The Weight of the Evidence

by Michael Innes

  The sunlight was on Sir David Evans. But Lasscock, by pushing his own chair round the desk until it was side by side with Sir David’s, had ensured that the sunlight should he on him too. And whereas Sir David was under the necessity of posing in the sunlight Lasscock had only to bask. Lasscock basked and Sir David weightily talked – presumably on some aspect of the administration of historical studies in the university. Sir David talked and Lasscock sat with his hands fingertip to fingertip in front of him: an attitude which contrived to suggest some degree of judicial attention, and thus to discount what might otherwise have been a disconcerting impression of obliviousness in Lasscock’s features. For Lasscock’s eyes were closed; his mouth might have been detected as slightly open; his breathing was regular and easy. One could almost believe him asleep. But every now and then his fingers would part; hang suspended, as it were, upon Sir David’s words; and then close in affirmation, or at least in cognizance, of whatever had been said.

  It was upon this scholarly and deliberative scene that Hobhouse burst. Lasscock and Sir David Evans, sitting side by side, looked at him with astonishment and mild reprobation, much as two first-class passengers of controlled behaviour but decided views might regard a person who flung himself down on an opposite seat while flourishing a green ticket. ‘Inspector Hobhouse,’ said Sir David sternly, ‘you preak in upon important pusiness, look you. Perhaps something urgent has occurred?’

  Hobhouse produced the first of his pencils and pointed it. He pointed it at the countenance of Lasscock which, rosy against the Vice-Chancellor’s rows of sunlit calf and morocco, showed like a peach lazily ripening against an ancient wall. ‘I have important business too, sir. I have come to tax Mr Lasscock–’

  ‘Bless me! Feller has changed his job.’ Lasscock shook his head in mild astonishment. ‘Policeman, when I last saw him. Goin’ round with the Lunnon man. And now he’s hopped into the Inland Revenue. Like some of the Lepidoptera, my dear Evans. A pest as a caterpillar and then a pest as a butterfly later on.’ Lasscock opened his eyes quite wide upon Hobhouse. ‘But it’s no good, sir; no dashed good at all. Nothin’ to be taxed on. Brother sold the last acre years ago. Not a penny left in the Funds. Supportin’ myself like a little school teacher. Sweat of my brow.’ And Lasscock produced a beautiful canary-coloured handkerchief and gave his forehead a sort of symbolical dab.

  ‘I have come’, said Hobhouse, breathing hard, ‘to charge Mr Lasscock–’

  Sir David rose to his feet. ‘Inspector Hobhouse, do I understand that you hold a warrant to arrest–’

  ‘No, sir; nothing of the kind.’ Hobhouse, thus unhappily taken up, floundered momentarily and the accusing pencil wavered. ‘I have come to – to represent to Mr Lasscock the seriousness of his having withheld important information from the police. He claims not to have been at the university on Monday. And now, acting on information received’ – Hobhouse boldly advanced this useful if mendacious formula – ‘we have reason to believe that statement to be inaccurate; deliberately misleading, I am afraid it is necessary to say. In fact I am inclined to suspect that Mr Lasscock saw the whole thing.’

  ‘Saw the whole thing!’ Sir David sat down again – quite abruptly.

  ‘Mr Lasscock was sitting in the Wool Court when the meteorite came down and killed Pluckrose. Mr Lasscock, I say, was there as he commonly is at that hour, sitting in a deck-chair. And, for all I know, he may have been staring straight up at the tower.’ Hobhouse paused. ‘The statement that he was elsewhere is a very serious matter indeed.’

  ‘Statement?’ said Lasscock. ‘What djew mean by statement, officer? Lunnon man got it in his notebooks, signed and properly witnessed?’

  Hobhouse struggled with his extreme indignation. ‘You distinctly stated to Detective-Inspector Appleby of Scotland Yard–’

  Lasscock shook his head indulgently and turned to the Vice-Chancellor. ‘Feller isn’t talkin’ about a statement at all. Talkin’ about a private conversation with this Appleby t’other mornin’. Gentlemanlike chap but seems to get things confused. Drowsy mornin’ in Miss Dearlove’s orchard – excusable perhaps. But inclined to take a severe view of this Hobhouse, ’pon my soul.’

