beside the girl. “I spoke to him and told him all the reasons why we’d dealt with him, and I let him know when he’d be released. He couldn’t possibly have freed himself. He cursed me pretty much, but he was perfectly all right, I’m sure of that. And none of us knows what happened to him.”

  “The people concerned must come to my room,” said Henry.“ Come now, at once, please, before you go on to the field.”

  The six students who entered Henry’s lecture-room consisted of the youth and the girl who had spoken in hall and four other young men. Henry civilly requested them to be seated and they took the three desks in front of his dais and the three immediately behind these.

  “Well, now,” he said, “who wants to speak first?”

  “Ladies first,” said one of the men.

  “Kathleen, isn’t it?” said Henry. “Right. Fire away.”

  “Well, we’re the committee,” she said. “We had a mass meeting after Colin got hurt. There was a lot of feeling about it.”

  “A vote was taken,” said one of the boys, “and it was decided that something must be done about Jonah.”

  “So various people got up and made suggestions,” put in another youth, “and the one that got the most votes was this belly-of-the-whale thing because it seemed appropriate and it sort of appealed to people.” He turned to a young man behind him. “Go on. Your turn. We’re all in on this.”

  “Right, then. Well, it seemed a committee—an action committee—was called for, and the six of us were voted on to it. We only wanted one girl because of the rough stuff, Jonah being a gorilla when forced to defend himself.”

  “It was a free vote,” said another boy in the second row, “but volunteers were called for who would be willing to serve, and there was a big response from the men
.”

  “Less from the girls, of course,” said the last to speak, “but that’s only natural. So everybody voted and the six of us were in. It was thought better not to have more than five men, because otherwise we’d only get in each other’s way.”

  “And the lady? What was her part to be?” asked Henry. Hamish, who had accompanied him with some idea of helping him if the students got out of hand, admired his attitude of grave and non-committal interest.

  “Well, rather important,” said the girl. “Somebody had to get the key out of Jackson’s cottage, so while Bill, John and Julian got Jackson out of the way by asking him to come and hold the stop-watch while they did a five thousand metres run…”

  “Nearly killed us, incidentally,” put in Bill, “but we knew we’d better allow Kath a quarter of an hour to do her stuff, and even more if we could manage it…”

  “So we strolled over to the track with Jackson. He’ll always hold the watch if he’s off duty and there’s no coach or one of the chaps or girls available,” said John. “And we took our time about changing down, and putting our spikes on, and warming up, and all that…”

  “You shouldn’t have changed down until you’d warmed up in your track suits and were ready to begin the race,” said Henry. “You know that.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, Harry boy,” said Julian. “We’ll remember. Well, then we stationed Jackson and started off, telling him to watch the lap times. That was just to give him something to think about, because his cottage, although a long way off, stands in the open and is visible from the running-track, and we didn’t want him to notice what Kath was up to.”

  “It was my job to get busy on Mrs Jackson and get her out of the cottage, too, while Benjy and Shaun sneaked the stoke-hole key,” put in Kathleen, “that was the tricky bit. She’s a simple soul, like Jackson himself, though, so I asked her whether she’d counted her chickens that morning, because I was pretty certain I’d heard a fox bark in the night.”