An Oxford Tragedy (15 page)

He drew a line firmly through Tweddle's name in his notebook and turned to the next page.

‘Then we come to Doyne and Mitton,' he remarked with an involuntary smile. ‘Let's dispose of them. I suppose that a master in the art of detection would have turned them inside out by now. Their alibis were wretched or nonexistent, and each of them had the opportunity to shoot Shirley. I'd better confess to you right away that I've paid no attention to them whatever, beyond taking a cup of tea one day with Mitton, and chatting with both of them in Common Room. I simply can't begin to suspect either of them. Mitton is the gentlest of men, who wouldn't hurt a fly; he'd blush too much to take aim with any lethal weapon; – and Doyne – well, he'd make so much noise about the job, and be so cheerful over the preliminaries that everyone would come along to see the crime. Seriously, how can one think of either of them as a criminal? Of course in books mild young men in Holy Orders and light-hearted care-free young fellows like Doyne are the very stuff out of which criminals of almost incredible turpitude can be constructed, but surely it's not so in real life. I can't and I won't keep either of them on my list, and if I'm wrong I'll never study another crime.'

There was another pause whilst Brendel crossed out the names of Mitton and Doyne, and turned over the next page of his note-book.

‘Next we have Prendergast, and he is not so easy. I've not ignored the possibilities of Prendergast all through. He's
an older man, and he's got both the brain and the willpower. There are certain good qualities, even if they're misdirected, which a man must have for a crime of this kind, and Prendergast has them. I don't believe that Mitton
could
commit a murder, but in certain circumstances Prendergast
might
. He's a deep man, and an able man, and a determined man, and so I've given a good deal of attention to his movements on Wednesday night. Listen. It's suspicious to begin with that it was he who first advanced the theory that one of those who dined at high table had committed the murder. Grant for a moment, and merely for the sake of argument, that he is the murderer. He guesses that sooner or later someone will point out that suspicion rests in the first instance on those who were dining; it is therefore sound policy for him to draw attention to the fact himself to avert suspicion from himself. Secondly he does not leave Common Room till ten o'clock. Why? Because everyone who goes out before him falls into the class of suspects if, as he hopes, each goes to his own rooms. Of course the time left to him is short. He has to run up and shoot Shirley before Hargreaves goes up himself to his rooms. But Hargreaves is deep in conversation at ten o'clock, and has apparently forgotten his appointment with Shirley. Prendergast can, then, probably count on ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. What does he do? He has to shoot Shirley and leave no trace, and of course his first thought is finger-prints. There are two ways in which a murderer can avoid them satisfactorily; either he can put on a pair of gloves, or he can wrap his handkerchief round his hand before he fires. But if you try the latter method you will find that it needs a little arrangement, and it has the drawback that the murderer may touch other objects with his hands after the crime has been committed. Now the fact that Shirley had apparently not moved in his chair points to the fact that the murderer picked up the
revolver and shot him almost before Shirley heard the door open. In other words, it is a fair assumption that the murderer used gloves and did not arrange a handkerchief round his hands. Do you agree?'

A nodded assent.

‘Good. Then we can reconstruct Prendergast's movements, still on the assumption that he was the criminal. A man who had the nerve to wait till ten as he did would have his plans cut and dried. He walks straight to his rooms, takes a pair of gloves from his drawer, walks back to Hargreaves' rooms, pulls on the gloves as he mounts the stairs, opens the door of the inner room, picks up the revolver, shoots Shirley, and returns to his own rooms. If he meets anyone going up as he comes down he can give the alarm, and say that he has found Shirley shot; he's only in danger himself for about three minutes. With that possible reconstruction of events in my mind I did an old-fashioned piece of detection. I made friends with his servant, and asked him some questions. Candour, even if it was artificial candour, seemed the right line, so I boldly told him that the police had got it into their heads that the murderer had stolen a pair of gloves from someone in college in order to conceal finger-prints. Could he tell me if Mr Prendergast had missed any gloves from his drawer? He was interested at once, and did just what I had hoped he would – that is to say he took me straight up to Prendergast's bedroom (I must confess that I'd picked an hour when Prendergast was lecturing). He opened a drawer, and there were the gloves: – one pair of motoring gloves, much too thick and clumsy for the purpose, and three pairs of wash-leather gloves. But all the latter had been cleaned since they had been last used. You can't put on a pair of gloves without making it obvious that they had been used, and his servant was perfectly confident that Prendergast had no other gloves in his rooms. Indeed he possessed no other pair. So
it's quite certain that if Prendergast did it he didn't do it in the way I described. And yet with his precision and nerve he
would
have done it in that way. He would have been sure that his gloves would have fitted him, and you want well-fitting gloves.'

More and more as he talked Brendel seemed to have half forgotten my presence; he spoke like a man arguing with himself, and gradually establishing his own conclusions.

