An Oxford Tragedy

by J. C. Masterman

  Brendel nodded comprehendingly. ‘It’s not important, except in certain eventualities, and perhaps in a couple of cases.’ He seemed to be talking to himself rather than to me, and for a minute or two he remained plunged in thought. Then he continued.

  ‘There are four of your undergraduates that I must know more about. I have noted their names – yes – Scarborough, Garnett, Howe, Martin. Tell me something of them. Where they live, and what their fathers do, and any personal details you can think of.’

  He noted the surprise in my face and laughed.

  ‘There’s no mystery, Winn. But I must talk with these young men, and the young are shy. If I know about them I can talk without scaring them, and there are perhaps things which they can tell me.’

  I gave him the information he wanted, and was rewarded by some congratulatory remarks, which I admit gave me satisfaction.

  ‘Excellent, excellent,’ he said; ‘really, you draw characters to perfection. You ought to write books, Winn, and give your gifts scope. Now tell me about all our friends who dined at the Henkersmahlzeit.’

  Flattered by his praise I exerted myself to give a portrait of each of my colleagues in turn, whilst Brendel industriously made entries in his note-book.

  ‘Just two more questions,’ he said, when I had finished. ‘First, do you own a car?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, somewhat mystified. ‘I don’t use it much, but I’ve an old Standard in the garage behind the college.’

  ‘May I borrow it when I need it?’

  ‘Most certainly. I’ll give you the garage key, and you can take it out when you wish.’

  ‘Thank you, and now the last question. How can I meet and talk to Mrs Shirley and her sister?’

  I hesitated and then answered him.

  ‘With them we mustn’t use any subterfuge. I couldn’t be a party to that. The only way is to tell them straightforwardly that you are investigating this affair, and ask for their help. It will be painful, but I’ll take you when you want to go.’

  He thanked me, and shut up his note-book. I was surprised that he had asked me none of the questions about access to college and about the porters which had exercised Cotter’s mind so much, and I mentioned my surprise to him.

  He smiled. ‘Your Inspector Cotter is highly competent,’ he answered. ‘He won’t make any mistakes about that kind of thing. I’ve had already one little talk with him. He will do all that better than I could. And perhaps my method of approach is a little different from his. Good night.’

  I saw little of him throughout Friday, though I knew from many stray remarks of others, and from my own observations, that he was busy throughout the day. I caught a glimpse of him driving in my car in the direction of Mottram’s laboratory, I heard by chance from a friend in Balliol that he had called upon Tweddle, I heard that he had smoked and chatted in the rooms of Prendergast and Mitton and others, and that he had flattered Callendar by a request that the latter would show him our college silver and the Common Room cellar. For myself I was in a fever of disquiet over the thought of the inquest which was to take place on Saturday morning. I paced up and down my rooms, considering time after time how I should give my evidence. In vain I told myself that my own part in the proceedings was of very minor importance. My old nightmare thought that I should make a fool of myself, and appear ridiculous in public, gripped me once more. In imagination I saw myself stuttering or tongue-tied as the coroner posed his questions; I saw the expressions on the pale beautiful faces of Ruth and Mary change from pity to surprise, even to contempt. I read too in advance the lurid accounts in the paper. Up to now the press had been admirably reticent, ‘Well-known don shot in mysterious circumstances at Oxford. Investigations proceeding’ had been a summary of all that had appeared. But after the inquest it would, I knew, be impossible to prevent a spate of hateful detail. I seemed to see a front-page picture of myself. ‘F. W. Winn, Senior Tutor of St Thomas’s, one of the first to see the murdered body’, and above a miserable effigy of myself, old, feeble, and ineffective. In vain my reason told me that since I was neither corpse, nor murderer, nor even the first to discover the crime, I could not be starred as a protagonist by even the most unprincipled of journalists in search of copy. Instinct is stronger than reason, and no efforts could make me thrust myself into the decent obscurity of unimportance. My wretched habit of introspection and self-analysis tortured me. Again and again I went over in my mind my actions on that fatal evening. Should I not have prevented that ill-omened discussion on murder? Might I not, by a swift decision, have collected a band of eager helpers as soon as I saw Shirley’s body, and with them have searched for and discovered the murderer before he could have escaped? Why had I not summoned the doctor before the police, and why had it taken me so long to fetch him? Half an hour earlier an experienced medical man might have been able to fix the time of the crime almost to a minute, and thus enabled us to trace the murderer. From nervous panic my mood changed to one of irritation. Why should the even tenor of my life be disturbed like this? For years I had lived the easy life of leisure and learning, hurting no one, content with my well-ordered, cultured, intellectual life. How easy it had always been over the port and coffee to discuss with enlightened and broad-minded calm the affairs of a troubled but distant world! How liberal had been my views, how even and well-informed my judgement! And on the whole how well I had done it! That surely had been my métier.

