An Oxford Tragedy (11 page)

I had worked myself into a miserable state of indecision and panic by the time, just before dinner, when next I saw Brendel. I had almost decided, I think (if the word decided can be used of one so infirm of will), to leave Oxford at the earliest opportunity rather than to continue living in a society which included, as it seemed, an undiscovered
murderer. But five minutes of Brendel's society was enough to soothe my frayed nerves. He had an almost feminine intuition, and I believe that he read my thoughts and misgivings as though they had been written in an open book. He was all sympathy and encouragement. Exactly what he said I cannot now remember, only that his words were precisely suited to restore my lost confidence. There was something about the good fortune of the Common Room in having me to preside over it; something to the effect that any court or any jury would feel that because I had been there everything must of course have been ordered in the best possible way; a suggestion that I had handled the situation to admiration; a hint that I was now as before clearly the keystone of St Thomas's. It was just the tonic that I needed. Flattery no doubt it was, but it made me less abject than I had been before his visit. I felt myself again the Senior Tutor – if not quite
sans peur et sans reproche
, at least tolerably confident of my own adequacy.

The inquest was held on Saturday morning in one of the lecture rooms, and I wondered whether I should ever be able to bring myself to use that room again. To describe the scene in any detail would be superfluous, though every detail and every face is fixed deep in my memory. I have only to shut my eyes to see the scene again – the coroner, careful, courteous, decisive; Ruth and Mary both pale but bravely hiding their emotion; Hargreaves uneasy and embarrassed; Mottram obviously wretchedly ill, but, to judge from his looks, oblivious of his own trouble in his anxious sympathy for the President's daughters; Prendergast alert and watchful; Doyne healthy and strong, but temporarily subdued and downcast. The proceedings seemed to me both ghastly and interminable. I had to live again through the horror of that Wednesday evening. It was as though I was undergoing a frightful nightmare, from which I had suffered before. I knew from the beginning the horror would grow until it became overwhelming, yet nothing I could do would avert or hasten it. Point by point, piece by piece, the witnesses reconstructed the story. Everything seemed to me sordid, business-like, inexorable. I longed to cry out, ‘Get on, get on; we know all this, for Heaven's sake finish with it.' At one moment I had an insane desire to shout out ‘I killed him myself, don't ask any more questions' – if only I could thereby put a stop to the whole hateful inquiry. One by one we gave our evidence; clearly and more clearly the facts took shape in the minds of coroner and jury and reporters. Only for a short period did I experience a sort of unworthy satisfaction. Maurice Hargreaves was giving his evidence, and he was not cutting his usual fine figure. As a rule the most confident and self-assured of men, he was finding it exceedingly difficult to
explain why he had left the revolver loaded on the table. The easy assurance that it would serve to impress the undergraduates in the morning with which he had countered my objections did not satisfy the coroner at all. He commented strongly, and with marked disapproval, on the Dean's behaviour. Maurice flushed and fumed, but for once he was muzzled. The provenance of the revolver was not disputed. Garnett admitted in the most barefaced manner that it was his, that he had always possessed one, and that he knew nothing about licences and such-like formalities. Scarborough was not called. As the inquest proceeded one thing became clear. No new fact or indication of any kind had come to light since I had last talked with Inspector Cotter. There was still no hint of any motive, still no clue, still no official theory of why the crime had been committed, or as to who the criminal might be.

The verdict was inevitable. Robbed of its official verbiage it amounted to this – that Shirley had been murdered, and that nobody knew by whom.

‘What did you think of all that?' I asked Brendel as we crossed to my rooms after the verdict had been given. His answer was non-committal, and his smile enigmatic as he added:

‘I think that you allowed yourself a little of what we Germans call
Schadenfreude
, did you not, when Mr Hargreaves gave his evidence?'

I had the grace to feel ashamed of myself, for I could not deny the accusation.

As we parted at the foot of my staircase he surprised me by a sudden request.

‘Can you come to my rooms after dinner?' he said. ‘I want to make a little experiment in which you can help me. It will take an hour or so. Please don't say No.'

‘Of course I'll come,' I answered. ‘What are you going to do?'

He wrinkled up his eyes in the fashion I now knew so well.

‘Ah, just a little experiment. Perhaps I have not quite time to tell you about it now. After dinner; we will make it then.'

I was consumed with curiosity as I mounted Brendel's staircase that night, and my mystification did not grow less when I had entered his room. We had allotted him a spare set of rooms in one of which stood a large old-fashioned diningtable. Somewhere or other he had contrived to find or borrow a second table of the same kind, and the two were placed side by side so that the whole centre of the room seemed to be filled with one immense table. On this, to my great surprise, was laid out a large plan of St Thomas's, constructed of paper and cardboard. Brendel stood laughing at my amazement.

‘I hope you admire my plan of St Thomas's,' he said. ‘I'm sorry that it has to be on the flat, but I could not build a proper model with all the staircases and rooms. However, I think this will serve the purpose. Look at these.'

