Death at St. Asprey’s School

by Bruce, Leo

  “Parker made his way down. He had drawn Sime’s curtains before he left him and found him now in the half darkened room in deep sleep. He stabbed him with a single blow severing the jugular vein, leaving the arrowhead deep in the wound. He screwed in the shaft of the arrow and then, according to plan crossed to open the curtains—for it was to be a stray arrow from outside that had killed Sime. The two boys had meanwhile approached, seen the curtain drawn, and in their own words ‘scooted back to the cricket field’. Parker looked cautiously out, I imagine, saw no one in the vicinity, drew back the curtains and returned to his room.”

  “An excellent account of things,” said Mr. Gorringer. “But I for one remain unconvinced. I daresay you are right in saying that Sime was stabbed, but I cannot see that you have more than circumstantial evidence against Parker. Why could not some other hand have done what you say he did?”

  “Whoever killed him by stabbing screwed on the shaft of the arrow afterwards,” said Carolus. “This can only mean that he intended it to look as though Sime had been shot. He would therefore in his actions that afternoon have avoided, at all costs, being on the archery lawn or in any place from which an arrow could have been shot through Sime’s window. Parker was the only person in, or connected with the school who did that. It was evident from the first that Sime was stabbed and not shot. No marksman in the world could shoot a man inside a room through the adam’s apple with a single shot at forty-five yards. William Tell couldn’t have done it. No one among the archers could even be sure of hitting the innermost ring of the target with his first arrow and on the range the target was standing at a fixed distance in a clear light. You play darts? Try throwing from a slightly different distance, nearer to or farther from the target, and you lose all control. To suggest that any archer could turn round from the archery lawn and calmly shoot an arrow into a man’s throat at any distance is absurd, and when the man is lying inside a room it becomes preposterous. That should have been obvious from the very first to anyone knowing the details. So the people on the archery lawn that afternoon, so far from being suspects, were the very ones who were free from all suspicion. And that left only Parker.

  “But when you say the evidence—at least for a trial on a charge of murder—is circumstantial, I agree. I must point out that the police and not I have the means of supporting it with more tangible evidence. There is, for instance, the age-old matter of bloodstains. It would have been impossible to do what Parker did without getting blood on his clothes—at least on his sleeve—and I noticed that on that evening he broke all precedents by changing for dinner. Now a blood-stained coat is not an easy thing to get rid of and has provided essential evidence before now. There are several other points which will already have occurred to the Detective Superintendent here. Like the gloves. I can only say what I believe—no, what I know—happened. I leave it to the police to prove it to the satisfaction of a jury.”

  “What about Duckmore and his confession?”

  “The only thing I know about Duckmore is that he did not kill Sime. He is so full of the illusions of guilt, poor chap, that it is impossible to sort out the facts from his various stories. I think it possible that he did shoot an arrow at Sime’s window, and it may even have broken the glass of the picture above Sime’s head. If so he recovered the arrow when he went into Sime’s room (as he did) before Mayring discovered the body. But even about that I am uncertain. He could have broken the glass himself, but Horlick did find an arrow in the rose-garden on the other side of the house, and Duckmore might have thrown it away. We may know more about that when the case against Parker has been proved. As a matter of fact, in view of Sconer’s suicide and the end of hope for the school as at present constituted, I should not be surprised if Parker confessed.”

  Osborne, very quietly but distinctly, made his only relevant observation.

  “He has,” he said and closing his notebook with a snap walked out of the room.