  Like Cato, give his little senate laws,

  And sit attentive to his own applause.

  That was how I had seen myself in the midst of my circle. Yes, Pope’s words were curiously applicable, except that perhaps the applause had come from myself more than from my colleagues. And suddenly ugly facts had obtruded themselves and broken up my sheltered world. In a moment of insight I saw myself as perhaps I was; a weak, ineffective man too long protected from contact with realities, and now girding helplessly and bitterly against fate. And how would all this end? Could I hope to settle down again into the old groove? Should I float again serenely on the old sea of selfsatisfaction? For the first time for more than thirty years I began to contemplate the thought of leaving Oxford, for a time at least. Many of my colleagues had taken to travel, to visit America or Australia or to go round the world, and I had mildly scoffed at their restlessness. ‘Why,’ I had once asked a returned and too voluble voyager with that gentle irony which I so much admired in myself, ‘should events uninteresting in themselves acquire a profound importance because they occur in Singapore?’ I remember how delicate the implied reproof had seemed to me. Yet might flight not now be my only salvation? Up and down I paced, arguing with myself, growing more irritated, more fretful, more unsettled with every hour that passed.

  I had worked myself into a miserable state of indecision and panic by the time, just before dinner, when next I saw Brendel. I had almost decided, I think (if the word decided can be used of one so infirm of will), to leave Oxford at the earliest opportunity rather than to continue living in a society which included, as it seemed, an undiscovered murderer. But five minutes of Brendel’s society was enough to soothe my frayed nerves. He had an almost feminine intuition, and I believe that he read my thoughts and misgivings as though they had been written in an open book. He was all sympathy and encouragement. Exactly what he said I cannot now remember, only that his words were precisely suited to restore my lost confidence. There was something about the good fortune of the Common Room in having me to preside over it; something to the effect that any court or any jury would feel that because I had been there everything must of course have been ordered in the best possible way; a suggestion that I had handled the situation to admiration; a hint that I was now as before clearly the keystone of St Thomas’s. It was just the tonic that I needed. Flattery no doubt it was, but it made me less abject than I had been before his visit. I felt myself again the Senior Tutor – if not quite sans peur et sans reproche, at least tolerably confident of my own adequacy.

