The Weight of the Evidence (8 page)

‘I think that would be excellent.’

Hissey, mildly happy, led the way into the night.

Professor Prisk held the chair of Romance Languages. But why, Appleby speculated, do professors have chairs? Why not desks? Or even boxes or bags? What Prisk ought really to have was a bag. He was using a sort of invisible bag now. It held what our Saxon forebears would have called his word-hoard. Prisk dipped into his invisible bag, drew out a word apparently at random, fingered it jealously for some minutes, returned it, and brought out another word. He was wholly absorbed in the contents of his invisible bag, so that Appleby thought he was rather like an ingeniously conceived allegory of miserliness. But clearly to have out and gloat over one’s word-hoard like this was a highly esteemed activity. Everybody listened to Prisk with respect – even the two young men behind Appleby who had been inclined to chatter to each other under their breath. The room was subterraneous and full of tobacco smoke, and the place names of Provence went on and on, and Appleby was sorry he had come.

Prisk was a little, stout, aggressive man who lived in a world of words. His room was next to Pluckrose’s. There was something about a telephone…

From the corridor outside a chink of china suggested that the place names of Provence might not go on for ever after all. The young men behind were whispering again. Appleby shifted on a rather hard chair. There was a telephone locked up in a box outside Prisk’s and Pluckrose’s rooms. They had to share the telephone because the university was hard up. Just the sort of malicious economy you could trust Sir David Evans to think of.

Somebody had interrupted with a question. Prisk earnestly explained himself, his hand held suspended over the invisible bag. Several people emitted helpful noises, working on one of Prisk’s words like children. There was animated discussion. Then Prisk was off again, word after word. The whole place was a world of words – which was what made it so difficult for a policeman to get up any steam in. An unsatisfactory day. That odd affair of the Duke of Nesfield – Appleby frowned, very much as if he had detected a possible flaw in the philological reasonings of the laborious Prisk. The telephone! Perhaps
that
was why the Duke –

Appleby took paper and pencil from his pocket. Several people were making notes.
I am a
policeman
, he wrote.
How does Prisk know a telephone call is for him
. When Appleby had written this he handed it to one of the young men behind him, continuing to give every appearance of serious attention to Prisk the while. At his back there was a mild sensation. And then the paper came back.
Thrilled
, it read.
One ring for Pluckrose, two for Prisk.

So there might be something in that. Appleby stuffed the paper in his pocket, aware that the place names of Provence had come to an end. They had come to an end disconcertingly because wholly without peroration or climax. It was just like the turning off of a tap. Only turn again the other way and there would be plenty more to come. But now there would be coffee and then somebody else would start. Pluckrose by this time was in the city mortuary, lying on a slab of marble like a fish in a shop… An open cigarette-case curved round Appleby’s right shoulder and hovered before his chest. It belonged to one of the whispering young men. And at the same moment both young men made a flanking movement and appeared before him. ‘Cigarette?’ said one. ‘Coffee?’ said the other, and darted away. In a moment Appleby found himself edged into an empty alcove, with the two young men staring at him with frank curiosity. It was like having confessed at a children’s party that one had an uncle who had been in prison or in the secret service or quite near the South Pole.

‘My name is Marlow,’ said the first young man. ‘This is the first time we’ve ever met the power behind the village copper. Do you wear a sort of badge behind the lapel of your coat?’

‘Marlow has no manners.’ The second young man spoke in accents of mild apology. ‘We ask no questions. And we are secret as the grave. But we give our modest advice.
Cherchez la femme
.’

‘The mind of Pinnegar’, said Marlow, ‘runs on sex and expresses itself in vuglar
clichés
. Trace the meteorite.’

‘Question his landlady. A sinister gentlewoman called Dearlove.’

‘Subject Prisk to a grilling examination.’

‘Arrest the Vice-Chancellor.’

‘Have you met old Murn? Have him shadowed.’

‘Discover who hung the skeleton in the maze.’

‘Drag the river for Lasscock.’

‘Inquire into the curious affair of Mrs Tavender’s tea-party.’

‘What’s happened to Timmy Church’s girl?’

