‘She was one of the Clive-Newtons of Bellpath, you know,’ said Jonathan Grigg, a red-faced man with bulging eyes and an ample greying moustache, ‘and she was very young when she married Lestrange. They were both fascinated by the East, and had planned an expedition to Syria with Sir Breedon Harcourt in ’82. And then the riots broke out in Alexandria. Captain Lestrange went out there with his regiment, and was killed in the riots. He was only thirty-two.’
‘How do you know all this, Grigg? You hardly ever leave Oxford.’
Grigg laughed. It was a humorous, self-deprecating sound.
‘It was in the London papers for weeks,’ he replied. ‘And besides, I had a girl cousin who was married to one of the Clive-Newtons. Anyway, when it was all over, young Mrs Lestrange went out to Syria with Harcourt, and discovered her vocation in life. She’s only forty now, but she never remarried. She’s devoted herself to archaeology, with resounding success. By the way, is it true that you and she are special friends? I’ve heard rumours—’
‘Oh, stow it, will you, Grigg! Here we are at Turl Street. We’ve ten minutes before the lecture starts.’
A tall, distinguished man in a black morning suit and silk hat brushed past them as they neared the gate of Jesus College. A man of swarthy complexion, he wore little round tinted glasses.
‘Look,’ said Grigg, ‘that fellow’s going into Jesus College. I wonder if he’s a Syrian?’
‘He could be,’ Oakshott replied. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’
Grigg laughed, and the two dons made their way through the first quadrangle and into Jesus College hall.
In Oakshott’s view, the hall of Jesus College was one of Oxford’s finest, with a grace and elegance that he found unique to it. In the early eighteenth century, the original hammer-beam roof had been hidden by a fine rococo plaster ceiling. On the north wall, above the high table, an exuberant plaster cartouche contained the college arms: Vert, three stags trippant argent attired or.
The hall was already packed with guests when the two dons from Jerusalem Hall arrived. Most were sitting on either side of the tables running the length of the hall; others were occupying a diverse array of folding chairs brought in for the occasion. Oakshott and Grigg took their seats, and waited for the proceedings to begin.
On the high table, beneath the great portrait of Queen Elizabeth, the Founder, a large screen had been erected, and at the rear of the hall, a powerful modern slide lantern stood on a kind of metal plinth, attended by a young man in a very stiff collar, who was obliged to work with his back pressed against the hall door.
Somebody walked out of the large window embrasure and called for silence. Then somebody else – was it Wallace Lindsay? – told them that they were all very pleased to welcome the Honourable Mrs Herbert Lestrange that afternoon, and that they would all be very interested and instructed by the subject of her lecture – Krak des Chevaliers.
Jonathan Grigg had had further business in town, so Oakshott walked back to Jerusalem Hall alone. The lecture had been fascinating, and the lantern slides, made from Mrs Lestrange’s own photographs, had brought much of her subject to life. An impressive, handsome woman of forty or so, she had been dressed in a business-like green tweed skirt and jacket. When she consulted her notes, she donned gold pince-nez attached to a slender chain around her neck.
It was when the lecture ended that she had approached him directly, greeting him by name. She told him that she had taken volume one of his work on the Crusades with her to Syria, and had frequently consulted it during the excavations that she had supervised at Krak. Then she had taken him into the window embrasure and told him something that set his pulses racing.
‘In the course of my excavations,’ she said, ‘I uncovered a hidden chamber containing a number of ancient manuscripts, written in Arabic. Their contents revealed that our ideas of what happened in 1271 need to be seriously revised. You recall that Sultan Baibars was said to have forged a letter, ostensibly from the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, ordering them to surrender Krak. Well, Dr Oakshott, it was not a mere rumour. I found that letter among the cache. And that was not all. There were other letters, showing that King Otakar II of Bohemia was also involved in a sort of unholy conspiracy …’
When she had finished her account of her findings, she made the invitation that he was both expecting and dreading.
‘I am making a further expedition to Krak in March,’ she said, ‘and I think it’s imperative that you accompany me. The French authorities have been fully cooperative, and will lend me one of their expert translators to look thoroughly at all those manuscripts, which I have removed to a secret place. They now need a specialist historian, someone of your distinction, to interpret them. I will give you free use of your findings for inclusion in volume two of your great work.’
