Swan Song

by Crispin, Edmund

  Peacock accepted this without apparent curiosity. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Simply what you yourself were doing.’

  This was easily elicited. After lunch Peacock had been interrogated by Mudge, retiring subsequently to his room in order to meditate over the score of Die Meistersinger. There he had remained until Mudge rang up at about three to say that the theatre would henceforth be available for its usual purposes. Immediately after this he had telephoned Karl Wolzogen, and instructed him to attempt to get people together for a snap rehearsal at five.

  ‘And I must say I was surprised,’ Peacock added, ‘at what he managed to achieve in the time. Fortunately I’d managed to warn a few people earlier on that there might be such a rehearsal . . . At about a quarter to five Karl appeared to report progress. Then we went straight to the theatre.’

  ‘Together, of course.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, no. Karl stayed behind –’

  ‘In pursuance,’ Fen quoted Wilkes, ‘of some bodily necessity?’

  ‘If you like to put it that way.’ Peacock frowned, apparently in deprecation of this harmless euphemism. ‘In any case, he wasn’t long after me in getting to the theatre.’

  Lurking in lavatories . . . The possibility, Fen remembered, had occurred to him before. And it was now evident that either Peacock or Karl Wolzogen could have slipped into Elizabeth’s bedroom unobserved by Joan Davis as she approached it from the stairs. Unhappily there was a general absence of exactness over the chronology of this particular half-hour – and, still more unhappily, it remained impracticable to ascribe the attacks on Elizabeth with any certainty to either Peacock or Wolzogen, since some third person, in wait outside the bedroom, might conceivably have been disturbed by the opening of Peacock’s door and have fled for shelter to a convenient bathroom, emerging to make his assault only when the coast was clear. The corridor was, of course, carpeted, and Joan Davis, approaching beyond its bend, would have been inaudible . . . These tortuous considerations, however, were leading nowhere. What they amounted to ultimately was that Elizabeth’s attacker might have been absolutely anyone. Yet again Fen was seized with exasperation at the unique elusiveness of this case. Whenever one seemed to see, on the horizon, some definite, incontrovertible conclusion, it faded as one neared it and at last vanished like a mirage, leaving one confronted with yet a further vista of featureless desert . . .

  ‘You’re going to the inquest, of course?’ Peacock was looking at his watch.

  ‘Yes. But we’re in good time.’

  ‘I was only thinking that in view of the newspapers there might be rather a crowd.’

  This was true enough. The death of Edwin Shorthouse, though in part eclipsed by the haphazard goings-on of the United Nations Organization, had at least reached the front pages. Fen finished his coffee.

  ‘You haven’t been subpoenaed, I suppose?’

  ‘No, thank God,’ said Peacock, ‘though Stapleton has . . . We’d better go straight away if we’re to get in. I’ll fetch my coat and join you in the foyer.’

  As he waited: ‘Something else will have to happen,’ Fen thought. ‘Something else will have to happen if I’m to get a grip on this business.’ But that it would happen so soon and so horribly he had at this stage no reason for suspecting.

  The sun was making a timorous début as they walked down Cornmarket towards the town hall in St Aldate’s, in a room of which the inquest was to be held. Peacock had been right about the crowd, and it was only thanks to the fact that Fen was known to the sergeant in charge that they got in at all. Virtually everyone was there: Adam, Elizabeth, Joan, Karl, Boris, Judith, Mudge, Furbelow, Dr Rashmole and, more surprisingly, the Master, smiling complacently beneath a neat black Homburg hat and attended by Beatrix Thorn. The room was bleak, with a dusty and uneven wooden floor, large, grimy windows, and a substantial supply of rickety, uncomfortable chairs, varied here and there by ancient school desks, black with inkstains and graven to the edge of collapse with the names of the generations of their former occupants. A platform at one end supported the coroner’s chair, table, and inkpot. The representatives of the press were segregated like lepers to the right of this, yawning, fidgeting, sneezing, and staring about them. Opposite them was the table reserved for the jury. The atmosphere was sub-arctic. There was a subdued and persistent chattering.

