A Question of Proof (7 page)

‘About what time was that?’

‘Ten or fifteen minutes before the sports began, I should say. Why?’

‘Well, sir, it is possible that the body was not placed in the haystack till some time after the murder. I am naturally wondering where it might have been hidden in the interval, if this theory should be correct.’

‘No, there were no bodies lying about in the shed when we went in. Couldn’t have been hidden, either, because Mouldy yammered something about his sacks having been moved, and shifted them all back; so we should have seen if there’d been anything behind them.’

Armstrong creaked slightly in his chair. ‘Well, that is about all then, sir. You didn’t happen to see Mrs. Vale after lunch, did you?’

‘I think she came out by the garden gate once or twice, to see about the seating accommodation.’

‘Anyone else about?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Oh, yes, Sims walked up and down the path for a bit. Came out as we were bringing hurdles in. And, I was forgetting. Just before that Evans walked along, from the direction of the wood. That’s all.’

‘Then I won’t trouble you any further. Can you send me Mr. Wrench?’

Armstrong beamed upon Wrench as he sat down. If he noticed the nervous tic in the master’s left eyelid,
and
the way his hands gripped the arms of his chair, he certainly did not betray the fact.

‘Now, sir, I expect you younger gentlemen know some things about the boys that the older ones don’t. Perhaps you may be able to give me some suggestion as to why anyone should want to kill this lad?’

‘Oh, really, I’ve no idea. Of course he wasn’t popular with the boys, though some of them played up to him because of his money; or with the staff, either, for that matter.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, he ragged anyone if he thought he could get away with it; in a nasty, malicious way, too.’

‘I see. Though I don’t imagine, from what I’ve seen of your colleagues, that he would get much rope from any of them.’

‘Good Lord, he twisted Gadsby round his finger, and as for Sims –’ Wrench broke off in some confusion.

‘I quite understand your hesitation, sir. Very natural under the circumstances. But, of course, even we policemen are not so stupid as to suppose that anyone would commit murder from such a motive. All I’m trying to do is to get an idea of the psychology of the victim. It often gives one a line on the murderer, you know.’

‘Oh, well, if that’s all,’ said Wrench, still rather uneasily, ‘I suppose there’s no harm in telling you that Wemyss did his best to make Sims’ life a hell for him.’

Armstrong elicited some circumstantial evidence for this; then, feeling Wrench to be ‘ripe,’ as he put it, moved to the attack.

‘All I want now, sir, is an account of your own movements between lunch and two-thirty.’

Wrench visibly braced himself in his chair, and began to finger his pink tie. Armstrong noticed a slight coarsening in his accent as he began to speak.

‘Aow. I was in the school – mucking about, you know.’

‘You must try to be more explicit, sir.’

‘Well, after lunch I went up to my bedroom, and lay down for a bit; feeling rather seedy. Then I felt better and thought I’d read. I remembered I’d left my book in the common room and went down to fetch it. Tiverton was there, and –’

‘May I ask what was the book, sir?’

Wrench looked up quickly, blushing. ‘I really don’t see what – it was a French book, if you want to know,
Mademoiselle de Maupin
,’ he spoke defiantly.

‘I see. A school textbook. They didn’t teach us French when I was at school. And then?’

‘Then I read for a bit, and changed, and came down.’

‘You were late for the first race, weren’t you, sir?’

‘Late? No. Who put that in your head?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir. Some mistake. I understood that you were not with the other masters at the beginning of the sports.’

‘No more I was. I was talking with a parent.’

‘Who was that, sir?’

‘Funny thing, I don’t know,’ said Wrench slowly. ‘Tall, blue-eyed chap, in a brown suit. He came up and asked me how ‘Tom’ was getting on. Hadn’t an earthly who he was, but I told him ‘Tom’ was doing all right. That often happens at these beanos. Parents come up to you and expect you to know who they are and all about their boys.’

‘Very difficult it must be, sir. Well, that is all I need ask you. Thank you. Good evening, sir.’

