The Problem of the Surly Servant

by Roberta Rogow

  Two hands were raised. “Miss Johnson will accompany you. The rest of you may walk in the gardens, but remember to wear your hats and gloves.”

  Gertrude spoke up: “Miss Wordsworth, last night you said that I might take out a punt with Mary and Dianna. Will we need a chaperon?”

  “Of course you will,” Miss Wordsworth declared. “Miss Laurel, you will act as spotter on the bank for Miss Bell and her crew. Do not go into the Cherwell, but stay in the Holywell Mill Stream. How far do you intend to go?”

  “We want to get to Christ Church Meadows,” Gertrude said, before Miss Laurel could object to the program set before her.

  “Do be careful, Miss Bell. The men are practicing for Eights Week,” Miss Wordsworth reminded her.

  Gertrude’s eyes flashed with anger. “Why should they take over the river?” she muttered to her friends. “Why may we not row instead of poking along in a punt?”

  “Miss Laurel, are you well?” Miss Wordsworth noticed the older woman at the foot of the table. “You have not eaten your porridge. I do hope this tragedy has not affected your appetite.”

  Miss Laurel managed a weak smile. “I am a little unwell this morning, but it will pass, Miss Wordsworth. I shall study my mathematics in the library until Miss Bell and her friends are ready to leave.”

  “There will be two hours of study,” Miss Wordsworth decreed. “After which Miss Bell and her friends may take out the punt. I shall be at luncheon with Dean Liddell and some others at Christ Church if I am needed. Good morning, ladies!”

  Miss Wordsworth rose, and the students of Lady Margaret Hall rose with her. No matter how delightfully the gardens beckoned, they must never forget why they had come to Oxford in the first place. The undergraduates of Lady Margaret Hall dispersed to their tasks.

  Chapter 12

  Dr. Doyle was waiting at the door to the mortuary when the police arrived at Tom Gate, to be let in by a disapproving porter. Five prospective doctors had already assembled, ready for their lesson in human anatomy. A scrawny man in a much-worn checked suit and dingy gray shirt carefully opened the door to the mortuary.

  Inspector Truscott was brushed aside by Dr. Kitchin, the tall bearded don who was Christ Church’s leading scientific expert.

  “Are we ready?” Dr. Kitchin asked of his assistant.

  “Here’s the specimen brought in last night. Body of one James Ingram,” the attendant reported. “For official autopsy.”

  “We don’t usually name the subjects,” Dr. Kitchin pointed out. “Who are all these people?” He glared at the crowd behind him.

  Inspector Truscott stepped forward. “Truscott, Oxford Constabulary,” he said curtly. “Dean Liddell insisted that you do this autopsy, sir, but we’ve got our own man along.” He indicated the short, stout man in striped trousers and frock coat who had followed the police into the mortuary.

  “Gentlemen!” Mr. Colfax trotted in with his bag of instruments. “I see we’re all here.” He looked about and nodded familiarly to the two policemen and bowed to Dr. Kitchin, acknowledging the superiority of a physician over a mere surgeon. For his part, Dr. Kitchin looked down his nose at Mr. Colfax and glared at the interloper in the tweed suit and deerstalker cap.

  “And who is this?” Dr. Kitchin demanded.

  “Dr. Doyle of Portsmouth,” Inspector Truscott said, with an air of annoyance. “He was present when the body was discovered and has evidence that he will give at the inquest.”

  “Then he should give it there,” Dr. Kitchin huffed. “He’s no business being present. Go away, young man!”

  “Dean Liddell told me that I should be here,” Dr. Doyle said firmly. “Besides, you might have difficulty about this body. It’s one of your own, after all.”

  “I understand this is the body of one of our scouts,” Dr. Kitchin said, peering at the body. “I do not know the scouts. The particulars?” He turned to the policemen with a vague wave of the hand.

  “James Ingram. Age, thirty-five. Height, six feet, one inch. Weight, ten stone or thereabouts,” Sergeant Everett reported. “Time of death?” Mr. Colfax asked.

  “That’s for you to say, isn’t it?” Inspector Truscott retorted.

  “I had hoped for a more definite answer,” Mr. Colfax admitted. “Let’s see … Has anything been removed from the body?”

