The Case of the Gilded Fly (25 page)

City of God, how broad and far

Outspread thy walls sublime …

For once Nigel was unmoved by what he considered one of the best pieces of religious verse in the English language. As he held the book up, making conventional noises in his throat and opening and shutting his mouth in a rhythmic but improbable way (to the alarm of one of the smaller Decani boys, who stared at him with mingled horror and fascination), his thoughts wandered to the events of the past few days.
Who had killed Yseut Haskell?
Robert Warner was the most likely candidate, but it was difficult to see how even he could have done it. Was the suicide perhaps faked before the girl was shot? But no, ridiculous; unless she was hypnotized, Yseut would never have allowed herself to be put through the necessary rigmarole. He wondered, as the Doctor in illustration of his thesis demonstrated the vanity of the surge's angry shock, whether she had ever known who killed her, and then realized that she must, for one terrible moment, have seen the murderer. Those powder-burns – she had been shot point-blank in the middle of the forehead …

‘Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places
…' Nigel hastily kicked a kneeling-mat into position, and as he dropped down on to it, glanced across at Fen. But the Professor seemed preoccupied. The Fellows' stalls were cleverly designed so that no one outside could see whether they were kneeling or not, with the result that most of them had developed the lazy and irreverent habit of simply slumping forward on the desks in front of them during prayers. Old Wilkes, a short distance away, was apparently sunk in a deep coma. Nigel remembered his story, told on that fatal Friday evening (only two days ago? It seemed more like two years) and looked instinctively into the antechapel where John Kettenburgh, too-militant champion of the reformed faith, had been hunted to death by Richard Pegwell and his associates.
‘Cave ne exeat
…' ‘Vex not his ghost …' Nigel dismissed these unprofitable reflections to
admire the singing of the psalm, and the musicianship that had gone into it; just that touch of preciosity, that lengthening, shortening or corruption of vowels which is the prerogative of a good choir. The boys were good – even the head boy showed none of the all too common tendency to exert his authority by hooting. Here, Nigel felt, Donald was in his element; outside he was ineffectual, incompetent in his affairs, foolish in his relationships; here he had unchallenged mastery.

It was after the theatrical and triumphant strains of the Dyson Magnificat had reached their elaborate conclusion that a sense of unease first became discernible. For one thing, the boys seemed unusually fidgety; they scratched their ears and gaped about and whispered and dropped their books to such an extent that even the lay clerks, who had the prerogative of poking them ferociously from behind when they misbehaved, seemed unable to restore order. Then the senior scholar, who was reading the lessons, dropped the marker out of the book and seemed to take minutes finding the place again. Finally, it was discovered that the head boy had forgotten, for some reason which remains unknown to this day, to give the men their copies of the anthem. So at the beginning of the Nunc Dimittis, the second boy was sent out to the vestry by the Cantoris tenor to fetch them. He astonished the gathering by returning empty-handed during the Gloria and fainting before he got back to his place. There was some confusion. Two of the men took him out and left him in charge of the porter, returning hastily at the end of the Collects with the necessary copies.

For a while all was well. The anthem – Charles Wood's ‘Ex-pectans Expectavi' – passed without incident, as did the subsequent prayers which preceded the final hymn (there was to be no sermon that evening). Order appeared to be restored.
‘…In Hymns Ancient and Modern No
. 563,
in Songs of Praise …'
The choir awaited the statement of the tune. There was no sound from the organ.

Eventually the Decani tenor, a fat authoritative man in full command, gave a note and a signal and the hymn went forward unaccompanied. The Chaplain, the President, and the Fellows were staring in a puzzled way at the organ loft. Out of the corner of his eye Nigel saw Fen leave his seat and slip out of the
chapel. Stealthily he followed, catching him up as he entered the vestry by the outside door and switched on the light. On his face Nigel saw an expression of mingled anger and anxiety that was so unusual and so intense that it shocked and alarmed him.