V

Obverse and Reverse

EVENING OF THE
next day. They have cleared supper away in the common room. Tiverton, Evans and Griffin have congregated in the former’s sitting-room; Wrench is on duty; Gadsby and Sims are in the village, and expected back presently. The superintendent, who has been poking and pottering about all day, is finally gone, and with his going the oppression in the air seems to have lifted a little. Other persons, too, have come and gone, leaving the atmosphere still acrid and poisonous, as though after a gas attack; reporters from local and London newspapers, smelling out scandal for their titled proprietors like jackals scenting down a corpse for rather seedy lions. Reporters with notebooks; reporters with telegraph forms; reporters with cameras, rather baffled to find no ‘sorrowing relatives’ whose contorted features they may serve up next morning as a breakfast relish for their great public; reporters courteous, insinuating, truculent, well-meaning, ignoble, acute or obtuse – the whole swarm has swept down and swept away. The night air seems to sigh with relief, and even the murder-stained
hayfield
may be feeling cleaner for the departure of the carrion birds who hovered over it. Millions of eyes have fastened avidly upon the news which, in its local evening paper variety, Tiverton is now declaiming to Evans and Griffin.

SHOCKING FATALITY AT PRIVATE SCHOOL

TITLED VICTIM

HAYMAKERS’ SENSATIONAL
7:15
P.M. DISCOVERY

CORD ROUND SCHOOLBOY’S NECK

‘Haymakers working in a field adjoining Sudeley Hall Preparatory School late yesterday evening were horrified to find the body of a boy underneath one of the stacks. The fatal discovery was immediately communicated to the headmaster, the Rev. P.R. Vale, M.A., who identified the body as that of his nephew, the Hon. Algernon Wyvern-Wemyss, a pupil at the school. The deceased, it transpires, had been brutally strangled, a thin cord tied round the neck being the cause of death. Superintendent Armstrong and Sergeant Pearson, of the Staverton force, were quickly on the scene and our correspondent learns that they have discovered clues which should lead to a speedy arrest. The headmaster, who is also president of the Staverton and District Archaeological Society, in an interview stated that he suspected the crime to be the work of some vagrant and attributed the
wave
of violence which has lately been sweeping the country to the disastrous policy of the late Labour government. In reply to a question, the Rev. Vale strongly deprecated the suggestion that a practical joke might have been at the back of this shocking fatality. The deceased, who was universally popular with his schoolmates, was the son of –’

‘Blah! Blah! Blah!’ interrupted Griffin rudely, ‘give it a rest.’

‘Oh, here’s something more to your taste,’ went on Tiverton. ‘Mr. Edward Griffin, the old Oxford rugby blue, who is on the staff of Sudeley Hall, on being asked for his theory about the crime, intimated that he had nothing to say.’

‘I intimated that that reporter would get shot out on his face if he didn’t clear off pretty quick.’

‘Which was impolitic of you, Edward,’ said Evans. ‘He’ll have it in for you now. Don’t you see, he’s already contrived to make you look slightly suspect.’

Griffin snatched the paper and read through the whole column. ‘Good Lord, I believe you’re right. What with him and the bobbies, I shall be getting a hunted feeling before long.’

‘The superintendent got after you, did he?’ Tiverton asked.

‘Did he not? A nasty, suspicious blighter. Some fool must have told him what I said at breakfast in the morning.’

‘Not guilty,’ said Tiverton.

‘Nor me,’ said Evans. ‘As a matter of fact, I think
I
’m the chief suspect at the moment. The ‘clues which should lead to a speedy arrest’ were my silver pencil. He found it in the haystack.’

Griffin looked concerned. ‘I say, that’s bad. I take it you are not the perpetrator of the outrage; or if you want any lying done, just tell me.’ He spoke lightly, but Michael became aware of a faint undercurrent of anxiety in his voice.

‘That’s very nice of you, Edward, but I hope it won’t be necessary. Curiously enough, I am not the murderer.’

‘That pencil’s a bit awkward, though,’ said Tiverton. ‘How did you explain it?’

‘Well, I told him it must have dropped out when I was ragging about during the hay battle.’

Tiverton looked as if he was about to ask another question, but refrained, saying instead, ‘In detective stories it would have been planted there by the criminal to throw suspicion on you.’

‘Perhaps it was,’ laughed Griffin, ‘as the most unpopular master at St. Botolph’s, you must have plenty of enemies.’

Michael reached forward to the table, took up a pile of books, and sprayed them with great deliberation over Griffin’s head.