‘I can't say for certain that Prendergast did not do it,' he went on after a ruminative pause, ‘but yet I'm almost sure that he didn't. Unless I've read his character all wrong he would have been an extraordinarily efficient murderer, if a murderer at all – and if competent, then he would have acted as I suggested – yet that he didn't do. I may have to come back to him, but for the time being I shall put him out of my mind. That leaves Mottram and Hargreaves alone out of all our original eight, and either of them might have been the murderer. Mottram is a retiring man, but there are hidden fires, or I am much mistaken. It is true that he went to his laboratory and that he was still there just after ten when his friend Holt visited him. But what was there to prevent him from coming down in his car, committing the murder, and returning? I've tried it in your car; he could have done the whole thing including the journey both ways in less than a quarter of an hour – and his alibi is only spasmodic. He's just as much under suspicion as ever he was. And Hargreaves too; I can find nothing which clears him. He was ten minutes alone in the Quad – so he says – before he went up to his rooms. Why didn't he go straight up to see Shirley? Isn't the explanation a little thin? But if he murdered Shirley at ten minutes past ten he might wait ten minutes before he returned in case even inexperienced persons like ourselves should realize that Shirley was only that moment dead. And then his character. I notice that you all tend to defer to Hargreaves, and to regard him as a
person of importance, and yet somehow none of you really like him very much. Is he a little too sure of himself, a little overpowering, something of a bully – or is it only that you are jealous of him? I don't know, but I suspect that he is not quite the sound, reliable, good citizen that he likes to think himself. No, Hargreaves as well as Mottram is still on the list.'

I felt that it was time that I interrupted him.

‘Really, Brendel,' I said, ‘this wretched theory of yours and Prendergast's is destroying itself. It seems to show that the murderer must have been Mottram or Hargreaves, but by applying your own methods I can show that that is all nonsense. Mottram was the only man amongst us who was a genuine friend and well-wisher to Shirley, and that surely exonerates him. As for Maurice Hargreaves, he was on better terms with Shirley than most of us were, and besides, how could he have shot him in his own rooms? Flesh and blood couldn't stand that. Won't you admit that if he did mean to shoot Shirley for some reason of which we know nothing he'd have chosen any other place than his own room to do it in? No, no, it won't do. Believe me, you're barking up the wrong tree with Mottram and Hargreaves.'

‘Even you, in this home of pure English! “Barking up the wrong tree” is admirable, and I thank you for it.'

I refused to be put off by his pleasantry.

‘It seems to me quite certain that we have got to abandon Prendergast's theory, and start afresh. Theories are all very well, but we must be prepared to abandon them when they don't work out. Think of the improbability of anyone who dined that night shooting Shirley.'

Brendel shook his head ever so slightly.

‘But consider the alternative! Are we to suppose that some enemy saw Shirley go up to Hargreaves' room, followed him there, found the revolver ready to his hand, and seized the opportunity? What a series of coincidences!
I've generally found, Winn, that, when the only alternatives are the improbable and the wildly improbable, it is wiser to concentrate on the former. However, we shall get no further by discussing that. Let's have a new list of suspects, for the old one is out of date. I insist on putting Hargreaves and Mottram on it until you have adduced some evidence to clear them, and you would add an unknown X, whom we haven't yet got into touch with, isn't that so?'

I nodded.

‘But there is one great difficulty, Winn, with regard to your unknown. He has to get into the college, and he has to get out again. If, as you would like to think, he's not a member of St Thomas's at all he has either to come in before nine o'clock, and hide himself somewhere, or else slip past your porter when he's not looking. Neither of those alternatives is an impossibility, but surely they're unlikely in the highest degree. And then again, having killed Shirley, the murderer has to secrete himself in college all through the night, or else run the gauntlet of the porter once again. Again I ask, is it likely? Wouldn't one of your lynx-eyed young men have noticed a stranger? Wouldn't someone have spoken to him? Of course there's the Fellows' door of which you spoke. Someone
may
have stolen a key, or even had a key made on purpose – but that at best is only a slender possibility, and there's no evidence to support it at all.'

‘Just one thing,' I interrupted him. ‘When I talked things over with Cotter we noticed that there was another way in, which you and I didn't discuss. I ought to have mentioned it before. You can come into the smaller Quadrangle through the President's Lodgings. Cotter took quite a lot of interest in the people who were in the Lodgings that night – I mean the servants and so forth.'

Brendel nodded appreciatively.

‘Cotter is a competent man; of course he would notice
that. I also took some little interest in that door and in those people. Unless the butler there is lying no one entered the Lodgings that night except the President, his daughter, his two guests and the servants. But that doesn't exclude the possibility that one of them may have slipped out into the Quadrangle and visited Hargreaves' rooms. Well, X is a comprehensive symbol, and must include for the time being all unknowns whether they entered through the President's Lodgings or otherwise. That's three suspects, Hargreaves, Mottram, and X – and by the way, after our last additions, X may be a man or a woman – but there's still a fourth possibility.'

‘Is there another?'

‘Yes, and suggested by yourself in the first instance. Doesn't it occur to you that we have given very little attention to Callendar and his boy? Yet we know that they were both in possession of the important facts; they both knew where Shirley had gone, they both probably knew where the revolver lay. And that boy is very much awake too, as you have reason to know. Why shouldn't one of them have done it, or even, why shouldn't they have been in collusion? One might have shot Shirley whilst the other watched to see that the coast was clear. We know of no motive, it is true, but we do not in any of the other cases. Besides, you probably know less about their thoughts and feelings than about those of your colleagues.'

