Gaudy Night (51 page)

“Who was it, Padgett?”

“Well, miss, not to put too fine a point upon it, miss, it was Miss Hillyard. She come out at the top end of the Garden, miss, and away to her own rooms. I follered ’er and see ’er go up. Going very quick, she was. I stepped out o’ the gate, and I see the light go up in her window.”

“Oh!” said Harriet. “Look here, Padgett. I don’t want anything said about this. I know Miss Hillyard does sometimes take a stroll in the Fellows’ Garden at night. Perhaps the person who sent the telephone call saw her there and went away again.”

“Yes, miss. It’s a funny thing about that there telephone call. It didn’t come through the Lodge, miss.”

“Perhaps one of the other instruments was through to the Exchange.”

“No, they wasn’t, miss. I ’ad a look to see. Afore I goes to bed at 11 o’clock, I puts the Warden, the Dean, and the Infirmary and the public box through, Miss, for the night. But they wasn’t through at 10:40, miss, that I’ll swear.”

“Then the call must have come from outside.”

“Yes, miss. Miss ’Illyard come in at 10:50, miss, jest afore you rang up.”

“Did she? Are you sure?”

“I remember quite well, miss, because of Annie passing a remark about her. There’s no love lost between her and Annie,” added Padgett, with a chuckle. “Faults o’ both sides, that’s what I say, miss, and a ’asty temper—”

“What was Annie doing in the Lodge at that hour?”

“Jest come in from her half-day out, miss. She set in the Lodge a bit with Mrs. Padgett.”

“Did she? You didn’t say anything about this business to her, did you, Padgett? She doesn’t like Miss Hillyard, and if you ask me, I think she’s a mischief-maker.”

“I didn’t say one word, miss, not even to Mrs. Padgett, and nobody could ’ave ’eard me on the ’phone, because, after I couldn’t find Miss Lydgate and Miss Edwards and you begins to tell me, I shuts the door between me an’ the settin’room. Then I jest puts me ’ead in afterwards and says to Mrs. Padgett, ‘Look after the gate, would you?’ I says, ‘I jest got to step over and give Mullins a message.’ So this here remains wot I might call confidential between you an’ me, miss.”

“Well, see that it stays confidential, Padgett. I may have been imagining something quite absurd. The ’phone call was certainly a hoax, but there’s no proof that anybody meant mischief. Did anybody else come in between 10.40 and 11?”

“Mrs. Padgett will know, miss. I’ll send you up a list of the names. Or if you like to step into the Lodge now—”

“Better not. No—give me the list in the morning.”

Harriet went away and found Miss Edwards, of whose discretion and common-sense she had a high opinion, and told her the story of the ’phone call.

“You see,” said Harriet, “if there
had
been any disturbance, the call might have been intended to prove an alibi, though I don’t quite see how. Otherwise, why try to get me back at eleven? I mean, if the disturbance was due to start then, and I was brought there as a witness, the person might have wangled something so as to appear to be elsewhere at the time. But why was it necessary to have me as a witness?”

“Yes—and why say the disturbance had already happened, when it hadn’t? And why wouldn’t you do as a witness when you had the Warden with you?”

“Of course,” said Harriet, “the idea might have been to make a disturbance and bring me on to the scene in time to be suspected of having done it myself.”

“That would be silly; everybody knows you can’t be the Poltergeist.”

“Well, then, we come back to my first idea. I was to be attacked. But why couldn’t I be attacked at midnight or any other time? Why bring me back at eleven?”

“It couldn’t have been something timed to go off at eleven, while the alibi was being established?”

“Nobody could know to a moment the exact time I should take coming from Somerville to Shrewsbury. Unless you are thinking of a bomb or something that would go off when the gate was opened. But that would work equally well at any time.”

“But if the alibi was fixed for eleven—”

“Then why didn’t the bomb go off? As a matter of fact, I simply can’t believe in a bomb at all.”

“Nor can I—not really,” said Miss Edwards. “We’re just being theoretical. I suppose Padgett saw nothing suspicious?”

“Only Miss Hillyard,” replied Harriet, lightly, “sitting in the Fellows’ Garden.”

“Oh!”

“She does go there sometimes at night; I’ve seen her. Perhaps she frightened away—whatever it was.”

“Perhaps,” said Miss Edwards. “By the way, your noble friend seems to have overcome her prejudices in a remarkable manner. I don’t mean the one who saluted you in the quad—the one who came to dinner.”

“Are you trying to make a mystery out of yesterday afternoon?” asked Harriet, smiling. “I think it was only a matter of introductions to some man in Italy who owns a library.”

