When he passed through Sim’s dark archway into the quad which, after the gloom of the Parks, looked festive with its double row of glowing windows, he made his way, without any definite intention in his mind, towards Matthew Coniston’s rooms. As he mounted the narrow stone stairs he became aware of a tumult of voices and laughter above him. This was unusual, for Matthew was a solitary kind of chap. Clever, erudite in queer bypaths of knowledge, a worker, a man with two or three firm friends, but not the sort of fellow into whose rooms men were continually drifting at any odd hour for idle chatter. It was not unusual, however, to find some total stranger closeted with Coniston for consultation on some awkward problem of life or work. He had a reputation for savoir-faire, due, perhaps, to his cosmopolitan life and experience in diplomatic circles. He was a small, dark, ugly man, with long legs, long, clever hands and dark eyes which glinted through thick-lensed, horn-rimmed glasses.
No good trying to do any tactful detective work on Coniston, if he’s got a party on, Owen reflected, but I might as well see what the row’s about.
The door stood ajar. Owen, on pushing it open, saw Coniston almost lost in the depths of a long arm-chair and behind a fog of smoke from his pipe. In the centre of the room, and apparently the centre of interest, stood a certain Dick Bayes who, it was generally supposed, would hardly have attained the status of member of the University if it had not been for his prowess with the oar. On a table and the arm of a chair perched two others, vaguely known to Owen as friends of Bayes, a long-necked, red-haired youth called Nickal and a square, stolid man known as Dumps.
“I tell you I saw that woman paddling her own canoe up the Char like a mad thing,” Bayes was proclaiming; “and then, later on, paddling it down again, alive and kicking.”
“What’s all this about?” cried Owen, startled. “When was this?”
“Come and listen, Vellaway,” Coniston hailed him. “Bayes saw the murdered bursar on her last voyage. But I don’t suppose you even know we’ve had a murder in academic circles?”
“The corpse in the canoe! I’ve just been having tea with the girl who found it,” said Owen.
There was a hail of questions: “When was the corpse found?” “Who did her in?” “Where?” “Why?”
“Bayes’s story obviously comes first,” said Owen. “We must do things in order. Let’s have it from the beginning.”
“I was takin’ Nuts—that’s my dog—for a run,” Bayes explained. “On the top of the Parks’ bridge I noticed a canoe——”
“High and dry on the bridge?” interrupted Owen sarcastically.
“Funny man! With a woman in a bright green jumper-thing, paddlin’ away like blazes up the Char,” Bayes continued unperturbed.
“What time?” inquired Owen.
“A bit before two, near as I can tell. She’d just passed under the bridge, so I only saw her back; she sat like a ramrod, and from the way she pushed that canoe through the water I’d say she might pull a good oar.”
“Too late to think of that now!” Nickal reminded him.
“That’s all right as to time,” Owen corroborated. “Was she wearing a hat?”
Bayes considered. “Felt hat, I think. Don’t remember her hair. I thought she was probably cracked and I went on with Nuts into those fields on the other side. As we came back I thought to myself, that dame must be about at Islip by now, if she hasn’t run aground, and lookin’ up the river, what should I see but another canoe comin’ down.”
“Another canoe?”
“Well, the same canoe, for all I know; but a grey Burberry-affair at the paddle this time. ’S a matter of fact, I took it for a man for a moment. Then I thought to myself, women’s colleges must have a regatta or something on; they’ve got some pretty hefty paddles. Nuts barked—no wonder! Suspicious of anything out of the ord’nary. I took another look at the female and dashed if it wasn’t the same one.”
“Well, she’d gone up the river, so it wasn’t very odd that she should come down again,” Owen pointed out. “What time was this?”
“Round about three, I should think.”
“Can’t you remember exactly? It’s vital,” Owen urged. “They found her body at four-fifteen, at Persephone boathouse. You’re the witness who can fix the time of the crime.”
“Didn’t you have a date with anyone?” Nickal suggested hopefully.
