The Seven of Calvary

by Anthony Boucher

  As the housekeeper opened the door, the scholar-pianist modulated abruptly from an Iolanthe chorus into the Mikado’s solo, and the two amateur detectives entered the living room to the notes of

  My object all sublime

  I shall achieve in time:

  To let the punishment fit the crime,

  The punishment fit the crime …

  Dr. Griswold broke off and rose from the piano. “This is a pleasant surprise visit,” he blinked. “Very glad to see you both.” And he gestured them to chairs.

  Ashwin plunged into the middle of things with unaccustomed abruptness. “You’ve no idea, Griswold, what appropriate music you provided for our entrance.”

  Dr. Griswold stroked his beard in quiet amusement. “I see Martin’s corrupting you already, Ashwin; you speak in terms of the theatre just like him. By the way,” he added, turning to Martin, “I came across a curious little squib in La abeja last night—a theatrical reviewer speaking of Fonseca’s Don Juan Redivivo as ‘un drama maldito,’ an accursed play—I suppose you would say ‘a jinx show?”

  “So?” Martin asked curiously. “When was this notice?”

  “1848, I think. I jotted down the reference; I thought you might want it.” He handed Martin one of those small bits of paper (known among the scholastic, Heaven knows why, as P-slips) with which his pockets always bulged. “The reviewer told various incidents of deaths, accidents, and other catastrophes in connection with revivals of the play—something the same legend as is told of the opera, La Forza del destino.”

  Ashwin was becoming a little impatient. “It is precisely in connection with Don Juan Returns that we’ve come to see you, Griswold.”

  “You sound sternly official. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m quite sure that the Dean and the President and several other worthies would not approve of what I am doing; but I’ve worked with you on committees, and I know that you are no hidebound academician.”

  “Thank you.” Dr. Griswold blinked mildly and placed his fingers together, wondering what on earth was coming of all this.

  “The fact is, Griswold,” (and for once Dr. Ashwin’s aplomb very nearly deserted him) “the fact is I’ve turned detective.”

  Dr. Griswold turned a rebuking smile on Martin. “You’ve corrupted him quite thoroughly, haven’t you?”

  “I’m afraid I have,” Martin answered, “but it’s really not a gag. It’s serious, and it may be damned important.”

  “You see,” Dr. Ashwin resumed, “Mr. Lamb has come across several things in connection with these deaths here which are not straightforward, acceptable, police-court evidence, but which have set me thinking along some peculiar lines. If we can learn just a little bit more, I think that we can know the whole thing.”

  “And then do your duties as citizens?” Dr. Griswold suggested. “Well, whatever information I can furnish you, you may have.”

  “Thank you.” Ashwin was visibly relieved at having completed the confession of his new hobby. “All that we want of you is this: a diagram of how people were standing around that little table back-stage when the glass was broken.”

  Dr. Griswold looked at them with a quizzical expression, and Martin hastened to explain the business of the stage sherry. When he had finished, Dr. Griswold removed his glasses and polished them absently.

  “Why, yes …” he said at last. “I think I could do that.” He found a pencil and paper and began his chart, making it slowly with many pauses for a careful check of his memory.

  When the sketch was almost complete, Dr. Ashwin broke the silence with another question. “Do you know how the Leshins happened to attend the dress-rehearsal?”

  “Let me see … I ran into Leshin in the library. He said he was meeting his wife at the auditorium to see the play, and I decided to go along, even though I had tickets for tonight. Fortunate that I did.”

  “You helped us through a bad time,” Martin said warmly.

  “I didn’t mean that.” Dr. Griswold was thoroughly embarrassed. “Simply that I should not have seen your play otherwise.”

  “But why were the Leshins going to the dress-rehearsal, rather than one of the performances?” Ashwin asked.

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t mentioned. We spoke very little. I scarcely know Mrs. Leshin, and there seemed to be some coolness between her and her husband. In fact, unless I am quite mistaken, she seemed surprised to see him there. Although he had told me that he was supposed to meet her.”