There was a pause. But they looked as if they might begin again. ‘Thank you,’ said Appleby hastily. ‘Thank you very much indeed. The meteorite shall be traced and the woman hunted for. Prisk, the Vice-Chancellor, and Miss Dearlove shall be interrogated, Murn shadowed if it should be necessary, the matter of the skeleton elucidated, and Lasscock – whoever he may be – traced. Mrs Tavender’s tea-party shall be investigated, and so will the fate of Timmy Church’s girl.’ He put down his cup. ‘I wonder if I might have more coffee? It would be nice to keep some sort of clear head.’

Marlow, a tall man with a shock of auburn hair, went for coffee. Pinnegar stood still and looked impressed and perhaps scared. From the body of the room came a murmur of conversation mingled with mooings, gruntings, and hissings as the assembled scholars continued to challenge each other on nice philological points. The effect, Appleby thought, was to make one look for those bird- and beast-likenesses which human features can always suggest. There were the usual parrots and porkers and fish. These, after all, are the common types. But here and there was something more
recherché
. Prisk, for instance, had a nose flattened after a fashion curiously suggesting the platypus. The grunting and hissing was reinforced by whistling and a sort of muted bellowing as some new class of phonetic phenomena gained the attention of the company. The mingling of noises human and brute, and the zoological analogies thus evoked, gave the whole affair the quality of some vast and suspended metamorphosis, some Circean magic in which there had been a hitch halfway through… But these were unprofitable reflections. Could one say otherwise of the chatter of these two apparently light-hearted young men? Must he take them sufficiently seriously, for instance, really to inquire into the curious affair of Mrs Tavender’s tea-party?

‘About the telephone’ – Marlow had returned with coffee and a plate of biscuits – ‘do you think it was really meant to be
Prisk
?’

‘By Jove, yes,’ said Pinnegar. ‘Appointment with Death. Something like that.’

They weren’t fools. Naturally not. Everybody here was presumably something above average intelligence – it was that perhaps which gave its irritating obliqueness to the whole affair. They liked to approach things sideways. If crabs made noises, then there might be added to the hissing and grunting – Appleby checked himself. Among the constitutionally oblique a little directness might be the most effective thing. ‘Oh, quite,’ he said. ‘Somebody might propose to make a comfortable little appointment with Prisk down by those deck-chairs. And because of this telephone-business the message might somehow deliver itself to Pluckrose instead. One doesn’t see just how. But it’s a possibility, isn’t it? Like Timmy Church’s girl.’

The young men were intrigued. They were also decently uncomfortable. ‘Perhaps’, said Pinnegar, ‘we ought not to have mentioned – ’ He was interrupted by the emergence from the pervasive zoological background of a single dominant noise. At first merely like another pertinacious experiment in phonetics, it presently disclosed itself as a giggle. An elderly man was approaching them, giggling and rubbing his hands. Pinnegar hailed him with renewed cheerfulness. ‘Tavender,’ he called, ‘here is Monsieur Dupont of the
Sûreté
.’ He gestured towards Appleby. ‘He has your
dossier
in his pocket. He is particularly interested in your skill as an epigrapher.’

Tavender – whose wife, presumably, had held the curious tea-party – bowed, giggled, and looked at the ceiling, rather as if he expected it to yield some suitable form of words. As this didn’t happen he simply bowed and giggled again – this, apparently, with much more of good humour than embarrassment.

‘Epigraphy!’ said Marlow. ‘That’s the thing. Tavender or Hissey shall read the evidences of the meteorite. They can decipher inscriptions that are thousands of years old. Let him try his hand at something which is as fresh as paint.’

‘As blood,’ said Pinnegar. ‘For what is inscribed on the meteorite? Presumably particles of Pluckrose. Parts, pieces, portions, pashes. Or should one say petals? Death’s fading rose.’

‘Rose leaves,’ said Marlow, ‘when the rose is dead–’

Tavender giggled, even more good-humouredly than before. He was, Appleby provisionally decided, a displeasing old person. And Marlow and Pinnegar were displeasing young men. At least they would read as that if one wrote their talk down and read it out in court. Perhaps they were sensitive little souls and mildly hysterical. That isn’t nice in young men, but then again it isn’t criminal. Perhaps they had imaginations and very little guts and they didn’t like the Pluckrose business at all… Appleby, who did in fact have a constantly growing
dossier
in his pocket, had another look at Tavender. Tavender quite liked the Pluckrose business. He would like anything which showed large potentialities for the creating of discomfort, malice, and all uncharitableness. For Tavender these things made the world go round. Poor old Hissey, thought Appleby. Coming to Nesfield and finding himself provided with so displeasing an assistant. But of course this might be quite wrong. In such matters even talented young detective officers can make mistakes.

