The Moving Toyshop (19 page)

“Be quiet, Wilkes,” said Fen irritably. “I’m coming to that… Mr. Scott,” he called to a tall, lanky young man sitting at the back of the room.

“Yes, sir?” said Mr. Scott, standing up.

“Do you drive a car, Mr. Scott?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Scott, are you prepared to risk losing your dinner by impersonating me?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“You’ll require a great deal of resource, Mr. Scott.”

“I have boundless resource, sir.”

“Good—admirable. If you understand me, you’ll have to look like me trying to disguise myself.” Fen produced a pair of dark glasses from his pocket. “If you’ll put these on—and my hat and coat—”

Mr. Scott did so. He strode experimentally up and down the lecture-room. At a short distance, the resemblance proved to be quite deceptive. Fen nodded his approval.

“We now need someone to impersonate Mr. Cadogan,” he announced. “Mr. Beavis, you’re about the right height. But you ought to have a hat and coat and dark glasses, too.” He considered. “Sally dear, would you go up to my room? You’ll find the hat and coat in my wardrobe—any ones will do—and the dark glasses in the left-hand top drawer of my desk. I wonder if a false beard… No, perhaps not.”

Sally ran off.

“Now, gentlemen, what I want you to do is this. In a few minutes the police will be here, searching for me and Mr. Cadogan. You know my car?”

“Couldn’t mistake it sir.”

“No. I see what you mean. It’s standing near the main gate—not locked, or anything. As the police arrive, I want you gentlemen to get into it and drive off as fast as you can go. It will need rather careful timing if you’re to induce them to follow you and at the same time get a sufficient start.”

“You want us to decoy them away, sir?” said Mr. Scott

That’s it. And lead them any sort of dance you like, all over the country. I leave that to your ingenuity. There’s plenty of petrol in the tank, and Lily Christine will go very fast. Obviously, they musn’t catch up with you and discover you’re not us.”

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Mr. Beavis remarked with some apprehension.

“It will work,” Fen responded confidently, “because no one
expects
this sort of trick outside a book. I should add that I’ll pay your fines for breaking the speed limit and get you out of any other variety of trouble you may land in. By a bit later this evening I hope to have everything cleared up, but in the meantime I must have the police out of my way. Well, are you game?”

Mr. Scott and Mr. Beavis looked at one another. Then they nodded. Sally returned with hat, coat, and glasses, and helped Mr. Beavis on with them.

“He doesn’t look like me,” said Cadogan.

“He looks very like you indeed,” said Fen. “That same shuffling, furtive gait… Thank you all for your attention, ladies and gentlemen. This seminar is now concluded. Next time,” he added, suddenly mindful of his duties, “we will return to
Hamlet
and discuss it in relation to sources, particularly the no-longer-extant earlier version. You will find that a splendid field for wild surmise… Now. If everything is ready—”

The under­graduates, now that the spell was broken, took their departure, chattering excitedly the while. Mr. Scott and Mr. Beavis, conferring in low tones, went to take up their station.

“I don’t think much of
her
figure,” said Sally, who was examining the Aphrodite.

“Let’s all go up to the tower,” said Fen. “There’s a window there, and we can see what happens.”

They had not long to wait. A black police car drove up, and from it emerged the Chief Constable, with iron-grey hair and moustache, a sergeant, and a constable. They looked very purposeful and grim. Mr. Scott and Mr. Beavis waited until they were about to enter at the main gate, and then darted from a nearby doorway and flung themselves into Lily Christine III. There was a horrifying moment when Cadogan thought the car was not going to start, and then they were off with a roar and a rush down the Woodstock Road, where, had they only known it, Dr. Reginald Havering was at that moment confronting his destiny. The noise attracted the Chief Constable’s attention just as he was stepping inside.

“There they go!” he shouted in a paroxysm of annoyance. “Get after them, you fools!” All three men precipitated themselves back into the police car, and in another moment it was moving off.

Fen sighed with relief. “My poor friend,” he commented. “Now perhaps we can have some peace for a little while. Come along, everyone. we’re going to the ‘Mace and Sceptre’. I’m expecting a message from Mr. Hoskins there.”

