An Oxford Anomaly

by Norman Russell

  ‘You’ll find some very knowledgeable old ladies there,’ the landlord of the Anchor had told her, ‘particularly old Mrs Pepper, who’s over ninety, so they say. She was in service for many years with a family called Rowe, who were friends of the Wests. She knows all the local myths and legends.’

  Armed with a bag of groceries, Sophia Jex-Blake called upon Mrs Pepper in her neat little dwelling in Corbet’s Almshouses. She was shown into the sitting room, one of three small rooms in her house, the other being a bedroom and a kitchen, with a coal range. Mrs Pepper was indeed very old, and walked with a stick, but her eyes were bright with interest in all that was going on.

  ‘Oh, yes, ma’am,’ she said, ‘I remember them all. After all, it’s only just over twenty years ago that Vivien West had her throat cut. At my age, you forget what you did last week, but twenty years ago is as clear as day.’

  ‘Vivien was a beautiful girl, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, yes, she was. Very delicate to look at, refined, you know. But she was a flirt! She’d play one lad off against another, and laugh at them both. She was very self-assured, was Vivien. She’d go out with the shoot, and come back smeared with blood from the birds she’d shot. She was very popular with that set – the shooting gentlemen. She rode well, too.’

  The old lady sighed, musing on the follies of the past.

  ‘They both loved her, you know,’ she continued, ‘Mr Michael and Mr Jeremy. Mr Michael Sanders loved her dearly in a quiet, devoted sort of way, and she loved him partly for that, I think. He was staunch and true, was Mr Michael. Mr Jeremy Oakshott, now, he was one of those men who can be consumed by passion, and that’s how he loved poor Vivien.’

  ‘And which of them did she love?’

  ‘She loved Mr Michael, as I said, she really did. She chose him in the end, but on the Friday before the wedding, she was murdered. It was terrible. Mr Michael never recovered from losing her. He took to drink, and went down in the world. He left these parts, and travelled around the country as a salesman. Restless, you see. And then, in the end, he was murdered, too. Well, of course, we all know who did that.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mrs Pepper?’

  ‘Well, it must have been Mr Jeremy, because it was Jeremy who murdered Vivien West. He was consumed with jealousy, and he blurted out his hatred to a poor mad girl who he was friends with, Margaret Meadows, her name was. And after he’d crept up on poor Vivien in the garden and cut her throat, he went and confessed to daft Margaret. For weeks afterwards she’d go round the town muttering to herself about the murder, and some people thought that she must have done it. So did she, in the end. But she didn’t do it, it was Jeremy.’

  ‘How can you be so sure, Mrs Pepper?’

  ‘He was always a bit of a milksop,’ the old lady continued, ignoring Sophia’s question. ‘He couldn’t cope with a girl like Vivien. Somebody heard him propose to her, all passion and madness. She just laughed at him. She couldn’t help it. So in his mad jealousy he killed her. No one said anything, of course, though a few of us knew well enough. Humble folk kept what they knew to themselves in those days. And now he’s a professor, or some such, at Oxford, or maybe it’s Cambridge. Poor Michael must have found out, and so Jeremy killed him, too.’

  ‘But this is all surmise, isn’t it, Mrs Pepper?’

  ‘Surmise? Oh, no, ma’am. You see, when he killed Vivien West, somebody saw him do it. But it’s best to leave these old, unhappy things alone. Asking your pardon, ma’am, but did you know any of the gentlefolk in Upper Henning?’

  ‘No, Mrs Pepper. I’ve only heard about them from people who knew them in past years. Upper Henning? Is that another village?’

  ‘Oh, no, ma’am, it’s just the part of our village where the gentry live. It’s just about time for my daily walk. Would you care to come with me? I’ll be able then to show you where they all lived – the Oakshotts, the Wests, and the Sanders.’

  Sophia gladly assented, and waited for the old lady to put on her bonnet and shawl. Although walking with a stick, she was evidently quite sound of wind and limb. They walked along a number of narrow lanes until they emerged at a wide flight of steps which took them up to a narrow green, flanked with substantial villas standing in their own grounds.

  Mrs Pepper stopped, and pointed to a granite house to their left. It stood in a walled garden, and was entered through a pair of iron gates.