There was no one in the vestry, and Fen made straight for the small arched doorway on the right whence an iron stairway ran up to the organ loft. Nigel followed at his heels, his thoughts unpleasantly full of the recollection of John Kettenburgh … ‘There had been teeth and bones, and a great many of these appeared to be broken …' The stairway was dark and chill, running up through an unpierced well of damp stone, and once he looked back over his shoulder.

They arrived in the organ loft. It resembled many another such. There were framed photographs of other organs – St Paul's, Truro, King's, Cambridge – cases and shelves of music and hymn books, an old comfortable chair for moments of inactivity, a primus stove on which Donald had been accustomed to make tea during the President's rather lengthy sermons.

What else he had expected to see, Nigel never knew. What they did see was Donald Fellowes, lying across the organ stool with his throat cut from ear to ear, and a blood-stained knife on the floor near him.

The next few hours had for Nigel, in retrospect, the proportions and inconsequence of a nightmare. He remembered Fen saying, in tones of bewilderment utterly uncharacteristic of him: ‘I couldn't have known! God help me, I couldn't have known!'; remembered the words of the Benediction, rising up out of infinite stillness:
‘The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost
…'; remembered his whispering, in a voice that he could not prevent from trembling a little: ‘Could a woman have done this?' and Fen's grim but abstracted reply: ‘It has been known.'

Then there was the business of getting rid of the choir when they returned to the vestry, of informing the college authorities, of keeping away unwelcome sightseers, of telephoning the police. Fen went immediately and interviewed the boy who had fainted during the service. His story was incoherent, but they were able eventually to elicit the main facts. He had entered the
vestry at the chapel end and found it in darkness; the light switch was by the outer door. He had been about to walk over and put it on when he had heard a slight movement in the darkness, and someone, or something, had whispered to him an invitation to come in and shake hands, a thing which he had felt little inclined to do. He had stood for a moment in a fright, and then run back again into the chapel, after which he remembered nothing more. Asked whether the voice had been that of a man or a woman, he replied reasonably enough that when a person was whispering it was impossible to tell, and added that he thought it had been neither. At which Fen, who had recovered something of his normal manner, went away snorting with annoyance and deploring the influence of M. R. James on the very young.

The Inspector, the doctor and the ambulance arrived in a very short time, and immediately afterwards Sir Richard Freeman appeared apocalyptically from nowhere, somewhat to the Inspector's annoyance. Their investigations proved to be of little value; Nigel remembered Fen showing them a few faint but unmistakable red stains on a copy of the Respighi Prelude which lay open on the organ desk, but at the time he did not realize their significance; he remembered, too, a casual, irrelevant remark on the oddness of the registration which Donald had prepared for the last hymn. The time of death, even apart from the doctor's contributory evidence, was easy to establish; it had been somewhere between the anthem and the last hymn, that was to say, somewhere between 6.35 and 6.45. The Inspector inquired how it was that no sound of a struggle had been heard, but Nigel, who had visited the organ loft several times during his undergraduate days, remembered that in fact very little was audible even from immediately below, and a few experiments proved this to be correct.

As to the weapon, its provenance was easily discovered. It belonged to the kitchen, situated near the chapel, which served the Senior Common Room, and was a sharp, thin-bladed affair of a fairly common type. The kitchen had been left unattended since 5.30 that afternoon, and there were no fingerprints on the knife except some old ones belonging to one of the kitchen-men. On the iron staircase some traces of rubber-soled shoes
were found, but they had been partly obliterated by Fen and Nigel, and it was impossible to tell either their type or their size; in the vestry, apart from a few smears made by someone wearing gloves, there was nothing. Fen turned the loft inside out in a fruitless search, and then asked the Inspector:

‘When did you take your guard off Fellowes' room?'

‘At 4.30 this afternoon.'

‘Then,' said Gervase Fen, ‘I fancy we shall find that has been searched too.'
(Quaeram dum inveniam!
thought Nigel). Investigation proved him to be right, but they discovered nothing to help them there any more than they had elsewhere.