In those halcyon times, when the rivers ran with strong ale and the supply of spirits was inexhaustible, the bar of the ‘Mace and Sceptre’ opened at 5:30 in the afternoon. It was just on six when Fen, Sally, Cadogan, and Wilkes arrived. The young man with the glasses and the long neck was sitting in his corner finishing
Nightmare Abbey, 
but the only other inhabitant of those Gothic splendours was Mr. Sharman, now familiar to them under the name of Mold, rabbit-toothed and muffled as ever, and looking as though he had not moved since they left him to search among the shopgirls of Oxford. He waved to them as they came in, and then shrank back in his chair as he saw Sally, his face suddenly pinched, mean, and frightened.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” Fen said amiably, striding towards him. “Richard, get us all something to drink, will you?” He towered over puny Mr. Sharman. “Well, Mr. Sharman, I expect you remember Miss Carstairs, your co-heir, whom you saw last night in the Iffley Road?”

Mr. Sharman licked dry lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come, come.” Fen pulled up a chair for Sally, and then sat down himself. Wilkes was at the bar, helping Cadogan with drinks. “We’ve discovered a great deal about things since we saw you last. Far too much for you to keep up the pretence any longer. Rosseter has talked. Miss Winkworth has talked.” Fen assumed a sinister expression. “And now you’re going to talk.”

“I tell you I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never seen this girl in my life. Now, get away from me.”

“In fact, Miss Winkworth—whom you know as Leeds—told us she saw you kill Miss Tardy.”

Mr. Sharman panicked. “That’s a lie!” he shouted.

“Still, you do know she was killed, don’t you,” Fen pointed out mildly. “Which means you must have been there.”

“I—”

“Let’s have your account of exactly what happened. It had better be a true account, because we have means of checking it.”

“You’re not going to get a word out of me.”

“Oh, yes, we are,” said Fen placidly. “A great many words, in fact.” He paused as Wilkes and Cadogan appeared with beer, whisky, and a cider for Sally. “Go on, Mr. Sharman.”

But Mr. Sharman was gaining confidence. His long teeth were revealed in what was almost a smile. “You’re not the police,” he said. “You’ve no right to ask me questions.”

“In that case we’ll take you along to the police-station, and they’ll ask you questions.”

“You’ve no right to take me anywhere.”

“In point of fact, we have. Every citizen has a right—and a duty—to arrest a criminal found committing a felony. Conspiracy to murder is a felony, you know.” Fen beamed engagingly.

“Prove it,” said Mr. Sharman tersely.

Fen regarded him thoughtfully. “Where murder’s concerned, one’s bound to put humanitarian feelings on one side, isn’t one? Hence the third degree in America. In a case like this one does somehow feel it’s justified.”

Fear was in Mr. Sharman’s red-rimmed eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we might take you away somewhere and hurt you rather a lot.”

Mr. Sharman started to get up from his chair. Cadogan, who had been following the exchange with interest, kicked him hard on the shin. He gave a little yelp and subsided again. “F—— you,” Mr. Sharman said viciously.

“Are you going to tell us what you know?” Fen said.

Mr. Sharman was thinking. “A confession made under threats isn’t any good in a court of law,” he said. “And not a soul can testify I was involved in any conspiracy. Yes, I’ll tell you, and you can make what you like of it.”

“That’s more sensible.”

Some newcomers entered the bar, and Mr. Sharman lowered his voice. “I went to the shop and helped shift those bloody toys about—since you’re so clever, you’ll know why. Then we waited for the woman to turn up. After she did, Rosseter put us all in different rooms and talked to her for a bit. Then the other three got together—Rosseter and Berlin and the woman—and after a bit I heard someone walking softly round the shop, so I went to warn them. We stayed quiet for a while. Then I went in to see the woman and found the light out and her dead. That’s all. Make what you like of it. If it ever comes to the point, I shall deny the lot.”

“Parturiunt montes,”
said Fen,
“nascetur ridiculus mus.”
Well, well, that’s quite enlightening, all the same. Did you dispose of the body and knock out Cadogan here?”

“No, I didn’t. Rosseter or Berlin must have done. Now go away and leave me in peace.” Mr. Sharman wiped a dirty hand across his straggling eyebrows.

A page-boy came into the bar. “Telephone call for Mr. T. S. Eliot!” he piped. “Mr. T. S. Eliot?”

To everyone’s surprise, Fen said “That’s me,” got up, and went out, pursued by the interested gaze of the other persons in the bar. In the telephone-box he talked to Mr. Hoskins, who was sadly out of breath, and with his normal equanimity gravely deranged.

“The fox is away, sir,” he panted into the instrument. “In the open, and making for cover.”

