‘Yes,’ Mr Spode replied blankly. ‘That’s so.’
‘Did you at any time have dealings with a Miss Snaith, of “Valhalla”, Boar’s Hill?’
‘Oh.’ Mr Spode went pale. ‘Yes – yes, I did.’
‘Professional dealings?’
‘Yes. She wanted us to publish a book she’d written. About spiritualism. It was a very bad book.’
‘Did you publish it?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Spode helplessly. ‘We did. We never meant to. As a matter of fact, I lost it almost as soon as it arrived.’
‘Publishers’ offices,’ Cadogan muttered explanatorily to the others. ‘Always losing things. Continual shambles.’
‘We couldn’t find it anywhere,’ Mr Spode went on. ‘You see, we hadn’t even read it at the time, and no one dared to write and tell her what had happened. She kept ringing up to ask how we liked it, and we had to put her off with all manner of excuses. Then eventually someone found it mixed up with a lot of American correspondence which was never looked at, and we felt we’d simply got to do it after keeping it a year.’
‘Moral courage in the publishing trade,’ Cadogan observed benevolently.
‘And she was very grateful,’ Fen said. ‘And sent you an envelope and asked you to look in the personal column of the Oxford Mail – ’
Mr Spode gaped at him absurdly. ‘How did you know?’
‘He saw it in a crystal, Erwin,’ said Cadogan. ‘Or it was communicated to him by spirits. Anyway, did you do what the old woman told you?’
‘No,’ said Mr Spode, distracted. ‘I didn’t. I put the envelope away, meaning to look at it later, and then forgot about it for a time, and when I remembered it – it had got lost,’ he concluded feebly.
‘Well, you’d better find it again,’ said Cadogan, ‘because it’s worth about a hundred thousand pounds to you.’
‘W – what?’ Mr Spode looked as if he were ready to faint. As briefly as possible, they explained the whole situation to him. To their annoyance, he kept saying ‘Don’t be silly; don’t be silly’ all the time; but in the end they managed to convince him. For Cadogan, the tale gained nothing in the telling, and how Fen was able to deduce from it the name of the murderer he could not think. Sharman, of course, had behaved suspiciously.
‘As a matter of interest,’ Fen asked in conclusion, ‘what did induce you to come to Oxford last night?’
‘It was business,’ said Mr Spode. ‘Nutling is living here, and he wanted me to run over the proofs of Staveling’s new novel with him. It’s libellous,’ Mr Spode complained. What time did you get here?’
‘About one in the morning, I think. I had a breakdown near Thame, and it took hours to fix. You can check that,’ Mr Spode added anxiously.
‘And why did you leave the tea-party so suddenly this afternoon? When Rosseter was killed, I was exceedingly suspicious of you.’
‘Oh … oh … Well, the fact is, I’m shy,’ said Mr Spode with pathos. They all gazed at him, and he went red. ‘Shy,’ he repeated aggressively. ‘I didn’t know anyone, and I felt I wasn’t wanted.’
‘Of course you were wanted,’ said Sally, touched.
‘So Erwin isn’t the murderer after all.’ There was a hint of disappointment in Cadogan’s voice.
‘No,’ said Fen; and added gnomically: ‘Though if everyone had their rights he would be.’ He regarded Mr Spode judicially, like a cannibal considering the culinary merits of a Christian mission.
‘Only a Red Herring,’ said Cadogan offensively. ‘A Red Herring and the Missing Link, and a wicked exploiter of divine-genius-as-represented-by-me. And now he’s got more money than he’ll ever know what to do with, just because he lost a manuscript and hadn’t the courage to say so. I could do with some of that money.’
‘So could I,’ said Fen aggrievedly, momentarily distracted from his high purpose by the injustice and enormity of the economic situation. ‘No one ever leaves me any money.’ Then, glancing hastily at his watch: ‘Good heavens, we must go.’
‘You haven’t told us who the murderer is.’
‘Oh? Haven’t I?’ said Fen. ‘Well, who do you think it is? Use what little ingenuity Heaven has provided you with.’
‘Well … ’ Cadogan hesitated. ‘Sharman, I should say.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, for one thing, you remember the Winkworth woman said that when she and Havering and Rosseter were together they shut the door of the room? He could have gone in to Miss Tardy and killed her then.’