  ‘Do you mean’ – Hobhouse rapped his pencil on Sir David Evans’s desk, and the point promptly snapped – ‘Do you mean flatly to deny that you said–’

  Momentarily disengaging his fingertips from their contact each with each, Lasscock pointed to a desk calendar. ‘Notice the date?’ he asked. ‘Monday quite a long time back now, ain’t it? What’s the Chief Constable goin’ to say when he larns that you haven’t yet taken formal statements from people you believe to be concarned? ’Course I was sittin’ in the court. And down the thing fell.’

  ‘Very well!’ Hobhouse contrived to control himself sufficiently to fish his second pencil unbroken from his pocket. ‘And now will you have the goodness to tell me–’

  ‘Stop!’ Sir David Evans, who had been listening to all this in evident perturbation, jumped up, strode across the room, and flung up a window. ‘My dear Lasscock,’ he said as he turned round again, ‘you must haf a care. It iss not to be porne, look you, that we should be intimidated in this way. You must carefully consider eferything you should say. We had petter haf advice, we had petter haf your solicitors, pefore anything more iss said.’

  ‘Attorneys?’ Lasscock very definitely shook his head. ‘A pack of six-and-eightpenny rascals and odjus jargonmongers. I think I can look after myself – obleeged to you, all the same. And it was like this. Of course I was sittin’ in the court; reclinin’, you might say–’

  The Vice-Chancellor fiddled at random with papers on his desk. ‘Lasscock,’ he said, ‘I peg you to stop and reflect.’ He turned to Hobhouse. ‘I consider it my duty to protect Mr Lasscock’s interests in efery way. He iss a most valued and respected colleague of mine, look you. I will not see a friend – a close personal friend – do anything rash, I say. There must pe no more of this now, inspector. If you wish–’

  ‘My dear Evans, you are too dam’ solicitous.’ Lasscock was now looking at Sir David with a good deal of covert curiosity. ‘But the officer may as well have the story now as later. There I was, reclinin’ in the court and workin’ one or two things out. It may well be I was lookin’ up at the tower–’

  ‘Lasscock, I peg you to reflect–’

  ‘–only, you know, my eyes were closed, likely enough, and perhaps I had put The Times over my face as well. I find I work things out best that way. Well, at eleven o’clock the bell went – and a nasty great clankin’ thing it is, that always wak – stops me from workin’ things out at once. And I started up, I dare say. And there was Pluckrose, sittin’ opposite. And then down this hijjus great thing came.’ Lasscock, for one who had to guard against unpleasant incidents lying on the mind, related this catastrophic circumstance with remarkable composure. ‘Nasty mess it made too. I was a bit splattered, if you don’t mind my mentioning it.’

  The Vice-Chancellor had turned pale beneath the white halo of his hair. ‘You mean to say’, he almost whispered, ‘that you saw Pluckrose killed?’

  ‘Just that. Distressin’, of course. But then it was Pluckrose, you know – which made it not quite so bad.’

  Hobhouse’s pencil, which had been racing, snapped. ‘And you mean to say’, he almost shouted, ‘that you just cleared out?’

  ‘Of course I went over to have a look.’ Lasscock fished in a pocket and placidly handed Hobhouse a fountain pen. ‘There could be no doubt that the feller was dead; indeed spectacular is the only term you could apply to the result the nasty thing had achieved. Well, I picked up my cushion – I commonly take a cushion out there – and came into the main buildin’ – intendin’, you know, to mention the affair to the porter.’

  ‘Mention – !’

  ‘It seemed the proper thing to do at once. I don’t think gals go much into the court, but one wouldn’t like one to stumble on just that. Though it’s surprisin’ what gals can stomach: know Miss Godkin?’ />
  Hobhouse made a strangled noise. ‘And did you see the porter?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I didn’t. I looked at my watch as I was goin’ down the corridor and saw that my next lecture was a bit overdue. So I felt I’d better leave Pluckrose for the time – the dead to bury their dead, you know – and get on with the business of the livin’. If Nesfield students can be described as livin’, that is to say.’

  ‘And did you lecture?’

  ‘Well now, I didn’t. I went back to my room for my gown and then a dam’ queer thing happened. I began to feel dam’ queer. After all, I suppose an affair like this Pluckrose business doesn’t happen every day.’

  ‘It certainly does not.’ Hobhouse spoke with fervent emphasis. ‘So you felt queer. And then?’

  ‘All I could do for a bit was just to sit down and recover. And by the time that was over it was too late for the lecture; all the students would have gone. So I went along the corridor again and peeped out at the court. And there they all were, fussin’ round the body. The thing, you might say, had been taken out of my hands. So I got my hat and coat and went home to my lodgin’s.’