  ‘That house, ma’am,’ said Mrs Pepper, ‘is Wellington Lodge, the residence of Mr and Mrs Percy Edwards and their children. He’s a corn factor, and chairman of the parish council. Well, in the olden days, it was lived in by Mr Bertram Sanders, who was something to do with Hereford Cathedral. He lived there with his wife Joan and his son Michael. Michael was an only child. You can see all their houses from here, ma’am, all the folk who figured in that old tragedy.’

  ‘Is that a school I can see, further up the green on the left?’

  ‘It is, ma’am. That road is called School Lane, and that’s Henning Grammar School. The nice sandstone house attached to it is where the headmaster lives. Mr Chivers, he’s called. But in the old days, that’s where the Oakshotts lived. Mr Oakshott was the headmaster then, a very clever man, so they said. I can’t remember his wife’s name. His son Jeremy took after him when it came to cleverness, though I never heard tell of him committing any murders, like his son did.’

  Mrs Pepper took Sophia’s arm and together they walked up School Lane. Opposite the school, on the other side of the green, a fine eighteenth-century town villa stood in its own extensive grounds. Its stuccoed walls gleamed white in the sun, and Sophia fancied that she could hear the sound of children playing in the walled garden. Mrs Pepper placed a finger to her lips, as though enjoining silence.

  ‘That’s Priory House, where the Wests lived. They lived here in Henning, but they owned extensive lands in Worcestershire. Mr Theodore West was a gentleman by birth, one of the Wests of Seaton Style. He was a kind man by nature, and a true countryman. He was Master of the Foxhounds, and a magistrate. I can see him now in my mind’s eye, though he’s dead these many years. His wife was a beauty – I don’t know where she came from. Some folk said that her family were in trade. And Vivien was their daughter. Poor, lovely girl! No one who had seen her would ever forget her.’

  They crossed the green, and walked quietly up to a gate in the rear wall of the house. Mrs Pepper invited Sophia to look through it to the garden beyond.

  She saw a grass arbour, shaded by tall bushes on the far side. Flowering shrubs occupied the space on either side of the wall. By looking beyond the line of tall bushes she could see Priory House basking in the sun. If there had been children playing in the garden, they were not there now.

  ‘That’s where it happened,’ Mrs Pepper whispered. ‘In that patch of grass between the gate and the line of bushes. It was a favourite spot of Vivien’s, especially in the summer, when it was cool and shady. She was sitting there in a basket chair, reading the marriage service in the Prayer Book. Jeremy Oakshott crept through that gate like the felon he was, and cut her throat from behind.’

  Sophia felt that she had fallen under the spell of the old woman, who remembered the past so vividly. But she forbore to make any reply to her bold assertions about Jeremy and the murder of Vivien. Mrs Pepper had said earlier that there had been a witness, but she seemed to have forgotten about it.

  ‘So there, ma’am,’ said Mrs Pepper. ‘That’s Upper Henning. But the folk you’re interested in have long gone. There’s nothing left here but memories. Mr Chivers has been at the school for nigh on fifteen years. Mr Percy Edwards and his wife have lived at Wellington Lodge for nearer twenty. And Priory House is the home of Sir Edward Phillips, the merchant banker.’

  ‘What happened to the Sanders family, and the Wests?’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Sanders both died of pneumonia one severe winter, and when Mr Sanders’s Will was read, he’d left Wellington House to his widowed sister, and just a couple of hundred pounds to Michael. I think Michae
l had disappointed him, you see. He’d sent him to one of those public schools, but nothing came of it. And then, after Vivien was murdered, a lot of people wondered. The widowed sister sold the house to Mr Percy Edwards.’

  ‘And the Wests?’

  ‘They couldn’t bear to live there after Vivien died. They upped sticks and left, and bought a country estate in Oxfordshire. Mr West died of grief within the year. Mrs West’s still alive, and lives on the estate that they bought.’

  The old woman turned to look at Sophia with a kindly and respectful interest.

  ‘Those buildings, ma’am, that school, and the great houses, hold nothing of the folk who once lived in them. The Wests, and the Sanders, are nothing but shadows.’

  They made their way back to the wide flight of steps that would take them away from Upper Henning. Presently they came to a row of workmen’s cottages.

