A Question of Proof

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘Blah! Blah! Blah!’ interrupted Griffin rudely, ‘give it a rest.’

  ‘Oh, here’s something more to your taste,’ went on Tiverton. ‘Mr. Edward Griffin, the old Oxford rugby blue, who is on the staff of Sudeley Hall, on being asked for his theory about the crime, intimated that he had nothing to say.’

  ‘I intimated that that reporter would get shot out on his face if he didn’t clear off pretty quick.’

  ‘Which was impolitic of you, Edward,’ said Evans. ‘He’ll have it in for you now. Don’t you see, he’s already contrived to make you look slightly suspect.’

  Griffin snatched the paper and read through the whole column. ‘Good Lord, I believe you’re right. What with him and the bobbies, I shall be getting a hunted feeling before long.’

  ‘The superintendent got after you, did he?’ Tiverton asked.

  ‘Did he not? A nasty, suspicious blighter. Some fool must have told him what I said at breakfast in the morning.’

  ‘Not guilty,’ said Tiverton.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Evans. ‘As a matter of fact, I think I’m the chief suspect at the moment. The ‘clues which should lead to a speedy arrest’ were my silver pencil. He found it in the haystack.’

  Griffin looked concerned. ‘I say, that’s bad. I take it you are not the perpetrator of the outrage; or if you want any lying done, just tell me.’ He spoke lightly, but Michael became aware of a faint undercurrent of anxiety in his voice.

  ‘That’s very nice of you, Edward, but I hope it won’t be necessary. Curiously enough, I am not the murderer.’

  ‘That pencil’s a bit awkward, though,’ said Tiverton. ‘How did you explain it?’

  ‘Well, I told him it must have dropped out when I was ragging about during the hay battle.’

  Tiverton looked as if he was about to ask another question, but refrained, saying instead, ‘In detective stories it would have been planted there by the criminal to throw suspicion on you.’

  ‘Perhaps it was,’ laughed Griffin, ‘as the most unpopular master at St. Botolph’s, you must have plenty of enemies.’

  Michael reached forward to the table, took up a pile of books, and sprayed them with great deliberation over Griffin’s head.

  ‘My books, thank you,’ Tiverton said. ‘But look here, seriously, are you sure you lost your pencil at the hay battle? I thought I saw you using it yesterday morning. I mean, if you did have it yesterday, or some one found it after the hay battle and didn’t give it back – well, you see, it follows that it must have been planted there, and by some one in this place.’

  The tone of the assembly suddenly grew rather grave. Michael was feeling ashamed to be deceiving men he was fond of. But was he deceiving them? He couldn’t for the life of him remember when he had used the pencil last. After all, it mightn’t have dropped out when he was with Hero at all. But who on earth could want to –?

  ‘I see what you mean,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes. It’s an unpleasant thought, isn’t it? If this person dislikes me sufficiently to want me hanged, he is presumably willing enough to bump me off himself if the law fails to come up to scratch.’

  Tiverton, who had been manipulating a coffee machine in a rather spinsterish way, poured out three cups.

  ‘I’m inclined to think, though,’ he said, ‘that you may get a reprieve. Has it struck you two what is the oddest thing about this business?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Proceed, Holmes, I am all attention.’

  ‘Well, where did Wemyss go after school yesterday? As far as we know he seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. And secondly, who or what could have induced him to go off in that curious manner, apparently without letting anyone know or leaving any trace behind him? I believe, if we could answer the second question, the mystery would be solved.’

  How right Tiverton was in this conjecture they were not to realise for some time.

  ‘You amaze me, Holmes,’ said Griffin, ‘but I must confess that I still don’t see where Evans’ reprieve comes in.’

  ‘Unless he was running away or playing truant – and I don’t think that very likely, apart from the fact that as far as we know no one saw him in the village or on the roads – some outside agency must have induced him to leave the premises.’

  ‘A fine period,’ commented Griffin with admiration.

