Gaudy Night (12 page)

“I won’t get lost Padgett.” And she had, in fact, no difficulty in finding the mysterious Guest Room by the shifting stair and the non-existent Cottage. She noticed that its windows gave her a commanding view over the Old Quad, though the New Quad was out of range and the greater part of the new Library Building hidden by the Annexe Wing of Tudor.

Having had tea with the Dean, Harriet found herself seated in the Senior Common Room at an informal meeting of the Fellows and Tutors, presided over by the Warden. Before her lay the documents in the case—a pitiful little heap of dirty imaginations. Fifteen or so of them had been collected for inspection. There were half-a-dozen drawings, all much of a same kind with the one she had picked up on the Gaudy night. There were a number of messages, addressed to various members of the S.C.R., and informing them, with various disagreeable epithets, that their sins would find them out, that they were not fit for decent society and that unless they left men alone, various unpleasing things would occur to them. Some of these missives had come by post; others had been found on window-sills or pushed under doors; all were made up of the same cut-out letters pasted on sheets of rough scribbling-paper. Two other messages had been sent to undergraduates: one, to the Senior Student a very well-bred and inoffensive young woman who was reading Greats; the other to a Miss Flaxman, a brilliant Second Year scholar. The latter was rather more definite than most of the letters, in that it mentioned a name: “IF YOU DON’T LEAVE YOUNG FARRINGDON ALONE,” it said, adding an abusive term, “IT WILL BE THE WORSE FOR YOU.”

The remaining items in the collection consisted, first, of a small book written by Miss Barton:
The Position of Women in the Modern State.
The copy belonged to the Library, and had been discovered one Sunday morning merrily burning on the fire in the Junior Common Room in Burleigh House. Secondly, there were the proofs and manuscript of Miss Lydgate’s
English Prosody.
The history of these was as follows. Miss Lydgate had at length transferred all her corrections in the text to the final page-proof and destroyed all the earlier revises. She had then handed the proofs, together with the manuscript of the Introduction, to Miss Hillyard, who had undertaken to go through them with a view to verifying certain historical allusions. Miss Hillyard stated that she had received them on a Saturday morning and taken them to her own rooms (which were on Miss Lydgate’s staircase and on the floor immediately above). She had subsequently taken them into the Library (that is to say, the Library in Tudor, now about to be superseded by the New Library), and had there worked upon them for some time with the aid of some reference books. She said she had been alone in the Library at the time, except for someone, whom she had never seen, who was moving about in the bay at the far end. Miss Hillyard had then gone out to lunch in Hall, leaving the papers on the Library table. After lunch, she had gone on the river to put a group of First-Year students through a sculling-test. On her return to the Library after tea to resume work, she found that the papers had disappeared from the table. She had at first supposed that Miss Lydgate had come in and, seeing them there, carried them off to make a few more of her celebrated corrections. She went to Miss Lydgate’s rooms to ask about them, but Miss Lydgate was not there. She said she had been a little surprised that Miss Lydgate should have removed them without leaving a note to say what she had done; but she was not actually alarmed until, knocking again at Miss Lydgate’s door shortly before Hall, she suddenly remembered that the English Tutor had said that she was leaving before lunch to spend a couple of nights in Town. An inquiry was, of course, immediately set on foot but nothing had come of it until, on the Monday morning, just after Chapel the missing proofs had been found sprawled over the table and floor of the Senior Common Room. The finder had been Miss Pyke, who had been the first don to enter the room that morning. The scout responsible for dusting the S.C.R. was confident that nothing of the kind had been there before Chapel; the appearance of the papers suggested that they had been tossed into the room by somebody passing the window, which would have been an easy enough thing for anybody to do. Nobody, however, had seen anything suspicious, though the entire college, particular late-comers to Chapel and those students whose windows overlooked the S.C.R., had been interrogated.

The proofs, when found, had been defaced throughout with thick copying-ink. All the manuscript alterations in the margins had been heavily blacked out and on certain pages offensive epithets had been written in rough block capitals. The manuscript Introduction had been burnt, and a triumphant note to this effect pasted in large printed letters across the first sheet of the proofs.

