The Weight of the Evidence

by Michael Innes

  ‘We become hypothetical,’ said Church. ‘Not only a hypothetical dispute about ballistics scientifically or morally conceived, but a hypothetical course to that dispute involving certain specific and rather far-fetched forms of words. An unfriendly person – say a barrister in court – might even insinuate that Crunkhorn is coming hurriedly forward with a laborious and slightly eccentric theory of his own devising – and one of which a principal consequence is to fix the attention upon likely frictions between Pluckrose and persons of markedly disparate age.’

  This was counter-attack with a vengeance. And the young man, like his senior, had the trick of turning his phrases in a bookish but effective way. There was no mistaking the implication of this studied piece of syntax. People who come forward with cock-and-bull tales of Galileo may be suspected of having something to hide… And now Crunkhorn had stood up. Perhaps he felt that he had indeed been injudiciously ingenious; perhaps he was simply angry. ‘I am afraid’, he said, ‘that another appointment must put an end to this interview. I do not say somewhat irregular interview, because I am willing to give any help I can, and I would not stand upon forms. Good afternoon.’

  And with a whisk of gown the professor of mathematics departed. What is called a dignified exit, thought Appleby. The sort of thing most people imagine afterwards rather than manage to achieve on the spot. And now perhaps it would be a good thing really to see that Vice-Chancellor. Or view the body. Or go poking about the topography of the thing: the Wool Court, the tower, the store-rooms, the hoist. But here still was the young man called Church – and he was now sitting back in his chair, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Gripes!’ said Mr Church. ‘This is a lousy go. The old bastard!’

  ‘Hobhouse,’ said Appleby gravely, ‘make a note. Mr Church can talk like a human being when he wants to.’ He looked sharply at the young man. ‘And so, as it happens, can we; Pluckrose – did you quarrel with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he annoy you on the subject of bombs and shells?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you, if not exactly quarrel, at least dispute with him?’

  ‘I bickered. A hole like this is largely bicker, bicker, bicker.’

  ‘I see. Did you ever–’

  ‘I didn’t pitch the meteorite at him; it never occurred to me that it would be a funny thing to do; I never play practical jokes.’ Church paused for breath. ‘I don’t believe you have seen the Vice-Chancellor or that he directed you to Crunkhorn. You picked on us quite arbitrarily and out came all that rubbish about Galileo. It’s your own mess, and you can jolly well clear it up yourselves. I’m off.’ And Church scrambled to his feet, suddenly a very belligerent young man.

  Appleby rose too. ‘Very well. But I’m sorry you should go off just when we’ve begun talking sense.’ His eye caught a flicker of uncertainty in the other man. ‘I expected you to tell us why Crunkhorn took that line.’

  Church gave a sort of impatient snort, but paused at the door. ‘He took that line because you blarneyed him into taking some line. Your smart yatter about mathematics and dispassionate views nobbled him and he thought up Galileo as something ingenious and learned and then he just went on elaborating. Everybody about the place will have some dam’ fool theory to air if you take them that way.’

  Hobhouse made a discouraged sound and drummed on the table; clearly he judged this last statement only too true. But Appleby was unperturbed. ‘Even yourself, Mr Church?’

  ‘I’m not going to air anything.’

  ‘Except your own constitutionally bellicose spirit?’

  ‘To hell with you.’ Church was now almost cheerful and his hand had dropped from the doorknob.

  ‘Of course, it’s just as you please as to that.’ Appleby was cheerful too. ‘But Crunkhorn was doing more than just elaborate a theory. He was getting at you. And then you got a nasty one back at him. It was almost as if you were accusing each other of homicide. Quite a startling thing to happen when one has, as you say, picked on two men at random. Can you explain it?’

  ‘Of course I can explain it.’ Church, as well as belligerency, had plainly a liberal dash of intellectual arrogance. ‘The old boy disapproves of me in various ways. He’s convinced, I have a hand in this idiotic joking. And it really did drift into his head that I might have flattened out poor Pluckrose in the way he hinted. He was appealing to me after his fashion to own up should it really be true. Or perhaps, even, he was putting me on my guard. You see, he’s a fatherly old person in some ways. He feels he’s making a mathematician of me.’

