Darkness at Pemberley Page 5

  Mauleverer went to a cupboard in the sitting-room and fetched out a bottle of sherry with some biscuits.

  He turned round as Inspector Buller knocked on the door.

  "Come in!"

  Buller said: "I have a grave matter to discuss with you, Mr. Mauleverer. May I see you for some time in private at once?"

  "Certainly. Come in and have some sherry."

  "Thank you, I'll do without a drink."

  "As you like," said Mr. Mauleverer. "I hope you won't mind if I drink myself. I've just been lecturing, and it makes one thirsty."

  He proceeded to pour himself a liberal glass, looking at Buller over the top of it with an inscrutable expression. Buller fidgeted with his hat uneasily. After a pause he said awkwardly: "I scarcely know how to begin. All this is very irregular. I ought not to have come to you."

  "Well," said Mr. Mauleverer pleasantly, "now you've come I hope we'll have a pleasant chat."

  "I believe," said the Inspector, enunciating his words with difficulty, "that you are the murderer of Mr. Beedon."

  "My dear Inspector! What an idea! What an unwarrantable remark! I hope you don't go about saying this sort of thing to everybody?"

  "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come." Buller rose to his feet. "I thought you might have taken it differently. I'll go away at once."

  "Well, I'm relieved at least that you haven't brought a constable—even if it is irregular. And oughtn't you to have warned me?"

  Buller was quite red with mortification. "I'm sorry, sir," he said (but stiffly). "I had no right to speak with you. I apologise for my remark. If you wish to, you can report me to my superiors."

  "Now don't go off like that. I don't take any offence, but I insist on an explanation. You can't go about accusing people of murder without telling them why. Are you free for an hour? We might take a little walk towards Grantchester while you explain yourself. I haven't any pupils till twelve o'clock."

  "Why," said Buller, "I have nothing which will come to any good by explanation. I've made a great mistake in coming."

  "Nevertheless," replied Mr. Mauleverer, "you won't retrieve it by going. You must explain yourself, you know, in common decency."

  "I have no common decency, not in my profession. I'm afraid I shall have to leave it as it is."

  Mauleverer said persuasively: "Come along, just a short walk. If you expected to get something out of me in conversation when you first came, why shouldn't you expect to get it still?" He walked to the door and looked out, as if he expected someone to be outside. But the landing was empty. "Come, take your hat," he said. "I have something to tell you after all."

  In Copper Street Mr. Mauleverer said to the Inspector, without change of tone: "I'm sorry to have had to drag you out. Walls have ears, you know (have you seen the ear in the dungeons at Hastings Castle?), and we scientific criminals get to be a little pernickety. This constant attention to minutiæ has the effect of making one over-careful. I'm sure it's a fault, really. Eventually one will get to the point of not seeing the wood for the trees. What a lot of proverbs!"

  Buller was at a loss for reply, but Mauleverer ran on. "Even now," he said, "I'm suspicious of a trap. Could you have a microphone in your button hole, for instance, with all the Roberts at Scotland Yard listening to my little confidences? I hardly think so, and, besides, conversation heard over the wireless hasn't yet been admitted as evidence in a court of law. One would be sure to get it suppressed."

  Buller was still silent.

  "You'll admit, however," Mauleverer went on, "that I had to get you out of doors before we could really talk. After all, you might have had a constable listening on the landing. I could hardly, in those circumstances, have agreed with your accusation enthusiastically."

  Buller said: "You were unwise to drink that sherry."

  "Not at all," replied the don. "My loquacity is due to other reasons than a mere glass of sherry. I have been ready to talk to you since last night, and I've nothing to hide. Perhaps the gaiety of my tone may be attributed in part to the intoxicant (though of course it's mainly nervous reaction) but you may be sure I'm not putting myself in any difficulties."

  "I understand," said Buller halting. "Now I'm going home."