  Chapter Nine

&n
bsp; The inquest was held on Saturday morning in one of the lecture rooms, and I wondered whether I should ever be able to bring myself to use that room again. To describe the scene in any detail would be superfluous, though every detail and every face is fixed deep in my memory. I have only to shut my eyes to see the scene again – the coroner, careful, courteous, decisive; Ruth and Mary both pale but bravely hiding their emotion; Hargreaves uneasy and embarrassed; Mottram obviously wretchedly ill, but, to judge from his looks, oblivious of his own trouble in his anxious sympathy for the President’s daughters; Prendergast alert and watchful; Doyne healthy and strong, but temporarily subdued and downcast. The proceedings seemed to me both ghastly and interminable. I had to live again through the horror of that Wednesday evening. It was as though I was undergoing a frightful nightmare, from which I had suffered before. I knew from the beginning the horror would grow until it became overwhelming, yet nothing I could do would avert or hasten it. Point by point, piece by piece, the witnesses reconstructed the story. Everything seemed to me sordid, business-like, inexorable. I longed to cry out, ‘Get on, get on; we know all this, for Heaven’s sake finish with it.’ At one moment I had an insane desire to shout out ‘I killed him myself, don’t ask any more questions’ – if only I could thereby put a stop to the whole hateful inquiry. One by one we gave our evidence; clearly and more clearly the facts took shape in the minds of coroner and jury and reporters. Only for a short period did I experience a sort of unworthy satisfaction. Maurice Hargreaves was giving his evidence, and he was not cutting his usual fine figure. As a rule the most confident and self-assured of men, he was finding it exceedingly difficult to explain why he had left the revolver loaded on the table. The easy assurance that it would serve to impress the undergraduates in the morning with which he had countered my objections did not satisfy the coroner at all. He commented strongly, and with marked disapproval, on the Dean’s behaviour. Maurice flushed and fumed, but for once he was muzzled. The provenance of the revolver was not disputed. Garnett admitted in the most barefaced manner that it was his, that he had always possessed one, and that he knew nothing about licences and such-like formalities. Scarborough was not called. As the inquest proceeded one thing became clear. No new fact or indication of any kind had come to light since I had last talked with Inspector Cotter. There was still no hint of any motive, still no clue, still no official theory of why the crime had been committed, or as to who the criminal might be.

  The verdict was inevitable. Robbed of its official verbiage it amounted to this – that Shirley had been murdered, and that nobody knew by whom.

  ‘What did you think of all that?’ I asked Brendel as we crossed to my rooms after the verdict had been given. His answer was non-committal, and his smile enigmatic as he added:

  ‘I think that you allowed yourself a little of what we Germans call Schadenfreude, did you not, when Mr Hargreaves gave his evidence?’

  I had the grace to feel ashamed of myself, for I could not deny the accusation.

  As we parted at the foot of my staircase he surprised me by a sudden request.

  ‘Can you come to my rooms after dinner?’ he said. ‘I want to make a little experiment in which you can help me. It will take an hour or so. Please don’t say No.’

  ‘Of course I’ll come,’ I answered. ‘What are you going to do?’

  He wrinkled up his eyes in the fashion I now knew so well.

  ‘Ah, just a little experiment. Perhaps I have not quite time to tell you about it now. After dinner; we will make it then.’

  I was consumed with curiosity as I mounted Brendel’s staircase that night, and my mystification did not grow less when I had entered his room. We had allotted him a spare set of rooms in one of which stood a large old-fashioned diningtable. Somewhere or other he had contrived to find or borrow a second table of the same kind, and the two were placed side by side so that the whole centre of the room seemed to be filled with one immense table. On this, to my great surprise, was laid out a large plan of St Thomas’s, constructed of paper and cardboard. Brendel stood laughing at my amazement.

  ‘I hope you admire my plan of St Thomas’s,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry that it has to be on the flat, but I could not build a proper model with all the staircases and rooms. However, I think this will serve the purpose. Look at these.’

  He held up a box full of cardboard discs. On each of them was written a name; I caught sight, on the top of the heap, of the names of Mitton, Doyne, and myself.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,’ I said.

  ‘Listen,’ said Brendel. ‘I want to reconstruct Wednesday night, and you must help me. Two heads are better than one, and there are some facts of which I must be sure. I want to go all through that evening; I want the conversations again, so far as we can remember them. I want the little incidents just as they occurred, and I want you to write down for me a little time-table as we go along. Come, let us begin at the beginning.’

  He took up a small pair of forceps, selected two discs marked ‘Prendergast’ and’ Brendel’, and placed them in the square in his plan which represented the Common Room.

  ‘Here are Prendergast and I by the fire in the Common Room; it is about ten minutes, I think, before dinner, and you come in.’

  He selected a third disc, marked ‘Winn’, and placed it by the other two.

  ‘Now try to remember as much as you can of our conversation.’

