Was It Murder? (2 page)

“You will smoke?” queried Roseveare, offering a box of Coronas.  “I may not do so myself, unfortunately, but I shall enjoy the scent of yours.  Good. . . .  And now, I am sure, you are waiting for me to mention the little affair I hinted at in my letter to you.”

Revell was waiting, it is true, but without any intense eagerness.  If life could continue to provide such agreeable moments of suspense, he at any rate would not be impatient.

“I shall be interested, of course,” he answered.

“No doubt my letter surprised you?”

“Well, perhaps I was—a little—puzzled by it.”

“Exactly.”  Roseveare seemed to welcome the reply.  “And that, my dear boy, is just my own position in a nutshell—I am PUZZLED.”

Revell glanced up with the beginnings of keener interest.  There had been in the “dear boy” a suddenly emotional inflection, as if, behind the mask of bland benignity, the elder man were calling out for sympathy from the younger.  “I hope I shall be able to help you, sir,” Revell said, simply.

“I hope so, too, though I am afraid you may think the whole affair too fantastic even to be considered.  Perhaps I had better give you a brief outline—fortunately it will not be very complicated.  It concerns an extremely sad and unhappy accident that occurred here at the beginning of this Term.”

He waited as if for Revell to make some comment, and then continued:  “There was a boy here named Robert Marshall, a younger brother of our head prefect.  A much elder brother—Henry, I think— was here in your time.  I don’t know if you knew him?”

“Slightly, that’s all.”

“Ah yes, yes.  He was killed during the last days of the War—most tragically, for he was under nineteen and ought not to have been sent out.  His death, indeed, was such a blow to his parents that they both died within a couple of years.  The two younger boys were left—Robert and Wilbraham.  They came on here in the usual way and at the usual ages from a preparatory school.  Pleasant boys—not brilliant, perhaps, but well liked and altogether a credit to the School.  Wilbraham, as I said just now, is our present head prefect— a boy of sound character, good at games, and very popular.  He will leave next summer, no doubt, and enter Oxford—there is, fortunately, plenty of money.  But to come to the point.  About three months ago his younger brother—Robert, that is to say—was the victim of a most peculiar and distressing accident.  A heavy gas-fitting fell on him in the dormitory during the night, killing him instantly.”

“Good Lord!”  Revell, who till then had been listening rather dreamily, found himself suddenly jerked into attention.

“Some of the London papers had a paragraph about it,” Roseveare went on.  “I don’t know if you noticed it?”

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t.”

“Then I certainly think it will be best if, before saying any more, I allow you to read the account of the inquest, reported fairly fully in our local paper.”

He took out a pocket-wallet and produced therefrom a folded newspaper-cutting.  “Take your time,” he remarked, handing it over.  “And remember—all this happened three months ago.”

It was a column and a half in length, and Revell, at a first quick reading, seized its main points as follows.  The accident had taken place on the first Sunday-night-Monday-morning of the Autumn Term.  It had not been discovered till daylight, when a boy named March, who had chanced to wake early, saw that something had happened, and raised the alarm.  The gas-fitting was a heavy, old-fashioned, inverted-T-shaped affair, one of a series that were suspended in a double row along the whole length of the dormitory.  Underneath the junction of the horizontal and vertical sections of piping a brass tip had been fitted, apparently for ornamental effect.  Marshall, it seemed, had been sleeping with his head exactly under this tip, so that when the whole thing collapsed the effect must have been like a heavy spear falling on him.

Of several witnesses called, none could give much real information.  The school doctor, a fellow named Murchiston, described how he had been sent for at seven in the morning to examine the body.  Death, he thought, had been instantaneous, the skull and brain having been pierced.  The accident might have taken place from five to eight hours before—he would not care to commit himself more than that.

The housemaster, Mr. T. B. Ellington, described the position of his private house, next to the School House block containing the dormitory, but quite separate from it.  He was not only Marshall’s housemaster, he explained, but the boy’s cousin as well.  It was his habit to walk through the dormitory and turn off the gas-jets at ten o’clock every night.  He had done so as usual on that particular Sunday night.  He had not noticed anything at all peculiar about any of the gas-fittings.  After bidding the boys good night he had worked for a time in his own private room adjoining the dormitory and had then returned to his house and gone to bed.  That might have been, perhaps, as late as one o’clock, for he had been busy marking terminal examination papers.  He had certainly heard nothing unusual during that time.  He knew nothing at all about the accident till a boy came to him soon after six o’clock with news of what had happened.  He had immediately hastened to the dormitory and had found Marshall dead.  The whole gas-fitting, wrenched or broken off at the ceiling, lay across the bed in the position in which, apparently, it had fallen.  He had been too much distressed to examine it minutely.  There was a strong smell of gas in the dormitory, so he had sent a boy to turn off the supply at the main.  Then he had sent another boy to fetch the Headmaster.

