“I don’t want to throw mud or cold water or other chilling substance,” said Basil. “I think you’ve all been pretty smart, but see how you’re up against it! You may be no end bright at theories but the police are bound to have you beat when it comes to facts. You don’t even know, for instance, what killed your bursar. The police, having analysed everything within reach, probably know by now whether she was really drowned or poisoned or smothered, or what. Hadn’t you better hand over to them what you’ve got, which they may be able to make more use of, and go on using your wits as hard as you can, but leave the sleuthing to them?”
“I don’t really see what more sleuthing we can do,” Daphne agreed, rather pleased to think there was now no reason for her to go squelching about on muddy river banks. “Of course, I can see if Owen knows anything about the knife and we might be able to find out something more about the rug. But I agree with Mr. Pongleton that the outdoor work had better be left to the police.”
“I think so too,” Gwyneth concurred. “We might construct a perfectly magnificent theory to explain how Burse was drowned and then Sir Bernard Spilsbury would decide that she was killed with a blunt instrument.”
“I think we’d better go back,” remarked Sally rather coldly. “Betty and Basil, you can come with us and be introduced to the Cordial and see if you can do anything about Pamela. I do feel awfully sorry for that girl. First she had Burse as an aunt and now she’s had her removed by a horrible mystery.”
CHAPTER VII
AUTHOR OF “DUST”
“DAPHNE, have you bought my new poem?”
A young man, who seemed to have been washed up to the pavement by the noisy tide of traffic in Cornmarket Street, intercepted Daphne as she walked back with the others to Persephone College. He had a charming smile, an air of being well-pleased with himself, and regularly waving hair.
“How can you expect me to attend to literature—even yours—when our bursar has just been murdered?”
“Lord! Really? How, when, where?”
“That’s just what we’re all trying to work out.”
“But—I say, does anyone know about it? You’re not serious?”
“Quite definitely serious. Everyone knows about it and even you would know about it if you weren’t too grand to look at the posters.” Daphne waved a hand towards an old woman who shambled down the street with a bundle of papers under her arm and an untidily flapping poster on which the words “LADIES’ COLLEGE DROWNING MYSTERY” were intermittently visible.
“Good Lord! Is it a University sensation? Will it spoil the sale of my book?”
“Really, Owen, of all the egoists——”
“Dash it all, if your bursar’s dead the fuss can’t matter to her, and a little fuss about my book would matter a lot to me. Definitely you must buy it. Come along now—you buy a copy and I’ll treat you to coffee—Oh, what’s the time of day? Tea then. Come along.”
Daphne hesitated, standing there, looking down demurely at her feet. The others had gone on.
“There was something I wanted to talk to you about,” she admitted. “But I think you might give me a presentation copy.”
“There are no presentation copies,” said Owen Vellaway firmly. “Mr. Blackwell isn’t taking any chances, and we’ve got to sell five hundred copies before I see my money back.”
“So it’s merely a commercial venture? I thought you were an inspired bard whose genius simply poured forth to refresh the arid universe—and damn the expense!”
They had strolled to the end of the Corn and Owen, taking her by the elbow, propelled her round the corner into the Broad.
“If genius is going to pour forth in print, someone has to pay for it, and I don’t see why I should be out of pocket so that the world can read the lines I have penned by the sweat of my brow.”
“What’s the price?” Daphne inquired.
“Half a crown—it’s a gift, the poem alone, not to mention a woodcut by Jopling.”
“But no one will buy it. You know that nobody buys new books in Oxford. They’ll go to Blackwell’s and read it there.”
“Don’t I know their charming habits! But that’s provided for—sealed copies! And I have several trusty friends on duty in Blackwell’s in the rush hours; if they see anyone breaking a seal they stroll up, disguised as one of Blackwell’s assistants, and say ‘sir—or madam,’ as the case may be—’would you like it wrapped up? Two shillings and six pence.’ Neat idea?”