Fen beamed at him. ‘But you seem to forget that Rosseter joined Havering and the woman at 11.25. At 11.30, according to the woman, Sharman joined them, and Miss Tardy couldn’t have died before 11.35.’
‘Havering must have invented that story about the time of death.’
‘What for? To protect Sharman, when he was in deadly fear for his own neck?’
‘Then he was mistaken.’
‘Practically impossible, I should say, as he got to the body so soon after death. The signs of the early stages are fairly definite.’
‘Couldn’t Sharman have done it when he went in to Miss Tardy with the gun? You remember he talked some nonsense about the light bulb being out, to excuse the delay.’
‘My dear Richard, Havering would have known if the woman had only just that minute been killed. That would point straight to Sharman; and again, there’s no earthly reason why Havering should protect him once the whole business had come out. Every reason why he shouldn’t, in fact. And the correspondence of all the stories is so exact, and containing so much that can be checked, that it’s pretty certain they’re true. Your theory faces this difficulty, you see: that although Sharman could have strangled the woman between 11.25 and 11.30, or at 11.50, she actually died between 11.35 and 11.45.’
‘Oh, very well,’ said Cadogan, disgusted. ‘Sharman didn’t kill her, then. Who did?’
‘Sharman, of course,’ said Fen, striding across to the door of the I room in which Havering was incarcerated.
‘W – what?’ Cadogan stammered, outraged.
Fen had unlocked the door. ‘Do you know, Havering’s actually asleep,’ he said, peering inside. ‘Asleep with a towel round his head and the weight of his crimes upon him.’ He re-locked the door.
‘Listen, Gervase, this is ridiculous. You’ve just proved he couldn’t have – ’
‘I wish you wouldn’t moan so,’ said Fen in exasperation. ‘Sharman killed Emilia Tardy. Sharman killed Emilia Tardy.’
‘All right. All right. You’ve just disproved it yourself. Don’t let that worry you.’
‘Oh, my dear paws,’ said Fen. ‘Of course you’re too unintelligent to see how it was done. Anyway, we must go now and meet Barnaby and his army at Sharman’s house. Sally, you’d better not come. Remember, the man’s killed two people already.’
‘I’m coming,’ Sally answered promptly.
Fen smiled at her. ‘Bring out the irons,’ he said. ‘“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tiptoe when this day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispin …” No, perhaps not exactly. Come along.’
13. The Episode of the Rotating Professor
George Sharman lived in Great King Street, which is a cheap residential road near Oxford Station. The house which he inhabited (along with a daily slut who came to cook his meals and make a pretence of cleaning), stood a little apart from the rest of the row, and boasted something in the way of a garden; if some barren rhododendron bushes, a great deal of rank grass, several cabbages, and two exuberant but unproductive apple-trees can be dignified with that name. It was small, and constructed of grey stone with a white facing at the front; on the wooden porch, green paint flaked and blistered. Its name was ‘The Haven’. The slut, after a day occupied mainly with drinking stout and reading a novelette in the sitting-room, returned to her own house at eight o’clock. So when Fen, Wilkes, Sally, and Mr Hoskins encountered Mr Barnaby at the end of the road, Mr Sharman was presumably its only occupant.
Mr Barnaby was full of bizarre strategies. He was holding a large street-map under a lamp and studying it intently but without much evident comprehension.
‘They’re all here, my dear Anthony,’ he told Mr Hoskins. ‘Quite fiery and aggressive with spirituous liquors. Positively every way of escape is guarded by some desperado of a Blue.’
‘Of course, there’s every possibility that he’s gone already,’ Fen said. ‘But I’m taking no chances. Wilkes, will you stay well in the background with Sally?’ Wilkes, brandishing his umbrella, nodded, and Fen was so taken aback at this immediate acquiescence that he forgot for a moment what he was going to say. Then, pulling himself together: ‘Mr Barnaby, you’ve got someone on the back gate?’
‘Oh, but of course.’
‘Good. Mr Hoskins, stay here and help Mr Barnaby. Richard, the front gate’s yours. I shall go in and interview the gentleman, if he’s there.’
‘Too like the Somme,’ Mr Barnaby murmured. ‘The Eve of Battle, by Burne-Jones.’
