An Oxford Tragedy (21 page)

‘I believe that he went to see Mary that same evening, but he'd reckoned without her spirit. I can't tell what passed, but I can guess. When she saw him as he really was she must have swept all his mean excuses and prevarications aside. It wasn't in her to act a lie to save his face and avoid comment, and so
she
sent that notice to
The Times
that you read this morning.

‘There's not much more to tell. Mary sent me a little
stiff formal note on Tuesday – her engagement had been broken off and she was going away for a few days; she thought that I might like to know this for I had always been a friend; there would be an announcement in the papers shortly. I knew that I had won then, but I waited to read the announcement, and when I saw it I knew a moment's happiness again. But I knew too that my part was played out and that I must go. I was still looking at
The Times
this morning when Brendel came in, and asked me to drive with him over the Downs. I don't know quite why I agreed, except that one can't refuse him when he's in earnest. We got out of the car somewhere near Wootton Bassett and then we walked over the downland. He'll tell you what we said to one another. Somehow I'd always felt that he guessed from the beginning.

‘A man like myself hasn't any affairs to set in order. I've no one dependent on me and no friends. That makes it all easy. And I know I'm right. How could I go on living, knowing all the time that I was a murderer? I couldn't face it. Brendel knows what I mean to do, I'm sure of that, though I've not told him. I've asked him to bring you up to-night, and he must know what I mean by that. He thinks I'm right, too, though he wouldn't say so. One sees pretty clearly when one's waiting for the end.

‘That's the whole story. Someone had to hear it, and you've always tried to be kind to me, though I don't think you ever saw very deep. Besides, there's one thing I want you to do. You must make quite sure that Mary is saved from any unnecessary grief or scandal. There's another letter here, which I've written for the rest of them all to read. It's the letter I ought to have written if I'd been the ordinary suicide. A nervous breakdown due to the failure of my research and the shock of the death of my friend Shirley –
that is what they must all think. After all what could be more natural? Overwork and overstrain, disappointment and a temporary loss of mental balance. A brilliant young scientist cut off on the threshold of his career! My God, I could make the Coroner's speech myself! Above all, Winn, never let Mary know; she has enough to bear without that.'

The letter stopped as abruptly as it had begun. I looked up and observed that Brendel was wiping his glasses with meticulous care just as he had done on that fatal evening a week before. When he spoke his voice was curiously gentle.

‘Yes, I knew that he meant to destroy himself, and I believe that he was right to do so. How could he go on living? It would have been a drawn-out torture, a daily death. But I was afraid that his nerve might fail him at the end. For he's right – there is too much of Hamlet in most of us, and though Mottram was a brave man in a way he was a weak man too. Twice perhaps he might have won happiness if he'd had the strength of will to grasp it, and twice he waited and did nothing. And then his work. Do you realize that if he'd stuck to that instead of allowing this hatred of Hargreaves to obsess him he, and not Wimpfheimer, would probably have been first with this discovery, and his name would be known now to every scientific man in Europe? No, fate forgives much, but it never forgives weakness. Read me that other letter.'

I opened the second envelope and read the contents aloud, but I cannot transcribe them. Mottram was a weakling, perhaps, but he had carried out his plan to the end. The latter was, as he had promised, the letter which he ought to have written – the letter of a nervous, hypersensitive man who had momentarily lost his mental equilibrium. To a coroner's jury it would appear pathetic enough, but to me who knew the truth it seemed a last
superb gesture, a piece of the finest acting, infinitely tragic.

I replaced it in its envelope and laid it on the table. Brendel looked at his watch and got up.

‘Come,' he said; ‘there are things which we must do.'

Brendei's words roused me to a sudden realization of our responsibilities.

‘We've been here half an hour and we haven't called the police or done anything to get help. What can we have been thinking of? There must be a telephone outside; let's find it and call them up at once.'

I sprang to my feet in a fury of belated impatience, but Brendel motioned me back to my chair.

‘No, not this time. It will be better if we go to fetch them. For us, at any rate, there is no mystery to solve, and nothing can be done for Mottram. But first put that document carefully in your pocket where it can't be seen, and the short letter back on the table where we found it. Thank you.'

He looked round the room carefully before we left it, and, from outside, locked the door. Then we stepped out into the night. Eleven o'clock was striking from all the clocks of Oxford as I got into the car and took the driver's seat. Brendel sat beside me in silence, but we had hardly gone a quarter of a mile when he suddenly told me to stop the car. Too much surprised to question him, I obeyed. He jumped briskly out, opened the bonnet in front, and for a few minutes so far as I could see busied himself with the engine. Then his head re-emerged from the bonnet.

‘Now see if she will start.'

I tried and failed.

‘What the devil have you been doing,' I exclaimed; ‘are you mad?'

