An Oxford Tragedy (14 page)

Brendel puffed a cloud of smoke triumphantly into the air and looked questioningly at me.

‘You don't seem quite so pleased at my little joker card as I expected,' he said.

I had indeed been unable to conceal my embarrassment. ‘Of course I'm delighted,' I said, ‘but I'm frightfully put out about that letter to Fred Scarborough. You see, I put it all very strongly. I told him that his son was suspected of murder, that the facts looked very awkward for him, that he was really in a grave predicament, and that Fred ought to come up at once. What the devil am I to do now? I shall look a perfect fool, and Fred Scarborough will never speak to me again.'

The laugh with which Brendel greeted my plaint seemed to me rather unfeeling.

‘Dear, dear,' he said, ‘and now
you
are in a “very grave predicament.” Well, you must wire as early as you can tomorrow morning and ask him to burn your letter unread. For me, I find the situation piquant. Your old friend will sit down to his hearty English breakfast. Naturally he will read
first the telegram which lies on the top of his letters. Every human instinct will then impel him to open the fat envelope, addressed to him in your handwriting, which lies by his plate. The training which he has laboriously received at his expensive public school and at St Thomas's will urge him with equal force to obey your request. The struggle will be terrible. Will he succumb to the temptation or will he not? Really a most dramatic situation! I think you must word that telegram very strongly, and perhaps it would be wise to prepay the reply. Ask him to let you know that he
has
destroyed the letter unread. We ought to weigh the scale a little in favour of St Thomas's training if we can; human curiosity is dreadfully strong on the other side. Don't worry, Winn,' he went on more seriously, as he noted my real distress, ‘honestly I don't think you need be nervous, and you must keep up a standard of relative values. After all, the solid fact is that the young man is as safe from suspicion as you or I. Furthermore, the laborious Cotter, my rival in detection, has by now discovered the fact, and is kicking himself for having wasted another half-day on a false scent. But don't write unnecessary letters again if you want to be a successful detective. And isn't it better sometimes' (his eyes twinkled as he spoke) ‘to overcome your natural shyness and ask a few awkward or even discourteous questions even at the expense of a snub? If you could have brought yourself to have inquired of your young protégé if he was murdering anyone that night, he would just have waved his bandaged hand in your face, and you need never have written to his father. There's something in the straightforward question and answer method, you know. But surely no harm has really been done.'

With my confidence partly restored I composed myself to listen to the rest of Brendel's story.

‘The tale of Howe and Martin was no less interesting,' he said. ‘Let me see, how did you describe them to me on
Thursday night? “A pair of good, normal, rather simple young men, not really academically-minded.” How true!'

From anyone else I should have felt disposed to resent the mimicry of myself, which I thought I could detect, but I was beyond the stage of resenting any of Brendel's little habits, so I made no comment, and he continued.

‘Listen then to the true tale of the two not academically-minded young men, as drawn from them by my Clos de Vougeot.'

He chuckled, and settled himself deeper into his chair as he continued his story. If the mimicry of myself had been doubtful and in slightly bad taste, that of the undergraduates was obvious and wholly amusing. The speaker was Brendel, but it seemed to me at times as though I was really listening to the voices of his Sunday guests.