They all went, feeling a little foolish, to take up their positions. Rain was falling again, and the reflections of the street lamps gained intensity and precision on the wet black road. No one was about. A sound of muffled altercation from some way away suggested that Mr Barnaby’s recruits were dissatisfied with some feature of the campaign. Cadogan stood by a telegraph pole, and putting his ear to it, listened to the singing of the wires. Analysing his feelings, he found that he was less excited than curious. After all, they had everything on their side.
Fen walked briskly up the short asphalt path which led to the door. Seeing a notice requiring him to knock and ring, he knocked and rang. He waited; knocked again; rang again; and eventually, receiving no answer, walked out of sight round the side of the house, where he might be presumed to be entering burglariously by a window. The rain increased in volume, and Cadogan turned up his coat collar. Mr Barnaby could be heard discoursing to Mr Hoskins on some subject unconnected with the present business. Two, three minutes went by without incident. And then, abruptly, the reverberation of a shot came from the house – a violent detonation accompanied by a sharp gash of flame in one of the darkened rooms. Immediately Fen’s voice was heard shouting, but the words were indistinct, and Cadogan, his muscles tight and his heart pounding, hesitated where to go and what to do. Finally he stumbled over the wet muddy lawn in the direction in which Fen had gone; that left the front gate unguarded, but along the road, in either direction, there were guards. Rounding the corner of the house, he was aware out of the corner of his eye of a dark figure slipping through the bushes on the other side, and gave a shout of warning. Almost simultaneously Fen dropped from a nearby window, cursing in several languages, and waved him back to his post.
‘He’s out,’ he announced rather obviously. ‘And he’s got a gun. The other side.’ They ran back again, slipping and stumbling in the darkness. Someone in the house next door flung open the window and said: ‘Anything the matter?’ but they ignored him, and by the time he had got on a hat and coat and arrived outside, almost everyone was gone.
Cadogan was never able to sort out the exact details of the fiasco which followed. It is to be remembered that Mr Barnaby’s army was not wholly sober; that in the darkness it was not easy to distinguish friend from foe, with the result that Mr Barnaby was set upon until his distinctive wails revealed the mistake; and that everyone, under the erroneous impression that the quarry was in sight, deserted his post at the crucial moment and joined in a fruitless general beating to and fro. It was soon apparent that Sharman had made his way through a gap in the fence at the back of the garden into an alley beyond; and Fen, unbelievably enraged, sent two undergraduates back to the house in case they were mistaken, dispatched Mr Barnaby (now plaintive with physical injury) and the rest in the direction of the station, and himself, with Cadogan, Mr Hoskins, Sally, and Wilkes, set off along the only other possible escape route, the road which leads out to the suburb of Botley.
‘He wanted to create a diversion,’ said Fen, ‘and, by God, he succeeded. Put not your trust in princes, etcetera … Keep an eye out on either side, everyone, and for God’s sake remember he’s armed … ’ He subsided into a sort of dull complaining, very distressing to listen to.
‘Unless he’s quite mad he won’t have gone to the station,’ Cadogan ventured.
‘No,’ said Fen, a little mollified. ‘That’s why I sent the others there. They’re so tight they couldn’t corner a tortoise in a rabbit-hutch … Sally, I really think you ought to go back.’
‘Me? No fear. Anyway, I’ve got Dr Wilkes to look after me.’
‘You see?’ said Wilkes complacently.
‘The vanity of the old,’ said Fen. ‘I suppose you realize, Wilkes, that you ought to be ending your life in ripe contemptation, and not gadding about protecting young girls?’
‘You unchivalrous hound,’ said Wilkes, and this so abashed Fen that for a short while he was quite silent.
This road, unlike Great King Street, was a busy one, and at several points they had difficulty in forcing their way through the ambuscades of damp umbrellas. The brightly-lighted buses, their radiators steaming beneath the rain, lumbered by. The gutters gurgled and streamed with water. A policeman, caped and imperious, stood at a crossroads directing traffic, but of Mr Sharman there was no visible sign.
‘Oh, damn,’ said Fen. ‘We’re never going to find him, you know. He may have gone in anywhere. God rot Barnaby and his minions for making a mess of things.’
But Sally was taking matters into her own hands. She ran into the road, narrowly missing a taxi on the way, and approached the policeman.
