The Incredible Crime

by Lois Austen-Leigh

  “Yes,” said his wife. “Thomas, I would have you all know, says every fly carries some disease; they have long located special diseases to each fly, all except the old bluebottle, and though they all entertained the very darkest suspicions about the bluebottle, no one knew for certain what mischief it was he was promulgating. Now Thomas has discovered it, and I expect the other entomologists are coming up to say he’s wrong! However, whatever they say, he is now set on getting some plutocrat to start a world crusade against all bluebottles and exterminate the lot.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Gordon, “I do hope not that. I love the buzz of a bluebottle fly, it’s one of the sounds of summer, and think of how many of the associations of one’s youth are connected with it!”

  “Yes, my dear,” said Prudence, “but the associations of your misdirected youth are all being weeded up in this enlightened spot. All the old hymn tunes are gone, and ones that are better for your education and not your sentiments substituted. Now the bluebottles are following suit. I met our Dean after chapel on Armistice Day,” said she, laughing, “and I said, ‘Mr. Dean, how is this, we have had the National Anthem to the original tune, it must have been an oversight!’”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He went off growling that if he had his way we shouldn’t ever have it at all in chapel.”

  The pretence of playing bridge finally came to an end, and Mrs. Gordon and Mrs. Maryon took their departure. The husband of the latter had only recently become a Fellow of Prince’s College. He had spent a good many years in the East, was learned in Sanskrit, and was popularly supposed to speak seventeen Eastern dialects. His wife was rather flattered at being admitted to play bridge regularly with the three ladies, who were old friends. She entertained a great admiration for Miss Pinsent, which she began expressing as they left the house.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Gordon, “she is beautiful as you say, and reliable—and kind—yes, and clever—yes, I quite agree with you, she is not a snob as so many people say, she’s very fastidious, and I love her, but I should never be quite surprised if one day she kicked over the traces altogether.”

  “But what do you mean by that, Mrs. Gordon…she’s most conventional, except that perhaps she uses rather strong language sometimes.”

  “Yes, my dear, I know she appears to be conventional, indeed she is; but, I don’t know, I have known Prudence for years, and I somehow have always felt I don’t trust her.”

  “Don’t trust her!” exclaimed Mrs. Maryon.

  “I don’t mean that, I only mean I don’t trust her conventionalism. I would trust her with any secret. Why, you know there was a don up here once who posed as a bachelor for twenty years, and all the time he was married. Even his best friends had no idea of it, but Prudence got to know of it by an accident, and she never, never let slip that she knew it. I would trust that woman with anything after that.”

  “Then what do you mean?” pursued Mrs. Maryon in some distress; “do you mean you think she might suddenly go off with someone else’s husband?”

  “Yes, I think I do mean that sort of thing, though it will never take that actual form with Prudence, she is too independent now to want a man, or to marry; but at bottom she is completely indifferent to public opinion, and if she wanted to flout it, she would do so without hesitation.”

  “It’s comparatively easy to be indifferent to public opinion when you have so assured a position as she has,” remarked Mrs. Maryon shrewdly.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Gordon with a laugh, “but with her it goes deeper than that. I tell you what I should have expected of her. I always thought she would have been a militant suffragette and gone to prison, and I don’t understand now why she wasn’t; perhaps she was too academic in her point of view.”

  “She was brought up with boys, wasn’t she? Some cousins—that might make her character more masculine.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Gordon, “I believe she lived a good deal with some Temple cousins in Suffolk, relations of the great Professor Temple.”

  Meanwhile at the Skipwiths Prudence resettled herself into a comfortable chair. “I am not going yet, Sue,” said she. “I am going to stop and see Thomas. When does he come in from the Labs.?”

  “Oh, any time about now, indeed I fancy I hear him slamming the front door,” and a moment later into the room came Professor Thomas Skipwith with an evening paper tucked under his arm. About the last thing in the world that Skipwith looked like was what he was, an eminent scientific professor. He was not only washed, he was even shaved.