  “Nothing touched,” Sergeant Everett stated, as if reciting from the official forms. “He was brought here at nine-fifty last night by the college clock and hasn’t been removed. Pockets still as found. No personal possessions removed.”

  “He should have been brought to the official mortuary,” Colfax fussed.

  “That would have been most improper, considering that he was found on University grounds,” Dr. Kitchin said pompously.

  “Ahem!” Dr. Doyle coughed sharply, ending the argument before it deteriorated into a genteel brawl. “Perhaps I can narrow the window of opportunity here. I saw and spoke with the deceased at five o’clock yesterday. Mr. Dodgson saw his body being transported from Magdalen Bridge as the clock was striking nine. It would appear that the deceased met his end between five and nine o’clock yesterday.”

  “Close enough,” Colfax said with a shrug. “All right, let’s have his pockets out.”

  Ingram’s belongings were arranged on the stone slab that was the only furnishing in the room. A pocket watch and chain, a pen-knife, and some coins were all that could be found.

  “Not much to show,” Sergeant Everett commented, as he regarded the meager collection of oddments.

  “What is interesting to me is what isn’t there,” Dr. Doyle said. “Where are his keys?”

  “Eh?” Inspector Truscott looked about sharply to see who had spoken.

  The young doctor pointed to the slab. “Mr. Telling said that Ingram had lodgings across the way. He must have had a latchkey or a key to his own rooms. Where is it?”

  Inspector Truscott looked at Sergeant Everett, who shook his head in negation.

  “No keys were found near the body,” Everett answered the unspoken question.

  “If the body had been moved, they might have fallen out of his pocket where he was killed,” Dr. Doyle pointed out.

  “Have the constables been out along the riverbank?” Truscott asked his sergeant.

  “Aye, they’re out,” Everett said, gloomily. “Not that there’s all that much to see. The bank’s been trampled, and all sorts of animals were out last night.”

  “And another point,” Dr. Doyle went on, in full cry now. “These wounds on the head”—he pointed to several large gashes on Ingram’s scalp—“they seem to have been inflicted before death, but none of them is really deep enough to have caused the death itself.”

  “Could be that someone bashed him, then left him to drown,” one of the medical students piped up.

  “In that case,” Dr. Doyle said, “what are these marks on his back and shoulders?”

  “First he was bashed, and then he was held under?” The medical student offered his solution.

  Dr. Kitchin tried to ascertain which of his lowly students had had the temerity to pronounce an opinion.

  “Anything else, young man?” Mr. Colfax asked with awful politeness.

  “Not at the moment. Proceed, sir.” Dr. Doyle stepped back to let Mr. Colfax do his work. Ingram’s black coat, white shirt, and dark waistcoat were removed, revealing his woolen combination underwear. When that was peeled away, he was laid out on the slab, a taller man than had been supposed, his cheeks covered with stubble, his chest ready for the scalpel.

  “Observe!” Dr. Kitchin ordered as Mr. Colfax made the incision, and the undergraduates paled and wished they had not eaten eggs for breakfast.

  Ingram’s thorax was laid open. “There!” Dr. Doyle pointed to the lungs. Mr. Colfax and Dr. Kitchin glared at the young man who had dared to inject himself into their proceedings.

  “We shall continue methodically,” Mr. Colfax said firmly. “Examining the mouth of the victim, I find remains of plants, possi
bly waterweed. There is water in the lungs, also traces of the same waterweed.” A stroke of the scalpel confirmed the diagnosis. “It is my opinion that this man died of drowning, in a natural body of water, as opposed to a bath.”

  “I agree,” Dr. Kitchin stated.

  “No one says he didn’t drown,” Inspector Truscott said. “And that Dodgson chap says he heard someone take him out of the water at Magdalen Bridge. What I want to know is, was it an accident or suicide?”

  Dr. Doyle was peering at Ingram’s back and neck. The scout’s thinning hair had been pushed aside when he was deposited on the slab. Now Dr. Doyle asked, “Would someone turn him over? If you please?” he added.

  The scrawny attendant obligingly lifted the body for Dr. Doyle. “Aha!” He pointed to the marks on the man’s back. “I noticed the indentations on the coat and the dark marks on the shirt collar. This man did not simply fall into the river, gentlemen. He was most certainly assisted and held down forcibly.”