  ‘I suggest it must have been a note of some sort from some one he knew, or he wouldn’t have gone; but not from anyone on the staff here, for masters do not make written assignations with boys. Wemyss would have felt there was something fishy about that.’

  ‘I sincerely trust they do not,’ said Griffin primly. He turned to Evans. ‘By Jove, Michael, he’s right, isn’t he?’ Griffin had the faculty of spontaneous enthusiasm, and Tiverton’s face reflected the warmth of his approval.

  Evans said, ‘So we look for some one outside the school who knew him?’

  ‘Or a boy in the school. Don’t forget that possibility,’ said Tiverton. Further exploration of the subject was interrupted by the arrival of Gadsby and Sims. Gadsby was unusually Cock and Featherish, and even Sims appeared, for him, quite on top of the world. Gadsby sat down and helped himself, unasked, to coffee and a cigarette. Then he delivered an ominous gargling noise and got under way.

  ‘Just been taking old Simmie along for a quick one. He seemed a bit down in the mouth – police been chivvying him or something – so I prescribed a dose of mother’s special, didn’t I, Simmie?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Thought we should never get there, though. Sims saw a yellow-bottomed gorse-tit or something in the hedge, so we had to stop while he stalked it. Can’t think what you see in these Godforsaken birds, Sims. Oh, and talking of birds, where’s Wrench? Stalking the fair Rosa, I suppose.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about, Gadsby?’ said Tiverton, with a voice like a cold douche. Gadsby was too well lit up to be extinguished by this. He continued:

  ‘Meantessay you haven’t noticed her making eyes at meals? Dirty work at the crossroads, you mark my words. It’s a case.’

  Griffin and Evans shuddered ostentatiously. Sims drew himself upright in his chair; he was pink and trembling. He stuttered, ‘R-really, Gadsby, that’s a most unneces-nerecess, er, uncalled-for remark. That sort of thing’s d-disgusting – t-talking about ‘bub-bub-birds’; j-just because some people – these s-stuck-up s-society people – choose to bub-behave like amilals, animals – I don’t think it’s f-funny at all,’ he concluded, in dignified confusion. Every one was rather embarrassed, except Gadsby, who opened his eyes in an exaggerated fashion and said:

  ‘Good Lord, who’d have thought it? Sims turning pious. I say, Simmie, how many did you have when my back was turned?’

  The following silence was so acute that it penetrated even Gadsby’s hide, and he remarked, a bit huffily, that he supposed the subject had better be changed. This he proceeded to do, crashing his gears mercilessly.

  ‘Well, as we seem to be in the drawing room, I’ll tell you a nice, clean joke. Oh, I say, that reminds me of a thing the superintendent said to me last evening – damn smart, I call it. Decent fullah, that.’

  The company was duly regaled with the superintendent’s witticism, and the talk drifted in his direction. Tiverton doubted the ability of his mind, Griffin the legitimacy of his birth. Gadsby thought he was a clever fullah and a sportsman. Sims remarked with some truculence that he was not going to be bullied by any great hulking lout in a blue uniform. Michael, appealed to as the thumbnail character-sketcher of the party, admitted that he’d been too frightened by the superintendent to get more than a blurred impression of him, but felt that his cleverness or stupidity, whichever it was, was on the grand scale, and that either would therefore be equally dangerous.

  At this point the alleged philanderer, Wrench, came in. A certain awkwardness made itself felt in the atmosphere, a general looking sideways and fiddling with teaspoons and relighting of pipes.

  ‘Have some coffee, Wren
ch?’ said Tiverton. ‘Been putting the boys to bed?’

  ‘Thanks. Yes, they’re a bit worked up tonight.’

  Sims blurted out, ‘There you are, Gadsby,’ and grinned apologetically as four pairs of eyes shot meaning glances at him. Wrench looked about him in a puzzled way. ‘What are you talking about? Is this a bet?’ The silence grew even more sultry. Tiverton broke it, like a thunderclap, ‘Gadsby apparently thought you were putting Rosa to bed.’

  ‘Here, I say, hang it, old man,’ stuttered Gadsby.

