The Weight of the Evidence (27 page)

‘Lasscock, I peg you to reflect–’

‘–only, you know, my eyes were closed, likely enough, and perhaps I had put
The Times
over my face as well. I find I work things out best that way. Well, at eleven o’clock the bell went – and a nasty great clankin’ thing it is, that always wak – stops me from workin’ things out at once. And I started up, I dare say. And there was Pluckrose, sittin’ opposite. And then down this hijjus great thing came.’ Lasscock, for one who had to guard against unpleasant incidents lying on the mind, related this catastrophic circumstance with remarkable composure. ‘Nasty mess it made too. I was a bit splattered, if you don’t mind my mentioning it.’

The Vice-Chancellor had turned pale beneath the white halo of his hair. ‘You mean to say’, he almost whispered, ‘that you
saw
Pluckrose killed?’

‘Just that. Distressin’, of course. But then it was Pluckrose, you know – which made it not quite so bad.’

Hobhouse’s pencil, which had been racing, snapped. ‘And you mean to say’, he almost shouted, ‘that you just cleared out?’

‘Of course I went over to have a look.’ Lasscock fished in a pocket and placidly handed Hobhouse a fountain pen. ‘There could be no doubt that the feller was dead; indeed spectacular is the only term you could apply to the result the nasty thing had achieved. Well, I picked up my cushion – I commonly take a cushion out there – and came into the main buildin’ – intendin’, you know, to mention the affair to the porter.’

‘Mention – !’

‘It seemed the proper thing to do at once. I don’t think gals go much into the court, but one wouldn’t like one to stumble on just that. Though it’s surprisin’ what gals can stomach: know Miss Godkin?’

Hobhouse made a strangled noise. ‘And
did
you see the porter?’

‘As a matter of fact I didn’t. I looked at my watch as I was goin’ down the corridor and saw that my next lecture was a bit overdue. So I felt I’d better leave Pluckrose for the time – the dead to bury their dead, you know – and get on with the business of the livin’. If Nesfield students can be described as livin’, that is to say.’

‘And
did
you lecture?’

‘Well now, I didn’t. I went back to my room for my gown and then a dam’ queer thing happened. I began to feel dam’ queer. After all, I suppose an affair like this Pluckrose business doesn’t happen every day.’

‘It certainly does not.’ Hobhouse spoke with fervent emphasis. ‘So you felt queer. And then?’

‘All I could do for a bit was just to sit down and recover. And by the time that was over it was too late for the lecture; all the students would have gone. So I went along the corridor again and peeped out at the court. And there they all were, fussin’ round the body. The thing, you might say, had been taken out of my hands. So I got my hat and coat and went home to my lodgin’s.’

‘And it doesn’t occur to you–’

‘I’m glad that you’ve got round to me eventually.’ Lasscock tapped his fingers together precisely. ‘It’s comfortin’ to be able to feel that the police are thorough, even if a bit slow. Gives one a sense of security. And although I didn’t see anythin’ and can add nothin’ to your case, it’s obviously the right thing that you should come to me in a routine way. But mind you have a clearer notion of what I say than that engagin’ but incompetent feller in the orchard.’

‘Mr Lasscock’ – this time Hobhouse tried speaking more in sorrow than in anger – ‘do you realize that you are our only witness that the crime happened just on eleven o’clock?’

‘Is that so?’ Lasscock looked only mildly interested. ‘And might that be of importance to your investigations? The possibility hadn’t occurred to me. But then I am quite schooled in that sort of thing.’

During the latter part of Lasscock’s narration Sir David Evans had been sitting at his desk with his beautiful head sunk meditatively in his hands; now he looked up and fixed the historian with an extremely penetrating glance. ‘And you mean to say’, he asked, ‘that you saw
nothing
except what you have described?’

‘Nothin’ at all. How could I, my dear Evans? I was in – in a considerable abstraction until the moment the thing fell.’

‘Nothing in the nature of an – an appearance at one of the windows of the tower?’

‘Certainly not.’ Lasscock shook his head comfortably. ‘As a witness I can be of no use whatever. The only other thing I noticed was that someone had turned the fountain full on. It was drenchin’ the path across the court. But clearly that has nothin’ to do with the case.’

Without any warning whatever Sir David Evans rose and pointed a minatory finger at the astonished Lasscock. ‘It is tisgraceful, look you! You haf impeted the police in the execution of their tuty! Hear you, Mr Lasscock, I am tispleased; I am more than tispleased – I am intignant!’ The Vice-Chancellor’s thickening Cambrian accent suggested that this statement was indeed true; he closed his finger so that what he held in front of him was a clenched fist, and this he proceeded to brandish in an extremely temperamental way. ‘You haf prefaricated, sir; you haf shamelessly prefaricated!’