  ‘By the by,’ said Fen, as he and Peacock pushed their way towards two vacant chairs immediately behind Adam, Elizabeth and Joan Davis, ‘there’s one question I forgot to ask: when you set off for the opera-house yesterday, did you see anyone you knew hanging about in your corridor?’

  But this forlorn hope was instantly crushed, and Fen, exacerbated, left Peacock and sought out Mudge.

  ‘We’re after a verdict of suicide, all right,’ said the Inspector in answer to his queries, ‘and as regards the Nembutal, we’re treating that, as you know, as a separate affair.’

  ‘You’re not going to attempt to charge anyone?’

  ‘We haven’t a case,’ Mudge admitted ‘unless something fresh turns up.’

  ‘That stool that was found overturned in the dressing-room – has it been tested?’

  ‘Yes. There are the marks of Shorthouse’s shoes on it, his prints, and some very much older prints which obviously have nothing to do with it. Exactly what you’d expect in a case of suicide.’

  ‘Exactly what you’d expect,’ Fen grumbled, ‘from an intelligent murderer.’ He debated whether to take this opportunity of telling Mudge about the attacks on Elizabeth, decided against it, and went back to his seat. Elizabeth turned round in her seat to speak to him.

  ‘Professor Fen,’ she said, ‘I owe you an apology.’

  ‘What nonsense.’

  Elizabeth was persistent. ‘I was unbearably rude to you last night.’

  ‘“Unnoticeably” is the epithet you want,’ said Fen, smiling at her. ‘Well, Adam, how are you feeling?’

  ‘He has a hang-over,’ said Elizabeth reprovingly. Adam nodded his confirmation of this melancholy diagnosis. Joan Davis said:

  ‘Well, quite candidly, I’m frightened.’

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ said Fen, ‘that you’ve no need to worry.’

  Presently the jury filed in. It consisted of five men and two women, in varying stages of bewilderment and self-consciousness. The representatives of the press stared at it and began savagely shaking their fountain-pens to make the ink flow. The foreman of the jury, a small, epicene creature with a piping voice and an arrogant manner, made little jokes about the uncomfortable chairs. This Fen observed with secret misgiving.

  Shortly afterwards the coroner himself appeared, and amid a hasty stubbing-out of cigarettes the proceedings began.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MUCH EVIL HAS been imputed to coroners, and doubtless with justification in some instances. The present official proved, however, to be an able and intelligent person, plainly anxious to get the verdict in with the minimum of fuss and irrelevance. The jury was sworn, and expressed its unwillingness to view the body. The formalities of identification followed. Dr Rashmole was then called to give evidence as to the cause of death.

  ‘Respiratory failure,’ he announced, ‘resulting from dislocation of the second and third cervical vertebrae.’

  ‘You have no doubt about this?’

  ‘None whatever. The post-mortem signs were unmistakable.’

  ‘Did your examination of the body lead you to any further conclusions?’

  ‘Yes. The general condition of the deceased suggested to me that at some time previous to death he had taken a quantity of some barbiturate poison. In view of this I arranged for the gastro-intestinal contents to be analysed.’

  ‘What would have been the effects of this poison?’

  ‘Drowsiness, merging eventually into coma. Also, in all probability, a state of mental confusion, perhaps combined with loss of memory.’

  ‘In your opinion, this poison could not have caused death?’
>
  ‘It could have caused death, yes,’ said Dr Rashmole testily. ‘But in point of fact it didn’t.’

  He stood down, and was replaced by an analyst.

  ‘You tested the contents of the deceased’s stomach and intestines?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘With what result?’

  ‘I diagnosed the presence of some seventy grains of a barbiturate hypnotic.’

  ‘Can you be more specific?’

  ‘Unfortunately that is difficult. There’s a great diversity of barbiturate products – I could name off hand at least twenty-five – which differ only very slightly in their chemical formulae, and for which as a result it’s virtually impossible to test. The only thing one can say with certainty is that it’s some form of Barbitone or Veronal.’