  ‘And it doesn’t occur to you–’

  ‘I’m glad that you’ve got round to me eventually.’ Lasscock tapped his fingers together precisely. ‘It’s comfortin’ to be able to feel that the police are thorough, even if a bit slow. Gives one a sense of security. And although I didn’t see anythin’ and can add nothin’ to your case, it’s obviously the right thing that you should come to me in a routine way. But mind you have a clearer notion of what I say than that engagin’ but incompetent feller in the orchard.’

  ‘Mr Lasscock’ – this time Hobhouse tried speaking more in sorrow than in anger – ‘do you realize that you are our only witness that the crime happened just on eleven o’clock?’

  ‘Is that so?’ Lasscock looked only mildly interested. ‘And might that be of importance to your investigations? The possibility hadn’t occurred to me. But then I am quite schooled in that sort of thing.’

  During the latter part of Lasscock’s narration Sir David Evans had been sitting at his desk with his beautiful head sunk meditatively in his hands; now he looked up and fixed the historian with an extremely penetrating glance. ‘And you mean to say’, he asked, ‘that you saw nothing except what you have described?’

  ‘Nothin’ at all. How could I, my dear Evans? I was in – in a considerable abstraction until the moment the thing fell.’

  ‘Nothing in the nature of an – an appearance at one of the windows of the tower?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ Lasscock shook his head comfortably. ‘As a witness I can be of no use whatever. The only other thing I noticed was that someone had turned the fountain full on. It was drenchin’ the path across the court. But clearly that has nothin’ to do with the case.’

  Without any warning whatever Sir David Evans rose and pointed a minatory finger at the astonished Lasscock. ‘It is tisgraceful, look you! You haf impeted the police in the execution of their tuty! Hear you, Mr Lasscock, I am tispleased; I am more than tispleased – I am intignant!’ The Vice-Chancellor’s thickening Cambrian accent suggested that this statement was indeed true; he closed his finger so that what he held in front of him was a clenched fist, and this he proceeded to brandish in an extremely temperamental way. ‘You haf prefaricated, sir; you haf shamelessly prefaricated!’

  Lasscock’s eyes opened wider than Hobhouse had ever seen them and slowly he sat bolt upright. ‘Sir David,’ he said with much dignity, ‘I don’t at all understand what you’re gettin’ at.’

  ‘It iss pad, Mr Lasscock. It is more than pad; it iss suspicious.’ The sibilants fairly hissed from Nesfield’s Vice-Chancellor; he might have been a railway engine blowing off superfluous steam. ‘It must be infestigated, sir; the police will infestigate, sir; you shall account for yourself, look you, Mr Lasscock.’

  ‘Well, I’m blessed.’ Lasscock too got to his feet – not exactly briskly but yet with a good deal of decision. ‘And what about the attorneys now? It might be a good idea to call one of the tedjus fellows in on your own account. And ask him about slander and defamation of character and that sort o’ thing. Close personal friend indeed – pshaw!’

  ‘It shall be reported on, Mr Lasscock; it shall be tiscussed. The Chancellor shall know of it, sir. It iss not conduct pecoming a scholar.’

  Lasscock, who had been holding his canary-coloured handkerchief in his hand, returned it very deliberately to his pocket and turned as if to leave the room in silent indignation. Sir David, who now seemed to find it necessary to stand on his toes, followed with every appearance of positive physical menace. ‘And hark you, Mr Lasscock, it iss not conduct pecoming a chentleman–’

  With his hand on the doorknob Lasscock turned round. ‘You silly old goat,’ he said. ‘You fuzzy-headed, muddle-minded, muddy- thoughted leek-eater.’ Lasscock spoke still in the most dignified way. ‘You ode bawlin’, chapel-crawlin’ upstart. Afternoon to you.’ And Lasscock turned to Hobhouse. ‘Common thing,’ he said. ‘Often obsarved. Noted by Tennyson. The schoolboy heat, the blind hysterics of the Celt. Afternoon to you, too.’

  And Mr Lasscock was gone.