He looked at me to see what impression his words had made. I felt puzzled how to reply.

‘Callendar is an old and trusted servant of the college,' I began, but Brendel interrupted me with, I thought, unnecessary haste.

‘Yes, yes, and Hargreaves is a respected and trusted Dean, but that's not the point. Callendar might have done it, just as, in the present state of our knowledge, Hargreaves might have. Anyhow, think over the new list of suspects.'

Twelve o'clock began to strike as he spoke, and he got up to go.

‘I will certainly,' I said, ‘but you may be quite sure that X is the only one on your new list who is ever likely to hang for the murder of Shirley.'

Every man has his special foible; my own was a harmless one, which had for many years given me a good deal of quiet pleasure. I had made it my boast that I could tell the character of any visitor in general outline by the nature of his knock on my door. An amiable weakness, no doubt, and a claim not susceptible of very accurate demonstration, but still it had provided me with much innocent amusement. My rooms were well adapted for the exercise of what I had come to look upon as my special gift. As is often the case at Oxford my oak, or outer door, opened into a small lobby, leading from which were two more doors, the one giving admittance to the larger of my two sitting-rooms, the other to my bedroom. A stranger, entering this lobby, was wont to pause irresolutely before the two doors, and this fact made his knock, when at length it came, especially instructive to me. If it was hesitating and self-exculpatory, I immediately translated it in some such words as these: ‘I trust that I have not knocked at the wrong door; if this is your bedroom, pray forgive me,' and I pictured to myself an individual timid and self-effacing. The pause too which elapsed between the arrival and the first knock was of great importance. A visitor of quick decision would soon make his choice of doors and put the matter to the test; one of cautious temperament would hesitate much longer before he made up his mind. I had even once been able to add to my collection a stranger so diffident and yet so anxious to do right that he had knocked simultaneously on both doors, on one with his right, on the other with his left hand. But many of my visitors gave information to me by their knocks of quite another kind. There was the angry knocker who, after a very brief pause, would strike loudly on one door or the other, as though he meant to say,
‘I really don't care if this is the right door or not, but damn you all the same for leaving me in doubt!' When such a knock came I diagnosed an egotist of the dominating type, and braced myself for an unpleasant interview. Sometimes again the knock would announce to me criticism of a more patient though equally disapproving kind, and I would guess a business man, or one of those self-chosen organizers and reformers, saying with his knuckles, ‘What an inefficient arrangement; why in Heaven's name don't you have a card pinned up to tell me which to choose?' Such deductions were only the A B C of my art; with my academic friends and pupils my technique was much more advanced. Undergraduates, I was wont to maintain, changed their methods from year to year. A freshman's knock was usually shy and apologetic; it seemed to say, ‘I'm compelled to do this, but perhaps I may be lucky enough to find you out – if so I shall waste no time in retiring.' Quite different the second-year man's rather noisy summons! ‘If anyone owns this college, it's probably I and my friends; I've brought up some work for you – not a great deal, but quite as much as you're entitled to expect – you may criticize it if you like, but I don't mind much what you say, and anyhow life is a pleasant thing at my age, and I can't waste too much time over my tutor.' The third-year man again would knock quite differently. My interpretation in his case was something after this kind. ‘Are you in? If so, please reply without delay. The schools are getting near, and I have no time to waste. It would be useful to discuss things with you, and I should like to get to business quickly, so please cut out unnecessary preliminaries.' The fourth-year man or the B.A. again had his own special method. His was the knock of a man who had learned how to use his time well, and yet had no need of excessive haste. ‘Are you in?' he would say. ‘If so I shall be glad to have some conversation with you. I
come as an intellectual equal to discuss subjects in which we have a common interest. I hope for your sake, as well as mine, that you are at home and disengaged.' Those who visited me often, of course, I could name before ever they entered my room. Mitton had a more apologetic knock than even the most callow of freshmen; when I heard him I used to think of a spinster district visitor uncertain of her reception. He seemed to be saying, ‘Could you be so very kind as to admit me for a few moments? I really won't stay longer, and whatever you do don't get up from your chair or put yourself out in any way.' How different was Hargreaves! His knock was that of the successful, dominating, almost bullying person, and it always exasperated me. It seemed to betoken a man who neither expected delay nor tolerated opposition, who assumed as a matter of course that his presence would be welcome and that everything and everyone else would wait on his convenience. The arrival of Trower was heralded by a terrific bombardment on the panels of my door. In early life he had taken part in military operations in Ashanti and other parts of Africa, and I always supposed that he had acquired there habits which he found it impossible to shake off. Savage chieftains, who had heard lions roaring by night, or gorillas drumming on their chests, or elephants trumpeting in the forest, might yet, I felt, have surrendered at discretion if Trower had thundered at the entrance of their huts. Even Doyne, who was in the room, like a draught of fresh air, before I had time to say ‘Come in,' was mild in his methods of knocking compared to Trower. As for Shirley, he used to enter without knocking at all, a habit for which I had never been able to excuse him.