Oakshott walked down Leper’s Lane, thinking about the invitation, which he had instantly accepted.
‘We’re funding this expedition ourselves,’ she had told him. ‘The Royal Albert Trust think that they’ve given us enough, and are turning their attention to quite different fields of study. So it will cost us each £6,000. Listen, we must meet for tea somewhere in town. There’s something I want to show you.’ She had smiled then, and walked away to talk to the earnest young man in the very stiff collar.
He had caught sight of David and Mary McArthur in the throng, and had made a point of greeting them. They were old friends, and also well known to his uncle, but all the time that he was talking to them he was thinking of Mrs Lestrange’s invitation.
Six thousand pounds! He had never amassed a sum of that immensity in the whole of his professional career. His annual income, from a sum invested for him by his late father in government stock, was £340. So it was impossible for him to go to Syria. In God’s name, what had made him accept the invitation?
Oakshott suddenly felt that he was being followed. He turned, and saw the tall, bearded man with tinted glasses standing halfway along Leper’s Lane. He was writing rapidly in a note book. Presently, he put the note book in his pocket and hurried away.
Jeremy Oakshott dismissed the man from his mind. He was so preoccupied with his own folly that he did not reply to Tonson’s cheery greeting as he entered the lodge of Jerusalem Hall.
At half past eight on Friday morning, 7 September, Doris Tench loaded her tray with the breakfast things for Mr Sanders, and knocked on his bedroom door. Mr Sanders usually responded by opening the door to her. Drink or no drink, he was an early riser. Evidently, he’d decided to sleep in that morning. They’d not heard him come in, but earlier in the day he’d been in high spirits, and had told Joe that for once in his life he had something to celebrate!
The door was slightly ajar, and Mrs Tench pushed it open with her knee. The curtains had not been opened. She put the tray down on the table, and turned to the bed.
3
A Cut-throat Business
Inspector James Antrobus stood beside the bed, and looked down at the man who lay there dead. He must have been quite handsome in his youth, but his face bore the signs of a man ravaged by drink. His moustache, though, was well trimmed, and his black hair had been slicked down with pomade. He was fully clothed in a threadbare but well-cut suit, and his feet were shod with well-polished boots.
His throat had been cut from ear to ear, and he lay in a congealing pool of his own blood.
Antrobus looked at the police constable standing deferentially near the door. He had identified himself as PC Mark Roberts, warrant number 476. Roberts seemed to confirm the popular belief that the older one got, the younger the policemen seemed to be. He was probably in his early twenties, but he looked no more than eighteen.
‘You did right to send for me, Constable,’ said Antrobus. ‘Just tell me in your own words how you came to be summoned here to this house, and what you did when you saw the body.’
‘Sir,’ said PC Roberts, opening his notebook, ‘I was sent for today, Friday, 7 September, 1894, at a quarter to nine o’c
lock, by Mr and Mrs Tench, who sent a boy to tell me that their paying guest, Mr Michael Sanders, had been found lying dead in his bed, with his throat cut. I sent for Dr McArthur, who came straight away, and as neither of us could see any weapon in the room, we concluded that Mr Sanders had been murdered. I went immediately and told my friend Seth Bolt, the blacksmith’s brother, who rode over to Forest Hill, and telegraphed to Oxford Police Station from there.’
Constable Roberts put away his notebook and watched the inspector as he made his own examination of the body. Mr Antrobus had a reputation for getting to the root of things. It was only last month that he had solved that tragic business at St Michael’s College.1
Inspector Antrobus was an alarming man to look at, or so Constable Roberts thought. He was tall and gaunt, with a face as white as parchment. He had deep hollows around his eyes. He wore a light beard and moustache, which looked as though he’d grown them because the business of shaving had become too much of a chore. He’d been very ill, so he’d heard, but illness hadn’t dulled his wits.
