A Question of Proof (25 page)

Griffin touched him gently, as one might touch a sleepwalker. ‘I was just saying to the super., it’s about time the race started.’

Nigel blinked. ‘The race? Oh, yes. Yes. We must get on with the race.’ He seemed to be pulling himself out of a daydream. His face became suddenly stern and formidable. Then he smiled at Armstrong and drawing him away from the others took a medium-sized exercise book out of one of his pockets. ‘You’re looking bored, Armstrong. How about a little light literature? You’ll find a full account of the crime – both crimes – in here. It’s in shorthand. I hope you don’t mind that. But it will be useful should – should anything go wrong with this little tableau vivant of mine. No, don’t read it yet. Just curb your indecent curiosity for a moment or two.’

He raised his voice and addressed the scattered groups. ‘Now, gentlemen, the 440 is about to begin. Will you all go to where you stood for the race, and try to imagine that it is actually being run. Try to follow
every
phase of the race. You’ve got to
see
the runners –’

‘I say, where’s Wrench?’ said Tiverton.

‘Never mind about Wrench. He’ll be on the spot in due course. Now, Griffin.’

The gamesmaster moved to the starting point, murmuring to himself, ‘There’s a breathless hush in the close tonight.’ He took out an imaginary list and allotted stations to six imaginary boys. Then he engineered an intensely dramatic pistol-jam failure. By this time the audience was keyed up to a far higher pitch of excitement than that in which they had awaited the original race. Only Armstrong, standing between the group of masters and the school, watching like a cat the door by which Wrench should presently emerge, was outside the sphere of emotional influence.

‘On your marks! Get set!’ snapped Griffin. The revolver exploded like the crack of doom. ‘Come on, Anstruther!’ shouted Nigel. The white oval on the turf, the drooping flags, the runners falling into line at the first bend – they all came back out of the past, those sunny images holding in a spell the inward eye of the watchers. Even the superintendent, whose ears were stretched as though to hear the feet of Wrench clattering downstairs, glanced involuntarily towards the expanse of turf before him. And then the spell was broken. Somebody was laughing, somewhere behind them; a cool, amused sort of chuckle; a sound that contained at first a hint of bravado, but soon changed to a quietly triumphant key, as though the
performer
had conquered his stage-fright and knew he was dominating his audience. He was. They whipped round all together. For a second they could see nothing; nothing but the path and the flat stubble of the hayfield. Then all eyes focused on the structure of deck chairs where the haystack had been. A head and shoulders showed above its top. Sims was there, peering benignly at them, chuckling away to himself. He looked like an undersized but confident cleric. He placed his hands on the deck chairs in front of him, as on a pulpit cushion, and gave his congregation the preliminary look-over, half winsome, half compelling, of the popular preacher. Then he began to address them. His tones were level and flowing. An expression of inward joy seemed to illuminate his plain face. One forgot the rabbit teeth and the ridiculous straggling mustache.

‘It was quite easy, you see,’ he said, ‘every one was so intent on the race. The murderer had only to walk into the haystack, like I did just now, and strangle his victim, and walk back again. There was plenty of time. It was the same at the cricket match. One of the tent-pegs was really a dagger, you know. He just waited for his moment, pulled it out, stabbed once, and put it back again. It only took a couple of seconds. You see, in moments of great excitement, every one’s attention is focused on one point and the whole strength of mass-emotion keeps it fixed on that point. Pickpockets work on that principle, of course.’

He paused. There was a sigh of sheer amazement, half at his words, half at the strange transfiguration of
himself
. They almost expected him to raise a glass of water to his lips. Incredulous murmurs began to break out. Sims held up a hand, with an ineffable gesture of authority. In the renewed silence he began to speak again, his voice gathering power and volume.

‘You are doubtless eager to know who the murderer was. I will keep you in suspense no longer. To evolve such schemes required brilliance – I think I may even say genius: to carry them out, a nerve and resolution beyond the capacity of most men. But there was someone you had always overlooked; one who appeared insignificant, incapable of brilliance or resolution. You ignored him or despised him, according to your natural bent. That was very silly of you. And he did something none of you could have ever contrived or dared to do. You see, gentlemen, I killed Wemyss and Vale. I hated them and I killed them – right in front of your noses. That is all, I think.’