This was the news with which Miss Hillyard had had to face Miss Lydgate when the latter returned to College immediately after breakfast on the Monday. Some effort had been made to find out when, exactly, the proofs had been taken from the Library. The person in the far bay had been found, and turned out to have been Miss Burrows, the Librarian. She, however, said that she had not seen Miss Hillyard, who had come in after her and gone to lunch before her. Nor had she seen, or at any rate noticed, the proofs lying on the table. The Library had not been very much used on the Saturday afternoon; but a student who had gone in there at about 3 o’clock to consult Ducange’s Late Latin Dictionary, in the bay where Miss Hillyard had been working, had said that she had taken the volume down and laid it on the table, and she
thought
that if the proofs had been there, she would have noticed them. This student was a Miss Waters, a second-year French student and a pupil of Miss Shaw’s.

A slight awkwardness had been introduced into the situation by the Bursar, who had seen Miss Hillyard apparently entering the Senior Common Room just before Chapel on Monday morning. Miss Hillyard explained that she had only gone as far as the door, thinking that she had left her gown there; but remembering in time that she had hung it up in the cloakroom of Queen Elizabeth Building, had come out immediately without entering the S.C.R. She demanded, angrily, whether the Bursar suspected her of having done the damage herself. Miss Stevens said, “Of course not, but if Miss Hillyard had gone in, she could have seen whether the proofs were already in the room, and so provided a
terminus quo,
or alternatively
ad quem,
for that part of the investigation.”

This was really all the material evidence available, except that a large bottle of copying-ink had disappeared from the office of the College Secretary and Treasurer, Miss Allison. The Treasurer had not had occasion to enter the office during Saturday afternoon or Sunday; she could only say that the bottle had been in its usual place at one o’clock on Saturday. She did not lock the door of her office at any time, as no money was kept there, and all important papers were locked up in a safe. Her assistant did not live in college and had not been in during the weekend.

The only other manifestation of any importance had been an outbreak of unpleasant scribbling on the walls of passages and lavatories. These inscriptions had, of course, been effaced as soon as noticed and were not available. It had naturally been necessary to take official notice of the loss and subsequent disfigurement of Miss Lydgate’s proofs. The whole college had been addressed by Dr. Baring and asked whether anybody had any evidence to bring forward. Nobody offered any; and the Warden had thereupon issued a warning against making the matter known outside the college, together with an intimation that anybody sending indiscreet communications to either the University papers or the daily press might find herself liable to severe disciplinary action. Delicate interrogation among the other Women’s Colleges had made it fairly clear that the nuisance was, so far, confined to Shrewsbury.

Since nothing, so far, had come to light to show that the persecution had started before the previous October, suspicion rather naturally centred upon the First-Year students. It was when Dr. Baring had reached this point of her exposition that Harriet felt obliged to speak.

“I am afraid, Warden,” she said, “that I am in a position to rule out the First Year, and in fact the majority of the present students altogether.” And she proceeded, with some discomfort, to tell the meeting about the two specimens of the anonymous writer’s work that she had discovered at and after the Gaudy.

“Thank you, Miss Vane,” said the Warden, when she had finished. “I am extremely sorry that you should have had so unpleasant an experience. But your information of course narrows the field a great deal. If the culprit is someone who attended the Gaudy, it must have been either one of the few present students who were then waiting up for vivas, or one of the scouts, or—one of ourselves.”

“Yes. I’m afraid that is the case.”

The dons looked at one another.

“It cannot, of course,” went on Dr. Baring, “be an old student, since the outrages have continued in the interim; nor can it be an Oxford resident outside the college, since we know that certain papers have been pushed under people’s doors during the night, to say nothing of inscriptions on the walls which have been proved to have come into existence between, say, midnight and the next morning. We therefore have to ask ourselves who, among the comparatively small number of persons in the three categories I have mentioned, can possibly be responsible.”

