The Problem of the Surly Servant
Page 25
Dr. Doyle was examining Chatsworth’s cheroot. “Most interesting,” he commented. “The police found something very much like this under Magdalen Bridge this afternoon.”
Chatsworth flushed angrily. “That means nothing. Anyone can smoke a cigar.”
“These are American-made cheroots,” Dr. Doyle said.
“What of it? A man may buy his cigars in London or have them sent to him direct,” Chatsworth pointed out.
“So he may,” Mr. Dodgson said. “And just because a man smoked a cigar under a bridge does not necessarily mean that he was involved in murder. However, if you three were responsible for moving that body, you had best own up to it now. Dean Liddell can inform Inspector Truscott. I assume that you three were the undergraduates I saw last night?”
Farlow glanced at Martin and Chatsworth then nodded briefly. “It was as Minnie said, a rag, that’s all. We were going to put him in with the anatomy subjects for the next day’s lecture at the mortuary.”
“How did you come to find him?” Mr. Dodgson asked.
Farlow passed his tongue over suddenly dry lips. “I was passing by, as it were …”
“Passing by Magdalen Bridge?” Mr. Dodgson’s tone was icy. “Mr. Farlow, I was present when the late Ingram shouted out a challenge to meet him under that bridge at six o’clock. As I understand it, your rooms overlook St. Aldgates. It was a warm day, and your windows must have been open. You heard Ingram’s shouted challenge; you went to meet him and found … what?”
“Why should I wish to speak to Ingram under Magdalen Bridge? He was my scout. I could talk to him right here in my own rooms,” Farlow sneered. “You are building a case out of thin air, Mr. Dodgson. You’ve had that Scotch swine following me about all day and what have you to show for it? A filthy cigar end and a squib. I’ll admit to moving Ingram, nothing more.”
“Ah yes,” Mr. Dodgson fairly purred, “a squib. A set of verses, which cannot be deemed poetry except by the most vulgar of minds, defaming not only the young lady but her school and its purpose as well. How do you come to know of it, Lord Farlow?”
“Why …” Farlow looked to Chatsworth for guidance.
“It’s in your hand,” Chatsworth said. “That piece of paper …”
“This?” Mr. Dodgson looked at the paper on the desk. “This is a list of objects found by the police, which Ingram had stolen from the rooms on his staircase, and which were pawned at a shop on Pembroke Lane.”
“I thought he was pinching things,” Chatsworth said, with a smug look at his roommates. “Your studs, Greg. See if there are a set of pearl studs on that list, sir. Greg here missed his yesterday. Ingram was a thief and a liar and …”
“And a blackmailer,” Mr. Dodgson added. “The police have found a cache of objects in his rooms that lead them to suspect that he collected half-written letters for use at a later date.”
Dodgson turned his eyes to Martin, who had remained silent throughout the interview. “Mr. Martin, I understand you have an interest in the Greek poetess Sappho.”
“Eh?” Martin jerked out of a troubled reverie. “Oh, yes. I have the newest translation, but there is so little of her work available that it is difficult to assess her place in the pantheon of ancient literature. I have been working on a new translation …” His voice trailed off.
“You have rooms with Lord Farlow and Mr. Chatsworth on the west side of Tom Quad, is that not so?” Mr. Dodgson asked, almost casually.
“That’s right,” Martin said. “Nev and Minnie and I … well, we’re old Etonians, and the rooms were available, and Peckwater’s too full of Rugby and Westminster boys and …”
Mr. Dodgson held up his hand for silence. “And you are all school chums. You are in and out of one another’s rooms all day. It would be quite simple for one of the others, Farlow or Chatsworth, to pick up your new translation of Madame Sappho’s poems and read it.”
“I suppose so, but I don’t see what this has to do with Martin looked at Mr. Dodgson then at his two friends with growing horror. “Minnie! Didn’t you have a go at my translation? You and Nev, reading it out loud …” He fairly choked with indignation.
Mr. Dodgson turned his attention to the other two men. “Dr. Doyle has a copy of the item in question,” he told them. “Now, Lord Farlow, Mr. Chatsworth, I think you had better explain yourselves to Dean Liddell. Sending items of this sort to young ladies is a very serious matter, and threatening to publish them unless the young lady leaves Oxford is even worse.”
“It’s blackmail,” Dr. Doyle elucidated.
