The Weight of the Evidence (30 page)

‘It was my intention, then, to let the matter alone. I must confess, even, to having thought it expedient a little to complicate the trail; that was in the matter of the redundant beards. One beard suggests a one-man show; it occurred to me that an
embarras du choix
in this particular might suggest a conspiracy; and hence the cupboard which positively grew the things.’ Tavender chuckled. ‘The action, being intended to mislead the police, was no doubt criminal. But the motive was altruistic; I wanted the Pluckrose affair buried in hopeless muddle and a futile scandal avoided. And towards that consummation we should be fairly launched at this moment, had not the fatal ingenuity of Mr Appleby worked out this extraordinarily ingenious case against Marlow. Of course I can’t see Marlow hanged. He had nothing whatever to do with the business.’

Tavender paused. Appleby, quite still at the head of the table, kept his eyes on his papers; he might have been a chemist patiently awaiting the step-by-step unfolding of an experiment.

‘Marlow had nothing to do with the business?’ Crunkhorn was speaking, slowly and carefully. ‘But, when Marlow was prompted to rebut the supposed case against Prisk, I understood him to admit that he and Pinnegar had planned–’

‘That was something quite different!’ Marlow, now sitting back in his chair, looked rather wildly around the room. ‘The fountain… Pinnegar and I had planned a joke…a joke against–’ And then Marlow threw up his head in despair. ‘Oh, lord,’ he said, ‘what a ghastly mess! If you just let me collect my wits for a minute I’ll explain–’

Tavender waved an impatient hand. ‘Marlow can explain what he pleases later. And it isn’t my business to explain anything, thank goodness. I’ve only to tell you what I saw. It was the beard. And the beard wasn’t on Marlow. It was on Evans.’

There was hubbub again. Marlow was shaking his head in some obscure negation, as if more wildered than ever. Church was leaning across the table and endeavouring to shake hands with him, apparently by way of celebrating the fact that the whirlwind had passed on to engulf the older generation. Lasscock was looking at the Vice-Chancellor in open-mouthed astonishment and speculating, no doubt, on what might be considered conduct unbecoming a scholar. The others questioned, exclaimed, or called loudly for silence. And at length Tavender once more made himself heard.

‘The beard was on Evans – which means, you might say, that the boot is on the other foot.’ Tavender paused to laugh complacently over this indifferent jest – and perhaps to heighten by suspense the effect that was to follow. ‘The beard was on Evans and Evans was coming out of the tower. The time was between eleven ten and eleven fifteen. Somehow I don’t think that Marlow will hang.’

‘It is all lies; it is all hallucinations!’ Sir David, who had been quite silent for some time, sprang to his feet and gesticulated wildly. ‘There was jokes, look you; there was impertinences!’

‘And another thing: it was clearly Evans who had turned on the fountain. He had got himself pretty well soaked in the process. It added to the fantastic appearance of the whole affair.’ And Tavender leant back, grimly enjoying himself. ‘Just what happened was this. I had been in town during the early part of the morning and when I got up here I went straight to the refectory and had a cup of coffee. When I came away and was crossing the side street I noticed that the door of the store-room at the bottom of the tower was open. And then I noticed Evans coming out. He was more or less his own proper self except, as I say, that he was soaking wet. He came out without seeing me – but he did apparently see a couple of students who were opposite the Great Hall and who might spot him at any moment. It was then that he did this fantastic thing. He dodged back into cover and a moment later came hurriedly out, fantastically disguised as Murn. And then he slipped along the other side of the road, as quickly as he could while preserving something of Murn’s manner. It wasn’t the sort of thing one sees every day.’

There was a silence of stupefaction in the boardroom. Appleby looked up and glanced round. ‘You will see’, he said, ‘that by means of a little shock tactics we have arrived at what is at least a modicum of fresh and surprising information. Sir David, do you admit that certain circumstances took you to the top of the tower on Monday morning, that when you were alone there you looked down and saw what had happened in the court, and that you then got away as quickly as you could, using a certain false beard in the process?’

‘It iss true. There was impertinences.’ Evans nodded his dignified head with every appearance of restored equanimity. ‘And Pluckrose was tead and it was tifficult. Reticence appeared to pe the prudent policy.’

‘Mr Marlow, do you admit that Mr Pinnegar and yourself planned and perpetrated a joke against the Vice-Chancellor?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Mr Tavender, did you find a false beard and stow it away in the dark-room; and later, believing that the whole matter had better rest in obscurity, did you add to the confusion with more beards?’

‘Just that. And perhaps the confusion could have got on very well without me. I doubt whether many people here feel the affair to be exactly pellucid yet.’