“Surely,” said Miss Burrows, “it is far more likely to be one of the scouts than one of ourselves. I can scarcely imagine that a member of this Common Room would be capable of anything so disgusting. Whereas that class of persons—”

“I think that is a very unfair observation,” said Miss Barton. “I feel strongly that we ought not to allow ourselves to be blinded by any sort of class prejudice.”

“The scouts are all women of excellent character, so far as I know,” said the Bursar, “and you may be sure that I take very great care in engaging the staff. The scrubbing-women and others who come in by the day are, naturally, excluded from suspicion. Also, you will remember that the greater number of the scouts sleep in their own wing. The outer door of this is locked at night and the ground-floor windows have bars. Besides this, there are the iron gates which cut off the back entrance from the rest of the college buildings. The only possible communication at night would be by way of the buttery, which is also locked. The Head Scout has the keys. Carrie has been with us fifteen years, and is presumably to be trusted.”

“I have never understood,” said Miss Barton, acidly, “why the unfortunate servants should be locked up at night as though they were dangerous wild beasts, when everybody else is free to come and go at pleasure. However as things are, it seems to be just as well for them.”

“The reason, as you very well know,” replied the Bursar, “is that there is no porter at the tradesmen’s entrance, and that it would not be difficult for unauthorised persons to climb over the outer gates. And I will remind you that all the ground-floor windows that open directly upon the street or the kitchen yard are barred, including those belonging to the Fellows. As for the locking of the buttery, I may say that it is done to prevent the students from raiding the pantry as they frequently did in my predecessor’s time, or so I am informed. The precautions are taken quite as much against the members of the college as against the scouts.”

“How about the scouts in the other buildings?” asked the Treasurer.

“There are perhaps two or three occupying odd bedrooms in each building,” replied the Bursar. “They are all reliable women who have been in our service since before my time. I haven’t the list here at the moment; but I think there are three in Tudor, three or four in Queen Elizabeth, and one in each of the four little dormer rooms in the New Quad. Burleigh is all students’ rooms. And there is, of course, the Warden’s own domestic staff, besides the Infirmary maid who sleeps there with the Infirmarian.”

“I will take steps, said Dr. Baring, “to make sure that no member of my own household is at fault. You, Bursar, had better do the same by the Infirmary. And, in their own interests, the scouts sleeping in College had better be subjected to some kind of supervision.”

“Surely, Warden—” began Miss Barton, hotly.

“In their own interests, said the Warden, with quiet emphasis. “I entirely agree with you, Miss Barton, that there is no greater reason for suspecting them than for suspecting one of ourselves. But that is the more reason why they should be cleared completely and at once.”

“By all means,” said the Bursar.

“As to the method used,” went on the Warden, “to keep check upon the scouts, or upon anybody else, I feel strongly that the fewer people who know anything about that, the better. Perhaps Miss Vane will be able to put forward a good suggestion, in confidence to myself, or to...”

“Exactly,” said Miss Hillyard, grimly. “To whom? So far as I can see, nobody among us can be taken on trust”

“That is unfortunately quite true,” said the Warden, “and the same thing applies to myself. While I need not say that I have every confidence in the senior members of the College, both jointly and severally, it appears to me that, exactly as in the case of the scouts, it is of the highest importance that we should be safeguarded, in our own interests. What do you say, Sub-Warden?”

“Certainly,” replied Miss Lydgate. “There should be no distinction made at all. I am perfectly willing to submit to any measures of supervision that may be recommended.”

“Well, you at least can scarcely be suspected,” said the Dean. “You are the greatest sufferer.”

“We have nearly all suffered to some extent,” said Miss Hillyard.

“I am afraid,” said Miss Allison, “we shall have to allow for what I understand is the well-known practice of these unfortunate—um, ah—anonymous-letter writers, of sending letters to themselves to distract suspicion. Isn’t that so, Miss Vane?”

“Yes,” said Harriet, bluntly. “It seems unlikely, on the face of it, that anybody would do herself the kind of material damage Miss Lydgate has received; but if we once begin to make distinctions it is difficult to know where to stop. I don’t think anything but a plain alibi ought to be accepted as evidence.”