Farlow turned on the interloper. “What are you doing here anyway, you Scotch upstart?” he snarled.
“I am here as amicus curiae,” Dr. Doyle said, with a bland smile and a twitch of his mustache.
“No friend of this court!” Farlow shouted. He swung wildly at Dr. Doyle, who evaded the younger man’s attempt at fisticuffs.
“I thought we’d finished with all that!” Dr. Doyle said disgustedly. “Mine is only one copy. Ingram had more. Mr. Farlow, you have admitted to moving a body, which is already a matter for the police. It is also obvious that you are behind this ludicrous attempt to suborn Miss Cahill and drive her away from Oxford. Be a man, sir, and take what is coming to you!”
Dr. Doyle’s words only seemed to enrage the younger man. Farlow lunged for the door. Dr. Doyle grabbed at his gown to stop him. Farlow twisted around, trying to get away. The two men teetered back and forth, until Farlow broke out of Doyle’s grip and headed for the door, evading the portly proctor, Seward.
“Where do you think you are going?” Mr. Dodgson shouted after him. Seward and Doyle ran after Farlow, as the young man looked wildly about him for a means of escape. The stairs were blocked by two substantial dons on their way up to their rooms. The only exit was the corridor that led to the clock tower.
“Don’t go that way!” Mr. Dodgson shouted from his place at the door. “He must not go into the tower!” he gasped out to Dr. Doyle. “The clock is about to strike!”
“The bell!” Dr. Doyle ran after the younger man.
“He must be trying to get to the stairs below the tower!” Seward wheezed.
Dr. Doyle saw Farlow at the end of the corridor, where an ancient wooden door led to the famous tower where Great Tom, the college clock, had its works.
Seward tottered along the corridor. “Get him out,” he gasped.
Dr. Doyle loped after Farlow, grabbing at the younger man’s flying gown. The cloth slid through his fingers as Farlow opened the door and dashed into the tower room, making for the spiral staircase that led to the roof. Dr. Doyle threw himself on the student before he could reach the stairs. The two of them went down, rolling on the bare boards of the clock tower.
Farlow scrambled to his feet and started to climb up the winding stair, his only possible escape route.
“Don’t be stupid, boy!” Dr. Doyle wheezed. “The clock’s going to strike at any moment! We have to get out of here!”
As if in response, the bell of Great Tom began to toll. Farlow fell down the stairs as if he had been struck. Dr. Doyle could feel the reverberations throughout his whole body. He grabbed Farlow by the shoulders, swung him around, and planted a good punch on his jaw. The young man sagged, and Dr. Doyle hauled him out of the clock chamber.
Only four strokes, and the bell was still. Dr. Doyle leaned against the wall of the corridor, breathing hard. Farlow groaned and tried to move.
“That was a very stupid thing to do,” Dr. Doyle chided him, as he helped the fallen student to his feet. “You have as good as admitted your guilt. Now take your medicine like a good fellow.”
“I didn’t kill Ingram,” Farlow said sulkily.
“I never said you did,” Dr. Doyle told him. “Of course, the police may think otherwise, unless you come clean and tell us all you know.”
Dr. Doyle and Mr. Farlow staggered into Mr. Dodgson’s rooms to the great astonishment of Chatsworth and Martin. Dr. Doyle dumped Farlow into one of the armchair
s.
“Will he be all right?” Chatsworth bent over his fallen leader.
“That’s the second time I’ve had to knock him down today,” Dr. Doyle said, sucking on his knuckles. “For a student, he seems unwilling to learn.”
“He’s always been that way,” Chatsworth said. “Can’t blame him, I suppose. My governor would say it’s lack of moral fiber. Very knowing one, my father.”
Mr. Martin’s round face echoed his friend’s concern. “I always felt a little sorry for him,” he said.
“Sorry? For the heir to a title, lands …,” Dr. Doyle began.
Martin blinked through his spectacles. “Oh, that. Well, as to the title, Lord Berwick, his father, came into it almost by accident, when his cousin died without an heir. Otherwise, I suppose he’d never have been allowed to marry the actress.”
