The Weight of the Evidence (19 page)

‘Please.’ Appleby pushed his cup across the table. ‘And will you tell me about Pluckrose and the Vice-Chancellor’s bust?’

‘Well, well!’ Hissey took up a fish knife and jabbed it vaguely at his bacon and egg. ‘You are developing quite a zest for the anecdotal side of our university life, I can see. And, talking of zest, may I pass you the Worcester sauce?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Appleby, and bit into his toast and marmalade. ‘And I don’t know that it’s just idle curiosity. Anything you can tell might help.’

Hissey nodded thoughtfully. ‘Prisk’, he said, ‘has made no headway with it. In fact, its origin is quite obscure. Except, of course, that it has something to do with an orange.’

‘An orange!’ Appleby stared. ‘This business of Pluckrose and the bust had something to do with an orange?’

‘Dear me, no. I am speaking of the word zest. It appears to have come from Portuguese through the French. The affair of the bust had nothing to do with an orange; it might rather be said to have something to do with grapes.’

‘Grapes,’ said Appleby. ‘I see.’

‘Sour grapes.’ Hissey chuckled innocently at this witticism. ‘You see, a little time ago Prisk was elected a Corresponding Member of the Prussian Academy. And Evans rather thought it was a distinction that ought to have come to himself. It was a most trifling business, and there is no doubt that Evans made something of an ass of himself. Pluckrose, who, I am sorry to say, always liked to make a little trouble, maintained that this rivalry or whatever it may be called was seriously disrupting university business. He was talking in this vein at Mrs Tavender’s party. I expostulated with him – when, as it chanced, we were standing beside Evans’ bust. And then the thing happened. “I tell you,” he said, “that the man is green with envy.” And at that he took the bottle from his pocket and smashed it over the thing’s head. And there, in a manner of speaking, was Evans – as green as you please.’ Hissey picked up a teaspoon and stirred carefully at the air in the vicinity of his cup. ‘I suppose’, he added thoughtfully, ‘that Pluckrose might be described as a somewhat eccentric person.’

‘I suppose he might. Indeed, he’s appeared to me in that role once or twice already. But this takes the biscuit.’

‘The biscuit?’ Hissey looked methodically round the table. ‘Ah – I follow you. And the colloquialism does appear justified. It was a fantastic thing to do. Of course, there may have been more to the Prussian business than I am aware of. You might ask Prisk.’

‘At the moment, unfortunately, Prisk isn’t available. He had an accident in his car last night and is laid up with shock. We’ll call it an accident at the moment. Actually, it looks as if someone had monkeyed with the steering.’

‘Dear me! There has been much practical joking about the place of late, as you have no doubt heard. But I should hardly think that anyone–’

‘Quite so. It was much more like attempted murder. And the possibility is that when Pluckrose was killed it was really Prisk who was the intended victim. This affair of the steering-gear was a second shot. Tavender, who appears rather an acute person, envisaged something of the sort. If at first you don’t succeed, shy, shy again. Only this time it wasn’t a shy with a meteorite. It was a quick twist or two with a spanner.’

Hissey sat back and looked thoughtfully at Appleby. He reached himself a piece of toast and buttered it with unusual precision. ‘Has it occurred to you’, he asked mildly, ‘to canvass any other explanation?’

‘Inevitably.’ Appleby smiled. ‘It’s my business to do just that. There’s the possibility that the two affairs are quite unrelated. Prisk appears to be a person of somewhat irregular life–’

‘You don’t say so?’ Hissey suspended operations on the toast in order to register decent distress. ‘I had no idea of it. Or no
clear
idea.’ He fell again to comfortable mastication.

‘And that sort of thing can raise up enemies. Or there might be this much connexion between the two affairs. The spectacle of one professor being violently dealt with might have suggested the idea of dealing similarly with another.’

‘You don’t think it might be a political conspiracy?’ Hissey looked very acute. ‘There has been so much persecution of the learned all over the continent–’ Hissey broke off and suddenly looked more acute still. ‘Or it might have been Prisk himself!’

‘Ah.’

