Gaudy Night (23 page)

“Dear me, Jukes,” said she. “Fancy seeing you here!”

“Do you know this blighter?” said Mr. Pomfret.

“Of course I do,” said Harriet. “He was a porter at Shrewsbury, and was sacked for petty pilfering. I hope you’re going straight now. Jukes. How’s your wife?”

“All right,” said Jukes, sulkily. “I’ll come again.”

He made a move to slip down the staircase, but Harriet had set her umbrella so awkwardly across it as to bar the way pretty effectively.

“Hi!” said Mr. Pomfret. “Let’s hear about this. Just come back here a minute, will you?” He stretched out a powerful arm, and yanked the reluctant Jukes over the threshold.

“You can’t get me on that old business,” said Jukes, scornfully, as Harriet followed them in, shutting oak and door after her with a bang. “That’s over and done with. It ain’t got nothing to do with that other little affair what I mentioned.”

“What’s that?” asked Harriet.

“This nasty piece of work,” said Mr. Pomfret, “has had the blasted neck to come here and say that if I don’t pay him to keep his mouth shut, he’ll lay an information about what happened last night.”

“Blackmail,” said Harriet, much interested. “That’s a serious offence.”

“I didn’t mention no money,” said Jukes, injured. “I only told this gennelman as I seen something as didn’t ought to have happened and was uneasy in my mind about it. He says I can go to the devil, so I says in that case I’ll go to the lady, being troubled in my conscience, don’t you see.”

“Very well,” said Harriet. “I’m here. Go ahead.”

Mr. Jukes stared at her.

“I take it,” said Harriet, “you saw Mr. Pomfret help me in over the Shrewsbury wall last night when I’d forgotten my key. What were you doing out there, by the way? Loitering with intent? You then probably saw me come out again, thank Mr. Pomfret and ask him to come in and see the College Buildings by moonlight. If you waited long enough, you saw me let him out again. What about it.”

“Nice goings-on, I don’t think,” said Jukes, disconcerted.

“Possibly,” said Harriet. “But if Senior Members choose to enter their own college in an unorthodox way, I don’t see who’s to prevent them. Certainly not you.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Jukes.

“I can’t help that,” said Harriet. “The Dean saw Mr. Pomfret and me so she will. Nobody’s likely to believe you. Why didn’t you tell this man the whole story at once, Mr. Pomfret, and relieve his conscience? By the way, Jukes, I’ve just told the Dean she ought to have that wall spiked. It was handy for us, but it really isn’t high enough to keep out burglars and other undesirables. So it’s not much good your loitering about there any more. One or two things have been missed from people’s rooms lately,” she added, with some truth, “it might be as well to have that road specially policed.”

“None of that,” said Jukes. “I ain’t a-going to have my character took away. If it’s as you say, then I’m sure I’d be the last to want to make trouble for a lady like yourself.”

“I hope you’ll bear that in mind,” said Mr. Pomfret. “Perhaps you’d like to have something to remember it by.”

“No assault!” cried Jukes, backing towards the door. “No assault!” Don’t you go to lay ’ands on me!”

“If ever you show your dirty face here again,” said Mr. Pomfret, opening the door, “I’ll kick you downstairs and right through the quad. Get that? Then get out!”

He flung the oak back with one hand and propelled Jukes vigorously through it with the other. A crash and a curse proclaimed that the swiftness of Jukes’s exit had carried him over the head of the stairs.

“Whew!” exclaimed Mr. Pomfret, returning. “By jove! that was great! That was marvellous of you. How did you come to think of it?”

“It was fairly obvious. I expect it was all bluff, really. I don’t see how he could have known who Miss Cattermole was. I wonder how he got on to you.”

“He must have followed me back when I came out. But I didn’t get in through this window—obviously—so how did he—? Oh! yes, when I knocked Brown up I believe he stuck his head out and said, That you, Pomfret? Careless blighter. I’ll talk to him....I say, you do seem to be everybody’s guardian angel, don’t you? It’s marvellous, being able to keep your wits about you like that.”

He gazed at her with dog-like eyes. Harriet laughed, as Mr. Rogers and the tea entered the room together.

Mr. Rogers was in his third year—tall, dark, lively and full of an easy kind of penitence.