Bayes considered. “I heard Sim’s strike three, but that might have been afterwards. Now I come to think of it, I believe I heard it from the fields—that’d make it just after three that I saw the canoe again.”
“Or it might have been as you put Nuts back in his kennel; that would make it about three-thirty; or it might have been when Nuts had his fourth scrap that day; that’d make it about five minutes after you started out—or——”
“Shut up, Nickal! Vellaway’s right; this is important; we’ve got to get it clear,” said Bayes earnestly.
“He’s got to report to the police,” Coniston reminded them, from the depths of his chair.
“That’s what I want to know,” Bayes declared. “What do I do next?”
“Police, of course,” Coniston repeated. “Quite probably it’s important. You may be the only person who saw her.”
“Then for heaven’s sake, don’t muddle me,” implored Bayes. “I’ve got the story quite clear if you don’t all keep bargin’ in with rotten questions.”
“There’s a raspberry waiting for you,” Nickal assured him. “Cops will barge in with questions all over the shop; that’s how they catch you out. You’d better let us help you get the story taped.”
“Sure thing,” Dumps added.
“To return to the canoe,” Owen suggested. “Are you sure it was the same one? The first one had a green jumper and the second one had a Burberry, and you didn’t see the first one’s face.”
“Didn’t see the second one’s face, either. You know the height of the bridge; I was lookin’ down on the top of her head, and she had the same grey felt hat rammed down over her ears——”
“Then the first one did have a grey felt hat?”
“Didn’t I say so? Same hat all right, and hefty female about the same height and build, paddlin’ down just as hard as she went up. Thin, square-shouldered, ’s far as I could see.”
“As a rowing man yourself, of course, you’d recognize her style when you saw her again?” Owen inquired.
Bayes became very serious. “There’s not so much individual style in paddlin’ a canoe, of course, as in rowin’. Now I come to think of it, she was paddlin’ on stroke side each time and holdin’ the paddle good and straight. Anyway, it must have been the same; there can’t be two strappin’ females mad enough to go paddlin’ up the Char on a winter afternoon.”
“Look here, you’ve described her as hefty and strapping and also as thin. Sure there weren’t two?” Owen asked.
“Well, she paddled pretty heftily, but now I come to think of it she wasn’t outsize,” Bayes decided.
“Perhaps one was the bursar and the other was the murderess, hot on her trail,” Nickal suggested.
“Though it’s not a dead cert that it was a murder,” put in Coniston.
“What, drowned herself and then got back into the canoe to go home?” asked Nickal.
“I don’t know how it could have happened,” said Coniston rather slowly. “But no one’s found a murderer yet, have they?” He looked towards Owen.
“I don’t think so,” Owen said hastily, a bit flurried. “This bursar seems to have been pretty unpopular, even for a bursar, but murder isn’t usually committed even on the least beloved of our dons. She had a quarrel with an ancient lunatic man who owns Ferry House, but he is reported to be too enfeebled to murder anyone. There doesn’t seem to be any definite idea of a motive, except general hatred.”
“Why do most women get murdered?” asked Dumps.
“Unfortunately they don’t,” Coniston informed him.
“But most of those who do——”
�
��Intrigue!” Owen hazarded. “Some wretched man gets involved with too many of them and has to remove one or two.”
“Was this bursar an intriguing sort?”
“I’ve only seen her slightly,” Owen admitted. “Struck me as one of those hard-faced, self-contained spinsters; not much appeal. Of course, you never know. What was your impression, Con? You knew her, didn’t you?”
“No more than you did, I suppose. Impression much the same. Not the sort to get entangled, I should have said,” Coniston replied.
“I suppose you didn’t notice a murderer hanging about, in the course of your walk?” Owen asked Bayes. “Sinister-looking fellow skulking behind a bush?”
“By Jove! Now I come to think of it, I met a rough sort of farmer chap! Gave Nuts a nasty look and said a dawg like that can do a tidy lot of damage, he wouldn’t wonder.”
“Sure that wasn’t another day you saw him?”