  At first glance you would have taken him for an amiable farmer, at second, for there was something distinctly arresting in his face, you would have put him down as a naval officer.

  “Did you see in the morning paper that there had been another murder with arsenic?” said he, as he came and warmed himself by the fire.

  “I simply cannot understand the crude stupidity of anyone using it now. Why, look at the amount written about it in fiction; you would have thought that alone would have prevented anyone using it seriously.”

  “I suppose it’s the easiest of all to get hold of,” said Prudence.

  “It seems to me they always succeed in tracing whoever does get hold of it,” retorted Susan.

  “Ah, but you’ve no idea how many may get away with it successfully!”

  “Don’t be gruesome, Prue. Wasn’t Professor Temple holding forth on poisons the other evening in the Combination Room—didn’t you say, Thomas?”

  “Yes, yes, he was,” said Thomas slowly, as he rubbed his back appreciatively in the warmth of the fire. “By Jove, and he said some things, too, which I don’t believe he would ever have let out if he hadn’t been filled up with our best college port; he’s a taciturn beggar as a rule”—here he paused—“let me see, he’s not a cousin of yours, Prue, is he?”

  “Yes, but a very distant one—I call him a kinsman; but go on with what you were saying.”

  “Well, he was holding forth on poisons generally; then he told us he had one himself, it is tasteless, and after swallowing, acts almost immediately. It just stops the heart beating, so that the victim dies of heart failure, and there is no trace whatever left in the body. You could never catch a fellow out using that,” said Thomas with an amiable smile.

  “How ghastly!” exclaimed Susan, “and the man is mad already, he ought never to have such stuff in his possession.”

  “His isn’t the sort of madness that turns to murder,” replied Thomas; “besides, he isn’t mad, it’s genius with him.”

  “Bosh, Thomas—he’s mad all right, and you can never tell what madness will turn to.”

  “How does he get hold of this drug?” asked Prudence, “is it imported?”

  “No, I understand that it is a vegetable poison and he makes it himself; more than that, mark you—he says if you take small doses at regular intervals, you become immune to the poison; so you see, Sue, he could give you a dose of it, then finish the tumblerful himself and say to the police, ‘there couldn’t be poison in the cup because I have drunk the rest!’”

  “The idea of it seems to amuse you,” said his wife frigidly.

  “The most interesting part,” said Thomas with a laugh at his wife, “was that I had the feeling that afterwards he wished he hadn’t said so much, and tried to laugh it away.”

  “Really, Thomas,” said Prudence, “you don’t think Professor Temple wants to murder?”

  “No, I don’t, but he undoubtedly could if he did want, and would certainly never be found out.” Thomas piled some more wood on the fire, then he said, “Temple had a queer guest, for him, up to the last College Feast—the young Duke of Banbury. I can’t think what they had in common, because the Duke hasn’t an idea beyond hunting, has he?”

  “No,” said Prudence, “it was an odd guest for Professor Temple to entertain, and no less odd that the Duke should come
away just as the hunting is beginning.”

  “Is it the hunting season?”

  “Now, Thomas, pull yourself together and answer that question yourself. It’s November.”

  “Well, I should say it probably was, as I know hunting goes on through the winter, but ’pon my word, I wouldn’t be certain.”

  “No,” replied Prudence with some bitterness, “I can well believe you really don’t know for certain—for sublime ignorance on general topics, ignorance that would shame a preparatory schoolboy—give me the expert.”

  Thomas shouted with laughter—“Never mind, Prue,” he said, “when will you come for a run in my new car?” The Skipwiths had recently acquired a 6-cylinder Bentley. Susan considered this a piece of unnecessary extravagance for people in their position, but motoring was Thomas’s greatest relaxation, and a lucky gamble on the Stock Exchange had made him feel extravagant, so he asserted, and he went a splash.

