He raced across the front quad, not wanting to be nobbled by anyone before he knew who had died. At the door of his rooms Bunter was waiting for him.
‘Assistant Chief Constable Parker is urgently wanting to speak to you, my lord,’ said Bunter. ‘He has rung three times. I assured him that you would ring back the moment you came in.’
He dialled a number, and handed the receiver to Peter.
‘Got you at last!’ said Charles.
‘What’s up?’ Peter asked.
‘We’ve got a lovely fresh body on our patch,’ said Charles. ‘Throat cut.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Peter. ‘If he be not killed for me, what care I how dead he be?’
‘He’s one of yours,’ said Charles. ‘He’s a fellow of St Severin’s. Do you want to see the crime scene before they move the body?’
‘Might help,’ said Peter.
‘Get down here quickly, then,’ said Charles.
‘Righty-ho. Oh, Charles, who is it?’
‘One Mr Oundle.’
‘Ah,’ said Peter. ‘I’m on my way.’
One of those large Edwardian blocks of flats in Barons Court. Heavy red architecture, and too many occupants to form a community. Green paint in the hallways and corridors. A terrified cleaner sitting sobbing in a chair in the bedroom. Crime scene detectives, a photographer, a fingerprint-seeker blowing powder on door handles, and a young doctor looking rather green. Everyone at once deferring to Charles.
The body lay face up on the living room floor, head at an odd angle, which was not in itself surprising, because the neck had been nearly severed with a clean, deep cut. The carpet was soaked with an extensive bloodstain, and a pool of blood beside the dead man’s neck looked like port jelly; not yet dry.
On the floor beside the body lay the murder weapon – a samurai sword, long, sharp and bloody. As it happened, though his career as a private detective had been long and varied, Peter had not seen very many fresh bodies, and this was a man he knew, even though recently and slightly. He felt distinctly sick.
‘Glass of water?’ asked Charles sardonically.
Peter accepted.
Charles was asking, ‘Signs of forced entry?’
‘None, sir. And the front door has one of those spy holes that allow you to see who you are letting in.’
‘I take it that the cleaner found the body?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said one of the policemen. ‘She arrived as usual at nine thirty this morning, and let herself into the flat. She’s a bit hysterical now, sir, but she did just the right thing. She picked up the phone with a hand towel over it so as not to leave her own prints, and she dialled 999 without touching anything. Smart girl. Seems she reads detective stories.’
‘Can she cast any light?’ Charles asked.
‘She says the body is that of Mr Oundle. The flat is his. He uses it very little in term-time, but is here more in the vacations. Quiet gentleman. What she does insist on is that the sword belongs to him. It has stood in the hallstand along with a walking stick and an umbrella as long as she has worked for him.’
‘How long is that?’ Peter asked.
‘Three and a bit years,’ the officer said.
‘I take it there are no fingerprints on the hilt of the sword?’ said Peter.
The officer blowing powder on the door handles and the drawer handles of the desk in the window bay said, ‘Nothing, sir. Wiped clean, or the assailant wore gloves. The girl says she asked the deceased about it, and he said it was a souvenir.’
‘Where’s the sheath?’ Peter asked. ‘These things usually have sheaths.’
‘It’s in the umbrella stand, as usual. Perhaps the assailant pulled it out of the sheath as he came through the hall. Nasty thing to keep in an umbrella stand if you ask me.’
‘Can we ask her again?’ said Peter. He approached the girl in the bedroom and silently offered her his handkerchief.
‘I’m not usually like this,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘It was such a shock.’
‘Of course it was,’ said Peter gently.
‘You read about horrible murders,’ she said, her words broken by a sob, ‘but you never expect just to come into a room with the vacuum, and see that!’
‘You are a brave and sensible young woman,’ said Peter. ‘You did all the right things in spite of the shock.’
‘Did I really?’ she said. She was quite pretty in spite of her tear-stained face, and she was recovering in the light of Peter’s attention. ‘I did the best I knew,’ she added.
