“Oh, I don’t know. He was all right. A bit of a nuisance, of course, when I was trying to get the library going, but polite and willing to understand that I could not do everything to help him, as I had not got all the books arranged and catalogued. He was much easier to get on with than the Doctor was. I forgot to include the Doctor’s books in the little bibliographies I made in the catalogue of the Museum and you’d have thought I had done it intentionally. No, I can’t say that I’d ever have had any reason to bump Julian off. I nearly batted him one when he got out of the lift and left me to carry a lot of books into the library by myself, but that was just a passing irritation.”
“Uhhuh,” the old man nodded, “that’s fine. Now will ye tell me what ye know o’ the Carr’s, mother an’ son?”
“Sweet damn all,” said Douglas, “he’s a pet of the Doctor’s and she’s his mother. She claims to be a hundred and two, but I don’t believe it. I’m not sure that I believe anything that either of them says. Ben Carr has told me stories which are quite impossible and his mother is as bad. I think that they live in a sort of mad dream world where everything is topsy-turvy, and that they cannot appreciate the ordinary life around them. Ben Carr is very amusing, in small doses, and he certainly seems to know about horses, for he took five bob off me and then gave me pounds and pounds as my winnings. He always seemed to be able to get money when he wanted it, but he complains that the woman he lives with uses crooked dice and wins all his money off him. I don’t know if it’s true.”
“Ho,” the old man seemed to have an idea, “you don’t think that he could be blackmailing anyone, do you? I never yet heard o’ a man who could consistently make money out o’ backin’ horses, did ye, Max?”
Addressed thus suddenly I thought hard. No, I was forced to admit, I had never known anyone who had managed to make money regularly out of horses. My own experience had been that I lost every time I tried to back a horse. My only lucky bets had been when I had picked a horse for the sake of its name, and it seemed to me that that was about as good a system as any, except picking them with a pin.
“I doubt if Carr would blackmail anyone,” Douglas said, “you see, as I’ve said, he lives in a sort of dream world where things like money don’t matter. He’s just as happy when he has to borrow half a crown as he is when he is dripping with pound notes. I don’t think that he’d bother to descend to blackmail. It would be too much like hard work. He likes the job of doing interior decorating because it gives him a chance to get along nicely while he is amusing himself. He is quite frank about the decorations he does. He just can’t understand how or why people like his work. I can’t say that I like it much myself. He told me that the idea was the property of one of his daughters who was amusing herself in a deserted chapel with stolen cement and a lot of rubble. He’s got a simple mind and so he joined in. If the Doctor had not stumbled on him while he was making his lunatic grotto, he’d have forgotten all about it and would have been occupied the next day in inventing a new method of tying shoe-laces, or something of the sort.”
“All right, then,” the old man growled, “say we put the Carrs aside for the moment. How about Emily Wallenstein?”
“Good God,” Douglas was shocked, “you don’t mean that you think that she would have murdered Julian. I mean you just can’t see her strangling him and then lifting him up and hanging him on that hook. I doubt if she’s strong enough.”
“You don’t think she could have done it, eh?” the old man was thoughtful, “because ye doubt whether she’d ha’ had the necessary strength. Well, I’d say that ye wouldn’t need to be very strong to lift him up, an’ that if ye came up behind him ye’d strangle him easy enough. He wasn’t what ye’d call a big man an’ he suffered from some kinda physical disability, didn’t he?”
“Well,” said Douglas, “I’d hardly call it that, but he did incline to move sideways, rather like a crab. I suppose that he must have had something the matter with him, for he never seemed to lift his feet very high, and his walk was peculiar. All the same I doubt whether Emily could have killed him, and if she had whether she’d have put him up like that. You see, the Museum is the realisation of all Emily’s dreams, and I must say that I don’t think that she’d have done anything which would have brought it into disrepute. You must have noticed how distressed she was at the very thought of what the papers will say, and, believe me, they’ll say plenty.” He looked slightly ashamed of himself and made a face. “As a matter of fact,” he went on, “I really shouldn’t have done it, perhaps, but I’m afraid that as soon as I had rung you up I thought of Alec Dolittle and got hold of him. I owe him one, anyhow, and I thought he might as well get in on the ground floor of what appeared to be a juicy murder as anyone else. After all, he is a friend of mine, and even in a case like this I felt I should help him. I told myself that it wouldn’t make any difference, as the journalists were sure to get hold of the case anyhow, and I didn’t see why Alec shouldn’t get in first with the news. He deserves a break anyway.”
