An Oxford Tragedy

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An Oxford Tragedy Page 18

by Norman Russell


  ‘But how can that be? I found a packet of mercuric chloride… .’

  ‘You did indeed, Mr Fowler, and foolishly concealed it, an act that could have had catastrophic consequences for you. But the placing of that poison in your father’s bedroom was part of another action on the part of a third party, and was not in any way connected with your father’s death. At the moment, you must take my word for that.’

  When Antrobus finished speaking, there was a palpable silence in the room. Timothy Fowler seemed stunned by what he had heard, and it was his sister Frances who broke the silence.

  ‘So no one murdered Father?’

  ‘No one, miss. Yourself, and your two brothers, are entirely innocent of any criminal act with respect to your father’s death. But grave acts of criminality have been committed, and will be punished with the utmost rigour of the law. What those acts are, you will learn in due course. I will leave you both alone with Miss Jex-Blake for a while, as there is something that she wishes to tell you.’

  Inspector Antrobus rose and quickly left the room.

  ‘Now, Timothy, and you, Frances,’ said Sophia, ‘is there no question you want to ask about your father’s behaviour while he lay on his sick-bed?’

  ‘There is,’ Frances replied. ‘Why did Father not tell the doctors where he had been, and what had occurred? He said nothing, you know. Nothing at all.’

  ‘He said nothing, my dear, because he did not want anyone to know of his relationship with Mrs Marian Hughes. He had known her for many years, ever since he was a young man. And the secret that he wanted to keep was that, many years ago, he and Marian had had a child together.’

  ‘What?’ Timothy had sprung to his feet. ‘A child? A child of wrath? No wonder he said nothing! Oh, the disgrace! This must not be made public. We have suffered enough from Father’s peccadilloes over the past few years. But this!’

  ‘Sit down, Mr Fowler,’ said Sophia, and there was a steely edge to her voice that made the young clergyman obey. ‘Examine your own conscience, and ask yourself is there nothing in your past that needs atonement. I have heard from Mr Antrobus the story of you and a young man called Adrian Fortesque.’

  ‘What young man? Timothy, what…?’

  Timothy Fowler made no reply to his sister, but he had the grace to blush. He held his head in his hands, and sat in all the misery of overwhelming shame.

  ‘I must leave you both now,’ said Sophia. ‘But before I do, there is something I wish to tell you about Sir Montague’s illegitimate child. In the manner of these things, the child – it was a boy – took its mother’s surname. She had not in those days married the man called Hughes, who was to be her husband for many years. Her maiden name was Ballard.’

  ‘A natural death? So Monty wasn’t murdered after all!’

  Joseph Steadman had received his unexpected visitors with his usual courtesy, and had sent for coffee to be brought up to the Bursary. Inspector Antrobus seemed much as usual, still clad in the sombre black suit that he had worn at the inquest, though that morning there were hectic spots showing in those parts of his face that were not hidden by his close black beard and moustache.

  He had heard of Dr Sophia Jex-Blake by reputation, and was sufficiently impressed by her now, as she sat at the table in the outer Bursary, where he had received them. She was sufficiently sure of herself to dress conventionally, though with a decided dash of style; her shrewd eyes regarded him from behind small, round spectacles.

  ‘No, sir, the Warden was not murdered, and it won’t be long now before the whole truth of the matter is laid before the public. The press need to be invited to a conference, in order to spread the truth of the Warden’s death as widely as possible.’

  ‘It’s such a relief to hear this news, Antrobus,’ said Joseph Steadman. ‘It was an appalling affront to imagine that anyone who knew Monty – the Warden – would have wanted to do him harm. So his family is entirely exonerated in any complicity – no, I’m not thinking straight! No one is implicated in any crime, because a crime did not take place!’

  Steadman’s brow grew dark, and a flush of anger suffused his face.

  ‘So the indignity – the sacrilege – of that autopsy was entirely unnecessary… . I confess, Inspector, that I’m beginning to lose the thread of what happened here.’

  ‘Let me ask you a specific question, Bursar,’ said Sophia Jex-Blake. ‘How did you find out about Dr William Podmore’s plagiarism? The coroner took you to task for not making your knowledge public – which was rather fatuous of him, as gentlemen are not in the business of sneaking on each other – but he didn’t ask you how you knew about it. The plagiarism, you know.’