He held up a box full of cardboard discs. On each of them was written a name; I caught sight, on the top of the heap, of the names of Mitton, Doyne, and myself.

‘I'm afraid I don't quite understand,' I said.

‘Listen,' said Brendel. ‘I want to reconstruct Wednesday night, and you must help me. Two heads are better than one, and there are some facts of which I must be sure. I want to go all through that evening; I want the conversations again, so far as we can remember them. I want the little incidents just as they occurred, and I want you to write down for me a little time-table as we go along. Come, let us begin at the beginning.'

He took up a small pair of forceps, selected two discs marked ‘Prendergast' and' Brendel', and placed them in the square in his plan which represented the Common Room.

‘Here are Prendergast and I by the fire in the Common Room; it is about ten minutes, I think, before dinner, and you come in.'

He selected a third disc, marked ‘Winn', and placed it by the other two.

‘Now try to remember as much as you can of our conversation.'

‘Brendel,' I said, ‘is this really necessary? Must I really go through all that again? Surely we had enough of that at the inquest? To me it seems – well – ghoulish. I'll do it if you say I must, but can it possibly do any good?'

‘I'm sorry,' he answered, ‘but I'm afraid it is necessary. Look; if you call in a doctor you always take his advice – or discharge him, and for this case you have called in Dr Brendel. This is part of his prescription, and you must accept it, if you mean to benefit from his advice.'

He spoke lightly, but I could see that he was very anxious that I should not refuse, so I stifled my repugnance and promised my assistance.

‘First rate,' he cried out with obvious relief; ‘now then, it is half past seven, is it not, when we all go up to your beautiful Hall. Write that down, “Seven-thirty, dinner begins”.'

As I wrote he sorted out thirteen discs, and placed them in position in the Hall on his plan. On each was written the name of one of the diners. With some little difficulty, after searching my recollection, I was able to place them in the order in which they had sat that night. He then took up three more, one marked ‘Callendar' and the other two ‘Servant', and placed them behind the diners.

‘Now,' he said, ‘we shall need all our memory. Between us we have to remember a conversation, or as much of it as possible, which took place three days ago.'

The task did not prove quite so impossibly difficult as I had anticipated. By jogging each other's memory we were
able to recall the main threads of our conversation with tolerable accuracy. Gradually we traced it to the moment when Maurice had informed the table of the loaded revolver in his room.

‘About when would that have been?' said Brendel.

‘About eight, I should think; it was towards the end of dinner, because you and I had very little conversation about it.'

He nodded. ‘Write down “Eight o'clock. Hargreaves tells us of the revolver”, please, and tell me when we went down to the Common Room.'

‘At about ten minutes past eight. It is always within five minutes of that when we get into Common Room.'

The thirteen discs were lifted and placed in Common Room; then he hesitated.

‘Was Callendar in the room?'

‘He came in with the port, and put it on the table; after that he came back once with a fresh bottle, and again, of course, with the coffee.'

‘That creates a difficulty,' said Brendel thoughtfully. ‘We can't possibly be quite sure what part of the conversation he heard, and what part he did not. On the whole it will be best to be on the safe side, and assume that he heard the whole conversation. Yes, that will be safe, surely. Now let's go on. We began to talk crime and detection as soon as we sat down?'

‘Yes, I'm sure of that. Doyne started the ball rolling at once.' Carefully, assisting one another as best we could, we reconstructed the conversation. It was a curious sensation to hear Brendel repeating again the views which he had advanced in that long discussion. For myself I seemed to be living Wednesday evening over once again.

‘When did coffee come in?' said Brendel at length.

‘I can tell you that exactly,' I replied. ‘Callendar has orders to bring it at twenty minutes to nine if I don't ring
before, and on Wednesday I didn't ring. So it was at twenty minutes to nine.'

He nodded approvingly. ‘Write it down. And then someone went out, I think?'

‘Yes, Shepardson. He had a pupil at a quarter to nine, so he left then, and Mottram went at the same time to his lab.'

The forceps were lifted delicately and the discs of Mottram and Shepardson removed. The former was returned to the box, the latter placed in his own rooms in the plan. Two more discs were placed by him, marked ‘Howe' and ‘Martin'.

‘And the next to move?'

My lips were dry as I answered.

‘It was Shirley; he got up when the clock struck nine.'

Fascinated, I watched him pick up the disc which had ‘Shirley' written on it, and place it carefully in the space which stood for Maurice Hargreaves' rooms.

‘Callendar was in the room, clearing away,' he said meditatively. ‘He told us that himself. He finished about ninefifteen, and went out to find Scarborough and Garnett waiting for him.'

Two new discs appeared upon the table and were placed beside that of Callendar. I was conscious of a growing feeling of excitement and of fear. Almost it seemed to me as though one of the little discs would move on its own towards the fatal square where Shirley's disc lay. But Brendel went on calmly enough.

‘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?