He’d brought a detective sergeant with him. There he was now, skulking around the back garden, and darting in and out of the bushes, a thickset little man with a straggly moustache, wearing a bowler hat and a drab overcoat. For a little man he had a very loud voice. But then, little men were often bumptious. What was the inspector doing now?
Antrobus had stooped over the body, and was examining the wound in its throat. Constable Roberts shuddered as the inspector delicately inserted the little finger of his right hand into the wound, and then examined the tip of it through a jeweller’s lens which he had produced from a pocket.
‘He’s been dead about six hours, Constable,’ he said. ‘Six to eight hours. That’s what the congealing of the blood in the wound tells me.’
He turned the head carefully to one side, and looked closely at the scalp. There was a contusion there, the result of a blow that had broken the skin, but not cracked the skull.
‘Yes,’ said Antrobus, ‘the state of congealment suggests that this unfortunate man was killed at about one o’clock this morning. He’d been knocked unconscious before his throat was cut. Did anything strike you as unusual about this business, Constable?’
Constable Roberts ran a finger round the inside of his collar. It was a hot day for September, and he was sweating profusely in his heavy serge uniform. It was time that they moved the body. Very soon, it would start to make its presence known. A number of curious flies had started to take an interest in poor Mr Sanders who, meaning no disrespect, was on the turn.
‘Well, sir,’ said Roberts, ‘I did wonder why he was lying there fully dressed. It’s usually drunks who collapse on their bed with their boots on. But before you arrived, sir, I made enquiries at the Bull, and the landlord told me that Mr Sanders had been a little merry, but certainly not drunk. He’d not seen him leave, as the bar was very busy, but it would have been some time after twelve.’
‘You went to the Bull, did you? That was very clever of you, Constable. Now, if Mr Sanders wasn’t drunk, why did he lie down on his bed fully clothed? He could at least have taken his boots off. No, I don’t want an answer; I’m just thinking aloud. Was that window open when you arrived here?’
‘It was, sir. Wide open, as you see. It was quite warm last night, sir. Perhaps that’s why he opened the window wide, and lay on the top of the bed.’
Inspector Antrobus had crossed the room, and was looking at the window sill. He bent down, and examined the oil cloth covering the floor.
‘There are drag-marks here, Constable,’ he said. ‘And there are traces of soil on the window sill – soil from someone’s boots. I’m beginning to think—’
The door of the room opened, and Sergeant Maxwell came into the room.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘there’s a dense shrubbery separating these premises from those of the neighbouring cottage. I conducted an examination, and saw at once that two of the bushes had been disturbed. I also found long tracks, left by the heels of boots or shoes when their owner had been dragged along, unconscious or dead, sir, by the shoulders.’
‘Constable Roberts,’ said Antrobus, ‘this is Detective Sergeant Maxwell. As you can see, his investigations in the garden complement my own observations by the window sill. Mr Sanders must have been attacked out there, in the shrubbery – waylaid, on his return from the Bull – and then dragged across the grass, hauled up over the window sill, and into the bedroom. Then his killer laid him down on the bed.
‘Now, Constable, where do you think his throat was cut? Be careful.’
‘He’d have had his throat cut in the shrubbery, sir, away from prying eyes. Maybe the murderer threw his knife away among those bushes. Shall I go and have a look?’
‘That won’t be necessary, Constable,’ said Sergeant Maxwell with a kind of smirk. ‘I’ve already searched the garden, and the road beyond. There’s no sign of any weapon.’
‘PC Roberts,’ Antrobus continued, ignoring his sergeant’s interruption, ‘if he was attacked out there, then the grass, and the floor of this room, would have been covered in blood spurting from a wound of that nature. No; he was stunned out there in the bushes, dragged into the bedroom, and his throat was cut here, which is why the bed, and the floor beneath it, are soaked in blood. That’s what happened here.’
He turned to look at the body.
‘Constable,’ he said, ‘ask your friend the blacksmith’s brother to ride over to Forest Hill again, and telegraph to the Oxford City Mortuary. They’re to send a closed van here as soon as possible to convey the body away. We don’t want him to start emulating Polonius behind the arras. Sergeant, go with him, and find some men to help him carry the body to a stable or outhouse. Incidentally, where are Mr and Mrs Tench? I’ve not seen either of them since I arrived.’