‘
My
books, thank you,’ Tiverton said. ‘But look here, seriously, are you sure you lost your pencil at the hay battle? I thought I saw you using it yesterday morning. I mean, if you
did
have it yesterday, or some one found it after the hay battle and didn’t give it
back
– well, you see, it follows that it must have been planted there,
and by some one in this place
.’

The tone of the assembly suddenly grew rather grave. Michael was feeling ashamed to be deceiving men he was fond of. But was he deceiving them? He couldn’t for the life of him remember when he
had
used the pencil last. After all, it mightn’t have dropped out when he was with Hero at all. But who on earth could want to –?

‘I see what you mean,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes. It’s an unpleasant thought, isn’t it? If this person dislikes me sufficiently to want me hanged, he is presumably willing enough to bump me off himself if the law fails to come up to scratch.’

Tiverton, who had been manipulating a coffee machine in a rather spinsterish way, poured out three cups.

‘I’m inclined to think, though,’ he said, ‘that you may get a reprieve. Has it struck you two what is the oddest thing about this business?’

‘No.’

‘Proceed, Holmes, I am all attention.’

‘Well, where did Wemyss go after school yesterday? As far as we know he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. And secondly, who or what could have induced him to go off in that curious manner, apparently without letting anyone know or leaving any trace behind him? I believe, if we could answer the second question, the mystery would be solved.’

How right Tiverton was in this conjecture they were not to realise for some time.

‘You amaze me, Holmes,’ said Griffin, ‘but I must confess that I still don’t see where Evans’ reprieve comes in.’

‘Unless he was running away or playing truant – and I don’t think that very likely, apart from the fact that as far as we know no one saw him in the village or on the roads – some outside agency must have induced him to leave the premises.’

‘A fine period,’ commented Griffin with admiration.

‘I suggest it must have been a note of some sort from some one he knew, or he wouldn’t have gone; but not from anyone on the staff here, for masters do not make written assignations with boys. Wemyss would have felt there was something fishy about that.’

‘I sincerely trust they do not,’ said Griffin primly. He turned to Evans. ‘By Jove, Michael, he’s right, isn’t he?’ Griffin had the faculty of spontaneous enthusiasm, and Tiverton’s face reflected the warmth of his approval.

Evans said, ‘So we look for some one outside the school who knew him?’

‘Or a boy in the school. Don’t forget that possibility,’ said Tiverton. Further exploration of the subject was interrupted by the arrival of Gadsby and Sims. Gadsby was unusually Cock and Featherish, and even Sims appeared, for him, quite on top of the world. Gadsby
sat
down and helped himself, unasked, to coffee and a cigarette. Then he delivered an ominous gargling noise and got under way.

‘Just been taking old Simmie along for a quick one. He seemed a bit down in the mouth – police been chivvying him or something – so I prescribed a dose of mother’s special, didn’t I, Simmie?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Thought we should never get there, though. Sims saw a yellow-bottomed gorse-tit or something in the hedge, so we had to stop while he stalked it. Can’t think what you see in these Godforsaken birds, Sims. Oh, and talking of birds, where’s Wrench? Stalking the fair Rosa, I suppose.’

‘What on earth are you talking about, Gadsby?’ said Tiverton, with a voice like a cold douche. Gadsby was too well lit up to be extinguished by this. He continued:

‘Meantessay you haven’t noticed her making eyes at meals? Dirty work at the crossroads, you mark my words. It’s a case.’

Griffin and Evans shuddered ostentatiously. Sims drew himself upright in his chair; he was pink and trembling. He stuttered, ‘R-really, Gadsby, that’s a most unneces-nerecess, er, uncalled-for remark. That sort of thing’s d-disgusting – t-talking about ‘bub-bub-birds’; j-just because some people – these s-stuck-up s-society people – choose to bub-behave like amilals, animals – I don’t think it’s f-funny at all,’ he concluded, in dignified confusion. Every one was
rather
embarrassed, except Gadsby, who opened his eyes in an exaggerated fashion and said:

‘Good Lord, who’d have thought it? Sims turning pious. I say, Simmie, how many did you have when my back was turned?’

The following silence was so acute that it penetrated even Gadsby’s hide, and he remarked, a bit huffily, that he supposed the subject had better be changed. This he proceeded to do, crashing his gears mercilessly.