‘It would be very helpful now if you could tell us all you know about that sword,’ Peter said. ‘Do you know where it came from, and why Mr Oundle kept it?’
‘He said it was give him in the war,’ she said, mastering her tears and speaking calmly. ‘He said I was never to touch it, because it was that sharp. Not that I wanted to touch it, but I might have thought to clean it if he hadn’t said.’
‘Did he say who gave it to him?’ Peter asked.
‘Not by name, sir, but he said it was give him by a Japanese officer who surrendered to him. He said it was a terrible thing for them Japs to give up their sword. And he said the swords were handed down from father to son. He thought if the man who give it to him was still alive he might come and ask for it back some time, or else his son might come. Oh, sir, do you think that Jap might of come to get his sword and killed poor Mr Oundle with it? Was it revenge?’
‘But whoever used it to kill Mr Oundle didn’t take it, did he?’ said Peter. ‘I don’t think you need worry about avenging Japanese warriors returning here.’
‘Oh, I won’t worry,’ she said. ‘When they lets me go home it’s the last time I ever come here. There’s plenty of flats wants cleaning, where there’s only umbrellas in the hallstand.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Peter.
‘Oh, sir,’ she said, ‘I’ve thought of something else Mr Oundle said. He would of given the sword back to the man. He said he would give it back to him if he ever came for it. He said the war was over, and it didn’t do to have grievances more than what one could help.’
Peter realised that Charles had been standing at the bedroom door listening to all this.
He now said, ‘I’ll just check with the duty officer and if he has nothing more to ask you we will send you home in a police car.’
‘I can’t go home yet, sir,’ the girl said. ‘I’ve got four more flats to clean.’
‘You need to go home,’ said Charles. ‘I’ll send somebody to explain to your employers.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the girl said. To Peter she said, ‘It’s exciting in a horrible sort of way, isn’t it? Like a detective story. Like one of them Agatha Christies or Harriet Vanes.’
Peter pulled an eloquent face at Charles. But that gentleman stuck to the point.
‘Nothing to be learned from the murder weapon,’ he said regretfully. ‘And no obvious motive that I can see. All the valuables in the flat untouched. No ransacking through papers in the desk. The fact is, Peter, that the motive must be in Oxford.’
Chapter 8
It wasn’t motive, however, that was on Peter’s mind as he drove back to Oxford.
It was the murder weapon. An oriental sword had figured in one of Harriet’s Robert Templeton mysteries. That was a wild coincidence, surely? But there was a question nevertheless about murdering a man with a sword from his own front hall. If the assailant had planned ahead deliberately, then he must have known that the sword was there; that implied that he had visited the flat before, a fact that was perhaps confirmed by Mr Oundle having let him in. Obviously the murderer could have been one of Oundle’s colleagues.
Peter found the college under siege. A row of police cars were parked outside the front gate. The outer doors were closed, and the porter standing guard. ‘What’s going on?’ Peter asked, although he could guess.
‘Poor Mr Oundle has been murdered, Your Grace,’ said the porter, with less relish than might have been expected of him. ‘
And the police are here talking to everybody in the college as to where they were this morning. Not just the Oxford police,’ he added, ‘but some of them’s from Scotland Yard!’
Peter felt suddenly inexplicably tired. It was barely six o’clock, and he could have rolled into bed and slept for a week. He doubted he could help the diligent officers with their interviewing, so he sat in one of the deep armchairs in his room, and drowsed there.
By and by Harriet came in, and said brightly, ‘Sorry I took so long. Have a good day, Peter?’ Then she said, ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened? You look like death.’
‘I’ve looked at death today,’ Peter said. ‘And a nasty one, at that.’ He launched into an account of Mr Oundle’s violent and messy end.
Harriet was shocked. She was also sympathetic.
‘. . . and I’m sure you see, Harriet,’ Peter said, finishing his account, ‘the significance of a bright sword.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid I do,’ said Harriet. ‘You are referring to the death by sword thrust in my detective story Blades of Hatred. But Peter, I hope, hope we are wrong. It’s a terrible thing to have been writing jolly puzzle books, and find one has been writing a handbook of murder methods.’