“View halloo,” said Fen. “What direction is he going?”

“If you can get round to St. Christopher’s you may head him off. He’s on a bicycle. Some of my friends are after him. I’m talking from his house. You’ll have to be quick.” Mr. Hoskins rang off.

Fen reappeared apocalyptically at the door of the bar and beckoned furiously to the others. “Come on!” he shouted. “Quick!” Cadogan, who had a mouthful of beer, choked terribly. They rushed to join Fen, leaving Mr. Sharman to his own sordid reflections.

“They’ve got the doctor,” Fen explained excitedly. “He’s out and away. We must run. Oh for Lily Christine!”

They rushed through the revolving doors. Wilkes, whose athletic days were over, seized the only bicycle within sight (needless to say, it was not his) and wobbled unsteadily away on it, while Fen, Cadogan, and Sally ran—ran like dervishes: down George Street, round the corner by Taphouse’s music shop, over the entrance to Beaumont Street (a bus nearly got them here), past the Taylorian, past the Bird and Baby… And there they stopped, gasping for breath, to contemplate the amazing spectacle which confronted them.

Down the Woodstock Road towards them an elderly, abnormally thin man was pedalling, his thin white hair streaming in the wind and sheer desperation in his eyes. Immediately behind him, running for their lives, came Scylla and Charybdis; behind them, a milling, shouting rout of under­graduates, with Mr. Adrian Barnaby (on a bicycle) well in the van; behind them, the junior proctor, the University Marshal, and two bullers, packed into a small Austin car and looking very elect, severe, and ineffectual; and last of all, faint but pursuing, lumbered the ungainly form of Mr. Hoskins.

It was a sight Cadogan was never to forget as long as he lived.

At the time, however, events were moving so fast that he had no opportunity to examine the scene in detail. Down into St. Giles’ came Dr. Havering, and along St. Giles’, travelling in the opposite direction and on the wrong side of the road, came Wilkes. Just in time the doctor perceived his peril. He turned half-right to evade Wilkes and found himself face to face with Fen and Cadogan, who were running towards him. The undergraduate mob was moving up behind. He hesitated, and then with sudden decision twisted away to the left. Wilkes braked violently, nearly falling off in the process. And the doctor cycled furiously into the alleyway which runs between the ‘Lamb and Flag’ and St. John’s. Without a moment’s hesitation, everyone followed—everyone, that is, except the proctorial authority, which stopped, baffled; for the alley-way is too small to admit a car. After some hesitation they set off to drive round to Parks Road, where the alley debouches, and it was the merest bad luck that they ran over a nail on the way and were delayed so long that they lost all track of the chase.

Some ingenious person has contrived, half-way down the alley, an arrangement of posts, and chains, which can only be negotiated on foot, and the pack nearly caught up with Dr. Havering here. But he just eluded them, and was to be seen cycling furiously down the short residential road which leads out into the Parks Road near the various science laboratories. The odds, of course, were unequal, and neither Mr. Barnaby nor Wilkes, the only two who had bicycles, seemed capable of tackling the doctor singly, or even in combination. Cadogan’s heart was pounding fiercely. But there was a sprinkling of determined Blues in Mr. Barnaby’s army; Fen was still running with an easy, loping stride; and Sally, in perfect training and fortunately wearing flat shoes and a split skirt, seemed to have no difficulty in keeping up. Scylla and Charybdis, defeated, dropped out of the race, but for the time being no one paid any attention to them, and they followed at a clumsy jog-trot.

From Parks Road Dr. Havering turned left into South Parks Road, tree-lined and pleasant, with the rout still indefatigably pursuing. Two classical dons, engaged in discussing Virgil, were submerged in it and left looking surprised but unbowed. “My dear fellow,” said one of them, “can this be the University steeplechase?” But as no enlightenment was forthcoming, he abandoned the topic. “Now, as I was saying about the
Eclogues
—”

It was at the end of South Parks Road that Dr. Havering made his great mistake—a mistake which can only be ascribed to the workings of blind panic. Doubtless he had hoped to throw off his pursuers long before, and was in the grip of nightmare. In any event, just as Fen was wasting his breath in chanting (rather inappropriately)
“‘But with unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy…’”
he ran down the lane which leads to Parson’s Pleasure, abandoned his bicycle, flung sixpence at the gate-keeper, and disappeared inside. And from the hounds a howl of victory went up.