‘Rosseter’s inquest,’ Fen pursued. ‘Police inquiries. Why did I steal a car? Why did Dr Wilkes steal a bicycle? Why did Mr Cadogan steal groceries? Petty minds. It turns me sour. There’s no justice.’
‘I gather that Sharman’s confession confirmed your deductions,’ said Cadogan, ‘but I haven’t yet succeeded in gathering what your deductions were.’
‘Everything confirms everything.’ Fen’s gloom was intense. ‘Miss Tardy’s body was found where Havering said it was. Rosseter’s brief-case, and the rifle he was shot with, were found in Sharman’s house – it was a small one, by the way, and I think he must have hidden it under his clothes. The police caught the Winkworth woman this afternoon, trying to clear out of the country – did you know that? They’ve got Havering, of course. I expect they’ll both be tried for something or other.’ He ordered a second round of drinks. ‘Sharman won’t be fit for six months, the doctors say. Nor shall I, if it comes to that. I had to apologize to the Chaplain for that business in the vestry. Humiliating. One gets no thanks for anything.’
‘I thought all those people’s stories of what happened in the toyshop were intended to incriminate Sally.’
‘They might have been. I had an open mind on the subject. The only thing was that if, as a hypothesis, they were true, there was one obvious way the murder could have been done, and one obvious person – Sharman – who could have done it.’
‘I still don’t see it. Did she die at about 11.40, as Havering said? Because if so, all the others were together in a different room at the time.’
The drinks arrived and Fen paid for them. ‘Oh, yes, she died at 11.40 all right,’ he said. ‘And not of natural causes either. You see, there are no two ways about it; she was suffocated.’
‘Suffocated?’
‘She must have been. The symptoms of strangulation and suffocation are exactly the same – obviously, because they’re both means of cutting off air from the lungs, the one at the mouth, the other at the throat. So if it was impossible for her to have been strangled, she must have been suffocated. Strangulation’s almost immediate, you see, but suffocation may take quite a time.’
Cadogan gulped his beer. ‘What about marks – bruises – on the throat, thought?’
‘They can be induced after death.’ Fen groped in his pocket and produced a grubby slip of paper. ‘I wrote this down for you. It’s from a standard authority. “A long line of medical jurisprudents,”’ he read, ‘“has established that marks of strangulation inflicted on a living person are hardly if at all to be distinguished from those produced on a corpse, especially if death be very recent.”a And death was very recent.
‘The point about the apparent impossibility of the thing was simply this: that if you strangle a person you’ve got to be there when he dies, but if you suffocate him, you needn’t be.
‘Of course, the theory of suffocation pointed immediately to Sharman. You remember the situation? Rosseter talked to the woman, and according to two other witnesses besides himself, she was alive and talking when he left her – and if she was talking she couldn’t very well have been in the first stages of suffocation. He then joined Havering and the Winkworth woman, and the only person who was on his own from then until the time of death was Sharman. It was as simple as that.
‘What happened was that he had come to realize that this intimidation business was going to be no good. So he went in, knocked the woman unconscious, plugged her nostrils and stuffed a handkerchief down her throat, and left her to die. Then when Rosseter sent him back to her with the gun, he removed the evidences of suffocation and tied the string round her neck (using that tale about the light as an excuse).’
‘But for heaven’s sake,’ Cadogan put in, ‘why arrange a business like that? Why make it look impossible? Besides, for all he knew, she might not even be dead by the time he got back, which would ruin the whole plan.’
‘Obviously, he didn’t intend it to look impossible,’ Fen answered impatiently. ‘What happened was that when he’d arranged the suffocation machinery he came back and found the others together, when he’d expected them to be in different rooms; and that, for reasons we’ve discussed, would throw the guilt infallibly on him. So he had to fake the thing to look like something else, and strangulation, in view of the symptoms, was the sole possibility.’
‘Then what about that story he told of someone prowling round? Sally said there wasn’t anyone prowling.’
‘Certainly there wasn’t.’ Fen’s tone was disgusted. ‘What he heard was Sally. Isn’t that so, Wilkes?’ he added sharply.
‘Eh?’ said Wilkes, startled at being thus brusquely addressed.