‘You could console yourself, Harriet, with the thought that many literary murder methods wouldn’t work.’
‘I do quite conscientiously try to make them plausible,’ said Harriet.
‘Well, for example,’ said Peter, ‘you used the bell-ringing episode at Fenchurch St Paul. But the victim in that case wasn’t really killed by bells. He had a weak heart; the ordeal killed him, but had he been a robust fellow in good health he wouldn’t have died – he would just have been left deaf.’
‘Like poor Mr Dancy,’ said Harriet. ‘That’s not much comfort, Peter.’
There was a light knock on the door. Bunter admitted a police officer, with a clutch of papers in his hand. ‘I’m Inspector Gimps, sir,’ he said. ‘Chief Inspector Parker asked me to let you have this, sir, when we had finished the interviews. And for your information, sir, I am assigned to be your point of connection to the Oxford police.’
‘The interviews are all done now?’ said Peter.
‘Yes, thank you, sir. Everyone’s in the clear in the college, sir, as you can see from our notes,’ he added.
‘Thank you, officer. I shall look forward to working with you. Have a pleasant evening,’ Peter said.
Inspector Gimps pulled a face. ‘That’s not very likely, I’m afraid, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m on duty at the police station till midnight tonight, and there’s always something barmy going on here.’
‘Like what, officer?’ asked Harriet. She never missed an opportunity to collect background detail.
‘Well, last night, m’am,’ he said, ‘we was called out to a nasty accident. Young man had fallen off a wall into Brasenose Lane. Trying to climb into Exeter College after midnight. Fell fifteen feet, and banged his head and broke his ankles.’
‘Very foolish, just to avoid a fine,’ said Peter.
‘Oh, but that’s not the half of it, sir. You see a great long bit of the wall of Exeter has fallen into the lane. There’s a gap maybe twenty feet wide. He could just have walked in. But there was a notice the Rector of Exeter put in the gap what said, “Will gentlemen please not avail themselves of this facility,” so that young moron was climbing up the drainpipe alongside the gap, just as they was all doing before the wall fell over. What do you make of that, then?’
‘Ah, my vanished youth!’ said Peter. ‘I would have done just the same myself.’
‘You surprise me, sir,’ said Gimps.
‘What happened to the young man?’ asked Harriet.
‘We stretchered him straight into the Radcliffe Infirmary, and then yours truly has the nice job of ringing up his parents in the middle of the night to tell them that their beloved boy might have killed himself.’
‘Has he killed himself?’ asked Peter.
‘Don’t know that, sir. I’ve been on this all day; haven’t had time to check.’
‘What are we thinking of?’ said Peter. ‘We must let you go. Many thanks.’
When Inspector Gimps withdrew, Peter spread the paperwork he had been given out on the table. Every senior member of the college had been asked to state his whereabouts between the hours of nine and noon that morning. And they all had alibis.
And what alibis they were! None of the ‘walking the dog in the park’ kind of story, where other passers-by, if they could be found, might confirm . . .
Vearing and Ambleside and Gervase had all been lecturing in the Examination Schools. Their presence there could be confirmed by dozens of easily findable people.
Trevair had been giving tutorials in his college rooms from nine till noon; any of his third-year undergraduates would confirm. Winterhorn, the Bursar, had been in conference with a distinguished architect on the subject of a necessary repair to one of the chapel vaults, and the question of whether there might be a cheaper way to do it. Troutbeck had been in a consultation session with dons from the Chemistry Faculty about the next finals paper to be set. So on, down and down the list.
‘Let’s get Ambleside to discuss this,’ said Peter. ‘Will you see if he can step across here, Bunter?’
When Ambleside appeared, Peter asked him, ‘It seems that every senior member of the college has a watertight alibi for the time of poor Oundle’s death, Ambleside. Does that strike you as odd?’
