A Question of Proof (12 page)

Strangeways moved across the passage and stopped, quite startled, outside Wrench’s room. Good Lord, what have we here? This man has something very near a genius for teaching, and at breakfast I thought he was just the usual scrubby prep-school nonentity. The silence in the room was one of rapt attention. Wrench’s voice was confident and incisive, the faint Midland accent lending it a curious kind of distinction. Patient, illuminating, right on top of his work, Nigel said to himself. He’s obviously got brains. Brains enough to plan a subtle murder, and the single-minded desire of the bright lower-middle-class lad to get somewhere. I can imagine him remorseless against anything that stood in the path of his ambition. But how could Wemyss? Supposing there was something that threatened to ruin his career; supposing Wemyss knew of it? Stop! We only want impressions so far; theories must wait for facts.

The bell rang for the end of the hour. Doors vomited forth a stream of boys. Evans came along and dragged his friend towards his own classroom. ‘You’ve got to come and take the part of Hamlet, if we succeed in doing any work at all. The boys have heard that there’s a new sleuth on the premises, so you’ll probably have to give a lecture on crime.’ A few minutes found
Nigel
, stripped to the shirt sleeves, a lath sword in hand, confronting the Laertes of Anstruther. Nigel was no actor; but, if he lacked dramatic talent, he was equally lacking in self-consciousness, and his boisterous abandon soon affected the other players. There was, perhaps, more sawing of the air, o’erdoing Termagant, and out-heroding Herod than the refined Prince of Denmark would have cared for; still, the Elizabethan gusto of the actors compensated for much. Laertes was truculent, Hamlet elaborately ironic. A smallish, rabbit-faced boy, representing the king in a purple tablecloth and a pie-frill crown, began to declaim:

‘Set me the stoups of wine upon that table.’ Two advanced bearing lemonade bottles, while the court made ribald comments, not unconnected with the weakness of Mr. Gadsby.

‘
If Hamlet give the first or second hit
,

Or quit in answer of the third exchange
,

Let all the battlements their ordnance fire;

The King shall drink to Hamlet’s better breath;

And in the cup an onion shall he throw
–’

The King was not allowed to proceed any further. Yelps and howls of mirth convulsed the company. Michael realised that it would take them the rest of the hour to recover from giggling fits, so he suggested that Strangeways might be willing to answer any questions they liked to ask. The form leaped at the chance and
plied
him for many minutes, with the thirteen-yearold’s quaint blend of sophistication and naïveté. Then Anstruther asked him how he would have gone about solving the mystery of his father’s death, supposing he had been Hamlet. This opened the floodgates, and Nigel talked on and on to a spellbound audience. As the hands of the clock hovered over ten-thirty, he noticed that one of his audience had conceived an idea and wished to deliver it. He broke off. ‘Did you want to ask something special?’

‘Sir, excuse my interrupting –’ it was Stevens, the head boy, speaking – ‘but wouldn’t it be fine if we could find out who killed Wemyss by acting the murder over again, like Hamlet made the players do before the king.’ Strangeways received the suggestion with perfect gravity. ‘Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll remember it. And by the way,’ he said, striking while the iron is hot, ‘if any of you have any ideas about this business, I shall be in Mr. Evans’ room after lunch. Remember, anything you know about Wemyss, any little detail you noticed that struck you as queer, however unimportant it may seem, may help a great deal.’ The bell rang, and Nigel left the room having made twelve hero-worshippers, allies, and possibly too zealous assistants.

Michael and his friend strolled into the common room, where they were received with friendly nods. Tiverton stretched out his cigarette case to Strangeways, looking at him quizzically. Strangeways took one, lit it, and said, ‘Anything wrong? They aren’t opium,
are
they? Or have I a smut on the end of my nose?’ Tiverton smiled, ‘Another illusion shattered! I’ve never read a detective story in which the great man didn’t “carefully select a cigarette from the case,” and I’ve always wondered how and why he did it when the case was generally full of Players.’

‘Just padding,’ said Wrench, ‘they can never spin a single crime over three hundred pages, so they either have to fill up with carefully selected drinks and smokes or make their criminal commit a few more murders.’