  Steadman told his visitors of his seeing Podmore hiding Herr Doctor Bosch’s manuscript under his coat, and his discovery of the address of the old German scholar’s sister and her companion, Mrs Langrish, at Hampton Stonor. He had visited her, and discovered the diary with the damning entry, which he had copied, and brought back to college to examine privately and at leisure.

  ‘The entry in Herr Doctor Bosch’s diary proved beyond doubt that Podmore had stolen his work, and published it as his own. I remember that lady asking me who was “in charge” of the university, as she wanted to send all Dr Bosch’s papers to him. It was an odd request, so I told her that the Vice-Chancellor was the man to contact. That’s how he, too, came to find out about Podmore’s – er – defalcation.’

  ‘When you came back to college with your copy of the diary entry, where did you examine it? Was it in here?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector. In the far room, there, what we call “the archive”.’

  ‘And was anyone else present when you did so?’

  ‘No. At least, Dr Templar, the Tutor in Chemistry, came to see me about a private matter while I was reading my copy of the diary entry.’

  ‘Could Dr Templar have seen that paper? I have a specific reason for asking you that question.’

  ‘Well… . I left him standing beside the desk on which I’d placed the sheet of paper while I came in here to deal with the business that he’d come about. So yes, he could have seen it. Could have read it, you know.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Inspector Antrobus, ‘Miss Jex-Blake and I both believe that Dr Templar read that diary entry, and used it to take some kind of revenge on Dr Podmore. We think he sent him anonymous notes, telling him that his secret was known. Dr Podmore evidently thought that it was you who sent them, as he accused you of having “done for” him in his suicide note.’

  Joseph Steadman blushed, and pretended to consult one of the papers spread out on his working-table. It was not Antrobus’s words that made him uneasy, but the steady, appraising gaze of the woman doctor. Dash it all! It wasn’t a crime to think badly of a rotter!

  ‘I did nothing of the sort. It was sufficient for me to know that Podmore was a bad lot – oh, yes, I had always been jealous of him! He pipped me to the post at every position I aspired to. Did you know that he once sent an aged, ailing don up to Scotland in the winter, knowing that the journey would kill him? And in the end he was too weak-willed, too pusillanimous, to face up to the consequences of his actions like a man. There, I’ve finished.’

  ‘I’m convinced that Dr Templar sent anonymous letters to Dr Podmore,’ said Antrobus, ‘and I intend to ask him face to face whether he did so. It was almost certainly Dr Templar who concealed that packet of poison under Sir Montague Fowler’s bed. I shall ask him about that, too.’

  Joseph Steadman had recovered his equanimity. His attention passed from recollected resentment against Podmore to the immediate subject of Gerald Templar.

  ‘Dr Templar had always resented Podmore’s refusal to consent to the construction of a chemical laboratory here in St Michael’s College. Sir Montague Wheeler had favoured the idea, but Podmore talked him out of it.’

  ‘So his motive for putting that poison where he did was to make Sir Montague’s death look like murder,’ said Antrobus. ‘Why should he do that? The answer is almost embarrass
ingly obvious. It was to throw suspicion on Podmore. The idea was that Dr Podmore had murdered his predecessor in order to become Warden himself.

  ‘And then there is the business of the post-mortem examination, and the finding of mercuric chloride in the stomach. How do you think that substance got there, Dr Steadman?’

  ‘Are you implying that Templar put it there?’ asked Steadman. ‘I believe he assisted at the examination of the remains. I think, Inspector, that you had better ask him for answers to these things now. As far as I know, he should be in college today, though he wasn’t at breakfast in hall. He’s been acting very strangely since the inquest. I think his mind is turning… . In the light of what you’ve told me this morning, I should think that Templar’s now blaming himself for Podmore’s death.’

  Templar was not in his usual haunts, and the porter at the lodge thought that he had not left the college that morning. His rooms were deserted, and it was seen that his bed had not been slept in. He was not in the Common Room, or in the library.