‘Thank God for it, I would say,’ said Ambleside. He looked exhausted and haggard.
Peter offered him a whisky, which he accepted at once.
‘What seems odd to me,’ said Peter quietly, ‘is that usually in a murder case a few people can’t really remember where they were at an exact time of the day in question. Or they remember, but it is something that can’t be confirmed – they were wandering alone in a wood, or they went to bed early with a headache . . . Or they say their wife can confirm their story – perhaps you know that wives have a special status as witnesses. I have learned to be suspicious of very solid alibis remembered in detail. Few ordinary people can come up with those, whereas a criminal might have provided himself with one. So as I say, does it strike you as odd?’
‘I don’t know what my colleagues have said,’ Ambleside answered cautiously.
‘Have a look,’ said Peter, pointing at the police reports laid out on the table.
Ambleside leaned over the table, studying the reports for some time. Then he straightened up and said, ‘No, Your Grace, none of this is in any way odd at all. Just an ordinary working morning. People would have been doing this, or variations of this, on any morning in term-time, and indeed any afternoon in term-time. In the vac they would have been working in libraries, or in their college rooms in full view of servants and librarians, unless they were away from Oxford. But after all, this is term-time.’
‘Yours is a very hard-working profession,’ said Peter, ‘in that case.’
‘Most Oxford people work hard,’ said Ambleside. ‘There are one or two who idle – a rich college can afford to indulge them if they have some valued quality or are resting on work of high repute. St Severin’s can’t afford old lions, or peacocks. We need the fellowship to work hard.’
‘You can afford feuding, though,’ said Peter.
‘Afford it? No, it looks set to ruin us. It will hurt the reputations of every one of us if we become famous for in-fighting, or if the college goes bankrupt. Some people are already discreetly looking for jobs elsewhere. As for the effect on us of a fellow having been murdered, even if it turns out, as it looks from all this that it must, that it had nothing to do with the college . . . we must put an end to the feuding as soon as possible, and you must help us. If you can,’ he added.
‘I am doing my best,’ Peter assured him.
‘Will you eat in Hall tonight, Your Grace?’ said Ambleside. ‘It might boost morale if people saw you were still concerned with our problems.’
‘In that case .
. .’ said Peter, taking his gown from the hook at the door. He gave Harriet a mute signal that she was not required to suffer with him, and he rattled down the stairs behind Ambleside.
It was indeed a grim experience that evening. Rather few of the fellows were present, those of them who had a home to go to having gone there. There was an uncomfortable atmosphere; the fellows had not filed in and sat together, there were spaces left so that the company was divided into three small groups. The undergraduates, on the other hand, had packed in and were talking loudly and excitedly, no doubt enjoying exactly the news that was weighing on the spirits of their seniors. The college food was not good enough to bear the burden, though the chef had contrived to lay his hands on enough chocolate, in spite of rationing, to make a sickly end to the menu.
Halfway through the meal a quarrel broke out between dons sitting down the table from where Peter and Ambleside sat. Voices were briefly raised, and then someone got up from his place, and moved down the table to sit alone. Stony-faced, the butler moved his cutlery along and reset his place in front of him. A long silence fell among the other diners who watched this little drama, but eventually they managed to resume some sort of conversation. The subject chosen was the college prospect of bumps in the forthcoming Eights. Could they recover the places lost in last year’s Eights?
Peter listened in silence, and a very young research fellow sitting beside him kindly explained to him how bumps worked. The river being too narrow to permit side by side racing, the college boats lined up in the order in which they had finished the previous year, and rowed like hell to try to catch and bump the boat in front. If you achieved a bump you moved up one in the order of the next day’s rowing, and your victim fell back one. Peter thanked him gravely for the explanation.
When the closing grace was said, the company dispersed rapidly, and Peter did not join the few who went towards the Senior Common Room for dessert, but returned to Harriet.
‘How did it go?’ she asked. She was curled up in an armchair beside the fire, contentedly reading.
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