  ‘Brendel,’ I said, ‘is this really necessary? Must I really go through all that again? Surely we had enough of that at the inquest? To me it seems – well – ghoulish. I’ll do it if you say I must, but can it possibly do any good?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he answered, ‘but I’m afraid it is necessary. Look; if you call in a doctor you always take his advice – or discharge him, and for this case you have called in Dr Brendel. This is part of his prescription, and you must accept it, if you mean to benefit from his advice.’

  He spoke lightly, but I could see that he was very anxious that I should not refuse, so I stifled my repugnance and promised my assistance.

  ‘First rate,’ he cried out with obvious relief; ‘now then, it is half past seven, is it not, when we all go up to your beautiful Hall. Write that down, “Seven-thirty, dinner begins”.’

  As I wrote he sorted out thirteen discs, and placed them in position in the Hall on his plan. On each was written the name of one of the diners. With some little difficulty, after searching my recollection, I was able to place them in the order in which they had sat that night. He then took up three more, one marked ‘Callendar’ and the other two ‘Servant’, and placed them behind the diners.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we shall need all our memory. Between us we have to remember a conversation, or as much of it as possible, which took place three days ago.’

  The task did not prove quite so impossibly difficult as I had anticipated. By jogging each other’s memory we were able to recall the main threads of our conversation with tolerable accuracy. Gradually we traced it to the moment when Maurice had informed the table of the loaded revolver in his room.

  ‘About when would that have been?’ said Brendel.

  ‘About eight, I should think; it was towards the end of dinner, because you and I had very little conversation about it.’

  He nodded. ‘Write down “Eight o’clock. Hargreaves tells us of the revolver”, please, and tell me when we went down to the Common Room.’

  ‘At about ten minutes past eight. It is always within five minutes of that when we get into Common Room.’

  The thirteen discs were lifted and placed in Common Room; then he hesitated.

  ‘Was Callendar in the room?’

  ‘He came in with the port, and put it on the table; after that he came back once with a fresh bottle, and again, of course, with the coffee.’

  ‘That creates a difficulty,’ said Brendel thoughtfully. ‘We can’t possibly be quite sure what part of the conversation he heard, and what part he did not. On the whole it
will be best to be on the safe side, and assume that he heard the whole conversation. Yes, that will be safe, surely. Now let’s go on. We began to talk crime and detection as soon as we sat down?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure of that. Doyne started the ball rolling at once.’ Carefully, assisting one another as best we could, we reconstructed the conversation. It was a curious sensation to hear Brendel repeating again the views which he had advanced in that long discussion. For myself I seemed to be living Wednesday evening over once again.

  ‘When did coffee come in?’ said Brendel at length.

  ‘I can tell you that exactly,’ I replied. ‘Callendar has orders to bring it at twenty minutes to nine if I don’t ring before, and on Wednesday I didn’t ring. So it was at twenty minutes to nine.’

  He nodded approvingly. ‘Write it down. And then someone went out, I think?’

  ‘Yes, Shepardson. He had a pupil at a quarter to nine, so he left then, and Mottram went at the same time to his lab.’

  The forceps were lifted delicately and the discs of Mottram and Shepardson removed. The former was returned to the box, the latter placed in his own rooms in the plan. Two more discs were placed by him, marked ‘Howe’ and ‘Martin’.

  ‘And the next to move?’

  My lips were dry as I answered.

  ‘It was Shirley; he got up when the clock struck nine.’

  Fascinated, I watched him pick up the disc which had ‘Shirley’ written on it, and place it carefully in the space which stood for Maurice Hargreaves’ rooms.

  ‘Callendar was in the room, clearing away,’ he said meditatively. ‘He told us that himself. He finished about ninefifteen, and went out to find Scarborough and Garnett waiting for him.’

  Two new discs appeared upon the table and were placed beside that of Callendar. I was conscious of a growing feeling of excitement and of fear. Almost it seemed to me as though one of the little discs would move on its own towards the fatal square where Shirley’s disc lay. But Brendel went on calmly enough.