An Oxford Tragedy

by J. C. Masterman

  ‘And we were still talking about crime and criminals. Let me see, it’s going to get more difficult now to remember who went out and when.’

  But it was not very difficult after all. I was able to fix Doyne’s exit at a quarter to ten, and with his that of the three scientists – Dixon, Tweddle, and Whitaker. Prendergast’s appointment at ten made it equally easy to know when his disc had to be lifted and conveyed to his room. Trower and Mitton had gone at the same time. In each case a disc was lifted and placed on another part of the table. Brendel, I noticed, knew without asking me where each of them had his rooms. He must have studied the movements of us all with scrupulous care since he had undertaken his task of investigation.

  The drama of the situation gripped me more and more as I saw that only three discs were left in the space marked ‘Common Room’ – those of Brendel, Hargreaves, and myself. I had noted each time which we had ‘agreed’ carefully in my time-table; I now made another entry. ‘10.10, Hargreaves leaves Common Room.’

  ‘How long was it before he came back?’ said Brendel.

  ‘Quite ten minutes, perhaps a little more, certainly not less.’

  His estimate agreed with mine. Maurice, then, if his story was correct, must have remained about ten minutes in the Quad before he walked up to his rooms. I made another entry and Brendel thoughtfully picked up the discs bearing his name and my own, and placed them with those of Maurice and Shirley.

  A frightful, and agonizing, curiosity possessed me. Which of all those discs lying on different parts of the table was acting a passive lie? Which of them, if any, ought to have been lifted and placed beside the disc of Shirley at the moment when the shot had been fired? Or should there not have been some other disc, one yet unnamed, which should have been placed there, the disc perhaps, as Mitton had thought, of some desperate homicidal maniac, who was still unsuspected in our midst?

  Brendel was looking at the table with a curious expression, as though he had resolved some doubts and arrived at a result which he both expected and disliked.

  ‘I don’t think we need go on any longer,’ he said. ‘But can you think of anything important which we have omitted?’

  I thought carefully for a few minutes.

  ‘What about Callendar’s boy?’ I said at length. ‘He came into the Common Room with Callendar to clear away, and must have heard Shirley saying that he would go up and wait for Hargreaves. He’s not very bright, but still he probably noticed what was being said.’

  Brendel emitted a long-drawn-out whistle.

  ‘Thank you, Winn. Which goes to show that one may miss important things however careful one tried to be. Was this boy up in Hall as well at dinner-time? I mean, could he have heard also what Hargreaves said about the revolver? And what sort of age is he? I took no proper notice of him.’

  ‘He’s about seventeen. Yes. He probably was up in Hall, but he’d be on the move up there, waiting and so on, and very probably didn’t hear about the revolver.’

  ‘Well, I must have a talk with him in the morning,’ said Brendel. ‘There’s a possible leakage there; a possible flaw in Prendergast’s theory – and I missed it. I’m very grateful to you for keeping me straight there, very grateful indeed.’

  He began methodically to collect his discs and put them back into the box. As he did so I glanced at the clock, and was amazed to see that our ‘reconstruction’ of the evening of Wednesday had taken us a couple of hours; I had been so enthralled that the time had passed as though it had been a short half-hour.

  Brendel laughed when I drew his attention to the time.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it took a long time, but I think it may have been very useful. By the way, is the funeral to be on Monday?’

  ‘Yes. The first part of the service is to be in the College Chapel, and the rest at the cemetery by the station. I suppose that only the relatives and poor Shirley’s colleagues will go down to the cemetery. Somehow we shall have to prevent a crowd of people who only want to gape out of morbid curiosity.’

  ‘You won’t exclude me, I hope; I want to be there particularly.’

  ‘Of course not; naturally you can come if you wish.’

  He had finished his tidying up by now, and I was preparing to say good night, but he made one more request.