  "Don't be a fool." Mr. Mauleverer laid his hand on the Inspector's arm. "You cannot allow a personal and illiberal dislike to tear you away just when you might be able to pump me advantageously. I gather from your behaviour that you haven't the evidence to convict, since you haven't even warned me. Your call was just an effort to startle an advantage. Well, go on with it. After all, there may be something to be gained, if only in studying my mentality as revealed by conversation."

  Buller made no reply.

  "Besides," added the other, "I enjoy pulling your leg."

  "I don't enjoy," replied Buller evenly, "having it pulled. Good-bye."

  "What a waste of time! Now that you've dragged me out on this pointless walk I insist on talking to you. I shall tell you exactly how everything was done. I suppose you've established the priority of wound by the autopsy?"

  Buller grunted non-committally.

  "You'd never have thought of looking into that so closely if it hadn't been for an accident." Mr. Mauleverer sighed with what seemed an almost genuine regret. "It was that wretched tone-arm and catch," he added and began to justify himself with vehemence.

  "I wanted to kill Beedon because I believed the Master was getting shaky. Beedon would have got the Mastership if he'd survived the Master. Now I shall get it. I'm poor, you know—by damned fortune. That's your motive. I wanted to make it a suicide. Beedon had a faintly shady past, and suicide would have gone down all right. I went over to Holland and got an unregistered Belgian automatic. (You know they have a type manufactured with a silencer.) It might just as well have belonged to Beedon as to me. Then, about a fortnight ago, I called on Beedon in the evening and got talking about typewriters. He let me try his. I wrote on a slip of his own paper: "I am sick of it. Good-bye," and slipped it in my pocket. He didn't notice. He was in the other room, making coffee. I had asked to try the typewriter just when the milk began to boil."

  "Then I made my plan about the gramophone. I proposed to prop the tone-arm up on a thin tripod made of ice—standing on the record, so that it would be knocked over when the record started. Then, if the engine was fully wound up, one only needed to release the catch for the needle to fall on a record which was already revolving fairly fast. It is the initial drag which slows records up when released with the needle lowered. I was to release the catch by means of a loop of string through the T keyhole of the sport door. (When released you merely let go of one end of the string and pull the whole length out. Then you burn the string.) Your companion has heard a record being played inside the room, with you outside it, and he can swear you were with him all the rest of the evening. Ergo, somebody was alive inside the room when you were at the Festival Theatre, and there's a bullet-proof alibi which isn't likely to be required in any case. For you shot Beedon with the automatic pressed to his temple, you have left no finger marks on the weapon except Beedon's, and the slip of paper is in the typewriter.

  "The gramophone would have borne a very close inspection, for I proposed to touch no part of it except with a pencil or the string itself (which would only mark the under surface of the catch, and you'd have had no reason to be suspicious enough to look there). And—this is the important point—I proposed to leave Beedon's own finger marks on both catch and arm. I did not propose to give them that suspicious wiping, as I was later compelled to do. The thin ice-bridge on which the arm rested was made by myself in the University laboratories so that it would melt in twenty minutes. Beedon's room had a fire in it. To account for the water on the gramophone which the melted ice would leave I put the calceolarias on the dresser by its side and watered them clumsily. I used the same water for both bridge and watering, so you won't prove anything by analysis.

  "And that was the whole of my operation orders at zero-hour. But the be
st-laid schemes, etc. I went into Beedon's room and shot him according to plan. He was more surprised and vexed than anything else, and couldn't believe his senses—whilst he had them. Then I turned at once to the arrangement of the gramophone. Perhaps rather morbidly I had myself given Beedon the record which I proposed to play for his funeral march. But my main reason in giving it him—a couple of days before—was to encourage him to play the gramophone and make nice fresh fingerprints. The record itself didn't matter in my calculations for I proposed to wipe it before putting it on with a silk handkerchief. You see one often wipes gramophone records.