The Professor nodded his head solemnly. I knew that he was thinking of the case of the Death Cap mushrooms when we had all suspected Alec Dolittle unjustly and, I am afraid, had let our suspicion shew in our treatment of him. I didn’t mind Alec having a break at all, but I found that I still could not think of the case without pain.
Mrs. Farley announced that dinner was ready. We went in. During dinner the old man did not refer to the death of Julian Ambleside, and instead told stories which seemed just as improbable as those of Mr. Carr.
After dinner we again retired to the large room, and had not had time to do more than settle down before Chief Inspector Bishop was announced.
“Hullo, John,” he said sleepily, but I knew that these weary eyes had noted with satisfaction the bottle of brandy laid out for him, as he is not a beer drinker. “It’s quite like old times isn’t it? Gathered round the fire with a case to crack. Have you made up your mind who did it and why?”
The Professor growled and snorted. “Gi’mme time,” he said, “I just started this afternoon an’ here ye are askin’ me to gi’ ye the murderer already. No, I don’t know who done it,” his voice was angry, “but I got me ideas, lots o’ ideas.”
“I’ve never known you without them,” the Bishop said comfortably, “ideas are your stock in trade. It doesn’t matter if they are good ideas or if they are rotten ones, you’ve always got plenty of them. Mostly, I must say, crazy.”
“Hoo,” the Professor hooted, “me have crazy ideas? Ye’re shewin’ yer thunderin’ ignorance o’ the way me mind works. I ha’ nothin’ but good ideas. That they don’t always work out,” he complaining, “is not me fault. It’s just what me friend Merrivale ’ud call the innate perversity o’ things. I got the scientific mind, I have,” he was as proud as a gorilla just about to beat its chest, “an’ I like to see things clear all the way round. I do like to approach things impartial like.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Chief Inspector soothingly, “by assuming that perhaps the murder was committed by all the people in the case working together, or else by the people who could not have done it. The trouble with this case seems to be that every single person in that damned Museum could have done it. Even you,” he turned to Douglas who looked slightly surprised, “could have done it. I don’t believe that anyone there could produce a decent alibi, even,” his voice was slightly bitter, “if that damned surgeon could give us some idea of the time of the murder, which he can’t. He just says that the body had been hanging there for over twelve hours and that it was hanged very shortly after death, or even preceding it. He’s a fine lot of help.”
“Uhhuh,” the old man grunted, “that’s the trouble wi’ doctors. They’ll bet their boots on some things, but when it comes to anythin’ ye really want to know they’ll shilly an’ shally, but all the same there’s somethin’ in what Joe says. Ye see it?”
“What?” asked the Chief Inspector in a voice that shewed that he expected no enlightenment from anythi
ng Professor Stubbs said.
“It means,” the old man spoke heavily, “that I got to discard me nice idea that maybe one person did the murder an’ another hanged the body up like a bit o’ meat in a butcher’s shop. I was rather hopin’ that I could prove this as it would ha’ simplified the case a bit. Ye see, the hangin’ o’ the body was an act o’ fantasy an’ not of concealment. There were plenty of other places where the body could ha’ bin better concealed, but no, whoever hung it up there had a kinda idea that it would be unveiled along wi’ the Max Ernst paintin’. The hangin’ o’ the body is the kinda joke that might ha’ suggested itself to Mr. Carr. He’s got a kinda likin’ for puttin’ things on walls an’ I thought he might ha’ found the body lyin’ on the gallery floor an’ played a joke wi’ it. He is not one o’ these people who’d be squeamish about dealin’ wi’ a dead body. What d’ye think o’ that?”