  ‘You said that you would arrange for me to see Mrs Shirley and Miss Vereker. I hate to have to question them, but if it can be arranged, I must. May I see them tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll ask them if they will see you to-morrow evening. Would some time about five or six suit you?’

  ‘Perfectly, and I shall be much obliged to you. And if you in your turn will keep an hour free after dinner for me I think that I shall have some interesting things to tell you – unless, of course, Inspector Cotter has arrested the criminal already before then. But somehow I don’t think he will have.’

  We made our arrangements accordingly, and wished each other good night.

  Chapter Ten

  Sunday in Oxford had always been a pleasant day for me. I was not one of those who had fallen a victim to golf, or who used my week-end to hurry away into the country. My habit always was to refresh myself by making Sunday a real day of relaxation. And so I would get up at a later hour, shave more slowly than usual, and dawdle over my breakfast. Then after the service in the College Chapel I would idle away the rest of the morning, entertain two or three friends to lunch and then go for a stroll round the Parks or for a short drive in the car. I not infrequently took a cup of tea with the Verekers and then read or dozed in my rooms until it was time for dinner and Common Room and the conversation which I loved. A day of leisure and ease and contentment. But with the shadow of an unexplained crime hanging over the college it was impossible to hope for the customary calm. Nor indeed had I quite finished my breakfast when Inspector Cotter was announced with the request that I would favour him with a quarter of an hour of my time. I sighed rather wearily and told my servant to bring him in.

  He started without preamble, and my heart sank at his first words.

  ‘I want you, sir, if you will, to tell me all that you can about a Mr Scarborough, who is an undergraduate here. He was, I understand, a friend of the owner of the revolver, and I discovered last night that he knew that Mr Shirley was in the Dean’s rooms, and that he made some very ugly remarks about him too. Yes, some very ugly remarks – something about shooting him if he had the chance.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ I asked involuntarily. Surely Callendar could not have spoken about his interview with Scarborough except to me; yet the Inspector had apparently wormed out the whole history of that unfortunate meeting.

  He gave me a keen and almost suspicious glance. ‘I heard, sir, from Callendar’s boy. He came out of the Common Room pantry at the same time as Callendar and seems to have – er – contrived to hear most of a highly interesting conversation.’

  Inwardly I consigned Callendar’s boy to the lowest place in Hades. I had thought him dull and stupid, and had told Brendel that he was unlikely to have listened intelligently to any conversation. Now it appeared that he had missed very little indeed.

  ‘There’s another thing sir. I think that Callendar told you all about that conversation up here on Thursday night.’

  His tone now was definitely challenging and hostile. I felt like a lad caught out in the act of committing some misdemeanour.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered, putting the best face I could on the situation. ‘He did tell me, but I thought it unnecessary to tell anyone else of a few wild remarks of that kind. But however did you know that Callendar had told me?’

  ‘The boy told me. He noticed that Callendar was very worried, and when he watched him come up to your rooms he put two and two together and guessed that you were being put wise about Mr Scarborough. That boy’ll get on in life, sir.’

  Inwardly I cursed the boy with redoubled vehemence. He was clearly much too sharp and much too interested in other people’s business. And I had dismissed him from my mind as
a dullard. For the time being, however, I had enough to do to placate Cotter.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ I said. ‘It was wrong of me, of course, but I know this young Scarborough pretty well, and it didn’t seem right to draw him into all this more than was necessary.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Cotter in a voice so dry as to be almost offensive. ‘You know him very well … Really, sir, I’m bound to say that I think it was foolish of you not to take me into your confidence. It’s delayed things a good deal. I suppose there’s nothing else that you would wish to tell me that you’ve kept to yourself? If I’m to bring this thing off I must get all the help I can.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ I said warmly. ‘There’s nothing else; I assure you that I’ve concealed absolutely nothing from you.’

  The Inspector seemed to accept my assurance, and appeared somewhat mollified.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Then perhaps you’d kindly tell me all you can about Scarborough. I haven’t seen him yet, but I shall examine him and his movements pretty closely to-day, and I want to know all I can about him before I start.’