Sims looked over the top of his
Daily Mirror
, ‘Let’s hope our local criminal doesn’t adopt your second alternative.’

Wrench frowned and exclaimed irritably, ‘Oh, God, why is everybody always bringing up this subject? Need we all become monomaniacs just because we all suspect that one of us
is
a maniac?’

There was a painful silence. It was the first public appearance of a truth, so to speak, and it got the welcome that truths usually get on their first appearance. Nigel looked down his nose in a noncommittal way, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts – actually listening hard for the intonations of voices. Griffin pushed back his chair and said:

‘A deep wedge of depression is moving quickly down from Iceland. There will be local soul-storms tomorrow.’

‘Look here, Wrench, that’s a nasty thing to say,’
exclaimed
Sims. ‘I mean, do you really think the murderer’s a maniac? It’s not a very agreeable thought.’

‘Don’t you worry, Sims, nobody would hurt you,’ Wrench replied, the contempt in his voice scarcely veiled. Sims ducked back behind his paper. Gadsby, who had been trying in vain to get a word in, rasped in his throat, collected eyes like a hostess, making a marked exception of Wrench’s, and said:

‘Rather a morbid subject this. Let’s change it. Well, Strangeways, getting any forrarder?’

‘That is not changing the subject,’ remarked Wrench belligerently.

Gadsby ignored the objection, and continued to stare expectantly at Nigel, with his rather grisly animation of face – the expression of a galvanised corpse.

‘Early days yet, Mr. Gadsby,’ said Nigel. ‘At present I’m so interested in the workings of a preparatory school that I have almost forgotten what I came here for.’

‘And what is your opinion of our workings?’ asked Wrench, a little on the defensive.

‘I think your boys are very lucky to be at school now and not thirty years ago. Nice common room you’ve got here. I’ve a dim recollection of the one at my own private school; no windows, one dusty skylight, a foil without the button in one comer and a broken brassie in another, on the table a Latin grammar without a cover, a bottle of invalid port, and a tooth tumbler.
A
very good expressionist picture of early twentieth century education.’

There was general laughter, to which Gadsby added a rather puzzled contribution, ‘There’s something in what you say,’ he remarked. ‘Talking of education, that reminds me, can’t find my French prose book.’ He got up and began looking into lockers that lined the far wall. ‘Suppose it can’t have got among your books by mistake, Tiverton?’

Tiverton turned round abruptly in his chair, ‘No, it could
not
. And will you kindly keep your nose out of my locker. You know perfectly well that there’s an unwritten law here against snooping into other people’s belongings in the common room.’

Sims looked up in a worried way and Strangeways looked down his nose again. The aggrieved Gadsby said, ‘Oh, very well, very well. Seem to have put my foot in it again. Got
Lady Chatterley
tucked away in there, have you?’

A further outburst from Tiverton was averted by the entrance of the headmaster, ‘Oh, there you are, Strangeways. Getting acquainted with the – a-ah – genius loci? Now, is there anything you want, any assistance we can give you?’

‘Well, yes, I should very much like a cup of tea.’ ‘Tea? Ah, yes, to be sure, tea. I will have a cup sent in to the morningroom for you.’

Nigel, looking, for him, almost bashful, asked if it might be a pot; to which the headmaster consented, though with the defeated air of one invited to take
part
in a round game whose rules he does not know. Nigel had only just poured out his third cup when Armstrong was announced. One or two preliminary remarks were passed, which made it clear to Nigel that the superintendent was sparring for a verbal opening, and he decided to get in his own word first.

‘As you know,’ he said, ‘I have come down with a rather vague commission to investigate this case in the interests of the school. I should like to assure you at the outset that I shall be doing so in no spirit of antagonism to yourself. Naturally, I hope that I may be able to find a solution which will help to restore the school’s reputation or, at least, damage it no further. But if I am forced to conclude that the criminal
is
connected with the school, I shall do my best to assist you in proving his guilt.’

‘That’s fair enough, sir.’

‘Like a cup of tea? No? A cigarette, then. Now, as to my line of action. I know that you professionals get sick to death of amateur theorising. I therefore suggest that we pool the facts, but each keeps his theories to himself until he has a pretty complete case.’