The Chief Inspector helped himself to a long and expensive cigar and lighted it carefully before he replied.
“Naturally,” he said, “we had realised that the surgeon’s report meant that it was probable that the person who killed Ambleside and the person who hung him up were one and the same, but I would hardly have thought of describing the hanging of the body as a joke.”
“O’ course it was a joke,” the old man was indignant, “can’t ye see that whoever hung it up also knew that the picture was to be unveiled durin’ the course o’ the afternoon, an’ they assumed that it would be a shock. It was, in a way, a kinda clever idea. There was obviously no point in hidin’ the body o’ Julian Ambleside somewhere in the Museum. It would be sure to come to light before long, so the murderer hung it in a place where he knew it would be secure for a certain number o’ hours an’ would not be discovered before it suited him.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Douglas broke in, “if I hadn’t been kept so damned busy all morning I’d probably have tried out the veiling and the toy rat. You see I was to let the thing go at the right moment and it would have been a pretty average farce if the rat had dashed across the room and had not pulled the covering off the picture. I’m sure I’d have given it a trial, but I really was too busy to think about it. And, apart from myself, I think that someone else might have done the same, but we were all in the same boat and none of us had time to think about it until it was too late to start worrying.”
“There, ye see,” Professor Stubbs was triumphant, “whoever hung the body knew dam’ well that, no matter what they intended, it was a safe bet that no one would ha’ time to start fiddlin’ wi’ the drapery until the openin’ an’ the unveilin’. The body was, I think we can take it, discovered at the time when it was meant to be discovered an’ not a moment before.”
“All the same, John,” the Bishop glanced along the brown cylinder of his cigar, “things may be as you suggest and the body may have been meant to be discovered when, in fact, it was discovered, but I don’t see where that gets us. What exactly are you driving at?”
“Bah!” the Professor was exasperated, “Bah! What I’m drivin’ at is that for some reason which we don’t yet know, it was important for the murderer that the body must be discovered in that way an’ at that time. Naturally, I don’t yet pretend to know why this was so, but I got no doubts that once I start thinkin’ about it, I’ll find some reason.”
The Chief Inspector looked amused. “No doubt you will, John,” he said, “and if you can’t find a reason you’ll invent one and in some way known only to yourself, you’ll persuade yourself that that is the only possible reason. Then, of course, you’ll set to work to build up a case, a very fine case, no doubt, with only one trouble about it—the fact that it is completely wrong.”
The Professor hoisted himself out of his chair. For a brief moment I thought and hoped that he was about to throw himself upon the Chief Inspector in a deathly grapple. I’ve been waiting for him to do this all along, but somehow, irritating though the Bishop may be, Professor Stubbs has not yet arrived at the violent stage. He lumbered heavily across to the beer-barrel in the corner and replenished our glasses.
“There’s no teachin’ you anythin’, Reggie,” he complained plaintively, “Here I am, solvin’ yer cases for ye an’ ye tell me I’m a dunderhead. How d’ye think I get me answers right? Guess ’em, eh?”
“No,” the Chief Inspector was slow, “I’d hardly say that, but I would say that you build up cases upon the flimsiest grounds and that you are right by a process of elimination rather than by one of deduction. You quite solemnly build up a case against every single person connected with a murder and you forget how often these cases have been wrong, because eventually you proved to be right. You only remember that you were right in the end and forget the awful errors you make in arriving at your right conclusions.”
“Bah!” the old man was scornful, “how often to-night ha’ I got to tell’ee that I got the scientific mind. I look at things all the way round an’ I got to work that way. I got to think it out by sayin’ that if A did this then B did that, an’ I gradually discard the solutions which I’ve shewn to be wrong.”
“Yes,” said the Chief Inspector, “but so many of your solutions look exactly right until they are carefully examined. Now I’ll admit that your way of working does get you somewhere, but the trouble is that, before you arrive at the correct solution, you are apt to find a solution that works, or seems to work, and you announce that that is the correct solution.”
