Death on the Cherwell (British Library Crime Classics)

by Mavis Doriel Hay

  “Moon’s coming out,” muttered Nina. “We shall be awfully obvious.”

  This was true, since they stood in the middle of a small lawn. Sally seized Nina’s hand and, pulling her along, moved carefully to the left to reach the shelter of the lilacs. But that brought them on to a gravel path, and here, in spite of their care, every movement produced a creak, crunch or rattle. The moonlight now clearly showed them the gate and, beyond it, on the water, a canoe. But the spot from which the other noises had proceeded was still hidden. Then one of them trod on a dry twig, which seemed to explode with a reverberating crack. They stood still, clutching hands.

  There were sudden, scuffling noises from round the corner of the bushes and then a figure appeared for a moment, a head was turned towards them, a man rushed at the gate, scrambled over it and seemed to slide, rather noisily, into the canoe. There was the sound of the chain being pulled in, and of a paddle brought into action.

  They rushed forward and peered over the gate and could just see a canoe disappearing round the bend of the river to the right, being propelled strongly by the bowed figure in the stern.

  “Certainly a man, and not a policeman,” said Sally.

  “Is he getting away with Burse’s canoe?” asked Nina.

  “I don’t think so. He must have come in that one—and he came to get something. I think we disturbed him. He was scared. I wish we’d rushed out sooner; we might have seen who he was.”

  “I was too petrified to move,” Nina confessed.

  “I wasn’t sure what to do,” was Sally’s way of expressing the same thing. “If he’s the—murderer—well——”

  “You mean, there might as well be two murders—or three—as one? Anyway, he was scared.”

  “Let’s see if Burse’s canoe is really there,” Sally suggested. She glanced at the college anxiously. “No one seems to have noticed anything. I expect those noises that sounded so terrific were awfully small, really. Got your torch?”

  The moon was again behind clouds. Nina swept the torch-light towards the place behind the bushes from which the intruder had emerged.

  “Yes! There!”

  They crept towards the canoe, which lay there forlornly, bottom upwards. They advanced very cautiously, as if they suspected that the unknown might have left a bomb behind him.

  “It’s the Faralone, and it looks all right,” said Sally quietly. “There seems to be nothing else here, but the police would have taken away the hat, and anything else they found. I’m sure that man wasn’t carrying anything.”

  “I don’t see what he can have been doing,” said Nina in disgust. After all this excitement, she felt, there ought to be something to discover. “Perhaps we prevented him from doing it.”

  “He had quite a lot of time, from the moment I first saw him. Oh! Here! Light this way again! Look!”

  Sally bent down and picked up something; she held it in her hand in the torch-light. It was a penknife, with one blade open.

  “So he was doing something—but what?”

  Investigation by torch-light of the canoe and the gravelled space around it failed to reveal anything unusual, and Sally and Nina retraced their steps towards the house. Sally had to crouch down outside the window and let Nina climb on to her back, in order to open the window, but fortunately no one had latched it. Nina climbed through, and after a lot of effort, and with the help of a pull from Nina, Sally also reached safety. The two of them, Sally with a grazed knee, returned to Sally’s room and sat down to examine their find.

  “It’s nice to be back again,” said Nina appreciatively, basking before the fire.

  “I don’t mind telling you I really was scared lest the window might be latched,” Sally admitted. “When you suggested it, before we started, I did think of leaving you behind, to let me in.”

  “Indeed! You didn’t think of staying behind yourself, to let me in?”

  “You weren’t so keen on going.”

  “I wasn’t sure, at first, that it was necessary,” Nina replied with dignity. “But let’s look at that knife.”

  Sally handed it to her; then suddenly exclaimed: “Oh!” in a tone that seemed to indicate horror.

  “What’s the matter? Not blood!” inquired Nina, dropping the knife.

  “Worse,” declared Sally gloomily. “We have made a mess of things. Fingerprints! There would have been some, but I’ve mauled it all over!”

  “Fingerprints wouldn’t be any good to us. You mean you were going to give it to the police?”