‘Hullo, Bob,’ she said.
‘Why, ’ullo, Sally,’ he answered. ‘Gawd, what a night. You oughtn’t ter talk ter me when I’m on point duty, yer know.’
‘I’m looking for a man, Bob.’
‘When weren’t yer?’ said Bob, winking. He beckoned a lorry across.
‘Oh, funny, aren’t you?’ said Sally. ‘No, really, Bob, this is serious. He must have come up here. Weedy, undersized chap, with rabbity teeth; very muffled up.’
‘Ah, yes, I saw ’im, not more’n a minute ago. ’E was nearly crushed to a pudding, crossin’ against signals.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Into the flicks,’ said Bob, jerking his head in the appropriate direction. ‘’Ardly your type, though, I should ’ave thought.’
But Sally was by this time returning to the others, flushed and victorious. ‘He’s gone into the Colossal,’ she told them.
‘Good for you,’ said Fen. ‘It’s nice to know there’s someone in this party besides me who’s got a little nous.’ He glared malevolently at Wilkes. ‘Well, come on.’
The Colossal (which lay less than a hundred yards ahead of them) is one of the smallest and most disreputable cinemas ever contrived. It is also, from the mechanical aspect, primitive to the point of seeming the first successful experiment of the cinematograph’s inventor. The usherettes are listless and the commissionaire old, confused, and prone to organize small, unnecessary queues of patrons when any number of seats are available. Very ancient films are shown, liable to every ill that celluloid is heir to, from incessant crackling through paralysis agitans to total dislocation, and matters are not improved by an operator who, apart from being constantly intoxicated, seems only imperfectly acquainted with the mechanics of his craft. The Colossal is also a great haunt of couples in an advanced condition of amorous delight, and is frequented by the rowdiest section of undergraduates for the sheer joy of seeing things go wrong.
Outside the doors Fen marshalled his forces. ‘There’s no point in all of us going in,’ he said. ‘And someone ought to keep an eye on this exit and the one round the corner. I hope he hasn’t gone in and come out again already, but we’ll have to risk that. Richard, and you, Mr Hoskins, will you stay outside?’
He went in, accompanied by Sally and Wilkes, to buy the tickets. The commissionaire tried to make them
queue, but they brushed him aside. Fortunately, the Colossal has no gallery, so there was no chance of their looking for Sharman in the wrong quarter.
Someone tore their tickets in two, and having performed this simple but destructive act, relapsed into apathy as they pushed through the swing-doors into a warm, vibrating darkness. The screen was for the moment occupied by the image of a door, which was slowly opening to admit the muzzle of a revolver, and this was immediately followed by the spectacle of a white-haired man writing at a desk. Invisible violins played a whole-tone chord, tremolo, in a high register, while muted trombones grunted in a diseased but foreboding manner underneath. This music rose to a violent fortissimo and was terminated abruptly by an explosion, at which the white-haired man fell forward on to his desk, his pen dropping from a nerveless hand. (‘Dead,’ said Fen sepulchrally.) At this crisis of affairs, however, they were diverted from attending to what subsequently occurred by being ushered to their seats.
The cinema was not very full. Immediately in front of them was a solid block of undergraduates, but the rest of the seats were sparsely occupied. Near them, a young woman who was showing a surprising length of leg lay stickily clutched in the embraces of a young man, apparently insensible to the alarming events being enacted for her benefit. Someone was asleep in the row in front. Even with nothing more than the illumination from the screen and from the small yellow lights at the side to help them, it should not be insuperably difficult to locate Mr Sharman.
‘Pa was a nice guy,’ said the film. ‘Who’d want to kill him?’
Fen got up and meandered down the gangway. An usherette, anxious to be helpful, approached and indicated to him the whereabouts of the gentlemen’s lavatory. He ignored her and continued peering about him.
‘O.K., boys,’ said the film. ‘Take him to the morgue. Now, Mrs Hargben, do you know of anyone who had reason to dislike your husband?’
Fen was getting in the way of the people at the side. One man got up and said: ‘ ’Ere, sit darn, matey.’ ‘Sit down yourself,’ said someone else behind him. Fen ignored them both and returned to Sally and Wilkes. ‘I shall have to try the other side,’ he told them.
The Moving Toyshop Page 19