“Doesn’t Blackwell mind?”
“His original idea, you know, was to run a bookshop and actually to sell books. The undergraduate population of Oxford turned the shop into a reading-room, but it is believed that occasionally an elderly professor gets into a panic at the idea that he may die—or at least become utterly cobwebbed and so immobile—before he can finish Blankenstein’s ten volume treatise on The Intangibility of the Actual, and deliberately buys the book. Oh, yes, they’ve got all the gadgets—a concealed till, complete with change, and what not——”
“But I mean, what happens to my half-crown if one of your pals takes it?”
“They’re all honest lads. Straight into Mr. Blackwell’s till it goes, not a hair of its head harmed. Here we are—but I don’t think any of the gang is there now, so you’ll have to shock one of the genuine salesmen into activity. Be a brave girl. Go in and say nicely, ‘Please, I want a copy of Mr. Vellaway’s Dust.’”
“Dust?”
“Snappy title, what?”
Daphne paused, irresolute. “I think I’ll get it out of the Times Book Club.”
“Done again! No copies sold to lending libraries! Such is the reluctance of the modern man or woman to buy a modern book, that they’d even take out a three months’ subscription, at a cost of two half-crowns, rather than take the desperate step.”
“I never realized that you were so practical!” Daphne regarded him with admiration. “But is it really worth half a crown? Perhaps I could borrow it?”
“Daphne, you shall have a really good tea, wherever you like; éclairs unnumbered——”
“Right oh!” Daphne walked deliberately up the steps into Blackwell’s bookshop. When she returned a few minutes later, Owen was mopping his brow.
“I begin to sympathize with Mr. Blackwell,” he told her. “Now where shall it be—Stewart’s, Elliston’s, Fuller’s?”
Daphne considered her choice. “I think I feel like Fuller’s to-day. Blackwell’s man bore the shock very well, I thought.”
“The booksellers of Oxford will rise up and bless me in years to come. I am creating a revolution! Lord! It’s a sweat!”
Daphne’s finger was sliding under the paper sash which prevented the opening of the thin volume which she held.
“Good Lord, girl! Don’t you know how to treat literature with respect? D’you mean to say you’d glance negligently at an epoch-making poem whilst strolling in the vulgar street?”
“I thought I’d just take a look at Jopling’s woodcut,” said Daphne innocently.
“Even Jopling is worthy of better treatment.”
It was early for tea and they easily found a quiet table near a window. After some earnest concentration on the menu, Daphne turned her attention to the book. Dust, by Owen Vellaway, was the title, and below it, on the paper wrapper, was printed: “You can get the best seat at the movies for half a crown and even see the picture round four times, if you can bear it, but you can’t pass the seat on to your friends. For half a crown you can buy the most vital poem and the most significant woodcut which Oxford has produced this century, and you can read the one and look at the other as often as you wish, but if you are a gentleman you will realize that for the pecuniary benefit of the author and the artist it is essential that your friends shall also pay for their seats.”
“I don’t see how I can prevent them reading it,” said Daphne; “but if they think it’s worth half a crown they’ll then go and buy it for themselves.”
“If you are a gentleman—” s
aid Owen warningly.
“Well, if it’s really a slap-up tea——”
“With knobs on,” Owen promised.
Daphne slit the wrapper and opened the book. Title page; a blank page; another blank page.
“Nice paper!” said Daphne. “For reader’s comments, I suppose.”
Another page revealed the woodcut, representing a small conical hill above which drooped a lugubrious figure, oozing large tears.
“Molehills aren’t really pointed.”
“How true!”
Daphne turned another page, which disclosed the title repeated at its head and in its centre a neat little block of print:
“When I am dead
A rubbish heap
My bones will keep.
“Above my head
If weep you must,
You’ll lay my dust.”
“Very nice and peaceful.” She turned another page. Blank. Another. Blank again. “Not much for the money!”