‘“You see,” Martin said, “we went up, Howe and I, to do our weekly tutorial with the Sheep – I beg your pardon, Sir, with Mr Shepardson. And it so happened that we hadn't done the work he'd set us.” “By a curious coincidence,” Howe interjected, “the same thing had happened the week before, too.” “Precisely,” said Martin, “and the Sheep, though a mild creature by nature and upbringing, had then shown unsuspected tigerish qualities. A fresh display of temper, unworthy of our tutor, was therefore, we felt, if possible, to be averted.” “That,” chorused Howe, “was exactly our intention.” “We therefore considered whether an appeal to his higher nature, or a well-phrased request for a moratorium might not melt his stony heart, and decided that we knew a trick worth two of that.” [I have,' interpolated Brendel, with obvious satisfaction, ‘added considerably to my stock of English idioms as a result of my luncheon party. The more obscure phrases I noted down directly in my note-book, so I think they are correct, though I did not always fully understand them.] “Yes, we knew a trick worth two of that, so we put
out a little bait.” “And the Sheep swallowed it line and all,” chimed in the faithful Howe.' [Brendel looked at me inquiringly. ‘A piscatorial metaphor not usually applied to Sheep,' I explained.] ‘“Before he could ask for the proses which we had not done, I said, all innocent like, ‘Please, Sir, I'd like to ask you a question before we get to work. Howe and I went to a lecture at New College to-day on Juvenal, and the lecturer seemed to think that two of Mr Shirley's suggested emendations in the text of the third Satire might possibly be mistaken. I've brought the text along to ask you.' ‘Possibly be wrong,' snorts the Sheep, ‘possibly be wrong … obviously, palpably, manifestly, ridiculously wrong! Give me the text for a moment and let me show you. And remember always, both of you, that wild speculative guesses are
not
scholarship.' Right off the deep end he goes at once,”' [Brendel looked at me with a puzzled air, as he recounted this passage. ‘Deep end of what? A sheep or something else?' ‘A swimming bath, I think,' I said, ‘but the phrase is obscure.'] ‘“Well, the Sheep didn't want much egging on after that. He got blood to the head in a way that was pretty to watch. He took a hold of the text and showed us one mistake of Shirley's after another. But the trouble was that once he'd smelt blood we couldn't stop him; hot on the scent and head down and all that. He showed us about one hundred instances which proved beyond all reasonable doubt that Shirley was a reckless and ill-informed person. Good, bitter scholarly back-chat it was too. At last we couldn't stand any more. We'd got up at a quarter to nine, ten o'clock had struck, and the Sheep was still hitting poor old Shirley for sixes all round the ground.”' [Brendel shook his head helplessly as he disinterred this phrase from his notebook. ‘A cricketing phrase,' I explained, ‘and incomprehensible to anyone born outside England. Go on.'] ‘“It was pretty clear that we had to make an effort, so I
kicked Howe under the table” [“unnecessarily hard,” muttered the chorus] “and said, with the innocence of a new-born babe, that it seemed that Shirley was a pretty dangerous sort of chap for us to get into touch with. Didn't the Sheep think that we ought to give up going to his lectures in case our minds might be corrupted? Well, the Sheep began to see that he'd gone a bit too far in crabbing a colleague, so he stopped in his mad career, and said that we mustn't take everything he said
au pied de la lettre
, that perhaps he'd overstated things a trifle, that Shirley was, of course, a great scholar, though fundamentally wrong in all his views about Juvenal, and that we must certainly not abstain (my God, what a word!) from his lectures, and that, well, it was getting late, and that he was glad we were so keenly interested in textual criticism, and, that, in short, we might go, and might bring him a couple of proses each next week. We didn't exactly take long in making our dignified exit, and as we came out we saw the Dean in the Quad, standing just under the windows of his own rooms. And that's the damnable thing again! If we'd shut down the Sheep's blitherings half an hour earlier we might easily have seen the chap who went and shot up poor old Shirley.”'

Brendel paused, and then added dryly, ‘And that is the end of the saga of the two normal rather simple young men, who are not academically-minded. It was also the end of my little party. I forgot to say that I had provided a bottle of that very excellent Taylor ‘08 port, in case the burgundy failed to loosen tongues. It was about this time that my Mexican guest, who had listened without interruption to Martin's tale, got up and intimated courteously that it was time for him to be going. I observed that the port was finished. So they all thanked me, and we parted with the warmest expressions of mutual esteem.'

Brendel's face was a perfect network of wrinkles. ‘That was the end of my party, and a very satisfactory end, too. Consider. Scarborough is cleared, I am sure, beyond all fear of suspicion. But more important than that, Shepardson is safe as well. You noticed that, surely. It was the chief object of all my manoeuvres to make sure about that. Now we know with absolute certainty that Martin and Howe were with him until Hargreaves came into the Quad. Could Shepardson possibly have visited Hargreaves' rooms and murdered Shirley in that short interval whilst Hargreaves was standing below in the Quad, or walking round it? I suggest that you've only got to put the question, and consider the difficulties, to arrive at your answer. Of course he couldn't have done it! Shepardson has his alibi, and I must confess that I'm relieved. I never really thought he was the criminal, but the actions and reactions of these learned and disputatious men are difficult to predict, and I couldn't disguise from myself that he
might
have done it. Now he's cleared. Yes, it was really a very satisfactory luncheon party for me. I've established the innocence of two of the suspects, I've learned a lot of new idioms, and of your famous Oxford educational methods I have now the most vivid picture.' He chuckled again at the recollection of Howe and Martin with their tutor. ‘Young men don't differ much all over the world, in Vienna or Oxford or anywhere else. Murderers don't differ much either,' he added in a changed and rather grim voice. ‘There is always plan and motive and opportunity, and our murderer is still amongst us.'