Evidence was then given by several boys, including the two who slept in the beds on either side of Marshall’s.  None of them had heard anything during the night.  They agreed that they usually slept well and did not waken easily.

A “certain liveliness” seemed to have been introduced into the proceedings by the evidence of a Mr. John Tunstall, chief engineer to the local gas company.  On being informed of the accident by telephone, he said, he had immediately visited the School, and made an examination.  The gas-fitting was very old, and of a type that no company would supply or recommend nowadays.  He had found a large fracture in the pipe near the ceiling-rose.  This had evidently been the cause of the fitting’s suddenly dropping loose.  Such fractures did sometimes occur in fittings that had seen many years’ service, especially if they had been subjected to any particular sort of strain.  Questioned by the Coroner on this point, he said that he had in mind another and a similar fitting at the School that had been pulled down as a result of some of the boys swinging on it.

Dr. Roseveare next gave evidence, if evidence it could be called.  The Coroner allowed him latitude to make a few kindly remarks concerning the dead boy and to express sympathy with his relatives.  From that he passed to the more practical announcement that the governors of the School had already given orders for the complete electrification of the entire buildings.  He also craved leave to state, since the point had been raised, that there never had been, to his knowledge, any instance of Oakington boys swinging on the gas-fittings.  The incident presumably referred to by one of the witnesses had been that of a window-cleaner who had carelessly broken off one of the fittings with his ladder.  As Headmaster he thought it only fair, in the interests of the School, to mention this. . . .

That was all.  The jury, without retiring, returned the inevitable verdict of “Accidental Death”.

Roseveare waited in silence until he could see that Revell had got to the end.  Then, moving forward a little in his chair, he coughed interrogatively.  “Well?  And what do you think of it?”

Revell handed back the cutting.  “It was an odd sort of accident, of course,” he commented.  “But then, odder ones have happened, I daresay.”

“Precisely.”  Roseveare’s grey, deep-set eyes quickened a little.  “I naturally regarded it in that light myself.  So did the poor boy’s guardian, a Colonel Graham, living in India, from whom I received a most courteous and sympathetic letter.  And then, just about a week ago . . .”  He paused.  “You will probably think it was quite a small and insignificant thing.  Indeed, I hope you do.  Anyhow, let me tell you about it.”

Through the haze of cigar-smoke Revell nodded encouragement.  Roseveare continued:  “Last week I had a letter from Colonel Graham— a second letter.  He suggested that Mr. Ellington, as the poor boy’s housemaster and cousin, should take charge of his personal belongings until he himself came home from India in about six months’ time.  I had naturally been expecting instructions of such a kind, and had already had everything collected and stored away.  I was just looking them over before passing them on to Ellington when—to make a longish story a little shorter—I chanced upon this.”  He produced a second slip of paper from his wallet.  “It was between the pages of the boy’s algebra-book.”

It was a sheet of notepaper with the Oakington crest and letter-heading.  At the top was the date—September 18
^th
.  And underneath, in carefully printed capital letters, the following:

“IF ANYTHING SHOULD HAPPEN TO ME, I LEAVE EVERYTHING TO MY BROTHER WILBRAHAM, EXCEPT MY THREE-SPEED BICYCLE, WHICH I LEAVE TO JONES TERTIUS.  (SIGNED)--ROBERT MARSHALL.”

Revell, after a short pause, handed back the document without remark.  Roseveare went on:  “You can perhaps imagine my feelings at the discovery of such a thing.  It raised—hardly perhaps so much as a suspicion—but a sort of—shall I say a sort of curiosity in my mind.  It was rather disconcerting to reflect that on the very evening before the boy died he had been thinking of his own possible death.”

Revell nodded.  “I suppose there WAS a three-speed bicycle?”