‘Not at all, I've been making a little adjustment. Listen to me, and listen carefully. We can't afford to make any mistake of detail. It may not have occurred to you that, as I have often remarked, Inspector Cotter is a very competent man. He will certainly connect these two deaths with
one another, and it may cross his mind to examine our movements to-night rather carefully and to check up the times. If he does that he will certainly notice that we spent about half an hour in Mottram's laboratory before we sent for the police. How are we going to explain that without telling the truth about Mottram's confession? We've got to gain half an hour somehow. Listen. This is what you must say if you are questioned about our movements.' He paused and thought carefully for a moment before he continued his instructions. ‘We didn't look at the time but we left college somewhere after ten and before half past – probably about ten-twenty.'

‘But it was certainly not later than ten past,' I objected.

Brendel made a gesture of annoyance at my obtuseness.

‘Forget that, please. You will say that we left round about ten-twenty, so far as you remember. The car was cold and wouldn't start, and ran very badly on the way up. We must have reached the laboratory soon after ten-thirty. That's a quarter of an hour gained on the journey out. After discovering the body our first thought was to rush down for the police. We started and the car broke down here. For ten minutes we tried everything we could think of to start her up again, and we couldn't, so we hailed a passing car. Luckily they're few and far between on this road at this time of night. There's the other quarter of an hour accounted for. Have you got that all clearly in your mind?'

‘But you want me to perjure myself, Brendel,' I protested.

‘Of course I do. The important thing is that you should perjure yourself successfully. There mustn't be any bungling about this.'

‘I can't do it. I'm no use at deception and I shall break down if I try it.'

‘Rubbish. You can do it and you must. Can't you imagine what Miss Vereker's position will be if all the truth
comes out? If Mottram was prepared to kill himself rather than let that happen you must be prepared to tell a few very white lies. Are you agreed?'

I nodded helplessly. What else could I do?

‘Very well then. Now repeat the time-table of our movements to make sure that you have it all right.'

Obediently I did so, and Brendel signified his approval.

‘Good. Ah …'

At the end of the stretch he had observed the lights of an oncoming car, and running into the middle of the road he began wildly moving his arms and shouting. The car stopped with a jerk, just in time to prevent a further catastrophe, and a surprised and angry-looking face was thrust out of the window. It was then that I realized what a magnificent actor Brendel would have made. The calm, the lawyerlike precision, the air of command with which he had addressed me were all gone. In a moment he had become an excited and breathless person, who had lost his head in an emergency, and he poured out a flood of words upon the stranger.

‘There's been an awful accident. For Heaven's sake take us to the police station. A terrible tragedy. A man's killed himself, and our car's broken down. Get us to the police station as quickly as ever you can. He's killed himself and we must get help from the police …'

‘What's it all about?' said the stranger. ‘Has there been a car crash, and who's hurt, anyhow?'

‘No, no,' I interposed, ‘a man has committed suicide in his laboratory – at least we think so, and we were going to the police station to get help when our car broke down. Can you run us down there?'

‘Righto. Jump in. The station's just by the Town Hall, isn't it?'

Five minutes later we were standing before the sergeant on duty in the police station.

There, and during our drive back to the laboratory, Brendel poured out his story once more, and I corroborated the details. Yes, he had become very friendly with Mottram during his stay in Oxford. He was interested in his work too, and had often visited him in his laboratory to talk about it, and to see how he was getting on. He had been worried a good deal by Mottram's bad state of health and particularly by his obvious mental depression during the last few days. (The Herr Inspektor would remember that there had been a mysterious murder at the dead man's college, which had doubtless preyed on his mind.) That very morning he had persuaded Mottram to take a long drive with him out into the country in the hope that he might cheer him up, and he had seemed, certainly, happier when they came back. But he, Brendel, was still anxious about his friend, and had arranged to go up in the evening to the laboratory to fetch him home when he had finished his work, because he thought that Mottram should not be left too long alone. It was a fine night and Mr Winn (‘who is sitting by you') had offered to accompany him. Yes, they had left college about twenty minutes past ten. Then, followed the tale, as he had taught it to me. I winced as the sergeant jotted down the false times and details, but I corroborated each of them in turn.

‘We reached the laboratory about half past ten,' Brendel was saying. ‘I had the keys because Mottram had given them to me that afternoon, in case he didn't hear me from his room when I arrived, so we walked straight in, Mr Winn and I. We found his body in his chair, and a letter lying on the table, saying that he couldn't bear it all, and that he had committed suicide. I'm afraid that the terrible shock made us lose our heads rather; we ought to have found the telephone and called you up, but we were so upset and horrified that our first thought was to run to the car and drive down to the police station for help. You see I am a foreigner
and don't know about things in this country, and Mr Winn' (his voice sank to a whisper which I imagine I was not supposed to hear) … ‘was an old friend and colleague and temporarily quite unfit to think of what should be done. Yes, I did remember to lock up the room before we left. Then the car broke down on the way to the police station, and we couldn't make it start again, so we had to hail the first car that passed. You know the rest.'

The car stopped. We entered the building, and once more we stood in that room of death.