  ‘And is he?’

  The inconsequent question stumbled Church for an instant. Then he laughed. ‘As it happens, I’m the mathematician about the place. Not that Crunkhorn has too bad a brain. Caught young and suitably trained, he’d have made quite a fair confidential clerk.’ Church paused, and the pause had the effect of acknowledging that, to strangers, this was not a pleasant witticism. ‘Anyway, I like him – quite.’

  ‘And your suggestion that he was talking away in order to conceal something on his own account?’

  Church hesitated. ‘That’, he said seriously, ‘was extremely foolish. So long.’

  The door banged behind him. Hobhouse drew a long breath. ‘I didn’t think there could be anything odder than that Duke-business. But this–’

  Appleby smiled. ‘We’re working among a queer lot. Not like respectable thugs and burglars. And now we’ll view the body and read the medical report and measure things and find the crucial finger-print.’ He frowned. ‘And surely there’s something else?’

  ‘See the Vice-Chancellor.’

  ‘Just that.’

  3

  Sir David Evans was a handsome old man with philosophic pretensions and a mass of white hair. Because of the philosophy he sat in front of an immense bookcase groaning under Locke, Hartley, and Hume; and because of the hair these sages were cased in a dark shiny leather sparely tooled in gold. The effect was charming – the more so in that Sir David’s features invariably registered rugged benevolence. Every few years a portrait of Sir David robed in black and scarlet and with Locke and Hume behind him would appear in the exhibitions which our greatest painters arrange at Burlington House. Of these portraits one already hung in the Great Hall of the university, a second could be seen in a dominating position as soon as one entered Sir David’s villa residence, and a third was stowed away ready for offer to the National Portrait Gallery when the time came. What happened to the others nobody knew. England is at best a semi-barbarous country, and the demand for portraits of retired professors of philosophy is astonishingly small. It was said that the portraits could be met with in every university in India, a country through which Sir David as a young lecturer had endeavoured to diffuse the light of Clear and Distinct Ideas, Exact Senses, and the outlines of that celebrated Modified Empiricism which he was then beginning to think up for himself. But this of the Indian portraits may well have been a slander, for there is no doubt that about Sir David slanders of every sort were rife. Mr Shergold, Nesfield’s present professor of philosophy, maintained that the Vice-Chancellor was among that unfortunate minority of bad men who get themselves generally reprobated and disliked. This, perhaps, was a judgment of a somewhat a priori sort, the presumed axiom – one widely current in such universities as Nesfield – being that a Vice-Chancellor, ipso facto, cannot be a good man. Sir David, in fact, was conceivably a man much traduced. And some will hold that the effect which he produced with his bookcase and his hair and his expression of benevolent power ought to be accounted towards righteousness. For one might wander the length and breadth of Nesfield University without coining upon a single other such contrived effect. The professors never framed themselves against anything at all – unless it were haphazardly and unconsciously against shelves which were a tumble of battered books and jumbled papers, with here and there a dusty picture hanging slightly askew on a nail. If there is innocent pleasure and even something of edification in a little c
areful dressing-up, then in one particular at least Sir David Evans deserved well of the institution over which he presided.

  A slender shaft of sunlight, filtering through the well-combed mane of Sir David, spotlit the polished leather spine of Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations. And gropingly Sir David was endeavouring to do a little of this observing on his own account; before him lay a letter to which he was applying himself with scholarly concentration for the second time:

  MY DEAR SIR DAVID,

  I am most distressed to hear of an occurrence which may cause annoyance to the dear Duke and considerable anxiety to yourself. The death of Mr Pluckrose is (doubtless) a loss to science; and must be, moreover, an occasion of sober reflection to us all. For he has been snatched away unprepared and, knowing him as we did, is it not a point of some nicety to determine whether our mourning may be tempered by a pious hope? As my father (the late Sir Horace Dearlove, KCMG) used to remark with the peculiar forcefulness characterizing all his utterances: In the midst of life we are in death.