  Wrench went very white. His eyes narrowed and his nostrils distended: all humanity seemed to have left his face. He rose to his feet, still holding the coffee cup, glaring at Gadsby:

  ‘You dirty rotter!’ he said, in a taut, brittle kind of voice. ‘You poor, brainless sot! Get to hell out of this!’ His voice rose to a shout and cracked. He threw the coffee cup full in Gadsby’s face.

  Gadsby staggered and blinked. Blood and coffee were running down his cheek. He growled in his throat, then lurched towards Wrench and knocked him several feet into a comer, where he lay with a heap of Tiverton’s golf-clubs tumbled over him, whimpering. Evans was on his feet, feeling full of blind, undirected rage. Tiverton had a queer, puzzled look on his face. Only Griffin seemed to be himself. He stood up like a cliff in front of Gadsby, took him by the shoulders, twirled him round and put him into the passage, saying quietly: ‘You seem to have done enough mischief for tonight; your presence will not be required any more.’ Then he turned round and got the sobered Sims to help him bring Wrench up to his bedroom. Tiverton and Evans were left alone in the devastated room. Tiverton still had that strange, faraway expression, as though he were trying to think out the answer to a conundrum.

  ‘Now what on earth,’ he said slowly, ‘what on earth made me say that?’

  ‘We all seem to be a bit bedlamite this evening,’ answered Michael lamely. ‘Well, I think I’ll go along. Good-night.’

  And he went to bed, where he lay awake for hours, coming to realise how the dirty work of murder was only beginning when the victim was dead: going over details of the past day, and as it were piecing together thus the new, changed relationship amongst his colleagues. For there was a change: a kind of reservation beneath the surface. It came upon him with a sickening impact that he and they felt that the murderer was one of their number, and that the events of the evening had been a violent revolt of masked suspicions. He was very glad indeed that Nigel Strangeways was commg.

  While the Sudeley Hall staff were showing these premonitory signs of a collapse of morale, Superintendent Armstrong and Sergeant Pearson were holding an informal council of war over whiskies and sodas in the former’s house. Sergeant Pearson made his report first. He was a young, keen, open-faced officer. His curly flaxen hair and general air of blue-eyed innocence made him a favourite, especially with middle-aged women, and a success as an interviewer. His face so accurately mirrored his mind, which was entirely straightforward in its workings, that criminals were apt to open their hearts to him as to a brother, or else – hopelessly rattled by his extreme ingenuousness – suspect that it concealed a diabolic cunning and tie themselves up accordingly in knots of duplicity.

  His report was long but apparently barren. He and the Sudeley constable had first verified Gadsby’s alibi at the Cock and Feathers. He had arrived and left at the hours stated. He had been alone in the private room for five or six minutes after his arrival, but had then sought the more congenial atmosphere of the public bar. Pearson had then gone the rounds of all the parents living in the vicinity who had attended the sports. None of them had seen the unfortunate Wemyss. Only one recollected talking to Mr. Wrench at the sports, and that was after the 440 yards race; neither had he blue eyes nor a son called ‘Tom.’ None of them had noticed Mr. Wrench talking to a blue-eyed man in a brown suit at any time before or during the sports; though several fathers had had the requisite colour of eyes and clothing.

  Meanwhile some of the sergeant’s men had been combing the neighbourhood; but, if the boy had left the school grounds at all, he apparently had done it in a cap of invisibility. An extensive inquiry had also been set on foot into the whereabouts of that class described as ‘having no fixed abode’; the results of this were still coming in, and no support for the headmaster’s theory had as yet been found. The labourers who had found the body had been put through a searching examination, the result of which was nil.

  All these facts Pearson retailed in a regulation voice, sitting bolt upright and gazing dreamily at a picture of some anatomically deformed angels above the superintendent’s head. He now relaxed, transferred his attention from angels to whisky, and waited for Armstrong to speak.

  ‘Well, George,’ the superintendent said, ‘you’ve done a good day’s work. I didn’t really expect those lines to lead anywhere, but it narrows down the field to be shut of them.’