  The Bursar and his two visitors stood on the shale path in the second quad, which seemed to be deserted. All three were beginning to feel a profound unease. It was a bright, warm morning, and the perfume of the wisteria came gratefully to their senses. The gilt clock above the passageway into the first quad struck eleven.

  And then a figure emerged from staircase XII. It was the aged chaplain, the Reverend and Honourable Theodore Waynefleet. He caught sight of Joseph Steadman, and greeted him with a kind of glad relief.

  ‘Ah! Joe! Good morning, madam. Good morning, sir. Pleased to meet you. Joe, there’s water coming through my ceiling. It’s making quite a mess in my sitting-room. Would you have a look at it? I know you’re very good at that kind of thing.’

  Steadman glanced up at the first floor windows immediately above the chaplain’s rooms, three sixteenth-century windows elaborately glazed with frosted glass. He knew instinctively what had happened.

  ‘Dr Jex-Blake,’ he said, ‘will you stay down here with Mr Waynefleet? Antrobus, come with me.’

  There were three bathrooms on the first floor, installed in the 1870s for the use of the undergraduates. It was a very advanced feature, much more convenient than the usual hip baths, brought in to the individual rooms, and filled with hot water by the staircase scouts from enormous jugs. The bathrooms were known affectionately as ‘The Palace’.

  In the second bathroom, Gerald Templar lay fully clothed in the long cast-iron bath. His eyes were closed, and to all appearances he was dead. The water, cascading over the rim, was coloured a faint red. The taps were still running. Steadman turned them off, released the plug, and together he and Antrobus dragged the Junior Dean from the bath, and laid him on the floor. At the same time, Stanley Fitzmaurice burst in to the room.

  ‘What’s amiss?’ he cried. ‘What has the fool done to himself? Here, let me attend to him.’

  Fitzmaurice turned the stricken man on to his stomach, and began to apply artificial respiration. A quantity of water poured from Templar’s mouth.

  ‘Now for the wrists,’ said Fitzmaurice. ‘Yes, he’s cut them across, so they can be easily stitched and then dressed. Had he thought to cut them vertically, he’d have severed arteries, and would be dead by now.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Steadman.

  ‘From certain Army experiences. There, he’s coming round!’

  Templar opened his eyes and tried to speak, but his voice came in stertorous agonized gasps. There came the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and Sophia Jex-Blake entered the bathroom. She looked with calm professionalism at Gerald Templar.

  ‘There’s a penknife lying on the bottom of the bath,’ she said. ‘I expect that’s what he used. He must be got to a hospital immediately. Could you gentlemen bind his wrists with neckties above and below those gashes? Only three ties? Well, don’t be shy of using Mr Templar’s own tie!’

  Inspector Antrobus looked at their patient with distaste. Attempted suicide was a crime, and he would have to pay for that. But he had done other things, things that had wrought havoc to the college, its members, and the family of its late Warden. He had much to answer for, and he would make sure that no attempts were made to spirit him away to some place were he could not be held to account for his actions.

  ‘Dr Steadman,’ he said, ‘do you have the electric telephone installed in the college? Good. Please ask someone to ring this number,’ he wrote hastily on a scrap of paper torn from a notebook, ‘and ask for a police ambulance to be sent here straight away. Mr Templar must be taken at once to the Radcliffe Infirmary, where one of my constables will be present at his bedside.’

  Steadman made no reply. He took the piece of paper from Antrobus, and made his way to the lodge, where the electric telephone was kept.

  When Templar opened his eyes, he saw that he was lying in a narrow hospital cot. His chest ached, as did his wrists. He vaguely remembered having the wounds on his wrists stitched and covered with dressings. He recalled a brisk young nurse forcing him to swallow raw white of eggs, which made him retch. His throat had been sprayed with carbolic. For most of the time, though, he had dozed fitfully. How wretched he felt!

  He was now aware of a number of faces looking down on him. His eyes focused, and he saw the cream-painted walls of the small room, the wooden bedside locker, and the plain deal table placed beneath a barred sash window. The faces became something more than pinkish blobs. There was Joe Steadman, and Stanley Fitzmaurice, and a well-dressed lady wearing a fashionable bonnet. And there was Detective Inspector Antrobus. He turned his head to the left, and saw an impassive bearded constable sitting beside the bed. After what seemed an age, a voice spoke.