  “Most observant of you,” Mr. Colfax said dryly.

  “I am sure we would have discovered this ourselves,” Dr. Kitchin added. “This confirms the diagnosis. The man was held under the water, presumably while unconscious.”

  “But if he was unconscious, he wouldn’t have dirt under his fingernails,” Dr. Doyle reminded them. “He was bashed with something, fell into the water, revived, and was then held under until he drowned.”

  “Have you any more information for us?” Inspector Truscott asked sarcastically.

  Dr. Doyle was examining the watch with his magnifying glass. “Well,” he began, “I would say this is a most unusual item for a man in Ingram’s circumstances to own. Wouldn’t you agree, Inspector?” He held out the watch to Truscott, who took it and turned it over in his hands.

  “A gold watch, engraved on the back …”

  “With a crest?” Dr. Doyle pointed to the design on the watch. “A bear, erect. Whose arms, do you suppose? Not at all the sort of thing to be owned by a servant.”

  “Unless the servant had been given it by his master,” Dr. Kitchin put in.

  “Or unless it was stolen,” Truscott said.

  “Or he could have come by it quite innocently in a pawnbroker’s shop,” Dr. Doyle said. “The question is, which explanation is the right one?” He snapped the case open and stepped closer to the windows that let in the spring sunlight, his magnifying glass at the ready. “Aha! An inscription: ‘To James Ingram. Well Done Thou Good and Trusty Servant.’ The watch was his.”

  “And the penknife?” Inspector Truscott asked, as he took Ingram’s watch into custody.

  Dr. Doyle frowned over the object. “This is an elegant object, made of mother-of-pearl, with a folding blade. Not the sort of thing one would expect a servant to own. Inspector, have you searched Ingram’s rooms yet?”

  “That I have not,” Inspector Truscott said. “I suppose you want to come along to that, too.”

  “Thank you very much, Inspector,” Dr. Doyle said cheerfully, apparently oblivious to sarcasm on any side.

  Dr. Kitchin harumphed and drew his students’ attention to the pertinent portions of Ingram’s anatomy, while Mr. Colfax continued to cut.

  Dr. Doyle peered at Ingram once again. “What sort of water-weeds were found on the man’s fingers and in his mouth?” he asked suddenly.

  Mr. Colfax shrugged. “I’m not a botanist,” he said.

  “I suggest you find one and check to see if the weeds under Magdalen Bridge match the ones in Mr. Ingram’s mouth. If not, he might have been drowned somewhere else and taken to the bridge.”

  The stolid policeman nodded. “Everett, find someone who knows plants and find out where this fellow was when he went in. It shouldn’t be hard to find a botanist in a University.”

  “And look for something long, with something flat at one end …,” Dr. Doyle added.

  “An oar,” Everett stated. “Plenty of those about, but not along the bank. Could be this chap went in under Magdalen Bridge, among the boats. If that’s so, there’ll be someone to see.”

  “Get on it,” Truscott ordered. He looked at Dr. Doyle and gave it up as a lost cause. There was no way short of incarceration to keep this eager amateur sleuth away from Ingram’s rooms. “If you must come along, then do it, but stay out of our way.” Truscott glanced at the late Ingram. “Anything else we should know, Mr. Colfax?”

  “Nothing in particular, sir. The man had a pork pie for his tea, which gives us another clue as to the time of his death. I would put it between six and seven o’clock yesterday.” Mr. Colfax stepped back to allow Dr. Kitchin to point out the internal organs to his students while the assistant did the actual cutting.

  “Is that all?” Inspector Truscott glanced at what was left of Ingram and shook his head. Then he beckoned to his own squad, glared at Dr. Doyle, and proceeded out the door, across the lane, and around the corner to the door of the grubby lodging house that the late Ingram had called home. Their arrival was noted by the many children who scampered about, regardless of the laws that provided national education for all children under the age of twelve.

  “Who’s knocking?” A rough female voice bellowed from within.