‘Suppose him to have murdered Pluckrose. It would be greatly to his advantage to establish the supposition that he had himself been in reality the intended victim upon that occasion. Interpreted so, the perpetration of a second shy, as you call it, would virtually clear him. But that is not all.’ Hissey was waving his knife quite dramatically in the air. ‘We must not overlook the possibility of yet further subtlety. Suppose that the meteorite found its true quarry but that Prisk was
not
the perpetrator. It is then possible to suppose that this attempt upon Prisk is an effort at confusing the trail. We are intended to spot the possibility of a guilty Prisk ingeniously clearing himself in the fashion to which I have just alluded. We are intended to go off down that blind alley.’ Hissey paused, decently solemn. Then he beamed irresistibly, much as if the conversation had turned to the subject of
Annotatiunculae Criticae
. ‘I can see’, he said, ‘that in the field of criminal investigation there are the potentialities of much intellectual dilectation. One’s wits can really be very fully employed. It is quite a new light to me.’

Appleby chuckled. ‘Don’t you ever read detective stories, sir?’

Hissey looked quite blank. ‘Detective stories?’ he asked. ‘But yes, of course. A species of fiction which I seem to remember that Merryweather was fond of. Or was it Grant?’

‘A species of fiction in which there would be some logical connexion between Pluckrose’s meteorite and the Vice-Chancellor’s bust. A beautiful world.’ Appleby sighed. ‘A meteorite green with moss and a Vice-Chancellor green with envy–’

‘Envy?’

It was Hobhouse’s voice which had interrupted. He had hurried into the little dining-room and now sat down between Appleby and Hissey. ‘Envy? You mean green with funk. I’ve just made an early call on Sir David. I thought he ought to know at once about this attempt on Prisk. So I told him. And what do you think happened? The man went green with funk.’

Appleby sighed. ‘Something to remember about Vice-Chancellors,’ he said. ‘They go green with funk.’

‘The plot thickens.’ Hissey took another piece of toast. ‘Is somebody going to drop a meteorite on Evans? A gory business. One is reminded of Shakespeare’s line.’

‘Shakespeare?’ said Appleby.

Hissey nodded placidly. ‘Making the green, one red.’

Going down the steps of the hotel, Hobhouse took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. ‘That was a really nasty joke – that one about Shakespeare. Pluckrose was one red, all right. You wouldn’t believe a human body held so much mess. I wouldn’t trust a man who can trot out a thing like that.’

‘My dear chap, we’re not going to trust anybody. And I’m not sure
Macbeth
wasn’t rather apposite. Macbeth, you know, got into a bloody business although he wasn’t altogether that sort of person – and then he just had to keep at it. This affair may have a pattern rather of that sort. Do you think Hissey might have murdered Pluckrose?

‘Might?’ Hobhouse grunted impatiently. ‘That’s just the sort of thing we’re going to give today to finding out. Who was where and when. But if you mean in point of character, I should say yes. A lot of horrid things have been done by just such mild-mannered little men.’

‘No doubt. But I don’t myself quite see Hissey murdering Pluckrose. In fact, I don’t as yet see any of them doing such a thing – except perhaps Prisk.’

‘There are one or two people we haven’t met yet. Somebody called Murn, for instance, who was Pluckrose’s assistant. Murn is apparently a much older man. Disgruntled, perhaps. There might be something in that.’ Hobhouse did not sound particularly hopeful. ‘Somebody must have done it, after all. Unless Sir David was right, and Pluckrose launched himself off the tower, meteorite and all.’

‘And then proceeded to complicate matters by a ghostly interference with Prisk’s car.’

Hobhouse grunted. ‘You know, I can’t help feeling we were on to something with that young man Church – the one the old fellow badgered about Galileo.’

‘We had certainly struck on something there. But I think it may be something substantially irrelevant. Dig about in a place like this and all sorts of odd things will turn up. The point is to bury the incidental ones again quick, before they begin to smell. But I don’t know that Church’s affairs will do that. And it’s possible that we may have to exhume them a bit further. I mean, they mayn’t be out-and-out irrelevant. I can see how they might just come in on the fringes of the case.’

‘The case?’ Hobhouse was ponderously sarcastic. ‘Would you be calling it that, now? I think I’d rather call it the mystery. The Pluckrose Mystery.’ Unlike Grant – or perhaps Merryweather – Hobhouse had no relish for romanticized versions of his craft. ‘And here we are. We’ll go up the tower. You ought to have seen this hoist and store-room and what-not long ago.’

‘No doubt. But, do you know, I think I’d like to have another look at the Wool Court first? A peaceful spot in which to order one’s thoughts.’ Appleby stopped to light his pipe. ‘On the Mysterious Affair at Nesfield.’