Appleby nodded gravely. ‘The matter is complex and there is a good deal that is still obscure. Several important matters have not yet been mentioned: for instance, a temple in Tartary, and a ladder, and the Strength of Materials.’ He paused and for a second his eye seemed to catch that of someone far down the table. ‘I think that some of you may want a little time to reflect, or for consultation with each other or with myself. I would suggest that we disperse now and meet again after dinner. Say in two hours’ time.’

The proposal seemed to meet with general favour and the company filed from the room. In the long corridor bleak, bare lights burnt sparely. Appleby, his notes under his arm, said a word to Hobhouse and disappeared. Outside it was quite dark.

Darkness was absolute in the boardroom. It was as if the nymphs were departed, leaving no addresses, and as if the bewhiskered worthies had faded, seeking a more kindly limbo. A rat crept softly among the university calendars and a night wind blowing down the chimney faintly rustled the invisible silk of the Duke of Nesfield’s gold and scarlet gown. Frozen amid their loaded vines the creatures of Burne-Jones awaited recreating light and from far away in the city the sound of horns and motors echoed up the hill. The second hour moved to its close.

Appleby was the first back; the lights snapped on and he came in rather wearily; an observer might have remarked that he was as pale as Aphrodite and her smock. He sat down at the table, put his notes in front of him, took one glance round the empty and silent room, and began to read sombrely at the first page.

Wednesday Morning

Arrived yesterday afternoon and got the general hang of the case.

Why should a man murder in this way, using a meteorite which only the uneducated could suppose to be an instrument of death by misadventure? Because either (1) the meteorite was the handiest thing or (2) it was the only thing or (3) there was attached to it a symbolism satisfactory to the perpetrator and possibly significant to some third party or (4) this particular meteorite had associations calculated to mislead or (5) a meteorite generically regarded has associations calculated to mislead. The last possibility is the most subtle and Tavender at the symposium last night seemed to have it in mind (
a
). A combination of the above factors is also a possibility.

The body has been quite remarkably crushed.

Jokes. As these have been current the crime may be (1) a joke gone wrong in some such way as Crunkhorn suggests or (2) deliberately or fortuitously intertwined with a joke or jokes itself innocently intended. Tavender again has seen something of this; he suggested correlating the crime with the matter of the skeleton in the maze and with the facetious possibilities of the Prisk-Pluckrose telephone.

There has been the odd circumstance of the porter’s tortoise and its engendering my Aeschylus theory. In fact I find myself canvassing all the curious associations of the death-from-the-air complex (
a
). Even so remote an association as that of Damocles.

The Duke of Nesfield has reason to apprehend that somebody else was actually the intended victim. Here there may he a situation which (1) bears out the Duke or (2) has been deliberately exploited by the murderer to confuse the trail or (3) introduces such a confusion by chance or (4) is capable of exploitation later to get people rattled and talking: the old technique!

Consider the shared telephone. This might be used in contriving (1) a murder or (2) a joke. And it might introduce a factor of error or miscarriage into either of these. I feel that here is rather a chancy element to embody or exploit in a planned crime.

A planned crime?

Sir David Evans is concerned to befog the affair. Just the role for a metaphysician. I doubt if he tried to kill anybody. He would have it remembered that professors go mad. It is doubtful if the cold light of statistics would bear this out but certainly dons are often highly-strung and pervertedly ingenious folk – see any learned journal.

Why turn on the fountain?

The dark-room. If one of those ingenious persons were planning a crime it might well occur to him to exploit this.
Or if he were improvising measures to escape the consequences of a crime?
The lie of the place is so like the main theatre of a crime story!

Old Hissey, the eminent epigrapher, turns out to be professor of classics here now; he is going to put out a book. Along with Evans he is the only person to convey an impression of disingenuousness so far. Marlow and Pinnegar? Well, Pinnegar perhaps a bit scared.

Back to notes marked (
a
) above. I have a dim, rather startling notion. I say dim, though – mistakenly or no – its first dawning was like a flood of light. I’ve been had by floods of light before now.

Wednesday Evening

Miss Dearlove of the moated grange, the dirty mind. Evans and Pluckrose were both after one girl. Why not? But one imagines in rather an ineffective way: chocolates, dinners, theatres, flowers. Common enough. But then such a situation hardly gives scope for homicidal passion. Here conceivably is a more or less extraneous, but complicating, factor. It opens the whole tiresome business of private lives. Nosy-parker Pluckrose may have known too much about, say, Prisk.

Lasscock, the man who knows something but not much.