“Stop talking about me as if I weren’t here,” Farlow muttered, as he wiped blood off his upper lip. “Everywhere I go, all people ever talk about is how my pater and mater got married in the teeth of everyone’s opposition. Regular Romeo and Juliet, you’d think them.” He jerked away from Dr. Doyle’s probing hands. “When Cousin Edmund died, the Pater got the title and the estate …”
“And Berwick Place, which you loathe,” Chatsworth said sagely.
“Great empty barracks,” Farlow grumbled. “All the servants eating their heads off in the hall and me alone up in the nursery, with just some miserable chit of a governess and the nursemaids. And Nanny, of course, but she was let go when I went to school.”
“I have often thought that the children of the great families have a much harder time of it than children in simpler homes,” Mr. Dodgson said. “One hears a great deal of Lord Berwick and his cronies, entertaining His Royal Highness lavishly and being entertained in their turn. Of course, such a life must mean a great deal of expenditure.”
“Money!” Farlow spat out. “My pater thought he was marrying it, but the old Methodist wouldn’t have an actress in the house, even after she got the title. I’ll never forget it! Sitting there for hours, decked out in my best suit, nothing to eat, not even a cup of tea or a biscuit, and then that miserable little girl bouncing in, all yellow curls, chattering about what a nice time she’d had with the sweet gentleman, and the jam cakes …” Farlow choked on the memory.
“So you did know who Miss Cahill was. I had wondered about that.” Mr. Dodgson nodded again. “I am now going to speculate, Mr. Farlow. You may agree or not, as you wish.”
“Your parents keep a large establishment. They would have had footmen. Was one of those footmen James Ingram?”
Farlow nodded. “I almost didn’t remember him, but he certainly remembered me. I was the one who got him sacked.”
“Eh?” Mr. Dodgson’s eyebrows rose.
Farlow reddened. “I found him with one of the maids, in flagrante, as it were. Naturally, the two of them were let go at once. No matter what was going on in the upstairs bedrooms, the servants had to uphold certain standards.”
“Which meant that Ingram went up to London with a recommendation from Lord Berwick and a distinct chip on his shoulder,” Dr. Doyle summed it up. “Whatever happened to the girl?”
Farlow shrugged. “Turned off, of course, with no character. I was left alone most of the time, except for the rest of the servants.”
“Not even a nurse?” Dr. Doyle asked.
“Once I was off to school, the Pater didn’t see why I had to have one,” Farlow said bitterly. “Of course, there was Greg. His father was Vicar at Berwick, and the two of us were of an age, so I went to the vicarage whenever I could. And then Minnie joined the two of us at Eton.”
“Three Musketeers,” Chatsworth put in. “What with my mother’s being a mill heiress, and his being an actress, the other chaps ragged us unmercifully. And Greg, here, stuck by us.”
Mr. Dodgson ignored the interruptions and picked up his tale. “I will leave it to the police to follow Ingram’s trail in London. During his travels, he seems to have picked up small items that were of no apparent value, but might be used for extortion at a later date.” Mr. Dodgson eyed Farlow and Chatsworth. “Mr. Farlow, did you ever inform Ingram of your encounter with Miss Cahill?”
“Me? Tell Ingram?” Farlow looked puzzled. “Why should I do that?”
“You never spoke of your childhood encounter?”
“Why should I? He was there!”
“What?” Mr. Dodgson exclaimed.
“When the Mater dragged me into Oxford to show me off to her brother, Ingram was the footman then so he knew all about the little b …”
Mr. Martin growled threateningly. Farlow amended his statement. “Blond,” he corrected himself. “Of course, when he turned up here I didn’t recognize him at all, but he reminded me of our past associations soon enough.”
Mr. Dodgson nodded thoughtfully. “And you decided to employ him in this scheme to apply to your uncle, who had announced that he would settle a large sum on any of his young relations who achieved honors at University,” Dr. Doyle said accusingly.
“What right had she to set herself up?” Farlow burst out angrily. “I saw her there, sitting up on the dais at the Balliol lectures, for all the world like a don herself!”
“So you took it upon yourself to remove her,” Mr Dodgson said sternly. “You wrote obscene letters directed to her. You threatened to defame her school if she did not leave Oxford. Finally, when that did not deter her, you wrote the verses in question, and Ingram provided the photograph, which he stole from my rooms.” Mr. Dodgson sat straight up in his chair. “What have you to say for yourself, sir?”
Gregory Martin bounded out of his chair. “You said it was a rag!” he exploded. “All because the girls were set up on the dais at Balliol lectures! I am ashamed of you, Nevil! I wash my hands of you!”