“All this running round and busting rules is rot,” said Mr. Rogers. “Why do we do it? Because somebody says it is fun, and one believes it. Why should one believe it? I can’t imagine. One should look at these things more objectively. Is the thing beautiful in itself? No. Then let us not do it. By the way, Pomfret, have you been approached about debagging Culpepper?”

“I am all for it,” said Mr. Pomfret.

“True, Culpepper is a wart. He is a disgusting object. But would he look better debagged? No, Socrates, he would not. He would look much worse. If anybody is to be debagged, it shall be somebody with legs that will stand exposure—your own, Pomfret, for example.”

“You try, that’s all,” said Mr. Pomfret.

“In any case,” pursued Mr. Rogers, “debagging is otiose and out of date. The modern craze for exposing unaesthetic legs needs no encouragement from me. I shall not be a party to it. I intend to be a reformed character. From now on, I shall consider nothing but the value of the Thing-in-Itself, unmoved by any pressure of public opinion.”

Having, in this pleasant manner, confessed his sins and promised amendment, Mr. Rogers gracefully led the conversation to topics of general interest, and, about 5 o’clock, departed, murmuring something in an apologetic way about work and his tutor, as though they were rather indelicate necessities. At this point, Mr. Pomfret suddenly went all solemn, as a very young man occasionally does when alone with a woman older than himself, and told Harriet a good deal about his own view of the meaning of life. Harriet listened with as much intelligent sympathy as she could command; but was slightly relieved when three young men burst in to borrow Mr. Pomfret’s beer and remained to argue over their host’s head about Komisarjevsky. Mr. Pomfret seemed faintly annoyed, and eventually asserted his right to his own guest by announcing that it was time to pop round to New College for old Farringdon’s party. His friends let him go with mild regret and, before Harriet and her escort were well out of the room, took possession of their armchairs and continued the argument.

“Very able fellow, Marston,” said Mr. Pomfret, amiably enough. “Great noise on O.U.D.S. and spends his vacations in Germany. I don’t know how they contrive to get so worked up about plays. I like a good play, but I don’t understand all this stuff about stylistic treatment and planes of vision. I expect you do, though.”

“Not a word,” said Harriet, cheerfully. “I dare say they don’t, either. Anyhow, I know I don’t like plays in which all the actors have to keep on tumbling up and down flights of steps, or where the lighting’s so artistically done that you can’t see anything, or where you keep on wondering all the time what the symbolical whirligig in the centre of the stage is going to be used for, if anything. It distracts me. I’d rather go to the Holborn Empire and have my fun vulgar.”

“Would you?” said Mr. Pomfret, wistfully. “You wouldn’t come and do a show with me in Town in the vac, would you?”

Harriet made a vague kind of promise, which seemed to delight Mr. Pomfret very much, and they presently found themselves in Mr. Farringdon’s sitting-room, packed like sardines among a mixed crowd of undergraduates and struggling to consume sherry and biscuits without moving their elbows.

The crowd was such that Harriet never set eyes on Miss Flaxman from first to last. Mr. Farringdon did, however, struggle through to them, bringing with him a bunch of young men and women who wanted to talk about detective fiction. They appeared to have read a good deal of this kind of literature, though very little of anything else. A School of Detective Fiction would, Harriet thought, have a fair chance of producing a goodly crop of Firsts. The fashion for psychological analysis had, she decided, rather gone out since her day: she was instinctively aware that a yearning for action and the concrete was taking its place. The pre-War solemnity and the post-War exhaustion were both gone; the desire now was for an energetic doing of something definite, though the definitions differed. The detective story no doubt was acceptable, because in it something definite was done, the “what” being comfortably decided beforehand by the author. It was borne in upon Harriet that all these young men and women were starting out to hoe a hardish kind of row in a very stony ground. She felt rather sorry for them.

Something definite done. Yes, indeed. Harriet, reviewing the situation next morning, felt deeply dissatisfied. She did not like this Jukes business at all. He could scarcely, she supposed, have anything to do with the anonymous letters: where could he have got hold of that passage from the
Aeneid?
But he was a man with a grudge, a nasty-minded man, and a thief; it was not pleasant that he should make a habit of hanging round the College walls after dark.