Lasscock’s eyes opened wider than Hobhouse had ever seen them and slowly he sat bolt upright. ‘Sir David,’ he said with much dignity, ‘I don’t at all understand what you’re gettin’ at.’

‘It iss pad, Mr Lasscock. It is more than pad; it iss suspicious.’ The sibilants fairly hissed from Nesfield’s Vice-Chancellor; he might have been a railway engine blowing off superfluous steam. ‘It must be infestigated, sir; the police will infestigate, sir; you shall account for yourself, look you, Mr Lasscock.’

‘Well, I’m blessed.’ Lasscock too got to his feet – not exactly briskly but yet with a good deal of decision. ‘And what about the attorneys now? It might be a good idea to call one of the tedjus fellows in on your own account. And ask him about slander and defamation of character and that sort o’ thing. Close personal friend indeed – pshaw!’

‘It shall be reported on, Mr Lasscock; it shall be tiscussed. The Chancellor shall know of it, sir. It iss not conduct pecoming a scholar.’

Lasscock, who had been holding his canary-coloured handkerchief in his hand, returned it very deliberately to his pocket and turned as if to leave the room in silent indignation. Sir David, who now seemed to find it necessary to stand on his toes, followed with every appearance of positive physical menace. ‘And hark you, Mr Lasscock, it iss not conduct pecoming a chentleman–’

With his hand on the doorknob Lasscock turned round. ‘You silly old goat,’ he said. ‘You fuzzy-headed, muddle-minded, muddy- thoughted leek-eater.’ Lasscock spoke still in the most dignified way. ‘You ode bawlin’, chapel-crawlin’ upstart. Afternoon to you.’ And Lasscock turned to Hobhouse. ‘Common thing,’ he said. ‘Often obsarved. Noted by Tennyson. The schoolboy heat, the blind hysterics of the Celt. Afternoon to you, too.’

And Mr Lasscock was gone.

There was no particular reason why, at this juncture, Hobhouse should judge it useful or desirable to put Professor Hissey next on his list. Perhaps he simply remembered him as a notably mild-mannered man, whose bearing and conduct were likely to afford a pleasing contrast to the deplorable scene which had just concluded. Be this as it may, Hobhouse found himself making his way to the celebrated epigrapher’s room. It was empty and – it occurred to him – surprisingly tidy. The pictures – photographs, for the most part, of inscriptions in what Hobhouse sagely took to be Greek – were straight on their nails, and a great many files were ranged in an orderly way on the shelves. There were moreover such evidences of well-regulated bachelor comfort as a teapot, kettle, and spirit stove behind a screen. And there was a tin of mixed biscuits into which Hobhouse, unaccustomed to sustaining himself on a sandwich throughout the day, was tempted to dip. He contrived, however, to resist this unprofessional impulse and went on to seek Hissey at his hotel. There he found the scholar in what was apparently his private sitting-room, peacefully arranging multi-coloured slips of pasteboard in a card index.

Hissey beamed upon his visitor, ‘My dear sir,’ he said, ‘come in; come in and tell me how you are progressing in this deplorable affair.’ He turned to the maid who had shown Hobhouse up. ‘And, Martha, should there be muffins, I don’t at all see why we shouldn’t have rather an early tea. See what can be done, there’s a good girl.’ He beamed again upon Hobhouse, who was much impressed by this intuitive understanding of his carnal needs. ‘If you will take the chair by the window, Inspector, I believe you will find it reasonably comfortable. And please forgive me if I go on with my job. It is almost purely mechanical and will not preoccupy me in the least. At the moment, as it happens, I have a good deal on hand.’

Hobhouse sat down. ‘I think, sir,’ he said affably, ‘that I might say much the same thing myself.’

‘Is that so? Is that really so?’ And Hissey looked up rather vaguely at his visitor. ‘I suppose a thing of that sort does at times take not a little working out. From one or two things that Merryweather has told me during the last few days I can well imagine that it may be so.’

‘Um,’ said Hobhouse, slightly mystified. He was wondering if there would be a muffin each, and whether there would be anything else as well.