  “Police!” That sent the neighborhood into a frenzy of speculation and the landlady to the door. Mrs. Perkins was a tall and bony woman of indeterminate age, who exclaimed loudly that she had never had the police in her house, that she was an honest woman who had never broken the law, and that she knew nothing of James Ingram save that he paid his rent and kept to himself.

  “Not that I’m one to complain,” she said, leading Inspector Truscott and Dr. Doyle up a rickety stair, “and I’ve been letting these rooms to the college scouts since I lost my husband, which is twenty years this March.” She produced a large key from a ring jangling at her waist to open the door to Ingram’s room.

  “Did Mr. Ingram have his own keys?” Inspector Truscott asked, glancing at Dr. Doyle.

  “A latchkey? Yes, he had one. He would sometimes be out late, attending to the students he said, and he didn’t like to wake the house. And he insisted on a key for his own rooms, but I kept one myself so that I could get in to clean.”

  Ingram had occupied one room, overlooking the lane and the walls of Christ Church. A narrow bed in one corner, a washstand in another, a wooden chair, and a large wardrobe were the principal furnishings. A wooden table had been dragged over to the window, and two kerosene lanterns added to the amount of light shed on the table’s surface.

  “What do you make of that?” Inspector Truscott asked, pointing to the table.

  Dr. Doyle examined the tabletop with his magnifying glass. “Most interesting,” he commented. “Inspector, I suggest you search for a camera. One of the newest models that uses celluloid films not the old glass plates so cherished by Mr. Dodgson. I think you will find that Mr. Ingram was photographing something that needed a great deal of light. He placed the object upon this table, fixed it into place with pins, and photographed it by both natural and artificial light. See, here are the holes made by the pins.” He indicated four minute blemishes on, the table’s wooden top.

  “What sort of object?” Inspector Truscott was examining the clothes in the wardrobe.

  “By the size of the space, I should say, a photograph,” Dr. Doyle said slowly. How much should he tell the police? he wondered to himself. Mr. Dodgson would be extremely distressed if the information about the nude photograph were to be given to the police, yet here was evidence that Ingram had been able to copy that photograph. In that case, where was the original?

  “Photograph? Why should he photograph a photograph?” Inspector Truscott asked.

  Dr. Doyle was already off on another search, down on his knees, peering under the bed. “Aha!” He withdrew a flat wooden box. “Here is your camera, Inspector. A most expensive one, too. I wonder how a servant could have afforded such a fine instrument? He could not have bought such a thing on a servant’s pay. And what have we here?” He pulled out the heavy
suitcase with its expensive lock that fairly shrieked “secrets within.”

  “What do you mean … Ah!” Light dawned on Inspector Truscott. “This Ingram was putting the black on someone, is that it?” Truscott regarded the locked box with intense suspicion.

  “With a camera of this sort, one may take pictures without the model even noticing that they are being captured on celluloid,” Dr. Doyle said. “Quite unlike the very bulky equipment of Mr. Dodgson’s day. If Ingram made a practice of following his noble masters about and catching them in unguarded moments, he might very well have attempted to blackmail them, using the photographs as bait. And I strongly suspect, Inspector, that the originals of those photographs are inside this suitcase.”

  “So this here Ingram takes photographs and uses them to blackmail folks, which might lead one of ’em to bash him with an oar and dump him into the river,” Truscott finished the thought. “It bears looking into.”

  “And what of his wardrobe?” Dr. Doyle glanced into the cavernous interior of the piece, which contained Ingram’s winter coat, a second black coat and pair of trousers, and a striped dressing-gown. The drawers of the wardrobe held white shirts of the accepted sort for scouts and the usual undergarments. Dr. Doyle rummaged in the drawers and found another small packet of personal items, which he examined before handing them to the perplexed Truscott. Then he wandered over to the washstand, where he examined Ingram’s razor and shaving brush. Finally he looked over the pile of newspapers and magazines next to the bed.

  “I see Ingram was a follower of the Turf,” Dr. Doyle commented, pointing to the Sporting News. “And here we have his calculations.” Dr. Doyle pointed to several loose sheets of paper, with penciled notations, addition problems, and names of racehorses with the appropriate odds. He frowned as he scanned the other side of the papers, and put one page into his coat pocket, even as he handed the others to Inspector Truscott, who accepted them with a grunt, looked at them, and put them back onto the table again.