  Joan turned and whispered to Fen:

  ‘That sounds a bit more hopeful.’

  Fen grunted: ‘You’ll be all right,’ he whispered back, ‘provided it doesn’t come out that you possess Nembutal . . . God bless that coroner, though. He does know what he’s about. We shall probably get the whole thing finished with in time for a drink before lunch.’

  A Miss Willis was called. She was young, foolish, and clothed with awe-inspiring elaboration.

  ‘You are Dr Shand’s maidservant?’

  Miss Willis giggled and made some inaudible reply.

  ‘You must speak up,’ said the coroner, ‘or the jury won’t hear you . . . Did you answer the telephone in Dr Shand’s house late on the evening of Monday last?’

  Miss Willis giggled again, and after a pause for recovery was understood to assent.

  ‘At what time was this?’

  ‘Something like ten past eleven, sir.’ On this occasion Miss Willis’s reply fractionally anticipated her giggles. The coroner, evidently interpreting this as a favourable sign, went on energetically:

  ‘Can you not be more precise?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir.’

  ‘What was the message you received?’

  ‘Oh, sir, it was someone said Mr Shorthouse was at the opera-house poisoned or the like, and would Dr Shand go round at once.’

  ‘Was the speaker a man or a woman?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir. It was all in a kind of whisper.’

  ‘Can you remember the exact words that were used?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir, not possibly I couldn’t.’

  ‘Was the form of the words such that Mr Shorthouse himself might have been the speaker?’

  ‘I – I think it might have been ’im.’

  ‘You can’t be more definite than that?’

  It appeared, in the upshot, that Miss Willis could not be more definite than that. Fen saw the point of the question, and admired the tactics which lay behind it. Obviously that telephone-call had to be explained away somehow if the theory of suicide were to stand.

  Miss Willis retired, scarlet but triumphant, and Dr Shand took her place. He was a tall, grey-haired, stooping man who made no attempt to conceal his dislike of the proceedings. Immediately on receiving the message, he said, he had got out his car and driven straight to the opera-house.

  ‘I had difficulty at first in finding anyone,’ he added, ‘but on proceeding towards the dressing-rooms I met the stage-doorkeeper, who pointed out Shorthouse’s door to me. I opened it and discovered Shorthouse hanging by the neck from a rope attached to a hook in the ceiling.’

  ‘There was no other person in the dressing-room?’

  ‘No one whatever. I went on, with Furbelow’s assistance’ – the tone of Dr Shand’s voice suggested that this had been exiguous – ‘to cut down the body, and discovered that although respiration had ceased, the heart was still beating faintly.’

  ‘Is this a common phenomenon in such cases?’

  ‘If not common, at all events well enough attested to give me no surprise. I injected Coramine to stimulate the heart, and applied artificial respiration. But the action of the heart, which was very weak, ceased almost immediately. Afterwards I got in touch with the police.’

  ‘In your opinion, how long could the heart go on beating after respiration had stopped?’

  ‘For two or three minutes at the most.’

  ‘It is therefore your opinion that the actual dislocation of the cervical vertebrae must have occurred some two or three minutes before you arrived?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘At what time did you arrive?’

  ‘It was just on half past eleven.’

  Mudge took the stand. Some inner unease caused him to give his evidence in tones of faint surprise, as though in retrospect he was unable to account for all the things he had seen and done. He described the dressing-room and its surroundings with great minuteness.

  ‘Is it your conviction,’ the coroner asked, ‘that the only possible form of access to this room was by the door?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Had the room any cupboard, closet, or other hiding-place where a person might have remained concealed?’

  ‘Decidedly not.’

  Mudge went on to speak of the gin bottle and the glass, and to read out the analyst’s report on them. Afterwards he described the fingerprint investigations. Fen noted with wry amusement that there was no reference to the skeleton or to the marks of tying on Shorthouse’s wrists and ankles. The former point, of course, could quite easily be explained away. But the latter . . . He roused himself from his reverie at the coroner’s final question.