  “Drive me down to Suffolk on the 8th,” said Prudence. “I am going off for a bit of hunting till Christmas, and you can stay the night; it’s a place well worth seeing, I can tell you.”

  “What day of the week would it be?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “No, I can’t. I am lecturing at twelve on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I should simply love to see your cousin’s place. It’s famous, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and I mean Susan and you to come some time; you’ve just no notion what it is after the strenuous up-to-date life of Cambridge. Get into your car and drive a hundred miles east and you come to Wellende Old Hall, seven miles from a station, seven miles from a shop, seven miles from anywhere; the Temples have lived there for nearly eight hundred years, and Ben has managed to remain feudal—no, that doesn’t quite describe it, there has been no ‘management,’ he just is feudal. The old butler once summed it up very well, when he said to me, ‘as it was in the beginning, miss, is now—and h’always shall be, that’s the motto for this ’ouse.’”

  “It sounds simply entrancing,” said Susan.

  “Come out for a drive to-morrow after my lecture, Prue. I’ll have the car at the Labs., and it’s only a step for you along from Prince’s.” And so they settled it, and Prudence rose to depart.

  “Wait a moment,” said Thomas, “there’s a story going its round about you, that someone stepped off the pavement just in front of your car, and you swore so lustily at him that the Vice-Chancellor, who was coming along and overheard you, nearly fainted, and said he wouldn’t have you inside the precincts of St. Benedict’s.”

  “It’s one long lie,” replied Prudence, “but it may have its origin in the fact that his wife stepped on my toe the other day and I dropped a mild oath, at which she said she shouldn’t ask me to dinner to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury, I wasn’t fit to meet him.”

  Thomas threw himself back in his chair and laughed.

  “I really must go now,” said Prue, and with that she was off. Thomas came back into the room after sending off Prue; as he gazed into the fire he said, “That cousin of Prue’s she goes to so regularly for hunting is unmarried, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Susan.

  “It’s unusual for a man in his position, unless there’s something wrong with him—do you suppose there was ever anything between them?”

  “No,” said Susan. “I am sure she never has been in love with him; she was brought up very largely with him and his brother, and I am sure all her affection for him is fraternal. I can’t quite imagine Prudence in love with anyone, you know. I wouldn’t criticize her to anyone but you, but there’s something hard about her.” Thomas assented.

  “She’s too independent for a woman,” he said.

  Chapter II

  It was a bright sunny morning and in a room overlooking the great court of Prince’s College the Master and his daughter were at breakfast. The sunlight lit up the old grey fountain in the middle of the court, and the splashes of colour made by the late autumn flowers in the bed surrounding it. Hurrying figures could be seen going in all directions; undergraduates in gowns and no caps, attending early lectures, with sheaves of papers and books under their arms, went round by the paths; while senior members of the College walked with dignified step across the grass. Tradesmen’s boys occasionally appeared strolling along and above all a flight of glorious white pigeons against the blue sky—settling on the old grey chapel—cooing and chuckling. Prudence strolled towards the window.

  “Aren’t there many more pigeons than there used to be, father?”

  “I am sure I am unable to say, my dear, I have not considered the matter—Drask”—(mentioning the Head Porter)—“would be the person to ask.”

  “Yes, I suppose so; he looks after them, doesn’t he—there,” said Prudence, peering round the corner of the window, “there is an undergraduate in his dressing-gown; I really do not think it ought to be allowed in the front court at nine-thirty.”

  “As long as there are so few baths in the College, my dear, it is impossible to circumvent it, unseemly as we may consider it.”

  Prudence turned her attention away from the window and transferred it to the breakfast-table. She gave her father his coffee, and proceeded to help herself to the hot dish. The Master sat at one end of the table surrounded by papers. A waste-paper basket by his side, into which he pitched a proportion of his correspondence, the rest he made a pile of on the table by his side.

  “Have you many engagements to-day, father?”

  “I’ve a meeting of the Council at twelve—another board meeting at three, and some young men coming to see me this evening.”