“I’ve seen him before; well, I think I have. Seems to own that land. I’m pretty sure it was yesterday that I passed the time of day with him and he muttered something about seein’ if he couldn’t get some wire put up before the summer to stop those blankety blank picnic parties from landin’ and tramplin’ down his hay.”
“Was he near the river?”
“Right on the bank.”
“There’s your murderer!” exclaimed Dumps.
“Hold hard!” said Coniston. “You might as well say that Bayes was the murderer, or Nuts.”
“But look here!” Bayes protested. “I didn’t even know who the woman was.”
“All right; we don’t suspect you, yet. But don’t go telling the police, or anyone else, that you saw the murderer,” Coniston advised him. “Are you sure you saw no one else?”
“Not a blooming soul!”
“Not even a woman, who according to some authorities, has no soul?” Coniston urged.
“I’m dead certain I didn’t,” Bayes maintained.
“Didn’t you say something, Vellaway, about a right of way?” asked Nickal.
“Yes, but that was through Ferry House grounds, lower down, and Bayes’s rough sort of farmer chap doesn’t sound like the owner. But of course, this bursar may have had a complex about rights of way, and she may also have passed the time of day with the farmer, and on hearing that he was going to put up barbed wire entanglements against her summer picnics, she may have attacked him with a paddle, and he knocked her into the river and then, not wanting her floating about near his property, put her back tidily into the canoe.”
“But Bayes saw her again, alive and paddling strongly,” Nickal objected.
“Bayes doesn’t know what he saw, do you, Bayes?” Owen asked.
“I know I saw that woman twice,” declared Bayes obstinately. “I can’t say you’ve cleared things up any with your damnfool questions and ideas, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar she passed under the Parks bridge alive, going strongly downstream.”
“She was found at four-fifteen, still going downstream, but dead,” Owen pointed out. “It wouldn’t take more than ten minutes, I should think, to paddle downstream from the Parks bridge to Persephone boathouse—or would it be longer, Con?”
“I don’t know; haven’t noticed particularly. But obviously she was murdered between the bridge and Perse Island. There’s a bit more field, isn’t there, below the bridge; and then comes Ferry House.”
“Yes, I was looking at that this afternoon from the bridge,” Owen told them. “Just the spot for a murder; deserted and surrounded by trees. If Bayes really saw her before three the murderer seems to have taken his time, but he may be one of these slow and sure fellows.”
“What else did you notice, Bayes?” Dumps asked.
“Yes, we must straighten out your story,” suggested Nickal; “and then we do a spot of detection. We piece together the facts and they make a theory.”
“Go easy on the theory, for the police,” Coniston advised.
“But you must have noticed something more,” Owen urged. “You saw the late bursar a few moments before her death. Wasn’t there a strange light in her eye? Didn’t she grip the paddle convulsively? Wasn’t there another canoe slipping quietly but swiftly round the bend of the river behind her?”
“Oh, stow it!” cried the harassed Bayes.
“What about that coat she came down in?” asked Nickal. “She can’t have had it on when she went up, if you only saw her back and noticed a green jumper—or was it Danube blue or Isis mauve? Anyhow, was the coat in the canoe?”
“Can’t say; easily might have been. I couldn’t really see into the canoe. But—by Jove! now I come to think of it, there was something in the canoe when she came down!”
“But that’s wrong; you ought to have seen a coat in the canoe when she went up,” Owen pointed out.
“I tell you I couldn’t see what was in it then, but there was a coat in it when she came down,” Bayes insisted.
“But she had the coat on, you said; you’ve bungled it hopelessly!”
“It might have been a rug, now I come to think of it; yes, that’s it; a brown rug!” proclaimed Bayes triumphantly.
“He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again and found it was
The Middle of Next Week,”
Owen quoted. “Or, if you prefer it:
He thought he saw a Bursar Dead
Who paddled a canoe:
He looked again and found it was
A yellow Cockatoo.
You’d better paddle on, he said,
Your gills are very blue!”