“Oh yes.  And he WAS friendly with Jones—I verified all that.  I couldn’t get hold of another example of his printing to compare with, but the handwriting of the signature seemed authentic enough.”  He clenched his hands on the arms of the chair and added, with a touch of eagerness:  “I daresay the whole thing is just pure coincidence.  I certainly don’t want you to assume that there is more in it than meets the eye.”

Revell nodded once again, but with his glance fixed rather shrewdly on the other.  “What is it,” he asked, “that you would like me to do?”

“Nothing definite, I assure you—nothing definite at all.  Just consider, if I may so express it, that for a few days you hold a watching brief.  Here, as I have told them to you, are the facts— presenting a situation that is, shall we agree to say, abnormal enough to be worth a little extra attention if only for its own sake.  Just look over it yourself and tell me how you feel about it— that’s really all I have in mind.”

“But surely, sir, you don’t suspect—“

“My dear boy, I suspect nothing and nobody.  As a matter of fact”— the emotional inflection was in his voice again—“this terrible business was a great blow to me—far greater than I have allowed people to see.  Apart from personal regrets, the publicity that the whole affair received was a great setback to the School.  You may or may not know, Revell, the state in which I found things when I first came here.  For half a dozen years I have toiled hard to raise and improve, and then—comes THIS.  There is no one on my staff in whom I would care to confide.  I cannot probe into the matter myself—to do so would draw even greater attention to it.  And yet, of course, there may be nothing at all to probe. . . .  My nerves, I am aware, are not in the best condition—I need a long holiday which I shall not be able to take until the summer vacation next year.  I can see you are tremendously mystified by all this.  And no wonder.  It is all, I daresay, perfectly absurd.”

“I must admit, sir, I don’t see a scrap of evidence to suggest anything really wrong.”

“Of course not.  There isn’t any, I don’t suppose.  And yet— there’s that little demon of curiosity in my mind—why WAS the boy thinking of death on that Sunday evening?”

“Who can say?  Coincidences like that DO happen.  And there’s nothing very remarkable in the note itself.  Just the fatuous sort of thing I might have written myself on a Sunday night after chapel when I’d nothing else to do.”

“Probably—you comfort me even by saying so.  Nevertheless, you will not decline my vague and probably quite ridiculous commission?”

“Oh, of course not, if you would really like me to look into it.”

“Good.  You see, no doubt, how well suited you are for the task.  As a distinguished Old Boy of the School, you have the best of reasons for being here as my guest.  You can talk to both boys and masters without anyone questioning your bona-fides.  No one, of course, knows or need know why you are really here.  You understand?”

“Oh yes.”

“Then I leave things in your hands.  I have heard splendid accounts, my dear Revell, of your work in connexion with a certain regrettable affair at Oxford.  This, I hope, will be less serious. . . .  You were in School House, I believe, when you were here?”

“Yes.”

“Good—that will give you a convenient excuse for meeting Ellington.  I mentioned your visit to him, in fact—he suggested you might care to breakfast with him to-morrow morning.”

“I should be delighted.”

“Most likely he will drop in later on to-night to meet you. . . .  Another cigar?  Yes, do, please.  Are you interested, by the way, in etchings?  I have one or two here that are considered to be rather choice.”

Revell perceived that the discussion, for the time being, was over, and he could not but notice and admire the ease with which the other resumed his earlier manner.  Nerves or not, he certainly had them well under control.  They talked on for over an hour on varied topics; Roseveare showed himself to be a man of remarkably wide interests, and obviously enjoyed an exchange of views with the younger generation.  Yet there was not a trace of patronage or of condescension in his attitude.  He listened sympathetically when Revell told him of his literary work and of the Don Juan epic.  Revell liked him more and more; it was as if their recent more serious talk had been a strange interlude in a much more real intimacy.

Towards ten o’clock Ellington arrived and was introduced.  He was a heavily built, middle-aged fellow, thick-set of feature and going a little bald.  Under his impact the conversation sagged instantly.  He appeared cordial enough about the breakfast invitation, but Revell gathered that it was his housemasterly habit to ask School House old boys to breakfast, and that he did it as a sort of routine duty.  Revell, in fact, was not greatly attracted to him.  When he had gone Roseveare faintly shrugged his shoulders.  “A hard worker, Ellington, and a devoted colleague.  But not much of a conversationalist, I am afraid.  However . . .  Perhaps you will take a little whisky before going up to bed?  I usually do so myself.”