  ‘Do you see that first cottage in the row, ma’am?’ said Mrs Pepper. ‘Well, a little boy of ten called George Potter lived there in 1872. Like all boys of that age he liked to go exploring – snooping, some called it. And on the day that Vivien was murdered, young George was hidden in the shrubs behind the garden wall of Priory House. He was playing Indians, or hermits, or something. And while he was there, Vivien came down with her book and sat in the basket chair. George knew that he’d get a wigging if he was discovered, so he stayed put.

  ‘And while he was hidden there, he saw Jeremy Oakshott sneak through the gate in the wall, and tiptoe across the grass, with a knife in his hand. Vivien, who was reading the marriage service in her prayer book, half turned round, so George said, with a smile on her lips. It was then that Jeremy leaned forward and cut her throat from ear to ear. George said that his face was the face of a demon. He turned and fled the scene. No doubt he went straight home and washed the knife under the sink-pump. You saw yourself, ma’am, how near the headmaster’s house was to Vivien’s home.’

  The door of the cottage opened, and a young, sun-bronzed man in his thirties came out. He raised his cap to the two ladies and walked rapidly away in the direction of Priory House.

  ‘And this boy – I expect he was ill for a time, wasn’t he? I don’t suppose he could even bear to tell anyone what he had seen.’

  ‘That’s so, ma’am. He was very ill for some weeks, with a fever of the brain. And he told nobody for years. He only confided in his mother after Jeremy Oakshott had left Henning for London. Most of us here know the truth of the matter, but we have always chosen to say nothing. It’s fear, you see, ma’am, fear of what Jeremy Oakshott might do if anyone here chose to open their mouth. Least said, soonest mended.’

  ‘And this George Potter – I suppose he’s another shadow, like the Wests and the Sanders.’

  ‘Oh, no, ma’am. That was George Potter who came out of the cottage just before. He’s lived there all his life. He’s the gardener to Sir Edward Phillips at Priory House.’

  14

  Jeremy Oakshott’s Day

  On the morning of 8 October, the day of Sophia Jex-Blake’s visit to Henning St Mary, Jeremy Oakshott rose early, breakfasted in hall, and then went in search of his friend Jonathan Grigg. The satisfying thing about Grigg was that he wasn’t ambitious. He was quite content to vegetate in Jerusalem Hall, working away at his research into what he called ‘reference toxins’. It would have been a social gaffe to ask him what that meant, as to do so would force him to give a little lecture in reply, which in its turn would have been a gaffe. One did not air one’s knowledge in front of a colleague working in a different discipline.

  The quadrangle was full of newly returned undergraduates, calling to each other in the loud and confident tones of young men who had been born into a privileged élite. Still, most of them were good, steady fellows, who would do well when they went out into the world. Several of them greeted him cheerily, and he returned their greetings in kind.

  Jonathan Grigg occupied a set of cramped rooms in a little eighteenth century afterthought to Jerusalem Hall known as Green’s Yard. It was an unlovely, triangular court, containing a door that took one out into Bacon’s Lane. Green’s Yard also housed the kitchen middens. Grigg’s quarters consisted of a sitting room, a bedroom, and two interconnecting rooms that had been set up as a chemical laboratory. All these rooms were pervaded with that acrid smell of chemicals typical of such places.

  Grigg, clad in an old dressing gown, looked up from the bench where he was peering into a microscope, and waved Jonathan to a chair.

  ‘You’re an early bird, Oakshott,’ he said. ‘What brings you here this morning? How’s your aunt? Is she coping in that vast barracks of a place she lives in?’

  ‘She’s coping very well,’ Jeremy replied. ‘Besides, she has plans to move abroad. She’s already been in contact with a French architect who proposes to build her a villa in Nice. I think it’s a splendid idea.’

  ‘It’s certainly an advantage to be extremely rich.’

  Jeremy looked at his friend, who had turned his attention once more to his microscope. When pursuing his professional interests, he always wore a long white laboratory coat. With his genial red face and ample greying moustache, he looked very like Mr Jelkes, the man who kept the pharmacy in Queen Street.

  Jeremy Oakshott wandered into the second room of the laboratory, and regarded the array of bottles and flasks lining the walls. Salts of Mercury, Mercuric Chloride, Strontium Hydroxide. Spirits of Salt. Hydrocyanic Acid. Dimethyl Mercury. There seemed to be several bottles of each chemical, and in a rack at the end of each shelf was a collection of ampoules containing lesser quantities of the same substances.