‘You see,’ Fen proceeded, ‘Wilkes’ acute and active mind had jumped instantly to the same conclusion.’ He glared malevolently at his aged colleague. ‘Naturally, all this depended on the witnesses’ stories being true. Fortunately, one didn’t have to go into all that, because Sharman gave himself away at our second interview. He said: “Not a soul can testify I was involved in any conspiracy.” Well, Rosseter could have testified, if he’d been alive. The only people, apart from the murderer, who knew he was dead were ourselves and the police. Argal, Sharman killed Rosseter; Argal, he also killed Miss Tardy.’
‘How did he get Miss Snaith to leave him the money? Has anyone found out?’
‘Oh, he published some rubbishy book on education, and she was interested in the subject. They corresponded, and eventually met. He played up to her, and she liked it. Miserable little sycophant.’
In the silence that followed: ‘To each according to his needs,’ the red-headed undergraduate could be heard saying. ‘Not absolute equality, because people have different needs.’
‘Who’s to decide what people’s needs are?’ his companion asked.
‘The State of course. Don’t ask such silly questions.’
Fen had reverted to his grievances. ‘Just because Scott and Beavis led the Chief Constable half the way to London and back,’ he said, ‘I don’t see that he’s entitled to swear at me like a railway navvy.’
‘How did they come to turn up at the Fair, by the way?’
‘Oh, they ran into some of Barnaby’s gang at the station. Which reminds me, we’re supposed to be going round to New College to have a drink with him in ten minutes. Let’s have another for the road.’
‘I’ll get it,’ said Cadogan. He ordered the drinks. ‘Spode’s gone back to London. I tried to get him to increase my royalties, but he wouldn’t. Evasive as a fish.’
‘So you’re going to write some poetry now?’ Sally asked.
‘Yes. That’s me métier. I might even try my hand at a novel.’
‘Flogging dead horses in mid-stream … ’ Fen grumbled. ‘What are you going to do, Sally?’
‘Oh – I dunno. I shall keep on with my job for a bit. I shouldn’t know how to get through the day otherwise. How about you, Anthony?’
Mr Hoskins stirred. ‘I shall continue my studies … Good evening, Jacqueline,’ he saluted a passing blonde.
‘Wilkes,’ said Fen sharply.
‘Eh?’
‘What are you going to do with yourself now?’
‘Mind your own business,’ said Wilkes.
Cadogan hastily interposed with: ‘How about you, Gervase?’
‘I?’ said Fen. ‘I shall pursue my orderly and dignified progress towards the grave.’
The crowd in the bar increased, and the smoke was beginning to sting the eyes. Fen drank his whisky gloomily. The young man with the glasses and the long neck finished Crotchet Castle and began Headlong Hall. Sally and Mr Hoskins were deep in conversation. Wilkes seemed on the point of slumber. And Cadogan’s mind was pleasingly blank.
‘Let’s play “Awful Lines from Shakespeare”,’ he suggested.
However, they were not destined to begin this immediately, as: ‘Women,’ said Mr Hoskins suddenly, ‘have strange ways.’ Everyone listened with respectful attention. ‘But for the eccentricities of Miss Snaith, none of
this business would have come about. You remember what Pope said about women in The Rape of the Lock?’ He looked inquiringly about him. ‘It goes like this:
‘With varying vanities from every part,
They shift the moving toyshop of their heart…
Dear me … ’
Footnote
a Hans Gross, Criminal Investigation (Sweet and Marwell, 1934).
A Note on the Author
Edmund Crispin (1921–1978) was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery (usually credited as Bruce Montgomery), an English crime writer and composer. Montgomery wrote nine detective novels and two collections of short stories under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin (taken from a character in Michael Innes’s Hamlet, Revenge!). The stories feature Oxford don Gervase Fen, who is a Professor of English at the university and a fellow of St Christopher’s College, a fictional institution that Crispin locates next to St John’s College. Fen is an eccentric, sometimes absent-minded, character reportedly based on the Oxford professor W. E. Moore. The whodunit novels have complex plots and fantastic, somewhat unbelievable solutions, including examples of the locked room mystery. They are written in a humorous, literary and sometimes farcical style and contain frequent references to English literature, poetry, and music. They are also among the few mystery novels to break the fourth wall occasionally and speak directly to the audience.
Discover books by Edmund Crispin published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/EdmundCrispin
Frequent Hearses
Glimpses of the Moon
Beware of the Trains
Fen Country
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © 1946 Edmund Crispin
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The Moving Toyshop Page 21