The old man was hopping mad. He had just been accused of publishing results too early, before he had proved that they were right beyond all possibility of a doubt. I must say that my sympathies were with him. He is often wrong, but his wrongness is understandable. After all, in murder one is dealing with human beings who are infinitely variable and unpredictable, while in his scientific work the Professor is dealing with plants with more or less predictable mutations and consequently results which are more capable of being worked out logically.
He sunk the whole of his quart of beer in one ferocious swallow and stumped over to the barrel to replenish the mug. The face which he turned to the Chief Inspector, who sat innocently enjoying his cigar and brandy, was a mixture of injured martyrdom and fury.
“Bah!” he said, “an’ Bah again. Ye got no conception o’ how ye think I work. Just because ye can track down a murderer who leaves his signature on the case, ye think ye’re a mighty fine feller an’ can do everythin’ by yerself. Yet, when ye get a difficult case ye come crawlin’ to me an’ askin’ me to gi’ ye a hand out. Bah!”
He had voiced his favourite fallacy which is that the police keep on asking him for advice. This is quite untrue, and I think he derives the idea from his reading of thrillers, but there is no doubt that where there is an interesting case it would take more than the whole of the Metropolitan Police to keep him out of it. One might as well try to keep a thirsty elephant away from a watering-hole with a bamboo rod, as try to prevent the Professor getting his fingers into the pie-crust of an odd murder.
Chapter 5
Soothsayer’s Recompense
BY THE morning the Professor’s irritation had vanished. When I crawled from my bed and started shaving I could hear him singing downstairs. It is a horrifying sound as he has no sense of the way a tune goes, but what he lacks in tunefulness he makes up in volume. The noise is sufficient to waken the dead in Highgate Cemetery. I knew that I was in for a bad day.
I was right. When I got downstairs the old man was fully dressed. This is a bad sign, too. He usually breakfasts wrapped in a tartan dressing-gown of uncertain clan and age, but violent enough in its colourings to burst a chameleon. He had done all the chores, such as watering the various plants which have marched in from the garden and taken up their quarters in the house. I won’t be surprised in the least the day I find a prickly-pear sprouting in my shaving-cream. The plants are only a little less rampant than the books.
“Hullo, Max,” he greeted me with such vigour that I felt ashamed of my suspicions, which, however, did not lessen
. We sat down to breakfast and he buried himself in The Times. I had the Daily Express and the Mirror. Anything that Emily Wallenstein had feared from the papers was small in comparison with the reality. The reporters really had laid themselves out.
From the noise they made one might have thought that modern art was a kind of Upas Tree which killed anything that came within miles of it. I was, frankly, astonished that reporters who treated it as if it was such a dangerous thing had dared to approach the Museum of Modern Art to get their stories. I discarded the papers and found the News Chronicle. As I had expected the Chronicle was rather more reasonable, though still sensational. At least they had not delegated the job of art critic to a man who did not know when a painting by Paul Klee was the right way up.
The Professor laid down The Times and helped himself to a large slice of toast upon which he spread masses of Oxford marmalade. He washed this down with about two-thirds of a pint of coffee. He always takes in liquid in such quantities that a normal person like myself would be unable to contain.
“Ho,” he said cheerfully and noisily, “Hum. We’re goin’ out. We’re goin’ a-huntin’. Yoicks! Tally-ho!”
I did my best to remind him that we had, really, intended to settle down to work on his History of Botany. This is a book upon which he has been working for many years and which looks as though it would take a great many more. At the present rate of growth it will occupy at least ten volumes by the time it is finished. It will be a most remarkable book, but I am not sanguine about its appearance during my lifetime.
I might just as well have suggested that we stayed at home and learned to knit. The Professor dismissed my suggestion with a wave of his hand and trundled towards the front door, picking up an absurd broad-trimmed black sombrero which he sometimes wears. The trouble with this hat is that, having been left behind by an American botanist with a narrow head, it is much too small for the old man and all it does is give his face the impression that it is topped by a black hell-begotten halo.
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