Harriet was alone in the Senior Common Room, everybody else having departed to her work. The S.C.R. scout came in, carrying a pile of clean ash-trays, and Harriet suddenly remembered that her children lodged with the Jukeses.

“Annie,” she said, impulsively, “what does Jukes come down into Oxford for, after dark?”

The woman looked startled. “Does he, madam? For no good, I should think.”

“I found him loitering in St. Cross Road last night, in a place where he might easily get over. Is he keeping honest, do you know?”

“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, madam, but I have my doubts. I like Mrs. Jukes very much, and I’d be sorry to add to her troubles. But I never have trusted Jukes. I’ve been thinking I ought to put my little girls somewhere else. He might be a bad influence on them, don’t you think?”

“I certainly do think so.”

“I’m the last person to wish to put difficulties into the way of a respectable married woman,” went on Annie, slapping an ash-tray smartly down, “and naturally she’s right to stick by her husband. But one’s own children must come first, mustn’t they?”

“Of course,” said Harriet, rather inattentively. “Oh, yes. I should find somewhere else for them. I suppose you haven’t ever heard either Jukes or his wife say anything to suggest that he—well, that he was stealing from the College or cherished bad feelings against the dons.”

“I don’t have much to say to Jukes, madam, and if Mrs. Jukes knew anything, she wouldn’t tell me. It wouldn’t be right if she did. He’s her husband, and she has to take his part. I quite see that. But if Jukes is behaving dishonestly, I shall have to find somewhere else for the children. I’m much obliged to you for mentioning it, madam. I shall be going round there on Wednesday, which is my free afternoon, and I’ll take the opportunity to give notice. May I ask if you have said anything to Jukes, madam?”

“I have spoken to him, and told him that if he hangs round here any more he will have to do with the police.”

“I’m very glad to hear that, madam. It isn’t right at all that he should come here like that. If I’d known about it, I really shouldn’t have been able to sleep. I feel sure it ought to be put a stop to.”

“Yes, it ought. By the way, Annie, have you ever seen anybody in the College in a dress of this description?”

Harriet picked up the black figured crêpe-de-chine from the chair beside her Annie examined it carefully.

“No madam, not to my recollection. Perhaps one of the maids that’s been here longer than me might know. There’s Gertrude in the dining-room; should you like to ask her?”

Gertrude, however, could give no help. Harriet asked them to take the dress and catechise the rest of the staff. This was done, but with no result. An inquiry among the students produced no identification, either. The dress was brought back, still unclaimed and unrecognised. One more puzzle. Harriet concluded that it must actually be the property of the Poison Pen; but if so, it must have been brought to College and kept in hiding till the moment of its dramatic appearance in Chapel; for if it had ever been worn in College, it was almost inconceivable that no one should be able to recognise it.

The alibis produced, meekly enough, by the members of the S.C.R. were none of them water-tight. That was not surprising; it would have been more surprising if they had been. Harriet (and Mr. Pomfret, of course) alone knew the exact time for which the alibi was required; and though many people were able to show themselves covered up to midnight or thereabouts, all had been, or claimed to have been, virtuously in their own rooms and beds by a quarter to one. Nor, though the porter’s book and late-leave tickets had been examined, and all students interrogated who might have been about the quad at midnight, had anybody seen any suspicious behaviour with gowns or bolsters or bread-knives. Crime was too easy in a place like this. The College was too big, too open. Even if a form had been seen crossing the quad with a bolster, or indeed for that matter a complete set of bedding and a mattress, nobody would ever think anything of it. Some hardy fresh-air fiend sleeping out; that would be the natural conclusion.

Harriet, exasperated, went over to Bodley and plunged into her researches upon Le Fanu. There, at least, one did know what one was investigating.

She felt so much the need of a soothing influence that, in the afternoon, she went down to Christ Church to hear service at the Cathedral. She had been shopping—purchasing, among other things, a bag of meringues for the entertainment of some students she had asked to a small party in her room that evening—and it was only when her arms were already full of parcels that the idea of Cathedral suggested itself. It was rather out of her way; but the parcels were not heavy. She dodged across Carfax, angrily resenting its modern bustle of cars and complication of stop-and-go lights, and joined the little sprinkling of foot-passengers who were tripping down St. Aldate’s and through Wolsey’s great unfinished quadrangle, bound on the same pious errand as herself.