  When Cotter left I was the prey to the most gloomy forebodings. The more I considered the case the more did it appear very ugly for Scarborough. Brendel, it is true, had assured me that he did not suspect him, but I could not help reflecting that Brendel was both a foreigner and an amateur. Cotter, on the other hand, was an experienced professional, whose methods might be slower and less subtle, but who might be expected to arrive at the truth by the orthodox means. If he really supposed that Scarborough was guilty, was it not at least possible that he was right? What ought I to do? I dared not warn Scarborough of the ordeal before him, even had I thought it wise to do so. I could hardly in the circumstances appeal to Brendel for advice. If I sought help from any other of my colleagues I should only raise suspicions of Scarborough in their minds. Finally I decided that I must write to his father. If indeed his son was in danger of being arrested for murder it could not be wrong to warn Fred Scarborough of the peril in which he stood. I sat down and narrated the whole story as clearly and succinctly as I could. Even so it was a long letter by the time I had finished it, and I dropped it into the letter-box with a sigh of relief.

  Just before six Brendel came to fetch me, for Ruth and Mary had agreed to see him in the President’s Lodgings that evening, and I was to go over with him. They were sitting in a room which I knew well, a small drawing-room next to the President’s study. Both of them, I thought, looked tired and ill in their black clothes, but nothing could make them seem other than beautiful to me. I forgot my own selfish anxieties and annoyance as I thought of the suffering which they must have undergone in the last few days. Brendel was full of solicitude, and, as it seemed to me, his apologies for the intrusion were almost overdone. In some way he appeared to me more foreign than he usually did. Often I had had to remind myself that he was not an Englishman, but now a sort of foreign ornateness of speech and manner was very noticeable to me. His excuses and his thanks to the ladies for receiving him were courteous but over-elaborate. I found myself wondering whether he was temperamentally unable to put himself en rapport with women in the same way as he could with men, or whether perhaps he was disguising a failure to make headway in his inquiry by a camouflage of energy and officiousness. My faint dissatisfaction grew as the interview proceeded, for Brendel’s questions when they came were disappointingly trivial and unilluminating. He made exactly those banal inquiries which I should have expected from an ordinary detective. When had Shirley left home? Had he seemed in any way anxious or nervous before he left the house in North Oxford? Had he ever received any threatening letters? Did Mrs Shirley know of any private enemies of her husband’s? I had come, in the last few days, to like and trust Brendel so much that I was keenly disappointed as the interview proceeded. I suppose that I expected some penetrating questions from him which would suddenly throw new light on the problem. Moreover, as I watched and listened, I was conscious of a curious fact. Brendel was addressing himself to Ruth, but his whole attention was really devoted to Mary. Of this fact I became more and more certain, and it filled me with disquiet.

  After perhaps ten minutes or a quarter of an hour Brendel thanked Ruth for her patience, and inquired if he might ask Miss Vereker a few questions also. Mary, of course, agreed, though I could see that she was surprised at the request. I was now again on the tiptoe of expectation, but again I was disappointed. The questions which were put to Mary were more pointless, as it seemed to me, even than those which Ruth had answered. I felt convinced that Brendel was talking merely for the sake of talking, and that no useful information was being elicited. At length he said, with the air of a man who has almost reached the end of a task which he has set himself:

  ‘One more thing, Miss Vereker; I want if I may to ask rather a personal question. You are engaged to be married, are you not?’

  Mary Vereker shared her father’s fastidious dislike of publicity, and I could see that she considered the question illtimed if not impertinent. What possible connexion could her own private affairs have with the tragedy of her brother-in-law’s death? For a moment I thought that she was going to administer a snub to her interrogator, but she restrained herself, and replied frigidly in the affirmative.

  ‘And have you in the last few days – forgive me for the question – had any little misunderstandings, any small quarrels with your fiancé?’