  ‘In your opinion, to what conclusion do all these circumstances point?’

  ‘To the fact that the deceased met his death by suicide.’

  There was a general murmur, more perhaps of disappointment than of surprise. Furbelow was called. He kept doggedly to his original story.

  ‘You are quite certain, then, that no one entered or left the dressing-room after ten minutes past eleven?’

  Furbelow was quite certain. The coroner questioned him a little longer, less, Fen suspected, in order to shake his story than to emphasize it in the minds of the jury, and he was allowed to stand down.

  The next witness was Stapleton.

  ‘You visited the deceased in order to discuss some private matter with him?’

  ‘Yes. An opera I’d written, and on which I wanted his opinion.’

  ‘He himself arranged the time and place?’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘Were you surprised at the lateness of the hour suggested?’

  ‘I was at the time, but I’ve learned since that he usually spent the evening in pubs and then returned to the theatre to go on drinking there. So I suppose that would account for it.’

  ‘When you arrived at the dressing-room he was alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At what time was this?’

  ‘Shortly before eleven. That was the time we’d agreed on.’

  ‘How long did you stay with him?’

  ‘Not more than ten minutes. It was obvious almost at once that he hadn’t even looked at the opera. What’s more, he was pretty well fuddled. He talked in a vague rambling way about opera in general, but I saw there was no point in staying, so I didn’t stay.’

  ‘Did he seem to you to be in a suicidal frame of mind?’

  Stapleton hesitated. ‘I’m not quite sure what a suicidal frame of mind is . . . Certainly he was depressed, and there were one or two bursts of self-pity. But I can’t say I had any suspicion that he might commit suicide.’

  ‘You saw nothing unusual about the room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No sign, for instance, of a length of rope?’

  ‘No. But I suppose there might have been rope hidden away somewhere.’

  ‘Did you notice if there was a hook embedded in the ceiling?’

  ‘I didn’t notice at all.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Stapleton. That will be all.’

  To Fen’s surprise, Stapleton was followed by Charles Shorthouse, who proved to be the coroner’s last witness.

  ‘Mr Shorthouse, do you c
onsider it possible, from your own knowledge of him, that your brother committed suicide?’

  ‘Well, now . . .’ The Master considered deeply. ‘He was, of course, mad. And then Oxford seems to have a curious effect on some people. For example, there was a man came to see me only yesterday, pretending to be the English representative of the Metropolitan opera-house . . . I saw through him, though,’ the Master added, ‘from the very first instant.’

  ‘But what reason have you for suggesting that your brother was insane?’

  ‘Well, for one thing he was a nymphomaniac. Nymphomaniac,’ the Master explained, ‘one who has a mania for nymphs.’ He paused innocently on this fragment of exegesis.

  ‘You mean that he was obsessed with the opposite sex.’

  ‘Exactly.’ The Master appeared pleased at such ready percipience. ‘He pursued women. And that, I presume, is an activity to be included in the definition of madness.’

  There was a mild outbreak of amusement. The coroner regarded his witness warily.

  ‘Do you suppose that such an – ah – predilection is likely as a rule to lead to suicide?’

  ‘Conceivably not,’ the Master admitted after a moment’s thought. ‘But he was none the less unbalanced. The whole of our family is more or less unbalanced.’

  ‘But can’t you give some instance to show that your brother was unbalanced?’

  ‘He refused to finance the production of my Oresteia.’

  The coroner became confused. ‘I thought that Aeschylus —’ he began, and then, pulling himself together: ‘Very well, Mr Shorthouse. That will do for the present.’ He turned now to the jury.

  ‘Members of the jury, you have heard the ev –’

  But he was not allowed to finish the sentence. The foreman of the jury was on his feet and clamouring for attention.

  ‘Mr Coroner,’ he piped, ‘is it in order for me to ask a question?’

  ‘You mean –’ the coroner was manifestly annoyed – ‘that you wish to recall one of the witnesses?’