It seemed to me a long time before he spoke again. He appeared to be lost in a reverie, in which I did not feel disposed to disturb him, but at length he re-lit his cigar and continued his narrative.

‘I've done some other things besides entertaining undergraduates to lunch, and you must hear about them. Scarborough is cleared and so is Shepardson, so we can dismiss them from our minds; but if I remember rightly Prendergast drew up a list of eight suspects – you probably remember that list?'

‘I'm not likely to forget it, though the whole theory was hateful to me, and I don't believe in it. His eight suspects were himself, Shepardson, Mitton, Trower, Mottram, Hargreaves, Tweddle of Balliol and Doyne. I think that was the lot.'

‘Yes, and we've cleared Shepardson, or rather his pupils have, so that leaves us seven. And I fancy that my researches have made some of them pretty safe too. If you'll listen I'll run through the list.'

He opened his note-book and studied it for a moment. ‘First there's Trower. I've got no certain evidence to clear him, and yet I'm sure that he can be eliminated. He went out at ten o'clock with Mitton; he said that he started to go through some accounts, and then went to sleep in his chair. Highly suspicious of course, but one small fact makes me sure it's true. It's just this. In spite, my dear Winn, of the brilliance of our conversation after dinner your gallant Major certainly went to sleep for quite five minutes in Common Room soon after we had had coffee. As a stranger I was observing you all pretty closely, and I'm certain I wasn't deceived about that. Of course these military men are accustomed to take a rest when they can get it, but I simply can't believe that he would have had a nap half-an-hour before committing a brutal murder. And if by some extraordinary chance he had, why then he would have invented a better or at least a different explanation of his post-murder occupation than another forty winks. No. I just can't fit him into the chief part, and I've crossed him off the list. Then there's Mr Tweddle of Balliol. I've
explored him a bit, and I confess that I laid a few traps for him.'

‘What do you mean by that?' I asked.

Brendel smiled. ‘Oh, the ordinary kind of trap. With the aid of the introductions you gave me I made my way into Balliol society and contrived to meet Tweddle in the Common Room there. I reminded him of our former meeting, professed to be interested in those ghastly subjects which he professes, and asked him round here to my rooms. He accepted. You'll find my room, I said, on the next staircase to Hargreaves'. His face was a complete blank; he didn't know who Hargreaves was, nor where his rooms were. I watched him pretty closely, and I'll swear he hadn't the remotest idea as to Hargreaves' domicile, and why should he, unless he was the murderer? But a man who has committed a crime is always expecting awkward questions of that kind, and guarding himself against the wrong answer. He's got to be what you call a pretty cool hand not to give himself away by admitting knowledge which he ought not to have, or by disguising it too obviously. Again, I mentioned Mrs Shirley quite casually in the course of conversation, and found that he had no idea that such a person existed. Of course he may have been deceiving me all the time; he may have coached himself to make just the right answer to every question, but I can't bring myself to believe that he is the sort of man to do that. Besides, I couldn't find any connexion whatever between him and anyone in St Thomas's except your scientists. The more I probed the more firmly I became convinced that his head has room for no other subject than higher mathematics. I therefore crossed him off the list also; he need never have been on it if he'd had the ordinary common sense to remember to take his scarf with him that evening. If he'd remembered it he'd have saved me a lot of trouble. However I'm quit of him now. As soon as I got back to college I
telephoned to him to say that I had stupidly forgotten a previous engagement at the time at which I had invited him round here, and that I'd write later to suggest another date. But I never shall – the life of the detective imposes its duties, but a
tête-à-tête
with Mr Tweddle on higher mathematics is more than I can be expected to endure unless I must.'