  As you know, Mr Pluckrose has been a member of my household for nearly fifteen years and I may fairly claim an almost intimate knowledge of his habits and connexions. I wonder if I can help in any way?

  With kind regards,

  Yours sincerely,

  VIRGINIA CAROLINE DEARLOVE

  PS – My housekeeper – a most dependable person – tells me that there is outstanding the sum of thirty-eight pounds eleven shillings and fourpence. Who are the solicitors?

  VCD

  The sunbeam, creeping diagonally towards the ceiling, had reached An Essay concerning Human Understanding. A mathematician – say Mr Crunkhorn or Mr Church – might have found considerable beguilement in calculating where it would arrive in ten minutes’ time. Would it be An Essay concerning Toleration? Or The Reasonableness of Christianity? And surely it would not be so undiscriminating as to miss A Treatise of Human Nature? But Sir David, immobile at his desk, was without thought of his sainted and Caledonian namesake. Miss Dearlove absorbed his attention, and continued to do so until there came a knock at the door. Whereupon Sir David put the letter in a drawer, slightly shifted his chair so as to recapture the requisite aureole of sunlight, and called to come in.

  Hobhouse introduced Appleby. Sir David, without budging, extruded so pungent a benevolence that the effect was rather that of coming unawares upon a skunk. Appleby said conventionally that this was an unfortunate business. Sir David, by silence, indicated that philosophers do not form these hasty conclusions; at the same time he continued to show that he held his visitors in the highest charitable regard. Appleby and Hobhouse decided that they might as well sit down. Whereupon Sir David stood up and walked to a window. Appleby and Hobhouse stood up and Hobhouse contrived to trip over his bowler hat. Sir David, not too philosophically remote to accord these blunderings a gentle compassion, tucked his hands beneath the tails of his beautiful black coat and presently spoke. ‘It iss mysterious,’ he said. ‘Whatever it iss, it iss that.’

  Appleby and Hobhouse found themselves nodding gratefully. The Vice-Chancellor had said the cogent thing. One was much more aware of this than of the fact that he spoke in the accents of Wild Wales. It must be the way he holds his head, Appleby thought. And the way he closes his mouth and jerks up his chin at the end of it. All needed, no doubt, if one is to put philosophy across on the hard-headed young. ‘You knew Professor Pluckrose well?’ he asked.

  It was obvious that another man would have raised his eyebrows. But the Vice-Chancellor crinkled the corners of his eyes into the kindliest smile – much as a dog-lover might do when subjected to the gambollings of an over-obstreperous puppy. To ask Sir David Evans a question must be something quite out of the way. ‘You will inquire into his death,’ he said benevolently and with authority. He took a hand from under his coat tails and raised a finger. ‘You haf a notebook?’

  Hobhouse – but with less alacrity than might have been expected – indicated that he had a notebook.

  ‘Things to remember about professors,’ said Sir David – and paused. It is a lecture, thought Appleby. It is – thought Hobhouse, innocent of the higher education – a dictation. But Appleby listened and Hobhouse wrote. Sir David still had that overpoweringly cogent air.

  ‘They are ampitious.’ Sir David slightly inclined his head, as one might do when saying something compassionate about the perennial strangeness and oddity of children. ‘All professors are ampitious – ampitious to become professors somewhere else.’ He paused and appeared to decide that, to reach the intellect of his hearers, this must be expanded and illustrated. ‘Professors at Leeds or Sheffield or Hull are ampitious to be professors at Nesfield; and professors at Nesfield are ampitious to be professors at Leeds or Sheffield or Hull.’

  ‘Ambition’, said Appleby solemnly, ‘should be made of sterner stuff.’

  Sir David looked momentarily so disconcerted that it was plain his acquaintance had not the habit of offering him little jokes. Then he put out a kindly hand and patted Appleby on the shoulder, thereby indicating that even if he had said something foolish he should not altogether lose heart. ‘It iss the prave music of a distant drum,’ he said. ‘They are anxious to get away, and so they work at things which are too hard for them, as it iss very easy for professors to do. They worry pecause their prains lack certain microscopic neural tracks which would make them a little cleverer than they are. How foolish it iss.’ And Sir David shook his head slowly and charitably, comfortably convinced that his own neural tracks were just as he would desire them. ‘So that iss the first thing about professors; they worry and have preakdowns.’