“Not much—! Look at that charlotte russe—ninepence! Four of those for half a crown, and to-morrow will you feel that you have any value for your money—or rather, my money? Whereas there, in that book, you have genius crystallized!”
“Four nines are more than thirty,” Daphne told him. “This was a bit of a shock at first, you know. I expect by to-morrow, when it has sunk in, and the charlotte russe has sunk in too, I shall be able to estimate both at their true worth.”
“You do not need time to appreciate it properly.”
“It certainly has a beautiful, peaceful finality. I’ll tell people to buy it, Owen, so that I can watch their faces when they turn the pages. Will you have some more tea?”
“What was it you were saying about your bursar?”
“Oh, yes! Now listen.” Daphne told him the story, outlined their tentative theories and described the “clues.”
“What do you think of it?” she concluded.
“I gather that your bursar was the kind of person everyone wants to murder?” Owen inquired.
“Don’t keep calling her my bursar! I didn’t choose her. For our sins, we were fed on her meals and had to submit, more or less, to her domestic tyranny. But to be fair to the woman, since she’s dead, I believe she really was efficient, from the college point of view. That’s what you’d expect of her—she was one of these hard-faced business women; definitely unsympathetic. Not that we wanted to weep on her shoulder, but she seemed hardly human.”
“So any one of you might have murdered her, so far as motive goes?” Owen suggested.
“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” said Daphne cautiously. “After all, you’d have to feel pretty desperate about a person to go to all the trouble and risk of murder, not to mention mess. We could put up with her; after all, there are things about Oxford to compensate you for a rotten bursar. But it’s pretty maddening, you know, to have a woman going about college who obviously doesn’t care a hang for any of you. Utterly wrapped up in her own affairs, whatever they were!”
“Now we’re getting at it!” Owen declared. “She was one of these superior beings, I take it, who look down the nose at all of us? That sort can drive a man to frenzy much more easily than one who is readily subject to the human emotions. Someone has come up against her and has been infuriated by that aloof manner and has upped and clouted her over the head!”
“Of course, she was infuriating,” Daphne agreed. “But that just means that anyone with a hasty temper and a strong arm, who might have had an argument with her, may be guilty. There’s old Lond, who was mad with her over the right-of-way and always flies into a rage when he sees one of us—anyone from Persephone, I mean—but he certainly hasn’t got the strong arm. He couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding!”
“You never can be sure,” said Owen. “Rage lends strength to a man’s arm, you know; probably to a woman’s, too. What about this girl Draga you mentioned? Is she the one with the flat face?”
“Flat face! I think she’s rather attractive, though it’s true she hasn’t much nose. You know her—it was at tea with her in Matthew Coniston’s rooms that I met you.”
“That’s the girl! No, not attractive; too bleached. I saw her yesterday in the quad.”
“In your quad? When?”
“Afternoon, I think. Let’s think; I’d been round to Blackwell’s to know when he would have my book on sale and it was as I came back—about three, I should think.”
“You’ve thought three times, so it ought to be right! So that’s where Draga went—but why wouldn’t she tell Nina?”
“Why should she tell Nina?”
“Nina wanted to find out, and she’s a miracle of tact, but Draga was awfully mysterious about it.”
Probably she came to see Coniston; he’s known her for ages; his father was in the diplomatic service in Yugo-Slavia and he was out there as a boy. Why should you probe into the wretched girl’s affairs?”
“Because Draga seems to be mixed up in some queer way with what happened to Burse. We don’t think she’s done anything really criminal, but she’s behaving like a perfect ass and we don’t want her dragged into it. If we could find out what her connection with the affair is, we might be able to help her.”
“I can’t quite see what grounds you have for thinking she’s connected with the affair, except that she claims she had grounds for a blood feud.”
“There’s more than that—and this is where I specially want you to help me. Do you happen to know if Matthew Coniston has a penknife with a brown handle that looks as if it’s made of some sort of stone?”
“A sort of streaky brown stone?” asked Owen, before he had time to think.