  “We might have. It depends. But now, I don’t know; they’d probably be awfully mad with us for having smudged the marks.”

  “He probably wore gloves,” suggested Nina. “I believe murderers generally do.”

  “But he naturally didn’t mean to leave the knife behind, and nobody would look for fingerprints on the bottom of the canoe, so he may not have bothered. Anyway, let’s not paw it any more.”

  Sally fetched a clean handkerchief and carefully picked up the knife without letting her fingers touch it. They gazed at it intently. It was rather large and the handle was made of a curious brown streaky material, that seemed to be stone.

  “It’s not quite ordinary,” said Sally hopefully; “but I don’t see how we can find out whose it is, unless we can think of who the man might have been and then try to find out if he has lost his knife, or if anyone recognizes this as his.”

  “He went up the river, along by the Parks. Or, of course, he might have started that way to put us off——”

  “I don’t think so. He was in too much of a hurry to think of that. He may have been going to land in the Parks.”

  “Gates would be shut. Of course, he might climb over them, but he’d have to leave the canoe, and I should think it could easily be traced. What’s beyond the Parks? Fields on the other bank, and nowhere to hide a canoe; there’s L.M.H., of course, but it certainly was a man. Then there’s——”

  “Sim’s!” Sally screeched. “Matthew! Draga’s telephone message!”

  “Gosh!” They gazed at one another in a sort of triumphant horror.

  “Do you really think—?” began Nina at last.

  “See how it all fits together,” Sally pointed out. “Draga is up to some fishy business. There’s something on, or in, or near that canoe which will give her away. She phones Matthew and says he’s got to come and take it away—or something. He probably expects to find the Faralone just moored to the steps, where we left it, but he has to climb over the gate——”

  “Yes, but what could Draga want him to do? If she had left anything that could be taken away the police would have taken it. Matthew would realize that, if Draga didn’t. And anyway, how could Draga have been near the canoe? The police were still there when we went in to dinner. Besides, she wouldn’t want to do anything to the canoe after we found it. And what could she have done, anyway? And then, what Matthew had to do needed a knife. What on earth!”

  “It does seem a bit of a problem,” Sally agreed. “We’d better sleep on it. But, look here, Daphne is pally with that man Vellaway, who’s a friend of Matthew’s. She must find out from him if that’s Matthew’s knife. I’ll tell her in the morning, but better not say anything to Gwyneth.”

  CHAPTER VI

  LUNCH AT THE MITRE

  SOON after twelve the next morning Sally was loitering on the Parks side of Mesopotamia bridge, which leads over the Cherwell to Ferry Road and so into the private lane to Persephone College. Before she had been there long a low-built, cream-coloured touring car with green wings approached, slowly because the road is narrow. She waved at it wildly.

  “How are you, pets?” she inquired, as the car drew up beside her. “Can you manage to reverse, Basil dear? I’ve a lot to tell you both and we must go rapidly to the Mitre. There’s a side-road, where you can turn, about a hundred yards back.”

  “Can I reverse?” inquired Basil sarcastically, doing it rapidly.

  Sally came up with them again when they had backed into t
he turning and stepped neatly into the back of the car without troubling to open the door.

  “Now go ahead and turn left at the end of this road, and remember that Oxford, being very advanced in its ideas, already has a speed limit.”

  “Why all this punctuality and hurry?” Basil asked. “What’s up, kid? Have you been sent down?”

  “Don’t call me that ridiculous name. There’s nothing up with me, but there’s an awful affair at college. And, by the way, you’re having three other charming young ladies, as well as me, to lunch. I’ve ordered a table and so on.”

  “Very kind of them,” said Basil, “and most thoughtful of you.”

  “Sally, you really haven’t got yourself into some mess?” inquired her sister, Betty, anxiously.

  “No, really, Betty. I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. Right, here, Basil, then first left. This is the Broad, Trinity on your right. I’m afraid I shan’t have much time to show you round, after all.”

  “Keeping your nose to the grindstone; that’s a diligent little scholar!” chuckled Basil.