“You pious fraud!” Farlow was on his feet, glaring at his boyhood friend. “It was you who had that Greek text in the first place, and …”
“I was studying it!” Martin retorted. “And I am not the one who went to that gambling room during the Long Vac and signed chits for money I did not have and could not earn!”
Chatsworth tried to worm his way between his taller, broader, stouter friends. “I wanted you to come with me to Wyoming, Nev,” he said sorrowfully. “He always gets into trouble if I’m not about to help him,” he explained to Mr. Dodgson.
“Which is why you followed him to Magdalen Bridge last night,” Mr. Dodgson said. “Gentlemen, I will not allow brawling in my rooms. Particularly not before the Dean!”
Chatsworth, Martin, and Farlow suddenly remembered that they were in the presence of their leader. Dr. Doyle eyed them as if they were a trio of wild animals, ready to fight one another or anyone else at any moment.
Mr. Dodgson took a deep breath to calm himself. “Now, where were we?”
“Under Magdalen Bridge,” Chatsworth said airily. “That’s where this all started, didn’t it? With my cheroot. And yes, I confess, I was there last night when Nev went to have it out with Ingram.”
Farlow swung around to look at his friend. “I didn’t see you.”
“Of course you didn’t! You were too busy trying to look innocent,” Chatsworth retorted. “I was on the other side, down by the Botanic Gardens. You came down the stairs and saw Ingram caught in among the boats. Then you left. It was all I could do to leg it to the Hall and get there before you.”
“That is not quite true,” Dr. Doyle said. “We found two cigars, Mr. Chatsworth. You did not follow Lord Farlow; you were there before him, possibly with the intention of having that word with Ingram yourself.”
Chatsworth’s amiably imbecilic expression changed to one of wary watchfulness. “And what if I was?”
“Then it is entirely likely that you witnessed the murder,” Dr. Doyle said.
Dean Liddell decided to exercise his authority. “Mr. Chats-worth,” he intoned, “it is your duty to tell what you observed.”
“All right.” Chatsworth glance
d at his friends. “I heard Ingram yelling in the street, something about meeting him at six o’clock under Magdalen Bridge. I knew he’d been nicking the college wine, and a few other things as well, and I thought he’d got his hooks into you, Nev, somehow, so I beetled on to Magdalen Bridge to have a word, as Mr. Dodgson said. Only when I got there, I heard him arguing with someone down by the boats.”
“Could you tell who it was?” Mr. Dodgson leaned forward in his chair.
Chatsworth shook his head. “I was on the other side,” he said ruefully. “I heard a splash and a lot of thrashing about, and then I heard footsteps on the stone stairs.”
“What did you do?” Martin asked breathlessly.
“What could I do?” Chatsworth replied carelessly. “I was going to see about helping the chap, when along you came, Nev. So there I was, and there you are. Nev didn’t do it, and I can swear to it in any court you like.” He looked defiantly from Mr. Dodgson to Dr. Doyle.
Mr. Dodgson frowned. “This is more difficult than I thought,” he muttered to himself.
“Sir?” Martin asked hesitantly. “May I go, sir? I wanted to finish my prep for viva voce.”
“You may all leave these rooms,” Mr. Dodgson told them.
Dean Liddell added, “Do not leave the grounds. You are all gated until further notice. I shall have to consider whether your actions toward Miss Cahill merit more stringent punishment.”
“We just wanted to get her out of Oxford,” Chatsworth offered as an excuse.
“So that Lord Farlow, here, could receive the bounty of the beneficent Mr. Roswell,” Mr. Dodgson finished for him. “I must point out to you that Mr. Roswell’s fortune is his to do with as he likes, and that your mother was cut out of the family totally when she went on the stage. Your scheme was based on faulty logic, Mr. Farlow, and the result is that it is you who will leave Oxford in disgrace. Good day, gentlemen!”
Dean Liddell rose majestically from his chair. “Gentlemen, you will remain in your rooms until dinner. I strongly suggest that you consider writing letters of apology to Miss Cahill and her friends, and that you send them to Lady Margaret Hall before the day is out. Thank you, Mr. Dodgson. You have cleared this matter up to my satisfaction. I shall inform the police of your discoveries. Gentlemen!”