Once more they were walking the gloomy corridors of the university; once more a scurry of students and whisking gowns was about them. ‘Bit of a racket somewhere,’ said Hobhouse and opened the door which gave on the Wool Court. ‘Well, I’m blessed! Did you say peaceful?’

The fountain played soothingly – but amid a whirring and clanking uproar from the engineering shops opposite. And Appleby chuckled. ‘Light!’ he said. ‘Light on Lasscock. This is his favourite haunt here, you know. And something about it has been worrying me. Too quiet for him by half after Miss Dearlove’s orchard. But with these lathes and drills and things going it must be just about right for him. Homely, so to speak. I can understand his dropping in for a snooze. And if he’s sufficiently convalescent perhaps he’s here now. I’d like you to meet him.’

‘There’s somebody under the tower.’ Hobhouse had to raise his voice. ‘But it’s what’s-his-name – old Galileo.’

Professor Crunkhorn was standing much where the deck-chairs had stood. Had he been reclining in one he would probably have achieved greater physical comfort. For his neck was craned backwards and his gaze was directed severely at the top of the tower. ‘Amateur detective on the job,’ said Appleby. ‘Magnifying glass in one pocket and false whiskers in another. And no doubt he’s already left us several lengths behind. Now we engage him in a little learned talk.’ They advanced upon Crunkhorn, their footsteps inaudible amid the banging and clanking from over the way. ‘Good morning,’ said Appleby. ‘Have you still got Galileo in mind, sir?’

Crunkhorn, it might have been said, started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons. But this was no doubt the result of being roused from some deep scientific abstraction. ‘Galileo?’ he asked. ‘Ah, yes – to be sure. And how, we may ask, would he have regarded this affair of Pluckrose? How, that is to say, in its scientific bearings? He would have been interested to know that the meteorite weighs between one and two hundredweight. And he would have pointed out that all bodies falling near the earth gather speed downwards at a rate approximately equivalent to thirty-two feet per second in one second if there is no matter to obstruct their progress. Even the statical mechanics of Archimedes–’

Hobhouse, not very attentive to this abracadabra, was looking up at the windows of the tower and scratching his jaw. ‘I suppose’, he interrupted, ‘that if somebody managed to balance the thing on the sill of that projecting window and then levered it off it would fall quite plumb to earth?’

‘It would, of course, fall in what, for practical purposes, may be called a straight line. Provided Pluckrose’s chair had been correctly placed – and a preliminary experiment with some small missile would insure that being so – then as a method of murder the thing was foolproof.’ Crunkhorn frowned. ‘But it is all very puzzling, nevertheless.’

Appleby glanced curiously at the mathematician. ‘Puzzling?’ he said. ‘It’s puzzling from several angles.’

‘No doubt. The figure of speech is a poor one, as a moment’s reflection on the nature of angles will show you. But the sense of your observation I am not disposed to question. Altogether’ – and Crunkhorn, apparently feeling that he had been a shade pedantic, made a sort of dive after more familiar language – ‘the death of Pluckrose is a rum go.’

‘And you still think it may have been the result of a joke that miscarried?’

‘I do. And I ought to add that I was uneasy lest it might be my colleague Church who was involved. He shows at times a streak of brutal humour which I deprecate. But on consideration I am fairly sure that actual practical joking is not in his line. There is a young man called Pinnegar who would be more inclined to that sort of thing.’

‘Prisk’s assistant?’

‘Yes.’

‘On good terms with Prisk?’

‘I think not.’

‘In fact, a likely suspect?’

Crunkhorn looked unexpectedly distressed. ‘It appears to be my fate, Mr Appleby, to suggest suspicions. And that is foreign to my intention. I merely feel morally obliged to mention anything of a possibly significant kind.’

Mathematics and humbug, thought Appleby, don’t on the whole go together. The chances were that Crunkhorn’s profession was honest enough. And there were several directions in which he might help. ‘I wonder, sir, if you can make any suggestion on one very odd point? The meteorite turns out to be the property of the Duke of Nesfield. He bought it some time ago on the advice of somebody in the British Museum – presumably on the supposition that it might be of some scientific interest. And it was, apparently, subjected to expert examination. We may have to follow up all that. But the point at the moment is this: the person who made off with the thing from Nesfield Court was Pluckrose himself. Can you think of any reason why he should do that?’