The porter was questioned as to the presence of strangers in the college that evening. He had seen no one, but he pointed out that there were half a dozen side entrances by which anyone could have come in unobserved. Those undergraduates and dons who had been in college but not in chapel were then assembled in hall and asked if they had seen anyone in the college between five and seven whom they did not know, but again with negative results. This series of frustrations was beginning to harass the Inspector exceedingly; Sir Richard maintained a gloomy silence; and Fen, while following the proceedings with sufficient attention, seemed little concerned about the outcome.

The culmination of the Inspector's troubles came with the visit to the dress-rehearsal which they made towards eight o'clock. Conveniently enough, all the possible suspects were there, including Nicholas, who had come to watch; inconveniently enough, none of them could be eliminated, since not a single one had an alibi which would bear investigation. A few who claimed immunity were rapidly shown that they had nothing of the sort. Most of them had not arrived at the theatre until 6.45, and some later; and as the theatre was only five minutes' brisk walking from St Christopher's, nobody could be freed from suspicion. When Robert assembled the company on the stage at the end of the first act to give them his notes, they were told what had happened, but apart from a manifest unease there had been no special reaction; only Jean gave a little strangled cry of dismay and went straight to Fen, remaining talking to him incoherently for some time. Nigel had no
opportunity to see Helen alone, but he read the fear and dismay in her eyes. It was a dispirited little party that returned to St Christopher's.

Back in Fen's room, the Inspector frankly admitted himself at a loss. There was no more talk of suicide, and obviously all he now cared about was getting the whole business cleared up and done with as soon as humanly possible. He appealed direct to Fen.

‘We've absolutely nothing to go on, sir,' he said, ‘and if you can't help us, nobody can. In its own way, this is a perfect crime; not a handle anywhere.'

‘Yes,' said Fen slowly, ‘a perfect crime because a lucky crime. The murderer entered the college by a back way – unobserved; took the knife from the kitchen and went up to the organ loft, frightening away that boy on the way – still unidentified; then killed Fellowes and left – still unobserved. The murderer had fantastic luck, and if it had been a murder in isolation, I think it would have been insoluble. Whoever killed Fellowes saw to it that his (or her) buttons were properly sewn on before leaving, refrained from smoking, and failed to catch his (or her) clothing on projecting nails. All very excellent. But because of the murder of Yseut, there's no doubt at all who that person was.' He mused. ‘It's my fault that Fellowes was killed, but I couldn't have foreseen it; it was impossible to foresee. Only, if I'd acted sooner, I could have prevented it.'

Sir Richard said: ‘Then the murderer was – ?'

‘I'll tell you,' Fen replied, ‘and I'll tell you the way in which Yseut Haskell was murdered, on one very simple condition. You'll excuse us, Nigel? I'd rather you didn't know just yet.'

Nigel nodded glumly and went out to smoke and walk in the garden. For half an hour Fen talked to Sir Richard and the Inspector in a low voice, explaining, emphasizing, illustrating. As he talked, Sir Richard tugged at his moustache, and the Inspector's face fell. Then they went away.

‘Nigel,' said Fen an hour later as they sat together in his room, ‘it appears that my scruples have been a trifle imbecile.'

‘I'm afraid,' said Nigel, ‘that I've been in a state of superstitious terror over the whole business.'

‘Superstitious terror? Oh, you mean Wilkes' fairy tale. It's time that particular college ghost was laid once for all. I've taken the opportunity of investigating the business, and I've discovered a dirty bit of work, which you may have guessed at. As I suspected, the President at that time wasn't at all the sober, more-things-in-heaven-and-earth character that Wilkes led us to believe, but simply an old fool who'd got his position by nepotism and influence. And you must remember that all the ghost part of it, apart from one or two easily explainable atmosphere incidents in the chape], came from Archer, the dean; Parks, it seems, never mentioned his nocturnal “adventurer” to anyone else. And a very pretty piece of invention it was, too, though the business about John Kettenburgh and the chapel wall gave it a convenient
cadre
. The relationship between Archer and Parks was, it seems, of such a discreditable kind that in those puritanical times not a whisper of it could be allowed to come out. Then Parks decided to do a bit of blackmail, and Archer polished him off, concealing the weapon heaven knows where before the others arrived.'