  Jonathan Grigg came into the room holding a sheaf of papers. He leaned against the door-post, regarding his friend quizzically.

  ‘I suppose you know the properties of all these mysterious substances,’ said Jeremy. ‘What they are, and what they do.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Grigg. ‘I do. What have you got there? For goodness’ sake, Oakshott, put it back on the shelf! That’s Dimethyl Mercury, one of the most dangerous chemicals that you can find. Just a sniff of its vapour is enough to kill you. When you’re working with that particular chemical, you have to wear a mask over your face, a sort of hood.’

  ‘And has it got any practical use?’

  ‘Well, it’s possible that it could be bonded to a target molecule to form a powerful bactericide – but I don’t know. Professor Oddling’s blown cold on the matter, and I’m inclined to agree with him. But why did you come to see me?’

  ‘I wanted to know what you feel about that subscription list, the list of donors to Mrs Lestrange’s coming expedition to Syria. You had your doubts—’

  ‘Yes, I did. I’d treat whoever got that list up with extreme caution. The trouble with you, Oakshott, is that you’ve got your head in the clouds. You live a large part of your life in the Middle Ages! Two of those subscribers are dead – I checked up on that, and found it was a fact. Sir Jacob Chantry died in 1890. Sir Philip Margrave, the merchant banker, died in ’91. Just be careful, old fellow. Don’t let your admiration for Mrs Lestrange lead you into Queer Street.’

  Jeremy Oakshott walked up the uncarpeted flight of stairs that would take him to the premises of Hodge’s Bank, which were situated above a fruiterer’s shop at 31a Queen Street. It was a warm day, and the scent of apples and peaches accompanied him as far as the little glazed outer office of the bank, at the top of the stairs. An elderly clerk looked up from a ledger. Yes, the gentleman was expected. Would he care to wait a few minutes until Old Mr Hodge was free?

  Hodge’s Bank was as sound as the Bank of England. It had occupied various premises in the Queen Street area of Oxford for over 200 years. It didn’t believe in ostentation, and was content to occupy a few rooms above a shop; it had for many years placed its gold by arrangement in the vaults of Parsons, Thompson, Parsons & Co in the High Street.

  Next March, the Honourable Mrs Herbert Lestrange – Celia! – would lead a new expedition to Krak des Chevaliers, and
he would accompany her as specialist historian. She had unearthed a horde of ancient manuscripts waiting for him to interpret their meaning. When he had incorporated his findings into the text of Volume II of his work on the Crusades, its publication would become a sensation.

  Six thousand pounds… . A fortune, but he must acquire it. Would old Hodge agree to a loan of that magnitude?

  Old Mr Hodge had been so called to distinguish him from his son. The son had predeceased him, but the epithet remained as a fossilized part of his name. He was much advanced in years, and seemed to be physically sustained by the starch and stitching of his attire. Frail and attenuated, his old eyes sparkled with a sort of youthful awareness of the present, its needs and its demands.

  Oakshott sat down on a leather-covered bench in the cramped office, and waited for the old banker to speak. (He and Celia would marry somewhere fashionable in London, and follow the ceremony with a reception for leading academics and patrons. Would she agree to that? Almost certainly… .)

  ‘You say here, in your letter, Dr Oakshott, that you want me to advance you a loan of £6000. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that £6000 is a lot of money.’ He added sotto voce: ‘A very great deal of money, if the truth be told.’

  ‘I agree with you, Mr Hodge,’ said Oakshott, ‘and I do not take the matter of my request lightly. But by part-funding Mrs Lestrange’s coming expedition to Syria, I will be expanding my own scholarly reputation, and will secure myself considerable rewards.’

  Old Mr Hodge permitted himself a little wintry smile. He picked up a document on his desk, peered at it, and threw it down again.

  ‘Your enthusiasm does you credit, Dr Oakshott, and I have no rooted objection to advancing you the money. But I shall require security for so large a loan—’

  ‘Of course; I fully realize that. I can offer as security my recently acquired property, Hazelmere Castle—’

  This time, Old Mr Hodge laughed. It was a singularly unnerving sound.