“So she informed us,” said Miss Edwards. Harriet realised that, when her own back was turned, a good deal of chaff must have been flying about the History Tutor’s ears. “Well,” Miss Edwards went on, “I promised him a paper on blood groups, but he hasn’t started to badger me for it yet. He’s an interesting man, isn’t he?”

“To the biologist?”

Miss Edwards laughed.

“Well, yes—as a specimen of the pedigree animal. Shockingly overbred, but full of nervous intelligence. But I didn’t mean that.”

“To the woman, then?”

Miss Edwards turned a candid eye on Harriet.

“To many women, I should imagine.”

Harriet met the eye with a level gaze.

“I have no information on that point.”

“Ah!” said Miss Edwards. “In your novels, you deal more in material facts than in psychology, don’t you?”

Harriet readily admitted that this was so.

“Well, never mind,” said Miss Edwards; and said goodnight rather brusquely.

Harriet asked herself what all this was about. Oddly enough, it had never yet occurred to her to wonder what other women made of Peter, or he of them. This must argue either very great confidence or very great indifference on her own part; for, when one came to think of it, eligibility was his middle name.

On reaching her room, she took the scribbled note from her bag and destroyed it without re-reading it. Even the thought of it made her blush. Heroics that don’t come off are the very essence of burlesque.

Thursday was chiefly remarkable for a violent, prolonged and wholly inexplicable row between Miss Hillyard and Miss Chilperic, in the Fellows’ Garden after Hall. How it started or what it was about, nobody could afterwards remember. Somebody had disarranged a pile of books and papers on one of the Library tables, with the result that a History Schools candidate had arrived for a coaching with a tale of a set of notes mislaid or missing. Miss Hillyard, whose temper had been exceedingly short all day, was moved to take the matter personally and, after glowering all through dinner, burst out—as soon as the Warden had gone—into a storm of indignation against the world in general.

“Why
my
pupils should always be the ones to suffer from other people’s carelessness, I don’t know,” said Miss Hillyard. Miss Burrows said she didn’t see that they suffered more than anybody else. Miss Hillyard angrily adduced instances extending over the past three terms of History students whose work had been interfered with by what looked like deliberate persecution.

“Considering,” she went on, “that the History School is the largest in the College and certainly not the least important—”

Miss Chilperic pointed out, quite correctly, that in that particular year there happened to be more candidates for the English School than any other.

“Of course you would say that,” said Miss Hillyard. “There may be a couple more this year—I dare say there may—though why we should need an extra English tutor to cope with them, when I have to grapple single-handed—”

It was at that point that the origin of the quarrel became lost in a fog of personalities, in me course of which Miss Chilperic was accused of insolence, arrogance, inattention to her work, general incompetence and a desire to attract notice to herself. The extreme wildness of these charges left poor Miss Chilperic quite bewildered. Indeed, nobody seemed to be able to make anything of it, except, perhaps, Miss Edwards, who sat with a grim smile knitting herself a silk jumper. At length the attack extended itself from Miss Chilperic to Miss Chilperic’s fiancé, whose scholarship was submitted to scathing criticism.

Miss Chilperic rose up, trembling.

“I think, Miss Hillyard,” she said, “you must be beside yourself. I do not mind what you say about me, but I cannot sit here while you insult Jacob Peppercorn.” She stumbled a little over the syllables of this unfortunate name, and Miss Hillyard laughed unkindly. “Mr. Peppercorn is a very fine scholar,” pursued Miss Chilperic, with rising anger as of an exasperated lamb, “and I insist that—”

“I’m glad to hear you say so,” said Miss Hillyard. “If I were you, I should make do with him.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” cried Miss Chilperic.

“Perhaps Miss Vane could tell you,” retorted Miss Hillyard, and walked away without another word.

“Good gracious!” cried Miss Chilperic, turning to Harriet, “Whatever is she talking about?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” said Harriet.

“I don’t know, but I can guess,” said Miss Edwards. “If people will bring dynamite into a powder factory, they must expect explosions.” While Harriet was rooting about in the back of her mind for some association that these words called up, Miss Edwards went on:

“If somebody doesn’t get to the bottom of these disturbances within the next few days, there’ll be murder done. If we’re like this now, what’s going to happen to us at the end of term? You ought to have had the police in from the start, and if I’d been here, I’d have said so. I’d like to deal with a good, stupid sergeant of police for a change.”

Then she, too, got up and stalked away, leaving the rest of the dons to stare at one another.