‘They’re in the kitchen, sir, consoling each other, and supping tea. Come on, PC Roberts, let’s find some men to move that body.’
‘Who was that Polonius, Sergeant?’ asked the constable, as the two men made their way across the cottage garden. ‘The one that Mr Antrobus was talking about?’
‘Never you mind about him, Constable,’ said Maxwell. ‘There are all kinds of crimes that he and I are investigating at the moment. Polonius was one of them. It’s all very secret, you see.’
It would never do to lose face before a junior officer. Sometimes, he’d no idea what the guvnor was talking about. The trouble with Mr Antrobus was that he read too many books.
Once the body of Michael Sanders had been removed, the two detectives set to work examining the dead man’s effects. A travelling salesman’s sample case stood in an alcove beside the fireplace. It contained a number of cravats in cardboard display boxes, and half a dozen fancy waistcoats arrayed on folding hangers. There was a printed catalogue, and an order book, which showed that he had been successful in securing orders in four tailor’s shops, all in the Oxford area, and during the last fortnight. Not a fortune, but he’d receive enough commission for him to pay his rent, and have a bit left over.
‘Joe,’ said Antrobus, ‘go into the kitchen, and find out from Mr and Mrs Tench what kind of a man this Sanders was. I’ll carry on looking through his things. Get them to give you a cup of tea, try to look sympathetic, and take them into your confidence. Festina lente.’
‘Festina… . Yes, sir.’
Muttering under his breath, Sergeant Maxwell left the room.
A chest of drawers yielded some underclothes, neatly mended, a spare shirt, and a box of starched collars. They were arranged neatly in the drawers, and folded with some care. In another drawer a zip-up pigskin purse held a pipe, and a pack of Ogden’s pipe tobacco. A pair of rolled-up socks concealed ten gold half-sovereigns.
Ah! Here was an old leather wallet. Antrobus took it across to the table in the window alcove, and sat down to examine its contents. No banknotes. Perhaps there were some in the pockets of his coat, but he had chosen not to disturb the body more than had been necessary until he
saw it in the city mortuary.
Here was a trade card, saying that Mr Michael Sanders was a representative of Samuel & Company, Clothiers, of Banbury. And here – hello! A cheque for £100, made payable to ‘Bearer’, and drawn on Hodge’s Bank, 31a Queen Street, Oxford. It was signed by a J. Oakshott. Whoever he was, he must have been a good friend to poor Michael Sanders. Or so it would seem. To a man who had clearly been in straitened circumstances, £100 was a great deal of money.
And here was a letter, still in its envelope. It was headed Jerusalem Hall, Oxford, and dated 28 August.
My dear Sanders (it ran),
How pleasant it was to hear from you after all these years! Do please come here, to Jerusalem Hall, next Tuesday, 4 September, about mid-morning. We can chat about old times. I am sorry to hear that all has not been well with you, and will be only too happy to do what I can to help.
With best wishes,
Jeremy Oakshott
There was no mention of the cheque for £100 in the letter, so the benevolent Mr Oakshott had probably sent it to Sanders under separate cover.
The door was pushed open, and Sergeant Maxwell came into the room. He was dabbing his untidy moustache with a spotted handkerchief.
‘The body’s been laid in the barn of a farmer called Robinson, sir,’ he said. ‘The closed van will arrive from Oxford in about half an hour’s time. I’ve sent Constable Roberts home. He’s a smart lad, to my way of thinking.’
‘Did you see how the Tenches are?’
‘I did, sir. They gave me a cup of tea – very good it was, too. They liked Mr Sanders a lot, because he paid them regularly, and was polite in his way of speaking. In their view, he was a gentleman. He used to use foreign words occasionally, Latin, French, that kind of thing. He wouldn’t be the only one to bewilder honest folk with foreign words. That’s another reason that they thought he was a gentleman. He’d been boarding with them for a month – he came to stay on 6 August. He told them that he worked for a firm in Banbury, but from the way he spoke – his accent, I mean – they didn’t think he was an Oxfordshire man.’
An Oxford Anomaly Page 3