  Hobhouse licked his pencil, marked a heavy full stop, and then unflinchingly pointed the lead at Sir David Evans’ nose. ‘This Mr Pluckrose,’ he said, ‘–did he have a breakdown?’

  This time the Vice-Chancellor seemed to welcome interrogation. ‘Pluckrose certainly had a preakdown. Otherwise, look you, why should he have had a preakup?’

  ‘A breakup?’ said Appleby, involuntarily chiming in on the questioning.

  ‘First Pluckrose had a preakdown. And then he proke up altogether and did it.’

  ‘Did it?’ Hobhouse had put down his notebook and was looking thoroughly blank.

  ‘Killed himself,’ said Sir David – and shut his mouth and jerked up his chin.

  It was almost as if Appleby and his colleague ought to take up their hats and retire as men sated and resolved. But Appleby had at least one question to ask. ‘Then’, he said, ‘it isn’t mysterious after all?’

  The effect of this was to cause Sir David Evans to move abruptly across the room as if in search of something. But the sunbeam was now high overhead and inaccessible, so he had to content himself with simply sitting down again at his desk. ‘You mistake me,’ he said patiently. ‘What iss mysterious iss that he should choose that way.’

  ‘Ah.’ Appleby nodded understandingly. ‘It does take some explaining, sir.’

  ‘And yet I think I haf an idea.’ Sir David looked with penetration at his visitors, as if sizing up their ability to do Advanced Work. ‘You haf heard of the Oedipus Complex?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And of the Electra Complex?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And of the Sisyphus Complex?’

  This time Appleby shook his head. ‘I don’t think I have.’

  ‘Good!’ Sir David was delighted. ‘That is very good. Up to now there has not peen such a thing, look you. I haf just discovered it. Pluckrose suffered from the Sisyphus Complex.’

  Hobhouse groaned. This, on top of Galileo and the Law of Falling Bodies, was too much. Forgetful of the respect ever due to the upper classes, Hobhouse was suddenly aggressive. ‘And how could Pluckrose have suffered from something you’ve just invented? It doesn’t make sense.’

  For a moment benevolence removed itself from the features of Sir David Evans and severity held sway instead. And then again he smiled, pardoning not only impertinence but bad
logic as well. ‘I haf distinguished the condition and given it a name. Surely you haf heard of Sisyphus?’

  Appleby decided that this exercise might as well be his. ‘Sisyphus was an avaricious king who was punished in the lower world, where he had to roll uphill a huge stone which kept on tumbling down again.’

  ‘Exactly! The stone was beyond Sisyphus’ weight. It was something he worked away at, but which he had not the necessary power to cope with. So it iss with the professors who do work too hard for them and haf preakdowns. They pecome conscious of their impotence and develop the Sisyphus Complex.’ Sir David was evidently highly pleased. ‘And so it was with Pluckrose, to be sure.’

  Appleby stared at him. ‘But you can hardly mean–?’

  The Vice-Chancellor raised a finger. ‘Things to remember about myths,’ he said.

  Hobhouse put his notebook in his pocket. Sir David ignored this act of insubordination.

  ‘Efery man has his myth, mark you. Long ago the myths provided opjective equivalents’ – Sir David paused and considerately repeated this hard phrase – ‘provided opjective equivalents of efery possible human situation. Sooner or later efery educated man discovers his own myth. Pluckrose discovered that his myth was that of Sisyphus. Never would he get the stone to the top of the hill. Always – crash! – it would fall pack again. Pluckrose was haunted by the myth and then there was a preakdown and he proke up. In his death he concretized the myth which now opsessed him. Up he went with his great stone. And down it came and crushed him.’ Sir David Evans, delivering himself of this remarkable psychological analysis with great power and conviction, almost deliquesced in kindly feeling. He bore the late Pluckrose no grudge on account of the quaint absurdity of his proceedings.