  Martin and Ashwin exchanged a glance of understanding. The obvious meaning was that Tanya Leshin had come alone, planning to meet Paul afterwards, if for no more sinister reason, and that Ivan Leshin had suspected and followed her, bringing Dr. Griswold possibly to avoid a scene.

  Dr. Griswold laid down the pencil. “There,” he said, “I think that is correct. I have as a rule an excellent visual memory.” He handed his chart to Ashwin, who produced from his pocket the one which Martin had previously drawn for him.

  The three men sat on the couch by the window, the bright April sunlight shining on the two charts of death. Dr. Griswold was the first to speak.

  “We seem to agree well enough, Martin. I believe we can conclude that both diagrams are approximately accurate.”

  “‘Approximately,’” Ashwin repeated with noticeable irritation.

  “If you want to discuss them with your Watson,” said Dr. Griswold, “go right ahead. I promise discretion.”

  “How far across would you say that table was?” Dr. Ashwin asked.

  “About three or four feet. Do you agree, Martin?”

  “Right.”

  “Then anyone reaching across the table would have been conspicuous. To be sure, you might not have noticed it; but it would have meant running a needless risk. That means that only Miss Wood or Mr. Bruce could have knocked that glass off the table.”

  “I thought Mr. Bruce was rather far from the table for that,” Dr. Griswold objected.

  “To my mind he seemed close enough,” Martin countered.

  “Then that … Ah!” Ashwin looked up with something of satisfaction. “You, Mr. Lamb, were facing toward Mr. Bruce and would have seen him the instant the glass fell. But you, Dr. Griswold, were faced toward Leshin, and had to turn a bit toward the sound before you could see Bruce. He had moved back in that moment.”

  “But just a minute!” Dr. Griswold had another objection. “You say you think that the other glass received the poison at the same time that this one was knocked over. But the poisoned glass was on the other side of the table from Bruce, nearer to Leshin and me.”

  “Of course!” Ashwin’s face bore a look of strong self-reproach. “The obvious has been staring me in the face and I have disregarded it. Breaking this glass was no accident. It had to be broken, deliberately.”

  “Why?” asked Martin. “Breaking it seems to me merely to draw unnecessary attention to the glasses.”

  “It had to be broken to make absolutely certain that Mr. Lennox would drink the strychnine-filled glass.”

  “Couldn’t both glasses have been poisoned?”

  “Then there would be the bare possibility of some harmless third person’s drinking off the second glass of poison. Our murderer was discriminating.”

  Martin nodded. “Then you think the other glass was poisoned earlier?”

  “Yes. Probably when people were milling about before you assumed these fairly fixed positions indicated on your diagrams. Possibly even after the glass was broken.”

  Dr. Griswold blinked several times. “You have no idea how I enjoy watching a deductive detective at work—or is this induction?—especially when I have seen him apply not dissimilar principles to scholarship applications in committee—among them yours, Martin. But would you mind telling me exactly what conclusions you reach from all this?”

  “Just this,” Ashwin replied deliberately, “and I’m afraid it is only a matter of probabilities. It is probable that Alex Bruce knocked over that glass. (It is almost certain that
either he or Miss Wood did so.) Since destroying that glass must have been an essential part of the poisoner’s plot, it is therefore probable that Alex Bruce was the poisoner. But this is no matter of obvious certainty. It is barely possible that Mr. Bruce or Miss Wood may have knocked over that glass by accident, simply forestalling the poisoner’s intent. We need more facts, and I don’t see where to find them.”

  “Since there is no immediate hurry in securing those facts,” said Dr. Griswold, “(or at least I hope that there is none), why don’t you and Martin stay for tea and rest your minds of this problem? My daughter Marjorie should be home at any moment and—”

  Dr. Ashwin rose ponderously. It was not merely the presence of a quiet young girl for tea that was sending him away; he wanted to be alone, free even of his loyal Watson, and struggle through this problem again. “I’m sorry,” he said; “I think I must be going. You stay, Mr. Lamb. I shall see you on Monday.” And after brief farewells, he left.