  Mary was really angry now, and she showed it. For a bachelor there are few sights more stimulating than a beautiful woman in a temper, but I admit that I was glad that I was not in Brendel’s shoes just then.

  ‘Professor Brendel,’ she said, ‘I do not know why you ask me such a question. My affairs have, I think, nothing whatever to do with the tragedy which you are investigating. I promised Mr Winn that I would answer your questions, and so I will tell you that I have had no kind of quarrel with Maurice, nor any sort of misunderstanding. But I cannot undertake to discuss my private affairs any further with a stranger, and I do not believe that Mr Winn would wish me to do so.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ I hastily interjected, for I had been appalled at Brendel’s remark. ‘I am sure that no good purpose could be served by any more discussion. I feel certain that Professor Brendel will not wish to trouble you any more.’

  Brendel was profuse in his apologies. In pursuing his inquiries he had not sufficiently considered that such questions must give pain to Miss Vereker; he was desolated at his own clumsiness; he hoped that he might be excused for his quite unintentional rudeness. Very stiffly Mary accepted his apology, and he bade the two ladies adieu.

  I did not go with him, but stayed behind to smooth down the troubled waters. It was no very easy task. The purport of Brendel’s questions had not been clear to any of us, but their general trend was obvious enough. If his questions had any significance whatever he had surely been suggesting the possibility of sordid quarrels and misunderstandings in Shirley’s family circle. The questions which he had put to Mary seemed to me, as they had to her, purely impertinent. I tried to explain them away as the clumsy faux pas of an amateur investigator, who was searching blindly for some chance clue; but I could see that in the minds of both ladies the reputation of Brendel was hopelessly ruined.

  Brendel was dining at All Souls that evening, and had told me that he would come to my rooms at about ten o’clock. I waited for him in a state of considerable exasperation, and prepared rather carefully what would be, I felt, at once a tactful yet severe reproof. I was pondering in my mind whether it would be wise to suggest to him that it might be safer, after all, to leave the investigation in official hands, when he knocked and came in. But I had no opportunity to broach the subject, for before I could open my mouth he had patted me twice on the back as though I were a child needing comfort, and was launched on a flood of words which I could not easily stem.

  ‘You were going to say, if I had let you, my dear friend, that the poor blundering Austrian Professor had made an intole
rable gaffe; that he had been terribly rude to your quite charming ladies in the President’s Lodgings; that he did not quite understand the conventions of English society; that in short he had made a real mess of all your business; that perhaps even, yes, perhaps he ought to give up the work of detection and leave it to those who understand it better. Now, admit, you were going to say all that, very tactfully yet very firmly; were you not?’

  Somehow as he spoke all my old confidence and belief in him returned to me, but I could not help admitting that his prognosis was almost literally true.

  ‘Yes,’ I said a little sheepishly. ‘I suppose I was going to say something of the kind. You know really in those questions to Mary Vereker you went too far; both she and her sister were terribly upset. And I was upset too. I’ve known them both so long and I like them so much. I really consider myself – well – more or less I’m in a sort of semi-paternal relation to them, poor girls. I feel for them more than I can say, and naturally they resented your questions, just as I did.’

  I was working myself into a state of indignation again, but Brendel soothed me with a reassuring gesture of the hand.

  ‘My dear Winn,’ he said, ‘indeed, as you say, they are the most charming young ladies, I find it in my heart to envy you – what is it? – your semi-paternal status in that household. Consider now. Do you really think that I can have liked asking them those very awkward and unpleasant questions? Am I quite such a heartless Philistine, am I really so little of what you call a gentleman to enjoy a task like that? I tell you I was quite nervous, quite uncomfortable all the time. I felt like one of your youngest undergraduates facing you for the first time, and finding you in a bad temper.’ All the little crow’s-feet round his eyes puckered up as he smiled at me. I knew that he was laughing at me and at my annoyance, but it was impossible for me to take offence or to maintain my censorious attitude towards him. I surrendered once more to his odd charm and power.