“Fine! Send it in for the Newdigate,” Nickal advised. “But to return to our bursar——”
“The more I think about the rug, the surer I am about it,” Bayes insisted. “And what’s more, there was something under it.”
“Poetry has stimulated his imagination,” said Owen.
“What was under it?” Nickal asked.
“If it was under the rug, how could I see?” demanded Bayes, aggrieved. “Picnic traps, I suppose.”
“Picnic traps!” yelled Nickal in derision. “At this time of year!”
“Well, what would you have in a canoe?” Bayes demanded.
“You, with a mind little above that of the beasts, wouldn’t think of anything but provender, of course,” Owen told him. “But bursars are bent on higher things. She may have been carrying her account books about, to work on them at odd moments. But you know, Bayes, the story’s getting too elaborate. All this ‘coming to think of it’ is fatal to its original charming simplicity.”
“There’s no sense in the affair, anyhow,” grumbled Dumps, who was beginning to be bored. “The bursar was batty and that’s that.”
“Batty or not,” growled Bayes. “She went up the Char in a canoe and she came down again, and that’s plain fact worth a dozen of your rotten theories.”
“That’s a good simple story for the police,” Coniston told him. “If you can stick to it and not introduce too many side-lines.”
“I’ll sum it up,” said Owen helpfully. “Just to help you get it clear. You went for a swim up the Char to see a farmer about a dog; a bursar paddled upstream to have a party with the farmer and you saw them both coming down again with empty bottles under a rug in the canoe.”
“Oh, cheese it!” cried the exasperated Bayes. “But now I come to think of it——”
The rest was drowned by howls of derision. When calm was restored Bayes remarked, sulkily: “I’ve forgotten what I was going to tell you. It was something rather vital, but you’ve put it out of my head with your howling.”
“You must at least admit that we’ve helped you a lot,” said Nickal. “Whatever you tell the police they’re sure to say ‘How do you account for that?’ and we’ve explained all the difficult points. Now have you got it all clear?”
“I had it perfectly clear,” Bayes muttered, “before you spouted all your putrid theories.”
“I advise you,
” put in Coniston, “to go and think it out quietly by yourself, trimming the story of all excrescences, and then off to the police before you talk to anyone else.”
“O.K.” said Bayes, and departed.
Nickal and Dumps made a move.
“Have a heart, my lads!” Coniston urged. “Don’t follow him or he really will get so mixed that the police will think he did it himself.”
They departed, muttering agreement.
“Wonder what he will tell the police,” murmured Owen.
“Probably very little; he’ll be so afraid of mucking up his story, which is perfectly good, I think, so far as it goes,” Coniston replied. “I’m afraid I ought not to have let you bait him so. We really don’t want to confuse the trail.”
“Do you think that it really was the same woman?”
“Most likely; but I think he invented the ‘traps’ under the rug. He may have invented the rug. By the way, what do you really know?”
“Practically no more than I’ve told you. Daphne Loveridge and some of her pals found the bursar’s body in a canoe by their boathouse.” He repeated a few more details. “Daphne said something about a rug having been found later, I think, so Bayes may be right about that.”
“You heard no suggestion as to who really did it?” asked Coniston.
“No. Daphne considers it a first-class mystery. That foreign friend of yours, by the way—Draga, I think she’s called—seems to have been the last person to see the bursar, apart from our bright friend Bayes.” Owen spoke with elaborate carelessness, keeping a watchful eye on Coniston.
“Yes, I saw Draga yesterday afternoon,” Coniston replied with equal carelessness, puffing at his pipe. “She rushed up here, as she often does, to tell me her troubles.” He paused; then continued: “I suppose she was here at about the time that the wretched woman was being murdered. She came bursting into my room all unchaperoned, which is just the kind of thing she is liable to do, with a fine scorn of any rules and conventions that are not those of her own country and family. She’s a queer creature, but her people were very decent to us when we were out in Belgrad, and I feel rather responsible for her.”
Death on the Cherwell (British Library Crime Classics) Page 10