  “Ashwin needed an interest like this,” Dr. Griswold observed. “He seemed to be going a little stale after he stopped translating. He gave up chess, gave up billiards—he used to be quite a champion at the Faculty Club, you know—and lost interest in most things aside from the little girl—Elizabeth or whatever her name is. I’m glad you’ve corrupted him.”

  “I’m a little worried about him,” Martin replied. “He seems suddenly to be much more serious about the whole thing. And that abrupt, ‘I shall see you on Monday, Mr. Lamb.…’ Things have come to a pretty pass when Holmes dismisses Watson as peremptorily as that.”

  At this point Marjorie Griswold came home. The tea was good; Dr. Griswold resumed his piano-playing; and Marjorie had various anecdotes, not unmalicious, concerning her instructors, which amused both Martin and her father.

  “And Dr. Leshin wasn’t at class this morning,” she mentioned. “Not that I blame him because lots of times I’m not at a Saturday morning nine o’clock myself, but they say it’s because his wife is having a nervous breakdown and needs him with her or something.”

  Aside from the sudden little shock he felt on hearing that piece of news, Martin spent a pleasant and quiet afternoon, unperturbed by thoughts of strychnine, symbols, or sudden death. The subject was not recalled to his mind until, returning home, he chanced to see Worthing sitting in the Great Hall. Beside him on the sofa sat Davis, the corporeal result of Worthing’s request for police protection. It had taken a call to the British Consulate in San Francisco to persuade Sergeant Cutting to give him a guard; and the more he looked at the stolid policeman, the less Worthing thought it worth the effort.

  His request and an inadvertent reference by the Sergeant to what Martin had seen had caused the evening papers to blossom out in headlines.

  SWISS SECT STRIKES AGAIN

  SCHAEDEL SLAYER ELUDES POLICE

  “Despite efforts of the police,” Martin read, “to disregard or suppress this important fact, it has been ascertained that the symbol of the Seven of Calvary was found beside the body of Paul Lennox, poisoned on the stage of Wheeler Auditorium at the University of California Thursday night. Lennox, it is now learned, was the original source of the information published exclusively in this paper concerning the Seven of Calvary and the activities of the Swiss sect known as the Vignards.”

  Here followed a rewrite of the original story, ending, “Richard Worthing, a close friend of Lennox,” (Martin was a little dazed by this statement) “who supplied the information to this paper, has received the symbol of death and only with great difficulty could secure police protection.”

  Guessing what he might find, Martin turned to the editorial page. Yes, there it was: a half-column of scathing denunciation of the police, together with certain remarks which would probably work the Swiss Consulate into a beautiful lather of indignation.

  The whole idea of the Vignards seemed damnably plausible—far more plausible, certainly, than the idea that Alex had committed two cold-blooded murders out of jealousy. To be sure, you never know how sexual rage will affect anyone, but still it seemed an insufficient motive for a person of Alex’s sympathetic quietness. And then there was the new symbol delivered to Worthing—a blind, or …?

  Martin wondered.

  Sunday afternoon Martin went for a walk in the hills with Mona, Lupe Sanchez, and Kurt Ross. Lupe seemed in the best of health again, although worried by her father’s illness and expecting at any moment an urgent call to Los Angeles. As the two girls chatted together in rapid Spanish, Kurt took Martin’s arm and held him back a moment.

  “Martin,” he began hesitantly, “is it true what is in the papers?”

  “Practically never.”

  “No, no. I mean, what is in the papers of what you saw—that symbol?”

  “Yes. I saw it right enough, and Mac will back me up on it, no matter what Sergeant Cutting thinks about my imagination running away with me.”

  “It was exactly the same as the one beside my uncle?”

  “As to exactly, I can’t say. I got only a brief glimpse of it at a very confused moment. But it was certainly the same symbol.”

  Kurt was worried. “Martin,” he said at last, “I cannot understand it. I am Swiss; surely I should know if such a sect there were. And what connection could Paul have with my uncle, unless all this be true?”

  “Mona said you were backstage that night.” Martin’s inflection was halfway between statement and question.