‘Monsieur Dupont’, said Pinnegar, ‘has discovered that it was Prisk whom it was understood to murder. But the call on the telephone missent itself and Pluckrose seated himself in error and the meteorite precipitated itself upon him with the violence enormous. Now, one addresses himself to trace the projectile. Monsieur Dupont will radio-diffuse an appeal tomorrow.’

Tavender, because all this was plainly meant to be droll, stopped giggling and contrived to look serious and sad. ‘It is a possibility,’ he said. ‘The murderer asks the switchboard for Prisk and the operator proceeds to give two rings. But Pluckrose happens to be by the machine – perhaps just about to make a call – and he picks it up on the first ring and says “Hullo”. There is nothing much to a Hullo, and the murderer thinks he has got Prisk. “Come into the court and have a chat,” he says; “there’s a nice bit of sun.” “Right,” says Pluckrose and rings off. Pluckrose goes out and the murderer goes up. Pluckrose finds nobody, so he sits down and waits. The murderer peers down from the tower; his man seems to be there; he drops what he has ready to drop. The theory is possible, and it has its appeal.’

‘Its appeal?’ said Appleby. Suddenly he felt almost affectionately disposed towards Tavender. The man spoke clearly, consecutively, and to the point. Which – in this particular society – was like a good deed in a naughty world. ‘Its appeal?’ said Appleby. ‘My name is Appleby, by the way. And I’m a policeman, all right.’

Tavender bowed and rubbed his hands. ‘It means’, he said, ‘that Prisk is still on the list. If at first you don’t succeed, shy, shy again.’

Marlow laughed. Pinnegar looked sulky; he was not going to be amused by others if others were not to be amused by him. Appleby glanced across the room at Nesfield’s professor of Romance Languages. Could Prisk really be in danger? Would they, perhaps, tie him up in his own invisible bag and chuck him into the fountain? Would a few Provençal place names bubble to the surface, and that be the end? Appleby frowned. The mental habits induced by this learned environment were extremely frivolous. ‘But you wouldn’t maintain’, he said gravely to Tavender, ‘that all this is at all probable?’

‘Of course it isn’t probable. If murder was a probable contingency among us it would be merely alarming. All this is wildly improbable. Who would ever have thought we should all have the chance of whispering criminal suggestions about each other?’ Mr Tavender rubbed his hands in a kind of sober delight. ‘But it has happened. A real murder. And we are concerned not with the probabilities but with what is feasible. One knows straight away that this of the telephone is improbable. But its feasibility depends on a number of factors which you would have to investigate. For instance, the possibility of the mistaken call.’

‘Ah,’ said Appleby.

‘One ring for one man; two for another. Frequently there must have been muddles – and indeed it is known that the shared telephone caused friction between them. One would suppose that always as one of them picked up the receiver the possibility of mistake would be faintly in his head. And this militates against the notion I have put forward. But one must notice that other interesting possibilities open out.’

‘Quite so,’ said Appleby, and wondered what the other interesting possibilities were. He was rather inclined to believe that if Tavender said they existed then they did exist. The man had an unattractive manner. But he also had a clear head. Appleby glanced at Marlow and Pinnegar. They were both looking faintly discontented, as if the matter of Pluckrose had gone unexpectedly dull.

‘For instance,’ said Tavender, ‘there is the matter of the skeleton in the maze. One sees possible correlations with that.’

‘Um,’ said Appleby. The skeleton in the maze had been part of that cluster of suggestions which had included too Mrs Tavender’s tea-party. And it sounded as if it might link up with the practical joking that had offended Professor Crunkhorn. But apart from this, Appleby knew nothing of it. So he said ‘Um’ as quizzically as possible and offered Tavender a sceptical smile.

But Tavender, by vocation a badgerer of bewildered youth, was not to be drawn. ‘Don’t you think?’ he said.

‘I try to think.’ Appleby smiled cheerfully. ‘And what you say is extremely interesting.’