  “Don’t be odious! Now, the Mitre is hellish to get at from this direction. At the bottom of this, which is the Turl, turn right and keep on the wrong side of the road, and there you are. I might have brought you a better way if you had been a better brother to me.”

  They arrived safely at the hotel entrance and Betty and Sally followed the porter upstairs whilst Basil garaged the car.

  “It looks an expensive sort of place,” Betty remarked, when they were alone in the bedroom. “Couldn’t you have found us a room in some more modest pub?”

  “Well, I could, but it’s a question of my reputation. The Mitre is the place for one’s people to stay. Of course, Gillian Waring’s people stayed in some mouldy boarding-house in Banbury Road, but then Gillian’s definitely a personality, and her father’s quite famous, so she can carry it off. And, by the way,” she added, with elaborate casualness, to conceal her anxiety lest this plan should not be approved, “I’ve said you’ll probably want a private sitting-room, because now that this mystery has happened it is absolutely essential to have some secluded spot to talk in.”

  “Really, Sally; Basil isn’t a millionaire, and you shouldn’t swank.”

  “You’ll understand, when I tell you the news, that it is quite definitely necessary. And if Basil grumbles about the bill, I’ll make it worth his while by telling everyone how frightfully good his books are and sending up his sales enormously.”

  At this moment Basil arrived. Sally hung about impatiently, urging both of them to hurry up, and as soon as they were ready she led them to their sitting-room. It was a cosy spot, well supplied with deep arm-chairs and cheered by a heaped-up fire.

  Basil whistled. “I’d better telephone to my bank at once for an overdraft!”

  “Basil, lamb! Don’t be so cross. I must tell you this story quickly!” Sally implored. “Now listen, our bursar has been drowned!”

  “Your bursar? Drowned—an accident? When?”

  “Yes, bursar. Miss Denning; generally known as Burse. It happened yesterday afternoon, and how it happened is a mystery.”

  “Denning—bursar. Basil, wasn’t that the woman we met in Wales last summer?”

  “Woman we met? Oh, yes! The one with the pretty daughter.”

  “Daughter?” began Sally incredulously. “She couldn’t——”

  “It was her niece,” Betty explained. “Pamela. A nice girl. Miss Denning seemed quite agreeable at first, and then, whether she thought Basil was an undesirable character, or what, I don’t know, but she sort of sheered off and kept Pamela under her wing, and we didn’t see much more of them. It was at Bala, when we were touring.”

  “Yes, I remember vaguely that you said something about it, but I didn’t know Burse then, so it didn’t impress me much. I don’t know about Pamela. Well, we found the bursar yesterday afternoon, drowned in her canoe.”

  “Who found her?” Basil inquired. “I suppose you mean drowned in the river?”

  “I and the three others who are coming to lunch.” Sally told the story. “So you see, it’s a mystery,” she finished. “And we—the four of us—are a league, and we’re trying to solve it, and I thought you might help us.”

  “Gosh!” groaned Basil. “I thought this was a holiday.”

  “So it is. Don’t talk as if you were a detective every day. I don’t suppose you can do much, anyway, but your car may be useful. But I thought Betty might have some ideas.”

  “What you mean, you’re a league?” Basil asked. “Nations, or football?”

  “Ass! It’s a secret league. The four of us were forming a league to—well, to curse the bursar, and before we’d quite finished forming it, she came floating down the river. So now the league is going to try to solve the mystery. But, of course, no one else in college knows anything about it.”

  “But look here, aren’t there some people called police—or don’t you have them in Oxford?” inquired Basil.

  “Of course we do; we’ve a marvellous police force that’s always getting bright new ideas about the traffic—but private people can often find out things that the police can’t—you ought to know that, both of you. And there may be things the police mustn’t find out. But it’s one o’clock—I’d better go and see if the others have arrived. We’ll tell you the rest after lunch.”

  Sally rattled down the shiny oak stairs of the Mitre and found Nina, Gwyneth and Daphne, trying to look like women of the world, in the lounge.

  “I’ve told them about finding the canoe; we mustn’t say any more till after lunch, for it’s sure to be all over Oxford by now, and we don’t want everyone listening.”