  "Well, I went to the gramophone to put the record on and so forth. I found it was on already. This made me look at the tone-arm through my magnifying glass—I was doing the thing scientifically, you must admit—and I was horrified to find my own fingerprints. That wretch Beedon actually had not touched the machine since I gave him the record, and played it to him myself, two days before. I recognised my own fingerprints because I have studied them. Many people can tell you what colour their own eyes are, but few are familiar with their fingers. I think this is an omission. Anyway I was confronted with Beedon dead and my own prints irreparably on the instrument. It would have been impossible to carry him across and make prints then and there, for what with the blood and other matters liable to microscopic examination I'd have messed up the verisimilitude too much. So I just had to wipe the arm and catch altogether. I still don't think you'd have noticed it but for the other miscarriage of plan. Both miscarriages, I claim, were unforeseeable.

  "Having wound up the handle—allowing it to turn in my palm so as to blur beyond recognition even such imperfect prints as one gets from the main body of the hand—and set up the tone-arm on its ice rest, I went to the little study which faces Copper Street in order to put the typewritten sentence into the machine. I had picked up the automatic as I went, and carried it in my hand, putting it down by the typewriter. The paper was already in place and I had wiped the wheel which turns the roller—of course I had been forced to get his 'confession' typed some days before, so that Beedon should have used the machine after me and thus left his own prints on the keys—when I picked up the automatic and glanced out across Copper Street. That unfortunate undergraduate was standing at the window of his rooms, on a level with myself, staring at me open mouthed.

  "I went straight out—I had to chance it—walked into Number 23, climbed the stairs, and found his room. He was waiting for me with an expression of horror and expectation. I shot him dead.

  "I went back to Beedon's rooms—there was nobody to be seen in the Porter's Lodge on either trip—and took the slip out of the typewriter again. I put it in the fire. Then I took a last look round, wiped the automatic, and put it in Beedon's hand, holding it by the barrel with a silk handkerchief as I did so. Afterwards I gave the barrel a second wipe to make sure. I went to the door and fixed my piece of string round the catch so that both ends just came through the keyhole. Then I sported the door and went to find Weans.

  "When we were outside Beedon's door together I pulled the loop under the pretence of trying to open the door. The catch was released with the engine at high pressure; the record revolving overset the ice prop and dropped the needle on the disc, which started playing with the slightest perceptible groan. I noticed it, but Weans didn't. He wasn't on the look-out for it. It is dark on that landing and neither my actions nor the string were visible."

  Mr. Mauleverer paused abruptly and looked at the Inspector. "That's all," he added.

  Buller said, rather cheerfully: "Well, if you've finished I'll be going." He turned round eagerly and began to walk towards the college. Mauleverer called him back.

  "You should have seen that porter before," he remarked.

  Buller looked at him with horror.

  "He saw me coming out of Number 23. I saw him too, though for some reason I thought he hadn't noticed me. He was coming out of the Crown Arms, where he ought not to have been. You see, he was on duty at the time. I expect you interviewed him and found him reticent on the subject of his whereabouts at eight o'clock. He didn't mention that he'd seen me for two reasons. First, because it implied that he must have left the Lodge when on duty—he did so because everybody was in Hall—and second because he had not actually connected me with the crimes: his mind was full of the Master's imbroglio with Beedon, and with the Chaplain's quarrel. He was a stupid man. In any case he thought best not to mention it: I may say fortunately, for his would have been the one tangible piece of evidence you could have offered against me at a trial. Without his evidence, even on the full reconstruction which I've offered you, you will realise that of course no jury will convict. Now the evidence is negative only."

  "Now?" enquired the Inspector, with his first trace of emotion. He looked as if he could strike Mauleverer to the ground.

  "Yes," replied Mauleverer, "now. But don't let me keep you from going to see him."

  "What have you done to him?" Buller said, rather than asked, in a voice of cold passion.

  "Tut, tut! Run along and see."

  Buller turned on his heel and made off towards the college. Mauleverer's voice called after him triumphantly.

  "Don't hurry," it cried. "Don't hurry!"