“Yes, that’s it,” cried Daphne excitedly.
“But look here,” Owen demonstrated, realizing that he had perhaps given Matthew away. “There must be hundreds of men who have penknives with brown handles.”
“Not like that. It’s rather odd. Handles are usually made of bone, or horn, if not metal. Now can you find out if Matthew still has that penknife.”
“No, I can’t!” declared Owen obstinately. “I’m not going to join your band of sleuths—at any rate, not unless you tell me more about it.”
Daphne told him of Sally’s and Nina’s night adventure in the college garden.
“What are you after, Daphne? Are you trying to scrape up a lot of facts incriminating Coniston and then pass them over to the cops?”
“That is about the last thing we are trying to do,” Daphne stated with dignity. “I always think that the front of Grimbly Hughes’s shop should be starred in Baedeker as one of the most remarkable examples of commercial Gothic, don’t you?” She gazed with great concentration out of the window and across the Corn at the building in question.
Owen stifled an exclamation of protest against the violent blow he had just received on his shin and leant towards the window with a critical air.
“Pure Ruskin! Certainly remarkable.” Then, after a few minutes, with a cautious glance over his shoulder: “Do you think they heard anything?”
Daphne regarded with distaste the two ladies who were just leaving the tea-room. “They seemed to be hanging round, under the pretence of putting on their gloves, but I don’t think they got anything of value. But look here, you do admit, don’t you, that it’s a queer episode. Draga telephoning to Matthew in Serbian; someone coming by river late at night, doing something queer at or near Burse’s canoe, dropping a penknife and bolting.”
“Yes, it’s queer. But why Coniston?”
“Well, the telephone message—and the penknife. You know him well, don’t you? Can you find out more about it from him? What did he and Draga do yesterday afternoon? Burse would have had time to go up the river as far as Sim’s; your garden runs along the river bank, doesn’t it?”
Owen looked worried. “Look here, Daphne. I don’t like the look of this. Coniston is a peaceable sort of chap, not in the least likely to mix himself in a blood feud. Of course, he feels a bit responsible for Draga,
I dare say, and might do a good deal for her, but not murder, or anything like murder. As for our garden, there’s a high iron fence all along the bank; they couldn’t meet your bursar on the bank except like monkeys looking through a cage. But I will see if I can find out anything helpful, though I’m not hopeful. And don’t mix yourself up in this affair too much, Daphne. It’s a nasty business and you don’t know where it might lead you. Don’t let your mind dwell on it; you’ll get morbid. Think of something else.”
“Dust, for example?”
“Yes; uplift is what you need.”
“And look here, Owen, when you have found out anything, ring me up and ask me to tea again, or something. That will mean you have something to tell me, but don’t dare to ring up unless you really have. I shan’t ask you on the telephone, because I don’t want anyone to overhear.”
CHAPTER VIII
“NIPPY”
WHILST Owen Vellaway was exercising considerably more mental energy in his effort to sell one copy of Dust than he usually felt inclined to spend on an essay, the superintendent was meeting the afternoon express from London which brought Detective-Inspector Braydon from Scotland Yard to the scene of the Cherwell mystery.
“Very awkward situation, sir,” Wythe explained. “The chief was involved in a motor accident a couple of days ago and sustained severe shock. He’s not to be worried, so he doesn’t even know that this has happened.”
“Most unfortunate,” Braydon agreed. “I hope that between us we can get it all straightened out for him before he has to hear about it. What happened to him?”
“Well, to tell the truth, his car got out of control and tried to climb the mound that stands in the centre of one of our new roundabouts. Quite a nasty smash!”
“No wonder he’s suffering from shock! Well, how’s the canoe case shaping?”
“It’s got no shape at all so far, sir, that I can see; or if it does begin to take some shape, it changes again before you can see round it, if you know what I mean,” grumbled Wythe. “This is the car.”
Death on the Cherwell (British Library Crime Classics) Page 8