  There was no particular reason why, at this juncture, Hobhouse should judge it useful or desirable to put Professor Hissey next on his list. Perhaps he simply remembered him as a notably mild-mannered man, whose bearing and conduct were likely to afford a pleasing contrast to the deplorable scene which had just concluded. Be this as it may, Hobhouse found himself making his way to the celebrated epigrapher’s room. It was empty and – it occurred to him – surprisingly tidy. The pictures – photographs, for the most part, of inscriptions in what Hobhouse sagely took to be Greek – were straight on their nails, and a great many files were ranged in an orderly way on the shelves. There were moreover such evidences of well-regulated bachelor comfort as a teapot, kettle, and spirit stove behind a screen. And there was a tin of mixed biscuits into which Hobhouse, unaccustomed to sustaining himself on a sandwich throughout the day, was tempted to dip. He contrived, however, to resist this unprofessional impulse and went on to seek Hissey at his hotel. There he found the scholar in what was apparently his private sitting-room, peacefully arranging multi-coloured slips of pasteboard in a card index.

  Hissey beamed upon his visitor, ‘My dear sir,’ he said, ‘come in; come in and tell me how you are progressing in this deplorable affair.’ He turned to the maid who had shown Hobhouse up. ‘And, Martha, should there be muffins, I don’t at all see why we shouldn’t have rather an early tea. See what can be done, there’s a good girl.’ He beamed again upon Hobhouse, who was much impressed by this intuitive understanding of his carnal needs. ‘If you will take the chair by the window, Inspector, I believe you will find it reasonably comfortable. And please forgive me if I go on with my job. It is almost purely mechanical and will not preoccupy me in the least. At the moment, as it happens, I have a good deal on hand.’

  Hobhouse sat down. ‘I think, sir,’ he said affably, ‘that I might say much the same thing myself.’

  ‘Is that so? Is that really so?’ And Hissey looked up rather vaguely at his visitor. ‘I suppose a thing of that sort does at times take not a little working out. From one or two things that Merryweather has told me during the last few days I can well imagine that it may be so.’

  ‘Um,’ said Hobhouse, slightly mystified. He was wondering if there would be a muffin each, and whether there would be anything else as well.

  ‘I hope that he is coming too? Grant, I ought to say. Or rather Appleby. I am extremely interested that Appleby should have taken up so novel a career.’ And Hissey worked with a good deal of concentration at his coloured cards, so that Hobhouse was inclined to doubt the quality of his interest in anything else whatever. ‘What a pleasant day it has been.’ Hissey craned his neck slightly in order to look out of the window, rather as one who would corroborate a random guess. ‘One really longs to go out and stroll in the sun. But I am unde
r some pressure of work at the moment, tiresomely enough.’ And at this Hissey got to his feet and fell to rummaging among piles of papers on a large table; there was, Hobhouse noted, a good deal of disorder in this more intimate retreat. ‘Now, what can have become of that Roman villa at Gub-Gub? I always mix it up with Dab-Dab, I am sorry to say.’ He shook his head, perplexed. ‘Is it not Shakespeare who speaks of Memory, the warder of the brain? Marlow would tell us at once. I find myself that it is a most capricious faculty. The important things one tends only too often to forget. Whereas entirely secondary and irrelevant matters can assume quite a haunting power over the mind… Dear me! Here is our tea already. Martha, you are a most commendably festinate girl.’ And Professor Hissey, already reaching for the teapot, chuckled happily at this piece of learned badinage. ‘Sugar, Inspector? And cream’ – he peered into a jug – ‘or milk, as I fear I ought to say?’

  After Sir David Evans it was extremely soothing. Hobhouse ate a whole muffin in silence – and this seemed to suit Mr Hissey very well. Mr Hissey coped with his tea with one hand and his card index with the other; Hobhouse, marking the smooth precision with which he worked, and guessing that the process had been going on uninterruptedly for hours, felt that he was at last gaining a convincing breath of that higher and rarefied air which academic persons are supposed wontedly to breathe. But presently Hissey paused. ‘And how’, he asked, ‘is our poor friend Prisk? Automobiles have always appeared to me to be somewhat dangerous contrivances, as so many of our recent innovations are. I was extremely sorry that he had so bad a spill.’

  Hobhouse reported on Prisk’s health – at some length, because he was a little puzzled as to how to proceed. His business, he now felt, was once more to go round the people concerned, taking a tug at an alibi here and a jab at a motive there. But he had chosen Hissey in rather an idle spirit and the hospitality of his reception made his position delicate. There were three muffins, all told, and plum cake and a plate of chocolate biscuits. Hobhouse, therefore, went slow. ‘I believe, sir,’ he said presently, ‘that it was you who took the news of Mr Pluckrose’s death to Sir David Evans?’