  “I am sorry for that,” said his daughter. “I was going to suggest your coming for a drive this morning. Thomas Skipwith is going to take me out in his new car, after his lecture.”

  “Ah,” said the Master, “I find driving with Skipwith a mixed pleasure, and so am able to regard my inability to accompany you with composure.”

  Prudence went about her household duties and then, wrapping herself in a warm fur coat, sallied forth. As daughter of the Master she walked across the grass to the College gate and Drask, the Head Porter, came out of his office to wish her good morning. The Head Porter of Prince’s College was a magnificent person, tall and clean-shaven, with hair just beginning to grey; he looked like a middle-aged Apollo, with the manner of a beneficent bishop. Strangers frequently took him to be the Master of the College—and there were those, who should have known better, who had often been heard to regret that Drask could not be made permanent Vice-Chancellor. Prudence turned in at the gates of the Entomological Labs., where in a corner of the court stood Professor Skipwith’s Bentley car. She got in and tucked herself up. Peace reigned for a short time, and then a door opened and a stream of young men issued forth. Prudence watched them idly at first, with her thoughts far away; then suddenly she became interested; they all came out looking as if a tornado had passed over them, the majority had a dazed look, almost bewildered, and their hair for the most part ruffled and standing on end; one or two looked merely very thoughtful. After a short interval out came the Professor; he always walked with a slight sea roll, and he had a happy smile on his round, cherubic face. Prudence burst out laughing at it all; someone had recently described Skipwith to her as “a live wire and a tremendous force in the University,” and the result of one of his lectures as seen in the faces of the young men was distinctly amusing.

  “One moment while I get rid of my gown,” said Thomas, on coming up to her, “and then we’ll have a good two hours to tool around.”

  He slid through the traffic of Cambridge, the narrow, overcrowded streets, motor-bicycles with four people up, push bicycles with two up, with the consummate ease of a practised driver. But when once out of the town, Thomas let her out, and they “tooled” to Huntingdon in a quarter of an hour. When at last Prudence could make herself heard and understood she protested vigorously.


  “I suggested to father he should come out this morning with us, and he said he’d be d—d rather than drive with you, and I’m not sure he wasn’t right.”

  “I know very well,” laughed Thomas, “that the Master did not say that, though he may have declined your invitation. All right, all right, we’ll go into the fens and go really slow.” They turned into the flat fen country and drove at a reasonable pace. On a bridge over a broadish bit of water they pulled up for a moment.

  “This is very fascinating,” said Prudence; “is it a ‘drain,’ the Ouse, or the Cam, I wonder?”

  “I think,” said Thomas, “that this is what you might call a drain—it’s the New Bedford Cut. It was made I don’t know how long ago by some Duke of Bedford, and cuts off a long bend in the Ouse; we shall pass the depleted bit of river farther on.”

  “Is this how you get from Cambridge by water to the sea?”

  “No, you do that by going down the Cam into the Ouse by Ely, by Denver Sluice into the Wash. I suppose that Huntingdon traffic, what there is of it, would come this way into the Wash; it’s a pity the waterways aren’t more in use, I am sure we should get our coal much cheaper if it was brought by water.”

  “You’re a keen yachtsman,” said Prudence, “have you ever been by water to the sea from home?”

  “No, I keep my boat at Mersea; it would take too long to get her up to Cambridge, besides she’s not the sort for canal work.” He slid the gears in as he spoke and the big car moved noiselessly on. “I’ll tell you what I do want; I want to come by boat to your cousin’s place, I could do that easily; I might do it next vac. and get a little duck shooting at the same time.”

  “Yes, that could be very easily managed,” said Prudence. “I am likely to be there a good deal this winter, for the hunting; you could arrange to come when I am. The house, you know, stands in the middle of acres and acres of marsh, the river which is very wide is less than a quarter of a mile away, but there’s a narrow creek comes right up to the house and goes into the cellars. You would anchor out in the river, you couldn’t get up the creek.”