  ‘Why did you attempt suicide? What had you done?’

  ‘It was I who drove Podmore to suicide. I sent him anonymous type-written notes, telling him that his plagiarism was known. How could I have possibly known that he would commit suicide as a result? So I thought I could atone for my crime by following his example.’

  ‘How did you find out about Dr Podmore’s plagiarism of Dr Bosch’s work?’ asked Antrobus.

  ‘I found out about it one day when I went to visit the Bursar. He had left a damning letter or diary entry on his desk. I already hated Podmore – or so I thought – and I saw the opportunity of tormenting him with his guilt, leaving him always uncertain of his security, waiting for exposure… .’

  ‘That was a damned wicked thing to do, Templar,’ said Stanley Fitzmaurice.

  ‘I know – I know that, now, to my cost. I’d no idea that those notes of mine would have driven the poor man to suicide. And when he blamed not just the Vice-Chancellor but Dr Steadman, in that suicide note of his, I was frantic. It was my fault that the college was being torn apart.’

  Templar stirred uneasily, and his pale cheeks flushed with something like anger.

  ‘But… . I was not entirely to blame,’ he said. ‘Podmore was the kind of dyed-in-the-wool pedant who had no interest whatever in the future. He put paid to my suggestion that laboratories should be constructed at St Michael’s, even though the Warden was in favour. Podmore disliked me, and the feeling was mutual. Can you wonder that my resentment of the man festered after that? The idea of revenge came to me as the Warden lay dying in the Lodgings. I secured a quantity of mercuric chloride from a chemist’s shop in Kingston upon Thames… .’

  ‘Why there?’ asked Fitzmaurice.

  ‘Because it was a place that had no connection with me personally, or as far as I knew, with anyone here at St Michael’s. I thought I’d have difficulty in obtaining the stuff, but it was frighteningly simple. I left the packet in Sir Montague’s bedroom when I paid him a visit, knowing that it would be found. I knew – we all knew – that Podmore would be appointed Warden, and I wanted to give him an uncomfortable time when people began to suspect that he had poisoned Sir Montague Fowler in order to succeed him.’

  ‘Another incredibly wicked idea,’ said Fitzmaurice. ‘Templar, our friendship
ends here.’

  The wretched man seemed not to hear. Unheeded tears rolled down his cheeks.

  ‘I tried to play fair,’ he whispered, ‘I left the packet unopened, and with the chemist’s seals intact. I assumed that once the packet was properly examined, Podmore would be cleared of all suspicion very soon. If nothing had happened by the end of the week, I would have started to ask the right questions about that packet myself, so forcing the authorities to examine it.’

  Templar suddenly cried out, wringing his hands in despair.

  ‘But there’s more – more!’ he cried. ‘The autopsy on Sir Montague Fowler. I—’

  ‘We know what you did, Templar,’ said Inspector Antrobus. ‘You can give us your account of the affair when you are recovered. Meanwhile, you must prepare yourself to answer grave charges of law-breaking in court, and I will advise you now to prepare yourself for a long term of imprisonment. When you are well enough to leave here, you will be lodged on remand in Oxford Gaol.’

  15

  Another Visitor to Makin House

  Dr Armstrong reached up to a high shelf fixed to the wall of the mortuary laboratory, and brought down one of the glass specimen jars stored there.

  ‘This jar,’ he said, ‘contains the stomach of the late Sir Montague Fowler. You will see his name affixed to the label, together with my signature, and that of Dr Gerald Templar, who assisted me at the autopsy. The lid is secured with a wax seal.’

  He stood back from the bench and surveyed his audience. Dr Jex-Blake seemed to be controlling her excitement. Inspector Antrobus stood a little apart from the others, as though conscious of the fact that he was not a medical expert.

  What would Armstrong make of Dr Evan Pincent, a forensic specialist brought in by Dr Jex-Blake from London to re-examine the stomach? He was a gloomy-looking man in his forties, with a straggling moustache, rheumy eyes, and a prominent Adam’s apple.

 

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