‘I hope that he is coming too? Grant, I ought to say. Or rather Appleby. I am extremely interested that Appleby should have taken up so novel a career.’ And Hissey worked with a good deal of concentration at his coloured cards, so that Hobhouse was inclined to doubt the quality of his interest in anything else whatever. ‘What a pleasant day it has been.’ Hissey craned his neck slightly in order to look out of the window, rather as one who would corroborate a random guess. ‘One really longs to go out and stroll in the sun. But I am under some pressure of work at the moment, tiresomely enough.’ And at this Hissey got to his feet and fell to rummaging among piles of papers on a large table; there was, Hobhouse noted, a good deal of disorder in this more intimate retreat. ‘Now, what can have become of that Roman villa at Gub-Gub? I always mix it up with Dab-Dab, I am sorry to say.’ He shook his head, perplexed. ‘Is it not Shakespeare who speaks of Memory, the warder of the brain? Marlow would tell us at once. I find myself that it is a most capricious faculty. The important things one tends only too often to forget. Whereas entirely secondary and irrelevant matters can assume quite a haunting power over the mind… Dear me! Here is our tea already. Martha, you are a most commendably festinate girl.’ And Professor Hissey, already reaching for the teapot, chuckled happily at this piece of learned badinage. ‘Sugar, Inspector? And cream’ – he peered into a jug – ‘or milk, as I fear I ought to say?’

After Sir David Evans it was extremely soothing. Hobhouse ate a whole muffin in silence – and this seemed to suit Mr Hissey very well. Mr Hissey coped with his tea with one hand and his card index with the other; Hobhouse, marking the smooth precision with which he worked, and guessing that the process had been going on uninterruptedly for hours, felt that he was at last gaining a convincing breath of that higher and rarefied air which academic persons are supposed wontedly to breathe. But presently Hissey paused. ‘And how’, he asked, ‘is our poor friend Prisk? Automobiles have always appeared to me to be somewhat dangerous contrivances, as so many of our recent innovations are. I was extremely sorry that he had so bad a spill.’

Hobhouse reported on Prisk’s health – at some length, because he was a little puzzled as to how to proceed. His business, he now felt, was once more to go round the people concerned, taking a tug at an alibi here and a jab at a motive there. But he had chosen Hissey in rather an idle spirit and the hospitality of his reception made his position delicate. There were three muffins, all told, and plum cake and a plate of chocolate biscuits. Hobhouse, therefore, went slow. ‘I believe, sir,’ he said presently, ‘that it was you who took the news of Mr Pluckrose’s death to Sir David Evans?’

‘Indeed?’ For a moment Hissey received Hobhouse’s question rather as if it were a piece of stray intelligence to be civilly received. And then he nodded. ‘To be sure I did. I was up in the dark-room, you see, when they brought the news. And I had an obscure feeling that everyone ought to do something. That was why I volunteered to break the news to Evans. Perhaps I don’t use quite the correct expression; perhaps I ought to say
give
the news’ – and Hissey looked quite anxiously at Hobhouse for his opinion – ‘though I have no doubt, of course, that Evans was very upset. He
looked
upset’ – and Hissey frowned momentarily, as if there was something disturbing in this recollection; ‘very upset indeed.’ For perhaps a couple of minutes Hissey worked silently at his cards. ‘There was something about Evans’ appearance,’ he said.

Hobhouse was startled – not so much by the words as by the almost undoubted fact that Hissey had spoken them to himself, without any thought of communication to his visitor. Hobhouse, from over his teacup, looked covertly at his host. Yes, Hissey was frowning thoughtfully – much as he frowned at his little cards. Only at the moment, and for almost the first time since Hobhouse had entered the room, his hands were empty. The man’s concentration and abstraction were alike complete.

And Hobhouse too was thoughtful. What had this normally absent-minded – and, upon the occasion in question, surely agitated – scholar remarked about Evans on encountering him some thirty minutes after Pluckrose’s death? Or had it been something about the way in which he received the news? For instance, had the Vice-Chancellor failed to register adequate shock or surprise? But it was something slightly different from this that was suggested by Hissey’s words. Evans’ appearance had been odd… And suddenly a grotesque vision presented itself to Hobhouse’s ordinarily unimaginative mind. He saw Sir David Evans sitting drinking coffee in the university refectory in his wonted way – but with his beautiful white hair matched by a beautiful and Murn-like white beard. And Mr Hissey, that abstracted man, was aware that about the Vice-Chancellor’s appearance there was something a little out of the way…

But this was absurd. Hobhouse accepted a chocolate biscuit and tried something else. ‘According to the statements we have collected there were several people with you in the dark-room when the thing occurred.’