  He then proceeded to outline his own activities. He had first examined the rumble and front seats of Gadsby’s car; there had been no sign of either having recently been occupied by a body, though that by no means eliminated Gadsby as a possible murderer. He had next interviewed the whole staff of servants at Sudeley Hall. They were now practically exempt from suspicion, having been underneath each other’s noses – if not actually tumbling over each other – either in the kitchen or the garden, during the hectic period between lunch and the sports. At this point Armstrong made a pregnant pause. Knowing his superior’s weakness for a dramatic effect, Pearson said, ‘ ‘Practically’ you were saying, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I stumbled over two curious pieces of evidence. The groundsman, Mould – he’s a bit lacking in the upper storey – but he was quite certain that a number of his sacks, full ones, had been moved since he went into his shed that morning. When he and Mr. Griffin went in, he said, he found them in a sort of lean-to position against the far wall. They were placed in such a way as to make a possible hiding-place – I got him to put them back for me as he remembered finding them after lunch.’

  Sergeant Pearson whistled in a way cunningly calculated to express both astonishment and admiration. The superintendent continued:

  ‘My other exhibit is Rosa. She is one of the maids. She was in the kitchen, helping to wash up, till just before two. Then she said she felt unwell and went up to her bedroom to lie down. We have no corroboration of her movements from then till she joined some of the other servants at a dormitory window watching the sports – soon after two-thirty. Miss Rosa is a pretty hot piece of goods, I can tell you, and what’s more, she’s frightened. I didn’t press her at all. I’m just leaving her to simmer for a bit.’

  Armstrong leaned back, took a good swig at his glass, breathed stertorously, and beamed upon the sergeant.

  ‘I got some interesting sidelights from the servants, too. Mr. Evans, it seems, is quite the gentleman but a bit standoffish. Mr. Wrench is the reverse, in both particulars. Mr. Sims gives no trouble; Mr. Tiverton a good deal – “fussy old geezer,” were the words, I think. Mr. Griffin and Mr. Gadsby are “jolly, pleasant-spoken gentlemen,” though the latter does keep whisky bottles under the bed. The Rev. Mr. Vale seems to be a holy terror, with a tongue “like I never did”; in fact, no one would stay on for a minute if it wasn’t for Mrs. Vale, who is “a real lady and ever so nice,” though “some do say as how she’s a bit flighty and who wouldn’t be with an old devil like that for a husband.” ’

  The superintendent filled up his glass and the sergeant’s before proceeding to relate the rest of his activities. After his interview with the domestic staff he had made a thorough search of the wood; result – nil. Had tested all suitable surfaces in Mould’s shed for fingerprints; result – hopeless. Had verified from several boys that Tiverton had been in and out of the day room after lunch. Had found a copy of Mademoiselle de Maupin in Wrench’s room, the illustrations of which caused him to amend his views about school textbooks. Had finally left the school and paid a visit to Mr. Urquhart in Staverton.

  ‘He told me,
after the usual lawyer’s demurring, that Mr. Vale, as the deceased’s next-of-kin, stood to come in for a considerable sum of money; he would not like to stipulate the exact amount, etc., etc. He himself had managed the boy’s financial affairs since the parents’ death, Mr. Vale seeing to the educational side. Mr. Urquhart is the sole executor of the will, and only comes in for a small legacy himself, so he tells me.’

  Armstrong hovered again, as it were in midflight, and the sergeant gave the requisite cue.

  ‘You are not satisfied with his story, sir?’

  ‘Mark my words, young man, that fellow’s frightened of something. Half the people in this case are, as far as I can make out. But I’m coming to the funny part of it. I asked him for his movements on Wednesday. He blustered a bit – all these lawyers do – then he told me a very curious story. Says he got a typewritten anonymous note by the morning post, with a Sudeley postmark, asking him to be in Edgworth Wood, that’s less than a mile from Sudeley Hall, you know, at one-forty-five, when the sender would tell him something to his advantage. “Absolute secrecy,” “burn this note”; all the usual stuff.’