There was a second of blank and ravaged silence. Then Armstrong darted forward. But Sims reached unhurriedly into a pocket, gave them all a last flashing arrogant smile, drew out a revolver and shot himself dead. He had had his triumph.

XIV

Memoirs and Commentary

‘YES, HATE. JUST
as in the celebrated Cain-Abel case. But the motive was too simple, too primitive for our sophisticated Armstrong. Murder for love; murder for money; murder to cover up a guilty secret; these are common coin for us nowadays. But to go and kill someone just because you hate him, that has become almost unintelligible to us. Which is why poor Sims so very nearly got away with it. He would have, too, if he hadn’t tried to get two separate hates off his chest simultaneously.’

‘Wemyss and Vale? But you can’t call that “simultaneously”.’

‘Oh no. I mean Wemyss and Vale on the one hand and you two on the other.’

It was after dinner on the day of Hugo Sims’ first and last public triumph. Nigel, Hero and Michael were talking in the drawing room. They were feeling exhausted and happy. Nigel had a successful case behind him, and in front of him a large earthenware pot of tea. Hero was sitting on the floor by Michael’s chair, with a hand in his and her golden hair shining
against
his knee; she looked wan still, like Eurydice just emerged from the shades, but the strain was gone; her body and her heart were relaxed. Michael looked down on her with infinite tenderness. It was as though she had come safe through childbirth; then he turned a rather bewildered glance on Nigel.

‘Us two?’

‘Mm. He bit off a little more than he could chew there.’ Nigel applied himself to his tea-drinking. Michael stirred restively, and Hero looked up at him – a sleepy look, that seemed to swim up from great depths, half drowned with love.

‘No doubt in your infinite wisdom you will vouchsafe us some explanation. Or is it one of the things we are not meant to understand.’ Michael spoke in the friendly, challenging, slightly acrid tones he and Nigel had used in their night-long controversies at Oxford. His friend, smiling, replied in the same vein.

‘You wish to pose a question? Proceed. You have our ear.’

‘Dozens. But first, what’s all this about Sims hating Hero and me? I know every one treated him like a subnormal child, but we were no worse than the rest, surely?’

‘Ah, no, it wasn’t that. As a matter of fact, I may have been a bit inaccurate in talking about pure hate. In your case, at any rate, the motive was more complicated. I daresay one would find that Sims was descended from a long line of evangelical missionaries,’ Nigel added inconsequentially.

Michael stared. ‘Why, his grandfather was a missionary in China, I know that. But what on earth –?’

‘It fits in. Missionaries are and always have been the most intolerant people on the face of the earth. They have to be, I suppose,’ Nigel broke off and apparently lapsed into reverie.

‘You know, if you’d lived in ancient Greece, the Delphic oracle would have had to go out of business. Do cut out the cryptic stuff; we’re simply itching to hear all about it. Begin at the beginning, go to the end, and there we may allow you to take a breath.’

‘The beginning? That would take too long. It began before Sims was born.’ Nigel fumbled in a pocket and drew out some sheets of paper. ‘The early Christian fathers sowed a new instinct in the heart of man, and it was watered by their spiritual heirs, the Puritans. Instinct is not the right word, I know, but that fear and hatred of the body is so strong and pervasive, one can scarcely give it any other name. It comes out in all of us at times, often in the most curious forms, and with Sims it was a sleeping volcano. We’ve found a secret diary he kept during the last two months; the superintendent let me make extracts from it. Extraordinarily interesting for an alienist’s casebook.’ He waved the sheets of paper vaguely in the air.

‘When does the lecture finish? I’m going out for a drink.’

‘Now, now; am I conducting this case or are you?
Control
yourself, old boy, control yourself,’ said Nigel coldly.

‘You
are
sweet,’ Hero exclaimed suddenly, full in Nigel’s face. He looked startled, then smiled delightfully back at her.

‘Oi! Oi! This has got to stop! You can’t talk like that to every stray male you meet,’ protested Michael.