Armstrong studied his toecaps for a moment or two. He was faintly resentful of Strangeways having taken the initiative thus, nor was he too keen on a pooling of the facts, when all the facts at present were to be contributed by himself. On the other hand, the amateur was in a far better position than himself for the making of further discoveries. So, on the whole, it seemed best to strike the bargain. He therefore
proceeded
to give Strangeways a detailed and lucid summary of the course of the investigation up to date, ‘And you can see for yourself, sir,’ he concluded, ‘though we have decided to keep our theories to ourselves, that the facts so far are all pointing in one direction.’

‘Mrs. Vale and Evans?’

‘Yes,’ said Armstrong, rather surprised by the other’s matter-of-fact admission, ‘though I shouldn’t have expected you to agree so readily.’

‘Why not? Evans is one of my best friends, but I shan’t help him by shutting my eyes to all evidence against him. If I may sum up your own position, it is this. The murder was committed either by someone outside the school or someone inside. The movements of all vagrants known to be in the district have been satisfactorily accounted for, and besides, there was no sign of the body having been robbed. This, and the entire absence of possible motives, puts the first alternative practically out of court, though one must not altogether leave out of one’s reckoning the man whom Wrench said he spoke to at the beginning of the sports. Take the second alternative. The time-limit appears to be fixed as from one to two-thirty p.m. From about one-forty-five to two-thirty the hayfield was in full view of Griffin and the groundsman. From one-thirty to one-forty-five, there was no one about outside, but the murderer could not reckon on this and it would have been dangerous in the extreme for him to have murdered the boy in the haystack or
carried
his body to it at a time when anyone might come out of the school. There remains one to one-thirty, when every one’s movements are accounted for, except those of Evans and Mrs. Vale, who admit that they were actually on the spot where the body was found.’

‘That’s it, sir, the case against them seems the only possible one. But –’

‘But you haven’t got a single fact to support it except a piece of string that might come off anyone of millions of balls, and a silver pencil, which seems to be rather a broken reed itself.’

‘It’s extraordinary, Mr. Strangeways. I’ve never heard of a case where there were so few material clues. I’ve been over that field and all the grounds till I was sick. I’ve badgered the servants. I’ve searched the masters’ rooms, though you needn’t tell ’em that. Not a blessed thing to be found. And yet the motive: Mr. Evans and Mrs. Vale seem to have so much the strongest one.’

‘By the way, superintendent, I’m surprised that you had so little difficulty in obtaining confirmation of this motive.’

Armstrong looked uncomfortable, but he could not ignore the question in Strangeways’ remark, and was compelled to give an account of the stratagem he had employed in his last interview with Michael. Nigel stared ruminatively down his nose during this account, then said, ‘Well, you certainly don’t use kid gloves. Don’t think I am criticising you. You people
wouldn
’t have much chance of catching criminals if you kept to the rules which they break. But there are two points which counsel for the defence can make –’

Armstrong, who had started very much on the defensive against the amateur, was now entirely at ease and asked him to expound.

‘First, it seems unlikely that a murderer would admit from the beginning having been on the spot when the murder was committed. One would expect them either to have cooked up an alibi, or to have put the body somewhere else.’

‘It might be a bold kind of bluff, sir, to sidetrack suspicion by putting themselves in the most obviously suspicious position at the start.’

‘It might. That has been done, I know, but – well, anyway, my second point is this. Supposing the murder had been done from the motive you suggest, it’s unnatural that a murderer should be so easily induced to betray his motive. One doesn’t give up one’s key position without making a fight for it, more of a fight than Evans seems to have made, at least.’

‘I see your point, sir. Yes, I admit that hadn’t occurred to me. Of course, he might just have lost his nerve; though, after that little affair yesterday, my opinion of Mr. Evans’ nerve has gone up. Considerably. Well, I must be getting along. I can see that you don’t need much advice from me, but there is one line which I’d like to suggest. I can’t manage to get anything out of the boys myself –’

‘Damned little snobs, most of them, I bet,’ interrupted Nigel.

‘That’s just it, sir,’ said Armstrong gratefully, ‘and I believe that they are the only ones who might give us a line on –’