  “Yes, but I saw nothing. How could I in that mass of people?”

  “You were near the table?”

  “Where the glasses were? Yes. I did not speak to you because you seemed to be so surrounded; I could not catch your eye.”

  “Didn’t you see anything unusual?”

  “No.”

  “Come on!” Mona’s clear voice sounded from twenty yards ahead of them. In puzzled silence they quickened their steps.

  Suddenly Kurt paused again. “Unusual …! Yes, Martin. One little thing. It returns suddenly. As I passed the table I heard the lady in red say, ‘Where is there a drinking fountain?’ I noticed because I too was seeking one. And the small dark man—that is Dr. Leshin, is it not?—said, ‘Why do you not drink of this?’ meaning the glass on the table.”

  “Which glass?” Martin interrupted eagerly.

  “How should I know? I only thought it was strange to suggest drinking what stands about on stage tables. I was not noticing it much.”

  “And did she?”

  “She said, ‘I am not so thirsty as that,’ or something like it—I do not know. I was only going by.”

  Martin was silent. Was this some significant new clue or the merest coincidence? Had Dr. Leshin had some mad idea of poisoning his wife as well as her lover? Was he aware of her plot and taunting her with it? Or was it simply a rather stupid conversation-making remark? And her refusal to drink—did it result from knowledge of what the glass contained or merely a quite natural disinclination to taste what passes for wine on the stage?

  “Are not you ever coming, you two?” Lupe called.

  “What do you believe of all this?” Kurt asked as they approached the girls.

  “I don’t know what I believe,” Martin replied. And that at least was the truth.

  After an hour of pleasant walking, Martin found himself stretched full length beneath a shady tree, with Mona sitting at his side. Kurt and Lupe had wandered off with the ostensible purpose of gathering wild flowers.

  Mona broke a long contented silence by asking, “And how are you progressing as an amateur detective?”

  “Lousily.”

  “How so, ‘lousily’?” The word sounded strange indeed when spoken with a Bolivian accent.

  “I can’t make sense out of anything.…” He plucked irritably at a blade of grass. “Besides, I’ve violated the first rule of a good detective story.”

  “What do you mean, Martin?”

  “Detectives don’t fall in love.” He kissed the palm of her hand tenderly.

  Mona leaned over
. “Pero, ¡qué tonterías me dices!” she murmured. “¿Enamorado tú?”

  It was a subject best discussed in Spanish, Martin decided, and taking the cue from Mona he continued the discussion in that language until both simultaneously decided that no speech at all was even preferable. And Martin quite forgot that the inquest on Paul Lennox was to take place on the following day.

  It would have mattered little if he had continued to forget the inquest, since it brought out no new facts of interest.

  Martin himself, in the absence of any relatives, gave formal identification of the body. For some reason, he found this a peculiarly unpleasant task. Then followed questions concerning what had taken place on the stage of Wheeler Auditorium, covering practically the same ground as his first interview with Sergeant Cutting. At last he stood down, not entirely surprised that the Seven of Calvary had not once been mentioned in the questioning. The news-break caused by Worthing’s request for protection had, he imagined, so irritated Sergeant Cutting that he was more than ever determined to disregard the incongruous symbol.

  The autopsy had revealed the size of the dose of poison administered—three grains, well over a toxic dose. No witnesses as to possible motives were called, and the jury brought in the inevitable verdict—that Paul Lennox had died of strychnine, given as wilful murder by person or persons unknown.

  Not that this affected the case in the least, Martin realized. The verdict of the coroner’s jury was a formality, with no defined legal standing as a finding of facts. Sergeant Cutting would continue his investigation, and perhaps … Looking up, Martin noticed among the few people in court Richard Worthing (still accompanied by the long-suffering Davis) and seeming woefully as though he expected to be the next protagonist in a coroner’s inquest.

  “Murder plays hell with Sanskrit,” Martin remarked as he settled himself in the chair beside Ashwin’s desk.

  “Yes. It seems almost as though I should have to pass you more on your Watsonian abilities than on your knowledge of the Mahabharata.”