‘Stray male to you, sir. That’s just what Sims wrote in his diary – “this has got to stop,” I mean. You see, he had seen you and Hero making love to each other; he deliberately followed you and watched you after a bit. It was a kind of self-torture to him, I expect, but he kept whipping up his Puritan blood like that till in the end he believed himself the instrument of God to punish the sinner. That’s why he tried to throw the guilt of the murders on you. It’s all in this diary of his, but I don’t think I’ll read out those bits; he’s terribly outspoken on the subject, and there’s nothing quite so nasty as the Puritan’s fascinated horror of sex, when he finds words for it.’

‘Good Lord! Good Lord! the poor devil,’ Michael said slowly, with strange compassion in his voice.

‘But I don’t understand,’ said Hero, ‘how could he have spied on us? Surely we would have seen him? And we weren’t as blatant as all that.’

‘He did, anyway. You’ll understand in a minute how he was able to. It’s a terrifying thought; that mild, insignificant-looking little man going about with a positive hell of disgust in his heart, fanning the flames with the images of his own furious imagination –
horrible
. But there’s no use us being morbid, too. I’ll get on with it and read some extracts from the diary.’

Nigel began to read:

‘
May 9th
. In Batford woods again. Chiff-chaff, willow-warbler, wood-warbler, white throat, several tree-creepers; the bullfinches; the redstarts’ nest finished. A lovely day – warblers and woodlarks in full songlike Eden “where every prospect pleases and only man is vile” – E. and his whore here again – the serpent of sin in the garden – wanton – filthy –’

‘And then there’s a good deal of plain speaking and – er – detail, which may be omitted,’ said Nigel.

‘So that’s how he found out,’ whispered Michael slowly, ‘birdwatching … his field glasses, of course.’

‘Yes,’ replied Nigel, ‘and that’s how
I
found out – or rather, how the possibility first entered my head.’

‘Meaning –?’

‘That conversation you told me about. In Tiverton’s room after the first murder. Don’t you remember? Sims saw a yellow-bottomed gorse-tit or something, so we had to stop while he stalked it… And talking of birds, where’s Wrench? Stalking the fair Rosa, I expect. And then the scene Sims made about that – people behaving like animals – quite a militant outburst, you told me.’

‘But he was drunk. He’d just had a few with Gadsby.’

‘Exactly.
In vino veritas
. Repressions pushed aside, timidity left standing, the real man appeared, and his ruling passion, or one of them.’

Hero stirred and looked up at Nigel. ‘But I still don’t follow just how that put you on the right track.’

‘Well. This is taking things out of their right order. Still, the more I looked at the facts, the more one interpretation seemed to emerge. You see, the whole haystack business smelt of stage-management. It was altogether too much of a coincidence that you two and a corpse should visit a haystack within a couple of hours. Armstrong drew the natural inference, that you were the cause of the corpse being there. I, with a possibly misplaced confidence in Michael’s freedom from homicidal tendencies, refused to play. There was only one other explanation, that the corpse was the cause of you being there; in other words, that you had been framed.’

‘Look on this picture and on this,’ interrupted Michael.

‘That will be all from you. So, to cut it short, I had to find out who had it in for you, and why. It was Sims’ great mistake, trying to kill two, or rather three, birds with one stone. It gave me a line. The fact that the scene was laid to compromise
both
of you was where Sims fell down. Too ambitious altogether. It narrowed the issue to someone who knew about your being lovers and objected to it. Judging from the madcap way you were behaving, there was nothing to prevent anyone
knowing
. But there seemed no one, except Hero’s husband, who would have any reason for objecting. I mean, for letting his objection carry him to such lengths.’

‘Quite good for a beginner, isn’t he, Hero?’ said Michael.

‘So Percy Vale was the obvious suspect. Yet I couldn’t take that. For two reasons. First, the injured husband killing a boy in order to take revenge on his wife and her lover. Too tortuous. Too melodramatic. It simply isn’t done. Second, Vale had plenty of money and an assured position; the revenge motive was not likely to be reinforced by a gain motive. Anyway, he wasn’t the right type, not for this type of murder. I could imagine him killing from fear – the cornered rat. But not for gain or out of passion. If he knew about you two, his reaction would be self-pity, followed by spite, cruelty, cat and mouse stuff, refusing to allow divorce proceedings – not murder.’

Nigel broke off, looking apologetic. ‘I say, Hero, I’m terribly sorry. You must think me a cold-blooded automaton, going on like this.’