  CHAPTER VI

  Buller turned in at the back gate of St. Bernard's, a wrought iron contrivance which led into the part of the college on the Grantchester side of the river. Here was the Fellows' Garden, with some decaying lecture rooms and the cottages which lodged the senior college servants. The Inspector made for Rudd's cottage.

  At the door he found a constable. Inside, talking to Mrs. Rudd, among the aspidistras and bowers of lace, were the police surgeon and the sergeant. Mrs. Rudd was in tears.

  The surgeon took Buller by the arm and led him into the passage. "I came along," he said, "in the hope of seeing you. Did you get the sergeant's note?"

  "No," said Buller. "I've been walking to Grantchester with Mauleverer. What's the matter?"

  "Rudd hasn't been in all night. His wife didn't let me know before because apparently he's done the same thing once or twice already. She seems to think he has a girl in Swavesey. But this morning one of the gardeners found a lot of blood on some clothes which he leaves in the gardening shed on the Backs, and she got frightened. She sent for us just after you left."

  Grounds of St Barnard's

  The Inspector called the sergeant out of the room.

  "Talk to Mrs. Rudd quietly," he said, "and find out everything you can about her husband. Try particularly to get her talking about the Beedon murder. I want to know if Rudd happened to mention to her that he saw Mauleverer coming out of Number 23 at about eight o'clock. I'm going to see this gardener." He tapped his teeth for a moment and then turned to the surgeon. "And I wonder if you," he added, "would 'phone up for reserves from the station? Tell them to bring something to drag the river with."

  *****

  When the surgeon got back from the telephone he found the Inspector standing half way down the path which bordered the Backs. St. Bernard's bridge was a hundred yards to their right, and Queen's bridge about the same distance on the other side. In front of them, across the river, rose the crumbling red brick of the Master's Lodge, and behind them dripped the early spring foliage of a dense grove of trees traditionally planted by Duns Scotus. Since the schoolman's initial effort very little care had been lavished on this part of the grounds, so that the two men seemed to be standing between barbarity and civilisation. The bowers and weedy thickets behind them crept untidily towards the University with something of a tropic surge. The trees hid, somewhere in their bosky heart, the brick wall of the Fellows' Garden (mainly vegetable) and, with their Copper Street wing, the outbuildings of the college. These included the lecture rooms, bicycle stores, porters' cottages, and two or three seedy tennis courts. It was a desolate spot, seldom frequented except in summer.

  Buller was standing on the river bank, looking down at his feet.

  "Look at this,"
he said, when the surgeon came up. "I suppose it's blood?"

  There was a wide and murky stain, rusting the blades of grass, which spread down the bank to the stone parapet of the river and trickled down to the water in cracking rivulets. The surgeon bent down and investigated with his finger. He plucked a blade of grass and tasted it. It was blood.

  "Don't move about," said Buller. "There are plenty of footprints and so on. It was a damp night." He seemed inert and uninterested.

  The surgeon asked helpfully: "Shall I 'phone for Chambers to make a plaster cast?"

  "Yes, and send the sergeant to keep people off. I want to see that gardener's shed as soon as I can get away. You'll find me there."

  The gardener's shed stood beside the cottages, at the edge of the stretch of gravelled drive where the Fellows left their cars. The place was at the very fringe of Scotus's plantation, just outside the walls of the Fellows' Garden. The surgeon, after he had completed his errand, found Buller talking to the under-gardener. On the potting table lay a coat, an apron and a pair of heavy boots: all bloodstained. Buller was looking at them without interest, whilst the gardener told his story. The latter was a black-haired Welshman with the expression of a baboon.

  "Indeed, sir, yes," he was saying, "a change of vestment I keep throughout the winter months. The clay in these parts is very clinging, look you, and I am a poor man sir, look you, indeed, so that I must needs cover my outward parts with a beggar's raiment, yes, and preserve my decent apparel against the Sunday, look you, yes, indeed!"

  "You left your working clothes hanging up here last night," said the Inspector, "and found them in their present state this morning?"