Marlow was a tutor at Nesfield Court. The Duke’s supposition that some other victim was designed connects, then, with Marlow.

Church’s girl, Church’s bigamy, Miss Godkin and the Foreign Office. The inwardness of all this is pretty clear and it appears as a side issue. But it may conceivably connect with the Evans-Pluckrose-girl complex (
b
).

Sir David Evans’s bust. The heart of the mystery lies here. So it is a pity I find it baffling!

Tavender recommends a reading of
Zuleika Dobson
, the story of a girl who proved fatally attractive in an academic society. The hint here tends to bear out (
b
) above.

If Prisk killed Pluckrose, Prisk may fake an attack upon himself, thus suggesting Prisk as the intended victim in the first place.
But so may someone else.
That is to say, if there is a discoverable motive for
X
’s killing Pluckrose it will suit
X
now to contrive the impression that Prisk and not Pluckrose was originally aimed at (
c
).

Wednesday Night

At Nesfield Court we have had a revelation of the sort of man Prisk is in the story of Marlow’s friend, the lad Gerald. Here is a true homicide-motive for the first time. But it is a motive for Marlow’s murdering
Prisk
. And, telephone and all, I distrust the notion of the wrong man’s having been killed.

And we have discovered that Pluckrose stole the meteorite.

Why should a man steal a meteorite?

Well, what is unique about a meteorite?

Pluckrose stole the meteorite; Pluckrose bashed the bust.

BILL STUMPS HIS MARK.

Thursday Noon

Why did Pluckrose bash the bust green? An explanation comes from Hissey (green with envy).

Hissey triumphantly finds possibility (
c
) above.

Making the green one red. Hissey’s little joke.

Lasscock would wake at eleven.

Crunkhorn on fifty-ton meteorite.

The sink was moved and this suggests that there was no previous plan to use the meteorite – although, if I am right about Bill Stumps, its use was something like poetic justice
(d)
. The sink was picked up to use; and then the meteorite was seen, and used instead. See (
a
) above and (
d
). We are dealing with a masterpiece of improvisation.

The false beard. False beards are used for
jokes
. Bogus telephone calls are used for
jokes
. It is a great
joke
to turn on a fountain on someone. Consider Evans’ quickest route to Pluckrose. Here then is a fortuitously synchronizing joke. And there was damp on the tower stairs: the joke and the tragedy at a sort of hide-and-seek, forming a syndrome. This, worked out, will explain all the facts. Pinnegar has decamped – but as one might from a scrape, rather than from a crime.

Extra beards. These represent simply a malicious spoke in our wheel. Thrust in by Tavender, I should say. (And I shall never know how much Tavender knew; he is a natural born detective, I am inclined to believe.)

Thursday Afternoon

The affair of Timothy Church’s bigamy has cleared itself up on the expected lines. The grotesque Evans-Pluckrose-Prisk embroilment with the magnetic German lady explains Evans’ concern to conceal the joke played on him; there he was in the tower with his lewd rival Pluckrose dead below!

Can the joke be got clearer? I think it can. By a little after ten Lasscock is comfortably asleep in the court. He may wake up for the fun, or he may not; it is not very material to the jokers. Somewhere about ten twenty Marlow rings up Evans on the Prisk-Pluckrose telephone, represents himself as Pluckrose, and asks Evans to come over urgently. Evans therefore takes the short route through the Wool Court. Pinnegar meanwhile has disguised himself as Murn (overcoat, hat, and muffler as well as the beard probably); he dodges out before the astounded Evans, turns on the fountain, and drenches him. Evans, his Celtic spirit roused, pursues the elderly-seeming jester. Pinnegar bolts round to the tower and up the staircase to the top floor. Evans still follows, and Pinnegar gives him the slip by coming down the hoist – having abandoned the beard. Evans is completely winded and more or less collapses; and meanwhile the murderer is at work on the floor below. So that when Evans recovers and looks out of the window there is Pluckrose dead beneath him. He hurries downstairs, taking Pinnegar’s abandoned beard with him – and thus leaves no trace of the affair except puddles on the stairs. At the doorway he is fearful of being seen, so on a sudden impulse he claps on the beard until he is well down the street. Then, perhaps, he attempts to stuff it in a drain – whence it is retrieved by the interested Tavender and later secreted in the dark-room cupboard: the first of Tavender’s little jokes. Evans hurries to his room (glimpsed by the porter); changes his jacket (warm day, he said, and something odd about his subsequent appearance, Hissey told Hobhouse); and goes to the refectory as usual. Note as a pleasant coda to all this unhappily timed buffoonery that he is there presently engaged in polite conversation by a beardless Pinnegar.