  “All over Oxford! I should think it is!” said Nina. “Have you seen the local rag—just out?” She produced a copy of the Oxford Mail.

  “Mystery Death of Ladies’ College Bursar—Tragic Drowning Accident—Undergraduettes’ Sensational Discovery—” thus the Oxford Mail called attention to the news of Miss Denning’s death.

  “Foul language! But they don’t really know anything about it,” Daphne pointed out. “They only say that some students—’undergraduettes’—ugh!—found the body in the river, and it is not yet known how the accident occurred, and ‘what makes the tragic occurrence even more mysterious is that the deceased lady was a strong swimmer.’”

  “Throw the nasty thing away!” advised Sally. “Here’s Betty and Basil.”

  Introductions followed, and cocktails. Conversation was rather sticky, because of the one subject which everyone was trying not to mention.

  “Did you motor down?” Gwyneth asked Basil politely.

  “We did—but I thought it was always called ‘up?’”

  “Well, of course, you come up, if you come to college, but when you motor from London on a visit I think you motor down.”

  “Very subtle! But of course, Oxford thought is subtle.”

  Gwyneth laughed uncertainly, fearing that Basil was a high-brow being obscurely witty.

  “How long did it take you from London?” she inquired.

  “An hour and forty minutes,” Basil told her with some pride.

  “You’re pretty fast!” exclaimed Gwyneth admiringly.

  “I? Oh, no, not really,” Basil disclaimed. “Nothing to my sister, who married a Talbot.”

  “One of the Worcestershire Talbots?” asked Gwyneth, who knew a good many of the best people.

  “No; I’m afraid not. This one came from the suburbs; six cylinders, you know. I believe there was a young man inside, who became a passenger, but the Talbot had my sister’s heart.”

  They were moving to their table for lunch and Gwyneth was swept on ahead.

  “Basil,” murmured Sally earnestly, “have you really got a sister?”

  “Sister?” he inquired, with the utmost surprise. “Heavens, no! Oh, that—just the art of conversation! Not taught at Oxford, I suppose?”

  Betty Pongleton, who could usually produce a flow of easy chatter,
sat in constrained silence during the first course because every subject that came into her mind deliberately struck her as having some bearing on Miss Denning’s death. The river—no! What have you read?—The latest murder mystery! What are we going to do after lunch?—Hear more horrid details about Miss Denning’s death, of course. All hopeless subjects. Moreover, she was rather awed by Sally’s gang of friends and afraid lest she might let her young sister down by some gaucherie which would show her unfamiliarity with the university world.

  Sally was also feeling the strain imposed by the unmentionable subject, and decided that the ban might be lifted slightly.

  “Do you know,” she announced in a pause, “that my sister met Burse and her niece in the summer vac in Wales?”

  “Really? What was the niece like?” inquired Gwyneth. “We’ve never seen her, but I’ve heard something about her.”

  “I thought the niece was charming,” said Betty. “She was pretty, too; fair. I gathered that she was an orphan and lived with Miss Denning.”

  “Poor devil!” Gwyneth sympathized. “She’s at Cambridge now, isn’t she? Girton?”

  “Yes, she talked about going. I wonder why she didn’t come to Oxford.”

  “Ah!” exclaimed Gwyneth knowingly. “Her aunt didn’t want her to have anything to do with this place. Kept the girl away even when she herself had to be here in the Long Vac for summer schools.”

  “There’s something to be said for not mixing business and home life,” suggested Basil.

  “If you were a definitely frightful bursar you mightn’t want your niece to know,” agreed Nina.

  “But Burse thought she was a lovely bursar,” Daphne pointed out.

  “I begin to have an idea why Pamela was snatched away from us so sternly at Bala,” said Betty.

  “I thought the idea was that her aunt saw through me,” put in Basil.

  “Do you remember,” Betty continued, “it was Pamela who told us her aunt was bursar at Persephone College, and then one evening after dinner, when we were talking to them, I said my sister was going up to Persephone next term? I’m quite sure that the coldness dated from that. I felt a little icy breeze creeping towards us almost at once.”