O well-knit Samson! strong-jointed Samson! I do excel thee in my rapier, as much as thou didst excel me in carrying gates. I am in love, too.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Harriet had been only too right about Wilfrid. She had spent portions of four days in altering and humanising Wilfrid, and today, after a distressful morning with him, had reached the dismal conclusion that she would have to rewrite the whole thing from the beginning. Wilfrid’s tormented humanity stood out now against the competent vacuity of the other characters like a wound. Moreover, with the reduction of Wilfrid’s motives to what was psychologically credible, a large lump of the plot had fallen out, leaving a gap through which one could catch glimpses of new and exciting jungles of intrigue. She stood aimlessly staring into the window of the antique shop. Wilfrid was becoming like one of those coveted ivory chessmen. You probed into his interior and discovered an intricate and delicate carved sphere of sensibilities, and, as you turned it in your fingers, you found another inside that, and within that, another again.

Behind the table where the chessmen stood was a Jacobean dresser in black oak, and, as she stood at gaze, a set of features limned themselves pallidly against the dark background, like Pepper’s ghost.

“What is it?” asked Peter over her shoulder; “Toby jugs or pewter pots or the dubious chest with Brummagem handles?”

“The chessmen,” said Harriet. “I have fallen a victim to them. I don’t know why. I have no possible use for them. It’s just one of those bewitchments.

“‘The reason no man knows, let it suffice What we behold is censured by. our eyes.’ To be possessed is an admirable reason for possessing.”

“What would they want for them, I wonder?”

“If they’re complete and genuine, anything from forty to eighty pounds.”

“Too much. When did you get back?”

“Just before lunch. I was on my way to see you. Were you going anywhere in particular?”

“No—just wandering. Have you found out anything useful?”

“I have been scouring England for a man called Arthur Robinson. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“Nor to me. I approached it with a refreshing absence of prejudice. Have there been any developments in College?”

“Well, yes. Something rather queer happened the other night. Only I don’t quite understand it.”

“Will you come for a run and tell me about it? I’ve got the car, and it’s a fine afternoon.” Harriet looked round, and saw the Daimler parked by the kerb.

“I’d love to.”

“We’ll dawdle along the lanes and have tea somewhere,” he added, conventionally, as he handed her in.

“How original of you, Peter!”

“Isn’t it?” They moved decorously down the crowded High Street. “There’s something hypnotic about the word tea. I am asking you to enjoy the beauties of the English countryside, to tell me your adventures and hear mine, to plan a campaign involving the comfort and reputation of two hundred people, to honour me with your sole presence and bestow upon me the illusion of Paradise—and I speak as though the pre-eminent object of all desire were a pot of boiled water and a plateful of synthetic pastries in Ye Olde Worlde Tudor Tea Shoppe.”

“If we dawdle till after opening-time,” said Harriet, practically, “we can get bread-and-cheese and beer in the village pub.”

“Now you have said something.

The crystal springs, whose taste illuminates
Refined eyes with an eternal sight,
Like tried silver, run through Paradise
To entertain divine Zenocrate.”

Harriet could find no adequate reply to this, but sat watching his hands as they lay lightly on the driving-wheel. The car passed on through Long Marston out to Marston and Elsfield. Presently he turned it into a side-road and thence into a lane and there drew up.

“There comes a moment when one must cease voyaging through strange seas of thought alone. Will you speak first, or shall I?”

“Who is Arthur Robinson?”

“Arthur Robinson is the gentleman who behaved so strangely in the matter of a thesis. He was an M.A. of York University, held various tutorships from time to time in various seats of learning, applied for the Chair of Modern History at York, and there came up against the formidable memory and detective ability of your Miss de Vine, who was then Head of Flamborough College and on the examining body. He was a fair, handsome man, aged about thirty-five at the time, very agreeable and popular, though hampered a little in his social career by having in a weak moment married his landlady’s daughter. After the unfortunate episode of the thesis, he disappeared from academic circles, and was no more heard of. At the time of his disappearance he had one female child of two years of age and another expected. I managed to hunt up a former friend of his, who said that he had heard nothing of Robinson since the disaster, but fancied that he had gone abroad and changed his name. He referred me to a man called Simpson, living in Nottingham. I pursued Simpson, and found that he had, in the most inconvenient way, died last year. I returned to London and dispatched sundry members of Miss Climpson’s Bureau in search of other friends and colleagues of Mr. Arthur Robinson, and also to Somerset House to hunt through the Marriage and Birth Registers. That is all I have to show for two days of intensive activity—except that I honourably delivered your manuscript to your secretary.”